RUTHFULLY YOURS

Retreat abroad and bigger government at home has made the U.S. weaker.

‘What would America fight for?” asked a cover story last month in the Economist magazine. Coming from a British publication, the headline has a tone of “let’s you and him fight.” But its main flaw is that it greatly oversimplifies the question of how the U.S. can recover from its willful failure to exert a positive influence over world events.

That failure is very much on display as Iraq disintegrates and Russia revives the “salami tactics” of 1930s aggressors, slicing off parts of Ukraine. Both disasters could have been avoided through the exercise of more farsighted and muscular American diplomacy. A show of greater capability to manage “domestic” policy would have aided this effort.

The U.S. is still militarily powerful and has a world-wide apparatus of trained professionals executing its policies, overt and covert. It has an influential civil society and a host of nongovernmental organizations with influence throughout the planet, not always but mostly for the better. It has a preponderance of multinational corporations. Although confidence in America has waned significantly, it is still looked to for leadership in thwarting the designs of thugs like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Syria’s Bashar Assad and Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei.

Yet President Obama has followed a deliberate policy of disengagement from the world’s quarrels. He failed to bluff Assad with his “red line” threat and then turned the Syrian bloodbath over to Mr. Putin, showing a weakness that no doubt emboldened the Russian president to launch his aggression against Ukraine. The errant Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, beset by a Sunni-al Qaeda insurgency, has been told, in effect, to seek succor from his Shiite co-religionists in Iran. Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry amazingly urges America’s only real friends in the area, the Iraqi Kurds, not to abandon the ill-mannered Mr. Maliki in favor of greater independence and expanded commerce (mainly oil) with our NATO ally, Turkey.

Three families in Israel are in agony. On June 12, when their sons Naftali Fraenkel, Eyal Yifrah and Gil-Ad Shaer were kidnapped by Islamic savages, the Fraenkels, Yifrahs and Shaers entered a new world where every breath they take is filled with devastating guilt – that they breathe free while their sons suffer unknown miseries.

Every moment that passes is filled with crushed hope that they will get word that their sons are free, and then the word doesn’t come. And it doesn’t come the next moment, or the next.

And so they will live, in agony, until this ordeal has ended.

Our hearts go out to these families. Our prayers are continuously directed towards them. And in a profound sense that is uniquely Israeli, the people of Israel share their pain. With this pain comes a sincere and overpowering desire to do something to bring the captive teenagers home.

What can be done?

There are only two ways for Israel to free hostages.

The government can devote all necessary resources to gathering actionable intelligence that will lead IDF troops to the boys.

Or the government can surrender to the terrorists by freeing thousands of Palestinian terrorist murderers from Israeli prisons.

“The whole area of intercept needs to be looked at. We have got a real debate, and it is a genuine debate in a democracy, between the libertarians who say the state must not get too powerful and pretty much the rest of us who say the state must protect itself.” — Liam Fox, Former British Secretary of Defense

In his testimony, Farr defends the practice because Britain has for “many years faced a serious threat from terrorism,” especially the threat derived from “militant Islamist terrorists.” He says the practice has prevented terrorist attacks and saved lives.

A recent spike in the number of British jihadists fighting with Sunni militant groups in Syria and Iraq is fuelling a heated debate over how much government surveillance is necessary to keep the United Kingdom safe from domestic terrorism.

The British government is asking for additional surveillance powers to monitor British jihadists who might be planning attacks in the UK after their return from the fighting in the Middle East.

But privacy groups counter that the British state has already amassed massive surveillance powers, and that what the government really wants is a free rein to monitor all of the communications of every man, woman and child in Britain.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has warned that the greatest threat to national security is from British citizens and other Europeans fighting with the Sunni militant group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS]. At a press conference on June 17, he said:

“No-one should be in any doubt that what we see in Syria and now in Iraq in terms of ISIS is the most serious threat to Britain’s security that there is today. The number of foreign fighters in that area, the number of foreign fighters including those from the UK who could try to return to the UK is a real threat to our country.”

Actually it will be 100 years ago tomorrow at 11:00AM, that Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent to the Austrian-Hungarian throne, was pronounced dead. He and his wife Sophie had been shot by an assassin a few minutes earlier while on a visit to Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia. The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, was a Serbian nationalist. For the next few weeks, diplomats from all major European countries scurried frantically around (like John Kerry today), in an attempt to head off what too few feared could become an inevitable conflagration. At the same time, they considered mobilization, while measuring capabilities and readiness. They secured alliances.

Diplomacy came to naught. A month and a week later, on August 4th, a day after Germany declared war on France, England declared war on Germany; thereby engulfing the continent in total war. Within the month there would be 182,000 casualties, as German troops, in a week-long battle and outnumbered almost two to one, virtually annihilated Russia’s Second Army at the Battle of Tannenberg. Three battles alone, over the course of the War, saw more than 2.5 million casualties – Gallipoli, Verdun and the Somme. On the first day of the battle of the Somme, England had 60,000 casualties. By War’s end, four years later, three months and one week later 20 million of Europe’s youth would be dead, with even more millions injured. The foundations for the Second World War had been laid, causing the 20th Century to become the bloodiest in the history of mankind.

There are many who suggest that the world today is similarly positioned as it was in 1914. I suspect the differences are the more pronounced. Nevertheless, there are similarities. One hundred years ago, old empires were fading while new ones were rising. The Ottoman Empire had been in decline for some time. Its occupation of the Balkans had been absorbed by two fading empires – Tsarist Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Turkish Straits, still owned by the Ottomans, were eyed enviously by the Russians. The British Colonial period was nearing an end; though most Brits could not see that happening. Germany was a relatively new country – like Italy it had been unified in the second half of the 19th Century – and since Bismarck’s time had been looking to expand east. The Slavic people in Serbia were flexing their muscles, chafing at borders arbitrarily drawn by Vienna and, to a lesser extent, by St. Petersburg. At least a dozen ethnic populations occupied the region, with three distinct religions dominant – Muslim, Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics. It was a combustible mixture.

“This was the moment,” Barack Obama had told the cheering audience in St. Paul, Minnesota. “When we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war.”

St. Paul has an Ocean Street. It has an Ocean Spa and Salon. It even has an Oceanaire Seafood Room.

It does not however have an ocean. But with ObamaCare an unpopular subsidized failure, the few new jobs around being confined to a local McDonald’s and Al Qaeda taking over Iraq; Obama has nothing left to do but to go back to his old promise of defeating the rise of the ocean.

With Al Qaeda pressing in on Baghdad, Obama ruled out air strikes. He did however order the Department of Defense to assign a senior official to the vital task of fighting mislabeled seafood.

While the Iraqi government was begging for air support, Obama instead issued an order in the name of the authority vested in him “by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America” to “ensure that seafood sold in the United States is legally and sustainably caught.” The United States Constitution does not have much to say about sustainable seafood. The Founders liked their flounder and they disliked kings and emperors telling them where to fish.

King George III responded to Patrick Henry’s cry of “Give me liberty or give me death” with the Fisheries Bill which banned the fishermen of New England from the North Atlantic. A letter sent to a sea captain denounced it as, “A Bill so replete with inhumanity and cruelty… an everlasting stain on the annals of our pious Sovereign.”

But not even King George III would have contemplated creating a “national monument” consisting of 782,000 square miles of water. And despite being a monarch, he did not unilaterally issue a ban, rather parliament did. Even during the American Revolution, King George III was a more lawful and democratic monarch than Obama’s unilateral reign of royal executive orders.

Banks should brace for assault as Arthur Andersen annihilator now controls world’s largest criminal conviction machine
Meet Leslie Caldwell. President Obama has installed Ms. Caldwell, known as a “terror of a prosecutor,” as head of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. It has been over a decade since Ms. Caldwell destroyed Arthur Anderson, and with it, 85,000 jobs—only to be reversed by the Supreme Court nine to nothing (well after she went into private practice). Now the president has brought her back—with a big promotion—and the vengeance of DOJ already aimed at Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas and others.

Ms. Caldwell and her then right hand man, Andrew Weissmann, viewed businessmen and bankers as “wise guys on Wall Street,” deserving of brutal prosecutorial tactics. Their prosecutions proceeded on the theory that the “end justifies the means.” Winning was the sole goal. They forgot that the job of a federal prosecutor is to seek justice—not convictions.

Arthur Andersen LLP was Ms. Caldwell’s first target in the wake of the collapse of Enron amid allegations of financial and accounting irregularities and secret-off balance sheet deals and partnerships. Andersen accountants were actually embedded at Enron, and the energy company paid the consulting firm millions in fees every year. Enron changed to mark-to-market accounting, lawful at the time, and was pushing the envelope.

Ms. Caldwell’s task force terrorized Arthur Andersen partner David Duncan with life in prison. Ms. Caldwell would walk into the room, take command and bark at a potential witness: “You’re going to tell us this, this and this (specifying the statements she wanted) or you’re going to be indicted.”

Ms. Caldwell and Mr. Weissmann persuaded Duncan it didn’t matter that he believed his conduct was lawful; it didn’t matter that he was following the policies of corporate counsel, that the accounting rules could be interpreted different ways, or, that Andersen had retained hundreds of thousands of documents—including anything it was supposed to keep. Ms. Caldwell and Mr. Weissmann virtually bludgeoned him into a guilty plea that required his testimony against his firm. Mr. Duncan acquiesced, but all the while maintained that he believed his conduct was lawful.

The Republican Party is nothing more than the servile junior partner of an entrenched bipartisan political establishment in Washington DC that does everything in its power to extinguish representative government and thwart the will of the American people.

In the Mississippi Republican primary run-off, Senator-For-Life, 76-year-old Thad Cochran was declared the winner over Tea Party-backed challenger Chris McDaniel by just over six thousand votes.

To secure his slim victory, Cochran not only received the full-blown backing of the Republican establishment and the amnesty-supporting US Chamber of Commerce, but he shamelessly solicited cross-over votes from traditionally Democratic voters, blacks and union members, who, like himself, support big spending and big government.

During the campaign, Cochran also adopted Democratic Party talking points about Tea Party candidates, leveling personal attacks against McDaniel, calling him an “extremist” and “dangerous.”

Having acquired their candidate, the Republican establishment will, in November, attempt to intimidate conservatives with the usual general election blackmail, vote for Cochran or risk a Democratic majority in the Senate.

If turnabout is fair play, then Mississippi conservatives would be justified in using the same tactics that Cochran used against them, voting for his Democratic opponent Travis Childers.

There is a Cold Civil War underway between Americans who want to adhere to the Constitution and adopt responsible fiscal policies, and the party leaders, who wish to continue the practices of political expediency and crony capitalism.

Politicians now seek election, not to uphold the rule of law and serve the American people, but to obtain power. Both Republicans and Democrats parlay that power into influence, privilege and personal affluence by redistributing the wealth generated by ordinary Americans into their own pockets and those of their supporters.

All the traditional means for the American people to seek the redress of grievances have been largely blocked by self-absorbed, unaccountable permanent political elites.

The Republican establishment’s investment in our corrupt political-media culture explains why they will go only so far in challenging the Constitutional violations and the anti-American policies of the Obama Administration.

Republican leaders will continue to hold hearings about Obama’s mounting number of scandals, but will do nothing.

Surrendering to ISIS in Iraq? — on The Glazov Gang

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/surrendering-to-isis-in-iraq-on-the-glazov-gang/print/

This week’s Glazov Gang was guest-hosted by Josh Brewster and joined by Michael Hausam, a writer at IJReview.com, Nonie Darwish, the author of The Devil We Don’t Know, and Ernie White, a civil rights activist.

The Gang gathered to discuss, Surrendering to ISIS in Iraq?

The guests also tackled America’s Border Crisis, Hillary’s Fantasy about Hamas’ Genocidal Technocrats, Benghazi ‘Suspect’ Captured, The IRS’s “Lost” E-mails, and much, much more.

Don’t miss it!

The term “The thin blue line” is associated with law enforcement, especially the police. The phrase is based on the usual color of the police uniform and the fact that the relatively small numbers of sworn police officers is all that stands between the citizenry of towns, cities and states and criminals.

The uniforms that the members of the United States Border Patrol wear is green. Sometimes the Border Patrol has been referred to as the “Green Machine.” The mission of the United States Border Patrol is to secure America’s borders between ports of entry against the illegal entry of aliens whose presence would be harmful or dangerous to America and Americans. The idea is to make certain that aliens seeking entry into the United States are subjected to the inspections process conducted by CBP (Customs and Border Protection) Inspectors.

The guiding principle behind the inspections process is to make certain that aliens who should be excluded from the United States are prevented from entering the United States. One of the sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) is Title 8, United States Code, Section 1182, enumerates the categories of aliens who are to be excluded and includes aliens who suffer dangerous contagious diseases, severe mental illness and are violent, aliens who are convicted felons, human and/or narcotics traffickers, human rights violators, war criminals, spies, terrorists and aliens who would likely become public charges or work illegally therefore displacing American workers or driving down the wages and/or working conditions of American workers.

The law, incidentally, is utterly and totally blind as to race, religion and ethnicity.

While the advocates for open borders describe aliens who evade the inspections process as being “Undocumented,” in point of fact, these aliens are Un-Inspected. In fact, my colleagues and I at the former INS referred to the method of entry of aliens who evaded the vital inspections process as being EWI (Entry Without Inspection).

This is hardly inconsequential. To draw a comparison- would you, or any reasonable person be willing to board an airliner if you observed several passengers sneak past the TSA inspectors and get on the airliner you were about to board? I am very confident you would not.

Why then are we being forced, by our own government, to live among unknown millions of foreign nationals (aliens) whose true identities- including their country of citizenship, possible criminal histories and possible affiliation with criminal or terrorist organizations or medical or mental well-being is unknown and unknowable?

In Jerusalem, Israelis pray for the return of three missing boys and in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers hunt for them and for their captors. But in the midst of all this, it is important not to lose sight of the larger conflict.

Israel made one tragic mistake with the Gilad Shalit deal. That deal, aside from already costing the life of one Israeli, is what led to this kidnapping. One kidnapping turned into three. It can easily become many more.

Defeating terrorist tactics can be more important than defeating terrorists. It is not that hard for a modern nation to kill a terrorist. Drones allow us to kill enemies from a distance at the push of a button. But drones cannot protect the morale of a nation.

Conventional armies use tactics to defeat enemy forces and seize territory. Terrorists however use tactics to take over mental territory. A suicide bomber is not out to take over a particular block. He is out to change how people think about that city block and the larger conflict.

Terrorism has succeeded in accomplishing that goal in Israel. The scale of terrorism turned every piece of land into a mathematical equation. How many lives was this village in Gaza worth? How many lives is this West Bank town worth? How many lives is East Jerusalem worth?

However terrorists are not trading an end to violence for a village or a town. They are calculating how many deaths it will take to force Israel to abandon that village or town. And once they have that town, they will use it to inflict more terror on another town or village.

Israelis were convinced that a price in lives had been put on Gaza and that if they withdrew, the killing would end. But Gaza was just the beginning. Not the end.

Terrorists try to create the perception that the winning side is losing. This perception can be so compelling that both sides come to accept it as reality. Terrorists manufacture victories by trapping their enemies in no-win scenarios that wear down their morale.

That is what has been happening to Israel. The entire carrot and stick of the peace process and the suicide bombing, the final agreement that never comes and the final solution that is coming, were designed to wear down Israelis, to make their leaders and people chase down empty hopes.