Mass Deportation
To help save the economy, "Abnormal Trump" will announce next Monththe Immigration Department will start deporting senior citizens (instead of illegals) in order to lower pensions and healthcare costs (flu jabs, walkers, wheelchairs, free prescriptions, bus passes, food stamps, free eye glasses etc.)
The Government has established older people are easier to catch and, in most cases, will not remember how to return home.
I started to cry when I thought of you - maybe I'd never see you again.. Then it dawned on me…
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It is time to respond to cyber attacks which is the new method of adversaries to engage in war.
Cyber attacks can do significant emotional, physical and economic damage and should be thought of in that way.
Several years ago I had James Van de Velde, speak under the auspices of The SIRC, and he warned the audience to expect what is now occurring. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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Haley eviscerates Iran in the U.N while Tillerson serves more syrupy platitudes.
What message are we really sending? (See 2 below.)
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A few ways Israel enhances America's security. (See 3 below.)
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Jindal, nails Trump's appeal.
The problem for Republicans is that what Trump brings to the political arena is not necessarily transferable. He points the way for them as to where they must break with the past and change their own style but the question is, can they?
I doubt they can unless they get rid of a lot of the old crop. (See 4 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
It is time to respond to cyber attacks which is the new method of adversaries to engage in war.
Cyber attacks can do significant emotional, physical and economic damage and should be thought of in that way.
Several years ago I had James Van de Velde, speak under the auspices of The SIRC, and he warned the audience to expect what is now occurring. (See 1 and 1a below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Haley eviscerates Iran in the U.N while Tillerson serves more syrupy platitudes.
What message are we really sending? (See 2 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++
A few ways Israel enhances America's security. (See 3 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jindal, nails Trump's appeal.
The problem for Republicans is that what Trump brings to the political arena is not necessarily transferable. He points the way for them as to where they must break with the past and change their own style but the question is, can they?
I doubt they can unless they get rid of a lot of the old crop. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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By Brennan Weiss
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, outlining a series of rising global and cyber threats the United States faces from adversaries including North Korea, Russia, Iran, and China.
Coats told lawmakers Tuesday that the growing national debt is the biggest internal threat to US national security. He urged Congress to take action “before a fiscal crisis occurs that truly undermines our ability to ensure our national security.”
The US national debt is currently more than $20.63 trillion. The recently implemented GOP tax law and last Friday's budget proposal are projected to add to it. But he also warned against an internal threat that he says could undermine US economic and national security: the national debt.
“I'm concerned that our increasing fractious political process, particularly with respect to federal spending, is threatening our ability to properly defend our nation both in the short term and especially in the long term,” Coats said alongside five other top intelligence chiefs. “The failure to address our longterm fiscal situation has increased the national debt to over $20 trillion and growing.”
“I would urge all of us to recognize the need to address this challenge and to take action as soon as possible before a fiscal crisis occurs that truly undermines our ability to ensure our national security,” added Coats, who served as a Republican senator from Indiana for 16 years.
As of Tuesday, the national debt stood at $20.63 trillion. Coats also cited Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who told Fortune in 2012 that the national debt was “the single biggest threat to our national security.”
In Tuesday's hearing, Coats said former secretaries of state Madeline Albright and Henry Kissinger, former secretaries of defense Bob Gates and Leon Panetta, and current defense secretary James Mattis agree with Mullen's assessment.
1a)
Pentagon Suggests Countering Devastating Cyber attacks With Nuclear Arms
By David Sanger
A newly drafted United States nuclear strategy that has been sent to President Trump for approval would permit the use of nuclear weapons to respond to a wide range of devastating but non-nuclear attacks on American infrastructure, including what current and former government officials described as the most crippling kind of cyberattacks.
For decades, American presidents have threatened “first use” of nuclear weapons against enemies in only very narrow and limited circumstances, such as in response to the use of biological weapons against the United States. But the new document is the first to expand that to include attempts to destroy wide-reaching infrastructure, like a country’s power grid or communications, that would be most vulnerable to cyberweapons.
The draft document, called the Nuclear Posture Review, was written at the Pentagon and is being reviewed by the White House. Its final release is expected in the coming weeks and represents a new look at the United States’ nuclear strategy. The draft was first published last week by HuffPost.
It called the strategic picture facing the United States quite bleak, citing not only Russian and Chinese nuclear advances but advances made by North Korea and, potentially, Iran.
“We must look reality in the eye and see the world as it is, not as we wish it to be,” the draft document said. The Trump administration’s new initiative, it continued, “realigns our nuclear policy with a realistic assessment of the threats we face today and the uncertainties regarding the future security environment.”
The Pentagon declined to comment on the draft assessment because Mr. Trump has not yet approved it. The White House also declined to comment.
But three current and former senior government officials said large cyberattacks against the United States and its interests would be included in the kinds of foreign aggression that could justify a nuclear response — though they stressed there would be other, more conventional options for retaliation. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the proposed policy.
Gary Samore, who was a top nuclear adviser to President Barack Obama, said much of the draft strategy “repeats the essential elements of Obama declaratory policy word for word” — including its declaration that the United States would “only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.”
But the biggest difference lies in new wording about what constitutes “extreme circumstances.”
In the Trump administration’s draft, those “circumstances could include significant non-nuclear strategic attacks.” It said that could include “attacks on the U.S., allied, or partner civilian population or infrastructure, and attacks on U.S. or allied nuclear forces, their command and control, or warning and attack assessment capabilities.”
The draft does not explicitly say that a crippling cyberattack against the United States would be among the extreme circumstances. But experts called a cyberattack one of the most efficient ways to paralyze systems like the power grid, cellphone networks and the backbone of the internet without using nuclear weapons.
“In 2001, we struggled with how to establish deterrence for terrorism because terrorists don’t have populations or territory to hold at risk. Cyber poses a similar quandary,” said Kori Schake, a senior National Security Council and State Department official during President George W. Bush’s administration, who is now the deputy director general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
“So if cyber can cause physical malfunction of major infrastructure resulting in deaths,” Ms. Schake said, the Pentagon has now found a way “to establish a deterrent dynamic.”
The draft review also cites “particular concern” about “expanding threats in space and cyberspace” to the command-and-control systems of the American nuclear arsenal that the review identifies as a “legacy of the Cold War.” It was the latest warning in a growing chorus that the nuclear response networks could themselves be disabled or fed false data in a cyberattack.
So far, all of the United States’ leading adversaries — including Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — have stopped well short of the kind of cyberattacks that could prompt a larger, and more violent response.
The Russians have placed malware called “Black Energy” in American utility systems, but never tried to cause a major blackout. They have sent cable-cutting submarines along the path of undersea fiber optic lines that connect the continents, but not cut them. North Korea has attacked companies like Sony, and used cyberweapons to cause chaos in the British health care system, but never directly taken on the United States.
Still, the document recognizes that American, Russian and Chinese strategies have all been updated in recent years to reflect the reality that any conflict would begin with a lightning strike on space and communications systems. During the Obama administration, for example, a secret program, code-named “Nitro Zeus,” called for a blinding cyberattack on Iran in the event negotiations over its nuclear program failed and Washington found itself going to war with Tehran.
There are other differences with the Obama administration policy.
The draft strategy embraces the American production of a new generation of small, low-yield nuclear weapons — some of which were under development during the Obama administration. Some experts warn that such smaller weapons can blur the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, and, as a result, be more tempting to use.
And it states outright that Russia is testing its first autonomous nuclear torpedo, one that American officials believe would be guided largely by artificial intelligence to strike the United States even if communications with Moscow were terminated. It was Washington’s first public acknowledgment of such an undersea weapon, a prototype of which was first envisioned in the 1960s by Andrei Sakharov, the physicist who later ranked among the Soviet Union’s most famous dissidents.
The torpedo’s development was detected by the Obama administration and has been widely discussed in defense circles, but never publicly referred to by the Pentagon as a significant future threat.
Mr. Trump has rarely publicly criticized President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for Russia’s aggressions around the world. But the Pentagon document describes Moscow’s actions as so destabilizing that the United States may be forced to reverse Mr. Obama’s commitment to reduce the role and size of the American nuclear arsenal.
Russia is adopting “military strategies and capabilities that rely on nuclear escalation for their success,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis wrote in an introduction to the report. “These developments, coupled with Russia’s invasion of Crimea and nuclear threats against our allies, mark Moscow’s unabashed return to Great Power competition.”
In most cases, the Trump administration plan would simply move forward nuclear weapons that Mr. Obama had endorsed, such as a new generation of nuclear cruise missiles — low-flying weapons with stubby wings that, when dropped from a bomber, hug the ground to avoid enemy radars and air defenses.
But the strategy envisions other new nuclear weapons. The draft policy calls for “the rapid development” of a cruise missile to be fired from submarines. Mr. Obama had retired that class. It also calls for the development of a low-yield warhead for ballistic missiles fired from submarines.
It is relatively easy for presidents to change the country’s declaratory policy on the use of nuclear arms and quite difficult for them to reshape its nuclear arsenal, which takes not only vast sums of money but many years and sometimes decades of planning and implementation.
The price tag for a 30-year makeover of the United States’ nuclear arsenal was put last year at $1.2 trillion. Analysts said the expanded Trump administration plan would push the bill much higher, noting that firm estimates will have to wait until the proposed federal budget for the 2019 fiscal year is made public.
“Almost everything about this radical new policy will blur the line between nuclear and conventional,” said Andrew C. Weber, an assistant defense secretary during the Obama administration who directed an interagency panel that oversaw the country’s nuclear arsenal.
If adopted, he added, the new policy “will make nuclear war a lot more likely.”
ne of the document’s edgiest conclusions involves the existence of a deadly new class of Russian nuclear torpedo — a cigar-shaped underwater missile meant to be fired from a submarine.
Torpedoes tipped with nuclear arms were common during the Cold War, with the Soviet Union pioneering the weapons and developing them most vigorously. One Soviet model had a range of miles and a large warhead.
Mr. Sakharov, a famous Russian dissident in the 1970s and 1980s, envisioned a giant torpedo able to travel several hundred miles and incur heavy casualties with a warhead thousands of times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. Though his vision was rejected at the time, the new review discloses that Moscow has resurrected a weapon along the same lines.
The document calls it “a new intercontinental, nuclear-armed undersea autonomous torpedo.” In a diagram labeled “New Nuclear Delivery Vehicles over the Past Decade,” it identifies the torpedo by its code name, Status-6.
News stories have reported the possible existence of such a weapon since at least 2015, but the document’s reference appears to be the first time the federal government has confirmed its existence. The long-range torpedo with a monster warhead is apparently meant to shower coastal regions with deadly radioactivity, leaving cities uninhabitable.
“So if cyber can cause physical malfunction of major infrastructure resulting in deaths,the Pentagon has now found a way “to establish a deterrent dynamic.”
A newly drafted United States nuclear strategy that has been sent to President Trump for approval would permit the use of nuclear weapons to respond to a wide range of devastating but non-nuclear attacks on American infrastructure, including what current and former government officials described as the most crippling kind of cyberattacks.
For decades, American presidents have threatened “first use” of nuclear weapons against enemies in only very narrow and limited circumstances, such as in response to the use of biological weapons against the United States. But the new document is the first to expand that to include attempts to destroy wide-reaching infrastructure, like a country’s power grid or communications, that would be most vulnerable to cyberweapons.
The draft document, called the Nuclear Posture Review, was written at the Pentagon and is being reviewed by the White House. Its final release is expected in the coming weeks and represents a new look at the United States’ nuclear strategy. The draft was first published last week by HuffPost.
A newly drafted United States nuclear strategy that has been sent to President Trump for approval would permit the use of nuclear weapons to respond to a wide range of devastating but non-nuclear attacks on American infrastructure, including what current and former government officials described as the most crippling kind of cyberattacks.
For decades, American presidents have threatened “first use” of nuclear weapons against enemies in only very narrow and limited circumstances, such as in response to the use of biological weapons against the United States. But the new document is the first to expand that to include attempts to destroy wide-reaching infrastructure, like a country’s power grid or communications, that would be most vulnerable to cyberweapons.
The draft document, called the Nuclear Posture Review, was written at the Pentagon and is being reviewed by the White House. Its final release is expected in the coming weeks and represents a new look at the United States’ nuclear strategy. The draft was first published last week by HuffPost.
It called the strategic picture facing the United States quite bleak, citing not only Russian and Chinese nuclear advances but advances made by North Korea and, potentially, Iran.
“We must look reality in the eye and see the world as it is, not as we wish it to be,” the draft document said. The Trump administration’s new initiative, it continued, “realigns our nuclear policy with a realistic assessment of the threats we face today and the uncertainties regarding the future security environment.”
The Pentagon declined to comment on the draft assessment because Mr. Trump has not yet approved it. The White House also declined to comment.
But three current and former senior government officials said large cyberattacks against the United States and its interests would be included in the kinds of foreign aggression that could justify a nuclear response — though they stressed there would be other, more conventional options for retaliation. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the proposed policy.
Gary Samore, who was a top nuclear adviser to President Barack Obama, said much of the draft strategy “repeats the essential elements of Obama declaratory policy word for word” — including its declaration that the United States would “only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.”
But the biggest difference lies in new wording about what constitutes “extreme circumstances.”
In the Trump administration’s draft, those “circumstances could include significant non-nuclear strategic attacks.” It said that could include “attacks on the U.S., allied, or partner civilian population or infrastructure, and attacks on U.S. or allied nuclear forces, their command and control, or warning and attack assessment capabilities.”
The draft does not explicitly say that a crippling cyberattack against the United States would be among the extreme circumstances. But experts called a cyberattack one of the most efficient ways to paralyze systems like the power grid, cellphone networks and the backbone of the internet without using nuclear weapons.
“In 2001, we struggled with how to establish deterrence for terrorism because terrorists don’t have populations or territory to hold at risk. Cyber poses a similar quandary,” said Kori Schake, a senior National Security Council and State Department official during President George W. Bush’s administration, who is now the deputy director general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
“So if cyber can cause physical malfunction of major infrastructure resulting in deaths,” Ms. Schake said, the Pentagon has now found a way “to establish a deterrent dynamic.”
The draft review also cites “particular concern” about “expanding threats in space and cyberspace” to the command-and-control systems of the American nuclear arsenal that the review identifies as a “legacy of the Cold War.” It was the latest warning in a growing chorus that the nuclear response networks could themselves be disabled or fed false data in a cyberattack.
So far, all of the United States’ leading adversaries — including Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — have stopped well short of the kind of cyberattacks that could prompt a larger, and more violent response.
The Russians have placed malware called “Black Energy” in American utility systems, but never tried to cause a major blackout. They have sent cable-cutting submarines along the path of undersea fiber optic lines that connect the continents, but not cut them. North Korea has attacked companies like Sony, and used cyberweapons to cause chaos in the British health care system, but never directly taken on the United States.
Still, the document recognizes that American, Russian and Chinese strategies have all been updated in recent years to reflect the reality that any conflict would begin with a lightning strike on space and communications systems. During the Obama administration, for example, a secret program, code-named “Nitro Zeus,” called for a blinding cyberattack on Iran in the event negotiations over its nuclear program failed and Washington found itself going to war with Tehran.
There are other differences with the Obama administration policy.
The draft strategy embraces the American production of a new generation of small, low-yield nuclear weapons — some of which were under development during the Obama administration. Some experts warn that such smaller weapons can blur the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, and, as a result, be more tempting to use.
And it states outright that Russia is testing its first autonomous nuclear torpedo, one that American officials believe would be guided largely by artificial intelligence to strike the United States even if communications with Moscow were terminated. It was Washington’s first public acknowledgment of such an undersea weapon, a prototype of which was first envisioned in the 1960s by Andrei Sakharov, the physicist who later ranked among the Soviet Union’s most famous dissidents.
The torpedo’s development was detected by the Obama administration and has been widely discussed in defense circles, but never publicly referred to by the Pentagon as a significant future threat.
Mr. Trump has rarely publicly criticized President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for Russia’s aggressions around the world. But the Pentagon document describes Moscow’s actions as so destabilizing that the United States may be forced to reverse Mr. Obama’s commitment to reduce the role and size of the American nuclear arsenal.
Russia is adopting “military strategies and capabilities that rely on nuclear escalation for their success,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis wrote in an introduction to the report. “These developments, coupled with Russia’s invasion of Crimea and nuclear threats against our allies, mark Moscow’s unabashed return to Great Power competition.”
In most cases, the Trump administration plan would simply move forward nuclear weapons that Mr. Obama had endorsed, such as a new generation of nuclear cruise missiles — low-flying weapons with stubby wings that, when dropped from a bomber, hug the ground to avoid enemy radars and air defenses.
But the strategy envisions other new nuclear weapons. The draft policy calls for “the rapid development” of a cruise missile to be fired from submarines. Mr. Obama had retired that class. It also calls for the development of a low-yield warhead for ballistic missiles fired from submarines.
It is relatively easy for presidents to change the country’s declaratory policy on the use of nuclear arms and quite difficult for them to reshape its nuclear arsenal, which takes not only vast sums of money but many years and sometimes decades of planning and implementation.
The price tag for a 30-year makeover of the United States’ nuclear arsenal was put last year at $1.2 trillion. Analysts said the expanded Trump administration plan would push the bill much higher, noting that firm estimates will have to wait until the proposed federal budget for the 2019 fiscal year is made public.
“Almost everything about this radical new policy will blur the line between nuclear and conventional,” said Andrew C. Weber, an assistant defense secretary during the Obama administration who directed an interagency panel that oversaw the country’s nuclear arsenal.
If adopted, he added, the new policy “will make nuclear war a lot more likely.”
One of the document’s edgiest conclusions involves the existence of a deadly new class of Russian nuclear torpedo — a cigar-shaped underwater missile meant to be fired from a submarine.
Torpedoes tipped with nuclear arms were common during the Cold War, with the Soviet Union pioneering the weapons and developing them most vigorously. One Soviet model had a range of miles and a large warhead.
Mr. Sakharov, a famous Russian dissident in the 1970s and 1980s, envisioned a giant torpedo able to travel several hundred miles and incur heavy casualties with a warhead thousands of times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. Though his vision was rejected at the time, the new review discloses that Moscow has resurrected a weapon along the same lines.
The document calls it “a new intercontinental, nuclear-armed undersea autonomous torpedo.” In a diagram labeled “New Nuclear Delivery Vehicles over the Past Decade,” it identifies the torpedo by its code name, Status-6.
News stories have reported the possible existence of such a weapon since at least 2015, but the document’s reference appears to be the first time the federal government has confirmed its existence. The long-range torpedo with a monster warhead is apparently meant to shower coastal regions with deadly radioactivity, leaving cities uninhabitable.
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2) Iran and Hezbollah Intend to Remain in Syria, US Ambassador Nikki Haley Warns UN Security Council
The US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, eviscerated Iran’s rulers before the Security Council on Wednesday as the global body debated the ongoing civil war in Syria.
Haley’s forthright comments contrasted with the more muted comments of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who expressed concerns about Iran in an interview on Tuesday with the Arabic language broadcaster Al Hurra.While expressing support for UN efforts to bring peace to Syria as the “sole legitimate venue for coming up with a political solution in Syria,” Haley cautioned that the Assad regime was seeking “a peace in which every person in Syria who opposes the regime is murdered, tortured, starved, imprisoned, or forced to flee the country.” Critically, she noted that the flight of an Iranian drone into Israeli airspace last Saturday was “a wake-up call for all of us. Iran and Hezbollah are making plans to stay in Syria.”
2) Iran and Hezbollah Intend to Remain in Syria, US Ambassador Nikki Haley Warns UN Security Council
by Ben Cohen
Haley described President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus as “a front for Iran, Hezbollah, and their allies to advance the irresponsible and dangerous agenda for the Middle East.”
“On every front of this conflict, we find fighters imported by Iran from Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan,” Haley told the Security Council. “When we see the Assad regime starving civilians in eastern Ghouta or pummeling schools and hospitals in Idlib, we see advisers from Iran and Hezbollah helping direct those atrocities.”
Haley also criticized Russia for failing to “guarantee adherence to… de-escalation zones to help the political process.” She continued: “But then again, Russia was also supposed to guarantee that all chemical weapons would be removed from Syria. Instead, we see the Assad regime continue to bomb, starve, and yes, gas civilians.”
Haley’s forthright comments contrasted with the more muted comments of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who expressed concerns about Iran in an interview on Tuesday with the Arabic language broadcaster Al Hurra.While expressing support for UN efforts to bring peace to Syria as the “sole legitimate venue for coming up with a political solution in Syria,” Haley cautioned that the Assad regime was seeking “a peace in which every person in Syria who opposes the regime is murdered, tortured, starved, imprisoned, or forced to flee the country.” Critically, she noted that the flight of an Iranian drone into Israeli airspace last Saturday was “a wake-up call for all of us. Iran and Hezbollah are making plans to stay in Syria.”
Tillerson argued that the way to counter Iranian influence in Syria is “through the political process.”
“The US is present in Syria for one purpose only, and that is the defeat of ISIS, the enduring defeat of ISIS,” the Secretary of State said. Pressed on the Russian and Iranian presence in Syria, Tillerson stressed that he did not “see the (Assad) regime, Russia, and Iran necessarily gaining ground. I see the entire country eventually defeating ISIS.”
On Tuesday, a bipartisan group of congressional representatives sent Tillerson a letter expressing concern that the US is still to develop “a strategy that will ensure Iran does not have a permanent presence on Israel’s border.”
The initiators of the letter, Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) and Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), issued a joint statement urging Tillerson – who is currently in Jordan on an official visit – to travel to Israel to “make a strong statement to the world that the United States stands with Israel” following the drone incursion.
“Last weekend’s incursion into Israeli airspace by an Iranian drone is completely unacceptable, and just the most recent example of Iran’s destabilizing and malign activities in the region and around the globe,” the statement said. “Tehran cannot be allowed to use the conflict in Syria to establish a permanent presence on the doorstep of our ally Israel.”
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3) Israeli bombing Syria enhanced US national security Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger
Posted By Ruth King
Israel’s unique contribution to US’ national security and US defense industries was reaffirmed on February 10, 2018, by Israel’s effective military operation against Syrian-based Iranian-Syrian surface-to-air missile batteries, early-warning radar stations, a launching-base of unmanned aerial vehicles and a command-control bunker.
While Israel lost one F-16 combat plane, its air force demonstrated exceptional capabilities in the areas of intelligence, electronic warfare – especially radar jamming – firepower capabilities, precision, maneuverability, penetration of missile batteries, early-identification and destruction of advanced unmanned aerial vehicles and their mobile controller, etc.
Israel’s Defense Forces (IDF) are analyzing the lessons of this recent operation, most of which will be shared, promptly, with the US – the manufacturer and provider of most of the systems operated by the IDF – as has been the case with a multitude of Israel’s military operations and wars. For example, much of the battle-tactics formulation in the US Army Headquarters in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas has been based on the Israeli battlefield experience.
Israel’s Defense Forces (IDF) are analyzing the lessons of this recent operation, most of which will be shared, promptly, with the US – the manufacturer and provider of most of the systems operated by the IDF – as has been the case with a multitude of Israel’s military operations and wars. For example, much of the battle-tactics formulation in the US Army Headquarters in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas has been based on the Israeli battlefield experience.
The February 10, 2018 Israeli Air Force operation against Syrian-Iranian military targets has reinforced the legacy of the late Senator Daniel Inouye, who was the Chairman of the full Appropriations Committee and its Defense Subcommittee. Senator Inouye considered Israel a moral ally of the US, as well as the most effective battle-tested laboratory of the US military and defense industries – a primary outpost, in a critical region, sparing the US billions of dollars, which would be required to deploy additional US military forces to the area.
Senator Daniel Inouye, who was also the Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, contended that the flow of Israeli intelligence to the US exceeded – quantitatively and qualitatively – the flow of intelligence from all NATO members combined.
Chairman Inouye maintained that Israel’s battle experience – shared with the US – enhanced US national security, yielding billions of dollars to the US treasury.
Chairman Inouye maintained that Israel’s battle experience – shared with the US – enhanced US national security, yielding billions of dollars to the US treasury.
For instance, the shared-lessons of the June 1982 Israeli destruction of 19 Syrian-operated advanced Soviet surface-to-air missile batteries and 97 Soviet combat planes, saved the US’ defense industries 10-20 years of research and development, enhanced the competitiveness of US military systems in the global market, increased US exports and expanded US employment. Moreover, the lessons of the Israeli military operation upgraded the capabilities of the US Air Force and the US’ posture of deterrence, exposed the vulnerabilities of advanced Soviet military systems – which were deemed impregnable until then – undermined the regional and global Soviet strategic stature, tilted the global balance of power in favor of the US and prevented the loss of many American lives.
When visiting the General Dynamics plant (currently, Lockheed-Martin) in Ft. Worth, Texas, which manufactures the F-16 and F-35, I was told by the plant manager that the US manufacturer was privy to an almost daily flow of operational, maintenance and repair lessons drawn by Israel’s Air Force, which generated over 600 upgrades, “worth mega-billion of dollars.” Common sense suggests that similar mega-benefits are afforded to McDonnell-Douglas, in St. Louis, Missouri, the manufacturer of the F-15, which is also operated by the Israeli Air Force.
In Dallas, Texas, a retired US combat pilot suggested to me that “a most productive time for US combat pilots are joint-exercises with Israeli pilots.” Responding to my doubts – since Israeli pilots fly US-made planes and are not smarter than US pilots – the US combat pilot elaborated: “Israeli pilots fly, routinely, within range of the enemies’ radar and missiles, and therefore always fly under a do-or-die state of mind, which results in more daring and creative maneuvers, stretching the capabilities of the US plane much more than done by US pilots.”
The February 10, 2018 Israeli Air Force operation highlighted the US-Israel mutually-beneficial, two-way-street, featuring Israel’s unique contributions to US national security and defense industries. It provided additional evidence of the exceptionally high rate-of-return on the annual US investment in Israel, which is erroneously defined as “foreign aid.” Israel is neither foreign to the US, nor is it a supplicant; it has been an unconditional, productive junior partner of the US in the liberty-driven battle against rogue regimes.
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4)
Trump’s Style Is His Substance
Primary voters chose him because he promised to fight. Party leaders
need to learn to be less timid.
By Bobby Jindal
You hear it all the time from Trump supporters: “I like a lot of what he’s done, especially the judges and tax cuts. But I wish he’d stop tweeting and picking fights. I wish he acted more presidential and stopped insulting reporters, entertainers, senators, foreign leaders and Gold Star families.”
Sounds right, seems smart. Yet for millions of Trump voters it misses the point entirely. Mr. Trump’s style is part of his substance. His most loyal supporters back him because of, not despite, his brash behavior. He would not be in the Oval Office today had he followed a conventional path or listened to the advisers telling him to tone down his rhetoric and discipline his behavior. If Republican primary voters had wanted a border wall, tax cuts and sound judges without the drama, they could have picked Ted Cruz. Instead they elected Mr. Trump for exactly the reasons that the mainstream media, late-night comics, and party elites cannot stand him.
GOP voters have traditionally demanded their leaders demonstrate fealty to conservative principles through life experience: by offering a spiritual conversion story, standing with a supportive spouse and children, talking about the deer bagged during last year’s hunting season. The apparent authenticity mattered, given that many competing politicians converged around the same policies. Hence the damage when a candidate came across as inauthentic, as in 2007 when Mitt Romney said he had hunted “a number of times,” mostly “small varmints.”
The reality was that voters trusted candidates who were like them in beliefs, habits and appearance. Knowing this, candidates tried to find common ground with regular people. That’s why Democrats in red states cut ads showing them shooting guns and professing their faith. It’s why Marco Rubio repeatedly told the story of his father, the immigrant bartender, and why John Kasich offered paeans to his father, the mailman.
But what was really achieved by all those years of supporting politicians with perfect church attendance and lifetime memberships in the National Rifle Association? Relatively little in enacted legislation. That’s why in 2016, after years of broken promises about repealing ObamaCare, balancing the budget and imposing term limits, conservative voters decided they’d had enough. They decided to support someone whose primary virtue was that he would not back down from fighting for them.
Mr. Trump may not have grown up in a log cabin, and he has at best a mixed record on conservative social issues. But he delights in taking on the Washington elites, the mainstream journalists and the Hollywood sophisticates who mock his voters and their cherished beliefs. Mr. Trump may not actually succeed in Washington, but how could he do any worse than the Republicans who paid lip service to conservative goals only long enough to get elected?
Many Trump voters are unapologetic social conservatives who reject secularism and multiculturalism while embracing patriotism. At the same time, they are economic populists. They want to cut federal funding for Planned Parenthood, but don’t share Paul Ryan’s eagerness to limit the growth of their Social Security and Medicare benefits. They don’t view Mr. Trump’s break from Republican orthodoxy on legal immigration and free trade as problematic. They cheer his denunciation of kneeling football players.
These voters suspect, with not inconsiderable evidence, that the GOP’s leaders have less in common with them than with the cultural elite. In their lifetimes, they have watched both parties, all three branches of government, and the popular culture move from embracing many of their core values to, at best, tolerating them.
In the same way that feminists like Gloria Steinem were desperate enough for victories to give Bill Clinton’s boorish behavior a pass, many conservatives are now willing to overlook each new revelation about Mr. Trump. After all, he is delivering wins: withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate deal and the Trans-Pacific Partnership; moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
Yet this conservative coalition, built on a potent combination of anger, frustration and resentment of its previous leaders and the cultural elites, may not be sustainable. These voters will not abandon Mr. Trump as long as they believe he will not abandon them, but they also won’t attract many new adherents. There must be a path forward that restores conservatism’s natural optimism, confidence and universalism.
Republican leaders can start by being honest with voters. They pretended for eight years they were going to repeal ObamaCare, even when they had no realistic plan to do so. For years they promised simple solutions and blamed others for America’s problems. The Chinese are indeed exploiting trade and intellectual property to their advantage, but China isn’t to blame for the appalling state of many urban schools.
The GOP needs to spend political capital accomplishing the priorities not merely of its donors but also its voters—for instance, by protecting religious freedom. Finally, Republican leaders have to lead. They have to persuade instead of pander, to expand the conservative coalition by building bridges where possible and evangelizing where not. Simply making another Trump joke may help party bigwigs feel good about themselves, but it only enhances the resentment that put him into office.
Mr. Jindal was governor of Louisiana, 2008-16, and a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
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