http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323415304578370782049694590.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop Seven weeks after Osama bin Laden‘s death in 2011, President Obama declared al Qaeda was “on a path to defeat.” He has redeployed the phrase often to justify leaving Afghanistan and slashing defense. Al Qaeda, meanwhile, mocks predictions of its imminent defeat. Even as the U.S. has “decimated” (the President’s word) al Qaeda’s senior […]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324482504578451213110506022.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
The Case for Pre-Emptive War, From Goliath to the Dardanelles
When—and it is most probably now a question of when, rather than if—Israel is forced to bomb Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities, the Israeli government will immediately face a cacophony of denunciation from the press in America and abroad; the international left; the United Nations General Assembly; 20 secretly delighted but fantastically hypocritical Arab states; some Democratic legislators in Washington, D.C.; and a large assortment of European politicians. Critics will doubtless harp on about international law and claim that no right exists for pre-emptive military action. So it would be wise for friends of Israel to mug up on their ancient and modern history to refute this claim.
The right, indeed the duty, of nations to proactively defend themselves from foes who seek their destruction with new and terrifying weaponry far pre-dates President George W. Bush and Iraq. It goes back earlier than Israel’s successful pre-emptive attacks on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 (not to mention other pre-emptive Israeli attacks like the one on the Syrian nuclear program in 2007). It even predates Israel’s 1967 pre-emption of massed Arab armies, a move that saved the Jewish state. History is replete with examples when pre-emption was successful, as well as occasions when, because pre-emption wasn’t employed, catastrophe struck.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/justice-department-failure-suit-filed-over-doj-refusal-to-clean-up-voter-rolls/?print=1 The American Civil Rights Union wants local election officials to clean up voter rolls in Mississippi. Last Friday, the group filed suit against two counties that have more registered voters than the Census says they have voting-eligible citizens. The ACRU is stepping into the breach left by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/347044/what-should-we-do-about-guns After the defeat of the Manchin-Toomey background-check bill, and the subsequent demonization of the Senate, Senators Manchin and Toomey are reportedly back at work on bipartisan legislation addressing gun control. John R. Lott, author of the new book At the Brink, who has been researching gun policy for decades, talks about the state of […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/347049/camp-bastion-cover Do you remember what happened last year on 9/14? Where are the White House phone calls for the families who continue to grieve? What is being done to prevent another fatal attack like the one on 9/14? And why is the full truth being withheld from the American public? Benghazi isn’t the only bloody […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/347052/cruz-2016 Freshman senator Ted Cruz is considering a presidential run, according to his friends and confidants. Cruz won’t talk about it publicly, and even privately he’s cagey about revealing too much of his thought process or intentions. But his interest is undeniable. “If you don’t think this is real, then you’re not paying attention,” says a Republican […]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/30/obama-press-conference_n_3186294.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&icid=maing-grid10%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl34%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D306407 WASHINGTON — The sunny, confident President Barack Obama who was the master of all that he surveyed at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last Saturday night was nowhere in sight at the podium in the White House press room Tuesday morning. In his place was a glum character, whose gloomy demeanor matched the lack […]
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ The one thing that gave me hope for my generation was our cynicism. We might not believe in anything, but at least we wouldn’t believe in everything. We might be apathetic, but that just meant it was harder to enlist us in causes. We didn’t just march to the beat of our own […]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/30/gabriel-gomez-wins_n_3189352.html
By STEVE LeBLANC and BOB SALSBERG, The Associated Press
BOSTON — Businessman and former Navy SEAL Gabriel Gomez has won the Republican nomination to run in Massachusetts’ special election for the U.S. Senate seat previously held by John Kerry.
Unofficial returns show Gomez defeating former U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan and state Rep. Daniel Winslow in Tuesday’s primary.
In the June 25 special election, Gomez will face the winner of the Democratic primary between U.S. Reps. Stephen Lynch and Edward Markey.
Gomez is a newcomer to politics. He’s the son of Colombian immigrants and learned English in kindergarten. He became a Navy pilot and SEAL, earned an MBA at Harvard and launched a private equity career.
Kerry resigned from the Senate to become U.S. secretary of state.
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2493/Q-A-The-Jihadist-Plot-by-John-Rosenthal.aspx
I will never forget the unmitigated horror of watching as the United States openly switched sides in the 2011 “Arab Spring,” abandoning allies in the war on terror (jihad) to support those same jihadist forces instead. There was precious little company in the press gallery on this one as US media, shouting slogans of “revolution” and “democracy,” blindly failed to perceive or actually covered up the obvious truth: The US, with NATO, was now supporting the Other Side — the same Other Side that had struck us in 9/11, killed and maimed our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and threatened Western liberty everywhere. It was in this crazy atmosphere, John Rosenthal’s independent reporting from Europe provided essential information and context.
John’s long-awaited book, The Jihadist Plot: The Untold Story of Al-Qaeda and the Libyan Rebellion, is now out from Encounter. It contains much new information on this shameful, perplexing, dangerous episode — whose jarring reverberations, by the way, have yet to play out.
Here is our Q & A.
DW: Whose side is the United States on in Syria?
John Rosenthal: Objectively, we are on the same side as Jabhat al-Nusra in the Syrian conflict. The administration’s listing of Jabhat al-Nusra as a terror organization changes nothing in this regard and amounts in fact to a kind of sleight of hand. It allows the administration to claim that it is supporting
the Syrian rebellion, but somehow not its “extremist” component. But this distinction is completely bogus. The response to the listing from other rebel brigades — many of which hastened to express their solidarity with Jabhat al-Nusra — makes this clear. Jabhat al-Nusra is part of the
mainstream of the Syrian rebellion. If it is extremist, then so is the rebellion as such.
DW: You explain in your book that in mid-2011, the US changed sides in the so-called war on
terror, which was originally mounted as a war against Al Qaeda; and, moreover,
that the US media missed this story. Could you state the case in brief?
