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I have several liberal friends and memo readers who decry my postings regarding Obama because they thought he was a great president, not only in his own right but in comparison to Trump.
I understand where they are coming from but it is an apple and orange matter to me.
I believe Obama made matters worse and Trump is trying to clean up the stable and this is why the reaction to both is so different.
Obama had no enemies beyond the fact that he was black and Trump is taking on the entire establishment culture in a brash, New York, bull in the China Shop manner.
Obama had never accomplished much other than getting elected, voted present so as not to have finger prints that could be used against him and had a speaking style that endeared him to his audiences. He managed to finesse his own history and the mass media circled their wagons so as to protect him from the slings and arrows of partisan politics.
Obama had some serious issues with America's own history, ran rough shod over the constitution because he had a pen and cell phone and his youthful relationships were with a host of radicals. He made some atrocious appointments, ignored their law breaking and his policies were destructive. That said, he was our first black president, he was a Democrat and what more can you ask for?
But then, I am racist for having a different view than my friends because we now live in a land where if you do not hew, toe the line you obviously are prejudiced. Welcome to America, the land of those distasteful ten amendments.
While on the subject let's look at Trump.
He has a Playboy history, has demonstrated,, time and again, a level of public vulgarity that is less than presidential, he too has surrounded himself with some bad actors , avoided military service yet claims to be patriotic and tortures the truth to suit his case and you know the rest.
The mass media assists his political enemies in finding fault with everything he does and says and
they maneuvered an investigation of his alleged collusion in a seditious manner to cover up their inability to accept his election.
Yet, if we separate the person from accomplishments and efforts, we find his unorthodox manner has been quite successful when measured against that of his predecessor. Most everything Trump has accomplished,we were told, could not be and because he defied all the mis-information his enemies hate him even more because he has made them look foolish.
There has never been, to my knowledge, such an effort to wreck an administration and it continues to this day in the guise of names like Schiff, Adler, Pelosi, Waters, Schumer and their ilk.
Their constant attacks, which seem wrapped in a tortilla of peevishness, are destructive not only to Trump's ability to govern but are also dangerous to America's legitimate interests.(See 1 and 1a below.)
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More edited good news Israel from Ordman. (See 2 below.)
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Dick
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1)The Destructive Legacy of Obama’s Approach to the Middle East
By Aaron Kliegman
This entry was posted in National Security and tagged Barack Obama, DNC, Iran, Iran Nuclear Deal, Middle East, Obama Administration, Saudi Arabia. Bookmark thepermalink.
As president, Barack Obama's record in the Middle East was disastrous. Mass slaughter in Syria, ruinous refugee outflows, the rise of a terrorist proto-state, a belligerent Iran on the march—the 44th president left the region aflame, more dangerous than when he entered office. When discussing Obama's policies toward the Middle East, and all of their grisly consequences, it is natural to focus on the situation in the region itself. Often overlooked, however, is how the damage caused by Obama's approach was domestic, not just foreign. Indeed, the figurative fires and partisan divisions that he created in Washington, D.C., are in some ways more destructive than the real fires and sectarian divisions toward which he showed such apathy during his eight years in the White House.
The latest example of this domestic damage came last week, when the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution calling on the United States to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. The full DNC adopted the measure at its meeting in Washington, D.C.
"The United States should return to its obligations under the JCPOA and utilize multilateral and bilateral diplomacy to achieve political solutions to remaining challenges regarding Iran," the resolution says, decrying President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the accord last May.
The DNC's resolution shows how Obama made not only the nuclear agreement detrimentally partisan, but also the country's broader approach to Iran and the Middle East. The measure is a clear sign that the Democrats running for president in 2020 will campaign to return the United States to the deal. Not that anyone needed more evidence: all the Senate Democrats who have launched bids for the presidency opposed Trump's decision to leave the JCPOA.
This point matters beyond campaign posturing. For months, experts on Iran have said the theocratic regime will try to wait out the Trump administration, to see what happens after the 2020 election. This strategy makes sense: if a Democrat who will return to the nuclear accord is elected president, then Iran has every incentive to wait out Trump's campaign of pressure, and not to do anything too provocative in the interim. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has even accused John Kerry, his predecessor from the Obama administration, of telling the Iranians to wait out Trump. When pressed on whether he reassured Iranian officials that Trump will be voted out of office, Kerry never explicitly denied doing so.
Think about this situation: an enemy of the United States is basing its strategy toward its nuclear-weapons program on which political party is likely to win the next election, because both parties are so divided on the issue. Tehran knows that Democrats and Republicans are so diametrically opposed to each other regarding the JCPOA, and Iran more generally, that it can predict what will happen. A Democratic president will live and die by the nuclear deal, fearing any coercive action may provoke the regime to leave the agreement. A Republican president will effectively do the opposite, following Trump's model, more or less. In each case, the United States cannot find any bipartisan consensus on Iran's nuclear program, its imperial expansion across the Middle East, or its human rights abuses, undermining any ability to create sound, lasting policies. And Obama is largely to blame.
The chief legacy of Obama's foreign policy is not the Iran nuclear deal, but rather the visceral partisanship that he fostered at home while trying to defend the deal. As the country debated whether to support the JCPOA in the summer of 2015, recall how Obama demonized the accord's critics. He went so far as to compare them to the hard men of Iran's murderous regime. "It's those hardliners chanting ‘Death to America' who have been most opposed to the deal," Obama said in August 2015. "They're making common cause with the Republican caucus." Such language is vile and dishonest, but the president and his allies employed it consistently, using an "echo chamber" of experts and media figures to drown out any opposition, no matter how genuine and well reasoned. Obama also troubled American Jews at the time with his rhetoric, singling out Israel and flirting, perhaps unintentionally, with conspiracy theories about nefarious Jewish money seeking to influence the public debate.
The Obama administration and its allies also made support for the Iran deal a litmus test of loyalty for Democrats in Congress. "Opponents of the agreement said they could not remember another recent policy battle where the White House and [Rep. Nancy] Pelosi were so driven," the New York Times reported at the time. "In tandem, they made the Iran vote a strong test of party loyalty." Several Democrats expressed strong concerns about the deeply flawed deal, but they were pressured to fall in line, no matter their reservations. Only a few voted no.
Meanwhile, as Obama waged his campaign of demonization against the deal's critics, he carried on a similar campaign against America's traditional allies in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia. Obama's contempt for the Saudis has been well documented, and, whether intentional or not, his approach to the region put the Democratic Party in the position of defending Iran and criticizing Saudi Arabia. Naturally, the Republicans did the opposite.
So what do we have now? One party effectively supports the regime in Iran and opposes Saudi Arabia, while the other party opposes Tehran and supports the Saudis. Both regimes are odious, but the Saudis are, like it or not, an essential strategic ally. They are an important security partner and ensure the free flow of oil from the Middle East. Iran's leaders, meanwhile, chant "death to America" and seek regional preeminence.
A country so divided on the Middle East cannot create effective policies in the region. American leaders cannot even agree on who their friends and enemies are. How can they possibly come to some kind of a bipartisan consensus? The DNC's resolution is a reminder of how far apart Democrats and Republicans are regarding the Middle East, and especially Iran. Of course the parties were never entirely on the same page. But the partisan divide grew substantially during Obama's presidency. His campaign to garner support for the Iran deal at all costs hurt American national security in the long run. Obama did not just cause lasting damage to the Middle East; he also caused lasting damage to Washington, D.C.
1a)
If Working with Moscow Is ‘Collusion,’ It’s a Bipartisan Offense By Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted By Ruth King
D.C. has been delusional about the Kremlin since the 1990s.
When the “collusion” music stopped, was Donald Trump the guy left without a chair?
If the latest reporting is accurate, we’ll find out soon enough. Special Counsel Robert Mueller is said to be wrapping up his probe. His final report could be submitted to Attorney General William Barr shortly.
Did Trump and his presidential campaign “collude with Russia” in the sense of conspiring to commit cyber espionage? That is, were they complicit in Russian intelligence’s hacking attacks on Democratic-party email accounts? There has been no indication that Mueller has such evidence. That is significant because Mueller is a prosecutor. Notwithstanding the irregular counterintelligence framework of the special counsel’s appointment, the principal job of a prosecutor is to determine whether crimes were committed. Espionage conspiracy is the collusion crime that launched the investigation.
Of course, as we’ve repeatedly observed, not all “collusion” is criminally conspiratorial — even if some of it involves dirty politics or is otherwise unsavory. It is easy to evaluate crime: A person is either guilty or not guilty of conduct Congress has criminalized; if the proof is there, he should be convicted. But when behavior is not criminal, yet we are being urged to condemn it because it was undertaken with a particular country, shouldn’t we evaluate how our government has regarded that country?
When it comes to “collusion with Russia,” there was an awful lot of that going on in the Bipartisan Beltway throughout the quarter century before Trump launched his White House bid.
Cro-Magnon blowhards like your humble correspondent have never warmed up to Moscow. So we’ve complained about the New Thinking, regardless of whether it was incumbent Republicans or Democrats delusionally portraying Moscow as a perfectly normal country with which to do business, make lots of money, and even ally.
Washington, however, has preferred to stay delusional.
For most of his eight-year tenure, President Bill Clinton flaunted his warm relationship with Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first post-Soviet president. Clinton committed to support Moscow with financial assistance, including subsidies to adjust decommissioned military officers and nuclear scientists to the new order. In 1997, Clinton prevailed upon our G-7 allies to make it the G-8 by admitting Russia, giving it greater influence over global trend-setting by the world’s leading economies, despite the fact that Russia was not one of them. Moreover, given the prominence of Ukraine in the Trump collusion narrative, recall Clinton’s collusion with Russia in the “Trilateral Statement,” which purported to guarantee Ukraine’s security. Why would Kiev need to keep its nuclear arsenal when its neighbor, Moscow, had reformed? After all, the Iron Curtain was history and we were now paying out the “peace dividend,” right?
Then there was President George W. Bush peering into Vladimir Putin’s soul, finding a “trustworthy” ally. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined our new “strategic partner” in an agreement to help Russia amass the technology, material, and equipment needed to improve its nuclear research and power production — for “civilian” purposes only, of course. Bush enthusiastically seconded Clinton’s proposal that Russia be admitted to the World Trade Organization, even though its corrupt economic policies and practices undermine the market-based norms the WTO is meant to fortify.
Meanwhile, an up and coming Democratic senator, Barack Obama, was working bipartisan magic with Senate Republicans, pushing Kiev to think bolder than just giving up its nukes; Ukraine needed to surrender its conventional arsenals, too. But wait, what about protection from possible Russian invasions? Please . . . that was foreign-policy thinking for a bygone time.
Of course, Putin humiliated the Bush administration and Congress’s bipartisan Russia accommodationists by invading Georgia, annexing swathes of its territory in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The White House quietly withdrew the ballyhooed U.S.–Russia Civilian Nuclear Power Agreement from congressional consideration. No matter: Even as Russia continued its Georgian occupation, President Obama revived the agreement in 2010, insisting that the pact promoted U.S. national security. To appease Putin, the president also shelved Bush’s plans for missile-defense installations in Eastern Europe.
Those were just two aspects of Obama’s heralded “Russia Reset,” championed with key assistance from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“Trade with Russia Is a Win-Win.” That was the headline of Secretary Clinton’s Wall Street Journal op-ed, in which she applauded Russia’s formal entry into the WTO. It was crucial, she explained, because Russia was just a great place for Americans to do business, and our commerce could now blossom since the Obama administration had made Moscow “a normal trading partner.” Sure, the Putin regime posed many challenges, but Clinton maintained that “it is in our long-term strategic interest to collaborate with Russia in areas where our interests overlap.”
Collaborate? That sounds almost like collu — well, never mind.
Clinton somehow decided that one of these collaborative areas should be technology. Under her guidance, the State Department teamed up with their Kremlin counterparts to help erect Moscow’s version of Silicon Valley — Skolkovo — despite FBI and Defense Department warnings that the project would enhance Russia’s military and cyber capabilities. Indeed, Clinton was sufficiently unconcerned about Russian cyber espionage that she even emailed President Obama while she was visiting Moscow, using her non-secure server system. (See FBI July 2, 2016, interview of Mrs. Clinton, page two.)
In the interim, an administration security panel on which sat Secretary Clinton and Obama Attorney General Eric Holder — the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States — green-lighted the acquisition of major U.S. uranium reserves by Russia’s regime-controlled energy giant, Rosatom. The transaction — specifically, the sale of a company called Uranium One — was approved even though the Justice Department had an active racketeering investigation against Rosatom’s U.S. subsidiary, and even though the U.S. does not produce enough uranium to meet our own energy production needs.
Clinton did not recuse herself from the matter despite her deep self-interest. The Clinton Foundation had reaped tens of millions of dollars in “donations” from Uranium One investors when former President Clinton intervened with Kazakhstan to help them acquire uranium reserves. Secretary Clinton’s State Department intervened on the investors’ behalf when Russia moved in on the Kazakh assets. Former President Clinton traveled to Russia while the Uranium One approval process was pending — first asking the State Department for an okay to meet with a Rosatom board member (Arkady Dvorkovich); then meeting with Putin and his factotum, Dimitry Medvedev; and finally collecting a tidy $500,000 (his biggest speech payday ever) for a brief talk sponsored by a Kremlin-backed bank (Renaissance Capital).
Then there was Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, during which — not realizing his mic was hot — the president, in hushed tones at a March conference in Seoul, asked Medvedev to assure Putin that he’d have “more flexibility” to accommodate Russia on missile defense and other contentious issues once the race was won.
Obama might be flexible with Putin, but he was harsh toward his Republican opponent. The president mocked Mitt Romney for describing Russia as a “geopolitical foe.” “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” Obama snarked during the final debate. Hadn’t Romney heard that “the Cold War has been over for 20 years”? He elaborated that Romney’s desire to return to 1980s security thinking was of a piece with the GOP’s purported desire to revive the “social policy of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.” That is, to see Russia as a hostile power that meant America harm was like wanting to revive Jim Crow and the protectionist practices that helped ignite the Great Depression. Makes sense, right?
Putin, naturally, responded to Obama’s blandishments by rolling out the red carpet for Edward Snowden and the mounds of U.S. defense secrets he had stolen; annexing Crimea and fomenting war in Eastern Ukraine; and introducing Russian forces into Syria to prop up the Assad regime. Obama’s response was muted: a few targeted sanctions after the Crimea provocation. After all, the president needed Russia’s cooperation to get his cherished Iran nuclear deal done.
Speaking just for myself — one of those benighted Mitt Romney types — I think Russia’s a menace. We shouldn’t pretend that it is anything else. But let’s be real: The reason we have been talking about “collusion” for over two years is not that the political establishment is finally convinced that Moscow is malevolent; it is that Hillary Clinton lost an election because she was a poor candidate and got outworked.
If Bob Mueller has found no crime but people still want to agitate over “collusion” with Russia, that’s fine by me. But if we’re going to talk about it, we should talk about all of it.
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2)Launched! - Israel's Good News Newsletter to 24th Feb 19
By Michael Ordman
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