Have Arabs Changed Their Strategy Towards Eliminating Israel? Obama Incrementally Changes His Failed Approach Proves He Remains Incapable of Being Capable!

Best Halloween Costume in Florida


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Love him or hate him this is another clever Trump anti-PC ad :

Here is a military medley that tells it in clever and funny lyrics ... Obama is suitably recognized ... it's a 2 minute video:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh8kaXXv35c
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What we have known all along, except for Kerry and Obama.  A former Iranian leader admits the nation seeks nukes for military purposes.  (See 1 below.)

Has the Arab strategy of defeating Israel militarily shifted to wearing them down both physically and psychologically?" (See 1a below.)
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I bash Obama but every once in a while he does something with which I accord.

Apparently he concluded heavy government breathing, regarding education testing and standards, was not accomplishing its espoused goal so he is backing off somewhat.  Hooray.

JEB has downplayed highlighting Common Core but it remains an albatross idea around his neck. (See 2 below.)

What I would like to see is the same degree of recognition in every aspect of government's destructive involvement in destroying our freedoms, increasing cost burdens thus, making us less competitive with the consequence of  diminishing citizen support for what government is legitimately needed.

That said, it would appear the new Marine Pentagon Chief of Staff is beginning to present Obama with reality but the president also seems stuck in his incremental mode and takes measures to bide time so he can hand his crippled  foreign policy to the next president.

We are now beefing up our ground forces and aircraft in Syria and Turkey but probably not at the level we should be. The response  pitch from the White House is they have begun to implement what seems to be working.

What the president's press secretary explained is that the strategy has not changed,  those sent  are not engaged in combat, and the solution has to be political because a military solution is not possible

I interpret this parsing of words as meaning Obama still does not have an effective and winning strategy and if he ever did have one it has failed and we will do everything we can to avoid calling whatever we do in a manner that suggests we are willing to win by confronting reality.

Too few, too late, too bad and very sad.  Just another Obama reversal because he does not know what he is doing. He continues to demonstrate he is incapable of being capable!

Time will tell. (See 3 below.)

The collapse of Obama's house of cards is becoming more evident and the pressure to change course is mounting. In my opinion, we still have no effective strategy, remain reactive, continue to lead from the rear and are unable and/or unwilling to confront Russia and impede its involvement and progress.

Time to bash Obama again for not being willing to release e Mails between himself and Hillary.  This from the liar who stated his would be the most transparent administrations.  After 7 years we now know, what I believed all along,  that was all a pocket of lies in order to hood wink the electorate who bought it hook, line and sinker.
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Strassel on the emerging "insider" Republican candidates. (See 4 below.)

Perhaps the media dolts at CNBC did Republican candidates and the nation a favor by openly displaying their bias  and causing the  Republican invitees to rally on behalf their collective defense.
It was nice to see some fire back at "gotcha crap."

I have railed for years that Republicans are not savvy when it comes to fighting and pushing back.

They simply come across as deer in headlights. (See 4a below.)
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Russian random air assaults kill hundreds and the world's media and press ignore but were that Israel they would be hollering hypocrisy.  (See 5 below.)
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Finally, I would like to return to an old theme regarding The Fed's intentions and policy.

The Fed knew lowering rates would inflate financial assets and create a wealth effect which is patently false and inherently dangerous.  I would hope, in the next FOX Business Debate, we will hear from one of the candidates a clear explanation of how  The Fed has leveraged America's economy and there will be a price to pay.  The date is uncertain when the pigeons come home to roost but they will.

Add to this risk the fact that what our Fed has done has been a global policy on the part of other Central Banks thus magnifying the risk exponentially.

The fan is beginning to turn!
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This from an old and dear friend and fellow memo reader: "Cruz and Rubio are also my favorites. If Hillary wins, I think Carly could put her in her place. Women are best at seeing through each other. D----."
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Dick
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1)FORMER IRANIAN PRESIDENT RAFSANJANI ADMITS IRAN AIMED

(AIMS) FOR NUKES

Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has admitted
what Israel has maintained all along (and critics of Israel in the western media
have doubted): that Iran’s nuclear program was launched in order to build
nuclear weapons. The BBC and other media have continually repeated the regime’s
misinformation that its massive uranium enrichment program was for non-military
purposes.

Rafsanjani made the remarks on Monday to the state-run IRNA news
agency, reports Agence France Presse and other media.

This is the first time such a senior regime insider has admitted Iran wants a nuclear weapon.
Rafsanjani did not say whether the regime would now like to acquire nuclear
weapons.
Iran  would like to rturn to an old themehas been trying to build a nuclear weapon since the 1980s but has
been thwarted in various ways by successive Israeli governments.

In the past, and in defiance of the United States, Israel has also prevented the regimes of
Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and of Bashar Assad in Syria, from developing a nuclear
weapons y, .

Not only has Israel prevented these genocidal tyrants from
obtaining such deadly weapons, but the site of Syria’s nuclear program bombed by
Israel in 2007 now lies in territory captured by ISIS, so presumably the outside
world should also acknowledge that it was a good thing Israel acted in defiance
of almost the whole world (including every senior member of the Bush
administration apart from Dick Cheney) and ISIS doesn’t now have nuclear
weapons.

In the interview published on Monday, Rafsanjani revealed that Iran’s
nuclear program was also helped by controversial Pakistani nuclear scientist
Abdel Qader Khan, who is reported to have sold nuclear weapons technology to
North Korea.

Rafsanjani said he and the country’s now Supreme leader Ayatollah
Khamenei, who was at the time a mere politician and a close confidante of then
supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, together went to Pakistan for talks

1a)"The Arab stratagem is no longer the cataclysmic annihilation of the Jewish state, but the ongoing erosion of Jewish will to maintain the Jewish state, by making Jewish life in it unbearable – both physically and psychologically."

"These post-Oslo declarations of intent irrefutably underscore that the ultimate objective of Israel’s then much lauded “peace partner” had deviated little from his pre-Oslo malevolence encapsulated in Arafat’s 1980 proclamation: “Peace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will last for generations."

"Accordingly, were Israel to yield control of Judea-Samaria, it would be far from implausible that Israel would be confronted with the daunting prospect of a massive stretch of Islamist-ruled territory, abutting the coastal metropolis – with Judea-Samaria comprising a mega Gaza-like entity, having a front extending almost 500 km. instead of the barely 50 km. in Gaza."

Photo by: MUSSA QAWASMA REUTERS Into the fray: Preserving the Jewish nation-state By MARTIN SHERMAN The predominance of Israel’s military prowess has little or no bearing on many of the emerging threats menacing the Jewish state today.

To question the Jewish people’s right to national existence and freedom, is... to deny to the Jewish people the right accorded to every other people on this globe... – Chaim Herzog, (1918-1997) sixth president of Israel and Labor MK Zionism is nothing more – but also nothing less – than the Jewish people’s sense of origin and destination in the land linked eternally with its name… The question is at what point Arab nationalism, with its prodigious glut of advantage, wealth and opportunity, will come to terms with the modest but equal rights of another Middle Eastern nation to pursue its life in security and peace. – Abba Eban, (1915- 2002) foreign minister of Israel (Labor) A number of learned scholars in academia have recently started to attack the very essence of Israel as a state that is both Jewish and democratic, or as the state of the Jewish people. This characterization, so they claim, is detrimental to the Arab population of Israel – to be more precise it undermines the basic right to equality of the Palestinians, who are Israeli citizens. It is difficult to contend, time and again, with this claim and explain, one more time, that the Jewish people have the right to their state, and just as is the case of any other nation-state, this does not imply discrimination against minorities in that state...  – Prof. Amnon Rubinstein, formerly education minister (Meretz), Yediot Aharonot, November 26, 2000 Modern Israel abounds with outward signs of power and prosperity. But don’t let the modern multi-level interchanges and soaring new high rises fool you. Don’t be misled by the booming haute couture boutiques and bustling gourmet restaurants. For despite this external display of success and strength, the fate of the Zionist project and the future of the Jewish nation-state have never been more imperiled. Misplaced complacency It is easy to be lulled into a false sense of security. But this misplaced complacency is a deceptively tempting pitfall that must be avoided at all costs, for it is certain to have catastrophic consequences. Frequently, one hears the ostensibly reassuring contention that Israel no longer faces any existential threat; that it has by far the strongest military in the region, (including rumors of scores of bombs in the basement); that its traditional enemies have been neutralized – by either peace agreements or internal disintegration. Yet while this is all completely true – it is equally irrelevant. For with the dissolution of central authority in Arab countries and the predominance of Israel’s military prowess has little or no bearing on many of the emerging threats menacing the Jewish state today. Perversely, in some respects, they may even exacerbate them. Thus on the one hand, the perception of military invincibility may generate a false sense of over-confidence and hubris, as it did before the Yom Kippur War of 1973, inducing it to lower its guard; on the other hand, the erosion of government control in Arab countries has spawned an array of uncontrolled, nonstate jihadist movements, undermining – and in several cases, overthrowing – any purportedly “moderate” Arab regimes, on which, prematurely/naively optimistic Israelis pinned much of their hopes for accomplishing peace, or at least, durable non-belligerence. More ethereal, no less lethal  Many of the threats confronting the Jewish state are perhaps less clearly defined, and arguably less immediate, than those in the past. But although they may be more ethereal, they are no less real, and certainly no less lethal. The array of new threats can be coarsely categorized into two main types: conceptual and concrete. These categories are not hermetically isolated from each other. Quite the opposite. They frequently interact – with fluctuations in one category exacerbating or attenuating the intensity in the other. There is little that Israel can do to prevent the concrete threats from arising, but much it can do to avoid them becoming unmanageable. By contrast, there is a great deal that Israel can do to curtail and counteract the conceptual threats. Yet sadly, it has done virtually nothing in this regard – and consequently they are on the verge of spiraling out of control, stripping Israel of much of its ability to contain the emerging concrete ones. For example, Israel can do little to prevent Syria (or large portions thereof) falling to Islamist radicals, whether of the Sunni variety (of al-Qaida or ISIS predilection) or of the Shia brand (of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah). Likewise, there is little it can do to prevent the regime in Jordan being taken over, or dominated, by some ISIS-like Islamo-mutation. But in either case, it makes a huge difference whether or not the threats inherent in these events are confronted with the Golan Heights and the highlands of Judea Samaria under Israeli control. However, whether or not Israel maintains or relinquishes control over these territories depends on how effectively it contends with the burgeoning threats of the conceptual type. Resisting attrition; not repulsing invasion It is of course correct that, for perhaps four decades, Israel has not faced a tangible threat of large-scale invasion by conventional Arab forces, as in 1948, 1967 and 1973 when it had to repulse Arab attempts (or preempt Arab designs) to overrun the country, or at least large portions of it. Today, however, with the changing nature of Arab enmity, the major existential challenge to Israel’s existence as the Jewish nation-state is no longer repulsing invasion, but resisting attrition. The Arab stratagem is no longer the cataclysmic annihilation of the Jewish state, but the ongoing erosion of Jewish will to maintain the Jewish state, by making Jewish life in it unbearable – both physically and psychologically. (While on the one hand, the nuclearization of Iran may reinstate the cataclysmic approach; on the other, it may “merely” provide a protective umbrella under which the attrition-oriented one can continue with greater intensity – and impunity.) Perhaps one of the most explicit expressions of this attrition-oriented intent came from Yasser Arafat in Stockholm, in an address to Arab diplomats, barely a year after being awarded the Noble Peace Prize: “The PLO will now concentrate on splitting Israel psychologically into two camps... We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare... I have no use for Jews. They are and remain Jews...” This overt admission of malice, and Arafat’s no less candid confession in Johannesburg (May 1994) and Cairo (January 1995), that the Oslo Accords were no more than a temporary subterfuge to weaken Israel ahead of a future Arab offensive to obliterate it, should have removed any doubt as to what lay ahead. Assault on legitimacy of Jewish nationhood These post-Oslo declarations of intent irrefutably underscore that the ultimate objective of Israel’s then much lauded “peace partner” had deviated little from his pre-Oslo malevolence encapsulated in Arafat’s 1980 proclamation: “Peace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will last for generations.” Yet, incredibly, despite this, the Israeli government continued to collaborate, with perverse eagerness, in brewing the noxious swill of deceit and deception, deliberately and undisguisedly designed to bring about the country’s demise. It should be recalled that until the early ’90s, the idea of supporting a Palestinian state was shunned by virtually all the Zionist political factions in the country as a near-treasonous anathema, with any contacts with Arafat’s PLO an offense punishable by law. What then induced this breathtaking metamorphosis that converted the detested into the desirable, and the catastrophic collapse of national will that made the vehemently abhorred into the virtually adored? It certainly was not military inferiority that compelled Israeli capitulation and coerced it to accept the once unacceptable; to legitimize the once delegitimized, and politically sanitize the once politically unsanitary. It was not predominance of Arab martial might that imposed upon Israel to allow armed Arab militias to deploy adjacent to the nation’s capital and within mortar range of its parliament; to permit the influx of hordes of brutal Judeocidal thugs and their access to military grade explosives that turned Israeli streets, cafes and buses into killing fields. No, all this was the result of intellectual surrender to a concerted assault on the conceptual legitimacy of Jewish nationhood, which made that legitimacy conditional on the recognition of an inimically adversarial – and openly admitted, fictional – nationhood, that of the Palestinian Arabs. Active complicity of Israeli establishment  So an absurd situation arose. Perversely, with the active complicity of much of the Israeli intellectual establishment, the myth was born that the Jews had no absolute right to national sovereignty. Paradoxically, according to this all-pervasive myth, this right and the ability to sustain it was now conditional. They would allegedly only become conceptually legitimate and practically feasible if the Jews deigned to make perilous concessions to accommodate the bogus demands of their implacable foes, the Palestinian Arabs, for national sovereignty, which the latter concede is nothing but a ruse to facilitate the termination of Jewish national sovereignty. Clearly, to contend with such conceptual threats to the existence of the Jewish nation–state, an entirely different arsenal is required from that at the disposal of the IDF. On the conceptual plane, the fight for Jewish sovereignty and a Jewish-nation state – and for legitimizing the demand for the minimal physical conditions to sustain them in the inhospitable real world, rather than in some cuddly Kumbaya delusional dream-world – requires mounting an intellectual counter-offensive. It will be an uphill battle and will have to be fought on at least two fronts. When the conceptual & the concrete converge It will be uphill, because the myth of Palestinian nationhood has become an integral part of international political culture. Indeed, support for what will almost certainly become yet another homophobic, misogynistic Muslim majority tyranny has become the prerequisite of acceptance into allegedly bon-ton liberal society. It will have to be waged on two fronts because the struggle will not only be against the ignorance, envy and/or malice from sources abroad. It will also have to be waged on the domestic front, against those who insist, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that for Israel to be secure and prosperous, it must relinquish the highlands of Judea-Samaria, and expose itself to the possibility of facing the specter of an Islamist-jihadist entity, stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo. The preceding discussion graphically illustrates how the new conceptual and the concrete threats converge to reinforce the dangers facing the Jewish state, and its capacity to resist Arab attrition. For if Israel cannot withstand the conceptual assault on its hold over Judea-Samaria and feels compelled to relinquish it (or large portions thereof), it will have no ability to determine who will control it – as the Gaza precedent unequivocally demonstrates. Likewise, as noted before, Israel has very limited ability to curb the concrete threat of the ascendancy of Islamist forces in Jordan. Accordingly, were Israel to yield control of Judea-Samaria, it would be far from implausible that Israel would be confronted with the daunting prospect of a massive stretch of Islamist-ruled territory, abutting the coastal metropolis – with Judea-Samaria comprising a mega Gaza-like entity, having a front extending almost 500 km. instead of the barely 50 km. in Gaza. Now imagine how much attrition that could wreak... Marshaling the intellectual arsenal I realize, of course, that some readers are chaffing at the bit for more “red-meat” operational prescriptions. But almost a quarter-century of intellectual mismanagement cannot be corrected with a few pithy sound bites. To repulse the conceptual threats bearing down on Israel and to generate the freedom of action to overcome the concrete ones, Israel needs to marshal a whole new arsenal of intellectual weaponry, which, subject to breaking news, will be the topic of next week’s column. Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.org) is founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (www.strategic-israel.org).

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2)

The Not Ready for Prime Time Bush

Like Scott Walker, Jeb couldn’t rise to the demands of the national stage.

ENLARGE

Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio during the Republican presidential debate Oct. 28 in Boulder, Colo. PHOTO: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

By

PEGGY NOONAN

We’ll begin with what went wrong with the Republican debate in Boulder, Colo., then look at what went wrong with Jeb Bush.

CNBC’s debate moderators have famously come under fire for questions, statements and a tone that were obnoxious. They were. The moderators seemed intent on trivializing the field. When you say, “Candidate A, you have criticized Candidates B and C, turn to them now and tell them why they’re dopes,” you are presenting yourself as the puppet master and them as puppets. They must either attack their colleagues as instructed and look weak, or push back against the moderator in a way open to charges of defensiveness and cynicism. They can’t win. (Though later one did.)

There’s nothing wrong with mischief from debate moderators, but this was dumb mischief, plonkingly obvious in its ideological hostility. What’s your greatest weakness? Should fantasy football be regulated? These questions were merely shallow.

It is very hard to imagine a candidate in a Democratic debate being asked if he’s not doing well because his party is ignorant and vicious. Jeb’s response to being smacked around like this was some vapidity about how “the great majority of Republicans and Americans believe in a hopeful future.”To Jeb Bush: “Governor, the fact that you’re at the fifth lectern tonight shows how far your stock has fallen in this race, despite the big investment your donors have made.” Donald Trump uncorking a taunt, right? No! It was moderator John Harwood! He followed up: “Ben Bernanke, who was appointed Fed chairman by your brother, recently wrote a book in which he said he no longer considers himself a Republican because the Republican Party has given in to know-nothingism. Is that why you’re having a difficult time in this race?”

There was browbeating, and interruptions aimed at forcing a candidate’s thought-train off its tracks:

Since Chris Christie has called climate change undeniable, asked Mr. Harwood, what would he do about it? Mr. Christie said his solutions would not be the usual Democratic ones involving more taxes and more power to Washington.

“What should we do?” Mr. Harwood pressed.

“What we should do is invest in all types of energy, John—”

“You mean government?” Mr. Harwood interrupted.

Christie: “I got to tell you the truth, even in New Jersey what you’re doing is called rude.”

That was a lovely moment. The best belonged to Ted Cruz. “The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media. This is not a cage match. And if you look at the questions—‘Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math?’ ‘John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?’ ‘ Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?’ How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about?”

He continued, over a moderator/interrupter: “I’m not finished yet. The contrast with the Democratic debate, where every fawning question from the media was, ‘Which of you is more handsome and wise?’ ”

Again he barreled past an interrupter: “Let me be clear. The men and women on this stage have more ideas, more experience, more common sense than every participant in the Democratic debate.”

Pressed to answer the original question, Mr. Cruz said he’d be happy to. But Mr. Harwood turned to another candidate.

“So you don’t want to hear the answer, John?” Mr. Cruz challenged.

“You used your answer on something else,” said Mr. Harwood, curtly.

He sure did.

I don’t know if fights like this win you anything, but the pushback was deserved, and instructive for future moderators: Be tough, incisive, follow up, dig down. But don’t be a high-handed snot, don’t wear your bias on your sleeve. That helps nothing. Don’t you get that?

To Jeb. He has not succeeded this year, and there is no particular reason to believe he will. Yes, he still has money, but what has money got him so far?

You could see almost all of what wasn’t working in his exchange with Marco Rubio, whom Jeb tried to zing in an obviously prepared attack on missed Senate votes.

“I’m a constituent of the senator,” said Jeb. But he’s not showing up for work. “I mean literally, the Senate—what is it, like a French workweek? You get, like, three days where you have to show up?”
He suggested Mr. Rubio resign “and let someone else take the job.”

Well, said Mr. Rubio, you’ve said you’re modeling your campaign on John McCain’s in 2008. “I don’t remember . . . you ever complaining about John McCain’s vote record. The only reason why you’re doing it now is because we’re running for the same position, and someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you.”

Mr. Bush began to respond but let Mr. Rubio cut him off: “My campaign is . . . not going to be about attacking anyone else on this stage. I will continue to have tremendous admiration and respect for Gov. Bush. I’m not running against Gov. Bush, I’m not running against anyone on this stage. I’m running for president because there is no way we can elect Hillary Clinton to continue the policies of Barack Obama.”

Mr. Rubio shut him down, just as Mr. Trump had in previous debates.

It’s widely believed among high Jeb supporters that Mr. Trump—“The Gong Show,” as they call him—has kept Mr. Bush from rising. But Mr. Trump isn’t the problem, he was the revealer of the problem: Jeb just isn’t very good at this.

He’s not good at the merry aggression of national politics. He never had an obvious broad base within the party. He seemed to understand the challenge of his name in the abstract but not have a plan to deal with it. It was said of Scott Walker that the great question was whether he had the heft and ability to go national. The same should have been asked of Jeb. He had never been a national candidate, only a governor. Reporters thought he was national because he was part of a national family.

He was playing from an old playbook—he means to show people his heart, hopes to run joyously.
But it’s 2015, we’re in crisis; they don’t care about your heart and joy, they care about your brains, guts and toughness. The expectations he faced were unrealistically high. He was painted as the front-runner. Reporters thought with his record, and a brother and father as president, he must be the front-runner, the kind of guy the GOP would fall in line for. But there’s no falling in line this year. He spent his first months staking out his position not as a creative, original chief executive of a major state—which he was—but as a pol raising shock-and-awe money and giving listless, unfocused interviews in which he slouched and shrugged. There was a sense he was waiting to be appreciated.

I speak of his candidacy in the past tense, which is rude though I don’t mean it rudely. It’s just hard to see how this can work. By hard I mean, for me, impossible.

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3) US to Put Boots on the Ground in Syria and Maybe Iraq

By: Lori Lowenthal Marcus

)In a startling turnaround - or one might characterize it as a pirouette in ultra-slow-motion - U.S. President Barack Obama authorized the deployment of dozens of Special Operations Forces to Syria. Also announced on Friday, Oct. 30, the U.S. is seriously considering sending Special Operations Forces to Iraq, to assist others fighting on the front lines against ISIS.

And so, this U.S. President who repeatedly swore that this country will not become involved in another military conflict in the Middle East, may be sending U.S. forces to fight in that region.

Try as they might, even the most ardent anti-Israel agitators in the U.S. and elsewhere will have a hard time blaming this military expenditure - in terms of financial outlay and personnel - on Israel.

The failure to recognize ISIS as a serious threat, President Obama disdainfully referred to that barbaric terrorist organization as a junior varsity team in January of 2014, and the endless dithering about how and whether to respond to the civil war in Syria, is why the U.S. now finds itself unable to act other than by sending in American troops.

As Secretary of State John Kerry explained earlier this week, ISIS (he now calls it Daesh) arose out of the chaos which ensued at the onset of the Syrian civil war.

The U.S. had focused its energy on an expensive "train and equip" $500 million strategy to shore up moderate rebels fighting against ISIS. The plug was pulled on that effort this month, after equipment and trained Syrians ended up either fighting with Assad or with ISIS or other terrorist groups.

The latest U.S. response comes late in the game, well after Iran and Russia have spent years and months, respectively, propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom the U.S. is committed to sidelining.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this week Gen. Joseph Dunford, Jr., Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff acknowledged, "no one is satisfied with our progress to date."

It may be unfair to refer to a U.S. President in the second term of his presidency as "junior varsity," but on May, 28, 2014 Obama made a speech at West Point that, in hindsight, might lead one to characterize his military thinking in those terms.

He said then that a,"strategy that involves invading every country that harbors terrorist networks is naïve and unsustainable.”

It was during that speech that Obama announced he would ask Congress for money to train the armies of "vulnerable" nations to carry out operations against extremists.

But now the U.S. is tentatively committed to sending in special forces units into both Syria and Iraq. As it turns out, the previous position of the U.S. was naive and unsustainable.

About the Author: Lori Lowenthal Marcus is the U.S. correspondent for The Jewish Press. A graduate of Harvard Law School, she previously practiced First Amendment law and taught in Philadelphia-area graduate and law schools. You can reach her by email: 

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4a)

Republican ‘Insiders’ Shine

Rubio, Christie and Cruz show why political experience is not a liability.

ENLARGE

Ted Cruz and Chris Christie at the Oct. 28 GOP debate. PHOTO: RICK WILKING/REUTERS

By  KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

Something important happened at the third GOP presidential debate that had nothing to do with hapless moderators. An outsider race gave way to an insider breakout.

Three insiders, to be precise: Marco Rubio, Chris Christie and Ted Cruz. Seasoned pols, one and all. The outsiders like to argue that political experience is a liability, that Washington needs interlopers. Maybe. But there’s something to be said for spending years understanding how voters think, and what they want. That’s what was on insider display on Wednesday night.

Mr. Rubio had yet another impressive debate night, and his consistent showings are steadily lifting him in polls. A great deal of the senator’s success comes down to raw political talent. He’s disciplined. Many hours of study and strategizing and rehearsal went into those answers. But Mr. Rubio has a remarkable ability to deliver every line as if unrehearsed. And to deliver them clearly, on themes big and policies small.

Opinion Journal Video

Editorial Board Member Joe Rago provides an analysis of the third Republican presidential debate. Photo credit: Getty Images.

This is something Republican voters want: a great communicator, an effective advocate for their cause. They haven’t had one since Reagan, and the Bushes and McCains and Romneys have highlighted how big a problem that is. They know the world has gone to hell, and they want a nominee who can explain how bad it is and who can articulate how conservative policies will fix it.

Carly Fiorina is eloquent, but increasingly a one-note Johnny (yes, Carly, government is bad). Donald Trump can talk (and talk and talk), just not on one topic for more than 37 seconds. Ben Carson’s shining moments are too often overshadowed by policy befuddlement. This may be Jeb Bush’s biggest problem, too. His policies are smart and bold—but good luck prying out that knowledge from a Jeb comment.

Here’s what else Mr. Rubio knows: that conservatives want to win—against Democrats. The senator’s best line of the night (among the audience and a debate focus group) was his slam of the media’s kid-glove treatment of Hillary Clinton. And his focus on Hillary serves him in other ways. He can sound aspirational about his own vision without sounding naïve. He’s broadcasting that he knows it will take a street-fighter to overcome the Clinton machine.

This is Mr. Christie’s strength, too. He’s also a good communicator, and like Mr. Rubio knows that a big part of connecting with voters is an occasional zing of humor. But he’s also kept most of his focus on the debacle of a Democratic White House. He skewered President Obama for his not backing up police officers, and for running a politicized Justice Department; he rapped Mrs. Clinton for her proposals for tax hikes and price controls. His promise that he’d be a formidable, prosecutorial opponent to Hillary is believable and sends a little thrill up some conservative spines.

Mr. Christie’s other voter insight: They want hard truths, no matter how hard. A lot of conservatives are so disillusioned with their party, they wonder if its leaders even understand what’s wrong. Mr. Christie sees a lot of problems: Social Security, Medicare, spending, ISIS, public safety, terrorism. Mike Huckabee’s defense of entitlements, by contrast, was the defense of a bygone Republican. And voters like Mr. Christie’s relentless focus on those problems—rather than fantasy football. Whether the New Jersey governor can overcome his geography—conservative distrust of the tri-state area—is another question.

Mr. Cruz’s insight into voters is smaller and more calculating—but effective nonetheless. The Texas senator understands that people are mad. Mr. Trump has caught the attention of many of these voters, but Mr. Cruz is presenting himself as a more effective alternative. And he’s quite believable, having proven he’d throw anybody under the bus—right, left or center—to accomplish his aims.

“I’m a fighter,” was among the senator’s opening lines. He railed on the Republican leadership, and lobbyists, and giant corporations, and Democrats. He isn’t limiting his criticism to Democrats. He boasted that he’d fought his own party on ObamaCare and immigration reform, and played up his role in the Planned Parenthood fight. Mr. Cruz has spoken openly of his strategy to ignore the so-called moderate-establishment wing of the party and pitch himself to tea partiers, evangelicals and libertarians. His every word is carefully chosen to help him win that more right-wing vote.

The Cruz approach is in contrast to that of Mr. Rubio and Mr. Christie—who are both pitching themselves to the Republican electorate as a whole, with messages (opportunity/security) aimed at growing the party among the general electorate. And if the insiders continue to consolidate support, that contrast may well become a defining aspect of the primary race.

All the candidates still have plenty to debate on specifics—taxes, spending, entitlements. But one odd aspect of having so many sound (policy wise) candidates on stage is that this race could come down far more to tone, character and that giant question of how Republicans want to define their party in a new generation. At least at the moment, it is the insiders who are forcing those questions.

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5)  Month of Russian air strikes on Syria kill nearly 600: monitor

Civilians inspect a site hit by what activists said were air strikes carried out by the Russian air force on Reef al-Mohandeseen area in the western countryside of Aleppo, Syria October 21, 2015. 

(Reuters/Hosam Katan)

Russian air strikes on Syria have killed nearly 600 people, a third of them civilians, since Moscow started its aerial campaign a month ago, a group monitoring the war said on Thursday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which collects information from a network of sources on the ground, said the Russian strikes had killed 185 civilians and 410 fighters from various insurgent groups.

Russia has said it is targeting Islamic State fighters and other jihadists in Syria and has denied its bombing has resulted in civilian casualties.

Writing by Sylvia Westall; editing by John Stonestreet