How could this be? Are Democrats willing to betray their hypocrisy and vindictiveness?
Even Democrats agree with much of Trump's
foreign policy legacy
by Jonathan Schanzer
National Post
http://schanzer.pundicity.com/25040/even-democrats-agree-with-much-of-trump-foreign
Incoming secretary of
state Anthony Blinken experienced his right of passage last Wednesday, when he
was grilled by senators, both Democrats and Republicans, about how he intended
to approach the job of America's top diplomat. After years of political rancor
and acrimony in Washington, one might have expected Blinken to hammer former
U.S. president Donald Trump's foreign policy at every turn. But he didn't. In
fact, on many issues, Blinken appeared to signal more continuity than change.
When asked whether he
thought it was a bad idea for the Trump administration to cajole America's NATO
allies to spend more on defense, Blinken replied: "I do not."
On the Trump
administration's targeted killing of Iranian arch-terrorist Qasem Soleimani in
January 2020, Blinken said, "When I was last in office, I saw first-hand
the blood that he had on his hands. So, no one regrets the fact that he is no
longer there."
After four years of
pro-Israel policies under Trump, Blinken showed no intention of changing that.
He affirmed that, "Our commitment to Israel's security is
sacrosanct." He further acknowledged the benefits of Trump's landmark
peace deals inked between Israel and four Arab states: the United Arab
Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.
Blinken called China the
"most significant challenge of any nation state to the United
States," echoing the two of the most important documents issued by the
Trump administration: the "National Security Strategy" and
"National Defense Strategy."
Even the Trump
administration's decision on its final day to call the Chinese treatment of
Uighurs in Xinjiang a "genocide" did not seem to bother Blinken. He
stated: "Forcing men, women and children into concentration camps, trying
to in effect re-educate them (to) be adherents to the ideology of the Chinese
Communist Party, all of that speaks to an effort to commit genocide. And so, I
agree with that finding."
More broadly, when asked
about the Trump administration's use of human rights sanctions against
authoritarian governments, Blinken lauded them as a "success story in
actually bringing the democratic countries of the world together and giving
them an effective tool to actually push back against the abuses of democracy
and human rights."
Yes, of course, there
are some extremely heated debates looming. Notably, the highly controversial
2015 Iran deal that was first brokered by President Barack Obama, and then
eviscerated by Trump in 2018, is now back on the agenda for the Biden
administration. But this controversy has little to do with Trump. Even centrist
Republicans who voted against Trump in the last election are sure to oppose a
new accord with the world's most prolific state sponsor of terrorism,
particularly if it grants the regime in Tehran a patient pathway to acquiring
nuclear weapons.
Policies surrounding
immigration, Saudi Arabia and Europe are other areas where the Biden
administration can be expected to make a U-turn. But with the perfunctory
caveats, it may be that after years of vitriolic debates and nasty rhetoric,
Democrats and Republicans actually agreed on more than they were willing to
admit — in terms of foreign policy, that is.
That won't shield Trump
from criticism, of course. His domestic legacy will almost certainly be defined
by the national disgrace of Jan. 6, when insurrectionists stormed the U.S.
Capitol building in his name. And on foreign policy, Trump's toughest critics
will likely point to his mercurial decision-making style.
Trump was a
"post-policy" president. There were times when he didn't actually
have a policy. He was perhaps most indecisive about military deployments in
Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. He could never quite articulate his preferred
course of action — stay or leave — often to the delight of terrorists and
strongmen in the Middle East.
Some of his other
policies were similarly opaque. He imposed sanctions on Russia and used harsh
rhetoric at times, yet praised Russian President Vladimir Putin on occasion. He
threatened North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un, but also developed a close
personal relationship with him.
Trump thus vexed allies
and enemies alike. And as I can personally attest, he vexed think tankers, too.
Trying to derive a consistent policy from some of his public statements often
led to splitting headaches among those of us charged with explaining America's
foreign policy to audiences at home and abroad.
But even Trump's
inconsistencies may ultimately be viewed by historians as strengths. The
inability to predict the behavior of the American president likely curbed some
of China's predatory behavior. It likely hindered the Iranians from engaging in
more brazen violence. It pushed NATO countries to pony up more for defense. And
it certainly seemed to prompt our southern neighbors to get a better handle on
illegal immigration before it reached America's borders.
This is not to say that
Trump's personal style should be emulated. Indeed, that is hard to imagine. But
important foreign policy lessons are to be learned from Trump's idiosyncratic
presidency. Given the political climate, that won't be easy. But one day, with
the benefit of hindsight, and without anger, Trump's legacy will be examined.
It had its failings. And his critics will not forget where he failed. But
Trump's foreign policy legacy may surprisingly be viewed in hindsight as one of
continuity and less radical change.
Jonathan Schanzer is
senior vice-president for research at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies, a nonpartisan national security think tank in Washington, D.C.
Follow him on Twitter @JSchanzer.
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A worthwhile repeat because Atlantic is not generally supportive of what is rational.
The Case Against the Iran Deal
Reviving the JCPOA will ensure either the emergence of a nuclear Iran or a desperate war to stop it.
Michael Oren, Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States and Yossi Klein Halevi, Senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem
Proponents of the Iran nuclear agreement are sounding the alarm. In 2018, the United States withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and since then, Iran has increased the quality and quantity of its uranium enrichment well beyond what the deal allows. Recently, it has even begun enriching uranium to 20 percent, a short distance away from weapons-grade. Iran, JCPOA advocates say, is closer today to producing a bomb than it was in 2015, when the deal was concluded. Only the deal’s renewal, they insist, can prevent the nightmare of a nuclear Iran.
“Five years ago, American-led diplomacy produced a deal that ensured it would take Iran at least a year to produce enough fissile material for one bomb,” Joe Biden wrote in September. “Now—because Trump let Iran off the hook from its obligations under the nuclear deal—Tehran’s ‘breakout time’ is down to just a few months.” More recently, he warned that if Iran gets the bomb, then Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt will follow.
Why, then, aren’t Israelis and Arabs—those with the most to lose from Iranian nuclearization—also demanding a return to the JCPOA? Why aren’t they panicking over its dissolution? The answer is simple: The JCPOA didn’t diminish the Iranian nuclear threat; it magnified it. MORE
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Liberals
Continue to Give Ridiculous Ideas as They Take Power
Power and money are all that the Democrats want. They do not care about freedoms or rights. All they know is that money is power. They have big tech and wealthy people in their corner, and that is all they need to control people. Through their channels, they are able to censor, manipulate and threaten people to get what they want out of them.
The
amount of censorship that has risen in the past few weeks of President Trump’s
term is exhausting. The frivolous liberals just could not wait until he was
gone so they could begin to engrain themselves into the annals of powers.
With
big tech in their corner, they can shut down people that voice opposition. They
are able to manipulate the news to match up with what they are proposing. They
employ these methods to work out their power hunger mirror those that communist
China uses to control their people.
Any
voice that would dare speak out against the election results and validity is in
danger of harm or being silenced through any of the deletion channels at the
Democrat’s disposal. And right now, they can delete profiles of people from
their social media accounts to keep the truth from being spread around the free
world.
Opposing
opinions are a threat to the power that the liberals have at their fingertips.
The problem with power-hungry dictators is that they end up making severe error
judgment calls. When they decided to delete accounts that posted legal
paperwork that was related to the Russia collusion issue, they shot themselves in
the foot.
The
deletion of factual information only raises more questions and causes
corporations and watchdog entities to zero in on the people responsible. But
these eyes have not stopped the carnage that continues to spread through the
media world.
Places
such as CNN and other major networks tell lies and use fake facts and sources
to make their news appear genuine. The Democrats ignore these gross errors and
go after truth-telling sources such as Newsmax and OAN with intentions of
shutting them down. They just do not want any truth leaking out.
The
Democratic Party is a mild version of communism. They want to control the news
and the facts that are told so they can make themselves look good. But the
problem they are going to face is that there are too many conservatives that
are not going to stand by and watch them tear down free America.
Of all
the terrible ideas and actions that the left has done, the most recent idea
from the Daily Beast tops them all. Their solution is to set up a secret police
organization that would probe around looking for dissidents that they can drag
to the woods and murder in cold blood. Much like the Nazi’s did and what the
Chinese do today.
Their
insanity was that “All find echoes in the events surrounding January 6. None
dare say “wake-up call” or “lessons learned”—there’s been far too many of them
over the decades. But one response to the 9/11 tragedy may well get renewed
attention after the Capitol assault—especially if armed white nationalists are
successful in carrying out more attacks in the coming days and weeks: The call
for the secret police.”
Their
idea is a replacement organization that would investigate any and all domestic
points of interest that would seek to topple the established dictatorship.
These kinds of ideas have been seen in the past in various forms.
J .
Edgar Hoover was known to spy on Martin Luther King and to watch political
opponents. People may think that this is a thing of the past, but it was done
to President Trump while he was campaigning in 2016 and all throughout his
presidency as his private phone calls would find their way into the hands of
the people that wanted to tear him to pieces.
Freedom
is never free. There is the cost of life that stands as a monument to the
greatness of men’s sacrifice and women who have died for this country. For the
Democrats to act like they hate the country is an insult to every hero that
sacrificed everything for the United States.
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Biden is on a roll and I seriously doubt he understands the implications of all that he is passing. Only time will tell. He is either a hopeless ideologue or a puppet of the radicals in his party or both.
Breaking: Biden’s Trans Agenda Threatens the Military, Science, and Women’s Rights
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Revelations:
As Biden made is inaugural address, he tried to make it sound as though his leadership would be a good thing for everyone. But as several have pointed out, looking just a little closer at his words reveals a much darker and more sinister meaning.
Find out what Biden’s address admits to the American people who aren’t liberals.
Fighting for Freedom,
Samuel Davis
And:
Granted, many found Trump's persona a turn off yet they allow their children to listen to rap music and most parents curse in front of their children, particularly in the black community. Even movies today are laced with vulgarity and nudity. We have become a tainted society. I am not condoning bad behaviour, I am simply unwilling to let vulgarity dictate choice over accomplishments.
WHAT PRESIDENT TRUMP REALLY SAID AT THE JANUARY 6
RALLY IN WASHINGTON DC
by Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, ret
Assertion: If you watch/listen to/read the main-stream media following the mob assault on Congress on 6 January, it is unlikely that your impression of what President Trump actually said is correct.
I have read the verbatim transcript of the entire speech; It’s 11,400 words long. There are three subjects.
1) His positive achievement over four years on behalf of all Americans.
2) Election results.
3) the march from the White House to Capitol Hill.
I will not belabor his achievements here.
My intent is to amplify what we have heard about election fraud and to clarify President Trump’s alleged “insurrection.”
ELECTION FRAUD: First, an assumption. The President used a lot of rounded-off numbers in describing election fraud. Many of you have probably already seen some of those numbers but my assumption is that they were assembled primarily from hundreds of sworn affidavits provided by the patriots who observed the fraudulent activity and had the fortitude to speak out under risk of being charged with perjury if they lied. In the interest of brevity, I plucked them out of some long, rambling sentences and short paragraphs, hopefully, without losing the context.
The president said to several thousand supporters at the rally: “In every single swing state, local officials, state officials, almost all Democrats, made illegal and unconstitutional changes to election procedures without the mandated approvals by the state legislatures, that these changes paved the way for fraud on a scale never seen before.”
PENNSYLVANIA: President Trump went on to point out the
following….
· Over 8,000 ballots were cast by
people whose names and dates of birth match individuals who died in 2020 prior
to the election.
· Over 14,000 ballots were cast by
out-of-state voters.
· More than 10,000 votes were
counted, even though they were received after Election Day.
· 25,000 ballots were requested by
nursing home residents, all in a single giant batch, indicating an enormous
illegal ballot-harvesting operation.
· The day before the election, the
State of Pennsylvania reported the number of absentee ballots that had been
sent out. Yet this number was suddenly and drastically increased by 400,000
people.
WISCONSIN: President Trump said……
· Over 170,000 absentee votes were
counted in Wisconsin without a valid absentee ballot application.
· In Madison, 17,000 votes were
deposited in so-called human drop boxes in complete defiance of
cease-and-desist letters from the state legislature. They came in duffle bags.
· According to eyewitness
testimony, postal service workers in Wisconsin were also instructed to
illegally backdate approximately 100,000 ballots.
· The margin of difference in
Biden’s win in Wisconsin was less than 20,000 votes.
GEORGIA: President Trump pointed out…..
· The absentee/mail-in ballot
rejection rate was more than 10 times lower than previous levels. In other
words, in a year in which more people were voting by mail for the first time,
the rejection rate was drastically lower than it had ever been before. If
Georgia had merely rejected the same number of unlawful ballots, as in other
years, there should have been approximately 45,000 ballots rejected.
· In Fulton County, republican poll
Watchers were rejected from the room under the false pretense of a burst water
main, which we now know was a total lie. Then election officials, when not
being monitored, pulled boxes and suitcases of ballots out from under a table.
(many of you saw this on television) and illegally scanned them for nearly two
hours totally unsupervised. That coincided with a mysterious vote dump of up to
100,000 votes for Joe Biden, almost none for Trump. That was at 1:34am.
· Over 10,300 ballots were cast by
individuals whose names and dates of birth match Georgia residents who died in
2020 prior to the election.
· More than 2,500 ballots were cast
by individuals whose names and dates of birth match incarcerated felons in
Georgia prison.
· More than 4,500 illegal ballots
were cast by individuals who do not appear on the state’s own voter rolls.
· Over 18,000 illegal ballots were
cast by individuals who registered to vote using an address listed as vacant,
according to the postal service.
· At least 88,000 ballots were cast
by people whose registrations were illegally backdated.
· 66,000 votes were cast by
individuals under the legal voting age.
· At least 15,000 ballots were cast
by individuals who moved out of the state prior to the November 3rd election.
· Senator William Ligon, chairman
of the Georgia Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, and highly respected on
elections, has written a letter describing his concerns with Dominion in
Georgia. He wrote, and I quote, “The Dominion voting machines employed in
Fulton County had an astronomical and astounding 93.67% error rate. In the
scanning of ballots requiring a review panel to adjudicate or determine the
voter’s interest, in over 106,000 ballots out of a total of 113,000. The source
of this astronomical error rate must be identified to determine if these
machines were set up or destroyed to allow for a third party to disregard the
actual ballot cast by the registered voter.” Trump commented that the
national average for such an error rate is far less than 1 percent. The
letter continues, “There is clear evidence that tens of thousands of votes
were switched from President Trump to former Vice President Biden in several
counties in Georgia. For example, in Bibb County, President Trump was reported
to have 29, 391 votes at 9:11 PM Eastern time. While simultaneously Vice
President Joe Biden was reported to have 17,213. Minutes later, just minutes,
at the next update, these vote numbers switched with President Trump going way
down to 17,000 and Biden going way up to 29,391. ‘And that was very quick, a
12,000-vote switch, all in Mr. Biden’s favor.’
· Despite all of this, the margin
in Georgia was only 11,779 votes.
ARIZONA: President Trump said….
· Over 36,000 ballots were
illegally cast by non-citizens.
· 2,000 ballots were returned with
no address.
· More than 22,000 ballots were
received back by election officials before they were supposedly mailed out.
· 11,600 more ballots and votes
were counted than there were actual voters.
· 150,000 people registered in
Mariopa County after the registration deadline.
NEVADA: President trump continued….
· The accuracy settings on
signature verification machines were purposely lowered before they were used to
count over 130,000 ballots.
· There were more than 42,000
double votes in Nevada.
· 1,500 ballots were cast by
individuals whose names and dates of birth match Nevada residents who died in
2020, prior to November 3rd election.
· More than 8,000 votes were cast
by individuals who had no address.
· 17,000 ballots were cast by
individuals whose names and dates of birth matched people who were deceased.
MICHIGAN: President Trump pointed out….
· In Wayne County (Detroit),
174,000 ballots were counted without being tied to an actual registered voter.
· Also, in Wayne County, poll
watches observed canvassers re-scanning batches of ballots multiple times.
· In Detroit, turnout was 139
percent of registered voters.
· Four witnesses testified, under
penalty of perjury, that after officials in Detroit announced the last votes
had been counted, tens of thousands of additional ballots arrived without
required envelopes. Every single one was for a Democrat.
· At 6:31am, after voting had
ended, Michigan suddenly reported 147,000 votes. An astounding 94 percent went
to Joe Biden.
COMMENT: Following the election, President Trump’s lawyers
filed approximately 60 lawsuits alleging massive election fraud. Most were based on sworn affidavits from election workers. All of the lawsuits were thrown out by judges. Why?
In our country, when there is reason to believe a crime has been committed, the following sequence of events follows:
· There is an investigation by law
enforcement officers; police, sheriff, State Bureaus of Investigation, FBI, Special
Councils, etc.
· Evidence would be gathered and
presented to a prosecutor.
· If the prosecutor was convinced
of a crime it would go to a grand jury. If upheld, individuals would be
indicted.
· A trial would be convened, and
for the first time, a judge would become involved.
Two things happened in this election fraud scenario;
1) There is little information to indicate that any of the governors seriously set out to conduct an investigation.
2) Three weeks after the election US Attorney General Barr stated, “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
Because the Trump legal team had no authority to conduct interviews or request warrants to view ballots, the only alternative was for Trump lawyers to take lawsuits directly to the appropriate judge, where they were generally denied because the individuals’ sworn affidavits were considered to be “uncorroborated hearsay”. No thorough investigation.
There was another factor in play, time. It was impossible, between 3 November and 20 January to conclude investigations in suspect states and complete a speedy trial. Is that a sufficient excuse to do nothing? I think not. But it begs the question, if we cannot successfully prosecute election fraud in a timely manner, how can we expect to ever have a free and honest election?
CONCLUSIONS concerning election fraud:
· There will not be an
investigation emanating from the Biden administration. Even if there was an
investigation, it would take at least a year and a few folks might go to jail,
but would it solve the problem? Probably not. So, what to do?
· Justice resulting from a long
investigation might be satisfying but will it solve the problem? Probably
not, and if only10% of President Trump’s above assertions are correct, we need
to bring these injustices to an end, forever.
· In fact, we neither need an
investigation of the last election, that train left the station, nor do we need
to recount votes.
There is a simple solution. Voter ID Cards (not voter ID,
but a special card); name, photo, expiration date, and an individual voter ID number. When your card is swiped for in-person voting, a ballot will be printed with all of your data on it. Absentee ballot applications must include your voter ID number. Having done that, it is a simple software command that only ballots that have an ID number can be “read” and ballots will be rejected if that ID number has been used during the voting cycle.
All Congress has to do is be proactive and pass a simple Voter ID Card law. With Voter ID Cards, every alleged voter fraud activity cited by President Trump during his 6 January rally would have been impossible to execute. For a more extensive discussion of Voter ID Cards, see WeThePeopleSpeaking.com, EVERY CITIZEN SHOULD HAVE A VOTER ID CARD, dated 10 December, 2020.
Given the alleged magnitude of fraud in this past election, without Voter ID Cards, not just voter ID, it is unlikely that we will ever have a legal election again. Next time it will be the Republican’s turn and then it will become a contest to see which political party can out-fraud the other. You can stick a fork in this country, we will be done. A cornerstone of our republic, free and honest elections, will be ripped out of the foundation.
Break, Break (Army speak for “new subject”): back to WHAT
PRESIDENT TRUMP REALLY SAID AT THE 6 JANUARY RALLY IN WASHINGTON DC.
If your primary source for current events is the main-stream
media, you would believe that on 6 January President Trump riled thousands of supporters into a rabid frenzy and said, grab your M-15 and follow me, we are taking down Congress.
Not quite: I plucked every reference to Capitol Hill out of
his speech. Here is what he actually said….
· "We’re going to walk down
Pennsylvania Avenue and we’re going to the Capitol,"
· “We’re going to walk down to the
Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and
women.”
· “I know that everyone here will
soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically
make your voices heard.”
· “So, let’s walk down Pennsylvania
Avenue. I want to thank you all. God bless you and God bless America.”
· Later, after the rioting began,
he tweeted, “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful.
No violence! Remember, we are the Party of Law & Order, respect the Law and
our great men and women in Blue. Thank you.”
· A second tweet, “Please support
our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our
Country. Stay peaceful.”
CONCLUSIONS concerning 6 January riots and follow-on impeachment.
It is obvious from 20/20 hindsight that the rally was a monumental mistake. The president’s intent to administratively change the outcome of a formal affirmation of the Electoral College victory, was ill-conceived and doomed to failure.
Since descending on the escalator at Trump Tower five and a half years ago, candidate/President Trump has led hundreds of rallies without a hint of violence by right-wing radicals. My theory is that, with that track-record, the domestic violence intel folks and Capitol Police believed the likelihood of an attack on the Capitol Building was low to none. Had they been better prepared, perhaps the outcome would have been less tragic.
One week later, without investigations by House committees and without the opportunity to mount a defense, President Trump was impeached by a House up-or-down vote for “incitement of insurrection.”
Whether or not President Trump should have been impeached by the
House goes to the question of intent. What did he mean by “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”? I believe it is abundantly clear the president’s words spoken to the thousands of supporters were not intended to promote violence by radical thugs, a very small percentage of the total rally participants.
The impeachment has to do with one thing, Pelosi’s intent. She is without a doubt the most vengeful, hate-filled senior elected official in my long lifetime of following politics.
As Victor Davis Hanson to eloquently pointed out a few days ago, “From now on, House impeachment will be used by the out-party as a periodic club to wound a first-term president”.
Bottom line: While listening to President Biden’s single-subject inauguration speech, I was hopeful that his words would be followed with commensurate actions. For example, a simple private phone call to Pelosi could have eliminated impeachment and sent a positive message to 74 million Trump supporters. Instead, the Biden administration’s intent is very clear, they will continue to foster a culture of hate for everything President Trump did for this country.
Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of VISION TO EXECUTION, a book for leaders,
a columnist for THE PILOT, a national award-winning local newspaper in Southern Pines, NC and the author of a blog, WeThePeopleSpeaking.com.
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