RUTHFULLY YOURS

Even if, as the US Administration ceaselessly assures us, Iran’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons can be frustrated for a while, any relaxation of the current economic sanctions will be used to finance Iran’s other drive: its quest for regional hegemony.

To begin with, the P5+1 could adopt the very successful style of negotiation practiced by Palestinians as well as Iranians. This is to whittle away at the position of the other side by extracting one little concession after another, but then to delay the negotiations indefinitely when the deal seems to be imminent. The result is that when negotiations do resume, it is not from zero, but from an inferior initial position of the other side.

Whenever a deal seems near, one of the P5+1 should come up with a further demand or demands. What they could do is adopt that role in succession, so that Iran is the party that needs to keep starting afresh from a worse position.

Tom Bevan at RealClearPolitics has a devastating indictment of the Coward-in-Chief and his deliberate thumb in the eye to the honor of the American military:

Travel back with me, dear reader, to a magical and sunny time. It was only 10 months ago, on a glorious June morning when President Obama called the White House press corps together in the Rose Garden. There, our smiling president proudly announced that the United States had secured the release of an American serviceman held captive in Afghanistan for five years.

Flanked by the grateful parents of returning Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the president lauded his administration’s “ironclad commitment to bring our prisoners of war home.” The soldier’s father, Bob Bergdahl, read a prayer; the young man’s mother, Jani, hugged the president. It was a story that could please all Americans: parenthood (quite properly) trumping partisanship.

Desertion is a very old story in the history of armies and armed conflict. Soldiers deserted from the Continental Army, from the Union Army, from the American armies in World War I and World War II — yet those armies fought on, fought well, and prevailed. An army can survive desertion, so to hear that Bowe Bergdahl has been charged with desertion hardly represents an existential crisis for the military or its character. In fact, it is to the Army’s credit that it has charged Bergdahl in the face of prevailing political winds.
Much more serious than Bergdahl’s desertion is our commander-in-chief’s decision to hand the enemy a victory to retrieve a likely deserter, compounded by a decision to celebrate this serious defeat at the White House, and then to clumsily attempt to cover their political tracks by trotting out Susan Rice to deceive the public about Bergdahl’s service record. This is dishonor, from the highest levels of American leadership.

As the Right embraces the Jewish state, the Left is pushing it away. ‘I don’t understand how Jews in America can be Democrats first and Jewish second and support Israel along the line of just following their president,” vented Representative Steve King (R., Iowa) on Boston Herald Radio last week.

It was a small controversy in the grand scheme of things, easily overlooked during a week when: a German pilot turned a routine flight into a murder-suicide mission, Ted Cruz drove the media batty by announcing he will run for president as Ted Cruz, an Army sergeant and Taliban captive the White House touted as a hero was charged with desertion, and America joined forces with Iran in Iraq to kill Sunni jihadists while allying with Saudi Arabia in Yemen to kill Shiite jihadists (who are backed by Iran).

Still, King’s comments did enrage a lot of people, particularly people eager to make political hay. “I was shocked and horrified when I heard the remarks made by Representative King today stating that we are ‘Jewish second,’ and implying that Democrats are anti-Semitic,” responded Greg Rosenbaum, chair of the National Jewish Democratic Council. Representative Steve Israel (D., N.Y.) took his hissy fit to Twitter. “I don’t need Congressman Steve King questioning my religion or my politics,” he tweeted. “I demand an apology from him & repudiation from GOP. #dangerous.”

I am astonished that Jay Nordlinger did not mention that John Adams is the composer of that musical felony known as “The Death of Klinghoffer”. It is important for those people who boycotted and protested the performance to know of John Adams’ political bent…..rsk
Tonight, the New York Philharmonic premiered a work by John Adams. Adams is probably the most famous and important composer in the world (classical composer). His new work is Scheherazade.2, a “dramatic symphony for violin and orchestra.”
Before the performance, Adams himself took a microphone and spoke to the audience about the work. He described how it came about. He had seen an exhibition in Paris about Scheherazade. Then he read Arabian Nights, and was appalled by the “casual brutality toward women” depicted therein.
At the same time, he was reading of brutality toward women around the world: in Egypt, Afghanistan, and India, for example. But we were not to think we Americans were exempt from this brutality. For example, you can “find it on Rush Limbaugh.” (Rush equals the Taliban or the Muslim Brotherhood, you see.) To this remark, the audience responded with sustained and robust applause.

How can the U.S. hope to keep tabs on Tehran’s nuclear program when we can’t even track its oil tankers?American negotiators and their cohorts are trying to close a deal that would let Iran keep its nuclear program, subject to intricate conditions of monitoring and enforcement. Yet how is a deal like that supposed to be verified? The Obama administration can’t even keep up with the Iran-linked oil tankers on the U.S. blacklist.

Currently, there are at least 55 of these tankers the Treasury Department says are under U.S. sanctions. These are large ships, major links in the oil chain that sustains the Tehran regime, many of them calling at ports from Turkey to China. They are easier to spot and track than, say, smuggled nuclear parts (which, in a pinch, they could potentially squeeze on board).

But Iran has engaged for years in what Treasury called “deceptive practices” to dodge sanctions. These include trying to mask the identities, and sometimes the smuggling activities, of its blacklisted ships by renaming them, reflagging them to other countries, veiling their ownership behind front companies, presenting false documents, and engaging in illicit ship-to-ship oil transfers.

The Saudis invade Yemen as the Sunni-Shiite war escalates.

An abiding goal of President Obama’s foreign policy has been to reduce America’s role in the Middle East, in the belief that it would lead to greater stability and serve U.S. interests. Has a policy ever been so thoroughly repudiated in so short a time? Mr. Obama has succeeded in his retreat, but the vacuum he’s left has produced a region on fire that is becoming a broad Sunni-Shiite war.

That’s the context for this week’s meltdown in Yemen, which has now escalated with the military intervention of Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Arab allies. This follows the rout of a U.S.-friendly government by Houthi militias that belong to the Zaidi offshoot of Shiite Islam and are backed by Iran. What had been a proxy war is in danger of becoming a direct Saudi-Iran conflict.

Liberal groups are out to sully the names of conservative professors and shut down programs funded by the Koch foundation.

Conservative thought on campus these days is rare, though for some it’s still not rare enough. Witness the growing campaign by politicians, unions and environmentalists to intimidate into silence any academic or program that might challenge liberal ideology.

Congressional Democrats have grabbed most of the attention here, with their recent attempt to cow climate skeptics. Richard Lindzen, an emeritus professor of meteorology at MIT and a Cato Institute scholar, earlier this month described in these pages how House Rep. Raul Grijalva was targeting seven academics skeptical of President Obama’s climate policies, demanding documents about their funding and connections. A trio of Senate Democrats is working to muzzle more than 100 nonprofits and companies that have questioned the climate agenda, with a fishing expedition into their correspondence.

As Israel’s most vocal defender in the West and a conservative to boot, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is now in Obama’s crosshairs. Most likely displeased by Canada’s unwavering support for the Jewish State and persistent pursuit of the popular Keystone pipeline, Obama has set his sights on replacing the Harper government with one of a more liberal stripe. Reportedly, in a repeat performance of his anti-Netanyahu strategy in Israel, Obama’s campaign operatives are now working with Canadian Liberals to defeat Harper. Shockingly, Obama is popular with Canadians; more so than Harper! Let’s hope Obama fares as badly as he did recently in Israel! Janet Levy, Los Angeles

One wonders if U.S. President Barack Obama will campaign as vigorously to defeat Prime Minister Stephen Harper this fall, as he did, unsuccessfully, to defeat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in that country’s recent election.

It’s no secret Obama despises Netanyahu, who heads Israel’s right-wing Likud party and favoured Mitt Romney over Obama in the 2012 presidential race.

The U.S. president has also talked since the beginning of his administration about the need to “put some daylight” between the U.S. and Israel, so he would have more influence with Arab and Muslim countries in his pursuit of an Israel-Palestine peace deal.

During the Israeli election, the Obama administration and the president’s political advisers did everything they could to defeat Netanyahu, including anonymously leaking information to the media to damage him, a tactic they have continued following Netanyahu’s victory.

That’s to say nothing of the direct attacks Obama levelled at Netanyahu during the campaign — Netanyahu did the same to him — while Obama administration officials, both publicly and anonymously, warned America’s support of Israel would be undermined if Netanyahu won.

Jerusalem is worried by the Iran-backed Houthi takeover of Aden, but Saudi Arabia is burning with anger, and not at Tehran

A few months ago, when Yemen’s Houthi uprising was still in its infancy, Israel was already worriedly watching over the progress of rebel forces making advances in the peninsula.

It’s little surprise the group got Jerusalem’s attention. In almost every demonstration held by Houthis in recent months, the slogans heard may as well have been taken straight out of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran: “Death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, victory to Islam.”