RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Center Is Not HoldingFrom ISIS at Ramadi to riots at home, nothing is going right.
“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” – W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

Things are starting to collapse, abroad and at home. We all sense it, even as we bicker over who caused it and why.

ISIS took Ramadi last week. That city once was a Bastogne to the brave Americans who surged to save it in 2007 and 2008. ISIS, once known at the White House as the “Jayvees,” were certainly “on the run” — right into the middle of that strategically important city.

On a smaller scale, ISIS is doing to the surge cities of Iraq what Hitler did to his neighbors between 1939 and 1941, and what Putin is perhaps doing now on the periphery of Russia. In Ramadi, ISIS will soon do its accustomed thing of beheading and burning alive its captives, seeking some new macabre twist to sustain its Internet video audience. We in the West trample the First Amendment and jail a video maker for posting a supposedly insensitive film about Islam; in contrast, jihadists post snuff movies of burnings and beheadings to global audiences. We argue not about doing anything or saving anybody, but about whether it is inappropriate to call the macabre killers “jihadists.”

When these seventh-century psychopaths tire of warring on people, they turn to attacking stones, seeking to ensure that there is not a vestige left of the Middle East’s once-glorious antiquities. I assume the ancient Sassanid and Roman imperial site at Palmyra will soon be looted and smashed.

“We want your blood. It tastes so wonderful.” — Denis Cuspert, German rapper-turned-jihadist.

Such measures, however, are not likely to deter Cuspert from producing more propaganda videos. They arguably pose more of a threat to Germany than his physical presence there.

“In Germany, sleeper cells lie in wait… Even while you’re in Europe, do your jihad. Allah is going to reward you. Paradise is waiting.” — Denis Cuspert.

A German rapper-turned-jihadist has called on his followers to carry out terrorist attacks in Germany.

In a high-quality video released by the Islamic State in April, Denis Cuspert also warns that terrorist sleeper cells have infiltrated Germany and are ready for activation.

German authorities say they are taking the threats seriously: Cuspert — who has been likened to Nazi Minister for Propaganda Joseph Goebbels — has become the Islamic State’s chief propagandist in the German language and is unusually capable of inspiring disillusioned young Germans to become jihadists.

Trade promotion legislation should discourage Europe from its economic attacks on the Jewish state.

Israel has faced existential danger since its founding. It pushed back conventional assaults during the 1948 War of Independence against Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Jordan, the 1967 Six Day War against Egypt, Syria and Jordan, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War against an Arab coalition led by Egypt and Syria. Today it faces periodic rocket fire, suicide bombings, and even kidnappings by Hamas. These efforts have tried but failed to demoralize and destabilize a critical U.S. ally.

Mr. Lehman was secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, and a member of the 9/11 Commission.

The president disregards a policy that for decades has ensured effective leadership of the nuclear fleet.
President Obama, possibly unaware of the implications, has made a mistake by nominating Adm. John Richardson as the new chief of naval operations. Adm. Richardson likely would do a fine job in that important role, but by trying to move him from his current position as director of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, the president has crossed a line and created a precedent that could have grave consequences for the effectiveness of the nation’s nuclear fleet.

First, a little history is in order. Adm. Hyman Rickover, the father of the U.S.Navy’s nuclear fleet and one of the fathers of commercial nuclear power, was a great man. Including his time at the Naval Academy, he served for 55 years on active duty and ran the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program for three decades until his retirement in 1982. He created and oversaw a culture of personnel and engineering excellence that is unique in the world.

Vladimir Putin’s recent decision to sell S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran over U.S. objections is more than an embarrassment to the Obama Administration. It is also the latest evidence of an emerging new threat to world order and U.S. security: the rise of authoritarian regional powers.

China, Russia and Iran are taking advantage of American retreat to assert political and (perhaps eventually) military dominance over their corners of the globe. They share a goal of reducing U.S. influence, bending neighbors to their political will, and ultimately using that regional base of power to diminish the global sway of Western democracies, especially the U.S. In addition to the rise of Islamic State, this will be the biggest strategic challenge for the next President.

If President Obama can forgive us our trespasses, he can forgive the Ayatollah Khamenei’s, too.

Can there be a rational, negotiable, relatively reasonable bigot? Barack Obama thinks so.

So we learn from the president’s interview last week with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg—the same interview in which Mr. Obama called Islamic State’s capture of Ramadi a “tactical setback.” Mr. Goldberg asked the president to reconcile his view of an Iranian regime steeped in “venomous anti-Semitism” with his claims that the same regime “is practical, and is responsive to incentive, and shows signs of rationality.”

The president didn’t miss a beat. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s strategic objectives, he said, were not dictated by prejudice alone. Sure, the Iranians could make irrational decisions “with respect to trying to use anti-Semitic rhetoric as an organizing tool.” They might also pursue hate-based policies “where the costs are low.” But the regime has larger goals: “maintaining power, having some semblance of legitimacy inside their country,” and getting “out of the deep economic rut that we’ve put them in.”

A Handbook on Islam is intended to be a supplementary guide to Islam’s Reign of Terror, which was published by the Voltaire Press in 2013. The latter title offers a chronicle of terrorist acts committed since 9/11, which, as of the date of this writing, have neared 26,000 separate and deadly attacks of varying magnitudes. These attacks are now commonplace and are occurring daily, chiefly in the Mideast and in Africa, committed by ISIS (or ‘ISIL,” or the “Islamic State”), which has established beachheads in Libya and in Nigeria and in other unstable countries in that region. “Outbreaks” of Islamic terrorism – or Islamic mob rule – are occurring in the Far East in Pakistan and Afghanistan, when Islamic fundamentalists not necessarily connected with ISIS or Al-Qaeda persecute or slaughter Christians or target individuals for execution. Attacks continue in Europe and in the U.S., ostensively in “retaliation” for drawing images of Mohammad, the alleged prophet of Islam. In early January 7th 2015 Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, forced their way into the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, the French weekly satirical newspaper, and killed eleven of the staff, and later killed a French police officer who was directing traffic. Following that, more attacks occurred in other regions of France. In the U.S., Pamela Geller’s Draw Mohammad contest and event in Garland, Texas, on May 3rd 2015 was attacked by two Muslim “extremists” armed with automatic weapons; the gunmen made it only as far as the building’s parking lot before being shot dead by a single policeman. And, more than a supplementary guide, the author thought it a necessary work to help counteract the mainstream media’s refusal, inability, or unwillingness to grasp the perilous seriousness of the ends and means of Islamic terrorism and terrorist acts committed in the U.S. and abroad.

“What other spot so fitting for their last resting place as this under the shadow of the Capitol saved by their valor? Here, where the grim edge of battle joined; here, where all the hope and fear and agony of their country centered; here let them rest, asleep on the Nation’s heart, entombed in the Nation’s love!”

On May 30, 1868, a crowd of 5,000 gathered at Arlington National Cemetery for the first Decoration Day exercises. Before strewing flowers upon the graves of the dead, the crowd listened to an address by James A. Garfield (1831–81), then an Ohio congressman who had also served as a major general in the Civil War. In this first of such annual addresses at Arlington National Cemetery, Garfield, who in 1881 would become the 20th president of the United States, sets a standard by explaining what Decoration Day is all about and why it should be commemorated.

I am oppressed with a sense of the impropriety of uttering words on this occasion. If silence is ever golden, it must be here beside the graves of fifteen thousand men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem, the music of which can never be sung. With words we make promises, plight faith, praise virtue. Promises may not be kept; plighted faith may be broken; and vaunted virtue be only the cunning mask of vice. We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue. For the noblest man that lives, there still remains a conflict. He must still withstand the assaults of time and fortune, must still be assailed with temptations, before which lofty natures have fallen; but with these the conflict ended, the victory was won, when death stamped on them the great seal of heroic character, and closed a record which years can never blot.

I know of nothing more appropriate on this occasion than to inquire what brought these men here; what high motive led them to condense life into an hour, and to crown that hour by joyfully welcoming death? Let us consider.

In America’s cities and towns today, flags will be placed on graves in cemeteries; public officials will speak of the sacrifice and the valor of those whose memory we honor.

In 1863, when he dedicated a small cemetery in Pennsylvania marking a terrible collision between the armies of North and South, Abraham Lincoln noted the swift obscurity of such speeches. Well, we know now that Lincoln was wrong about that particular occasion. His remarks commemorating those who gave their “last full measure of devotion” were long remembered. But since that moment at Gettysburg, few other such addresses have become part of our national heritage—not because of the inadequacy of the speakers, but because of the inadequacy of words.

I have no illusions about what little I can add now to the silent testimony of those who gave their lives willingly for their country. Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day, for the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers those who were loved and who, in return, loved their countrymen enough to die for them.

Yet, we must try to honor them—not for their sakes alone, but for our own. And if words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice.

Our first obligation to them and ourselves is plain enough: The United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper. Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost; it imposes a burden. And just as they whom we commemorate were willing to sacrifice, so too must we—in a less final, less heroic way—be willing to give of ourselves.

It is this, beyond the controversy and the congressional debate, beyond the blizzard of budget numbers and the complexity of modern weapons systems, that motivates us in our search for security and peace. War will not come again, other young men will not have to die, if we will speak honestly of the dangers that confront us and remain strong enough to meet those dangers.

It’s not just strength or courage that we need, but understanding and a measure of wisdom as well. We must understand enough about our world to see the value of our alliances. We must be wise enough about ourselves to listen to our allies, to work with them, to build and strengthen the bonds between us.