RUTHFULLY YOURS

Saudi monarch’s decision signals that the Arab states aren’t on board with nuclear accord.

WASHINGTON—Saudi Arabia’s monarch pulled out of a summit to be hosted by President Barack Obama on Thursday, in a blow to the White House’s efforts to build Arab support for a nuclear accord with Iran.

King Salman’s decision appeared to ripple across the Persian Gulf. Bahrain said on Sunday that its ruler, King Hamad bin Isaa Al Khalifa, had opted not to travel to Washington.

The only two monarchs from the six countries confirmed to attend the summit at the White House and the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., were the emirs of Qatar and Kuwait.

At stake for the White House is Mr. Obama’s key foreign-policy initiative, an Iran pact that is proceeding toward a June 30 deadline without support from regional powers. King Salman’s decision signals that the Arab states aren’t on board and could continue to act on their own to thwart Tehran, as Saudi Arabia has done in leading a military coalition against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen.

America after World War II practiced containment. U.S. foreign policy now is self-containment.On Saturday Russia marked the 70th anniversary of victory in Europe during World War II, with Moscow’s Red Square looking like a staging area for blitzkrieg. With 15,000 soldiers, 200 tanks and missile launchers, and 140 combat aircraft, the parade was a spectacle of bluster and intimidation.

The rest of the world was not amused. Barack Obama stayed away, as did the leaders of Britain, France and Germany. Not even North Korea’s Kim Jong Un showed up. It was Vladimir Putin home alone.

If President Obama had a sense of history, he might have thrown, in Washington, a more heartening party, to which V-E Day would serve only as prologue. Pride of place would go to the beginning of the most glorious chapter in American foreign policy, the Pax Americana that has held for 70 years and benefited not only the United States, but also the rest of the world.

The American-built postwar order is not ancient history; the story comes with a thoroughly modern moral. Success was not foreordained. As today, the U.S. in 1945 was tired and eager to go home. Meeting with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at Yalta, Franklin D. Rooseveltconfided to “Uncle Joe” that he might give away the store. The U.S. would withdraw from the travails of the world; its troops would not stay in Europe for more than two years. Let Britain, France, Russia and the U.N. do it.

The Massachusetts exchange is under federal investigation.
The catastrophic ObamaCare rollout merely two years ago has disappeared into the distant political past, forgotten, with zero accountability for the taxpayer waste and disruption to individuals and business. Massachusetts may prove to be an exception.

Late last week the administration of Republican Governor Charlie Baker confirmed that the FBI and U.S. Attorney for Boston have subpoenaed records related to the commonwealth’s “connector” dating to 2010. This insurance clearinghouse was Mitt Romney’s 2006 beta version for ObamaCare’s exchanges, but updating the connector to comply with the far more complex federal law became a fiasco rivaling any of the other federal and state ObamaCare failures.

Bill handled earthquake aid while Hillary was secretary of state. The nation deserved better.

“It is the sense of Congress that transparency, accountability, democracy, and good governance are integral factors in any congressional decision regarding United States assistance, including assistance to Haiti.”

—Assessing Progress in Haiti Act of 2014, section 4.

Peter Schweizer’s new book, “ Clinton Cash,” has stirred up media and public interest partly by making the point that most of the dealings of Bill and Hillary Clinton have been with poor countries with a weak rule of law. The U.S. legislation cited above singles out Haiti.

There could hardly be a better example of Clinton machinations undermining development. Congress is partly to blame and now seeks to make amends.

The U.S. Founding Fathers went out of their way to establish a republic guided by the rule of law and not the rule of men. If there is a singular principle that has set the U.S. apart from countries south of the Rio Grande it’s the checks and balances that protect against caudillo power.

My mother died in 1998 after a brief illness. She was beautiful, elegant, and game. She trudged through the jungles of South America, Africa, Borneo, and India with her high heels and matching purses. And she always traveled with a huge box of cosmetics. She had a quality that was above intelligence and wit. She anticipated people’s needs.

In Israel in 1950 she invited six of her friends for lunch. They had survived the Holocaust- some hiding in unspeakable circumstances of fear, starvation and cold, and others survived Auschwitz and were prone to weeping and recounting. Out came the box of cosmetics and my mother and I…at her direction….gave them manicures in addition to lunch. While we buffed, and pushed cuticles and filed and moisturized their hardened hands and brittle nails, my mother sang songs in Polish and Yiddish and reminded them of youth in high-school, gossip, boy friends, flirtations and dress-ups and parties and dancing….the life they had before the darkness. Suddenly they were singing, chatting and laughing and when we applied the colors they waved their hands in the air admiring their hands and shiny pink and red nails. When they left they all took polish in what one called “happy colors.”

She had a knack. Sofia Salomon my mother was unique.

This is a very pertinent column… Generals David Petraeus and Stanley A. McChrystal established COIN- Field Manual (FM) 3-24, the manual on counterinsurgency, with a focus on winning hearts and minds,that was far more concerned with sensitivity to the mores of local enemy savages than to protecting our own troops. rsk

When it comes to gaining or losing allegiance, the sword is mightier than the pen.
Those who argue against publishing Mohammed cartoons — like the ones featured in Pamela Geller’s now-famous “Draw Mohammed” contest — often claim that the cartoons don’t just provoke terror, they also alienate Muslim friends and allies. Thus, even if one wishes to be defiant in the face of jihadist aggression, publishing the cartoons is still foolish because of the effect on our friends.

As we mentioned a week ago, I’m none too well at the moment, and it so happens my preferred position in which to write causes me severe pain – which is presumably some kind of not so subtle literary criticism from the Almighty. But I’m back, more or less, with lots to catch up on. There were two big elections in recent days, with dramatic results: in Alberta, the Tories were wiped out; in Scotland, the Labour Party was slaughtered; in England, the Liberals were crushed. Strange times.

I’ll have more to say about the elections in the days ahead, but for now let me offer a whole-hearted good riddance to Ed Miliband, the now departed Labour leader who, in a desperate last-minute pander, offered to “outlaw Islamophobia”. That was the British political establishment’s contribution to a rough couple of weeks for free speech, culminating in the attempted mass murder in Garland, Texas.

“Carter Causes Consternation with Election Call for Palestinian Arabs”

Former US president Jimmy Carter has created a stir with his call for Palestinian Arabs to hold elections to end the internecine struggle between Hamas and the PLO in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza.

Speaking at a joint news conference with PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah – after cancelling his stop in Gaza where he was supposed to meet Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh – Carter – now a member of the independent Elders Group of global leaders – declared:

“We hope that sometime we’ll see elections all over the Palestinian area and east Jerusalem and Gaza and also in the West Bank”

It is not just the Arab-Israeli conflict that fuels anti-Semitism. It works the other way around too: the old-fashioned anti-Semitism is the reason behind a biased narrative of the conflict in the Middle East.
The rise of anti-Semitism in U.S. colleges has alarmed conservative groups for quite some time, yet it was largely ignored by the liberal media until recently. The turning point was a spate of shocking, high-profile incidents involving student government bodies, normally bastions of political correctness and darlings of the radical left, which were covered by the New York Times, CNN and other news outlets. Forced to address this seemingly awkward issue, the media offers two rationalizations. The first argues that the Jewish students make up a largely successful group, and therefore, are not on the list of “protected species.” This argument is rather weak. Indeed, the Chinese students make up an even more successful group, but no public expression of anti-Chinese sentiments would be tolerated.

Syria’s Scud-C ballistic missiles put several big Turkish cities “within range.”

Half of the Turkish squadrons that would fly over Syrian skies may not be able to return home safely.

Turkey simply does not have a long-range anti-missile defense architecture to counter the Syrian (and/or Iranian) missiles.

On June 22, 2012, a Turkish RF-4E military reconnaissance aircraft took off from an air base in eastern Turkey. It flew at low altitude, as most spy planes do, and violated Syrian airspace before it was hit — most likely — by a missile fired from a Syrian- or Russian-operated air defense system.

Two Turkish pilots were killed. Their bodies were later recovered from the Mediterranean Sea with help from a US ship.