RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/ilhan-omars-big-lie/The Left distorts what happened in El Salvador in the 1980s.

In a viral exchange at a congressional hearing last week, the new congresswoman from Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, who is quickly establishing herself as the most reprehensible member of the House Democratic freshman class despite stiff competition, launched into Elliott Abrams. She accused the former Reagan official and Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela of being complicit in war crimes.

“Yes or no,” she demanded, “would you support an armed faction within Venezuela that engages in war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide, if you believe they were serving U.S. interest, as you did in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua?”

Omar was cribbing from the Left’s notes on U.S. Latin American policy, and doing it badly. She made much of the 1981 El Motoze massacre in El Salvador. The idea that Abrams is somehow directly implicated in this bloodcurdlingly awful event is completely absurd. He was assistant secretary of state for international organizations in the Reagan administration, then became assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs on December 10, 1981. The massacre occurred the next day. Unless we are to believe the El Salvadoran military unit took his change of jobs as a green light to indiscriminately kill villagers (which unfortunately was not a new practice), Abrams obviously had nothing to do with the massacre.

Nonetheless, the Omar attack is an opportunity to examine the premises of the Left’s narrative on Reagan’s policy in El Salvador, which supports the persistent attacks on Abrams as a “war criminal.” To paraphrase the famous Mary McCarthy line about Lillian Hellman, every word in this narrative is a lie, including “and” and “the.”

In what follows, I rely throughout on Russell Crandall’s book The Salvador Option: The United States in El Salvador, 1977–1992, a fair-minded, factual account that’s a marked contrast to the tendentiously left-wing material that dominates online.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/the-honor-of-elliott-abrams/

Three weeks ago, Elliott Abrams returned to government. This was very good news for U.S. foreign policy. He is the State Department’s special representative for Venezuela. And his presence on the public stage has reignited passions about the Reagan administration’s record in Latin America.

Abrams was the assistant secretary of state for Latin America in Reagan’s second term. During the first, he had been assistant secretary for international organizations, and then for human rights. (Abrams joined the administration when he was in his early 30s.)

Like many others he was caught up in the Iran-Contra affair, and he pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress. (Two misdemeanor counts.) He was pardoned by the first President Bush. There is a story to be told about all this, which we will not get into here. Abrams told it in a book, Undue Process: A Story of How Political Differences Are Turned into Crimes.

The second President Bush made Abrams part of his national-security team, first in the area of democracy and human rights. Then he gave Abrams a Middle East portfolio. Later, Abrams wrote a memoir, Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. In recent years, he has been a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

In short, Elliott Abrams is one of the wisest, most experienced foreign-policy heads in this country. He is also a steadfast advocate of freedom, democracy, and human rights, or American values, if you like.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/donald-trumps-iran-deal-withdrawal-is-clear-success/

Europe is coming to acknowledge and act on the nuclear threat posed by Tehran.

Despite howls of protest by the Left, the foreign-policy establishment, and European leaders, and contrary to misleading assessments by U.S. intelligence agencies, it is now clear that President Trump’s decision last May to withdraw the United States from the controversial 2015 nuclear deal with Iran (the JCPOA) was the right call and is a huge policy success.

Trump’s JCPOA withdrawal did not lead to war with Iran, as many critics predicted. Instead, Iran is far more isolated than it was when President Trump assumed office. The United States has worked to unite its Middle East allies, especially Israel and Saudi Arabia, against Iran and, in Warsaw this month, will co-chair an international conference with Poland on the threat from Iran. Iran’s economy is under unprecedented pressure thanks to reimposed U.S. sanctions, especially oil sanctions, with negative 1.5 percent growth in 2018 and an expected negative 3.6 percent growth in 2019. Iran’s current year-on-year inflation rate through last month was 40 percent.

Some Trump critics predicted that any effort by the president to reimpose U.S. sanctions lifted by the JCPOA would have little effect, since other parties to the agreement — in particular the EU, Germany, France, and the U.K. — would not follow suit. But numerous European companies have resisted pressure from their governments to defy reimposed U.S. sanctions. On January 31, European leaders announced a special finance facility to help European firms skirt U.S. sanctions on Iran, but that initiative is months behind schedule and few experts believe it will work.

Instead, as a result of reimposed U.S. sanctions, European airlines Air France, British Airways, and KLM ended service to Iran last year. European companies Total, Siemens, and Volkswagen also withdrew from Iran, along with U.S. companies GE, Boeing, and Honeywell and the Russian oil firm Lukoil. In November, Germany’s Bundesbank changed its rules so it could reject an Iranian request to withdraw 300 million euros from Hamburg-based trade bank Europäische-Iranische Handelsbank, to protect the central bank’s relationships with institutions in “third countries.” That is, the United States.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272787/time-frank-discussion-nato-ari-lieberman

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed in 1949 as a collective defense pact against the aggressive designs and intentions of the Soviet Union. Turkey was accepted into NATO in 1951. The latest NATO entry was the tiny Balkan nation Montenegro, which ascended in 2017.

The United States shoulders the lion’s share of NATO’s budget and the defense of Europe. According to one estimate, US expenses associated with the defense of Europe totaled US$36.0bn in 2018, which represents 5.5% of the US defense budget and 6.3 times the amount President Trump is asking to facilitate the construction of a barrier or wall on the US-Mexico border.

With the fall of communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the threat of a mass Soviet invasion of Western Europe instantly vanished. Western style democracy and free enterprise triumphed decidedly over totalitarianism and stifling socialism.

Despite the diminished threat, NATO still served a valuable purpose in that its collective defense doctrine promoted regional and world stability. Indeed, following the 9-11 attacks, NATO invoked the principles of Article 5, providing for collective defense of alliance members. It was an extraordinary expression of solidarity with the United States, which witnessed the worst attack ever perpetrated on its soil.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/02/05/trump_administration_threads_the_needle_in_venezuela_139363.html

The Trump administration has clear goals in Venezuela and is determined to achieve them with limited means. Those goals are straightforward:

–Out with the fraudulently elected regime of Nicolás Maduro, its Chávez-style socialism, and its strong ties to Cuba, Russia, Iran, and China;

–In with the duly elected moderate Juan Guaidó.

To do that without sending U.S. troops means squeezing Maduro with harsh economic pressure, recognizing Guaidó as the legitimate leader, and naming an experienced point man, Elliott Abrams. It also entails, and this would be a departure for President Trump, building a supportive coalition of Latin American nations and major economic powers.

The coalition helps in two ways. First, it blunts Maduro’s knee-jerk claim that any effort to replace him is simply Yankee imperialism. His claim sounds ludicrous when there are massive protests inside Venezuela itself and after nearly every country in South America (Bolivia and Uruguay are the exceptions) recognized Guaidó as the country’s legitimate leader.

Within the region, Maduro’s support comes mainly from Cuba, an ideological fellow traveler with few resources to help. Outside the region, his support comes from Russia, Iran, and China, the triumvirate that now challenges the U.S. around the globe. They would hate to lose their foothold in Latin America.

Of the two coalitions, America’s is obviously much larger and richer, much more capable of exerting economic leverage. Sanctions are key. The heaviest blow was Washington’s decision to place Venezuela’s oil revenues in escrow. With a stroke of the pen, the U.S. Department of the Treasury cut off Maduro’s primary source of foreign exchange, his only way to pay the army. When he desperately tried to move his country’s gold reserves out of Britain, the Bank of England refused. The European Union is likely to impose additional sanctions this week.

These restrictions won’t add much more pain for Venezuela’s ordinary citizens, who already face grim conditions. The economy is in free fall, food is scarce, and inflation tops 1 million percent, according to Reuters. When currency becomes worthless, as Venezuela’s has, the economy is reduced to barter. What will the sanctions do, then? They will make it very hard—nearly impossible—for Maduro to buy food and essential supplies for his soldiers. If they defect, the regime dies.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-foreign-policy-critics-are-losing-11549325062

Is President Trump losing control of the foreign-policy agenda? Last week the administration suffered a stinging political defeat as the Senate voted 68-23 to advance a bill that criticizes his plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan. This comes on the heels of Congress’s refusal to accede to Mr. Trump’s demands for further funds to fortify the U.S.-Mexico border and the Senate’s December vote to end U.S. military support for Saudi Arabia’s operations in Yemen. It is now clear the president’s foreign-policy and national-security approach faces increasing and often bipartisan congressional opposition.

Yet the White House shows no sign of backtracking. Far from meeting his critics halfway, Mr. Trump and his foreign-policy team announced progress in Afghanistan negotiations that opponents call a surrender, doubled down on plans to withdraw troops from Syria, announced its impending withdrawal from an arms-control agreement many consider foundational to the post-Cold War security order in Europe, and attacked the judgment of his senior intelligence officials. The administration also advanced an aggressive hemispheric strategy aimed not only at Venezuela, but also at Cuba and Nicaragua—the other two regimes in what national security adviser John Bolton calls the “troika of tyranny.”

There is no sign Mr. Trump can or will be persuaded to reconsider his approach. He does not believe existing arms treaties serve American interests; his withdrawal from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty was motivated by the same considerations that drove his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. Meanwhile, he wants to reduce American commitments in the Middle East and sees close links with Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt as the best way for the U.S. to retrench militarily while containing Iran.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-01/inf-treaty-democrats-should-welcome-trump-s-withdrawal?srnd=opinion

No one should be surprised that President Donald Trump has made good on his threat to begin withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia. More surprising is the reaction from some leading Democrats.

It was always a long shot that the administration would succeed in negotiations, begun in December, to get Russia to destroy the missiles they illegally fielded under the treaty. And top administration officials such as National Security Adviser John Bolton have never been big fans of arms control.

Some Democrats, meanwhile, were quick to express their concern. Adam Schiff of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said that the withdrawal “risks precisely the sort of nuclear arms buildup that the treaty was designed to guard against.” Chris Coons of Delaware, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that withdrawal “without a clear plan for bringing Russia back into compliance will lead to a new arms race and endanger the people of the United States and Europe.” Both men, to be fair, also acknowledged that Russia has violated the treaty.

President Trump’s recent decision to withdraw forces from Syria, along with a 21st century would-be Turkish Sultan, President Erdogan’s, apparent aim to re-create part of the Ottoman Empire, have quickly led to disturbing consequences. More are sure to follow…

Over a dozen Americans and allies were killed by ISIS on January 17th in response to President Trump’s plan. The aim was to further demoralize our troops and Kurds who’ve done most of the fighting and dying for us for a half century now.

The arena is largely part ofgeographical Kurdistan, mostly mountainous regions of Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, where Kurds–as the Bible’s Hurrians; Gutian conquerors of Babylon; (probably) Medes; and others–pre-date Arab and Turkish imperial conquerors by millennia.

Kurds have had their language and culture outlawed by Arabs and Turks, while hundreds of thousands have been slaughtered.

In the wake of the collapse of empires in the early 20th century, while Arabs wound up with almost two dozen states (most forcibly Arabized from non-Arabpeoples), some 38 million Kurds remain stateless to date–frequently at others’ mercy.On September 9, 2018, The Jerusalem Post reported a precision Iranian ballistic missile strike on Iraqi Kurds. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was sending a message to others besides Kurds with this attack.

Like Tehran’s centuries’ old rivals–Turks and Arabs–the one thing all agree upon is denial of political (even basic human) rights to millions of Kurds who pre-date the latter two in their region by millennia.