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This response, from a very dear friend and fellow memo reader, to my most recent memo pertaining to the tectonic shifts taking place in America's political system.
"In truth, the Democratic Party hasn’t had a real center since the early days of JFK.
The Sam Nunn's and Scoop Jackson's were always a minority within their party, which has drifted steadily, but inexorably, left since 1968.
Obama is just the logical conclusion of this leftward drift, to such an extent that there is no longer any real difference in an avowed Socialist and the locus of the mainstream of the party. A---"
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It has become fashionable and politically correct to dump on GW. Yes, he made some mistakes but he was a far better president than his current reputation and I believe history will prove him better than he is currently perceived. (See 1 below.)
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Should we not be disgusted with Kerry and Obama again? (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Our Black Citizens are angered that their movie efforts have not been recognized. Perhaps they should begin their own Oscar awards. After all, they have Black History Month, Black Miss America and affirmative action opportunities or they could renew their efforts to make films that have greater appeal to audiences. Frankly, I thought "Concussion" was an excellent movie and Will Smith should have been nominated but then I am sure there were other truly worthy movies that did not make the cut either.
Those who feel under recognized could take a leaf from Obama and blame GW, or they could take to the streets and burn down a town or two.
At least Hillarious is selectively on the side of our Black Citizens. She rails against lead water in Flint but passes on Black deaths in Chicago.
The author of this article happens to be black and brilliant. (See 3 below.)
and
Star Parker, who I have had the pleasure to meet and who receives my memos, is also black and courageous and believes Republicans need a Bernie.
Not sure I agree with her because winning an election with a Bernie would be the final nail in our nation's coffin and I would rather, should that come to pass, be owned exclusively by the Demwits. Let history reflect it was the Demwits who killed our Republic. Obama has given them a long head start. (See 3a below.)
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As I have repeatedly noted, I am still reading "Lawrence in Arabia." It is a thoroughly researched biography but not particularly an easy read because it gives me more details than I personally need.
Perhaps Major Gen. Curry has not only revealed why Christians and Muslims will never reach a level of trust and acceptance and the same could be why the divide between black and white will take the same path.
Certainly Obama has widened the distrust and gap.(See 4 below.)
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Ironically Obama has turned out to be a gun runner. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)The other day on Facebook, I saw a friend pictured with his kids and a frosted cake with the number 100 on it. Everyone was using their fingers to make the number 100 as well. When I asked my friend Tevi Troy to explain what was going on in the photo, he said the family was celebrating joining the Century Club.
I shouldn’t have felt bad about not knowing what it was since Troy made it up. Years ago he had been influenced by his kids’ school to create an at-home memorization challenge. Troy explained:
The kids have a program at [their Jewish day] school where they get points for memorizing certain prayers, lineages (12 Tribes, 3 fathers, 4 mothers . . .) titles of the Tanakh and Talmud, etc. If you get above a certain number of points, you get to go on a special trip. I created an English program for the Troy family where the kids have to memorize poems, recognize passages from literature, and learn the presidents, British and Israeli Prime Ministers, Roman emperors, and the like. Same deal: if you get above a certain number of points, you get to go on a special trip of my choosing.
As a parent I have found that rote memorization is largely ignored as a means of conveying information or learning. My daughter’s third grade teacher admitted sheepishly at the beginning of the year that the kids would be memorizing their times tables. I cheered; everyone else in the room looked at me as if I’d lost my good sense.
“After doing [the memorization contest] for a number of years, I then added the books program as an additional incentive-based activity,” Troy explains. It was a huge hit. The children, ages 8, 10, 12, and 14 all took it on and completed 100 books (at their own level), in 12 months. Troy says the subject didn’t matter. “It’s all about establishing behavioral patterns,” he said. In reality, for Troy it was more about encouraging his children to behave more like himself, since he is such a big reader. “I think it made an impression that I was doing it with them,” Troy admits, “but also that they’ve always seen me read.”
When I asked Troy about the origins of the contest’s name, he admitted his inspiration came from his former boss, the 43rd president of the United States, George W. Bush:
I met with President Bush in Dallas last year and told him that I was inspired by his reading contest with Karl Rove, and that I had read 100 books in the previous year in part as a result. He smiled, and said, ‘Century Club,’ which became the inspiration for the name of the activity with the kids.
Karl Rove described the contest in a beautiful 2008 column for the Wall Street Journal. In his column, Rove said the reading competition “reveals Mr. Bush’s focus on goals” and noted:
It’s not about winning. A good-natured competition helps keep him centered and makes possible a clear mind and a high level of energy. He reads instead of watching TV. He reads on Air Force One and to relax and because he’s curious. He reads about the tasks at hand, often picking volumes because of the relevance to his challenges.
Easy for Rove to say it wasn’t about winning; he beat the President every year. But as the mother of four kids fairly close in age, I’m sometimes concerned about competition between my children.
I asked Troy about one aspect of Rove’s description of the contest—the nature of competition. “I really didn’t make it a competition because it wasn’t about who did it the most,” Troy says. “They understand this from school, and they all benefit from the trip. The kids would help each other because they wanted the trip to include everyone.”
I spoke with Troy’s 12-year-old daughter Ruthie for confirmation. She says it was a good idea, though she admits, “I was annoyed at first.” She didn’t seem to think it was too difficult a task because, as she explained, “I read a lot, but I wouldn’t have read this number without it.” When I asked if she thought any family could do as hers had done, reading 100 books in a year, she suggested starting with a lower target number “for a family that doesn’t like to read as much.”
I’ve always thought that parents modeling behavior to children is the best way to influence their behavior. This is the first time that I can say that another family has taught me how I want my family to behave. After all, what’s not to like about great books—and a cake and trip to celebrate having read them?=====================================================================
When many Americans reacted with outrage at the sight of our Navy sailors on their knees after being detained by Iran, and then more so, after video of one sailor compelled to apologize on camera, the Obama administration’s outward reaction was blasé.
Indeed, Secretary of State John F. Kerry boasted upon the sailors’ return that this is what comes from our new diplomatic relationship with Iran. He even thanked the mullahs for returning our sailors. It turns out Kerry was steamed. Oh, yes indeed. “I was very angry. I was very frustrated and angry that that was released,” he now says about the Iran photos and video. “I raised it immediately with the Iranians.” You’d never know it from the continued concessions that followed.
This in a nutshell is what is wrong with the new diplomatic relationship. “The administration has convinced itself that it is doing the hard work of diplomacy. It knows that it has made significant concessions up front, but it believes that it is roping Iran into a cooperative relationship that will pay off in the long term,” says Michael Doran, a Middle East expert and former national security official. “Unfortunately, in the eyes of all Middle Eastern leaders, including Iranian leaders, the U.S. is simply being conned.”
Indeed, it’s hard to stomach the administration’s fawning over Iran in public, acting as its PR flack when critics express dismay at Iran’s conduct. The Obama team never forces Iran to pay a price for its conduct, but instead proceeds with ludicrously one-sided deals that reward Iranian misbehavior. The so-called prisoner exchange — four Americans held without justification swapped for seven Iranians charged with violating U.S. trade sanctions, plus our agreement to forgo charges against 14 others — comes after Kerry’s “very angry” reaction. Not to worry. He took it up with the Iranians right away.
“Anger is best expressed in quiet and tough bargaining at the negotiation table, where the United States should be using its leverage to extract meaningful and permanent concessions from adversaries,” sanctions expert Mark Dubowitz tells Right Turn. “Too often, however, some senior administration officials resort to foul language and angry words to project toughness. They should study, instead, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, who uses temperate rhetoric and an iron determination to extract massive concessions from his American counterparts.”
While Kerry is demonstrating a new passive-aggressive (mostly passive) foreign policy, Americans have further reasons to be angry about the prisoner swap. The Post reports: “[Post reporter Jason] Rezaian described months of extraordinarily limited human interaction and said that at one point he spent 49 days in solitary confinement. Later, he was put in a 15-by-20-foot room with three cots and no mattresses. For exercise, he said, he would walk for up to five hours every day around an 8-by-8-foot concrete courtyard.” Moreover, “Rezaian’s health was reported to have suffered because of poor conditions at the prison and a lack of medicine for his high blood pressure. Family members said last year that he had lost weight and suffered from back pain and chronic infections.” Where are the consequences for that? There are none; the newfound relationship increasingly resembles that of an abusive relationship in which mistreatment and aggression by one party is enabled by the other.
Congress should not be waylaid by the puny sanctions the administration rolled out in response to Iran’s illegal missile tests. Meaningful action is required to enact a cost to Iran for its treatment of our citizens, for its violations of United Nations resolutions, for its abuse of its own people, for its regional aggression and for its continued support for terrorism. As one pro-Israel critic of the administration put it, “These ‘sanctions’ are almost worse than nothing since they are inconsequential and give the false impression that Iran is being penalized for its illicit missile tests. What are needed are punitive economic penalties directed against the Iranian government — but don’t hold your breath that is happening anytime soon.”
Congress can certainly proceed on its own, and if Senate Democrats are “profoundly concerned” with the way things have played out, they can join in veto-proof majorities to enact appropriate sanctions responding to Iran’s conduct. And if Hillary Clinton wants to show us she is not a patsy like the president, she can support new sanctions. I know that will make Kerry “very angry,” but sanctions proponents should ignore his meaningless theatrics — just like the Iranians do.
UPDATE: To add insult to injury, “Three US citizens disappeared last week in Baghdad were kidnapped and are being held by an Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia, two Iraqi intelligence and two US government sources said on Tuesday. The US sources said Washington had no reason to believe Tehran was involved in the kidnapping and does not believe the trio are being held in Iran, which borders Iraq.” Once again, the administration is playing defense counsel for Tehran. Moreover, why should we not be demanding Iran use its influence — and hold Tehran accountable if the Americans are not returned unharmed? When there is no penalty for kidnapping Americans, more Americans will be kidnapped.
“We Caved: What happened when Barack Obama’s idealistic rhetoric collided with the cold realities of war and dictatorship in the Middle East and beyond”.
By Michael Crowley
On a late July day this past summer, a roar filled the sky over Cairo. It was the sound of Barack Obama’s capitulation to a dictator.
Eight new American fighter jets, freshly delivered from Washington, swooped low over the city, F-16s flying in formation. As they banked hard over the city’s center, they trailed plumes of red, white and black smoke—the colors of the Egyptian flag. For Egypt’s brutally repressive president, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the spectacle was a triumph, symbolizing not only his militaristic power at home, but also his victory over an American president who had tried to punish him before surrendering to the cold realities of geopolitics.
Just two years earlier, Sisi had seized power in a military coup, toppling Mohamed Morsi, the democratically elected successor to Hosni Mubarak, himself a strongman of 30 years pushed out in early 2011 by mass protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. In the summer of 2013, Sisi followed his coup with a brutal crackdown that would have done Saddam Hussein proud. His security forces arrested thousands of people, including much of his political opposition, and in one bloody day that summer, they gunned down some 1,000 pro-Morsi protesters (or more) who were staging peaceful sit-ins. The massacre was shocking even by the standards of Egypt’s long-dismal human rights record.
Obama was appalled. “We can’t return to business as usual,” he declared after the slaughter. “We have to be very careful about being seen as aiding and abetting actions that we think run contrary to our values and ideals.” Several weeks later, Obama halted the planned delivery of U.S. military hardware to Cairo, including attack helicopters, Harpoon missiles and several F-16 fighter jets, as well as $260 million in cash transfers. He also cast doubt on the future of America’s $1.3 billion in annual military aid to Egypt—a subsidy on which Cairo depends heavily, and much more than the United States sends to any country in the world aside from Israel.
But a fierce internal debate soon broke out over whether and how to sanction Egypt further, a fight that many officials told me was one of the most agonizing of the Obama administration’s seven years, as the president’s most powerful advisers spent months engaged in what one called “trench warfare” against each other. It was an excruciating test of how to balance American values with its cold-blooded security interests in an age of terrorism. Some of Obama’s top White House aides, including his deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, and the celebrated human rights champion Samantha Power, now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, urged the president to link further military aid to clear progress by Sisi on human rights and democracy. But Secretary of State John Kerry, then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Hagel’s successor, Ash Carter, argued for restoring the aid. Trying to punish Sisi would have little effect on his behavior, they said, while alienating a bulwark against Islamic radicalism in an imploding Middle East. “Egypt was one of the most significant policy divides between the White House and the State Department and the Department of Defense,” says Matthew Spence, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East policy.
For months, Obama tried to split the difference. In meetings and phone calls with the Egyptian ruler, by now paranoid and resentful about America’s intentions, Obama and Kerry urged Sisi to respect human rights, while also seeking his help in countering the the metastisizing Islamic State in nearby Syria and Iraq. Sisi did little of either.
In the end, Obama folded. This past March, he called Sisi once again, this time to explain that he would release the cash transfers and delayed hardware—including the F-16s—and end the administration’s threats to block the larger $1.3 billion annual aid package.
In the end, Obama folded. This past March, he called Sisi once again, this time to explain that he would release the cash transfers and delayed hardware—including the F-16s—and end the administration’s threats to block the larger $1.3 billion annual aid package.
“We caved,” says a former senior administration official who participated in the debates.
In a long conversation recently, Rhodes, the speechwriter turned national security aide who has been with Obama from the beginning of his presidency, didn’t mince words when it came to the years-long internal battle over Egypt. “We’re in that sweet spot where everyone is pissed off at us,” Rhodes told me.
And not just about Egypt. The persistent problem of how to deal with American-allied strongmen has long tripped up a president who prefers pragmatic solutions to moral purity but has been unable to find much of either in the Middle East. While every U.S. president struggles to balance values like democracy and human rights with national security, Obama has struggled more than most because of the vast gap between his inspirational rhetoric and the compromises he has made with thuggish world leaders, especially—but by no means exclusively—in a Middle East where authoritarian heads of state from Riyadh to Cairo have cracked down with renewed vigor after the unsettling protests of the Arab Spring.
“The rhetoric got way ahead of the policymaking,” says Michael Posner, who served as Obama’s top State Department official for human rights and democracy in his first term. “It … raised expectations that everything was going to change.”
“He’s never quite melded his rhetoric with his policies,” says Dennis Ross, who served as Obama’s top Middle East aide in his first term. Adds Robert Ford, who was Obama’s ambassador to Syria before resigning in frustration over the president’s policy there: “It seems like we are swinging back to the idea that we must make a choice between supporting dictators or being safe.”
Their views were echoed in many of more than two dozen recent interviews with current and former administration officials, members of Congress, experts and activists—interviews that revealed a striking degree of frustration and disillusionment. Many Obama supporters started out believing that the president had grand ambitions for replacing George W. Bush’s militaristic posture with a more enlightened and progressive approach to the world before coming to believe they had misread a president who was not the idealistic internationalist they had thought he was.
Their views were echoed in many of more than two dozen recent interviews with current and former administration officials, members of Congress, experts and activists—interviews that revealed a striking degree of frustration and disillusionment. Many Obama supporters started out believing that the president had grand ambitions for replacing George W. Bush’s militaristic posture with a more enlightened and progressive approach to the world before coming to believe they had misread a president who was not the idealistic internationalist they had thought he was.
In hindsight, it seems clear that Obama came to office far more focused on showing the world that the Bush era was over than on any coherent strategy of his own for advancing human rights or democracy.
But it didn’t seem that way at the time: Obama’s aides entered the White House full of plans for “dignity promotion”—a favorite phrase of Power’s meant to signal a contrast with Bush’s post-9/11 talk of “democracy promotion” and his second-term “Freedom Agenda” that many came to equate not with Bush’s lofty goal of “ending tyranny in our world” but with imposing Western values on countries like Iraq and Afghanistan at gunpoint.
But it didn’t seem that way at the time: Obama’s aides entered the White House full of plans for “dignity promotion”—a favorite phrase of Power’s meant to signal a contrast with Bush’s post-9/11 talk of “democracy promotion” and his second-term “Freedom Agenda” that many came to equate not with Bush’s lofty goal of “ending tyranny in our world” but with imposing Western values on countries like Iraq and Afghanistan at gunpoint.
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3)
Outrage About Flint, but Not Chicago
A tale of two beleaguered cities: Hillary Clinton focuses her concern for black residents on those most likely to help elect her.
By Jason L. Riley
At Sunday’s Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton said that she “spent a lot of time last week being outraged by what’s happening in Flint, Michigan,” where state officials were slow to respond to elevated levels of lead in the city’s drinking water. Mrs. Clinton’s outrage may be heartfelt but it is also politically calculated.
Flint’s water problems date to 2014, when the cash-strapped city stopped buying treated Lake Huron water from Detroit, located about 60 miles south, to save money. The plan was to use the Flint River as a temporary water source and to later join a new regional water authority that would charge much lower rates. But the river water turned out to be more corrosive than Detroit’s and leached more lead from city pipes. The problem went unaddressed for months despite early telltale signs like discolored tap water with a bad odor.
Flint went back to using water from Detroit in October, but the contamination continues because the river water damaged the city’s distribution system. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder has apologized for his handling of the situation and declared a state of emergency on Jan. 5. President Obama declared a federal emergency in Flint on Saturday, which frees up resources to assist the state.
Mrs. Clinton sees this as a crisis worthy of political exploitation because Flint is an impoverished majority-black city in a state with a white Republican governor. Yet the decision to use the river as a short-term water source was made while Flint was under the control of a black emergency manager appointed by the state. There is some dispute over whether local or state officials drove that decision, but Mrs. Clinton has no use for such details. For the Democratic front-runner, Flint’s problems symbolize the GOP’s callousness toward low-income black people. Democrats will give blacks a $15 minimum wage and free health care; Republicans will give them voter ID laws and contaminated water.
One reason commentators have been so dismissive of Mrs. Clinton’s rival, Bernie Sanders, despite his strong polling in Iowa and New Hampshire, is that Mr. Sanders has so little black support. Because those first two states are overwhelmingly white, a Democrat can compete in them without black voters. But once the election moves to South Carolina and Nevada, more demographically diverse states, winning without the backing of nonwhites becomes more difficult. In the largest states with the most delegates—including California, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio—it is nearly impossible. A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows Mrs. Clinton leading Mr. Sanders, 69% to 27%, among nonwhite primary voters.
Mrs. Clinton spends so much time praising the president’s record because she and the Democrats need the votes of his biggest supporters to prevail in November. It’s no accident that Sunday’s debate was hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation on the eve of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
For Democrats, courting black voters means turning every issue, whenever possible, into a question of racial justice. It means appealing to blacks as blacks, who supposedly share a collective mind-set and who are forever being victimized by whites. On Monday Mrs. Clinton described Flint as a “civil- rights issue,” adding: “We would be outraged if this happened to white kids, and we should be outraged that it’s happening right now to black kids.”
To appreciate the opportunistic nature of the former secretary of state’s indignation, compare it to her response Sunday morning when asked on “Meet the Press” about the 2014 death of Laquan McDonald in Chicago. The city’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, is facing questions over whether his administration covered up details of the police shooting last year to help him win re-election. The city hid from public view a dashcam recording of the incident that contradicted the police’s version of events. If released, it likely would have cost the mayor black support that he needed to win. The Justice Department is investigating.
When Mrs. Clinton was asked if Mr. Emanuel, a top aide in her husband’s administration, still had enough credibility to lead the city, she demurred. “That’s going to be up to him and up to the people of Chicago to prove,” she said. Calling out a Republican governor is more useful to Mrs. Clinton than is calling out the Democratic mayor of the president’s hometown. Her concern is not the plight of poor blacks in general but the plight of those blacks best situated to help her win the White House. In Michigan, the governor needs to be held accountable. In Chicago, the mayor gets a pass.
Mr. Riley, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and Journal contributor, is the author of “Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed” (Encounter Books, 2014).
3a)Republicans Need Their Own Bernie Sanders in 2016
By Star Parker
As the political landscape started to crystallize at the onset of the 2012 election, I wrote a column making a comparison to the election of 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected.
My point then was that the common ground of these two elections was the fracturing of Americans' most basic sense of what the nation is about.
The 1850s saw the collapse of the Whig Party and the birth of the Republican Party. The Democratic Party fractured into two and ran two separate candidates. The Republican Lincoln was elected with just 39 percent of the popular vote.
The core question tearing the country apart then was slavery. What place would that institution — intolerable and abhorrent to some, and central to nature’s moral order to others — find in our nation?
Two years prior, in 1858, Lincoln gave his famous “house divided” speech where he put his finger on the root of the battle for America’s soul.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”
Now, in 2016, we see a continuation of this same process: the fracturing of Americans' sense of what we’re about; and our movement even further to the polar extremes.
The decisive question today is where God and government stand in our lives. The movement over the years has been steadily in the direction of less God and more government. Secularism and government is so pervasive now that we are on the cusp of changing forever what America is about. Some sense that it has already happened and it is too late to change course.
American voters are looking for honesty today.
“Stop playing games with us,” voters are telling politicians. “Tell us who you are; give us the facts, and let us choose. Don’t tell us how much you love freedom and then deliver more government.”
For this reason, Bernie Sanders is having surprising success challenging the Clinton machine.
Sanders is a socialist, and he’s not afraid to say it.
The advantage that Sanders has is he is going with the flow. He is pointing in the direction in which the country is already moving. He is not looking to unwind or turn back against anything. He wants to do more of what we are already doing and is up front about defining ourselves as socialists.
Republicans need to be as clear with the country as Sanders with an alternative.
With the same clarity as Lincoln, Republicans need to level with Americans that we need to decide who we are and that we can’t go on pretending that we don’t have to make hard choices. Our making no decision is a victory for secularism and socialism.
The job for Republicans who want to lead America toward freedom is much harder because it means real change from the status quo.
It means telling the truth about abortion and the central importance of sanctity of life; and real reform in Social Security and Medicare, our tax system and our school systems.
Throwing hand grenades at the “establishment” doesn’t do this. We need substance. We need real ideas and proposals to change our fiscal and social realities.
We need a Republican Bernie Sanders to give Americans a real and explicit alternative to the secular and socialist path we’re already on.
This is the kind of candidate that Republicans need to nominate in 2016.
American voters need a clear choice for their future in this election. Are we going to be secular and socialist or a God-fearing free people?
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4) By: Major General Jerry Curry, USA (Ret.)
===============================================================================The British poet Rudyard Kipling, understood today's situation in Afghanistan better than our State Department when he wrote:"I have eaten your bread and sarlI have drunk your water and wine.The deaths you died I’ve watched besideand the lives you led were mine."There are two points Congress members, the President, Secretaries of State and Defense should keep in mind as they evaluate future involvement in the Mid-East and how to address them. Both are easiest illustrated by real life situations.Point One (1)Many years ago I attended the Infantry officer Advanced Course at Fort Benning , Georgia. Ten percent of the students attending that ten month course of instruction were from foreign countries. For about half of the course my table-mate was an Arab. We studied, completed homework assignments together, got to know each other's families, and generally enjoyed each other's company. Part of that time we students were immersed in reading about, researching, and discussing wars and problems of the Middle East . In time my Arab classmate and I had (I thought) become close friends. A question popped into my mind and without evaluating it I said, "I have a question to ask you, and you may find it impertinent, or perhaps offensive." "That's quite all right", he replied. "We know each other well enough to be honest with each other. So go ahead and ask your question." "Well," I began, "Each time you Arabs start a war with Israel , they beat your socks off. Why don't you learn your lesson and quit making war on them?" The words hadn't passed my lips before I felt that I shouldn't have asked that particular question, but I was wrong. My Arab officer friend didn't get angry. He didn't even think before replying. "My dear friend," he said in his British accent, "You are absolutely right. Each time we attack the Israelis they whip us. But have you noticed that with each loss we get better. We get whipped not as badly as in the war before." Then he got a faraway look in his eyes, pounded on the table and said, "sometime in the next thousand years, we will win!" Up until then I’d never thought in terms of a thousand years, and I don't think I'm very good at it today. But for those formulating foreign and defense policy for our nation, it is worth making the effort. For it’s difficult to think in terms of the immediate future while negotiating with a nation whose leaders are thinking in terms of hundreds or thousands of years.Point two (2)During the 1st Gulf War , US and Arab forces fought side by side and some of the officers became close friends. When the war ended in victory there was a celebration in the Officer's Club with congratulations all around. A lot of handshaking and hugging was going on. It was a time of displaying real brotherly love. Seeing this, one of the senior Arab generals felt the need to set the record straight. "Look," he said to a cluster of American generals. "We’ve fought together and some of us have died together. I know you feel that makes us brothers. But that’s not the way it is in my world." He looked around the circle making eye contact with all of them. "I don't want to see you hurt, so I need to share this with you. There is no tomorrow for us jointly. No matter how much you have helped my country and you came and helped us when we desperately needed your help and no matter how friendly you feel toward us, we are still Muslims and you are still Christians. That means that in our eyes, we can never be brothers. I'm sorry, but to us, you will always be Infidels!"Yes, we Infidels have liberated Iraq and Afghanistan , but we’ve not made their countries, nor their people, depositories of freedom and liberty. No matter how hard we work to rebuild their government’s infrastructure, educational, and medical institutions, and no matter how desperately they need our help-as the Arab general noted, we can never be brothers to each other.I understand what Kipling meant when he wrote: "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet."."Jerry Curry , USA , Maj. Gen. (ret.)
5)
Terrific: Gun ATF Illegally Trafficked Through Operation Fast and Furious Found in El Chapo's Lair
By Katie PavlichIt turns out at least one firearm trafficked into Mexico (and lost) through the Obama Justice Department's Operation Fast and Furious made its way into the upper echelons of the Sinaloa Cartel.
According to a report by Fox News' William La Jeunesse a .50-caliber rifle connected to the program was found inside the lair of notorious drug kingpin El Chapo Guzman. Bolding is mine:
Based on the intention of the firearm to be used to take down a helicopter, it should be noted another .50-caliber rifle trafficked through Fast and Furious was in fact used to take down a Mexican helicopter in 2011.
This news comes just under two weeks since El Chapo was captured by the Mexican military after escaping from prison twice. Further, this news comes hours after a federal judge struck down President Obama's assertion of executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents back in 2012.
Officials are working on the extradition of El Chapo to the U.S
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