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July 2017

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A New Fantasy of Power By Eileen F. Toplansky

By on July 7th, 2017

In his book titled Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary, editor Steven R. Weisman cites an October 5, 1973 letter of Moynihan’s affirming that

[Norman] Podhoretz is at the height of his form. He has it. He knows what has been going on in America since 1932 when Edmund Wilson, becoming Marxist, exulting in the Depression, pronounced that ‘we now have a chance to take our country away from the businessmen who took it from us.’ A score from Walden time, now to be settled, because the normal sources of strength of the republic had been shaken. A fantasy of power. So the 1960s. The radicalization of the intellectual community was not a response to a new perception of evils of bourgeois society, but a response to a new fantasy of power . . . .

The issues of ‘poverty,’ ‘war,’ ‘racism,’ were manipulated by intellectuals to establish their new politics. He is right. The main political values of the American intellectual community are anti-democratic or non-democratic [.] The armies of youth of the 1960s were commanded.

Fast forward 44 years later and Matthew Vadum explains how sharia-supremacists collaborate with Leftists to destroy the United States. He lays out the information in Volume 10 of the Civilization Jihad Reader Series from the Center for Security Policy.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President and CEO of the Center writes in the foreword that “the jihadists’ success… owe much to the decades-long march of cultural Marxism through the key pillars of American society: academia, faith communities, government (especially national security), law enforcement, and media.”

It is clear that Hollywood leftists have long displayed intentional ignorance of the crimes of Communist and Muslim regimes, as noted by Norman Berdichevsky in his 2013 article at the New English Review.

How is it, though, that two seemingly opposing groups could come together? It is because “communists, leftists and progressive operatives see Judeo-Christian principles as a force for ill in the world” and want them eliminated. Likewise, jihadists have vowed to destroy Western civilization. Consequently, “this shared antipathy to the traditional religious values that inspired and nurtured Western civilization, allow Islam and the left to make common cause.”

This Red-Green axis was strengthened as America’s Intelligence Community’s ability to “protect against propaganda whether of the communist or taqiyya varieties” has been severely weakened.

The real story of Russian influence into our world is routinely overlooked. Yet the “ties between Western leftists and jihadists who were recruited, trained and, in some cases… managed by the Soviet Union and the KGB has led to a decades-long collaboration that for too long operated mostly in the shadows.” Declassified information like the Mitrokhin Archive and the Venona Papers have “illuminated how communist agents stoked the flames of Islamic terrorism and infiltrated deeply inside the ranks of the U.S. government.”

Thus, America finds itself confronting “cultural Marxists and jihadis now working hand-in-hand to demean our culture, destroy the nuclear family, trash the nation’s heritage and undermine non-Muslim religious communities.” And this is being underwritten by the “left’s wealthy donors and foundations.” Their “shared loathing for America” and the Constitution has resulted in millions of dollars going towards weakening America.

Specifically, Matthew Vadum highlights the following by which the Red-Green Axis works to weaken American resolve.

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Trump Provokes CNN’s Self-Immolation, America Relieved By Roger Kimball

By on July 7th, 2017

A couple of weeks ago in this space, I speculated that CNN, the Crackpot News Network, had reached the terminal stage of malevolent implausibility. “[I]t would be a good thing,” I wrote, “were CNN humiliated and sued out of existence. It performs no journalistic function, merely a destructively partisan one.”https://amgreatness.com/2017/07/05/trump-provokes-cnns-self-immolation-america-relieved/

As usual, I was too kind. CNN will not have to be sued out of existence, as Gawker Media, another disgusting purveyor of malicious gossip and fake news, was a year or so back. No, CNN seems to be performing a species of hara-kiri or seppuku in public.

Actually, CNN’s behavior is closer to the behaviour of the fanatic Naphta in his duel with the suave humanist Settembrini in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. The two antagonists confront each other, pistols in hand. Settembrini calmly delopes; Naphta screams “You coward!” and shoots himself in the head. Everyone is happier.

Several people have suggested to me that the whole travel ban drama, in which Trump’s legally formed and disseminated executive order was stomped upon by a couple of grandstanding district judges run amok, was actually a cunning plan™ devised by Democrats. The idea, the hope, was that Trump would be so enraged by the obvious affront to his constitutional authority that he would overreact, do something legally culpable, and thus give his enemies grounds to call for his impeachment.

It didn’t work. Trump did issue his ill-formed “so-called judge” tweet, but beyond that, he sat back, fumed, and let his lawyers loose on the preposterous temporary restraining orders. Last week, the Supreme Court vindicated Trump (more or less), allowing a modified version of the travel bans to proceed (which they did as of last Thursday).

But two can play at the provoke-your-enemy-into-doing-something-stupid strategy. The media keep telling us how thin-skinned and volatile Donald Trump is. Just about everybody wishes he would Tweet less and enjoy it more. But when it comes to the art of provocation, Trump is a Supreme Galactic Master and the media are weenie pikers.

The media wheeled out Kathy Griffin, whose infamous photo shoot featured her holding a bloody severed head in Trump’s likeness. They deployed foul-mouth pundits who, like grubby, ill-bred school boys, emitted various scatalogical epithets about the president of the United States. They published fantastical stories about alleged connections between Trump surrogates and “the Russians,” but then walk them back or, in the case of the latest libel, publically disown the story, scrub it from the Internet, and fire the three senior employees responsible for its writing and publication.

When the avid Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson goes on a hunting expedition against Republican congressmen, shooting several, the media blame Republicans for creating a “climate of hate.” (One Democratic official was recorded saying he hoped Rep. Steve Scalise [R-La.], the most seriously injured, would die.)

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Trump’s Defining Speech In Poland, he asks the West to defend its values of faith and freedom.

By on July 7th, 2017

The White House description of Donald Trump’s speech Thursday in Warsaw was simply, “Remarks by President Trump to the People of Poland.” In truth, Mr. Trump’s remarks were directed at the people of the world. Six months into his first term of office, Mr. Trump finally offered the core of what could become a governing philosophy. It is a determined and affirmative defense of the Western tradition.

To be sure, Mr. Trump’s speech also contained several pointed and welcome foreign-policy statements. He assured Poland it would not be held hostage to a single supplier of energy, meaning Russia. He exhorted Russia to stop destabilizing Ukraine “and elsewhere,” to stop supporting Syria and Iran and “instead join the community of responsible nations.” He explicitly committed to NATO’s Article 5 on mutual defense.

But—and this shocked Washington—the speech aimed higher. Like the best presidential speeches, it contained affirmations of ideas and principles and related them to the current political moment. “Americans, Poles and the nations of Europe value individual freedom and sovereignty,” he said. This was more than a speech, though. It was an argument. One might even call it an apologia for the West.

Mr. Trump built his argument out of Poland’s place in the history of the West, both as a source of its culture—Copernicus, Chopin—and as a physical and spiritual battlefield, especially during World War II. The word Mr. Trump came back to repeatedly to define this experience was “threat.”

During and after the war, Poland survived threats to its existence from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Mr. Trump believes that the West today confronts threats of a different sort, threats both physical and cultural. “This continent,” said Mr. Trump, “no longer confronts the specter of communism. But today we’re in the West, and we have to say there are dire threats to our security and to our way of life.”

He identified the most immediate security threat as an “oppressive ideology.” He was talking about radical Islam, but it is worth noting that he never mentioned radical Islam or Islamic State. Instead, he described the recent commitment by Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations to combat an ideological menace that threatens the world with terrorism. He compared this idea of mutual defense to the alliance of free nations that defeated Nazism and communism.

But the speech’s most provocative argument was about our way of life. It came when he described how a million Poles stood with Pope John Paul II in Victory Square in 1979 to resist Soviet rule by chanting, “We want God!”

“With that powerful declaration of who you are,” Mr. Trump said, “you came to understand what to do and how to live.”

This is a warning to the West and a call to action. By remembering the Poles’ invocation of God, Mr. Trump is clearly aligning himself with the same warning issued to Europe some years ago by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict.

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Washington’s Leak Mob Trying to topple Trump, current and ex-officials damage national security. By Kimberley A. Strassel

By on July 7th, 2017

Today’s Washington is overrun by two kinds of crimes.

The first is the still-speculative kind, which the Washington press corps obsesses over— Trump -Russia collusion, obstruction of justice—despite no evidence of its existence. By all accounts, special counsel Robert Mueller’s growing team of Democratic lawyers intends to devote itself to this fiction.

Yet if Mr. Mueller were serious about bringing down a threat to the nation, or even carving himself a place in history, he’d be tackling the second kind of crime, the real kind. These are the crimes that occur constantly and actually harm national security, even if they’re routinely ignored by a self-interested media. We are talking of course about the serial leaking of sensitive information, the daily profession of a new government elite akin to an organized crime network.

Lucky for Mr. Mueller, he doesn’t even need his army of legal investigators to get an immediate handle on this mafia. He can instead stroll down to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. That’s the purview of Sen. Ron Johnson, who keeps dogged oversight of government among his many self-set tasks.

That mission resulted this week in a shocking staff analysis of the recent deluge of secret-spilling, and the manner in which these unauthorized disclosures are harming national security. It’s the first congressional scrutiny of the leaks—and notable for its straight-up nature. This is no partisan document. It’s a bloodless accounting of a national-security failure, perpetrated by dozens of government employees willfully breaking the law.

The first 126 days of the Trump administration featured 125 stories that leaked harmful information. Just under one a day. The committee staff judged the stories against a 2009 Barack Obama executive order that laid out what counted as information likely to damage national security. And as it chose to not include borderline leaks or “palace intrigue” stories, that number is an understatement.

For reference, the first 126 days of the Obama term featured 18 stories that met the criteria. Ten of those were actually leaks about George W. Bush’s “torture memo,” which Mr. Obama released.

The Trump leaks show the sweeping nature of this enterprise, coming as they have from “U.S. officials,” “former U.S. officials,” “senior U.S. officials,” “intelligence officials,” “national security officials,” “Justice Department officials,” “defense officials” and “law-enforcement officials.” One story cited more than two dozen anonymous sources. Alarmingly, the titles, and the nature of the information disclosed, indicate that many leaks are coming directly from the U.S. intelligence community.

What’s been disclosed? The contents of wiretapped information. The names of individuals the U.S. monitors, and where they are located. The communications channels used to monitor targets. Which agencies are monitoring. Intelligence intercepts. FBI interviews. Grand jury subpoenas. Secret surveillance-court details. Internal discussions. Military operations intelligence. The contents of the president’s calls with foreign leaders. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Madmen and Nukes: North Korean Edition By Brandon J. Weichert

By on July 7th, 2017

The North Koreans put on their own pyrotechnic display over the July 4th weekend with a successful launch of an ICBM into the Sea of Japan. With a working ICBM, Kim Jong-Un’s regime is now capable of reaching Alaska. If they continue testing and learning from their previous launch, it is only a matter of time before the North Koreans could strike any major American city.https://amgreatness.com/2017/07/06/madmen-nukes-north-korean-edition/

Time is all that stands in the way between Kim and the ability to incinerate Los Angeles or Chicago or New York. It wasn’t that long ago the North didn’t have nukes at all.

In 1994, the Clinton Administration wanted to strike a nuclear reactor in Yongbyon to prevent the North Koreans from recovering the raw materials necessary for making nuclear bombs. However, after looking at his options—the costs, both in terms of lives and treasure, that another Korean war would incur—former President Clinton chose to create a multilateral framework that would encourage the North to abandon its nuclear weapons program in exchange for Western concessions.

The North’s demand was simple: if the United States did not want to see a nuclear-armed North Korea, they had to pay the Kim regime not to develop nukes.

The international community happily agreed. As it is with most blackmailers, however, paying the ransom only encouraged them to double down on bad behavior. The only difference in this instance was that the international community became complacent about the threat that North Korea posed because an “agreement” had been reached.

Meanwhile, the North Koreans took the blackmail money and invested it in their military—including their nuclear program—and in a program of enriching the corrupt members of the regime. They then systematically raised the stakes on the international community.

From George W. Bush to Barack Obama, different combinations of carrots-and-sticks were paraded in front of the North Koreans in an attempt to stabilize relations and bring security and stability to the Korean Peninsula. Each time, the Kim Regime was unfazed. Indeed, in spite of sanctions, the North Koreans successfully tested a nuclear weapon in 2006. So, whether you’re Hillary Clinton demanding that Trump replicate her husband’s schemes from 1994, or if you’re Elliot Abrams insisting that Trump reinstitute the George W. Bush-era sanctions regime, you’re making an argument that—however different in particulars—is the same in its level of utter ineffectiveness. .

Over the last two decades, the North has become the hub of international criminal schemes, a critical point in the global human trafficking system; it has suborned international terrorism; and more importantly, it has become a major player in a global, illicit network of nuclear proliferation. On the international stage, North Korea’s nuclear shenanigans are protected by the Chinese and the Russians. The primary beneficiaries of all this are other rogue states, such as Iran. Clearly, this is not the kind of regime with which Americans should feel comfortable in the knowledge that it possesses nuclear weapons.

Many (until recently, myself included) had hoped China would apply pressure to goad Pyongyang into being more cooperative. It’s clear now that China won’t lift a finger to help (though Beijing will happily string the United States along, so the Chinese can extract more concessions from us). China fears what would happen if the Kim regime collapsed: their worst nightmare is for a human tidal wave of North Korean refugees to swamp their borders and destabilize their country. Plus, the Chinese historically favor “stability” above all else. They cannot be relied upon. And, now with Russia getting involved on behalf of North Korea, there is little hope for an international settlement on this issue. The autocrats will have each other’s backs.

Pyongyang has paid close attention to what has happened to similar autocratic dictatorships around the world that did not possess nuclear arms: America toppled them. Whether speaking about Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi, a lack of nuclear arms makes such regimes susceptible to being overthrown by the United States. Meanwhile, similar regimes that may have nuclear arms—such as Iran—are given a wide berth by the United States.

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‘Collusion’ as Farce: The Hunt for Hillary’s Hackers By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on July 7th, 2017

Do you know what federal prosecutors do when a thief brings the FBI incriminating documents that he has swiped from his victim’s home?

They use the documents to convict the victim.https://amgreatness.com/2017/07/06/collusion-farce-hunt-hillarys-hackers/
And they would use such stolen evidence to convict the victim even if the thief were a hacker. Even if the thief were a hacker from Russia!

If you find such government behavior unseemly, the New York Times will really give you the heebie-jeebies. The Paper of Record, as we shall see, would not only use stolen information; it would encourage the theft—arguably, a felony violation of federal law.

Once you grasp this, you get a sense of what drivel is the Hunt for Hillary’s Hackers, the latest Russia molehill that the Trump-deranged have fantasized into Mount Elbrus. Served up by the Wall Street Journal, it is the tale of a now-deceased Republican activist’s quest for the 33,000 emails former Secretary of State Clinton hoarded on a private server and attempted to destroy, in violation of various federal laws.

The heavy breathing belies a principle that should come as no surprise to journalists, as it is their bread and butter. As long as one is not complicit in a theft and has no fiduciary obligation to the victim, he is permitted to exploit stolen information that he chances upon.

Under the Fourth Amendment, for example, you are protected from the prosecutor’s use against you of evidence the government’s own agents have unlawfully seized from you; you have no protection, though, from a prosecutor’s using against you evidence stolen from you by some non-government actor—as long as the government was not a participant in the theft.

To be sure, federal and state laws exist that bar trafficking in stolen property. They are tough to enforce, however, due to difficulties in proving the receiver’s knowledge that the property was stolen (and, in most jurisdictions, assessing the property’s value). These laws, moreover, are geared toward fencers of stolen goods for profit. They are largely irrelevant in the realms of law-enforcement, media, and politics, where what matters is the information value, not the acquisition and sale of stolen items.

It is worth noting, then, that there was a time, not so long ago, when one might have thought the Wall Street Journal would be more interested in finding Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails than in identifying others who were looking for them.

The Journal’s story is yet another moving of the collusion goalpost. Remember (though doing so gets more and more difficult): the original allegation was that the Trump campaign conspired with the Putin regime to steal the 2016 election. There is no evidence of this—Russia did not steal the election, and Trump did not conspire with the Kremlin. So, the story shifted to the studiously vaporous claim that 1) Russia tried to “influence” the election—basically, by putting out information that was true but embarrassing to Democrats; and 2) Trump must have “colluded” in this effort because . . . well . . . because.

The problem for “collusion” is twofold. The embarrassing information in question (emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta), while interesting to political wonks, had no impact on the public, the vast majority of whom have no idea what a John Podesta is. More importantly, there is neither evidence nor commonsense reason to believe that Putin involved Trump in his shenanigans.

Thus, the narrative is morphing from “collusion” into “obstruction”—a half-baked accusation based on actions that were within Trump’s lawful discretion and defensible on the merits (viz., recommending against the prosecution of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and dismissing FBI Director James Comey). The obstruction narrative reportedly has its own rabbit holes: suppositions about bribery, money laundering, and who knows what else wishful thinking will conjure up.

As the saga lumbers toward its final Mueller ex machina, the trick for the anti-Trump camp is to keep the Russia theme alive with new disclosures that are sensational (or at least sensationalized)—all the while hoping no one notices that each new disclosure makes the original “steal the election” allegation increasingly implausible.

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Zimbabwe’s Freedom Pastor Evan Mawarire, the anti-Mugabe By Jay Nordlinger

By on July 6th, 2017

One day last year, Evan Mawarire was feeling very low. He had just turned 39 — and he considered himself a failure. He had a wife and two children, which was great. And there was a third child on the way — also great. But Mawarire could barely make ends meet.

The family was living hand to mouth. Mawarire could not afford school fees for the children. He owned no home of his own. Prospects seemed negligible.

“I was dejected and frustrated,” Mawarire says, “but also, for the first time in a long time, I was angry.”

That was April 19. The 18th had been Zimbabwe’s independence day. And on the 19th, Mawarire sat down and made a four-minute video, with the Zimbabwean flag wrapped around his neck.

That flag is a colorful one. And all the colors have meanings. For example, red is supposed to stand for the blood that patriots shed in the liberation effort. But what would those patriots say about Zimbabwe now? What had they died for? That’s the kind of thing Mawarire asked in his video.

At the end of it, he asked Zimbabweans to stand up: for themselves, for their flag, and for their country.

He hesitated to post this video, naturally: He lives in a dictatorship. He knew the video could get him into big trouble. But post it he did, around midnight. After a hard, emotional day, he went to bed.

The next morning, he received a call from a friend, who had unexpected news: The video was going viral. It had struck a nerve among Zimbabweans. And it would lead to a democracy movement that travels under a hashtag, #ThisFlag.

Evan Mawarire does not see himself as a political leader. “I’m someone who has been able to express the views, the frustrations, and the hopes of an oppressed population.” But others see him as a political leader, including the regime. “I didn’t find it,” says Mawarire, of politics. “It found me.”

A word about pronunciation. That name is pronounced “Mah-wah-REER-ay.” And his first name, interestingly enough, is pronounced “Ee-VAHN” (though he also answers to the familiar “EH-vin”).

He was born in 1977, during the final days of Rhodesia. He spent his early childhood in a ghetto of Salisbury, the capital city (now Harare). In 1980, when independence came, Robert Mugabe took power. He still has it, 37 years later.

At 93, he is one of the oldest men ever to rule a country. Next year, there will be another of those sham elections that dictators sometimes feel the need of holding. Mugabe will run. If he dies, his wife has said, the ruling party will run his corpse.

Mawarire was brought up in a Christian home. His parents were civil servants. Evan worked in business for a while. But he also worked at church, teaching Sunday school and the like. And he found this much more fulfilling. “So I decided I would give my life to pastoring,” he says. He quit his job, went to Bible school, and indeed became a pastor. That was 15 years ago.

When he made his “flag” video, he did not stop there: He made 25 more videos, one a day from May 1 to May 25, which is Africa Day on the continent. Mawarire wanted Zimbabweans to think, “What kind of African nation do we wish to be?” In those videos, he discussed the various problems of Zimbabwe.

And he continued to strike nerves. The democracy movement grew. Mawarire’s repeated message was, It’s up to us to save ourselves. No one’s going to swoop in and help us. We have to claim our own country.

He tells me that, year after year, he watched rigged elections. “And I always yearned for someone to come to our rescue: regional powers, or the African Union, or the United Nations. But there is so much happening across the world, there is no one to listen to your own troubles. We have to rescue ourselves.”

Mawarire and his movement have a slogan: “If we cannot cause the politician to change, then we must inspire the citizen to be bold.”

Zimbabwe is in desperate shape — it is desperately poor. Unemployment is something like 95 percent. And more than half the population is under the age of 25. Silvanos Mudzvova has something funny to say, regarding this mass joblessness.

He is a Zimbabwean actor, playwright, and activist. He is also a guest of the Oslo Freedom Forum, as is Pastor Mawarire. (It is in Oslo that I talk with Mawarire.) In Zimbabwe, Mudzvova used theater as a form of protest. In a country where nobody’s working, he quips, “you are assured of an audience within minutes.”

They arrested him many, many times — so many times, he lost count. Finally, they tortured him almost to death, leaving him paralyzed on one side. Mudzvova now lives in exile, in Britain.

Last July 6, there was a mass protest in Zimbabwe. And, six days later, Evan Mawarire was arrested. The charge was incitement to violence. What happened next, as people have noted, is straight out of a movie.

The courthouse for Mawarire’s hearing was packed to the rafters. People were singing: worship songs, church songs. Outside, there were thousands of people, also singing. Mawarire could hear it from his prison cell. The young guards were amazed: They had never seen anything like it, and neither had anyone else.

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The Canadian Terrorist Who Killed a U.S. Soldier Has Been Awarded $8 Million Omar Khadr has been awarded millions in compensation for his alleged mistreatment while imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. By Elliot Kaufman

By on July 6th, 2017

Omar Khadr has been tremendously lucky, all things considered. In July 2002, he killed U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer, a medic, with a hand grenade. The grenade also injured Sergeant Layne Morris, costing him an eye. Luckily for Khadr, however, another American medic saved Khadr’s life — all while working next to the corpse of his slain comrade.

Now, just 15 years later, Khadr, a Canadian citizen, will be awarded roughly $8 million ($10.5 million in Canadian dollars) and an apology from the Canadian government in a settlement negotiated with Khadr’s lawyers. The money is in compensation for Canada’s cooperation with his American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. Sergeant Layne and Sergeant Speer’s widow, Tabitha, have yet to receive a penny.

“Odious. Confessed terrorist who assembled & planted the same kind of IEDs [improvised explosive devices] that killed 97 Canadians to be given $10-million by Justin Trudeau,” Jason Kenney, a former Conservative-party minister, tweeted. Many in Canada feel the same way.

They are right to. This agreement is, on its face, unjust. Khadr was a terrorist, acting in violation of the laws of war. Then, in his apotheosis, surrounded and clearly defeated by American troops, Khadr still chose to lob that grenade. In fact, he pled guilty to doing so in 2010 before a U.S. military commission. You can even watch a video, made by Khadr and his terrorist buddies, of Khadr constructing the type of IEDs that killed so many Western troops.

But the story gets more complicated. Khadr was only 15 years old when he killed one U.S. soldier and blinded another. Born into an extremist family, Khadr is the son of a financier and associate of al-Qaeda. As a boy, Omar once stayed in Osama bin Laden’s house. He went on to be the youngest prisoner in Guantanamo. Khadr also claims that his confession at Guantanamo was coerced, and that he does not know if he threw the grenade.

In 2003, Canadian intelligence obtained evidence from Khadr in Guantanamo and shared it with U.S. officials. According to the supreme court of Canada, this evidence was obtained under “oppressive circumstances.” Canada’s (and, by extension, America’s) actions constituted a failure to uphold the “principles of fundamental justice,” according to the Canadian court.

It is likely that Khadr was mistreated at Guantanamo. It is also likely that the Canadian government failed in its obligation to protect the rights of its citizen, even if that citizen was fighting in Afghanistan against Canada and its allies. Perhaps this made some form of compensation for this failure inevitable. But that doesn’t make the situation right.

Omar Khadr has claimed that he will show Canada he is now a “good person.” If he is a man of his word, he will give his millions to the victims of his crimes. His “youthful indiscretions,” after all, were not like yours or mine; he likely killed a man and blinded another, taking up arms in adherence to a vicious ideology. No matter what Khadr went through, Sergeant Morris and Tabitha Speer are far more deserving of compensation. Now working toward a nursing degree in Edmonton, Alberta, Khadr will be just fine. Indeed, he is lucky (and indebted to American soldiers) just to be alive. But for his victims and their survivors, life cannot simply “go on.”

If Khadr will not do the right thing and give up the money, it should be taken from him. In 2015, an American judge granted Morris and Speer’s widow $134.2 million in damages for their losses. At the time, however, Khadr was penniless. No collection ever happened. Now that Khadr is flush with the Canadian government’s cash, collection should proceed apace. An application has already been filed to that end, but it will require the cooperation of Canadian courts.

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Lord Ismay, NATO, and the Old-New World Order What has become of the prescient post-WWII dictum ‘Russians out, Americans in, Germans down’? By Victor Davis Hanson

By on July 6th, 2017

The accomplished and insightful British general Hasting Ismay is remembered today largely because of his famous assessment of NATO, offered when he was the alliance’s first secretary general. The purpose of the new treaty organization founded in 1952, Ismay asserted, was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

Ismay formulated that aphorism at the height of a new Cold War. The Soviet Red Army threatened to overrun Western Europe all the way to the English Channel. And few knew who or what exactly could stop it.

A traditionally isolationist United States was still debating its proper role after once again intervening on the winning side in a distant catastrophic European war — only to see its most powerful ally of WWII, Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, become the victorious democracies’ most dangerous post-war foe.

A divided Germany had become the new trip wire of the free world against a continental and monolithic nuclear Soviet Union and its bloc.

Nonetheless, note carefully what Ismay did not say.

He did not refer to keeping the “Soviet Union” out of the Western alliance (which the Soviets had once desired to join, a request that Ismay compared to inviting a burglar onto the police force).

Ismay did not cite the need to ensure that Nazi Germany never returned.

He did not insist that the inclusion of Great Britain was essential to NATO’s tripartite mission.

Why?

Ismay, a favorite of Churchill’s and a military adviser to British governments, had a remarkable sense of history — namely that constants such as historical memory, geography, and national character always transcend the politics of the day.

Russians from the days of the czars have wanted to extend their western influence into Europe. Russia was often a threat, given its large population and territory and rich natural resources — and it was also more autocratic and more volatile than many of its vulnerable European neighbors.

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Trump Admin Authorizes Strikes on Iranian-Backed Forces Officials: ‘We’re determined to defend ourselves’ against Iran in Syria by Adam Kredo

By on July 6th, 2017

U.S. forces have been instructed to take all measures needed to protect American interests in Syria, including military measures, as part of an effort that comes after top officials in the Trump administration assessed that Iran is deliberately probing American weaknesses and reactions on the Syrian battlefield, according to senior Trump administration officials who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.

Iran-backed forces, including Hezbollah, have already initiated multiple encounters with the United States by violating agreements worked out between Washington and Moscow aimed at preventing the various factions targeting ISIS inside Syria from coming into conflict. This is part of a campaign that analysts inside and outside the White House believe is aimed at testing the Trump administration’s resolve, sources said.

“That was very clearly a process of the Iranians and Hezbollah and [the] Syrian regime probing and testing our limits, and testing how much we were willing to do,” one senior Trump administration official said. “In every case, it was a matter of them testing and probing, and us responding by defending ourselves.”

These clashes were the result of pro-Syrian regime forces, including Iran and Hezbollah, “violating a de-confliction measure that had been worked out with the Russians,” the official said. “The forces violated the measure.”

The Trump administration has instructed U.S. forces to respond to Iranian attacks with force if necessary.

“What they found out very quickly,” said the official, was “us responding by defending ourselves. What was established was that we’re determined to defend ourselves.”

This defensive action is being implemented at the same time the Trump administration turns its attention to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the Islamic Republic’s paramilitary force that coordinates operations in Syria and other warzones.

Trump administration officials view the IRGC as being part of “every malignant protrusion of the Iranian regime,” according to one administration official, who said the White House is dually focused on choking off this force.

The actions by U.S. forces are part of a broader pushback against Iran, ranging from battlefield responses to diplomatic action, according to a veteran Iran policy analyst who has been briefed by the White House both on parts of the Syria strategy and on parts of an ongoing Iran policy review being conducted by the administration.

The Free Beacon first reported many details of the review several weeks ago, including actions by the Trump administration to potentially block the sale of U.S. commercial aircraft to Tehran.

“For the first time since the U.S. intervened into the Syrian conflict, American forces have been authorized to do take all measures to defend U.S. interests against Iranian provocations and aggression,” said the source. “This is part of a concrete strategy that has already been implemented in part, and is being bolstered every day, but very senior Trump officials. No more of watching U.S. forces get rolled in Syria, and also no more of thanking Iran after they seize our sailors in the Gulf.

One senior Trump administration official familiar with the Iran policy review said the White House is currently “in the thick of it,” evaluating a range of options to confront Iran’s global terror operations.

The review expands far beyond the landmark nuclear deal, according to the administration officials.

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