The eight years of the Obama Administration represented a dramatic break from the bipartisan foreign policy consensus that had held since World War II: instead of the United States asserting leadership, confronting threats to global piece, and guaranteeing the security of our friends and allies, President Obama placed his faith in multilateralism, international institutions, and in the words of his own administration, “leading from behind” in global crises. The results are evident around the globe as war and chaos engulf Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; anti-democratic forces are resurgent; and Islamic terrorist organizations are emboldened in their efforts to establish a tyrannical Caliphate. In a series of columns and commentaries over the past several years, Herb London has provided an insightful and prescient critique of the Obama Administration’s feckless, even dangerous, foreign policy. This volume collects those works, and combines them into a narrative that not only provides an important history of a president’s failed policies but also shows the incredible challenges facing the United States–and the world–over the coming decade. Leading From Behind is an indispensable resource for students and observers of international affairs.
Like the two prior months, January’s news was dominated by Mr. Trump. While the liberal media is obsessed with his habit of tweeting amid claims of “fake news,” what has been newsworthy is how much has accomplished in the twelve days since inauguration. The new President signed five executive orders in the first five days, nine memorandums, and began to unravel regulatory burdens. He met with the British PM, and corporate and union leaders. It has all been in keeping with his campaign promises.
He froze the hiring of federal employees. He removed the United States from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was not supported by Mrs. Clinton and which was not expected to receive Senate approval. He signed a go-ahead for the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines, projects that had been approved by the State Department, before Mr. Obama, bowing to pressure from rail investors like Warren Buffett and environmental groups, put a stop to them. He canceled federal funding to sanctuary cities. He began to undo some of the mandates required of the Affordable Care Act. And, remembering his promise to “drain the Swamp,” he signed a five-year ban on White House officials becoming lobbyists. He ordered the removal of criminal illegal immigrants. On the last day of the month he nominated Neil Gorsuch of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Colorado to the Supreme Court.
In a controversial move, toward the end of the month, he temporarily suspended immigration from seven terror-prone countries. This aroused resistance, much of it feigned; keep in mind, in 2011 Mr. Obama placed a six-month ban on immigration from Iraq, with no opposition and no crocodile tears. Of the roughly 100,000 people entering the U.S. from overseas every day, 109 were detained during the three days ending last Sunday. All had been released by Monday. The ban, which is for 90 days, applies to seven predominantly Muslim nations – nations cited by the Obama Administration as incubators of terrorism. To put the number of seven countries in perspective, there are fifty-six UN member states who are also members of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation. The decision was not Islamophobiac, theophobic or xenophobic. It was aimed at preventing terrorists from entering the United States – protecting Americans is every President’s primary responsibility. Could the ban have been announced and implemented more effectively? Probably. He could have alerted our partners both at home and abroad, but we should not alert our enemies as to our intentions. Regardless of what he did, Mr. Trump would have been criticized.
The policy positions of Schulz and Merkel on key issues are virtually identical: Both candidates are committed to strengthening the EU, maintaining open-door immigration policies, pursuing multiculturalism and quashing dissent from the so-called far right.
Regardless of who wins, Germany is unlikely to undergo many course corrections during the next four years.
Schulz has already called for tax increases on the wealthy and for fighting the AfD party. He has also threatened financial consequences for European countries that refuse to take in more migrants.
“The chancellor’s office is worried.” – Der Spiegel.
Martin Schulz, the former president of the European Parliament, has been chosen to challenge Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany’s general election on September 24.
The policy positions of Schulz and Merkel on key issues are virtually identical: Both candidates are committed to strengthening the European Union, maintaining open-door immigration policies, pursuing multiculturalism and quashing dissent from the so-called far right.
Time for a changing of the guard? Pictured: Then European Parliament President Martin Schulz meets with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Brussels, January 30, 2012. (Image source: European Parliament)
Polls show Merkel, who heads the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), slightly ahead of Schulz, the new leader of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Regardless of who wins, Germany is unlikely to undergo many course corrections during the next four years.
Diversity becomes a moral end in itself. If all variations of human beings are not present at an event or in an organization, it is seen as prejudiced and discriminating. But this does not apply to members of the majority, who are increasingly not welcome.
The University of Pennsylvania removed a portrait of Shakespeare, on the grounds that Shakespeare is not sufficiently diverse, and replaced it with a portrait of the black lesbian poet, Audre Lorde.
As capitalism is recognized as a cause of inequality, and thus oppression, it must be replaced. These days, progressives do not usually specify what capitalism is to be replaced by, but presumably they are impressed with [irony alert] the great benefits socialism brought to the people of the USSR, Mao’s China, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, North Korea, and Cuba.
Hurt feelings are the “social justice” criteria for what is and what is not allowed. You may not say anything that would hurt someone’s feelings; if you do, you must be punished.
Finally, diversity of opinion in the social justice university is forbidden: opposition to social justice is never reasonable opinion, but evil. Disagreement with the principles of social justice identifies such critics as sexist, racist, homo-lesbo-transphobes, xenophobes, and fascists.
Universities used to be fonts of knowledge, charged with disseminating the known and seeking new knowledge. But progressives have brought great progress to the university: progressives know all the answers, and that the problem is not to understand the world, but to change it.
Welcome to the “social justice” university. Its orientation is expressed by the School of Social Work, at Ryerson University in Toronto:
School of Social Work is a leader in critical education, research and practice with culturally and socially diverse students and communities in the advancement of anti-oppression/anti-racism, anti-Black racism, anti- colonialism/ decolonization, Aboriginal reconciliation, feminism, anti-capitalism, queer and trans liberation struggles, issues in disability and Madness, among other social justice struggles.
Many universities are not as candid as Ryerson, but often their positions are much the same. Many have established “equity and inclusiveness” committees to oversee “just practice,” to disseminate “correct” views through literature, posters, and re-education workshops, in some cases mandatory. They also sanction faculty members who express unacceptable views. Schools of education ensure that their graduates will be inculcating their school pupils in the principles of “social justice,” and in identifying the deplorable “multiphobes” in their families and communities. American schoolchildren have been taught by teachers determined to discredit America, that slavery was an American invention and existed exclusively in America — a staggeringly counter-factual account.
What do progressives intend under the label of “social justice”? What theories and policies have they made the central task of the university to advance?
The first goal to be advanced is equality, by which they mean equality of result, as opposed to equality of opportunity — which is often inadequate and needs to be addressed. Thus, to advance economic equality, progressives advocate redistribution of wealth, taking money from those who have it and giving it to preferred others. (“The problem with socialism,” as the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher pointed out, “is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.”)
Progressives also recognize that equality of result contradicts individual freedom, and that individual freedom will have to be suppressed supposedly for the collective good. Coercion is necessary to enforce social justice goals. A social justice friend recently argued that cars should be replaced by public transport, and that people should live in central cities rather than suburbs. When it was pointed out that housing and transport choices indicated North Americans seem to have a strong preference for suburbs, and that they prefer driving cars to taking public transport, he replied that they will have to be forced to live in cities and use public transport. This is an actual the plan of the United Nations, known as Agenda 21.
According to a recent public statement by the HDP, 1478 Kurdish politicians — including 78 democratically-elected mayors — have been arrested since July 2016.
The co-heads of the HDP party, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksektas, are also in jail. Prosecutors seek up to 142 years in jail for Demirtas and up to 83 years in jail for Yuksekdag. One of the charges directed to Demirtas is “managing a terrorist organization.”
According to a recent report by Turkey’s Platform for Independent Journalism (P24), 151 individuals are in prison for being journalists or for being employed in the news media. Dozens of TV stations, news agencies, newspapers, magazines, and radio stations have been closed down by the Turkish government.
In Turkey, it seems, ISIS members are freer than journalists and peaceful, democratically-elected Kurdish politicians.
According to the Turkish ministry of justice, only seven members of the Islamic State (ISIS) have been convicted of crimes and jailed in Turkey in the last year and a half.
The data was made public when Bekir Bozdag, the Turkish justice minister, was asked in Turkey’s parliament the number of ISIS convicts in Turkish jails.
One of the many ISIS members in Turkey that has been released by Turkish courts is Abdulsamet C., arrested on September 2 of last year on charges of being a member of a terrorist organization.
Abdulsamet C. confessed that he had travelled to Syria to join ISIS in 2014. He added that an Azeri man with the code-name “Ammar”, who spread ISIS propaganda in an Istanbul mosque, provided him with contact information that enabled him to go to the Turkish city of Gaziantep, through which he entered Syria, where he joined ISIS.
Abdulsamet C. said that he went to the Syrian town of Jarabulus with a group of people, received religious education in the town of Manbij for a month, and then traveled around to Iraq and Syria before returning to Turkey in July 2015.
Seeking to benefit from the “Active Repentance Law,” he was released by a Turkish court on probation. Yet he continued to be in contact with ISIS even after returning to the Umraniye neighborhood in Istanbul, where his family resides.
An indictment drafted for Abdulsamet C. by the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office includes evidence showing his connections with ISIS, such as banners, photographs, videos and songs. During a raid on Abdulsamet C.’s house, police also found a book entitled, “44 Ways of Supporting Jihad,” which is banned in Turkey.
Despite all the evidence at hand, Abdulsamet C. was released by an Istanbul court on probation on the grounds that he has a permanent residence in Istanbul. The newspaper Hurriyet contacted the lawyer of the ISIS member, who said he was surprised at the release of his client.
The interviewer seemed shocked to hear that I do not have any Arab or Muslim friends who are protesting President Trump’s ban, and that many immigrants of Islamic origin support the ban and are fed up and embarrassed by what jihadists are doing.
The lesson America needs to know is that the West is not doing Muslims a favor by constantly treating them as children who should be shielded from reality. They hungry for the truth: that their educational system and mosque preaching are full of incitement, are abhorrent, hate-filled and the foundation upon which violent jihad is built.
Muslims need to know that the world does indeed have a justifiable and legitimate concern about Islam and actions done in the name of Islam by Muslims.
Muslims need to look at themselves in the mirror and see the world from the point of view of their victims. Instead, the West is sacrificing its culture, values, laws, pride and even self-respect.
It might compassion that leads the West to take in millions of Muslim refugees but it is reckless compassion. Do Westerners question the motivation of Islamic theocracies as to why ultra-rich Arab nations are sending us their refugees but taking in none?
Some “tough love” is urgently needed if Muslims are to be motivated to change and reform.
Early this morning an Arabic radio station in the Middle East called asking my opinion about President Trump’s ban on refugees and citizens of seven Muslim nations. The radio host, who sounded angry over the ban, was a Christian Arab. She was surprised to hear that I supported the ban and think that it should have taken place the day after 9/11.
She then asked me if I knew any Arab American activist who was against the ban because she wanted to interview someone against the ban. She seemed shocked to hear that I do not have any Arab or Muslim friends who are protesting the ban, and that many immigrants of Islamic and Middle East origin support the ban and are fed up and embarrassed by what jihadists are doing.
She said that all she sees on CNN and other channels are riots that portray almost all Americans supporting Muslims and against Trump. I am upset over the success of the leftist propaganda all over the Middle East. It brings back memories of the life of the hate indoctrination and misinformation I lived under for most of my life.
The 2008 Holy Land Relief terrorism funding criminal trial resulted in multiple convictions and was touted as the one of the largest terrorism financing trials in American history. Expectations were high that the 2008 trial would be followed by further trials involving the listed unindicted co-conspirators such as CAIR USA and the Islamic Society of North America.
However, with the appointment of Eric Holder as the U.S. Attorney General in 2009, all further actions on this file appear to have been frozen. Holder would later speak at a conference supporting one of the unindicted co-conspirators.
It is not clear if the ongoing criminal investigation focuses only on those individuals leading IRFAN at the time of its delisting as a charity and listing as a terrorism entity, or if the investigation also includes those who helped found IRFAN. This may be an important distinction, as the Canada Revenue Agency stated that IRFAN was deliberately created and designed to circumvent Canadian terrorism-funding rules.
It appears possible that the Trump Administration will crack down on Islamist extremist groups in the USA. This would likely have a spill-over effect into Canada and Europe, though greater attention to border security and issues of funding terrorism.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz last week submitted legislation to designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a Terrorist Organization.
Cruz (R-TX) earlier had a bill in the Senate which would not only ban the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. but also three of its front groups: Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) USA, Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). These American-based front groups have corresponding chapters or organizations in Canada as well.
Muslim Brotherhood front organizations and their members have an ongoing problem with criminal activity, terrorism-funding activities and overall negative relations with legal authorities. These problems range from being listed as terrorist groups, being charged for weapons possession and an even an arrest for alleged sexual charges involving a 12-year-old girl. Several of the charges are consistent with the extremist nature of the Muslim Brotherhood itself, given its commitment to violent political change. Both criminal investigations and terrorism listings in North America, for instance, have been directly related to terrorism funding for Hamas, itself a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Irresponsible incendiary rhetoric spewed by politicians and members of the media, in reaction to the executive order signed by President Trump to temporarily suspend the entry of aliens from a limited number of countries that are associated with terrorism, from entering the United States irrespective of whether they had been issued visas, has fired up throngs of demonstrators in New York City and elsewhere.
President Trump began his executive order by noting how failures of the immigration system enabled terrorists to carry out the murder of 3,000 innocent people in the United States on 9/11.
The 9/11 Commission was crystal clear about the ways that failures of the immigration system enabled not only the 9/11 terrorists, but others, to enter the United States and embed themselves as they went about their deadly preparation. We have seen similar attacks in the years since as I noted in my article, “Reflections On 9/11’S Vulernabilities.”
The report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel – Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.” began with this first paragraph:
It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.
That report should be required reading for all journalists and politicians.
Trump’s action is not without precedent.
The Obama Administration Stopped Processing Iraq Refugee Requests For 6 Months In 2011.
In 1980 then-President Jimmy Carter banned citizens of Iran from entering the United States as the Washington Post reported on April 9, 1980, “Carter’s Visa Crackdown Won’t Hurt Immediately.”
On February 24, 1998, just two days shy of the fifth anniversary of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the U.S. Senate’s Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information conducted a hearing on the topic, “Foreign terrorists in America : five years after the World Trade Center.”
At that hearing Senator Dianne Feinstein hammered failures of the immigration system more than three years before the attacks of September 11, 2001. Her testimony included this statement:
I am also concerned that we need to strengthen further our immigration laws and procedures to counter foreign terrorist operations. I have grave reservations regarding the practice of issuing visas to terrorist supporting countries and INS’ inability to track those who come into the country either using a student visa or using fraudulent documents through the Visa Waiver Pilot Program.
What Trump has learned that his opponents haven’t.
Is US President Donald Trump the new Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Does his immigration policy mimic Roosevelt’s by adopting a callous, bigoted position on would-be asylum seekers from the Muslim world? At a press conference on June 5, 1940, Roosevelt gave an unspeakably cynical justification for his administration’s refusal to permit the desperate Jews of Nazi Germany to enter the US.
In Roosevelt’s words, “Among the refugees [from Germany], there are some spies… And not all of them are voluntary spies – it is rather a horrible story but in some of the other countries that refugees out of Germany have gone to, especially Jewish refugees, they found a number of definitely proven spies.”
The current media and left-wing uproar over the executive order US President Donald Trump signed on Saturday which enacts a temporary ban on entry to the US of nationals from seven Muslim majority countries is extraordinary on many levels. But one that stands out is the fact that opponents of Trump’s move insist that Trump is reenacting the bigoted immigration policies the US maintained throughout the Holocaust.
The first thing that is important to understand about Trump’s order is that it did not come out of nowhere. It is based on the policies of his predecessor Barack Obama. Trump’s move is an attempt to correct the strategic and moral deficiencies of Obama’s policies – deficiencies that empower bigots and fascists while disenfranchising and imperiling their victims.
Trump’s order is based on the 2015 Terrorist Travel Prevention Act. As White House spokesman Sean Spicer noted in an interview with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz Sunday, the seven states targeted by Trump’s temporary ban – Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Iran, Libya, Yemen and Somalia – were not chosen by Trump.
They were identified as uniquely problematic and in need of specific, harsher vetting policies for refugee applications by former US president Barack Obama.
In Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, the recognized governments lack control over large swaths of territory.
As a consequence, they are unable to conclude immigration vetting protocols with the US. As others have noted, unlike these governments, Turkish, Saudi Arabian and Egyptian officials have concluded and implement severe and detailed visa vetting protocols with US immigration officials.
Immigrants from Somalia have carried out terrorist attacks in the US. Clearly there is a problem with vetting procedures in relation to that jihad-plagued failed state.
Finally, the regimes in Sudan and Iran are state sponsors of terrorism. As such, the regimes clearly cannot be trusted to properly report the status of visa applicants.
In other words, the one thing that the seven states have in common is that the US has no official counterpart in any of them as it seeks to vet nationals from those states seeking to enter its territory. So the US must adopt specific, unilateral vetting policies for each of them.
Now that we know the reason the Obama administration concluded that visa applicants from these seven states require specific vetting, we arrive at the question of whether Trump’s order will improve the outcome of that vetting from both a strategic and moral perspective.
The new executive order requires the relevant federal agencies and departments to review the current immigration practices in order to ensure two things.
First, that immigrants from these and other states are not enemies of the US. And second, to ensure that those that do enter the US are people who need protection.
President Trump has nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch, 49, to fill the Supreme Court seat held by Justice Antonin Scalia until he passed away last February. In announcing the nomination, President Trump said, “Judge Gorsuch has outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind, tremendous discipline and has earned bipartisan support.” President Trump added that Judge Gorsuch was “the man our country needs and needs badly to ensure the rule of law and the rule of justice.”
Judge Gorsuch was a Marshall Scholar at the University of Oxford, a Harvard Law School graduate, and a clerk for Supreme Court Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy. He served in a high-ranking position in the Justice Department before he was nominated by former President George W. Bush and confirmed by voice vote in the Senate for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in 2006.
Judge Gorsuch shares Justice Scalia’s originalist legal philosophy. Like Justice Scalia did throughout his judicial career, Judge Gorsuch seeks to interpret the Constitution through strict construction of its text and an understanding of the Founding Fathers’ original intent.
“The great project of Justice Scalia’s career was to remind us of the differences between judges and legislators,” Judge Gorsuch remarked at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland. He said that judges should refrain from imposing their own moral predilections in their decisions. Instead, they should use “text, structure and history” in their interpretations of the law. Legislators “may appeal to their own moral convictions and to claims about social utility to reshape the law as they think it should be in the future,” Judge Gorsuch said. However, “judges should do none of these things in a democratic society.”
As Judge Gorsuch put it in one of his opinions, judges should “apply the law as it is, not as they wish it to be.”
It is this approach, as reflected in his opinions, which explains Judge Gorsuch’s ranking near the top of the so-called “Scalia Index,” created by some legal academics, to analyze who would be likely to best follow in Justice Scalia’s footsteps.
