RUTHFULLY YOURS

Nazi Germany signed its instrument of surrender on May 8, 1945, but the Pacific War dragged on. General Douglas MacArthur warned that an invasion of Japan could cost over a million lives. Together with the United Kingdom and China, the United States called for the unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed forces in the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, 1945 with the threat of “prompt and utter destruction”. Japan vowed to fight to the bitter end in the Pacific. General Douglas MacArthur and other top military commanders, who counseled a conventional weapon invasion of Japan, advised Truman that such an invasion would result in U.S. casualties of up to 1 million. Truman, who had only been president since the Spring of 1945, decided–over the moral reservations of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General Dwight Eisenhower and a number of the Manhattan Project scientists–to use the atomic bomb. On August 6,2015 the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945 bringing World War II to an end.

Ask yourselves, as I will, which of the assorted GOP contenders would have the guts of Harry Truman now that America is faced with an existential threat that could, in the estimates of many analysts, claim more than a million American lives….RSK

A crescendo is building for raising the federal minimum wage by 107%, from $7.25 an hour to $15.00. To be against it, according to those who support such a move, is to favor inequality and unfairness – it is to show one’s Simon Legree side. The $7.25 wage has been in place for six years; so it is understandable why this tidal wave has been developing. But its implementation will have negative consequences that are surely unintentional. Some perspective is needed.

The income gap has widened during the six years since the recession ended in mid 2009. That fact has little to do with the minimum wage and a lot to do with government policies regarding taxes, regulation and interest rates. A front-page article in Saturday’s New York Times detailed the gloomy news. While employers have added 200,000 jobs a month and the official jobless rate is at a post-recession low of 5.3%, the labor participation rate (62.6%) is at the lowest level since the Carter years. Six years into economic recovery there are fifteen million Americans on Social Security disability insurance, more than when the recession ended. Forty percent more people are on food stamps than six years ago. Work requirements, which were part of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, were waived in 2012 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. And for the first time in the nation’s history, or at least during a time of economic recovery, more small businesses are closing than opening. And now government wants to fuel this fire by mandating a doubling of the minimum wage?

As Censored Voices makes its American debut, my advice to American Jews is this: save your tears—the Six-Day War was decently waged and morally just.

In a recent interview, Daniel Sivan, the producer of Censored Voices (and partner of the director Mor Loushy), describes the effect of their film on pro-Israel American Jews who saw it at Sundance in January:

From their point of view, even to murmur the word “occupation” is treason. But they couldn’t rage against our film, because we didn’t invent the questions within it. They were posed by young soldiers, days after the battles of 1967. So we opened up something with these pro-Israeli Jews. Older people came out crying, they said they’d always been proud of that great victory, but now they feel confused, undermined, and embarrassed.

Yes, Censored Voices will provide fodder for Israel-haters (it already has). But as Sivan rightly points out, such people don’t need Censored Voices to hate Israel. Its more significant effect outside Israel will be to demoralize a generation or two of American Jews for whom the Six-Day War was a source of pride, and who will now be told that it really comprised wanton murder and dispossession.

Conrad Black’s defense cannot undo the damage Henry Kissinger has done.
This controversy between Conrad Black and myself on Henry Kissinger’s legacy to American statecraft will have been worthwhile if it leads anyone to the Claremont Review of Books, where my review of Kissinger’s latest book, World Order, treats that legacy at due length. Regardless of the merits (or lack thereof) of my or Black’s writings, they have not shaped American statecraft. Kissinger’s have, and continue to do so.

My review’s one and only reference to Conrad Black was to quote his praise of Kissinger’s book: “brilliantly conceived and executed . . . even by Henry Kissinger’s very high standards.” Black construes this as an “attack” on him, of “extreme belligerence.” Who am I to disagree? Black then joins himself to Kissinger — “admiring of his talents as both an academic theorist and a practical executant of foreign policy . . . He is a friend . . . ” — as well as to others who write “civilly.” These, Black says, have been victimized by a “malignant outburst of Codevilla’s love for psychoanalytic imputations of motives to others,” manifested by my “shock-and-awe carpet-bombing.” Black does not quote me. But, forswearing “animus,” he is surprised that my “virulently accusatory” writings, which I “don’t substantiate,” appear “in reputable places like the Claremont Review and National Review.” Why try to disagree? As Casablanca’s Rick said to Ilsa: “The problems of [such as ourselves] don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” Kissinger’s problems amount to a lot.

Never mind the atomic ayatollahs, it’s a trans/drag girl fight!

Somewhere in Iran, a team of very studious, serious, and likely bespectacled men is working, diligently and tirelessly, to build a nuclear weapon. Perhaps it will be detonated in Jerusalem. Perhaps it will be detonated in New York City, and perhaps these men describe their work, with grim humor, as “the Manhattan project.”

Meanwhile, in Glasgow, the West is not concerned with men strapping on their armor, but about whether some men who strap on wigs and brassieres are offensive to other men who strap on wigs and brassieres. Our Kat Timpf reports that Glasgow’s biggest gay-pride festival banned and then unbanned performances by some drag queens (but only some! A bit more on that in a bit) from its annual march.

Conservatives have much to criticize in President Obama’s deal with Iran on its nuclear program. The agreement allows Iran to operate sophisticated nuclear equipment, keep its suspected weapons labs open, and maintain stockpiles of nuclear material with ample opportunity to manipulate international inspectors. Washington and its allies must lift crippling sanctions and release $150 billion in frozen assets now, while hoping that Iran will refrain from developing an atomic bomb for the next decade.

Some conservatives may argue that Obama is violating the law, too. The Treaty Clause declares that the president “shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.” Instead of following this process, set out in Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, President Obama plans to codify the deal as an executive agreement without the Senate’s supermajority approval. The Iran deal appears to run counter to decades of practice by the elected branches, which have used the Treaty Clause to make almost every significant arms-control agreement, such as the Test Ban Treaty, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the INF, and the START and New START pacts.

The title should be changed to “A Fool’s Life”……rsk

“My last year in office was the most stressful and unpleasant of my life,” writes Jimmy Carter in his new memoir A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety. America’s 39th president hasn’t forgotten the root cause of the problem. “From November 4, 1979 American hostages were held captive by Iranian militants, supported by the Ayatollah Khomeini and his government.” For those who missed the Carter Era (1976-1980) there’s a bit more to it.

“This crisis was of overriding importance to me,” writes Carter, who does not explain that Iran held 52 American hostages for 444 days. He mentions not a single American hostage by name. The Iranian invasion of the U.S. embassy and the taking of the hostages was the clearest act of war against the United States since Pearl Harbor. So what was the response from America’s commander-in-chief?

Watching Trump’s rise, America’s middle class “fed-up crowd” is enjoying the comeuppance of an elite that never pays for the ramifications of its own ideology.

Yeah, I kind of love this guy —->@unsavoryagents [1] Ha ha #LosAngeles [2] violent crime up 26% wake up! #SanctuaryCity [3] pic.twitter.com/4TtvwVWY5C [4]

— RockPrincess (@Rockprincess818) July 10, 2015 [5]

Donald Trump — a former liberal and benefactor of Democrats — is still surging. But his loud New York lingo, popular put-downs of obnoxious reporters and trashing of the D.C. establishment are symptoms, not the catalyst, of the growing popular outrage of lots of angry Americans who are fed up.

The fed-up crowd likes the payback of watching blood sport in an arena where niceties just don’t apply anymore. At least for a while longer, they enjoy the smug getting their comeuppance, as an uncouth, bullheaded Trump charges about, snorting and spearing liberal pieties and more sober and judicious Republicans at random.

Perhaps they don’t see the abjectly crude Trump as any more crude that Barack Obama calmly in academic tones assuring Americans that they all could keep their doctors and health plans when he knew that was simply untrue or announcing to the nation that his own grandmother was a “typical white person” or advising supporters to “get in their face.”

None of my Jewish liberal friends — the few I have left — knows much about the Iran deal. In fact, they know virtually nothing about it. I have not heard one mention it voluntarily and when I have brought it up, keeping it low key to be polite (I have long realized confrontation does no good), they simply ignore what I’m saying or stare blankly as if I never spoke.

I imagine Jewish liberal politicians like Barbara Boxer and Richard Blumenthal are pretty much the same way. Only old Joseph Lieberman seems to have paid any attention and we all know he’s retired.

But then we can hardly blame them. No one seems to know what’s in this deal, not even John Kerry who negotiated it. Or at least they say they don’t.

On a single day, Islamists blew up the Al Sadaq mosque in Kuwait, killing 28, slaughtered 38 tourists on the beach in Tunisia, and beheaded a man in France. Religion of Peace renegades? No at all, just more of the Prophet’s followers heeding his words and example
How often have we heard our political leaders spring to appease Muslims by asserting that, contrary to an ever-growing body of evidence, Islam is a religion of peace? In attempting to avoid antagonising or alienating that minority and preserve the fiction of multicultural amity, “peace” is the first word that comes to their lips when Muslims’loyalty to the state comes into question after an atrocity. Truth is made subservient to compromise.

Dabiq is the glossy, professionally-produced propaganda magazine of ISIS, the self-styled Islamic State. Regularly, it lauds the heroic sacrifices of its suicide bombers, praying that Allah will accept them. It lambasts the campaigns of the “Crusaders” of the West, calling down imprecations from convenient verses of holy writ. Every so often, it publishes a sermon by the Caliph, to inspire and energise the warriors.