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The voters reject Obama, his policies and the change he has wrought yet they wind up paying for everything he asks for. No wonder fiscal ruin is in our future! (See 1 below.)
In order to get this monstrosity of a budget passed, Republicans had to get some Democrats to co-operate because Pelosi and her crowd wanted to shut down the government. Interesting how when the shoe is on the other foot Democrats do not consider themselves terrorists. The word they threw against Republicans in prior times when shutting down government was imminent.
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.Perhaps it would be useful if every police department went on strike for a week. Maybe that would allow the anti-everything elite complainers and rioters to build stronger relationships and really get to know and better understand each other!
And while this is happening perhaps the CIA could go on a non-paid month's vacation.
I understand the bizarre capture the headlines and sell newspapers and increase TV watching and this is why the press and media focus on riots, complainers, America haters etc. Meanwhile, 90% of Americans go about their daily lives shaking their heads in bewilderment.
The problem with this model is that it causes/encourages backlashes, dispirited feelings and often provokes counter arguments and policies that are equally bizarre and contentious.
The change Obama has wrought is an America that is increasingly upside down in its collective thinking but then maybe that has been his intent all along. Weaken America, bring it down to its knees through internal discord, increase its debt and punish us because of our arrogance, racial attitudes and stupidity.
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Dershowitz on why the surge in European anti-Semitism. (See 2 below.)
I concur in much of what he writes and I would add the following:
a) When Israel was established and a weak underdog, the world felt sympathy because the world empathizes with an underdog. When Israel defeated its enemies and proved it was strong the world no longer felt empathy.
b) The Palestinians now have become the underdog replacing Israel, so their is an empathy shift going on which is purely emotional, is amoral and illogical.
c) When you repeat something you create a base line for future acceptance. If you continue repeating what appears to be a simple message, ie. all Palestinians want is a land of their own (they were given this opportunity in 1947, rejected it and lost), and circumstances do not change because you have been obstinate and have continued your terrorist behaviour and will not renounce your desire to destroy Israel, the world does not respond to logic but simply to the unfulfilled message.
d) The West remains over an Arab/Muslim barrel of oil and thus energy vulnerable so they readily bought into the lie that Israel was the fly in the ointment.
Now that America can be energy independent, if Obama allows same, and ISIS threatens the same Arabs/Muslims who have the world over their barrel of oil and find a strong Israel useful, it is only, perhaps, a matter of time before attitudes in the Middle East will change but outward appearances of discord and enmity towards Israel must remain. Why? Because when you have been successful in creating a state of hate it is hard to undue such.
e) Finally, European nations are weak and the Arab/Muslim influence grows as their population increases in these countries. The weak always need a scapegoat. (See 2a and 2b below.)
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Once again, Krauthammer and I are on the same page. (See 3 below.)
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1) CROmnibus: The $1 Trillion Betrayal
Flush from an unprecedented nationwide GOP victory in this November’s elections, House and Senate GOP leadership determined that their essential first course of action should be to snatch defeat from its jaws. They have brought forth a spending bill for 2015 that gives President Obama almost everything he wants, while disenfranchising the very voters who delivered the GOP victory.
The $1.014 trillion Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015, (HR 83), has been dubbed “CROmnibus” as it is a combined continuing resolution (CR)[1] and Omnibus spending bill. It will provide full funding for 11 of the 12 annual appropriations bills to the end of FY 2015 (September 30th), and a short term continuing resolution to February 27 for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The 1,603 Page Cromnibus
Speaker Boehner has said he would ensure members a minimum of 72 hours to read legislation. Instead, following former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s innovative “pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it” policy, there will only be a tiny window of no more than 52 hours to read, analyze and vote on a trillion dollar spending bill that is 1,603 pages long. For reference, the Bible (NKJV) is only 1,200 pages. In 2010, incoming Speaker Boehner sang a different tune, “I do not believe that having 2,000-page bills on the House floor serves anyone’s best interests, not the House, not for the members and certainly not for the American people,” he said. But he also said he was going to cut spending…
Well, since this monstrosity went public at around 8:30 Tuesday night, countless eyes have been poring over its provisions to make sure we don’t have to pass it to find out what’s in it. Following are some of the worst:
1. Explanatory Statement
Right from the start, the very first provision indicates this is a new animal:
Sec. 4 Explanatory Statement (P 4.)
The explanatory statement regarding this Act, printed in the House of Representatives section of the Congressional Record on or about December 11, 2014 by the Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations of the House, shall have the same effect with respect to the allocation of funds and implementation of divisions A through K of this Act as if it were a joint explanatory statement of a committee of conference.
What it says in plain English is that the appropriations committee chairman will have authority to write in changes to any of the appropriations bills after the bill is passed. Usually this is done by a conference committee before the vote and indicates how and where they would like to see monies spent. This provision could allow the chairman to sneak in something or make other changes after the vote!
2. Executive Amnesty Is Fully Funded
The bill withholds funding for 451 separate activities, but none for executive amnesty. It provides at least $2.5 billion to handle this year’s influx ofapproximately 252,600 illegals. Most of the programs existed beforehand, but the legislation makes clear that increases have been provided to cover the additional costs:
Health and Human Services: $948 million for HHS’s Unaccompanied Alien Children program, $80 million more than fiscal year 2014, specifically to accommodate the “more than 57,000 children” apprehended in 2014. According to the Democrats, “It will also support legal services for children as they seek safety in the United States from extreme violence and abuse in their home countries.” This mantra is part of the Democrats’ effort to reclassify illegal aliens as “refugees,” a classification they clearly do not warrant. See p. 34 of Democrat bill summary.
Social Security: The following convoluted language actually gives illegals greater access to Social Security. By limiting denials to individuals whose actions have “formed the basis for a conviction…” implicitly everyone else is eligible, including those 4.5 million amnestied illegals:
None of the funds appropriated in this Act shall be expended or obligated by the Commissioner of Social Security, for purposes of administering Social Security benefit payments under title II of the Social Security Act, to process any claim for credit for a quarter of coverage based on work performed under a social security account number that is not the claimant’s number and the performance of such work under such number has formed the basis for a conviction of the claimant of a violation of section 208(a)(6) or (7) of the Social Security Act. (PP. 958-959).
Department of Education: “$14 million for grants to all State educational agencies within States with at least one county where 50 or more unaccompanied children have been released to sponsors since January 1, 2014…” (P. 910) Furthermore, local agencies will be given subgrants for “supplemental academic and non-academic services and supports to immigrant children and youth.”
Department of State: $932 million. Includes a provision to assist Central American countries in improving their border security. (PP. 1303 -- 1306). No funds appear to be allocated specifically to this activity but theDemocrats’ bill summary identifies $260 million “to respond to a surge of unaccompanied children from Central America coming to the U.S. The funds will be used to implement a prevention and response strategy focused on border security and the reintegration of migrants, as well as the causes of the migration, including programs to improve education and employment, support families, counter gangs, coyotes and drug cartels and professionalize police forces.” See p. 53.
Note that the above does not refer to U.S. border security but that of Central American countries -- an absurd gesture. The three Northern Triangle states of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador facilitated this year’s migration. Their borders are much tighter than ours. If they wanted to shut them down, they could. Flush $260 million.
Providing a short-term CR for DHS was supposed to make it appear that the GOP was going to challenge Obama’s illegal executive amnesty next year, because DHS agencies are to process new applicants under the executive order. But there is no language in the DHS CR defunding amnesty. Bill writers claimed they could not insert defund language into the DHS CR because affected programs are self-funded with user fees. Yet the bill had language restricting other user-fee based programs in other agencies. And if they couldn’t defund it now, how could they next year when the CR expires?
Between now and February 27, Obama’s executive action is fully funded, and the CR expires after the program kicks in. Meanwhile, DHS is rushing to hire new personnel to process the illegals expected to apply for the amnesty. There were so many lies and deceptions in this exercise it was almost impossible to keep up.
The GOP House leadership wants amnesty. Rep. Pete Sessions has said publicly that Republicans did not intend to repatriate the illegals who overwhelmed the border in 2014. Regarding any immigration “reform,” Sessions emphasized that the plan, “even in our wildest dream, would not be to remove any person that might be here, unless they were dangerous to this country and had committed a crime.” They structured the CROmnibus specifically to give Obama what he wants, allowing him to take the heat for it while they pretend to oppose it. Their real goal is to pass comprehensive immigration “reform” in 2015 that will look much like George W. Bush’s failed effort in 2007.
The Daily Caller’s Neil Munro quoted a GOP Hill aide: “GOP leaders want to block and complicate the anti-amnesty fight because the GOP might win the fight against Obama… That victory would derail their plans for an GOP-designed amnesty in 2015, and complicate their efforts to keep immigration out of the 2016 election...”
The Leadership’s amnesty goals defy all logic. Those illegals brought with them a dictionary of new diseases, including most likely, the Enterovirus outbreakresponsible for at least 8 deaths and numerous cases of serious paralysis. Illegals commit heinous crimes in disproportionate numbers. A major reason the GOP swept elections nationwide is that most Americans -- including Democrats and Hispanic Americans -- do not like Obama’s open borders policies and want illegals sent home, not to remain here stealing jobs and overburdening our welfare system -- already stressed to the max. Poll after poll indicates this.
On Wednesday, an amendment was proposed that would block funding for Obama’s executive amnesty. One of the amendment’s co-sponsors was Dave Brat, the Virginia legislator who threw Eric Cantor out of office. The amendment probably won’t get a fair hearing but good on him for trying.
3. Full Funding for Obamacare
Clever language says “no new funding” for Obamacare. But Obamacare was fully funded in the CR passed in September to keep the government open until December 11, including the contentious abortion funding and other issues. Now funding will be provided for the full fiscal year. This means no Obamacare repeal this year, and as it gradually sinks its tentacles into our Nation’s heart, it will be increasingly difficult to rip out. If a Republican becomes president in 2016, by then it will be so entrenched they won’t dare risk political capital to remove it. Difficult to believe, but the GOP Leadership appears to want Obamacare almost as much as the Democrats.
4. Millions More Muslim Refugees
Syrian Refugees $3.06 billion has been provided, $1.01 billion above the President’s request for Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons. (P. 52Democrat summary). Recall that in September Simon Henshaw, deputy assistant secretary of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, announced: “Next year, you will see thousands [of Syrians] entering the US. We are committed to a large program on a par with other large [refugee resettlement] programs in the past… Our commitment is to do thousands a year over many years,” he said. There are over 1 million Syrian refugees in Turkey who have fled Syria’s civil war. “Our resettlement program from Turkey is one of our largest in the world, and it will continue to grow,” he added. Refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran will also benefit. So if you like Dearbornistan, prepare for many more towns like it.
5. Aid to Syrian Rebels
Half a Billion to Nice Terrorists “$500,000,000 … to provide assistance, including training, equipment, supplies, sustainment and stipends, to appropriately vetted elements of the Syrian opposition and other appropriately vetted Syrian groups or individuals for the following purposes: defending the Syrian people from attacks by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and securing territory controlled by the Syrian opposition; protecting the United States, its friends and allies, and the Syrian people from the threats posed by terrorists in Syria; and promoting the conditions for a negotiated settlement to end the conflict in Syria.”. Weren’t our friends in Libya “appropriately vetted” too? The bill denies use of these funds for “procurement or transfer of man portable air defense systems.” But how does DoD plan to enforce that? (PP 426-427).
6. A Bunch More Objectionable Provisions
- EPA gets to keep on imposing “greenhouse gas” regulations that are strangling coal, while provisions reining in EPA were stripped from the bill.
- Provisions supporting gun rights were removed.
- $5.4 billion for Ebola efforts in Africa -- more than provided to fight ISIS.
- The bill contains phony budget gimmicks, but still violates spending caps
- Too many others to list
Club for Growth is urging all members of Congress to vote "NO” on the Cromnibus (HR 83), as is Heritage Action for America, the political action arm of the Heritage Foundation. Conservatives may have an unlikely ally in Senator Elizabeth Warren. Warren has become the Democrat’s latest folk hero following the ignoble flameout of Wendy “Abortion Barbie” Davis. Warren has called on Democrats to deny support until one objectionable provision regarding the Dodd-Frank law is removed. The Teamsters have weighed in as well, asking members not to support Cromnibus because of changes to multi-employer pension legislation. Both sides may be willing to consider a short term 90 day CR should the CROmnibus fail to pass, but the White House understandably prefers the monster.
This bill sets horrible precedents; most importantly it blatantly dismisses overwhelming popular opposition to both executive amnesty and Obamacare. The GOP majority was elected to take action, and not the action preferred by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Obama and the Democrats, but that demanded by taxpaying voters. If allowed to stand, these two policies will rip our country apart and ensure that the GOP majority, as usual, is very short-lived.
James Simpson is an economist, former White House budget analyst, businessman and investigative journalist.
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2)WHY SUCH A SURGE OF WORLDWIDE ANTI-SEMITISM -- BY ALAN DERSHOWITZ
By: Alan Dershowitz
Why are so many of the grandchildren of Nazis and Nazi collaborators who brought us the Holocaust once again declaring war on the Jews?Why have we seen such an increase in anti-Semitism and irrationally virulent anti-Zionism in western Europe?To answer these questions, a myth must first be exposed. That myth is the one perpetrated by the French, the Dutch, the Norwegians, the Swiss, the Belgians, the Austrians, and many other western Europeans: namely that the Holocaust was solely the work of German Nazis aided perhaps by some Polish, Ukrainian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian collaborators.False.The Holocaust was perpetrated by Europeans: by Nazi sympathizers and collaborators among the French, Dutch, Norwegians, Swiss, Belgians, Austrians and other Europeans, both Western and Eastern.If the French government had not deported to the death camps more Jews than their German occupiers asked for; if so many Dutch and Belgian citizens and government officials had not cooperated in the roundup of Jews; if so many Norwegians had not supported Quisling; if Swiss government officials and bankers had not exploited Jews; if Austria had not been more Nazi than the Nazis, the Holocaust would not have had so many Jewish victims.In light of the widespread European complicity in the destruction of European Jewry, the pervasive anti-Semitism and irrationally hateful anti-Zionism that has recently surfaced throughout western Europe toward Israel should surprise no one."Oh no," we hear from European apologists. "This is different. We don't hate the Jews. We only hate their nation-state. Moreover, the Nazis were right-wing. We are left-wing, so we can't be anti-Semites."Nonsense.The hard left has a history of anti-Semitism as deep and enduring as the hard right. The line from Voltaire to Karl Marx, to Levrenti Beria, to Robert Faurisson, to today's hard-left Israel bashers is as straight as the line from Wilhelm Mars to the persecutors of Alfred Dreyfus to Hitler.The Jews of Europe have always been crushed between the Black and the Red - victims of extremism whether it be the ultra-nationalism of Khmelnitsky to the ultra-anti-Semitism of Stalin."But some of the most strident anti-Zionists are Jews, such as Norman Finkelstein and even Israelis such as Gilad Atzmon. Surely they can't be anti-Semites?"Why not? Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas collaborated with the Gestapo. Atzmon, a hard leftist, describes himself as a proud self-hating Jew and admits that his ideas derive from a notorious anti-Semite.He denies that the Holocaust is historically proved but he believes that Jews may well have killed Christian children to use their blood to bake Passover matzah. And he thinks it's "rational" to burn down synagogues.Finkelstein believes in an international Jewish conspiracy that includes Steven Spielberg, Leon Uris, Eli Wiesel, and Andrew Lloyd Webber!"But Israel is doing bad things to the Palestinians," the European apologists insist, "and we are sensitive to the plight of the underdog."No, you're not! Where are your demonstrations on behalf of the oppressed Tibetans, Georgians, Syrians, Armenians, Kurds, or even Ukrainians? Where are your BDS movements against the Chinese, the Russians, the Cubans, the Turks, or the Assad regime?Only the Palestinians, only Israel? Why? Not because the Palestinians are more oppressed than these and other groups.Only because their alleged oppressors are Jews and the nation-state of the Jews. Would there be demonstrations and BDS campaigns on behalf of the Palestinians if they were oppressed by Jordan or Egypt?Oh, wait! The Palestinians were oppressed by Egypt and Jordan .. Gaza was an open-air prison between 1948 and 1967, when Egypt was the occupying power. And remember Black September, when Jordan killed more Palestinians than Israel did in a century? I don't remember any demonstration or BDS campaigns -- because there weren't any.When Arabs occupy or kill Arabs, Europeans go ho-hum. But when Israel opens a soda factory in Maale Adumim, which even the Palestinian leadership acknowledges will remain part of Israel in any peace deal, Oxfam parts ways with Scarlett Johansson for advertising a soda company that employs hundreds of PalestiniansKeep in mind that Oxfam has provided "aid and material support" to two anti-Israel terrorist groups, according to the Tel Aviv-based Israeli Law Group.The hypocrisy of so many hard-left western Europeans would be staggering if it were not so predictable based on the sordid history of Western Europe's treatment of the Jews.Even England , which was on the right side of the war against Nazism, has a long history of anti-Semitism, beginning with the expulsion of the Jews in 1290 to the notorious White Paper of 1939, which prevented the Jews of Europe from seeking asylum from the Nazis in British-mandated Palestine .. And Ireland , which vacillated in the war against Hitler, boasts some of the most virulent anti-Israel rhetoric.The simple reality is that one cannot understand the current western European left-wing war against the nation-state of the Jewish people without first acknowledging the long-term European war against the Jewish people themselves.Theodore Herzl understood the pervasiveness and irrationality of European anti-Semitism, which led him to the conclusion that the only solution to Europe's Jewish problem was for European Jews to leave that bastion of Jew hatred and return to their original homeland, which is now the state of Israel ...None of this is to deny Israel's imperfections or the criticism it justly deserves for some of its policies. But these imperfections and deserved criticism cannot even begin to explain, must less justify, the disproportionate hatred directed against the only nation-state of the Jewish people and the disproportionate silence regarding the far greater imperfections and deserved criticism of other nations and groups including the Palestinians.Nor is this to deny that many western European individuals and some western European countries have refused to succumb to the hatred against the Jews or their state. The Czech Republic comes to mind. But far too many western Europeans are as irrational in their hatred toward Israel as their forbearers were in their hatred toward their Jewish neighbors.As author Amos Oz once aptly observed: the walls of his grandparents' Europe were covered with graffiti saying, "Jews, go to Palestine .." Now they say, "Jews, get out of Palestine " ? by which is meant Israel ...Who do these western European bigots think they're fooling? Only fools who want to be fooled in the interest of denying that they are manifesting new variations on their grandparents' old biases.Any objective person with an open mind, open eyes, and an open heart must see the double standard being applied to the nation-state of the Jewish people. Many doing so are the grandchildren of those who lethally applied a double standard to the Jews of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.For shame!
2a) To whom it may concern
We are tired of hearing that withdrawal from Judea and Samaria will bring peace. We know and you know that it would bring another Gaza. So stop saying it. We are tired of hearing that land beyond the Green Line is ‘Palestinian land’. The Green Line is simply an armistice line that has no political significance. You know this too. We are tired of hearing about the “Palestinian people.” They are no different from the Arabs of Syria or Egypt, from which most of their ancestors migrated in the last 150 years or so. There is no Palestinian language or religion, and until very recently they considered themselves simply ‘Arabs’. Their culture is almost entirely defined by their opposition to the Jewish state. We are tired of hearing that “the Palestinians deserve a state.” We are indigenous here, not them, and their behavior entitles them more to a trial at The Hague than to a state. And they certainly don’t deserve ourstate, which is the only state they want. We are tired of hearing about ‘The Occupation’. As Naftali Bennett said the other day, you can’t be an occupier in your own land. We are tired of hearing that “settlements are illegal under international law.” They aren’t.
We are tired of hearing that “settlement construction is an obstacle to peace.” Arab rejectionism and terrorism is the reason there isn’t peace. By the way, we are pro-peace. We are just not pro-suicide.
We are tired of hearing about the 5 million (or whatever ridiculous number there are alleged to be) ‘Palestinian refugees’ or the ‘Palestinian diaspora’. There were about 700,000 Arabs that left their homes in 1948, mostly of their own volition, more or less at the same time as the 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries. We resettled ours — resettle yours. We are tired of hearing anything from anyone associated with the UN. The UN is a parasitic and criminal enterprise dominated by our mortal enemies. We are tired of stupid post-colonialist rhetoric. We aren’t ‘colonists’ and Arabs don’t have the right to murder us in the name of ‘resistance’. Talking this way reveals you as moral imbeciles. You can’t recognize a state that has no borders, no single government, and no economy. We know we can’t depend on any kind of security guarantee from anyone except the IDF. So stop being insulted because we don’t trust you. And don’t ask us to give up any nuclear weapons we might or might not have. We know that the left-wing parties in Israel are bankrupt of ideas. We aren’t going to vote for them, no matter how much you would like us to. So don’t bother trying to influence our election. Don’t believe what you read in Ha’aretz.
Jerusalem, undivided, is the capital of the state of Israel. Get used to it, because you can’t change it.
Sincerely, Ordinary Israelis
2b) Undiplomatic Talk From Michael Oren
'This administration has a worldview that is not in accord with any Israeli government.'
Editor and Publisher
During his four-year tenure as Israel’s ambassador to the United States, marked by an often-stormy relationship between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama, Michael Oren was the consummate diplomat. He was dignified, thoughtful, articulate, knowledgeable and tactful.
But those days are over.
Fourteen months after returning to Israel, where he is lecturing at the IDC Herzliya College and writing a book about his experiences in Washington, the 59-year-old Oren is speaking out about his deep concerns over Israel’s standing in the world, and particularly its relationship with its most important ally, the U.S.
In a dialogue at The Plaza here last week at the annual Scholar-Statesman dinner of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he and another former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Tel Aviv University President Itamar Rabinovich, were the honorees, Oren said that “this administration [in Washington] has a worldview that is not in accord with any Israeli government,” not just the current one. Describing the Obama administration as “ideological” on the Mideast, with the president’s 2009 outreach-to-the-Arab-world Cairo speech as its source, Oren said the White House views east Jerusalem communities like Gilo, for example, as not necessarily part of the Jewish state, a position he said no Israeli government would accept.
(Gilo is over the Green Line but part of the Jerusalem municipality, with a largely Jewish population.)
After the March 17 elections, Israel’s next government “likely will move to the right,” Oren predicted, “and America may be going a different way.”
Though he said the U.S.-Israel relationship is crucial — “we [Washington and Jerusalem] have no choice but to be allies” — he asserted on several occasions that “Israel has to take responsibility for itself.”
It was clear, if not explicitly stated, that Oren feels the Obama administration has not lived up to its “no daylight” pledge to be in sync with Israel on key strategic and diplomatic issues. (On security matters, it should be noted, Israeli officials give the U.S. high marks on cooperation. The relative quiet on the West Bank and support for Iron Dome during the Gaza war are examples.)
But the sentiment that the president views Israel at times as a stubborn child, if not an adversary, rather than a major ally adds to the speculation that Oren’s first-person memoir, which in part will deal with his 2009-2013 stint in D.C., will be highly critical of the president’s dealings with Israel.
The book is almost completed and is due out in the spring of 2016.
Asked by moderator Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute, about the West’s negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, Oren first noted that Israel’s “margin for error is exactly zero” on this issue, given Iran’s longstanding threat to destroy the Jewish state.
Then, his voice rising, he said that if you believe that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is indeed the moderate he claims to be, if you believe that Iran has reversed its policy of being the world’s leading exporter of terror, if you believe that its leaders have changed their long pattern of lying about the nuclear program, and if you believe the West is capable of and willing to respond militarily to prevent the production of a nuclear bomb, then yes, you should support the U.S. effort to reach an agreement with Iran.
“But if your children and grandchildren’s’ lives depended on it, you may reach a different conclusion,” he asserted, adding:
“We [the Jewish people] have not come back after 2,000 years to disappear.”
(During the course of the discussion, Rabinovich and Oren largely agreed on key points, but Rabinovich sounded less emotional, more diplomatic. In discussing how to improve relations with the White House, for example, he said the next Israeli prime minister should be up front with Obama and encourage him to work together to improve relations. On Iran, Rabinovich said the U.S. seemed “too eager” in the negotiations, giving Iran a critical advantage.)
‘Solution’ Not Possible Now
Oren, a native of New Jersey who made aliyah more than 30 years ago, was a surprise choice as ambassador when he was tapped for the job five years ago. He was not a professional diplomat but came from the academic world, building a solid reputation as an historian and author. His books on the 1967 conflict, “Six Days of War,” and history of the U.S. involvement in the Mideast since 1776, “Power, Faith and Fantasy,” were widely acclaimed. His years as ambassador were marked by tensions between Netanyahu and Obama, though Oren received high marks for making Israel’s case in the U.S.
He offered an historian’s perspective at the Scholar-Statesman program when he said that the chaos in the Arab world we are witnessing now is “the unraveling of the post-World War I plan for the region.” When the allies carved up the region based on geography rather than by affinity groups, he said, they created states that cannot sustain themselves.
As for the prospect of peace with the Palestinians, he said he is “very skeptical,” adding, “I’ve erased the wold ‘solution’ from my vocabulary.”
What can be achieved, he said, is “a two-state situation” that calls for “movement” with the Palestinians incrementally. He spoke of “managing the conflict” and seeking to enhance the lives of Israelis and Palestinians through cooperation in trade, exports, etc., until conditions improve enough to explore a real peace.
Amplifying those thoughts this past weekend at the Saban Forum on the Mideast, sponsored annually by the Brookings Institute in Washington, Oren asserted that “the left in Israel has crashed because it has not yet internalized that the Palestinians are not part of the negotiations, and aren’t interested in being so. The Palestinians have chosen a different path, the destructive path of delegitimization of Israel.
“On the other hand,” he added, “the right doesn’t yet have the courage to admit that Israel isn’t able to protect its identity and its alliance with the U.S., while ruling 2.5 million Palestinians.
“Inaction isn’t an option,” he said. “Israel needs to take its fate into its own hands, and to come out with a political initiative that will serve its interests.”
Many believe that Oren has his sights on a political career in Israel and that his experience in seeking to improve the relationship with the U.S. will stand him in good stead.
An ‘Overdraft’ With Washington
In a follow-up interview the day after the Scholar-Statesman event, Oren was critical of Israel’s lack of a viable narrative regarding the Palestinians. “We have outsourced our security” to the Palestinians, he told me. “They’re calling the shots, and we need to come up with an initiative of our own.” He favors setting out a plan for Israel’s borders that “would include as many Jews as possible” and end Israel’s rule over 2.5 million Palestinians.
Oren worries that the Palestinian Authority’s planned diplomatic initiative at the United Nations is “insufficiently appreciated” as “a strategic threat” by Israel and its supporters. The Palestinian effort to take its case to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, arguing that Israel commits war crimes, and to seek statehood at the UN, would not only delegitimize Jerusalem diplomatically but also hurt it economically, he said.
Will the U.S. stand by Israel? Oren compares the U.S.-Israel relationship to a bank account where Israel has to make deposits and is then able to write a check. He said that Israeli deposits, like agreeing to a 10-month halt on settlements a few years ago, endorsing a two-state solution and taking part in peace talks, resulted in U.S. support for Israel in its wars with Hezbollah (2006) and Hamas (2008-2009).
“Last summer we had an overdraft, an empty bank account,” he said, referring to the most recent Hamas war, with its heavy civilian casualties in Gaza, coming after Secretary of State Kerry’s failed peace initiative. He said Israel needs “space and time,” adding that he would be wary of any new settlement building plans by Israel on disputed land, certain to further darken the mood in Washington.
Discussing his memoir in general terms, he said it will include his family history — his dad is a World War II hero — and his wife Sally’s journey from her San Francisco youth as a fan and muse of rock groups like Jefferson Airplane, to settling in Israel. There will be sections on the U.S.-Israel alliance, media coverage of Israel, and the American Jewish community, where, he said, “the biggest challenge” in promoting support for Israel among younger Jews, “is apathy.”
If Oren’s book lives up to its promise as an insider’s critique of American Mideast policy during the Obama years, it will be worth the wait.
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3) A Travesty of A Report
The report by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding CIA interrogation essentially accuses the agency under George W. Bush of war criminality. Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein appears to offer some extenuation when she reminds usin the report’s preamble of the shock and “pervasive fear” felt after 9/11.
It’s a common theme (often echoed by President Obama): Amid panic and disorientation, we lost our moral compass and made awful judgments. The results are documented in the committee report. They must never happen again.
It’s a kind of temporary-insanity defense for the Bush administration. And it is not just unctuous condescension but hypocritical nonsense. In the aftermath of 9/11, there was nothing irrational about believing that a second attack was a serious possibility and therefore everything should be done to prevent it. Indeed, this was the considered opinion of the CIA, the administration, the congressional leadership and the American people.
Al-Qaeda had successfully mounted four major attacks on American targets in the previous three years. The pace was accelerating and the scale vastly increasing. The country then suffered a deadly anthrax attack of unknown origin. Al-Qaeda was known to be seeking weapons of mass destruction.
We were so blindsided that we established a 9/11 commission to find out why. And we knew next to nothing about the enemy: its methods, structure, intentions, plans. There was nothing morally deranged about deciding as a nation to do everything necessary to find out what we needed to prevent a repetition, or worse. As Feinstein said at the time, “We have to do some things that historically we have not wanted to do to protect ourselves.”
Nancy Pelosi, then ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, was briefed about the interrogation program, including the so-called torture techniques. As were the other intelligence committee leaders. “We understood what the CIA was doing,”wrote Porter Goss, Pelosi’s chairman on the House committee. “We gave the CIA our bipartisan support; we gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.”
Democrat Jay Rockefeller, while the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was asked in 2003 about turning over Khalid Sheik Mohammed to countries known to torture. He replied: “I wouldn’t take anything off the table where he is concerned.”
There was no uproar about this open countenancing of torture-by-proxy. Which demonstrates not just the shamelessness of Democrats today denouncing practices to which, at the time and at the very least, they made no objection. It demonstrates also how near-consensual was the idea that our national emergency might require extraordinary measures.
This is not to say that in carrying out the program there weren’t abuses, excesses, mismanagement and appalling mistakes (such as the death in custody — unintended but still unforgivable — of two detainees). It is to say that the root-and-branch denunciation of the program as, in principle, unconscionable is not just hypocritical but ahistorical.
To make that case, to produce a prosecutorial brief so entirely and relentlessly one-sided, the committee report (written solely by Democrats) excluded any testimony from the people involved and variously accused. None. No interviews, no hearings, no statements.
The excuse offered by the committee is that a parallel Justice Department inquiry precluded committee interviews. Rubbish. That inquiry ended in 2012. It’s December 2014. Why didn’t they take testimony in the interval? Moreover, even during the Justice Department investigation, the three CIA directors and many other officials were exempt from any restrictions. Why weren’t they interviewed?
Answer: So that committee Democrats could make their indictment without contradiction. So they could declare, for example, the whole program to be a failure that yielded no important information — a conclusion denied by practically every major figure involved, including Democrat and former CIA director Leon Panetta; Obama’s current CIA director, John Brennan; and three other CIA directors (including a Clinton appointee).
Perhaps, say the critics, but we’ll never know whether less harsh interrogation would have sufficed.
So what was the Bush administration to do? Amid the smoking ruins of Ground Zero, conduct a controlled experiment in gentle interrogation and wait to see if we’d be hit again?
A nation attacked is not a laboratory for exquisite moral experiments. It’s a trust to be protected, by whatever means meet and fit the threat.
Accordingly, under the direction of the Bush administration and with the acquiescence of congressional leadership, the CIA conducted an uncontrolled experiment. It did everything it could, sometimes clumsily, sometimes cruelly, indeed, sometimes wrongly.
But successfully. It kept us safe.
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