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Say No to David Petraeus He did his county a great service, but he also broke the law. By David French

Posted By on February 14th, 2017

If Donald Trump doesn’t understand now, he will eventually. Integrity and truth ultimately do matter, and if he wants to be a successful president, he’s going to have to appoint people to high office who won’t violate the public’s trust.

That means appointing more men like Neil Gorsuch and James Mattis. And it means keeping David Petraeus out of the White House.

This is a painful thing to say. I served under General Petraeus (far, far under, I was a lowly captain in an armored cavalry squadron deployed roughly 100 miles from Baghdad) during the Surge, and I saw with my own eyes the power of effective leadership, the right strategy, and the proper application of force. He came into Iraq at a time of maximum chaos and was instrumental in transforming an emerging and bloody defeat into a stunning battlefield victory.

It’s no understatement to say that by the September 2008 — when he turned over command in Iraq to General Raymond Odierno — he was an American hero, one of the great generals of modern times. Then he betrayed his family, violated the law, and established a precedent for prosecutorial favoritism that haunted America during the 2016 presidential election.

The facts of his case are simple and disappointing. Petraeus had an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, and provided her with notebooks containing highly classified information. Compounding his offense, he apparently initially lied to the FBI when they confronted him in 2012, denying that he had provided any classified information to his mistress.

Lest anyone think the disclosure was harmless — more the by-product of overclassification than an action that risked national security — consider the information he shared with Broadwell. As the Washington Post reported, the notebooks “contained code words for secret intelligence programs, the identities of covert officers, and information about war strategy and deliberative discussions with the National Security Council.”

This was a serious offense, but rather than serve the prison time that virtually any service member would receive under similar (or lesser) circumstances, Petraeus received a sweetheart plea deal. In exchange for pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information, Petraeus was sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to pay a $100,000 fine.

It pays to be powerful.

EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Gamble Helped Black Students Thrive On the similarities between Betsy DeVos and another education philanthropist. By William Mattox

Posted By on February 14th, 2017

Tallahassee, Fla.

Something curious happened at a Black History Month program held at Florida A&M University last week. An actress portraying African-American educator Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) praised someone with a demographic profile eerily similar to Betsy DeVos, who earlier that day was confirmed by the Senate as education secretary. As the program unfolded, it became easy to see why the performer decided to speak up.

When Bethune started her Daytona School for Negro Girls in 1904, the education establishment had little interest in seeing young black children receive good instruction. So she looked elsewhere for help. Bethune reached out to James N. Gamble, son of the Procter & Gamble co-founder and a regular vacationer in Daytona. Bethune told Gamble she wanted more than money. She needed someone who would share her vision for giving underprivileged black children more opportunities.

Gamble was so impressed with Bethune and her students that he bought into her vision—wholeheartedly. He not only became the chairman of Bethune’s school, but enlisted the support of other wealthy businessmen, including John D. Rockefeller.

The influx of financial resources helped. Bethune had previously made school desks out of discarded boxes and crates, and ink for pens out of elderberry juice. But outside funding didn’t solve everything.

During her performance last week, Ersula Odom re-enacted the story of how Bethune and her students huddled one night in their schoolhouse as an angry mob of Ku Klux Klan members assembled outside. Suddenly, the voice of one schoolgirl pierced the darkness, singing the comforting hymn “God Will Take Care of You.” When Bethune and the other students joined in the resounding chorus, the Klansmen realized that they were up against forces they dare not cross. Sheepishly, they turned and walked away.

I realize some people think Mrs. DeVos should be disqualified from public service because she supports giving students more opportunities, including the option of attending faith-based schools where such hymns are often sung today. But I see in Mrs. DeVos echoes of James N. Gamble—another Midwestern Protestant Republican with a family fortune from a cleaning-products company. Like Gamble, Mrs. DeVos has given generously to help disadvantaged kids receive a good education, and she has fully bought into a philosophy that places the needs of children ahead of the interests of the education establishment.

That’s something that should give pause to all of the new education secretary’s detractors—especially those who last Friday stood in a schoolhouse door to block Mrs. DeVos from entering.

Mr. Mattox is director of the Marshall Center for Educational Options at the James Madison Institute.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Step Toward Mideast Peace: Tell the Truth Netanyahu’s Washington visit is an opportunity to debunk pernicious falsehoods about Israel. Max Singer

Posted By on February 14th, 2017

Donald Trump ran for president pledging to throw off political correctness and tell bold truths. That’s something to keep in mind this week. On Wednesday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit the White House. Thursday will bring Senate confirmation hearings for David Friedman, Mr. Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the Jewish state. Both events offer an opportunity for the fearless truth-telling that Mr. Trump promised.

The U.S. has long favored Israel, even during the relative chill of the Obama administration. Washington has nevertheless parroted or passively accepted the conventional falsehoods about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If Mr. Trump wants to advance the possibility of peace, he should begin by challenging the five big untruths that sustain the anti-Israel consensus:

• Israel occupies “Palestinian territory.” This is nonsensical: There never has been a Palestinian government that could hold any territory, meaning Israel could not have taken “Palestinian land.” Quite possibly large parts of the West Bank should become Palestinian territory, but that is a different claim.

The Trump administration should always describe the West Bank as “disputed” land and speak against the phrase “Palestinian territory”—except when used in the future tense. It should also recognize that Israel came to the territory it holds not only during a defensive war but also through historical and legal claims, including the 1922 League of Nations mandate to establish a Jewish homeland.

• Millions of Palestinian “refugees” have a “right of return” to Israel. The standard international view is that Israel has prevented five million Palestinians, many living in “refugee camps,” from returning to their homes. But practically none of these people are refugees as normally defined; rather they are the descendants of refugees. The Arab world has kept them in misery for three generations to preserve their plight as a weapon against Israel.
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Washington Institute Distinguished Fellow David Makovsky on how to repair U.S.-Israeli relations. Photo credit: Getty Images.

The U.S. has failed to challenge this false narrative. It is the principal financial supporter of Unrwa—the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East—whose sole purpose is to provide for the basic needs of these perpetual “refugees.”

Privately, American diplomats understand that the normal description of Palestinian “refugees” is a fraud and that these descendants have no legal “right of return.” A first step to peace, then, would be to end the charade and begin to dismantle Unrwa. The Trump administration might also mention the estimated 800,000 Jewish refugees who, in the late 1940s and early ’50s, were thrown out of the Arab countries where they had been living for millennia. Most of them settled in an impoverished, newborn Israel without international assistance.

• Israelis and Palestinians have comparable claims to Jerusalem. This is the best example of the false “evenhandedness” that has long characterized American policy—saying, for instance, that “Jerusalem is sacred to both religions.” Although the city’s Al Aqsa mosque is significant in Islam, Jerusalem itself has essentially no religious importance. It is not mentioned in the Quran or in Muslim prayers. It was never the capital of any Islamic empire.

Peace requires recognizing three things: that Jerusalem must remain the capital of Israel; that the city’s religious sites must be protected and free, as they have been only under the Jewish state; and that any provision for a Palestinian capital must not threaten the city’s peaceful unity. A bold truth-teller would also move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, despite the threats of a violent response, and would allow the passports of American citizens born in the capital to record that they were born in Israel.

• There was no ancient Jewish presence in Israel. Palestinian leaders insist that this is true, and that the historical Jewish temples were not actually located on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This feeds their claim that the Jews came to Israel as foreign colonialists imposed by the Europeans after the Holocaust.

This falsehood can be sustained only because it is politely tolerated by the U.S. and Europe—and sometimes supported by U.N. agencies like Unesco. It works against the possibility of peace by denying the Palestinians a moral basis for negotiating with Israel. The Trump administration should contradict these absurd denials of history so often that Palestinian leaders begin to look foolish to their own people.

• The Palestinians are ready to accept a “two-state solution” to end the conflict. The U.S. has a tendency to assume that Palestinian leaders are ready to accept Israel if suitable concessions are offered. The Trump administration ought to ask: What is the evidence for this? When did the Palestinians give up their long-term commitment to destroy Israel, and which leaders backed such a dramatic change? Undoubtedly, many Palestinians are willing and even eager for peace. Yet it is still taboo in Palestinian debate to publicly suggest accepting Israel’s legitimacy or renouncing the claims of the “refugees.”

Washington is practiced at superficial evenhandedness, always issuing parallel-seeming statements about both sides. What the Trump administration can bring is genuine evenhandedness: respecting each side’s truths and rejecting each side’s falsehoods, even when this leads to a position that seems “unbalanced.” CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Michael Flynn Fallout Congress should include the leaked transcripts in its Russia probes.

Posted By on February 14th, 2017

Michael Flynn’s resignation as national security adviser is an opportunity for Donald Trump to stabilize his White House operation. But it’s also an opening for Congress to clarify the troubling intelligence machinations over Mr. Flynn’s 2016 campaign contacts with Russia.

Mr. Flynn became a political liability after his account of Dec. 29 phone calls with the Russian ambassador was contradicted by news reports. In his resignation letter, the former intelligence officer said he had given Vice President Mike Pence “incomplete information” about whether he had discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia on these calls.

Initially Mr. Flynn claimed Russian sanctions hadn’t come up in the conversations, and that’s what the Vice President said in defending him on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” But U.S. officials then leaked to the press that transcripts of Mr. Flynn’s phone calls show that sanctions were discussed. “This was an act of trust, whether or not he misled the Vice President was the issue,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday.

Fair enough, if that’s the real reason. But as troubling is the fact that Mr. Flynn may have been targeted for political destruction by intelligence sources inside the government. We wrote Tuesday that the existence of transcripts of Mr. Flynn talking with a foreign official suggests that he may have been the subject of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) warrant.

Some media outlets have reported that the FBI requested the warrant as part of the Obama Administration’s investigation into contacts between associates of Mr. Trump and Russian banks. Democrats are now demanding hearings, which they believe will expose more serious and unseemly interactions between Vladimir Putin and the Trump campaign. The House and Senate intelligence committees are already investigating Russian election meddling.

But readers should understand how rare it is for electronic intercepts of a private U.S. citizen—which Mr. Flynn was at the time—to be leaked to the press. The conversations of American citizens are supposed to be protected, lest private reputations be ruined without accountability. So it’s unsettling to read that so many in the government claim to have read the transcripts of Mr. Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador, and then spoke about them to the press.

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America Snoozing Europe is waking up. When will blue-state U.S.A.? Bruce Bawer

Posted By on February 14th, 2017

There was a time, in the years immediately after 9/11, when I was reasonably (though not entirely) confident that we Americans would be too savvy to let ourselves be led down the primrose path of Islamization. I assumed that the alarming example of Europe – where the destructive nature of Islam’s impact was there for all to see – would be effective enough to persuade us to pull up the welcome mat and double-lock the door. What I didn’t count on was that so many of our politicians and media would do such a splendid job of covering up the facts about the European situation and whitewashing the Religion of Peace. Nor could I have imagined that the post-9/11 generation of Americans would grow up to be so thoroughly drenched in political correctness that many of them would, in fact, come to see Islam not as an violent existential threat but as the most vulnerable of victim groups.

Yes, Americans elected Trump. Red-state Americans, anyway. But coastal elites went ballistic over his executive order that sought to put a temporary halt to immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. Hollywood, the bubble-headed brain trust of blue-state America, set the tone of the backlash: Judd Apatow denounced Trump’s “ignorance and cruelty”; Patricia Arquette suggested returning the Statue of Liberty to France; John Leguizamo reminded his Twitter followers that “The pilgrims came here on the #mayflower as refugees!” Several celebrity tweets implied that Europeans would never support such a monstrous act. Yet a new poll tells otherwise. Most EU citizens, it shows, would be happy to see a total and permanent end to immigration from the Islamic world. To be specific: 71% of Poles, 65% of Austrians, 53% of Germans, 51% of Italians, 64% of Belgians, 58% of Greeks, 61% of Frenchmen, and 64% of Hungarians want Muslim immigration to stop. For good. Only in two of the ten European countries surveyed did a Muslim immigration ban not win the support of a clear majority, and even in those cases a plurality approved of a ban: in Britain, the numbers were 47% for, 23% against; in Spain, 41% to 32%.

Chatham House, the London-based think tank that conducted the survey, plainly found these results distasteful. Calling them “sobering” and attributing them (at least in part) to the influence of the so-called “radical right,” the pollsters sought to discount opposition to Muslim immigration by emphasizing that it was stronger among pensioners, the undereducated, rural types, and those “who are dissatisfied with their life” – in other words, not the right sort of people. Of course, what self-respecting think tank would be willing to admit that Europeans – having had enough of doling out welfare to immigrants who, in return, rape women and children, torment Jews and gays, commit violent crimes on an unprecedented scale, and express contempt for democracy and their infidel neighbors while tacitly supporting terrorism and sharia – are finally waking up?

How depressing that while more and more Europeans are snapping out of their self-delusions, all too many North Americans remain first-class dupes. According to the results of a Rasmussen poll that were released just the other day, 56% of Democrats actually believe that Muslims undergo serious persecution in the U.S, while only 46% think that Christians are persecuted in the Islamic world. What could be more delusional? Meanwhile, a CBS survey showed that only one in seven Democrats consider Islam to be more dangerous than any other religion and that nearly seven out of ten Democrats think Islam encourages violence to approximately the same extent as other faiths. Insane. Not to leave Canadians out, on February 16 the Parliament in Ottawa will actually consider a motion, known as M-103, that would criminalize Islamophobia. It’s a move that should elicit mass protests in the streets; but most Canadians appear to be far more worked up about Trump than about the prospect of their own government severely curtailing their free-speech rights.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Rape and Slavery That No Campus Will Condemn Slavery and rape aren’t wrong when Muslims do it. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on February 14th, 2017

“I don’t think it’s morally evil to own somebody.”

“A male owner of a female slave has the right to sexual access to her.”

These views don’t come from an ISIS underground bunker, but out of the brilliantly lit halls of Georgetown University where rape and slavery are defended by an Islamic studies professor.

Georgetown had changed the names of Mulledy Hall and McSherry Hall because Mulledy and McSherry had once been involved in selling some slaves back in the early 19th century. When Christina Hoff Sommers spoke at Georgetown, feminists demanded trigger warnings and a university official threatened College Republicans. But defending actual slavery and rape is still okay at Georgetown.

So long as it’s committed by Muslims under the license of the Koran.

“I don’t think it’s morally evil to own somebody,” Jonathan Brown explained to attendees at his lecture. “Slavery cannot just be treated as a moral evil in and of itself.”

The Georgetown Islamic Studies professor had expelled a critic before the lecture even began. He thought that he was among “brothers” at the International Institute of Islamic Thought. But sitting in the audience was Umar Lee, another convert, but one who unlike Brown had struggled with the morality of his new religion. Some in the audience had questions and Brown had horrifying Islamist answers.

To a man who argued that slavery was wrong, Brown retorted, “How can you say, if you’re Muslim, the Prophet of God had slaves. He had slaves. There’s no denying that. Was he—are you more morally mature than the Prophet of God? No you’re not.”

Slavery can’t be wrong. Not if Mohammed, the prophet of Allah and founder of Islam, had slaves. The Koran is the touchstone of Brown’s personal morality, as it is of every Muslim.

Mohammed was the perfect man and a role model for all Muslims. Therefore rape and child abuse can’t be wrong either. Not when the founder of Islam was both a rapist and a pedophile.

When Brown had been asked in the past about the women and girls sold and raped by ISIS based on Islamic law, he defended the Islamic practice of sex slavery, “There is no doubt that the Quran and Sunna permit this.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

ISIS Beheads Teddy Bear to Warn of Valentine’s Day Ban By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on February 14th, 2017

The Islamic State has reportedly banned any red clothing today in the section of Mosul it still controls out of fear residents will celebrate Valentine’s Day — and even beheaded a teddy bear to drive home their edict.

The holiday of hearts and candy is big in Iraq, with vendors stocking up on roses, plush red and pink teddy bears, mylar balloons and other classic gifts.

Eastern Mosul has been liberated by Iraq forces, who are preparing their assault on the rest of the city west of the Tigris — smaller, but more densely populated with civilians.

According to Alsumaria News, a source in occupied Mosul told the satellite network that ISIS media distributed the alert barring shades of red even on children’s clothes.

The source further reported that an ISIS cleric delivering a sermon days ago ripped the head off a red stuffed bear to underscore the ban.

Chaldean Catholic Bishop Basel Yaldo, meanwhile, posted pictures of a Baghdad Valentine’s Day party attended by Chaldean Archbishop of Kirkuk and Mosul Louis Sarko.

Valentine’s Day hasn’t been the easiest thing for Islamist governments to control — the handful who try to ban observance of the holiday, anyway.

Islamabad’s High Court banned celebration of the holiday in public places throughout Pakistan on Monday after a citizen argued it was “against Islamic teachings and should be banned immediately.” TV channels and newspapers were told to pull any promotions for V-Day.

Still, the ruling didn’t have an immediate effect.

Arab News in Saudi Arabia reported last year that even though the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice bans the sale of Valentine’s gifts, vendors do furtive home deliveries of roses and bears at hiked-up prices.

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Obama Fundamentally Transformed the Democrats By Karin McQuillan

Posted By on February 14th, 2017

Former President Obama failed at transforming America, but did succeeded at transforming the Democratic Party. That is why we are witnessing an unprecedented all-out war against the new president.

Since President Trump’s inauguration, the headlines are all about leftist groups forcing Democratic Party politicians to adopt their strategy of “Resist!” and claiming President Trump is a threat to the country.

Believe your eyes: women in pink pussy hats led by a jihadi-supporting Muslim in a hijab, and youths in black masks attacking Trump supporters with clubs, are precisely what they look like – ideologues and extremists.

So where did all these agitators come from? From the moment he entered the Oval Office, Obama staffed up a leftwing DOJ, EPA and Department of Education, and began to target blacks, conservationists, and millennials with his leftwing, divisive messages. Enormous sums of money were lavished on radical groups and agendas.

As Paul Sperry tells us in an important New York Post article, Obama’s private foundation, Organizing for Action, directly churned out community organizers by the tens of thousands.

When former President Barack Obama said he was “heartened” by anti-Trump protests, he was sending a message of approval to his troops. Troops? Yes, Obama has an army of agitators — numbering more than 30,000 — who will fight his Republican successor at every turn of his historic presidency. And Obama will command them from a bunker less than two miles from the White House.

Significantly, Obama handed his famous state of the art election campaign – the data, the staff, the fundraising – to Organizing for Action, not to the Democratic Party. Eight years later, the Democratic Party is decimated at every level of government. And they are being overrun by professional agitators.

From the moment he took over the Oval office, Obama’s efforts were much bigger than the OFA’s direct training.

According to Hans von Spakowsky and Christian Adams, two attorneys who previously worked in the Civil Rights Division …every single one of the hundreds of lawyers hired during the Obama Administration—every single one—was a leftwing activist. “The Obama Justice Department,” they wrote, “has assembled a law firm of hundreds of fringe leftists to enforce a brave new vision of civil rights law.

Through the DOJ, President Obama instituted a shakedown system eerily reminiscent of the Acorn “Muscle for Money” program that he was a part of in Chicago. But as president, he could do it to the tune of half a billion, yes that’s a billion, dollars.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Afghan bride sold for 30 goats executed for non-performance By Ed Straker

Posted By on February 14th, 2017

In America, if you’re a young woman and your parents disapprove of your boyfriend, you’ll probably marry him anyway. But in Afghanistan, it happens a little differently, maybe even something like this:

1) Your parents will force you into an arranged marriage.

2) They will sell you for something like 30 goats, and even some cows, if you look sexy in a burka.

3) If you instead elope with your boyfriend, your family will hunt you down to try and kill you.

4) If you go to the police for help, the police will arrest you for adultery.

5) When a mob comes to the police station to demand your release, the police will hand them over to you.

6) Your family members will execute you for having shamed them, since they received all these lovely goats and you refused to let a strange man rape you.

An armed mob that included relatives of a young woman who had eloped with her lover stormed a police station holding the couple in eastern Afghanistan over the weekend, then dragged the lovers off and killed them, officials and witnesses said.

The woman, Fatiha, 18, was described as having been married against her will and eloping instead with a young man…. But on Saturday the police caught and arrested the couple on suspicion of adultery.

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The Delusion of the “Two-State Solution” Joel Fishman ****

Posted By on February 14th, 2017

The world still believes that the “Two State Solution” is the way to resolve the Israel-Palestine Conflict. But when the Palestinians invoke this idea, they mean something very different, which has nothing to do with peace.http://mida.org.il/2017/02/12/the-delusion-of-the-two-state-solution/

For some time, the slogan of the so-called “Two-State Solution” has constantly been presented in the media as a desirable goal, one that Israel and the Palestinians should implement in the interest of peace. Whenever one raises this idea, it is implied that Israel should make major sacrifices in exchange for an unclear benefit. During the Obama administration, Secretary of State, John Kerry, bitterly accused the Government of Israel of not being committed to the “Two State Solution,” and even last week in London, Prime Minister Theresa May declared that she favored the “Two-State Solution.” She asked Prime Minster Netanyahu if he were also committed to this formula. For his part, the Prime Minister did not respond directly but stated that Israel is committed to peace.

This slogan completely lacks merit. The PLO first introduced it as a stratagem, and its real purpose has been to conceal their true aims and those of their successor, the Palestinian Authority. Those who launched the idea of the “Two State Solution” intended that it be understood differently by the Israelis — their potential victims — and other well-meaning outsiders who seemingly would want a fair solution to this war.

During the war in Vietnam, the North Vietnamese originally launched the “Two-State” formula in order to hide their strategic goal. They adopted a strategy of phases which, by devoting attention to the intermediate stages of their struggle, would enable them to reach their goal by gradual steps. Their real intention was that North Vietnam would conquer South Vietnam, but they spoke of the “Two-State Solution,” a tactic whose purpose was to disguise their aims and manipulate world public opinion. In the end, Communist North Vietnam subdued and conquered South Vietnam, and in 1975 the last Americans fled from the rooftop of their embassy in Saigon by helicopter. This was a major defeat both for the South Vietnamese and for the United States of America.

During the early 1970s Salah Khalaf, known as Abu Iyad, led a PLO delegation to Hanoi to learn from the North Vietnamese. There, they met the legendary General Vo Nguyen Giap and political advisors who coached them on presenting their case and changing their image of being terrorists in world public opinion. Abu Iyad described this important visit in his book,My Home, My Land (which he published with Eric Rouleau in 1978). Abu Iyad recounted that the North Vietnamese advised the Palestinians to devote attention to the intermediate stages of their war and to accept the need for “provisional sacrifices.”