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I am just back from Edisto Beach and two wonderful weddings of sons of dear friends. My third daughter is coming Tuesday for a brief visit from Chicago and I'm going to spend the rest of the week trying to catch up so these postings are somewhat late. However, I believe, they are still worth posting.
I know this memo is unusually long but I am trying to make up for lost time.
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While away, I was deeply disturbed by the pitiful, bordering on anti-Semitism, State Department comments regarding the Palestinian incited stabbings of innocent Israelis.
Our State Department now equates Israelis being stabbed and protecting themselves by Palestinians, as terrorists. This from a State Department that cannot call ISIS be-headings acts of terrorism. This from a morally bankrupt State Department that falls back on proportionality when it comes to Israel defending itself from constant attacks against its citizens.
Our State Department has long been Anti Israel but it has not been excessively overt. Now it is.
Obama made bed with Iran despite the fact he must have known this nation would eventually dominate The Middle East replacing America and that Iran would eventually rise to a position they would be in a position to solve our State Department's irritant - Israel.
The alliance between Iran , Russia and now Cuba is the beginning of another encircling alliance which President Kennedy thwarted. In time , I believe, Putin's Russia will gain military concessions by Cuba. China has just begun making military pacts with Cuba as well.
I know these comments may not sit well with Obama lovers and Bush haters and those who believe America needs to withdraw from the world because we have been bled dry by the cost of Bush, Obama, Clinton and Kerry's disastrous foreign policy failures which are proving grave and threatening our very freedom.
Obama has created vacuums and our adversaries are eagerly filling them and are dumbfounded at their good fortune. NATO's dismemberment is their goal and it too could become a relic.
This past Thursday, Obama retreated from his long held desire to totally withdraw from Afghanistan as he did in Iraq. His entire policies of withdrawal and apology have cost us dearly and will deal successor president's with no win prospects, all because this inept community organizer put politics and his legacy goals above America's security.
I wonder what Obama's response would be if he and his two daughter were visiting Israel, as private citizens, and were attacked by Palestinian thugs? (See 1, 1a, 1b, 1c and 1d below.)
For 67 years, Israel has sought peace with the Palestinians.
For 67 years, the Palestinians have sought Israel’s annihilation.
We cannot achieve meaningful peace until the world is willing to hold the Palestinians accountable for their relentless rejection-ism and bigotry. (See 1e below.)
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Kissinger and Tobin on Obama's foreign policy initiatives. (See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
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Greatest threat to America are Obama, Hillarious and Bernie's views regarding global warming!
The biggest risk to America are the lies attributable to members of this Administration, starting at the very top, and use of various government agencies to still the voices of those who question their actions, challenge their policies and efforts to thwart The Constitution. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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While in Edisto I watched the CNN Democrat Debate if you want to call it that. It was more a surrender, love fest and a set up by CNN to allow Hillarious to come off unscathed.
Former Sen. Chafee's response, to why he voted to eliminate Glass Steagell, served to validated Pelosi's comment: "you have to pass it to find out what is in it."
Sen. "Bernie" believes America should downsize and become a small Socialist nation like Denmark and Sweden. He fails to realize we have more illegal immigrants than those two nations combined.
He also believes climate warning is the greatest threat to America. (See 3 and 3a below.)
Furthermore, he seems to have tired of hearing about Hillarious' e mails and gave her a free pass regarding her questionable ethical behaviour.
Hillarious was delirious Bernie gave her cover that allowed her to cackle about how she too Is tired of hearing about placing her personal and devious interests above that of the nation.
There were never any questions about Blumenthal seeking preferential treatment from the Sec of State Hillarious to line his pockets so he could siphon money off to The Clinton Foundation. There was no mention of Obama's failed foreign policy which Hillarious helped to reset and implement.
In fact, the entire evening was a meeting of patronizing leftists who have turned against America and love to single out things and people they hate. They hate Wall Street, the wealthy (substitute Koch brothers), the NRA and Pharmaceutical Industry, they want to give "free stuff" to win votes yet have offered nothing believable by way of paying for their giveaways.
And so it goes!
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1)ByTzipi Hotovely
The latest surge of Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis has come in the immediate wake of explicit calls by the Palestinian leadership to “spill blood.” This well-orchestrated campaign of violence follows many years in which Palestinian children have been taught to idolize the murder of Jews as a sacred value and to regard their own death in this “jihad” as the pinnacle of their aspirations.
Such violence has deep roots. It goes back to the rampages at the behest of Haj Amin al-Husseini, a Muslim activist and at one point grand mufti of Jerusalem, in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. It continued with the fedayeen Palestinian militants in the 1950s and ’60s, and evolved into the terrorism of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Fatah under Yasser Arafat and now Mahmoud Abbas. Anyone who claims that Palestinian terror against Jews dates only to 1967, or is a response to Israeli settlements, should become more informed of the conflict’s history.
Yet the apathy shown by the international community to the death-culture fostered by Palestinian elites, and the unbalanced manner in which subsequent violence is often treated by the international media—as if there is any kind of symmetry between terrorists and their victims—is doing long-term, and possibly irrevocable, harm to generations of Palestinians.
A few recent examples underscore the depth of the problem.
Mr. Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, said the following on Palestinian television on Sept. 16: “We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem. This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah.
With the help of Allah, every martyr will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward.”
Two weeks later, on Oct. 1, Palestinian terrorists murdered an Israeli couple, Eitam and Naama Henkin, in cold blood in front of their four children, who ranged from 9 years old to 4 months.
Days later, with the Henkin children still in mourning, PLO official Mahmoud Ismail went on official Palestinian television, PBC, and proclaimed their parents’ murder to be a fulfillment of Palestinian “national duty.” He was one of several Palestinian officials who condoned the murder.
Such statements strike a resonant chord among generations of Palestinian children who have been taught that Jews are the descendants of “barbaric monkeys” and “wretched pigs” (a phrase from a poem repeatedly recited on PBC television, to the applause of children.) They have been taught that “armed conflict” (a common Palestinian euphemism for the murder of Jews) against “the so-called State of Israel” is both a religious duty and an act purportedly legitimized by the United Nations—a falsehood repeated in a number of 12th-grade Palestinian textbooks.
The Palestinian Authority also pays handsome stipends to terrorists and their families, which serve as a powerful incentive to carry out acts of terror.
Is it surprising, then, that Mr. Abbas’s explicit call for “blood on its way to Allah” has resulted in a surge of stabbings and other attacks against Israelis? Is it any wonder that viewers of official television recently were treated to the sight of a Palestinian boy, dressed up in battle fatigues, telling a smiling talk-show host of his wish to become an engineer “so that I can build bombs to blow up all the Jews.”
The unending stream of blood-drenched caricatures and video clips that circulate virally through Palestinian social media is a telling indication of how profoundly the worship of violence is entrenched in Palestinian society. So are the many schools, city squares and sports tournaments named for arch-terrorists.
The cultivation of this culture of death is having devastating effects. As Palestinian terror touches more Jewish families, Israelis, especially of the younger generation, are increasingly resigning themselves to the fact that Palestinian society is guided by a dramatically different set of values.
Israeli society and Jewish tradition sanctify life. Palestinian society glorifies death. Israeli children grow up on songs of peace and the biblical vision of “nation shall not lift up sword against nation.” Palestinian children are taught to hate.
Yet there is no international outcry. No indignation at the exploitation of Palestinian children from all the nongovernmental organizations and U.N. agencies that profess to monitor human-rights abuses.
This is tragic because the international community could make a practical difference. About a third of the Palestinian Authority’s budget is financed by foreign aid. This money is intended to develop Palestinian infrastructure and foster economic growth, but it is being misused by the Palestinian Authority to promote the murder of Jews and to sow destruction within Israel. The international community can wield its influence toward a cessation of incitement.
Turning a blind eye to the enormous harm that the Palestinian leadership is doing to its own people—by raising successive generations of children on blind hatred of the Jews and Israel—is dooming these children to a bleak future. This ought to be a compelling reason for the international community to seriously rethink the strange tolerance it exhibits toward the Palestinian death-culture.
Changing this culture of death is no less important for the Palestinians than for Israel.
Ms. Hotovley is deputy foreign minister of Israel.
1a)Location: Tel Aviv
Cleared for release: Sergeant Omri Levi, 19 years old from Sdei Hemed, was murdered during the terror attack that occurred in the Central Bus Station in Beersheba earlier this evening, the 18th of October 2015. In addition, four soldiers and several civilians and security personnel were injured and are currently in various conditions. Corporal Omri Levi was posthumously promoted to the rank of Sergeant.
1b)
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| Israel’s political leaders have rightly expressed anger at the US State Department’s hostile characterizations of the Palestinian terrorist onslaught. Secretary of State John Kerry’s claims, parroted by his spokesmen, that Israel is either entirely to blame for Palestinian terrorism or shares the blame equally with the Palestinians, are baseless lies. Kerry and his spokesmen have alleged that the current Palestinian convulsion of murderous violence is a product of “a massive increase in settlements.” Yet as Haaretz reported this week, Israel has built fewer homes for Jews in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria since 2009, when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (and President Barack Obama) entered office, than it had since 1995. The steep increase in the Jewish population in the areas is almost entirely the result of Jewish women having babies. The other accusations the State Department has leveled against Israel – that it incites violence and engages in terrorism – are so obscene that there is no point in trying to set the record straight. Quite simply, an administration comfortable with libeling Israel in this way doesn’t want to know the truth. While at this point it is abundantly clear that Kerry like the administration he serves has an unpleasant, irrational obsession with the Jewish state, it’s hard to shake the conclusion that there is more going on here than simply opposition to Israel. For instance his claim this week that “Unless we get going, a two-state solution could conceivably be stolen from everybody,” is more an assault on reality generally than on Israel in particular. Kerry, like the Obama administration as a whole, is angry at reality because at least as far as Israel and its Palestinian neighbors are concerned, reality shares no common ground with the administration’s assumption of Israeli guilt. There is no chance that Palestinian Authority Chairman and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas will agree to make peace with Israel. We know this not only because Abbas rejected peace and a Palestinian state when then-prime minister Ehud Olmert offered him both in 2008. We know this as well because three years ago Abbas rejected the idea of a negotiated settlement and opted instead to use the UN to gain international recognition of a Palestinian state at war with Israel. For the past several years, Obama and his advisers have collaborated with Abbas’s UN strategy by refusing to commit themselves to vetoing a UN Security Council resolution mandating the establishment of a Palestinian state. In so doing, they have shown that they want Israel to vacate Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria no matter what. If we learn nothing else from the current violence, we must learn that the idea we can separate from the Palestinians is a delusion. The current round of Palestinian terrorism, like last year’s offensive, has been largely undertaken by Arabs who live in Israel – either Israeli citizens from the Galilee or permanent residents from Jerusalem. The natural response that many Israelis have had to the fact that it is our fellow citizens and residents of our capital city that are perpetrating the violence has been to hope that a way can be found to finally separate from them. While understandable, this visceral response to Arab-Israeli terrorism is based on a misunderstanding of reality. Israelis who preach separation from the Palestinians as a strategic goal claim that the reason the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem – like the Palestinians of Gaza and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon before them – oppose Israel is because Israel controls the territory they live in. Accordingly, they argue, if Israel quits these areas – as it withdrew from Gaza and south Lebanon in the past – the Palestinians will stop their attacks. They are wrong. Arab Israelis and Jerusalem residents aren’t attacking Jews because Israel exercises sovereignty over the areas they live in. They are attacking Israel because like the Palestinians in Judea, and Samaria, they watch Palestinian and pan-Arab television, and like the Palestinians they use Facebook. In other words, the 1.7 million Arabs inside sovereign Israel, and the 1.7 million Palestinians in Judea and Samaria have been subjected to the same campaign of incitement and solicitation of terrorism against Jews over the past year and to the same 22 years of indoctrination to hate Jews and seek Israel’s destruction. The geographic borders separating these two groups have no impact whatsoever on their hearts and minds. The question isn’t how they feel, but whether or not they can act on their feelings. The reason that the Arab Israelis who have been moved to murder Jews do so with knives and pistols rather than missiles and suicide vests is that Israel controls Jerusalem and the Galilee. Israel’s sole security control over its territory enables the security cabinet to decide to deploy security forces throughout the country and to place roadblocks at the entrances to all the major Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem without fear of armed opposition. Likewise, the reason the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria haven’t renewed their mass casualty bombings from a decade ago despite the Palestinian and pan-Arab incitement is that beginning in Operation Defensive Shield in April 2002, the IDF retook control over the Palestinian population centers from the PA. Today Palestinian terrorist cells operating in the areas know that if they turn their guns on Israelis again, the IDF will immediately take their guns and arrest or kill them. Had Israel implemented then-prime minister Ehud Olmert’s plan to unilaterally withdraw from Judea and Samaria in 2007, Israel would be facing a catastrophic situation today. The main difference between the Arabs of Israel and of Judea and Samaria today is not their intentions, but the fact that in Israel proper, the government is the sole governing authority, while in Judea and Samaria, Israel shares sovereign control with the PLO-controlled PA. Two unique military challenges arise from this distinction. First, unlike the situation in Israel proper, in Judea and Samaria, the Palestinians are armed to the teeth. The quantities of firearms and explosives in Judea and Samaria are dizzying. Since 2007, when his forces were thrown out of Gaza, Abbas has viewed Hamas as a greater threat to his regime than Israel. As a result, he has cooperated with Israel in fighting Hamas and has not ordered his US-trained forces to turn their guns on the IDF and Israeli civilians. So since Israel’s ability to operate in Judea and Samaria at will has kept Hamas at bay, and Abbas’s belief that Hamas is a greater threat than Israel has kept him in check, Israel’s security control over the areas has prevented both Hamas and the PA from waging a renewed terrorist offensive against Israel. Unfortunately, this state of affairs will not last much longer. In all likelihood, at some point in the near to medium term, the PA’s threat assessment will change. The US-trained PA security forces will come to view Hamas as less of a threat than Israel. The main reason for this changed assessment is incitement. Like the rest of Palestinian society, the PA’s security services have been marinated in genocidal Jew hatred at the hands of Abbas’s media and Al Jazeera for the past 22 years. And as we see with the Jerusalem Arabs who run over Jews and then butcher them with meat cleavers, 22 years of indoctrination leaves a mark. But that’s not the only reason that the PA as we know it is about to disappear. In the not too distant future, Abbas will either retire or pass away. The PLO chief who incites Palestinians to murder Jews while owing his life and regime to the IDF which keeps Hamas and his Fatah challengers at bay is 80 years old. Just a month ago he resigned for the 10th time. None of Abbas’s possible successors will be likelier to lead the Palestinians to peaceful coexistence with Israel than Abbas has been. Moreover, none of them is likely to succeed in maintaining the PA as a coherent regime throughout Judea and Samaria. It is far likelier that after Abbas departs, the PA will fall apart and each Palestinian population center will be ruled by a local clan or militia. Under such a scenario, the current distinctions between Hamas and Fatah affiliates are likely to fall by the wayside. Here it is important to note that Israel has no interest in prolonging Abbas’s tenure. To the contrary, his record in office makes clear that he has personally caused great damage to Israel. For while Abbas owes his life and regime to Israel, he leads the diplomatic war against Israel in the international arena. Abbas’s refusal – despite his repeated resignations – to vacate his position, along with claims by Israeli officeholders that he serves as a moderating force in Palestinian society, have placed Israel in a situation where it is forced to participate in the diplomatic war against itself. After all, if Abbas is moderate and legitimate, then his incitement against Israel is similarly legitimate. Israel’s reluctance to abandon the fiction of Abbas’s moderation makes it impossible for it to prepare for the day after he disappears. Such preparations would involve setting the stage for expanded Israeli control over the territories. Steps to this end include limiting the transfer of weapons and additional Palestinian forces to Judea and Samaria. To this end, Israel must begin explaining to Congress that continued US funding of the Palestinian security forces endangers Israel. So, too, Israel must pounce on any opportunity to seize weapons in Judea and Samaria. The more weapons Israel takes control over today, the fewer it will need to seize in the future. Perhaps more important than any specific step that it can and should take to minimize the long-term dangers posed by the heavily armed Palestinian militias and security forces, our political and military leaders simply need to recognize that Palestinian society in Judea and Samaria is about to undergo major political changes. The better Israel recognizes the dynamics at play, the better prepared it will be to shape the new reality ways that minimize threats to our long-term security. No, Israel cannot change what is in the hearts and minds of the Palestinians, or of its Arab citizens and permanent residents. And it is because of this that separation is a chimera. All we can do is limit their ability to act on the hatred that has been instilled in them for the past 22 years. As for Kerry and his delusions, we have no choice but to allow him to fail to make peace again. But while we are at it, we need to recognize that given that he lives in his world of delusion, no concession Israel makes in the real world will satisfy him. 1c)The Knives of Jerusalem
For 67 years, Israel has sought peace with the Palestinians.
For 67 years, the Palestinians have sought Israel’s annihilation.
We cannot achieve meaningful peace until the world is willing to hold the Palestinians accountable for their relentless rejectionism and bigotry.
1d) Why Kerry Keeps Blaming Israel1e) Palestine: The Psychotic StageThe truth about why Palestinians have been seized by their present blood lust.
by Bret Stephens
If you’ve been following the news from Israel, you might have the impression that “violence” is killing a lot of people. As in this headline: “Palestinian Killed As Violence Continues.” Or this first paragraph: “Violence and bloodshed radiating outward from flash points in Jerusalem and the West Bank appear to be shifting gears and expanding, with Gaza increasingly drawn in.”
Read further, and you might also get a sense of who, according to Western media, is perpetrating “violence.” As in: “Two Palestinian Teenagers Shot by Israeli Police,” according to one headline. Or: “Israeli Retaliatory Strike in Gaza Kills Woman and Child, Palestinians Say,” according to another.
Such was the media’s way of describing two weeks of Palestinian assaults that began when Hamas killed a Jewish couple as they were driving with their four children in the northern West Bank. Two days later, a Palestinian teenager stabbed two Israelis to death in Jerusalem’s Old City, and also slashed a woman and a 2-year-old boy. Hours later, another knife-wielding Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli police after he slashed a 15-year-old Israeli boy in the chest and back.
Other Palestinian attacks include the stabbing of two elderly Israeli men and an assault with a vegetable peeler on a 14-year-old. On Sunday, an Arab-Israeli man ran over a 19-year-old female soldier at a bus stop, then got out of his car, stabbed her, and attacked two men and a 14-year-old girl. Several attacks have been carried out by women, including a failed suicide bombing.
Regarding the causes of this Palestinian blood fetish, Western news organizations have resorted to familiar tropes. Palestinians have despaired at the results of the peace process—never mind that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas just declared the Oslo Accords null and void. Israeli politicians want to allow Jews to pray atop the Temple Mount—never mind that Benjamin Netanyahu denies it and has barred Israeli politicians from visiting the site. There’s always the hoary “cycle of violence” formula that holds nobody and everybody accountable at one and the same time.
Left out of most of these stories is some sense of what Palestinian leaders have to say. As in these nuggets from a speech Mr. Abbas gave last month: “Al Aqsa Mosque is ours. They [Jews] have no right to defile it with their filthy feet.” And: “We bless every drop of blood spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah.”
Then there is the goading of the Muslim clergy. “Brothers, this is why we recall today what Allah did to the Jews,” one Gaza imam said Friday in a recorded address, translated by the invaluable Middle East Media Research Institute, or Memri. “Today, we realize why the Jews build walls. They do not do this to stop missiles but to prevent the slitting of their throats.”
Then, brandishing a six-inch knife, he added: “My brother in the West Bank: Stab!”
Imagine if a white minister in, say, South Carolina preached this way about African-Americans, knife and all: Would the news media be supine in reporting it? Would we get “both sides” journalism of the kind that is pro forma when it comes to Israelis and Palestinians, with lengthy pieces explaining—and implicitly justifying—the minister’s sundry grievances, his sense that his country has been stolen from him?
And would this be supplemented by the usual fake math of moral opprobrium, which is the stock-in-trade of reporters covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? In the Middle East version, a higher Palestinian death toll suggests greater Israeli culpability. (Perhaps Israeli paramedics should stop treating stabbing victims to help even the score.) In a U.S. version, should the higher incidence of black-on-white crime be cited to “balance” stories about white supremacists?
Didn’t think so.
Treatises have been written about the media’s mind-set when it comes to telling the story of Israel. We’ll leave that aside for now. The significant question is why so many Palestinians have been seized by their present blood lust—by a communal psychosis in which plunging knives into the necks of Jewish women, children, soldiers and civilians is seen as a religious and patriotic duty, a moral fulfillment. Despair at the state of the peace process, or the economy? Please. It’s time to stop furnishing Palestinians with the excuses they barely bother making for themselves.
Above all, it’s time to give hatred its due. We understand its explanatory power when it comes to American slavery, or the Holocaust. We understand it especially when it is the hatred of the powerful against the weak. Yet we fail to see it when the hatred disturbs comforting fictions about all people being basically good, or wanting the same things for their children, or being capable of empathy.
Today in Israel, Palestinians are in the midst of a campaign to knife Jews to death, one at a time. This is psychotic. It is evil. To call it anything less is to serve as an apologist, and an accomplice.
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2)
A Path Out of the Middle East Collapse
With Russia in Syria, a geopolitical structure that lasted four decades is in shambles. The U.S. needs a new strategy and priorities.
The debate about whether the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran regarding its nuclear program stabilized the Middle East’s strategic framework had barely begun when the region’s geopolitical framework collapsed. Russia’s unilateral military action in Syria is the latest symptom of the disintegration of the American role in stabilizing the Middle East order that emerged from the Arab-Israeli war of 1973.
In the aftermath of that conflict, Egypt abandoned its military ties with the Soviet Union and joined an American-backed negotiating process that produced peace treaties between Israel and Egypt, and Israel and Jordan, a United Nations-supervised disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria, which has been observed for over four decades (even by the parties of the Syrian civil war), and international support of Lebanon’s sovereign territorial integrity. Later, Saddam Hussein’s war to incorporate Kuwait into Iraq was defeated by an international coalition under U.S. leadership. American forces led the war against terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States were our allies in all these efforts. The Russian military presence disappeared from the region.
That geopolitical pattern is now in shambles. Four states in the region have ceased to function as sovereign. Libya, Yemen, Syria and Iraq have become targets for nonstate movements seeking to impose their rule. Over large swaths in Iraq and Syria, an ideologically radical religious army has declared itself the Islamic State (also called ISIS or ISIL) as an unrelenting foe of established world order. It seeks to replace the international system’s multiplicity of states with a caliphate, a single Islamic empire governed by Shariah law.
ISIS’ claim has given the millennium-old split between the Shiite and Sunni sects of Islam an apocalyptic dimension. The remaining Sunni states feel threatened by both the religious fervor of ISIS as well as by Shiite Iran, potentially the most powerful state in the region. Iran compounds its menace by presenting itself in a dual capacity. On one level, Iran acts as a legitimate Westphalian state conducting traditional diplomacy, even invoking the safeguards of the international system. At the same time, it organizes and guides nonstate actors seeking regional hegemony based on jihadist principles: Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria; Hamas in Gaza; the Houthis in Yemen.
Thus the Sunni Middle East risks engulfment by four concurrent sources: Shiite-governed Iran and its legacy of Persian imperialism; ideologically and religiously radical movements striving to overthrow prevalent political structures; conflicts within each state between ethnic and religious groups arbitrarily assembled after World War I into (now collapsing) states; and domestic pressures stemming from detrimental political, social and economic domestic policies.
The fate of Syria provides a vivid illustration: What started as a Sunni revolt against the Alawite (a Shiite offshoot) autocrat Bashar Assad fractured the state into its component religious and ethnic groups, with nonstate militias supporting each warring party, and outside powers pursuing their own strategic interests. Iran supports the Assad regime as the linchpin of an Iranian historic dominance stretching from Tehran to the Mediterranean. The Gulf States insist on the overthrow of Mr. Assad to thwart Shiite Iranian designs, which they fear more than Islamic State. They seek the defeat of ISIS while avoiding an Iranian victory. This ambivalence has been deepened by the nuclear deal, which in the Sunni Middle East is widely interpreted as tacit American acquiescence in Iranian hegemony.
These conflicting trends, compounded by America’s retreat from the region, have enabled Russia to engage in military operations deep in the Middle East, a deployment unprecedented in Russian history. Russia’s principal concern is that the Assad regime’s collapse could reproduce the chaos of Libya, bring ISIS into power in Damascus, and turn all of Syria into a haven for terrorist operations, reaching into Muslim regions inside Russia’s southern border in the Caucasus and elsewhere.
On the surface, Russia’s intervention serves Iran’s policy of sustaining the Shiite element in Syria. In a deeper sense, Russia’s purposes do not require the indefinite continuation of Mr. Assad’s rule. It is a classic balance-of-power maneuver to divert the Sunni Muslim terrorist threat from Russia’s southern border region. It is a geopolitical, not an ideological, challenge and should be dealt with on that level. Whatever the motivation, Russian forces in the region—and their participation in combat operations—produce a challenge that American Middle East policy has not encountered in at least four decades.
American policy has sought to straddle the motivations of all parties and is therefore on the verge of losing the ability to shape events. The U.S. is now opposed to, or at odds in some way or another with, all parties in the region: with Egypt on human rights; with Saudi Arabia over Yemen; with each of the Syrian parties over different objectives. The U.S. proclaims the determination to remove Mr. Assad but has been unwilling to generate effective leverage—political or military—to achieve that aim. Nor has the U.S. put forward an alternative political structure to replace Mr. Assad should his departure somehow be realized.
Russia, Iran, ISIS and various terrorist organizations have moved into this vacuum: Russia and Iran to sustain Mr. Assad; Tehran to foster imperial and jihadist designs. The Sunni states of the Persian Gulf, Jordan and Egypt, faced with the absence of an alternative political structure, favor the American objective but fear the consequence of turning Syria into another Libya.
American policy on Iran has moved to the center of its Middle East policy. The administration has insisted that it will take a stand against jihadist and imperialist designs by Iran and that it will deal sternly with violations of the nuclear agreement. But it seems also passionately committed to the quest for bringing about a reversal of the hostile, aggressive dimension of Iranian policy through historic evolution bolstered by negotiation.
The prevailing U.S. policy toward Iran is often compared by its advocates to the Nixon administration’s opening to China, which contributed, despite some domestic opposition, to the ultimate transformation of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The comparison is not apt. The opening to China in 1971 was based on the mutual recognition by both parties that the prevention of Russian hegemony in Eurasia was in their common interest. And 42 Soviet divisions lining the Sino-Soviet border reinforced that conviction. No comparable strategic agreement exists between Washington and Tehran. On the contrary, in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear accord, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the U.S. as the “Great Satan” and rejected negotiations with America about nonnuclear matters. Completing his geopolitical diagnosis, Mr. Khamenei also predicted that Israel would no longer exist in 25 years.
Forty-five years ago, the expectations of China and the U.S. were symmetrical. The expectations underlying the nuclear agreement with Iran are not. Tehran will gain its principal objectives at the beginning of the implementation of the accord. America’s benefits reside in a promise of Iranian conduct over a period of time. The opening to China was based on an immediate and observable adjustment in Chinese policy, not on an expectation of a fundamental change in China’s domestic system. The optimistic hypothesis on Iran postulates that Tehran’s revolutionary fervor will dissipate as its economic and cultural interactions with the outside world increase.
American policy runs the risk of feeding suspicion rather than abating it. Its challenge is that two rigid and apocalyptic blocs are confronting each other: a Sunni bloc consisting of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States; and the Shiite bloc comprising Iran, the Shiite sector of Iraq with Baghdad as its capital, the Shiite south of Lebanon under Hezbollah control facing Israel, and the Houthi portion of Yemen, completing the encirclement of the Sunni world. In these circumstances, the traditional adage that the enemy of your enemy can be treated as your friend no longer applies. For in the contemporary Middle East, it is likely that the enemy of your enemy remains your enemy.
A great deal depends on how the parties interpret recent events. Can the disillusionment of some of our Sunni allies be mitigated? How will Iran’s leaders interpret the nuclear accord once implemented—as a near-escape from potential disaster counseling a more moderate course, returning Iran to an international order? Or as a victory in which they have achieved their essential aims against the opposition of the U.N. Security Council, having ignored American threats and, hence, as an incentive to continue Tehran’s dual approach as both a legitimate state and a nonstate movement challenging the international order?
Two-power systems are prone to confrontation, as was demonstrated in Europe in the run-up to World War I. Even with traditional weapons technology, to sustain a balance of power between two rigid blocs requires an extraordinary ability to assess the real and potential balance of forces, to understand the accumulation of nuances that might affect this balance, and to act decisively to restore it whenever it deviates from equilibrium—qualities not heretofore demanded of an America sheltered behind two great oceans.
But the current crisis is taking place in a world of nontraditional nuclear and cyber technology. As competing regional powers strive for comparable threshold capacity, the nonproliferation regime in the Middle East may crumble. If nuclear weapons become established, a catastrophic outcome is nearly inevitable. A strategy of pre-emption is inherent in the nuclear technology. The U.S. must be determined to prevent such an outcome and apply the principle of nonproliferation to all nuclear aspirants in the region.
Too much of our public debate deals with tactical expedients. What we need is a strategic concept and to establish priorities on the following principles:
• So long as ISIS survives and remains in control of a geographically defined territory, it will compound all Middle East tensions. Threatening all sides and projecting its goals beyond the region, it freezes existing positions or tempts outside efforts to achieve imperial jihadist designs. The destruction of ISIS is more urgent than the overthrow of Bashar Assad, who has already lost over half of the area he once controlled. Making sure that this territory does not become a permanent terrorist haven must have precedence. The current inconclusive U.S. military effort risks serving as a recruitment vehicle for ISIS as having stood up to American might.
• The U.S. has already acquiesced in a Russian military role. Painful as this is to the architects of the 1973 system, attention in the Middle East must remain focused on essentials. And there exist compatible objectives. In a choice among strategies, it is preferable for ISIS-held territory to be reconquered either by moderate Sunni forces or outside powers than by Iranian jihadist or imperial forces. For Russia, limiting its military role to the anti-ISIS campaign may avoid a return to Cold War conditions with the U.S.
• The reconquered territories should be restored to the local Sunni rule that existed there before the disintegration of both Iraqi and Syrian sovereignty. The sovereign states of the Arabian Peninsula, as well as Egypt and Jordan, should play a principal role in that evolution. After the resolution of its constitutional crisis, Turkey could contribute creatively to such a process.
• As the terrorist region is being dismantled and brought under nonradical political control, the future of the Syrian state should be dealt with concurrently. A federal structure could then be built between the Alawite and Sunni portions. If the Alawite regions become part of a Syrian federal system, a context will exist for the role of Mr. Assad, which reduces the risks of genocide or chaos leading to terrorist triumph.
• The U.S. role in such a Middle East would be to implement the military assurances in the traditional Sunni states that the administration promised during the debate on the Iranian nuclear agreement, and which its critics have demanded.
• In this context, Iran’s role can be critical. The U.S. should be prepared for a dialogue with an Iran returning to its role as a Westphalian state within its established borders.
The U.S. must decide for itself the role it will play in the 21st century; the Middle East will be our most immediate—and perhaps most severe—test. At question is not the strength of American arms but rather American resolve in understanding and mastering a new world.
Mr. Kissinger served as national-security adviser and secretary of state under Presidents Nixon and Ford.
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Obama’s Real Foreign Policy Legacy
Throughout most of the last year, we’ve heard a great deal about President Obama’s foreign policy legacy. The vicious, partisan brawl waged by the administration for the Iran nuclear deal was motivated in large measure by the notion that Democrats were fighting for more than a pact that gave international sanction to Iran’s nuclear program. They were really working to save what the president saw as the crowning achievement of his presidency with regard to foreign policy. The president wasn’t merely defending an effort that would supposedly prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon he was initiating a new era of diplomacy that put to rest a conflict with Iran that stretched back to the 1970s. That it will almost certainly do no such thing is beside the point. Obama believes it to be so. Though he tells us that if it fails it be his name on the policy, he will exit the White House claiming that he has truly changed the world, even if the change is for the worse.
But an Iran deal that will go very sour sooner or later isn’t the sum total of Obama’s foreign policy legacy. Yesterday’s announcement that the drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan would be slowed to keep 9,800 U.S. troops in the country through the end of his term in office is another watershed moment that illustrates just how much a mirage the expectations of a “hope and change” presidency turned out to be. The president’s vision of an America that could safely withdraw from the Middle East and end an era of wars was nothing more than an exercise in wishful thinking.
As our Max Boot wrote on Thursday, the president’s decisions in Afghanistan and Iraq were motivated more by his misguided political strategy than any interest in winning either war. Indeed, President Obama doesn’t believe in the concept of military victory. Obama’s precipitate withdrawal from Iraq threw away the victory that had been won by President Bush in his last years in office and saw it replaced by the rise of ISIS and chaos. In Afghanistan, the president has maintained just enough of an American presence to stave off disaster. His latest move will ensure that there is no humiliating defeat of American allies by the Taliban while he is in the White House, but the fate of the conflict beyond that point will be in the hands of his successor.
But that just illustrates how completely false Obama’s self-image as the “peacemaker” president has been. As Michael Crowley noted in Politico, the president successfully campaigned for re-election as the man who ended America’s Middle East wars and retroactively earned the Nobel Peace Prize he received in his first year in office. Wars end when both sides stop fighting, not just the United States. Despite all the grand rhetoric, all the president has accomplished is to help create a power vacuum into which dangerous forces such as his Iranian negotiating partners, ISIS, and now Russia have stepped in to fill.
The conceit of American foreign policy for the last seven years has been the notion that Obama’s faith in outreach to Islamists, his dedication to multilateral diplomacy, and his aversion to conflict would transform America’s image in the world and leave it a better place. But that has turned out to be only partially true. Obama may claim that Iran or Russia are acting out of weakness, and that ISIS is merely the JV of terrorism, but the rest of the world knows better. Though George W. Bush made some big mistakes (though he kept America safe in the years after 9/11) and was reviled in some quarters, his America was not thought of as weak. Unfortunately, the catastrophe in Syria and Iraq is just the first indication of what happens when America is not only perceived as a paper tiger but actually acts out of weakness. We can only guess at what new horrors will arise as that situation unravels but the rise of a newly strengthened post-nuclear deal Iran will only worsen the situation for American allies in the coming years.
Nor can we leave the Israel-Palestinian conflict out of the discussion of his legacy. The president was sure that the resolution of that century-old war could only be achieved by creating more daylight between the United States and Israel and he was unceasing in his efforts to create more of it. But far from encouraging the Palestinians to negotiate a two-state solution or pushing the Israelis to take new risks for peace, all he accomplished there was to encourage the Palestinian leadership to be even more resolute in their refusal to make peace since they believed America no longer had the back of the Jewish state. Indeed, in just the last week, the administration’s reflexive even-handed approach has caused it to equate the fate of Israeli victims of terror with that of slain terrorists. Can it be any surprise that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has become the leading inciter of terror while enjoying the enthusiastic support from Obama as a champion of peace. The president inherited a stalemated peace process. But on his watch, he did what many thought was impossible in 2008 since the conflict has actually worsened and peace is even more unlikely that it was then.
The true Obama legacy abroad has nothing to do with the peace that he craved to make between Israelis and Palestinians or in the wars that he believed himself to be ending. The aftermath of his presidency will be one in which American power and prestige fall to its lowest point since Jimmy Carter. U.S. allies are isolated and weakened while its foes such as Iran and Russia are embarked on the sort of adventurism not seen since the 1970s. But the president is right about one thing. He has changed the world. Just not in the way he or his adoring fans ever dreamed it would happen.
Jonathan S. Tobin is senior online editor of COMMENTARY magazine and chief political blogger at www.commentarymagazine.com.
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| It works out that US President Barack Obama’s signature diplomatic achievement, his nuclear deal with Iran, has nothing to do with preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power or even with placing restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities. Just weeks after Obama led the international community in concluding the nuclear pact with Iran, the Iranian regime filed a complaint with the UN Security Council accusing the US of committing a material breach of the agreement. The US action that precipitated the complaint was a statement by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest claiming that if Iran violates the deal, “the military option would remain on the table.” In making the statement, Earnest was responding to a hypothetical question regarding what the US would do if the Iranians breached the deal. Earnest explained that not only would the US then consider attacking Iran’s nuclear installations militarily, but that its “military option would be enhanced because we’d been spending the intervening number of years gathering significantly more detail about Iran’s nuclear program.” “So when it comes to the targeting decisions,” he continued, “our capabilities [would be] improved, based on the knowledge that has been gained in the intervening years through this inspections regime.” The Iranians argued that Earnest’s statement was a material breach of the nuclear agreement because under Iran’s interpretation of the deal, UN inspectors are barred from sharing sensitive information they collect during the course of their site visits. As Tower Magazine pointed out at the time, Earnest’s remarks gave the Iranians a justification for refusing to allow UN nuclear inspectors from entering their nuclear sites. Indeed, Earnest’s remarks gave Iran a rationale for vacating its signature on the agreement. Like the US and the other parties to the agreement, the Iranians can vacate their signature if they feel their claims against other parties’ perceived breaches of their commitments are not properly addressed by the relevant UN agencies. According to Obama, if Iran walks away from the deal, it will take the mullocracy up to a year to develop nuclear weapons. Whereas Iran can use the deal to advance its nuclear program and then walk away, the US cannot use the deal to prevent Iran either from advancing its nuclear program or from walking away from the deal. Sunday Iran test-fired a new ballistic missile. According to Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan, unlike the Shihab intermediate-range surface-to-surface missiles that Iran already fields, the new Emad missile is precision guided. The Wall Street Journal reported that experts assess its range at 1,300 km. The missile test is not a violation of the agreement. Last month US Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged in a letter to Senator Marco Rubio that the deal does not restrict Iran’s ballistic missile program. Rather, Kerry claimed, Iran’s ballistic missile program is restricted by the Security Council resolution passed July 20 which calls on Iran “not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology,” for eight years. In response to Iran’s missile test Sunday, State Department spokesman John Kirby said the US would take “appropriate actions” at the UN if the tests violated the resolution. Unfortunately, Iran probably didn’t violate the resolution. Because whether the missile test was a violation or not is open to interpretation. Iran’s position is that the test is permitted because, it claims, it has nothing to do with its nuclear program. And because of the way Obama negotiated the nuclear deal and the Security Council resolution, Iran’s word is just as good as America’s on this score. Moreover, even under the unlikely scenario that the administration determines that Iran’s missile test violated the Security Council resolution, such a conclusion will make no difference. As Amir Taheri explained in The New York Post, America’s negotiating partners from the P5+1 view the nuclear deal as little more than a trade deal with Iran. Since they signed on in July, the Germans have expanded their trade with Iran 33 percent, making Germany Iran’s third largest trading partner. Britain has lifted its restrictions on Iranian banks. France has sent a 100-man delegation of salivating businessmen to Tehran. China has penned an agreement to build Iran five nuclear reactors. Russia has not only agreed to sell Iran the advanced S-300 air defense system and begun negotiating the sale of Sukhoi fighter jets, Russia has gone to war in coalition with Iran in Syria. Other states, including India, Turkey, Austria and the UAE are all clamoring for deals in Iran. The question of whether or not Iran actually abides by the deal’s nuclear limitations is the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. Given the circumstances, the idea that Obama’s much touted “snapback” sanctions will actually be implemented if and when Iran is caught cheating on the nuclear deal or the restrictions on its ballistic missile program is a joke. Kerry admitted to Congress that the US has given assurances to the Russians and Chinese that in the event sanctions are re-imposed they will not jeopardize those nations’ trade with Iran. So sanctions, which Obama himself insisted failed in the past to prevent Iran from advancing its nuclear program, cannot be reimposed, even if they are passed in the Security Council. And they won’t be passed in the Security Council because no one on the Security Council is paying attention to whether or not Iran keeps its side of the agreement. And even if they did pay attention, and decide that Iran has breached the accord, Iran will simply walk away from the deal with little to no international response. In his much cited article published last week about Obama’s ill-treatment of Israel during the course of his nuclear talks with Iran, ambassador Dennis Ross wrote that Obama’s commitment to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons was never straightforward. The issue of whether the administration would take all measures to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons or would merely seek to contain a nuclear Iran was never settled. In a speech at a Washington synagogue last May, Obama insisted that he has a “personal stake” in ensuring the deal prevents Iran from developing nuclear weapons because “this deal will have my name on it.” But as the deal’s substance and the behavior of the US’s negotiating partners makes clear, the purpose of the nuclear accord isn’t to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It is to get Obama off the hook and place the deal’s opponents in the dock. By giving Iran the right to walk away whenever it claims the US has breached the deal, Obama has ensured that Iran will walk away, and has given himself the means to blame the Republicans for the deal’s failure. Just as the Iranians used Earnest’s statement as a reason for leaving the deal, so they should be expected to use any limitation the US places on implementing the deal as a means to vacate their signature and walk away. Last week we learned that aspects of the US ’s commitments to Iran under the deal are illegal under US law. If the Republican Congress tries to force Obama to obey the law (that he himself signed), Obama will blame the Republicans when the Iranians respond by abandoning the deal. If the Republicans try to impose new sanctions on Iran because Iran breaches its commitments, then Iran can leave the deal. And Obama will blame the Republicans. What this means for Republicans is clear enough. They must recognize the deal for what it really is – a political tool to weaken them, not Iran. Once they understand what is going on, they must refuse to fall into the trap Obama set for them. Republican mustn’t worry about whether or not Iran vacates its signature. It is the deal, not any action they may take, that ensures Iran will walk away. Moreover, Republicans – and the deal’s Democratic opponents – must refuse to shoulder the blame when Iran acts as expected and walks away. Obama negotiated a deal that guarantees Iran will become a nuclear power and prevents the US from taking steps, in the framework of the deal, to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Obama didn’t do this because he is a bad negotiator. He did this because his goal was never to prevent Iran from developing atomic bombs and delivery mechanisms. His goal was always to blame Republicans (and Israel) for what he had to power to prevent, but had no interest in preventing. |
3)Another fact that Climate Change is not been proven, and our President is promoting it as the most critical situation for our future. All while he annoys Radical Islam.
Freeman Dyson is a 91-year-old theoretical physicist who was a contemporary of Einstein at Princeton, has received multiple international awards for his scientific efforts, and has published numerous books and papers on a wide range of topics.
Dyson is criticizing scientists who advance what he describes as an ‘agenda-driven’ perspective on global warming.
In an interview with The Register, Dyson responded to questions about the forward he just wrote for a scientific paper that confronts the “overrated” concerns about CO2 in the atmosphere:
“That is to me the central mystery of climate science. It is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts?”
Dyson, who describes himself as 100% Democrat, strongly disagreed with President Obama:
“It’s very sad that in this country, political opinion parted [people’s views on climate change]. I’m 100 per cent Democrat myself, and I like Obama. But he took the wrong side on this issue, and the Republicans took the right side.”
Part of the issue, according to the interview and the CO2 paper, is that the scientific models that have been used to predict climate outcomes have been wrong:
“What has happened in the past 10 years is that the discrepancies between what’s observed and what’s predicted have become much stronger. It’s clear now the models are wrong, but it wasn’t so clear 10 years ago. I can’t say if they’ll always be wrong, but the observations are improving and so the models are becoming more verifiable.”
For example, NASA has admitted that it is unable to explain a 17-year hiatus in an average global temperature increase, which has led to 95% of manmade global warming projections being false.
Explaining why this refusal of scientists to adjust their opinions when confronted with facts that seemingly refute their manmade global warming hypothesis, Dyson gives a couple of reasons.
He suggests that there has been a confusion between “pollution,” something definitely man-made and solvable, and “climate change,” a feature of nature and mostly beyond the control of humanity.
Furthermore, he also asserts that there’s not only a “large community of people who make their money by scaring the public,” but an element of groupthink at play, as well:
“Real advances in science require a different cultural tradition, with individuals who invent new tools to explore nature and are not afraid to question authority. Science driven by rebels and heretics searching for truth has made great progress in the last three centuries. But the new culture of scientific scepticism is a recent growth and has not yet penetrated deeply into our thinking. The old culture of group loyalty and dogmatic belief is still alive under the surface, guiding the thoughts of scientists as well as the opinions of ordinary citizens.”
Dyson concluded with an assertion and an appeal to dispassionately evaluating facts:
“Climatic effects observed in the real world are much less damaging than the effects predicted by the climate models, and have also been frequently beneficial. I am hoping that the scientists and politicians who have been blindly demonizing carbon dioxide for 37 years will one day open their eyes and look at the evidence.”
If anything, Dyson’s disputation of man made global warming just adds to the list of scientific voices who are bucking the received “consensus” on temperatures.
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Hans Von Spakovksy and Hope Steffensen: Gag reflex on climate change
Are you skeptical of human-caused global warming or climate change like many respected scientists and climate experts? Then you should be prosecuted like a Mafia mob boss, according to 20 academics at ivory towers such as Columbia, Rutgers and the University of Washington.
Apparently, these professors either don’t believe in the First Amendment or are profoundly ignorant of the basic rights it protects. They recently wrote an open letter to President Barack Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking for anyone who questions the climate-change dogma to be criminally prosecuted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, because they have “knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change.”
RICO is a federal law passed in 1970 as part of the Organized Crime Control Act. It was intended to be used as a tool to go after organized crime, including dangerous drug cartels and Mafia operations.
The professors seem totally oblivious to the fundamental infringement of free speech they are urging. These academics are trying to foster the exact opposite of a “free exchange of facts, theories, and ideas.” They want to end all scientific debate.
These academics could also use a remedial course in the history of scientific development. There have been many fierce debates over new scientific theories that have occurred over the past 2,000 years of human development. There are countless examples of theories that became accepted wisdom that later turned out to be completely wrong, in which dissenters from the original “accepted wisdom” were greeted with a range of reactions from skepticism to derision.
Suggesting, however, that so-called dissidents on the climate issue be prosecuted is a whole different story and amounts to a modern-day academic Inquisition. Like the supposed “consensus” of the “overwhelming majority of climate scientists” today (which actually isn’t true), these lofty academics know what the absolute truth is about climate change — just like Pope Urban VIII knew what the absolute truth was about the nature of the universe and our solar system.
These academics want anyone who disagrees with their “absolute” truth to be prosecuted, just like Galileo. Should the skeptics be put in prison? Or would these professors be satisfied with the skeptics being confined to house arrest and formally abjuring their errors, as Galileo was?
The final word here is this: The heads of George Mason University, the University of Washington, Rutgers University, the University of Maryland, Florida State University, the University of Miami, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University should be embarrassed to have professors on staff with such a profound ignorance or intentional disregard for the First Amendment.
The need for robust, unchecked, vibrant debate — not just in the university setting, but in American society, culture and politics — has never been greater.
Hans von Spakovsky and Hope Steffensen write for the Heritage Foundation a Washington think tank.
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