Tobin Discusses Why Obama is Questioned. (See 1 below.)
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Obama versus Netanyahu. (See 2 below.)
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Sent to me from a friend and fellow memo reader:
"I live in Crystal River, Florida, and the other day
saw a bumper sticker on a parked car that read:
"I miss Chicago ."
So, I broke the window, stole the radio, shot out
two of the tires, added an Obama bumper sticker
and left a note that read, "I hope this helps!"
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Before you can defeat your enemy you must know who they are and before you know who they are you must also know who you are. (See 2 and 2a below.) === I am in discussions with several friends pertaining to why the State House Leader has refused to bring a piece of legislation up for consideration that basically stipulates that in the State of Georgia, Sharia law or any foreign law not authorized by our State Constitution cannot be used to decide legal matters or words to that effect. This is how Muslims get the nose of their camel further under our Republic's tent. I am currently reading "Sharia: The Threat To America" published by The Center For Security Policy with an introduction by R.James Woolsey et al === |
Dick
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1) Why Is Obama’s Stance on Israel Questioned by So Many?
Yesterday in an interview with the New York Times Thomas Friedman, President Obama purported to be aggrieved that anyone would question his support for Israel or his respect for concerns about its security. Not satisfied with merely asserting his devotion to the Jewish state, he said it was “personally difficult” to hear such criticism and that he would consider his presidency “a failure” if anything he did weakened it. Six years of endless attempts to undermine Israel’s diplomatic position and the last few months of bitter, personal and even vulgar criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu culminating in threats to leave it isolated at the United Nations made his protestations absurd if not completely disingenuous. But Israelis could at least console themselves that in the course of trying to sell his appeasement of Iran to Congress, he was trying to downplay the crisis in the alliance that he had created. But it only took 24 hours for Obama to answer his own question about why so many Americans and Israelis question his attitude about Israel. In another interview, this time with another friendly questioner from the reliably liberal NPR, Obama dismissed the suggestion that Iran be asked to recognize Israel as part of the nuclear deal he is promoting. His reason: doing so would mean asking Iran to change the nature of its regime. To which critics must respond that this is exactly why it can’t be trusted with a nuclear infrastructure.
Obama said the following to NPR’s Steve Inskeep:
The notion that we would condition Iran not getting nuclear weapons in a verifiable deal on Iran recognizing Israel is really akin to saying that we won’t sign a deal unless the nature of the Iranian regime completely transforms. And that is, I think, a fundamental misjudgment.
Obama went on to say that he believed the reason why the deal couldn’t be struck in that matter was because his goal was to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons and that he couldn’t count on it changing.
That makes a sort of superficial sense. And if the as yet unwritten deal actually insured that Iran could never get a nuclear weapon, he might have a strong case for ignoring the nature of the Iranian government. But despite his ardent salesmanship, he can’t honestly claim that it does. Obama has made an endless string of concessions that have allowed Iran to keep its nuclear infrastructure, including its fortified bunker at Fordow, not forced it to export its stockpile of nuclear fuel, reveal the extent of its nuclear research and put an expiration date on the restrictions on its program. All this means that Iran can, if it is patient, build up its nuclear capabilities and then have a bomb in short order at the end of the agreement. Or, if it is not that patient, it can easily cheat its way to a weapon due to the weakness of the deal and the lack of a truly strict inspections regime or the ability of the West to quickly reimpose sanctions.
At best, all Obama has accomplished is to delay an Iranian bomb. At worst, he has allowed it to get close to one with Western permission and after having made it impossible to reassemble the international coalition that might have brought Iran to its knees had it been led by an American president with the guts to stick to a tough line rather than one that folded at every opportunity. The reason for this was that Obama’s goal throughout this process was détente with an aggressive, anti-Semitic and tyrannical regime rather than an effort to keep his 2012 campaign promise to eliminate its nuclear program.
Thus, the question about forcing it to recognize Israel is actually an apt one. Having empowered Iran at a time when its quest for regional hegemony via actions in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and now Gaza are scaring Israelis as well as moderate Arabs, it is fair to ask why the deal ignored Tehran’s support for terrorism and its frequent threats to obliterate Israel.
The president is right that to ask Iran to give up its rhetoric about Israel, let alone its policies aimed at bringing its dream of its elimination about, is to seek to change the nature of its theocratic government. But that is exactly why any deal that leaves people who have such goals in possession of thousands of nuclear centrifuges and a stockpile of nuclear fuel and a free pass to build a bomb in 15 years is tantamount to saying you don’t give a damn about Israel’s legitimate worries about Iran.
It was beneath the dignity of the presidency for Obama to feign hurt feelings about criticism for his efforts to undermine the U.S.-Israel alliance. Had he not spent most of his presidency (with the exception of the one year grace period of a Jewish charm offensive that accompanied his re-election campaign) sniping at Netanyahu, tilting the diplomatic playing field in the direction of the Palestinians and ignoring the latter’s consistent rejection of peace, there would be no justifications for questioning his bona fides as a friend of Israel.
But when he treats the vile threats against Israel as an insignificant detail about his prized negotiating partner, he betrays his own mindset that sees the Jewish state’s existential worries as a tiresome drag on his diplomatic ambitions. The president would probably prefer that the Iranians pipe down about their desire to destroy Israel but he doesn’t feel strongly enough about it to let it derail his grand design for a rapprochement with Tehran.
The president can complain about his hurt feelings as much as he wants though to do so strains even the credulity of his most fawning interviewers. But by agreeing to a deal that makes Iran a threshold nuclear power without insisting on it dropping its ideology of hate, the president has answered questions about his negative attitude toward Israel by confirming the worst fears of his critics.
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2) Obama versus Netanyahu
Jerusalem Post Editorial
We are entering into a rocky period for US-Israeli relations.
| Even before the announcement of a framework agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, relations were bad between the Obama administration and the slowly materializing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Since the announcement relations have gone from bad to worse. US President Barack Obama fired the latest salvo when he accused Netanyahu of preferring war to a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear program. During a speech at the White House’s Rose Garden, Obama framed the disagreement between himself and Netanyahu in a particularly misleading way. resolution to the Iranian issue,” Obama said. “If, in fact, Prime Minister Netanyahu is looking for the most effective way to ensure Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon, this is the best option.” Netanyahu has never opposed a peaceful resolution to the Iranian issue. And Obama knows this. In fact, no country has more of an interest in seeing a peaceful resolution to the conflict over Iran’s nuclear weapons program than Israel. It is the Jewish state, more than any other country in the region, that would be targeted first by Iran’s proxies – the Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza – in the event of a military conflagration resulting from an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran’s most senior leaders have said on numerous occasions that they intend to “wipe Israel off the map.” Obama’s attempt to portray Netanyahu as a war-mongering leader appears to be part of the US president’s campaign to convince Americans that the framework agreement is the best possible way of preventing the Iranians from obtaining nuclear weapons. It seems to be a continuation of Obama’s very public conflict with Netanyahu – first over his March 3 speech on the Iran deal before Congress, then over comments made by Netanyahu ahead of elections here. Obama’s rhetorical offensive against Netanyahu – which included a threat that the US would “reassess” its foreign policy relations with Israel – seems to be geared to divert attention away from serious Israeli criticism of the materializing deal with Iran and focus instead on Netanyahu’s purported disrespect for a US president, his supposed intransigence on the two-state solution, and his alleged bigotry toward Israel’s Arab citizens. Unfortunately, Obama’s strategy has left Israel’s leaders with little choice but to take an aggressive tact vis-a-vis the framework deal drafted in Lausanne. Netanyahu has launched a lobbying campaign directed at Americans that severely criticizes the framework agreement. Over the weekend Netanyahu was interviewed on a number of US TV networks, including CNN and NBC. He argued that Americans no less than Israelis are put at risk by Iran – particularly by the Islamic Republic’s intercontinental ballistic missile system, which is not even mentioned in the framework agreement. Because the framework deal is a capitulation to so many of Iran’s demands and reflects a reneging of Obama’s promises (the US president insisted in the past that Iran cease enrichment and dismantle its facilities, while the framework deal permits Iran to maintain uranium enrichment and makes no demand to dismantle centrifuges), more heated and very public clashes between Jerusalem and Washington are in the offing. Inevitably, the very vocal clashes over the Iran negotiations will have negative ramifications regarding other aspects of US-Israel relations, perhaps even with regard to intelligence cooperation. And deterioration in relations between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government – particularly if a national unity government is not formed – will spill over to other arenas. The open hostility that already exists between the Republican- controlled Senate and House of Representatives will likely escalate as criticism of the emerging deal voiced by Republicans and some Democrats becomes more vocal. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States, Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey are all threatened by the prospects of Iran turning into an internationally recognized nuclear threshold state. A rare, if informal, Sunni-Israeli anti-Iran-deal coalition will put additional pressure on the US and the other nations negotiating with Iran to demand more. We are entering into a rocky period for US-Israeli relations. But the stakes are high and the dangers are real. There are times in history when even the closest of allies have serious, substantive disagreements. This is one of those times. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
Author: Mordechai Kedar
Israeli scholar Mordechai Kedar’s presentation for the Endowment for Middle East Truth gave indispensable insight into the Islamic sources of jihadist movements now threatening the world. During his briefing entitled “First Steps in Defeating Islamic Terror,” Kedar warned that one must recognize the nature of a threat if one ever hopes to defeat it.
“There is no radical Islam,” Kedar said definitively. “There is no moderate Islam. There is Islam.” Each of Islam’s three canonical sources includes “whatever you want to justify, [from] zero violence to 100 percent violence.”
Like Jews and Christians, every Muslim “has his own reality of religious doctrine” and “can argue that opposing viewpoints have hijacked Islam.” Many Muslims uphold Islam’s positive ideas and are “as peaceful as can be.” Other Muslims go the opposite way. Kedar pointed out that environment plays a significant role, since a Muslim who grows up in a free society like the United States will most likely “tailor his Islamic garment” with benign texts, while a Muslim who grows up in war-torn Libya will probably seek out Islam’s more martial aspects.
The problem is that it only takes a few bad seeds. If just one out of every 10,000 Muslims in the worldwide community of 1.5 billion joined ISIS or a similar group, these 150,000 Muslims could “devastate the whole world.” After all, 9/11 and this January’s Paris massacres took place at the hands of just a few jihadists.
The audience watched segments of an ISIS propaganda video showing mass beheadings of captives in places like Europe, Malaysia and the Middle East. This type of video strikes terror in the hearts of Iraqi soldiers and other Middle Easterners longing for peace and order. An English-speaking jihadist pictured in the video warned that Americans deployed to the region could be the next beheading victims; he also called out “to Obama, the dog of Rome.” Kedar explained that a medieval Muslim leader, following the 1453 Ottoman subjugation of the “cats” of Constantinople, had declared that the “dogs of Rome” were Islam’s next target.
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in 1928, can be thought of as the grandmother of organizations like ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Nigeria’s Boko Haram. The Muslim Brotherhood’s logo, whose depiction of crossed swords and Quran leaves no doubt about its Islamic agenda, features the Arabic word “prepare,” which occurs only once in the Quran, in verse 8:60’s command to “prepare … whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war, by which you may terrify the enemy of Allah.” The Muslim Brotherhood and similar organizations represent Sunni terror, while Hezbollah is the Shiite terror counterpart with a state sponsor in Iran’s Islamic Republic, possibly nuclear-armed in the future.
One audience member referenced Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s internationally noted New Year’s Day address that called for Islamic reform, but Kedar was unimpressed. “I highly respect this man,” he said, but added that Sisi is no different from past dictators like Anwar Sadat (subsequently assassinated), Hosni Mubarak, or Hafez Assad. “Every ruler who sees himself as a target of those radical Muslims has made similar appeals for religious reform,” Kedar said, “yet the last people on earth to change anything are political Muslims who would not consider Sisi legitimate” after that president overthrew Muslim Brotherhood rule.
Willful blindness was a running theme in Kedar’s briefing. He warned that “political correctness will kill America after it already killed Europe,” where the human landscape is morphing after decades of Muslim immigration and non-assimilation.
Kedar ominously concluded his presentation by saying that “the Atlantic is not wide enough to protect this country from a global jihadist ideology.” He pointed to the book 40 Hadith on Jihad, which has a chapter titled “War is a Deception.” While current policies often prevent American authorities from asking about religion during criminal investigations, combating Islamic threats demands, first and foremost, “intelligence, intelligence and intelligence.” Sun Tzu’s dictum of knowing the enemy remains valid in today’s conflicts, religious or not.
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2a)-- Obama's anti-Christian 'pattern' disconcerting to some
While Easter always occurs on a Sunday, this year's White House Easter breakfast was held Tuesday – and President Obama's comments during that gathering aren't sitting well with some individuals.
"On Easter I do reflect on the fact that, as a Christian, I am supposed to love," the president offered. "And I have to say that sometimes when I listen to less-than-loving expressions by Christians, I get concerned." (See AP video report to right)
Hearing "Amens" in response to that, Obama added: "But that's a topic for another day" – a remark greeted with laughter and applause.
In reaction to the president's remarks, author and Fox News reporter Todd Starnes had this to say Tuesday on American Family Radio.
"It just continues to overwhelm me, this president and his righteous indignation," said Starnes. "Have you noticed that whenever there's a Muslim holiday, he never takes that opportunity to criticize or critique the Muslim faith or Muslims in general? But whenever there's a Christian holiday, he doesn't hold back. He tells it like he thinks it is."
Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, who hosted Starnes on his "Washington Watch" program Tuesday afternoon broadcast, also took issue with the president's less-than-loving jab at Christians.
"This was a perfect opportunity, reflecting on the most holy day of the Christian faith, to once again point to Pastor Saeed Abedini – who is being held in an Iranian prison because of his faith – [and] to talk about the attack on the Kenyan Christians for their faith," Perkins observes.
"[But] there's a pattern here, and I know people say, Well, you are critical of the president. You'd have to be blind not to see the pattern that this administration and this president follow."
The president also took the opportunity in February – at the National Prayer Breakfast – to take a swipe at Christianity, pointing out that Christians in the past had used their faith to justify violence and cautioning today's believers not to get on their "high horse" in criticizing Islamic extremists for doing the same now.
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