HIGH NOONAN Scott Johnson

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/09/high-noonan-3.php

Noonan is a sore subject of long standing with me. She makes my skin crawl.

Noonan joined the crowd turning on George W. Bush in what I thought was (in Noonan’s case) a grossly unfair manner in 2008. Noonan wasn’t just unfair, she was also cowardly. I wrote critically about one of Noonan’s weekly Wall Street Journal columns in which she identified with the public disapproval of Bush that April in “Season of the witch.”

Having turned on George W. Bush, Noonan moved on to support the election of Barack Obama later that year. Noonan all but endorsed Obama in her 2008 column “Obama and the runaway train.” The anti-Bush and pro-Obama columns fit neatly together. She wrote of Obama just before the election:

He has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief. He climbed steep stairs, born off the continent with no father to guide, a dreamy, abandoning mother, mixed race, no connections.

He rose with guts and gifts. He is steady, calm, and, in terms of the execution of his political ascent, still the primary and almost only area in which his executive abilities can be discerned, he shows good judgment in terms of whom to hire and consult, what steps to take and moves to make. We witnessed from him this year something unique in American politics: He took down a political machine without raising his voice.

In a sense, Obama delivered, but in another sense Noonan got everything wrong. Obama certainly changed the direction and tone of American foreign policy, yet the change failed to yield the results Noonan anticipated. He betrayed allies and sold out to enemies for good measure, but for nothing in return.

Noonan then turned on Obama. In “The unwisdom of Barack Obama,” Noonan condemned Obama on one of the grounds she had supported him in 2008. It had dawned on her: “His essential problem is that he has very poor judgment.”

MY SAY: REFLECTIONS ON ROSH HA SHANA THE JEWISH NEW YEAR

Tonight begins a new year 5782 for the Jewish people. It is observed with reflection on a tragic history, pride in survival and achievements, and, of course delicious and savory food. This year there is also foreboding occasioned by the steep rise in overt antisemitism in America, the best and brightest corner of the diaspora.

It is demonstrated in the libels against Israel and actual violence against American Jews, particularly those in Orthodox garb. It is prevalent in the media, the academies and in the corridors of power, specifically in the Democrat party, whose grandees ignore and paper over the overt bias.

I am an optimist by nature so I will hope for a better year that restores patriotism and pride in America’s exceptionalism and legacy, and for the safety of Israel and people of good will all over the world. As we always abbreviated in the Bronx: “A happy and healthy……” rsk

The Armenian Genocide: Past, Present, and Future? The massacre of 1.5 million Christians was ultimately a severe segment of an ancient and ongoing continuum. Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/armenian-genocide-past-present-and-future-raymond-ibrahim/

On April 24, 2021, Joe Biden became the first sitting U.S. president formally to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide.  What was this genocide about, and what is its significance for today?

The Genocide Education Project offers a summary of that tragic event which transpired during World War I, specifically between 1915 and 1917:

More than one million Armenians perished as the result of execution, starvation, disease, the harsh environment, and physical abuse.  A people who lived in eastern Turkey for nearly 3,000 years [more than double the amount of time the invading Islamic Turks had occupied Anatolia, now known as “Turkey”] lost its homeland and was profoundly decimated in the first large-scale genocide of the twentieth century.  At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000….  Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, eyewitness accounts, official archives, photographic evidence, the reports of diplomats, and the testimony of survivors, denial of the Armenian Genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present.

The evidence is indeed overwhelming.  As far back as 1920, U.S. Senate Resolution 359 heard eyewitness testimony concerning the “[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death [which] have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages.”

In her memoir, Ravished Armenia, Aurora Mardiganian described how she was raped and thrown into a harem (consistent with Islam’s rules of war).  Unlike thousands of other Armenian girls who were discarded after being defiled, she managed to escape. In the city of Malatia, she saw 16 Christian girls crucified: “Each girl had been nailed alive upon her cross,” she wrote, “spikes through her feet and hands, only their hair blown by the wind, covered their bodies.”  (Such scenes were portrayed in the 1919 documentary film Auction of Souls, some of which is based on Mardiganian’s memoirs.)

In short, that the Turks orchestrated and carried out a deliberate genocide of Armenians during World War I is an uncontested fact—for those who still care about facts—irrespective of who does or does not acknowledge it (Turkey itself epitomizing the latter category).

Even so, the extent of Turkish atrocities committed against Armenians far exceeds the Armenian Genocide.  In fact, it is more appropriate to see the latter, not as a singular event, but as an especially severe segment of an ancient and ongoing continuum.

The Genocide before the Genocide

The Turks’ initial genocide of Armenians began slightly over a thousand years ago, when the Muslim tribesmen first began to pour into and transform a then much-larger Armenia into what it is today: the eastern portion of modern-day Turkey.

Thus, in 1019, “the first appearance of the bloodthirsty beasts … the savage nation of Turks entered Armenia … and mercilessly slaughtered the Christian faithful with the sword,” writes Matthew of Edessa (d.1144), a chief chronicler for this period.  Three decades later, the raids were virtually nonstop. In 1049, the founder of the Seljuk Empire himself, Sultan Tughril Bey (r. 1037–1063), reached the unwalled city of Arzden, west of Lake Van, and “put the whole town to the sword, causing severe slaughter, as many as one hundred and fifty thousand persons.”

After thoroughly plundering the city, he ordered it, including 800 churches, to be set ablaze and turned into a desert. Arzden was “filled with bodies” and none “could count the number of those who perished in the flames.”  Eight hundred oxen and forty camels were required to cart out the vast plunder, mostly taken from Arzden’s churches. “How to relate here, with a voice stifled by tears,” continues Matthew, the many butchered Armenians who were “left without graves” and “became the prey of carrion beasts,” and “the exodus of women … led with their children into slavery and condemned to an eternal servitude! That was the beginning of the misfortunes of Armenia,” laments the chronicler, “so, lend an ear to this melancholy recital.”

Biden and the Left-wing Standard of Attacking Presidents In just a few months Joe Biden has wrought a series of disasters that will invoke outrage that dwarfs the concocted anger directed at Donald Trump. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/05/biden-and-the-left-wing-standard-of-attacking-presidents/

As Joe Biden entered office in January 2021, there still roared a left-wing revolution, a woke madness spreading through popular culture and Congress, much of which he indirectly has aided and abetted. It has redefined not just politics but the rules of the presidency. And the eventual casualty of these radical shifts in protocols and customs will be—Joe Biden.

Take impeachment, which heretofore had been rare and has still never led to a Senate conviction. Prior to Trump, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were the only presidents to have been impeached (Richard Nixon resigned to avoid it), and both were acquitted in the Senate. 

Yet leftist congressional representatives introduced articles of impeachment the very first week Trump was in office, on the absurd allegation of profiting from his office (the presidency cost the Trump corporations hundreds of millions). The House later went on to impeach him twice, without writs of “treason” and “bribery” or even “high crimes and misdemeanors” as set out by the Constitution. Instead, Trump was, first, successfully impeached for supposedly abusing his power and obstructing Congress. I don’t think the average American has ever been pulled over by the police for the high crime “of obstructing Congress” (historically a presidential pastime) or has been charged with “abuse of power” (said of every president from Thomas Jefferson to Barack Obama). 

Trump’s second impeachment was even flimsier. He was accused of “incitement of insurrection” concerning disturbances on January 6 that supposedly led to the violent death of Officer Brian Sicknick, the fatal shooting of an unarmed Ashli Babbitt, and the entire fable of an “armed insurrection.” Post-impeachment, we would learn that Sicknick died of natural causes. Strangely, for months no information about the shooter of Ashli Babbitt or the inquiry into that fatal act was ever fully released to the public. No one was charged with armed insurrection, largely because none of the buffoonish rioters were found either to have carried or used a firearm that day or were exposed as master plotters with plans to destroy the U.S. government. They may well have been guilty of felonies, but armed insurrectionary conspiracy was not one of them.

Erdogan’s Plans for the Future of Afghanistan: China, Russia and Terrorists by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17721/erdogan-afghanistan-terrorists

The US and the EU should not buy Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s fake pro-Western posture (such as when he offered to run the Kabul airport, then fled) or his fake anti-radicalism (such as when he is courting the Afghan terrorists). Erdogan’s strategy, as a member of NATO, is clearly to bolster Russia’s and China’s plans for the future of Afghanistan.

Iran, for its part, seems to be hoping to hit two birds with one stone: by systematically facilitating the journey of illegal Afghans to Turkey and toward Greece, it might destabilize both Turkey and Europe.

“The persistence of Erdoğan’s relationship with Hekmatyar illustrates that it was wishful thinking to believe that Erdoğan was ever anything more than a jihadi in a business suit, no matter how many diplomats projected their hopes of change on him.” — Michael Rubin, Middle East expert, Washington Examiner, August 11, 2021.

Now, due to Erdogan’s long-term anti-Western ideology, he will probably be tempted to seek an alliance with whichever pro-sharia group(s) will, in the near future, be governing Afghanistan.

The US and the EU should not buy Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s fake pro-Western posture (such as when he offered to run the Kabul airport, then fled) or his fake anti-radicalism (such as when he is courting the Afghan terrorists). Erdogan’s strategy, as a member of NATO, is clearly to bolster Russia’s and China’s plans for the future of Afghanistan.

Who Is Responsible For the Darkness That Has Descended on Us? The Treason Party. David Horowitz

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/who-responsible-darkness-has-descended-us-david-horowitz/

The late author Susan Sontag once famously said, “Communism is fascism with a human face.” A more perfect description of what the Democrat Party has become would be hard to come by. For five years the Democrats have focused their energies on laying the foundations of a communist economy and a one-party state. In pursuit of the latter, they have tried to abolish the electoral college, change the election laws to undermine the integrity of the voting system, give non-citizens the right to vote, eliminate voter I.D.’s which connect legitimate voters to their ballots, pack the Supreme Court, end the filibuster, pass legislation that would put control of presidential elections in the hands of the Democrat-favoring Washington bureaucracy and remove that control from the fifty states, as the Constitution now requires.

These efforts led to massive irregularities in the presidential election results that put the brain-damaged, pathological liar in the White House and led directly to the crises on the southern border, in America’s streets, and in Afghanistan. They were accompanied by a campaign to demonize former President Trump and the 74 million Americans who voted for him as “white supremacists” and “cultists.” This was itself a dagger aimed directly at the heart of the democratic process which depends on respect for the political opposition and compromise on legislation. If an opposing political party is placed beyond the pale, the inevitable result is a one-party state.

Character assassination has become the Democrats’ first weapon of choice, with Trump’s multiple bogus impeachments providing examples of how far Democrats are prepared to go to tear up the Constitution and two-hundred and forty years of American political tradition. Trump is no longer president but as a private citizen he is still the target of a Pelosi “commission” or “committee,” stacked completely with members who voted to impeach him, whose sole purpose is to convict Trump of inciting a fake “insurrection” in an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States. This is one more despicable effort to demonize Trump and his 74 million voters as “domestic terrorists” and therefore enemies of America to be dealt with as such.

Al-Qaida and ISIS: Still in Afghanistan Does Biden have a realistic plan for keeping them contained there? Terence P. Jeffrey

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/al-qaida-and-isis-still-afghanistan-terence-p-jeffrey/

“Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history,” President Joe Biden said in an address to the nation last Tuesday afternoon.

But is that war over?

Biden may have withdrawn the U.S. military from Afghanistan, but terrorist groups intent on attacking the United States still operate there.

A week after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Congress enacted a war authorization that was succinct yet sweeping.

It said: “That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations and persons.”

Al-Qaida, of course, was the terrorist organization that planned and committed the 9/11 attacks. Its leader, Osama bin Laden, was the person most responsible. The Taliban’s Afghanistan was the nation that most significantly aided bin Laden and al-Qaida.

Soon after 9/11, the United States invaded Afghanistan, overthrew the Taliban and drove Osama bin Laden into hiding in Pakistan, eventually finding and killing him.

For twenty years, the U.S. military maintained a presence in Afghanistan that prevented the Taliban from retaking control of the country and stopped al-Qaida from using it as a sanctuary from which it could plan and launch terrorist attacks against the United States.

But this April 14, Biden announced he was going to follow through on the agreement former President Donald Trump had made in 2020 with the Taliban to remove all U.S. forces from that country.

“It’s time for American troops to come home,” Biden said that day.

But it is not only the Taliban and some unevacuated Americans Biden has left behind.

That same April day that Biden said he would complete the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, CIA Director William Burns testified in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

“I think we have to be clear-eyed about the reality, looking at the potential terrorism challenge, that both al-Qaida and ISIS in Afghanistan remain intent on recovering the ability to attack U.S. targets, whether it’s in the region, in the West, or ultimately in the homeland,” Burns told the committee.

Thank you, President Biden By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/09/thank_you_president_biden.html

Joe Biden may have aged, but there is a consistency about him that remains true to form.  For this, we must thank him.

Anything that would assert American exceptional ideals and maintain American supremacy in the world is an anathema to Mr. Biden. 

Those who paid attention to this man over the years are not truly surprised by his indifference to Americans and allies of Americans who have been left behind in the terrorist haven of Afghanistan.

In early 2009, when some 150,000 American soldiers were still stationed in Iraq, President Obama put Vice President Biden in charge of bringing the U.S. troops home. According to the Atlantic magazine: ‘Biden threw himself into the mission. He chaired meetings and oversaw negotiations.’ In February 2010, Biden said: ‘I am very optimistic about Iraq. I think it’s going to be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government. I know every one of the major players in all of the segments of that society. I’ve been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences.’

American Education Is Rotten from Top to Bottom By Jack Cashill

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/09/american_education_is_rotten_from_top_to_bottom.html

In reading the “overview” of Dr. Jill Biden’s 2006 doctoral dissertation from the University of Delaware, I am reminded just how rotten, from top to bottom, are America’s schools of graduate education.  That a doctor of anything could write a sentence like the one that follows speaks to the historic worthlessness of most graduate programs in education:

Three quarters of the class will be Caucasian; one quarter of the class will be African American; one seat will hold a Latino; and the remaining seats will be filled with students of Asian descent or non-resident aliens.

An advisory committee had to approve this mumbo-jumbo. Apparently, none of the committee members noticed that when you add three fourths to one fourth, you’ve pretty much exhausted all the “fourths” available — all the seats as well.  Although the temptation is to write Dr. Jill’s dissertation off to the power of political pull, her dissertation, from my experience, represents something of a norm in the illiteracy, innumeracy, and race obsession of grad-level education.

My oldest brother, an exceptional high school principal, refused to pursue a doctorate in education — the key to becoming a school superintendent — because he thought the courses he took to get his Master’s a waste of everyone’s time.  My middle brother became a very good high school math teacher without getting any education degrees.  He simply retooled through a special quickie program after retiring as an engineer from Exxon.

On the other hand, an in-law, since deceased, did go on to get his Ed.D.  As a “doctor,” he quickly climbed the ranks and became a school superintendent.  Oh, one caveat: I took his Graduate Record Exams for him.  He could not have passed on his own.  My bad.

The Intellectual Conformity of International-Relations Faculty By Gabriel Scheinmann

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/the-intellectual-conformity-of-international-relations-faculty/

A dearth of conservative professors deprives students of crucial perspectives.

Americans may be repulsed by the fiasco in Afghanistan — a recent poll suggests only 25 percent approve of President Biden’s handling of the situation — but there is one constituency that fully supports his decision: the ivory tower. International-relations professors have been near-unanimous in their calls for American retreat from Afghanistan (and elsewhere.) When surveyed, fewer than 3 percent believed the war in Afghanistan is a top-three foreign-policy issue for the United States. In a May poll, nearly three quarters of international-relations faculty endorsed President Biden’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Similarly, 85 percent of professors approved of Biden’s handling of national security and 81 percent approved his approach to international human-rights issues. When the Trump administration temporarily called off peace talks with the Taliban in January 2020, a stunning majority of academics said the decision would have a negative effect on U.S. credibility with our allies, whereas today many argue the debacle will likely not damage U.S. credibility elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the academic debate about Afghanistan is the norm, not the exception. As survey after survey demonstrates, university faculty — particularly international-relations faculty — harbor worldviews that are wildly out of step with the American people and leaders of both political parties. Their worldview informs the courses they teach and the syllabi they assign. Absent greater exposure to more sensible and realistic points of view, we risk producing a generation that is out of touch and out of depth with the challenges at hand. From a totalitarian and expansionist Chinese Communist Party to a revisionist Russia to a murderously ideological Iran and North Korea, challenges to American leadership cannot be overstated. Given the generational nature of these challenges, one would think that our faculty’s priority would be to educate college students on these threats and equip them with the skills to emerge victorious, however defined.