Things will really have to get worse before he is driven to respond in a meaningful way and even then I would not trust him to craft an effective response . Another attack on our homeland might force his hand but until something truly terrible happens Obama will remain aloof, and detached while drowning us in words and avoidance. (See 1 below.)
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Hanson discusses appeasement and narcissism.
When you have spent your entire life on a pedestal it is hard to even conceive you might not be made of the stuff you believe got you there.
Obama is perhaps one of the most psychologically challenged president in recent times and we have had some real losers. (See 2 and 2a below.)
More evidence why Obama's chip on his shoulder attitude distorts his ability to function as a president of our nation. (See 2b below.)
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Meanwhile Hamas rebuilds in Gaza. (See 3 below)
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Has the chain that has bound the Jewish vote to Democrats finally been broken?
This article refers to Norman Podhoretz' book which I reviewed many years ago and which suggested liberal Jews supplanted their religion for politics.
One day Black Americans will also wake up and smell the stench caused by their obeisance to Democrats and realize they have been had because their own corrupt leadership sold them out.
When, and if this happens, Democrats will be left with Hollywood's Michael Moore , Wall Street Fat Cats, Greens and an assortment of illegal immigrants. All grievance voters.
This is why Republicans must drop the press on social issues, balance the budget and stick to protecting the Constitution from which all our blessings flow. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) Does ISIS risk blowback, or is there a plan?
The airwaves are full of talking heads telling us that ISIS has made a mistake in posting the horrific video of the burning alive of Jordanian pilot Muath Al-Kassasbeh. The theory is that this may be a turning point, mobilizing not just Jordanian, but also Arab public opinion, and forcing President Obama to finally decide to do what it takes to not just contain, but to conquer ISIS.
Maybe. I hope so. But it is worth considering what kind of strategy ISIS had in mind. After all, they have shown more propaganda sophistication than any other jihad group, and so far seem to be attracting adherents from all over the ummah rapidly, following the “strong horse” strategy first articulated by Osama bin Laden.
Another possibility is that ISIS wants to appear as the biggest, baddest strong horse, and thereby appeal to the widespread desire among Arabs, and Muslims more generally, for revenge. The more recent centuries have been tough on Muslim pride, after all. Taught that their religion and values are from Allah and superior to everything else, they have been forced to watch as decadent Westerners have triumphed, militarily, culturally, and economically. Islam spread farther and faster than any other civilization in the two centuries following Mohammed, strong evidence of its superiority. But first the Crusades, and then the defense of Europe at Tours and later at the Gates of Vienna, caused some trouble for this interpretation of Allah’s triumph. The Ottoman Empire, however difficult for the non-Turkish subjects, was still a formidable and powerful caliphate. But its humiliation and breakup a century ago was another huge blow.
However much President Obama (and NASA) tout the Muslim purported contributions to science (a millennium ago), the plain fact is that science, industry, telecom, air conditioning, and almost everything else that makes life today easier than it was in Mohammed’s time are a product of the decadent West. And world culture is also the product of the West, especially the Great Satan, America. There has got to be a desire for vengeance, in the face of the supine position that Islamic civilization finds itself in. But for oil, discovered, developed, and mostly used by the infidels, Islam would be impoverished, weak, and supplicant. It has to enrage many. Particularly against fellow Muslims like the pro-Western monarchs and those who pilot their planes (or command their tanks or bear their arms).
Vengeance has a powerful appeal.
There is a third possible motive: to terrify. Of course, by definition, this is what terrorism is all about. But there is a powerful history to horrifying cruelty as a tactic. While there is nothing uniquely Islamic about this, most recently in world history, it is an Islamic tactic. Walid Shoebat highlights this thinking and its history:
To desecrate the victim while alive is part and parcel of Islam in hope that people would convert through sheer fear or to repulse the enemy. (snip)Everyone in the Middle East knows three things told to them by their grand parents about the Ottoman Turks and what they spread throughout the Middle
East: Sihr “sorcery,” Baksheesh “bribery”, and theKhazouk which is a spike driven through the victim’s rectum, which the Ottomans used to terrify locals and deter potential insurgents. And this is exactly what this lady wanted to reinstitute:Khawiskou “impale him” she cries out “then send him to his mother” says the peace-loving Muslim lady.
“Are you going to execute him with a merciful bullet? Or are you going to execute him with a merciful knife?” she asks.
“Why are the Arab world fighting us. We are Muslim doing the will of Allah”.
“I am pleading [ISIS] to honor my special request that you Khazouk him “impale him” and post it all over the social networks and the media”.
Executing someone and desecrating the body alive is not something that only existed in far history, it was a reality under the Turks until the Christians gave a crushing blow to the Ottoman beast after World War I when Khazouk executions were part of daily life. One TV series reminds how the Ottomans, in order to thwart dissidents used this horrific type of execution:
Such brutality has come to the world from an Islamic edict by Ibn Taymiyya, one of the highest authorities on Islamic jurisprudence, and will be emerging as we see neo-Ottomanism revive….
It would not in the least surprise me to see all three motives at work as ISIS holds more prisoners.
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2)Appeasement as narcissism
By Victor Davis Hanson
Members of the Obama administration have insisted that the Taliban are not terrorists. Those responsible for the recent Paris killings are not radical Islamists. The Muslim Brotherhood is largely secular. Jihad is a "legitimate tenet of Islam." And "violent extremism," "workplace violence" or "man-caused disaster" better describe radical Islamic terrorism. Domestic terrorism is just as likely caused by returning U.S. combat veterans, according to one report by a federal agency.
What is the point of such linguistic appeasement?
The word "appeasement" long ago became pejorative for giving in to bullies. One side was aggressive and undemocratic; the other consensual and eager to avoid trouble through supposedly reasonable concessions.
But appeasement usually weakened the democratic side and empowered the extremist one.
The architect of appeasement -- for example, Neville Chamberlain, former prime minister of Great Britain -- was predictably a narcissist. Chamberlain believed that his own powers of oratory, his insights into reason and his undeniably superior morality would sway even a thug like Adolf Hitler.
President Obama currently is convinced that his singular charisma and rare insight into human nature will convince the Taliban to peacefully participate in Afghan politics. Obama will supposedly also win over the Iranian theocracy and show it how nonproliferation is really to everyone's advantage.
"Reset" diplomacy with Putin was supposed to lessen tensions -- if, after the 2012 election, Putin just had more exposure to a flexible statesman of Obama's wisdom.
Throughout history, without the vanity of the conceder, there would never have been appeasement.
Appeasement also always subordinates the interests of vulnerable third parties to the appeaser's own inflated sense of self. When Chamberlain and the French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier signed the 1938 Munich Pact, they worried little about the fate of millions of Czechs who lost their country -- and less about millions of Poles who were next in line for Hitler's Blitzkrieg.
Reset diplomacy with Russia in 2009 was not much concerned about the ensuing danger to Crimeans or Ukrainians. When the Taliban takes over, hundreds of thousands of reformist Afghans will die.
Obama sees a deal with Iran as a way to cement his legacy as a breakthrough statesman. In comparison, the long-term consequences of a nuclear Iran on the security of tiny Israel or on the stability of the largely Sunni Arab Middle East are future and more abstract concerns for others.
Even major concessions never satisfy aggressive powers. It is a traditional Western liberal delusion -- brought on by our wealth, leisure and the good life -- that autocrats appreciate magnanimity rather than see it as timidity to be exploited further.
Hitler fumed that the compliant Chamberlain at Munich was a "worm" for making such concessions to him and boasted that he would stomp on that "silly old man" on the next occasion he saw him.
Releasing Guantanamo prisoners, or ignoring red lines to Syria, deadlines to Iran and step-over lines to Russia, did not win over aggressors. Gestures of appeasement and empty threats only emboldened terrorists and green-lighted dictators to ratchet up nuclear enrichment, or violence against their own people -- or to go into Ukraine.
When a top Russian general brags that its nuclear force is now more powerful than America's, or when Raul Castro warns that Cuba now expects an early return of the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay as the price of normalization, past American concessions seem to have whetted their appetites for more confrontations.
The euphemisms for radical Islamic terrorism have not curbed it. They have not improved U.S. popularity in the Middle East.
The appeasing party is not always the weaker one. In 1938, Combined British and French military power was greater than that of the Third Reich. President Jimmy Carter had far more military options than did the Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran during the 1979-80 hostage crisis.
Instead, stronger democratic nations feel that they can continue to enjoy short-term calm and peace of mind -- and let others worry about any long-term likelihood of aggression. Maybe by treating jihad, terrorism and radical Islam as taboo words, radical Muslim terrorists will respond and become less threatening.
In truth, appeasement, not deterrence, is the more reckless path. With serial concessions, democratic leaders convince aggressors that they must be stronger than they actually are. Those fantasies increase the likelihood that weaker dictators and terrorists will miscalculate and set off a deadly confrontation down the road.
Yet the public often prefers appeasement. Military preparedness and investment are too costly. Backing up threats seems too scary. Churchills and Reagans sound shrill. Alliances, deterrence and balance of power sound so old-fashioned. Evil and good are derided as too simplistic. Defusing a crisis now is preferable to ensuring one down the road.
Appeasement continues not because it works, but because it serves the pretensions of narcissists.
2a) The emerging Iran nuclear deal raises major concerns
"Unless we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," Obama said. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ."
The comments drew swift reaction.
Appearing on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan fumed at Obama comparing the extreme barbarity of ISIS to the Crusades.
2a) The emerging Iran nuclear deal raises major concerns
AS THE Obama administration pushes to complete a nuclear accord with Iran, numerous members of Congress, former secretaries of state and officials of allied governments are expressing concern about the contours of the emerging deal. Though we have long supported negotiations with Iran as well as the interim agreement the United States and its allies struck with Tehran, we share several of those concerns and believe they deserve more debate now — before negotiators present the world with a fait accompli.
The problems raised by authorities ranging from Henry Kissinger, the country’s most senior former secretary of state, to Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, Virginia’s junior Democratic senator, can be summed up in three points:
●First, a process that began with the goal of eliminating Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons has evolved into a plan to tolerate and restrict that capability.
●Second, in the course of the negotiations, the Obama administration has declined to counter increasingly aggressive efforts by Iran to extend its influence across the Middle East and seems ready to concede Tehran a place as a regional power at the expense of Israel and other U.S. allies.
●Finally, the Obama administration is signaling that it will seek to implement any deal it strikes with Iran — including the suspension of sanctions that were originally imposed by Congress — without seeking a vote by either chamber. Instead, an accord that would have far-reaching implications for nuclear proliferation and U.S. national security would be imposed unilaterally by a president with less than two years left in his term.
The first and broadest of these problems was outlined by Mr. Kissinger in recent testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee. The talks, he pointed out, began as a multilateral effort headed by the European Union and backed by six U.N. Security Council resolutions intended “to deny Iran the capability to develop a military nuclear option.” Though formally the multilateral talks continue, “these negotiations have now become an essentially bilateral negotiation” between the United States and Iran “over the scope of that [nuclear] capability, not its existence,” Mr. Kissinger said.
Where it once aimed to eliminate Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, the administration now appears ready to accept an infrastructure of thousands of Iranian centrifuges. It says its goal is to limit and monitor that industrial base so that Iran could not produce the material for a warhead in less than a year. As several senators pointed out during the hearing, the prospective deal would leave Iran as a nuclear threshold state, while theoretically giving the world time to respond if Tehran chose to build a weapon. Even these limited restrictions would remain in force for only a specified number of years, after which Iran would be free to expand its production of potential bomb materials.
Mr. Kissinger said such an arrangement would very likely prompt other countries in the region, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey, to match Iran’s threshold capability. “The impact . . . will be to transform the negotiations from preventing proliferation to managing it,” he said. “We will live in a proliferated world in which everybody — even if that agreement is maintained — will be very close to the trigger point.”
A related problem is whether Iran could be prevented from cheating on any arrangement and acquiring a bomb by stealth. Mr. Kaine pointed out that an attempt by the United States to negotiate the end of North Korea’s nuclear program failed after the regime covertly expanded its facilities. With Iran, said Mr. Kaine, “a nation that has proven to be very untrustworthy . . . the end result is more likely to be a North Korean situation” if existing infrastructure is not dismantled.
The administration at one time portrayed the nuclear negotiations as distinct from the problem of Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism, its attempts to establish hegemony over the Arab Middle East and its declared goal of eliminating Israel. Yet while the talks have proceeded, Mr. Obama hasoffered assurances to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that the two countries have shared interests in the region, and the White House has avoided actions Iran might perceive as hostile — such as supporting military action against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.
For their part, the Iranians, as Mr. Kaine put it, “are currently involved in activities to destabilize the governments of [U.S.-allied] nations as near as Bahrain and as far away as Morocco.” A Tehran-sponsored militia recentlyoverthrew the U.S.-backed government of Yemen. Rather than contest the Iranian bid for regional hegemony, as has every previous U.S. administration since the 1970s, Mr. Obama appears ready to concede Iran a place in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and beyond — a policy that is viewed with alarm by Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey, among other allies.
Former secretary of state George P. Shultz cited Iran’s regional aggression in pronouncing himself “very uneasy” about the ongoing negotiations. “They’ve already outmaneuvered us, in my opinion,” he told the Senate committee.
While presidents initiate U.S. foreign policies, it is vital that major shifts win the support of Congress and the country; otherwise, they will be unsustainable. Yet Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested in Senate testimony that the administration intends to postpone any congressional vote on a deal indefinitely, while meeting its commitments to Iran by using provisions allowing it to suspend legislatively enacted sanctions. Mr. Blinken conceded that the Iranian parliament would likely vote on any accord but said that Congress should act only “once Iran has demonstrated that it’s making good on its commitments.”
Such a unilateral course by Mr. Obama would alienate even his strongest congressional supporters. It would mean that a deal with Iran could be reversed within months of its completion by the next president. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that Mr. Obama wishes to avoid congressional review because he suspects a bipartisan majority would oppose the deal he is prepared to make. If so, the right response to the questions now being raised is to seek better terms from Iran — or convince the doubters that a deal that blesses and preserves Iran’s nuclear potential is better than the alternatives.
2b) Obama: Christians Did Bad Things 'in the Name of Christ'
President Barack Obama stirred outrage with his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday, comparing the atrocities committed by ISIS to those of Christians "in the name of Christ."
President Barack Obama stirred outrage with his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday, comparing the atrocities committed by ISIS to those of Christians "in the name of Christ."
"Unless we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," Obama said. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ."
"So it is not unique to one group or one religion," Obama said. "There is a tendency in us, a simple tendency that can pervert and distort our faith."
Story continues below video.
Story continues below video.
The comments drew swift reaction.
Appearing on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan fumed at Obama comparing the extreme barbarity of ISIS to the Crusades.
"He's trying to give them all equivalence to what happened in the 11th century to what's happening today? It's astonishing," Buchanan said.
"The whole idea of the Inquisition in Spain – I mean these things are hundreds of years ago. That was a 30-year war long, long ago.
"I can't think of any atrocities that have really been committed in the name of Christ … There's no justification anywhere in all the books of the New Testament for any kind of violence on the scale of what we just saw with that Jordanian pilot."
Buchanan said Obama has a "real problem with the cold hard truth and reality of our times" regarding terrorism.
"There is an element in the Islamic community worldwide, which has awakened and is embarked on a global crusade of its own to conquer western countries," Buchanan said.
"But first [they want to conquer] Arab and Muslim countries and to impose upon them a Sharia law to expel the Christians, Jews, and the nonbelievers if they're Shiite and not part of what they consider the mainstream.
"They're using all manner of violence in order to achieve this, from Boko Haram to ISIS to Ansar al-Sharia and to al-Qaida. Can the president not see the reality of his own time that he's got to retreat centuries to find what he thinks might be a moral equivalence?"
Buchanan also objected to Obama's reference to racial segregation laws during the Jim Crow era during the same speech.
"To call it Jim Crow, which was a form of segregation of racists; to say that was rooted in Christianity, it seems to be an absurdity and injustice," he said.
Former U.S. Rep. Allen West said: "President Obama is the gift that keeps on giving,' "The Islamapologist-in-Chief attempted to find moral equivalency between the brutality of ISIS and Christianity."
And in a statement on his website, Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said "the president should apologize for his insulting comparison."Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, a Republican, said Obama's remarks were "the most offensive I’ve ever heard a President make in my lifetime."
Gilmore said it illustrated that "Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share. There is no moral equivalency for the horrific behavior of terrorists whose atrocities are shocking and reprehensible"
Reaction also poured in on Twitter.
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3)
HAMAS FAST REBUILDING GUERRILLA-TERRORIST FORCES IN GAZA
Author: Yaakov Lappin
Hamas and allied terrorist organizations in Gaza have spent recent months intensively rebuilding their guerrilla terrorist capabilities, which sustained significant damage during Operation Protective Edge last summer.
“Their aim is to recover the military infrastructure that was damaged and return it to full capabilities and broaden it,” according to a recent report by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Tel Aviv, which is a part of the Israeli Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center, founded by leading members of the Israeli intelligence community.
To that end, Hamas has allocated the necessary funds, personnel, and equipment, despite the shortages suffered by the civilian sector in the Strip, the study found. Its domestic security bodies are part of the effort.
“This stands out especially against the background of the ongoing delay in the civilian recovery of the Gaza Strip,” the report said, adding that it “illustrates well that, as in the past, Hamas’s priorities clearly lie in rebuilding military capabilities at the expense of civilian needs.”
Dr. Reuven Erlich, head of the Terrorism and Intelligence Center, told The Jerusalem Post, “We see that when it comes to military programs, resources flow without a problem.
This is no coincidence. If their priority was in civilian reconstruction, would they allocate their few resources to offensive military programs? The Western world, in the depth of its heart, knows that the Palestinians have money for military programs.
“They are rebuilding their capabilities. It will take time.
Israel will encounter these in the next round of fighting,” he said.
Hamas in Gaza is using mass media to safeguard and strengthen support among the Gazan public for its military wing and to propagate the idea of “armed resistance,” while indoctrinating children and teenagers, the report’s authors said.
The center reported observing in recent months a large recruitment program of teenagers aged 15 to 21 and their deployment to training camps opened by Hamas’s Izzadin Kassam Brigades.
More than 17,000 youths trained in the camps, according to the report, undergoing basic military training, and then advanced training in kidnapping soldiers and tunnel warfare. They also underwent religious indoctrination.
The program is aimed at both replenishing the military wing’s ranks and support for Hamas among the Gazan population, which is suffering extreme hardship in the aftermath of the summer conflict with Israel.
Additionally, Hamas has begun building what it calls “a people’s army,” and exhibited the first battalion of this force in November 2014. The battalion has 2,500 new operatives, and is aimed at acting as an assistance force for the Izzadin Kassam Brigades during a clash with Israel.
“We believe Hamas would like to set up an additional battalion of the ‘people’s army,’” the report’s authors said. “Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees set up new military frameworks as well, which they claim are battalion- sized,” they added.
The document drew attention to intensive training programs simulating raids on IDF posts that dot the Gaza border and kidnapping soldiers.
Hamas viewed such raids carried out during the summer war as being especially successful, causing many losses to Israel.
Gaza’s domestic security bodies completed two officers’ courses in December 2014, involving a total of 1060 members. End-of-course drills included mock raids on Israeli army posts at an Izzadin Kassam training camp.
Gazan domestic security bodies are controlled by Hamas, which views them as a vital component in enforcing its rule over the Strip, and providing support to the military wing.
Hamas has begun to reconstruct its network of tunnels within Gaza, and Israel is watching out for any signs of cross-border attack tunnels as well, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said in December.
Hamas’s domestic rocket production is rapidly replenishing the Islamist regime’s arsenal of projectiles
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------How long can it last that the Republicans are the party that’s more supportive of Israel but the Democrats are the ones that get the Jewish vote?Could it be that President Obama is upending the old alliance?It’s for a reason that I pose those as questions. The landscape is littered with newsmen who’ve erroneously predicted that we’re at the end of the era when the Jewish vote goes automatically to the Democrats.Yet it’s hard to deny that there’s “a real crisis going on,” as Sen. John McCain put it on CNN over the weekend. What will happen if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shows up to address a joint meeting of Congress and the Democrats boycott?“I don’t know” is the answer Nancy Pelosi gave over the weekend to the question of whether most House Democrats would attend Netanyahu’s speech. The ex-speaker went on to sneer that if Netanyahu wants to get his message through, he could go on TV.Pelosi has also been carping about alleged violations of protocol by Speaker John Boehner in failing to consult with the White House — or her, the House minority leader — in arranging for Bibi’s speech.That strikes me as malarkey. As I wrote in this space last week, Congress has the standing to invite Netanyahu (or any other foreign leader) under half a dozen or more independent powers enumerated in the Constitution.All this pettifogging might mean something were it taking place in a vacuum. But the Democrats are changing. When they nominated Obama for a second term, they tried to abandon the pro-Jerusalem plank that had long been in their platform.When party leaders discovered this, they tried to bring Jerusalem back, only to be blocked by a voice vote. Delegates actually booed from the floor. It was only by ignoring the chorus of nays on the third attempt that the chairman declared the measure passed.Democrats like to point out that, even after that debacle, Obama won the Jewish vote by a large margin. This Jewish voting pattern is such an anomaly that the neoconservative sage Norman Podhoretz wrote a book called “Why Are Jews Liberals?”He concluded that secularism has replaced the truths of religion with what he called the “Torah of liberalism.” He could find no signs that this would change soon, but expressed the hope that there would eventually be an end of delusions.Podhoretz’s book came out in 2009. In 2012, the share of the Jewish vote that went for the GOP soared to 30 percent, up by more than a third from 2008. If it keeps moving in that direction at that clip, the old alignment could soon be history.Certainly it’s hard to think of a moment quite like that to which Obama has brought us. It’s not, after all, just the Jewish Republicans that he is alienating. He has actually accused members of his own party of kowtowing to political donors.This happened the other day, when the president vented about the distrust in Congress of his negotiations with Iran. According to The New York Times, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) stood up and told the president to his face that he took personal offense.No wonder. Menendez is the real deal, an old-style pro-Israel Democrat. He’s just lost his position as chairman of Foreign Relations because the voters reacted against Obama-ism and tossed the Democrats out of the majority in the Senate.This is a point to mark about the current flap. Obama wants everyone to think this is a fight between himself and Netanyahu. The more important fight is between Congress — Republicans and the Democratic Party’s pro-Israel camp — and a renegade president.He wants to negotiate with the Iranian mullahs without so much as a howdy-doo to the Congress. He resents Senate oversight, even when it’s led by a fellow Democrat. He wants Congress to trust him and the mullahs and not even listen to Netanyahu.The left is trying to palm off the idea that Netanyahu is destroying the bipartisan basis of America’s support for the Jewish state. It turns out to be Obama that’s doing the deed.We’ll know whether he’s succeeding by watching who shows up for Netanyahu’s speech.
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