RUTHFULLY YOURS

The People’s Republic of China sent its aircraft carrier, Liaoning, through the Strait of Taiwan early this month, at least in part responding to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s phone conversation congratulating President-elect Donald Trump.

That’s Beijing’s style: Make an unacceptable long-distance phone call, and an aircraft carrier shows up in your backyard. It is akin to proclaiming the South China Sea a Chinese province and constructing islands in international waters to house military bases; to declaring a provocative Air Defense Identification Zone in the East China Sea; and to seizing Singaporean military equipment recently transiting Hong Kong for annual military exercises on Taiwan.

It is high time to revisit the “one-China policy” and decide what America thinks it means, 45 years after the Shanghai Communiqué. Mr. Trump has said the policy is negotiable. Negotiation should not mean Washington gives and Beijing takes. We need strategically coherent priorities reflecting not 1972 but 2017, encompassing more than trade and monetary policy, and specifically including Taiwan. Let’s see how an increasingly belligerent China responds.

Constantly chanting “one-China policy” is a favorite Beijing negotiating tactic: Pick a benign-sounding slogan; persuade foreign interlocutors to accept it; and then redefine it to Beijing’s satisfaction, dragging the unwary foreigners along for the ride. To Beijing, “one China” means the PRC is the sole legitimate “China,” as sloganized in “the three no’s”: no Taiwanese independence; no two Chinas; no one China, one Taiwan. For too long, America has unthinkingly succumbed to this wordplay.

Even in the Shanghai Communiqué, however, Washington merely “acknowledges” that “all Chinese” believe “there is but one China,” of which Taiwan is part. Taiwanese public opinion surveys for decades have shown fewer and fewer citizens describing themselves as “Chinese.” Who allowed them to change their minds? Washington has always said reunification had to come peacefully and by mutual agreement. Mutual agreement hasn’t come in 67 years, and won’t in any foreseeable future, especially given China’s increasingly brutal reinterpretation of another slogan—“one country, two systems” in Hong Kong.

Beijing and its acolytes expected that Taiwan would simply collapse. It hasn’t. Chiang Kai-shek’s 1949 retreat was not a temporary respite before final surrender. Neither the Shanghai Communiqué nor Jimmy Carter’s 1978 derecognition of the Republic of China persuaded Taiwan to go gentle into that good night—especially after Congress enacted the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979.

Eventually Taiwan even became a democracy, with the 1996 popular election of Lee Teng-hui, the peaceful, democratic transfer of power to the opposition party in 2000, and further peaceful transfers in 2008 and 2016. So inconsiderate of those free-thinking Taiwanese.

What should the United States do now? In addition to a diplomatic ladder of escalation, we can take concrete steps helpful to U.S. interests. Here is one prompted by China’s recent impoundment of Singapore’s military equipment. Spoiler alert: Beijing will not approve. CONTINUE AT SITE

Not just his Mideast policy- his entire eight years in office have been a tragic failure in the economy, defense, foreign policy, job killing regulations, corruption, lies, and the worst race relations in recent history. And you Mr. Dershowitz voted for him twice and promoted Hillary Clinton…..rsk

The Middle East is a more dangerous place after eight years of the Obama presidency than it was before. The eight disastrous Obama years follow eight disastrous George W. Bush years, during which that part of the world became more dangerous as well. So have many other international hot spots.

In sum, the past 16 years have seen major foreign policy blunders all over the world, and most especially in the area between Libya and Iran — that includes Israel, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey and the Gulf.

With regard to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, the Obama policies have made the prospects for a compromise peace more difficult to achieve. When Israel felt that America had its back — under both Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush — they offered generous proposals to end settlements and occupation in nearly all of the West Bank.

Tragically the Palestinian leadership — first under Yasser Arafat and then under Mahmoud Abbas — did not accept either offers from Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Clinton in 2000-2001, nor Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s offer in 2008. Now they are ignoring current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s open offer to negotiate with no preconditions.

In his brilliant book chronicling American-Israeli relationship, Doomed To Succeed, Dennis Ross proves conclusively that whenever the Israeli government has confidence in America’s backing, it has been more willing to make generous compromise offers than when it has reason to doubt American support.

Obama did not understand this crucial reality. Instead of having Israel’s back, he repeatedly stabbed Israel in the back, beginning with his one-sided Cairo speech near the beginning of his tenure, continuing with his failure to enforce the red line on chemical weapons use by Syria, then allowing a sunset provision to be included in the Iran deal, and culminating in his refusal to veto the one-sided UN Security Council resolution, which placed the lion’s share of blame on the Israelis for the current stalemate.

Obama and his followers in the US and around the world refuse to see the connection between the policies borne of that ideology and their destructive consequences.

President Barack Obama promised that his would be the most transparent administration in US history.

And the truth is, it was. At least in relation to his policies toward the Muslim world, Obama told us precisely what he intended to do and then he did it.

A mere week remains of Obama’s tenure in office.

But Obama remains intent on carrying on as if he will never leave power. He has pledged to continue to implement his goals for the next week and then to serve as the most outspoken ex-president in US history.

In all of Obama’s recent appearances, his message is one of vindication. I came. I succeeded. I will continue to succeed. I represent the good people, the people of tomorrow. My opponents represent the Manichean, backward past. We will fight them forever and we will prevail.

Tuesday Obama gave his final interview to the Israeli media to Ilana Dayan from Channel 2’s Uvda news magazine. Dayan usually tries to come off as an intellectual. On Tuesday’s show, she cast aside professionalism however, and succumbed to her inner teenybopper. Among her other questions, she asked Obama the secret to his preternatural ability to touch people’s souls.

The only significant exchange in their conversation came when Dayan asked Obama about the speech he gave on June 4, 2009, in Cairo. Does he still stand by all the things he said in that speech? Would he give that speech again today, given all that has since happened in the region, she asked.

Absolutely, Obama responded.

The speech, he insisted was “aspirational” rather than programmatic. And the aspirations that he expressed in that address were correct.

If Dayan had been able to put aside her hero worship for a moment, she would have stopped Obama right then and there. His claim was preposterous.

But, given her decision to expose herself as a slobbering groupie, Dayan let it slide.

To salvage the good name of the journalism, and more important, to understand Obama’s actual record and its consequences, it is critical however to return to that speech.

Obama’s speech at Cairo University was the most important speech of his presidency. In it he laid out both his “aspirational” vision of relations between the West and the Islamic world and his plans for implementing his vision. The fundamentally transformed world he will leave President-elect Donald Trump to contend with next Friday was transformed on the basis of that speech.

Obama’s address that day at Cairo University lasted for nearly an hour. In the first half he set out his framework for understanding the nature of the US’s relations with the Muslim world and the relationship between the Western world and Islam more generally. He also expressed his vision for how that relationship should change.

The US-led West he explained had sinned against the Muslim world through colonialism and racism.

It needed to make amends for its past and make Muslims feel comfortable and respected, particularly female Muslims, covered from head to toe.

As for the Muslims, well, September 11 was wrong but didn’t reflect the truth of Islam, which is extraordinary. Obama thrice praised “the Holy Koran.” He quoted it admiringly. He waxed poetic in his appreciation for all the great contributions Islamic civilization has made to the world – he even made up a few. And he insisted falsely that Islam has always been a significant part of the American experience.

In his dichotomy between two human paths – the West’s and Islam’s – although he faulted the records of both, Obama judged the US and the West more harshly than Islam.

In the second half of his address, Obama detailed his plans for changing the West’s relations with Islam in a manner that reflected the true natures of both.

In hindsight, it is clear that during the seven and a half years of his presidency that followed that speech, all of Obama’s actions involved implementing the policy blueprint he laid out in Cairo.

He never deviated from the course he spelled out.

As a final sop to his friends and fans in Communist Cuba, President Obama yesterday abruptly ended the two decade-old compassionate immigration policy that allowed any Cuban who made it to U.S. soil to remain in this country and become a legal resident.

This middle finger to the Cuban community is likely part of a series of last-minute policy changes Obama makes on his way out of office. In addition to an expected avalanche of eleventh-hour executive orders and regulations, media reports indicate the White House is seriously considering commuting the 35-year prison term handed out to traitor Bradley Manning for leaking classified documents. Other possible clemency recipients include Hillary Clinton, Bowe Bergdahl, Edward Snowden, and terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman, also known as the Blind Sheikh.

Cubans remain desperate to escape their miserable, impoverished nation and get into the United States. Since October 2012, more than 118,000 Cubans have shown up at border ports of entry, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The 118,000 figure includes more than 48,000 people who presented themselves at the border between October 2015 and November 2016.

Obama moved after reportedly reaching an agreement with Cuban officials Thursday.

Cuban officials praised Obama’s action, calling the new agreement “an important step in advancing relations” between the U.S. and Cuba that “aims to guarantee normal, safe and ordered migration.” Ordered migration is apparently a Cuban euphemism for no migration.

“For this to work, the Cubans had to agree to take people back,” said Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser who both lied about the loophole-ridden Iranian nuclear nonproliferation pact and worked with journalists to generate fake news stories about it to win support for it.

Fleeing Cuba is a crime. Whether the Cubans sent back to Cuba under Obama’s new fiat will be tortured, jailed, or executed is an open question but not one that Obama cares about.

After all, Cuba can’t afford to be losing the native-born slaves that it needs to feed its precarious economy and move forward, Rhodes may as well have argued.

Perhaps you’ve heard that the dark night of fascist conformity is about to descend on America in the form of the Trump Administration. We’ll let you know when it arrives. But meantime the news at this week’s various confirmation hearings was how often the nominees disagreed with the President-elect who nominated them.

Take Donald Trump’s choice to run the Pentagon, retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, who spent three hours Thursday in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Mr. Trump has gone out of his way to praise Vladimir Putin and suggest the U.S. and Russia can find a new and better relationship.

Gen. Mattis offered a more skeptical view. “I’m all for engagement, but we also have to recognize reality and what Russia is up to,” he told the Senators. “There are a decreasing number of areas where we can engage cooperatively and an increasing number of areas in which we will have to confront Russia.”

He added, rightly in our view, that Mr. Putin “is trying to break the North Atlantic alliance” and that Russia ranks among the main threats to the U.S. The general vowed to continue the new military deployments on NATO’s eastern front and said he supports a permanent U.S. presence in the three Baltic states on the northwest Russian border.

In other examples, Rex Tillerson, Mr. Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, said that as Exxon CEO he supported the Pacific free trade deal, which Mr. Trump wants to kill. Mike Pompeo, the CIA nominee, disavowed harsh interrogation techniques, though Mr. Trump said in the campaign that he might revive waterboarding against terrorist detainees.

Presidents get the last word on policy. But these differences ought to reassure Americans that Mr. Trump is assembling a cabinet of serious men and women who know their own mind. And whatever one thinks about Mr. Trump’s views, he doesn’t seem to mind advisers who are willing to disagree with him. Presumably those advisers have enough self confidence that they won’t be shrinking violets when they debate the hard questions of governance.

“The worst agreement in U.S. diplomatic history,” that was the way Charles Krauthammer characterized the Iran deal back in July 2015. Of course, when Krauthammer made that very accurate assessment, he had no way of knowing that the deal was even worse than originally envisioned.

The Iran deal’s ancillary aspects, which the administration tried to keep secret from Congress, included ransom payments totaling $1.7 billion to Iran and secret side agreements negotiated between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Islamic Republic. One of the most absurd provisions of that secretive side agreement enables the mullahs to collect their own soil samples at their highly opaque Parchin facility, in lieu of on-site inspections. The Obama administration even conducted lobbying efforts on behalf of the Islamic Republic, in a failed attempt to convince banking institutions to conduct business with the world’s premier state-sponsor of international terrorism.

The notion that the Obama administration would trust the Iranians to collect their own samples to establish compliance demonstrates with utmost clarity just how far divorced from reality Obama has become. The notion that Obama would place national security interests in the hands of a non-U.S. body demonstrates just how utterly reckless he is. The notion that the U.S. would actively lobby on behalf on an entity responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in Syria, Yemen and Iraq and responsible for supplying anti-U.S. insurgents with sophisticated Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFP) that killed and maimed hundreds of U.S. soldiers, demonstrates how morally depraved the Obama administration has become.

Since the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran has been testing the resolve of the U.S. in enforcing the agreement. Twice since the JCPOA went into effect, Iran exceeded its 130 metric ton limit for heavy water, which is used to cool reactors that produce plutonium. The cumbersome JCPOA mechanism put in place to abrogate the agreement in the event of breach means that all but the most serious Iranian transgressions will likely go unpunished. In the meantime, Iran continues to push the envelope while receiving all the benefits including sanctions relief and lump sum cash payments, including nearly $12 billion received in the past three years.

The Obama administration’s dealings with the Islamic Republic borders on sycophantic. The AP reported today that the Obama administration, in its twilight weeks, issued its consent to allow the Iranians to receive 116 metric tons of natural uranium from Russia as compensation for its export of tons of reactor coolant. The move requires U.N. Security Council approval but is expected to easily pass.

BRUSSELS—U.S., European and Iranian officials meet Tuesday in Vienna, a last opportunity for the Obama administration to bolster the Iranian nuclear agreement along with its partners before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

The officials are meeting under the aegis of the so-called Joint Commission, comprised of representatives of Iran and the six world powers who negotiated the July 2015 nuclear deal. The commission oversees the implementation of the accord and arbitrates disputes among the signatories.

In recent months, the Commission has approved decisions to exempt some Iranian nuclear material from the country’s stockpile limits and sought to shore up the agreement with measures to ensure Iran doesn’t breach the terms of the nuclear accord by exceeding caps on material such as uranium and heavy water.

During the U.S. presidential campaign, Mr. Trump repeatedly attacked the accord, a key foreign-policy legacy of the Obama administration. After the Nov. 8 election, U.S. officials said they were looking for ways to help secure the agreement.

Among the issues set for discussion Tuesday are Iranian complaints about the decision last month by U.S. Congress to extend nonnuclear U.S. sanctions on Tehran, according to diplomats.

The meeting may also address the decision by the six powers to allow Iran to import large amounts of natural uranium. On Monday, Western diplomats confirmed that the U.S. had backed a request by Russia to export more than 100 tons of natural uranium to Iran. A second export request by Kazakhstan is pending, they said.

Despite reservations in some European capitals, the decision to approve the Russian uranium export request was supported by the U.S. administration, according to several Western diplomats. It must still be confirmed by the United Nations Security Council.

In its natural form, uranium isn’t useful in a nuclear program, but it can be enriched to produce fuel for a nuclear weapon. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that “any sort of uranium that’s held by the Iranian government will be subject to very strict limits.”

U.S. officials say Iran could use the uranium from Russia to fuel its nuclear power plant at Bushehr. Iran was required to submit plans for use of the material, which will be monitored, the officials say, for the next 25 years.

Under the nuclear deal, Iran is limited to a stockpile of low-enriched uranium of 300 kilograms, about 660 pounds, for the next 15 years—a key part of the deal designed to ensure that until at least 2026, it will take Iran over a year to accumulate enough material for a nuclear weapon.

Iran has repeatedly said its nuclear program is for purely civilian purposes. CONTINUE AT SITE