RUTHFULLY YOURS

Insofar as Islam got a look in from officialdom, it was a passing reference in the speech of Defense Secretary “Mad Dog” Mattis:

Maniacs disguised in false religious garb thought by hurting us they could scare us that day.

Well, whoever they are, these “maniacs” can evidently scare grizzled hard men called “Mad Dog” into concluding that, when it comes to mentioning the I-word, discretion is the better part of valor. “False religious garb” means we’re back to the standard Euro-squish line that all this Allahu Akbar I’m-ready-for-my-virgins stuff is a “perversion” of the real Islam, which is a peaceful faith practiced by millions of people for whom self-detonation is an unwelcome distraction from traditional activities such as clitoridectomies, honor killings and throwing sodomites off tall buildings. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but these “maniacs” are hijacking this “religious garb” in order to peddle a “false” vision of Islam. Foaming-canine-wise, Mad Dog sounds about as mad as, say, Theresa May. I take it that, even in today’s politically correct military, you can’t earn the epithet “Mad Dog” simply by handing out diversity awards to the Transgender Outreach Liaison Officer of the Month, and General Mattis served honorably and impressively in Afghanistan and Iraq. But, when it comes to strategic clarity, that may be the problem.

https://www.steynonline.com/9730/the-language-of-losing

The eighteenth anniversary of 9/11 was marked by the Administration inviting the Taliban to Camp David, and by the resignation and/or firing of John Bolton as National Security Advisor – which two events may not be unconnected. Because really, when the Taliban are running around Camp David, who needs national security?

For the fifteen years after the launch of SteynOnline in 2002, we re-posted every year on this date material of mine from September 11th 2001 and the days we followed. Two years ago, we ceased that policy, for reasons I discussed on Clubland Q&A:

If this is a war, there’s no agreement on what we’re up against: Terrorism? Islamic terrorism? Islamic extremism? Islam? Whatever it is, a president who, on the campaign trail, mocked his predecessor’s inability to use the words “radical Islam” himself eschewed all mention of the I-word today. September 11th 2001 was supposedly “the day everything changed” – if by “everything changed” you mean “the rate of mass Muslim immigration to the west doubled”. As that absurd statistic suggests, we are not where I thought we would be 16 years on: We run around fighting for worthless bits of barren sod like Helmand province in Afghanistan, while surrendering day by day some of the most valuable real estate on the planet, such as France and Sweden.

That last point may seem obvious. But, if it is, it’s a truth all but entirely unacknowledged by anyone who matters in the western world. I subsequently expanded on it, in a piece we called “The Language of Losing” and which appears to have been succeeded by “The Actions of Losers” – such as inviting the Taliban to Camp David. Hey, why not for the ceremonies in Lower Manhattan? On yet another wretched anniversary I mourn not only the dead of that grim day, but our loss of purpose. All that has changed two years on is that for “sixteenth anniversary” we substitute “eighteenth” – and on and on into the future:

In any war, you have to be able to prioritize: You can’t win everything, so where would you rather win? Raqqa or Rotterdam? Kandahar or Cannes? Yet, whenever some guy goes Allahu Akbar on the streets of a western city, the telly pundits generally fall into one of two groups: The left say it’s no big deal, and the right say this is why we need more boots on the ground in Syria or Afghanistan. Yesterday President Trump said he was committed to ensuring that terrorists “never again have a safe haven to launch attacks against our country”.

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/460829-two-names-who-would-give-trump-an-all-star-security-team-after-bolton

Love him or hate him, Donald Trump knows exactly what he wants when it comes to foreign policy. He wants a clear definition of the American strategic interest across the globe and a commitment that war is always a tool of last resort. 

His stubborn loyalty to those two objectives sometimes is derided as nationalistic and non-interventionist by his critics.

But for those of us old enough to remember, those principles used to be endemic to U.S. foreign policy for decades, until Bill Clinton and Barack Obama took the Iranian appeasement bait and George W. Bush mispositioned America as the unrelenting, trigger-happy global cop.

The murky foreign policies of the past two decades moved America away from defining its strategic interest on each global issue to a more populist, hair-trigger approach, giving us such blunders as Bush’s bogus Iraq WMD claim and Obama’s feckless erosion of a red line in Syria.

With John Bolton’s departure as the president’s national security adviser on Tuesday, President Trump has the rare opportunity to restore the American strategic interest to foreign policy and create a clear global doctrine to govern for years to come.

But it will require something he hasn’t always done well — picking the right people.

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2019/09/never-forget-ecumenical-9-11-al-azhar-imam-of-manhattans-largest-islamic-center-was-viscerally-anti-american-and-rife-with-islamic-jew-hatred/

Since its founding in 973 C.E., Al Azhar University (and its mosque) have represented the apogee of Islamic religious education, which evolved into the de facto Vatican of Sunni Islam. Egyptian Sheikh Muhammad Al-Gameia, the Al-Azhar University representative in the U.S., and Imam of the Islamic Cultural Center and Mosque of New York City, at the time of the 9/11 attacks, provided a very concrete and disturbing example of the authoritative Al-Azhar Islamic mindset exported to America.

Within three days of the 9/11 jihad carnage al-Gameia, “known for his moderate views,” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 25, 2001; p. 6]  sermonized “in English calling for peace, healing, and love among people of all religions.” [Tampa Bay Times Oct. 24, 2001; p. 20] The good Sheikh struck an entirely different chord when he was interviewed for an Al-Azhar University website, on October 4, 2001. Sheikh Gameia returned to Egypt after September 11, 2001 alleging, without any substantiation, that he was being “harassed.” Gameia’s interview (original Arabic; extracts translated here) was rife with conspiratorial Islamic antisemitism, which riveted upon his invocation of the central Koranic motifs of Jew-hatred, while equating Jews and Zionists. Al-Azhar’s representative to the U.S. melded this sacralized anti-Jewish bigotry to virulent calumnies against Americans, and threats to the U.S.—witless “dupes” of the Zionist Jews.

On the solemn 18th anniversary of the calamitous 9/11 jihad terror depredations, Gameia’s behaviors and remarks stand as a lasting, res ipsa loquitur testament to the hateful duplicity inculcated by authoritative, mainstream, institutional Islam.

Calumnies against Americans, and threats to the U.S.—witless “dupes” of the Zionist Jews

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/11/john-boltons-art-of-the-non-deal/

What it takes to survive for long in the Trump White House would fill a tome that may command a seven-figure advance for whoever ends up being qualified to write it. But whatever now-ex National Security Adviser John Bolton ends up writing might solve an even more perplexing mystery: What is really at the heart of this president’s foreign policy?

It cannot be denied that Donald Trump is a hawk, despite his rhetoric sometimes indicating otherwise. He backed large increases in Pentagon spending during his first two years and this year focused on out-maneuvering the Democrats’ majority in the House on federal budget caps to get another increase for fiscal 2020, irking fiscal conservatives as well as dovish liberals. And, of course, Trump used force last year against Syria.

He has also risked military conflict with Iran over scrapping the nuclear deal President Barack Obama agreed to, driving the left to warn of a spiral of dire consequences.

But there is also the Donald Trump whose son-in-law Jared Kushner aspires to solve the unsolvable Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Elements of Kushner’s proposal that were floated in June, despite its including a $50 billion handout, were rejected out of hand by Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas.

There is the Donald Trump who decided to be the first U.S. president to negotiate face-to-face with a North Korean ruler, despite the risks of it ending in monumental embarrassment for the United States. And who now seeks an open-ended meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose constant smile hides a long history of shrewdly practicing anti-Western deceit at the negotiating table.

It’s no secret to anyone that Trump likes to win at that same negotiating table, particularly when the odds are against victory. “One of the keys to thinking big is total focus,” his “The Art of The Deal,” written more than 30 years ago, says. “I think of it almost as a controlled neurosis, which is a quality I’ve noticed in many highly successful entrepreneurs.” In New York real estate, Trump adds, “you are dealing with some of the sharpest, toughest, and most vicious people in the world. I happen to love to go up against these guys, and I love to beat them.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274911/did-we-learn-anything-911-daniel-greenfield

Two things happened in 2001.

Islamic terrorists carried out their most successful attack on America with the murder of 2,977 people. And the number of immigrants obtaining permanent residency passed a million for the first time in a decade. Before 2001, a million plus was a streak that might linger for a few years before falling back.

These days it’s the new normal. Aside from one blip, we’ve been riding the million plus train for over a decade. The resistance to that trend is currently the one thing we seem to have learned from 9/11.

After decades of being massacred by terrorists who have come here as tourists, refugees and immigrants, we are finally trying to close the door on travelers from Islamic terrorist states.

And it only took 16 years.

That’s because learning nothing from the past has been our specialty.

“A flag bearing a crescent and star flies from a flagpole in front of the World Trade Center, next to a Christmas tree and a menorah,” The New York Times reported in 1997.

Four years earlier, Muslim terrorists had bombed the World Trade Center in an unsuccessful effort to bring down the towers. Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh at the center of the terror plot, had urged, “We . . . have been ordered with terrorism because we must prepare what power we can to terrorize the enemy of Allah and your enemy. The Koran says ‘to strike terror.’”

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/09/07/air-force-defends-c-17-crews-stopover-scotland-trump-resort.html?ESRC=eb_190909.nl

“”The Trump property — at $136 a night — was less expensive than the Marriott property — $161 a night…” so a C-17 crew stayed there during an overnight stop in Scotland. If ever there was a crisis demanding Congressional investigation, this is it.” DPS

The U.S. Air Force is defending an aircrew’s decision earlier this year to make a scheduled stop in Scotland and stay at a luxury resort owned by President Donald Trump.

The seven-member crew of a C-17 Globemaster III flying to Kuwait followed all proper procedures and protocols when they stopped at Glasgow’s Prestwick Airport and when they booked their stay at Trump’s Turnberry resort for a mission in March, the Air Force’s top spokesperson told Military.com on Saturday.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/10/obama-not-trump-outed-russian-spy/

President Trump did not cause the Central Intelligence Agency to withdraw a top-level spy from Russia. Obama did. And so did indiscreet intelligence officials. CNN’s report to the contrary is false, as usual. CNN has a track record of fake news, including false and biased reporting that elevates white supremacists.

On Monday, CNN bragged of an “exclusive” report that “the United States successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government” partly because “President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.”

In fact, however, officials “mishandled intelligence” and tried to extricate this source in 2016, before Trump even won the presidential election. The New York Times reports intelligence officials compromised this source by gossiping about him to news reporters.

“When intelligence officials revealed the severity of Russia’s election interference with unusual detail … the news media picked up on details about the C.I.A.’s Kremlin sources.” Then, “C.I.A. officials … made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to extract the source from Russia. … [T]he C.I.A. pressed again months later after more media inquiries.”

President Obama compromised this source even further, right before Trump’s inauguration. Obama authorized the public release and declassification of a report by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) alluding to this source’s placement in the Russian government. The New York Times cites the public release of the DNI report as another reason for extracting the source.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/460550-states-launch-antitrust-investigation-into-google

A coalition of 50 attorneys general will be investigating Google for potential violations of antitrust law, a step that could potentially lead to a broad legal challenge to the company’s market dominance.

The investigation, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine (D), was announced on the steps of the Supreme Court building Monday afternoon after months of rumors about states seeking to turn up the pressure on Silicon Valley. 

The probe will focus on Google’s dominance in the online search and advertising markets.

“We have 50 attorneys general from across the nation who are involved in this investigation that we’re leading from Texas,” said Paxton. “This is a company that dominates all aspects of advertising on the internet and searching on the internet as they dominate the buyers’ side, the sellers’ side, the auction side and even the video side with YouTube,” he said of Google.

“This investigation is not a lawsuit — this is an investigation to determine the facts, and right now we’re looking at advertising,” Paxton added. “But the facts will lead to where the facts lead.”

Paxton and Racine were joined at the announcement by attorneys general from Alaska, South Dakota, Indiana, Arkansas, Utah, Florida, Missouri, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana and Nebraska.

The coalition includes 48 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. California and Alabama are the only two states not to join the investigation.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/all-in-the-comey-family/

Baker, Page, Priestap, and Strzok are toadies who aided Comey’s efforts to turn an election and kneecap a presidency.

B y his own admission, the recently fired FBI director James Comey leaked at least four memos of private presidential conversations — at least one of them containing some classified secret material — variously to his lawyers and through liaisons to the press. In both phone calls and personal meetings, Comey never gave any hint to the president he served that he intended to leave a written record of the conversations for what turned out to be his own selfish agenda.

Comey said his intent by leaking his versions of these conversations was to force a brouhaha that would in turn prompt Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel. That gambit worked to perfection when, shortly after Comey’s scripted media leaks, Robert Mueller, his predecessor, former FBI director, and longtime friend, was appointed special counsel, apparently to do what the now fired James Comey could not.

Mueller immediately put together a left-wing “dream team” of “all stars” — Clinton supporters, Clinton donors, and former attorneys of Clinton interests. As we can now conclude from his often clueless congressional testimony, Mueller himself essentially outsourced control of the investigation’s direction to Andrew Weissman, another strong Clinton partisan and Trump opponent.