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Meet Aleppo’s ‘Moderate,’ ‘Secular’ ‘Rebels’: Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood Let’s support moderate Muslims. But that means figuring out which ones are the real deal. By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on August 22nd, 2016

As the invaluable David Pryce-Jones notes, Syria’s second-most important city, Aleppo, is the locus of heavy combat, pitting Russia and Iran, the forces propping up the Bashar Assad, against anti-regime fighters, also known as the “rebels.” David refers to reports that, as he summarizes them, “secular rebels appear to have liberated most of [Aleppo], maybe all of it.” Meanwhile, the estimable Charles Krauthammer observes that Russia is operating out of an air base in Iran (probably yet another violation of Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal with the mullahs). And who does Charles say Vladimir Putin’s air force is targeting? “It’s hitting a lot of the moderate rebels . . . in Aleppo.”

I have been arguing for years (and as recently as last weekend) that there are simply not enough moderate, secular rebels in Syria to overthrow the regime, much less to defeat both Assad and ISIS simultaneously. Suggestions to the contrary are wishful thinking. More important, such suggestions are counterproductive: The illusion of a vibrant secular, pro-Western opposition in Syria is the basis for urging that America throw its weight behind the “rebels,” on the theory that we would be undermining radical Islam.

In truth, we’d simply be empowering one set of anti-American Islamists against another.

At The Long War Journal, Tom Joscelyn, who for my money does the best job in America of analyzing the factions involved in the global jihad, takes a careful look at who is fighting against Assad in Syria. To what should be no one’s surprise — but will apparently be very surprising to many — the bulk of the opposition consists of Islamists.

As Tom explains, two coalitions are spearheading the campaign that has enjoyed recent success against the regime in Aleppo. The first is headed up by al-Qaeda and goes by the name Jaysh al-Fath (Army of Conquest). The al-Qaeda franchise in Syria, until recently known as al-Nusrah, has rebranded itself as Jabhat Fath al-Sham (JFS). It has a close alliance with a group called Ahrar al-Sham (Ahrar), which includes many al-Qaeda veterans and (as Tom notes) models itself after the Taliban (al-Qaeda’s close ally in Afghanistan). JFS and Ahrar run the Jaysh al-Fath coalition, which includes sundry other jihadist militias long affiliated with the al-Qaeda terror network.

Al-Qaeda is well aware of the West’s myopic focus on ISIS (the Islamic State — the al-Qaeda splinter group that began as al-Qaeda in Iraq). This myopia has the U.S. government and much of the commentariat turning a blind eye to other anti-American Islamists, even absurdly labeling them “moderates,” as long as they are not part of ISIS. The leaders of al-Qaeda realize that a great deal of financial and materiel support is to be had in the “moderate rebel” business but that the al-Qaeda brand could be problematic in maintaining the façade. So they have encouraged their franchises to obscure and soft-peddle their al-Qaeda connections — particularly by not brandishing “al-Qaeda” in their names.

It’s working.

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For Worried Democrats: All Eyes on WikiLeaks When a fundraising scandal threatened his reelection in 1996, Bill Clinton stonewalled.Can Hillary do the same with the Clinton Foundation? John Fund

Posted By on August 22nd, 2016

Much of the media are already declaring the election an all-but-certain win for Hillary Clinton. Today, the political forecasting site FiveThirtyEight, using polls plus historical and economic data, gives Hillary a 74.7 percent chance of being elected. But smart Democrats are resisting overconfidence; they know a lot can happen before the election. “American politics is freaky and can turn on a dime and in the other direction in one news cycle,” Democratic strategist Brad Bannon admitted last week,

Forecasts like the one from FiveThirtyEight are often based on a combination of polls, economic conditions, and factors such as the popularity of the incumbent president. They clearly don’t include the inevitable “x factors” in a campaign, such as the performances in presidential debates, possible terrorist attacks, and mega gaffes by one or more of the candidates. They also ignore the impact a late-breaking scandal can have on a race. Donald Trump has to worry about a potential leak from his IRS tax returns (it happened to Mitt Romney in 2012). Hillary Clinton has known since the Democratic convention in Philadelphia just how disruptive a WikiLeaks revelations can be — the leaks of e-mails from the Democratic National Committee cost chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job.

Clinton must also remember what happened exactly 20 years ago during her husband’s campaign for reelection. That campaign has so far been recalled this year mostly for the skillful decision by Haley Barbour’s Republican National Committee to put some distance between GOP congressional incumbents and presidential nominee Bob Dole. The RNC urged voters not to “hand Clinton a blank check,” in the event he won reelection, by turning control of Congress over to the Democrats. It worked: Democrats actually lost two seats in the Senate and gained only two seats in the House.

But another story emerged from the 1996 election, centering around how Bill Clinton had to run out the clock on a growing campaign-finance scandal that in the last month of the campaign changed the dynamics of what had been a complete cakewalk of a race. Clinton ended up winning by eight points over Bob Dole (49 percent to 41 percent, with Ross Perot taking 9 percent of the vote). But that loss was not nearly as bad as Republicans had feared. Six final pre-election polls had Clinton winning by anywhere from eleven to 16 points. The New York Times/CBS poll was the most off-base, showing Clinton beating Dole 53 to 35 percent. CNN’s final tracking poll had Clinton ahead by 16 points. The respected Pew Research Center issued a final poll showing Clinton ahead 52 percent to 38 percent, a 14-point lead almost double the actual results on Election Day.

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Of Course There Should Be an Ideological Test in Immigration The U.S. Constitution allows barring would-be immigrants who would subvert our Constitution. By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on August 22nd, 2016

Imagine an American government official, interviewing an alien seeking admission to our country from, say, Syria:

U.S. official: “Will you support the United States Constitution?”

Syrian alien: “Well, sure, except that I believe the government should be overseen by a caliph, who must be Muslim and male, and who must rule in accordance with Islamic law, which no man-made law may contradict. None of this ‘We the People’ stuff; Allah is the sovereign. Non-Muslims should not be required to convert to Islam, of course, but they must submit to the authority of Islamic law — which requires them to live in the second-class status of dhimmitude and to pay a poll tax for that privilege.”

“I also believe women must be subservient to men, and that men are permitted to beat their wives if they are disobedient — especially if they refuse sex, in which they must engage on demand. There is no such thing as marital rape, and proving non-marital rape requires testimony from four male witnesses. Outside the home, a woman should cover herself in drab from head to toe. A woman’s testimony in court should be worth only half of a man’s, and her inheritance rights similarly discounted. Men should be able to marry up to four women — women, however, are limited to marrying one man.”

“Oh, and Muslims who renounce Islam should be put to death . . . as should homosexuals . . . and blasphemers . . . and adulterers — at least the ones we don’t let off with a mere scourging. The penalty for theft should be amputation of the right hand (for highway robbery, the left foot is also amputated); and for drinking alcohol, the offender is to be scourged with 40 stripes.”

“There are a few other odds and ends — you know, jihad and whatnot. But other than that, will I support the Constitution? Sure thing.”

U.S. official: “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second. That’s not supporting the Constitution. That would be destroying the Constitution.”

Syrian alien: “Yeah, maybe so. But it’s my religion.”

U.S. official: “Oh, your religion. Why didn’t you say so? I thought you were spouting some anti-American political ideology. But as long as you say it’s your religion, no problem. C’mon in!”

This conversation is impossible to imagine because . . . it would be honest. In the decades-long onslaught of radical Islam against the United States, honesty went out with the benighted notions that we should “know thine enemy” and, God forbid, train our national-security agents in that enemy’s ideology, methods, and objectives.

In our alternative universe, you are not supposed to remember that there is an American constitutional framework of liberty, popular sovereignty, and equality before the law.

You are not supposed to realize that aliens are expected to exhibit fidelity to this constitutional framework as a precondition to joining our society.

You are not supposed to know that there is an Islamic law, sharia, that has far more to do with governance, economics, warfare, civil rights, domestic relations, criminal prosecution, and fashion than it does with spiritual life.

And you are absolutely not supposed to grasp that sharia is antithetical to the Constitution, to the very foundational American principle that the people may make law for themselves, live as they see fit, and chart their own destiny.

You are not supposed to connect the dots and ask, “Well, how is it conceivable that any sharia-adherent alien could faithfully pledge allegiance to our Constitution?”

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Child Suicide Bomber Hits Wedding in Southern Turkey, Killing Dozens Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says attack was likely carried out by Islamic StateBy Margaret Coker and Thomas Grove

Posted By on August 22nd, 2016

ISTANBUL—Turkey’s president blamed Islamic State for turning a youth into a human bomb at a crowded outdoor wedding party in southeast Turkey’s largest city, killing at least 51 people in a weekend attack that underscored how the war in neighboring Syria is destabilizing the region.

The bombing in Gaziantep targeted a largely Kurdish neighborhood and turned a celebratory summer evening into a scene of anguish and mourning, as the couple recovered on Sunday from injuries sustained in the massive Saturday blast and investigators worked to identify the charred body parts of guests and family members.

Dozens of funerals took place on Sunday, including ceremonies for 29 children who forensics teams had managed to identify. Nearly 100 people, including many women and children, were wounded in the attack.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a youth between the ages of 12 and 14 carried out the attack and said the bombing had the hallmarks of Islamic State.

Turkey has been battling the terror group as part of the international coalition, and has suffered multiple bombings targeting Turkish citizens already this year, including a devastating attack at Istanbul’s Atatürk International Airport.

Turkey’s Kurds in particular have come under fire from Islamic State. Kurds in Syria and Iraq, who are ethnically related to their kin in Turkey, have been among the most active groups fighting the extremists. Previously, Islamic State bombed a Kurdish rally in the Turkish capital and killed more than 100 people last year.

Earlier this month, a Syrian rebel offensive carried out largely by Syrian Kurdish groups and backed by U.S. special operations forces routed Islamic State positions in the Syrian city of Manbij, cutting the terror group’s last major road link to Turkey, which it had used to shuttle foreign fighters and supplies to its so-called caliphate. Turkey’s prime minister said Saturday that his nation was stepping up its role in finding a peace deal for Syria.

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Ortega’s Nicaraguan Coup The Sandinista has become a dictator amid U.S. indifference.

Posted By on August 22nd, 2016

Freedom and human rights have had a bad run in Latin America in the past decade. Venezuela has become a Cuban satellite and holds scores of political prisoners. Pluralism hangs by a thread in Bolivia, El Salvador and Ecuador. Yet the collapse of democracy may be most poignant in Nicaragua, which fought back against the Communist Sandinistas during the Cold War only to see them return with a vengeance amid U.S. indifference.

Last month Sandinista President Daniel Ortega purged Nicaragua’s opposition from Parliament. In November he will run for a third five-year term with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as his vice-presidential candidate. Elections under Mr. Ortega have never been transparent and he has barred international observers from this one. He has blocked serious presidential challengers, so this won’t be much of a contest.

Readers may recall how Mr. Ortega led the Sandinista revolution that toppled Anastasio Somoza in 1979 with the help of the Soviet Union. He moved quickly to establish a Communist beachhead in Central America. This spawned the grass-roots Nicaraguan resistance known as the Contras aided by the U.S. Mr. Ortega won one rigged election in 1984. But when he agreed to another with international observers in 1990, he lost to Violeta Chamorro.

The Sandinistas accepted defeat but refused to surrender their weapons or their judiciary seats. The “commandantes” of the revolution had enriched themselves by confiscating property in what was known as “the piñata,” and many Nicaraguan property owners have never been compensated.

Mr. Ortega has returned to power by exploiting democratic rules and then changing them once in power. Center-right President Arnoldo Aleman (1997-2002) negotiated a deal with Mr. Ortega to lower the threshold for a first-round victory in the presidential election to 35%. That allowed Mr. Ortega to split the anti-Sandinista vote in 2006 and win. CONTINUE AT SITE

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What Trump’s Foreign Policy Gets Right The GOP nominee’s speech last week was a serious contribution, in sharp contrast with Clinton and Obama’s non-strategy. John Bolton

Posted By on August 22nd, 2016

ad one of Donald Trump’s Republican opponents during the campaign for the GOP nomination given the same speech on combating global terrorism he gave last week, it would have raised few eyebrows. Naturally, competing candidates would have disputed particular points—some vigorously—but the speech’s overall analysis fits well within mainstream conservative and Republican thinking.

Some Trump opponents and supporters alike will be distressed by this news, but the speech visibly sharpens the contradictions with Hillary Clinton, who clearly would continue President Obama’s nonstrategy concerning radical Islam—now confirmed to include paying ransom for hostages. More broadly, the speech underlines why terrorism and other grave national-security threats should take center stage in the presidential race.

Mr. Trump rightly sees an ideological war being waged against the West by a hateful, millenarian obsession targeting core American constitutional and philosophical principles. From that assessment flow several policy consequences, most important the imperative to destroy the terrorist threat rapidly and comprehensively before it kills and maims more innocent people. Mr. Trump correctly argues that, in combating Islamic State, al Qaeda and others, “we must use ideological warfare” as well as stronger military and intelligence operations, and be “a friend to all moderate Muslim reformers.” This strategy is entirely consistent with what Jordan’s King Abdullah II and other Arab leaders characterize as a civil war within Islam.

In contrast, Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton still believe terrorism is a law-enforcement issue. They fail to grasp the ideological war we are in and therefore refuse to combat the enemy effectively. There were once those who did not see Communism as an ideological threat. They played down their views publicly because U.S. public opinion was overwhelmingly contrary, as Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are doing now regarding terrorism. Mr. Trump should emphatically move the debate about radical Islam into the campaign spotlight. Let’s see who stands where.

Mr. Trump’s speech also demonstrated his willingness to face the hand dealt an incoming president, rather than following ideological abstractions, as Mr. Obama has consistently done. Although Mr. Trump restated his opposition to President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq and overthrow of the dictator Saddam Hussein, he nonetheless argues correctly that Mr. Obama’s “reckless” withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2011 rested on an “election-driven timetable” that “surrendered our gains in that country and led directly to the rise of ISIS,” thereby constituting “a catastrophic mistake.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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The Climate Prosecutors Can’t Dodge Congress Forever The state officials who subpoenaed Exxon face questions from the House—and they have to answer. By Elizabeth Price Foley

Posted By on August 22nd, 2016

For a sense of how far the left will go to enforce climate-change orthodoxy, read the recently released “Common Interest Agreement” signed this spring by 17 Democratic state attorneys general. The officials pledged to investigate and take legal action against those committing climate wrongthink. Beginning late last year, the attorneys general of Massachusetts, New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands, all signatories to the agreement, issued broad-ranging subpoenas against Exxon Mobil and conservative think tanks. They sought documents and communications related to research and advocacy on climate change.

Concerned that these investigations were designed to chill First Amendment rights, the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology issued its own subpoenas. In mid-July the committee, led by Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas), asked the attorneys general to produce their communications with environmental groups and the Obama administration about their investigations.

They have indignantly refused to comply. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman claimed, in a July 13 letter to Mr. Smith, that the committee was “courting constitutional conflict” by failing to show “a due respect for federalism.” Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, in a similar letter dated July 26, asserted that the subpoenas are “unconstitutional” because they are “an affront to states’ rights.”

This view is utterly wrong. Federalism is a critical component of the constitutional architecture. The federal government exercises only limited and enumerated powers, and the states, under the Tenth Amendment, possess all other powers “not delegated to the United States.” But when the federal government acts within its delegated powers, it is entitled to supremacy over the states.

The Supreme Court has long recognized Congress’s power to investigate any matter within its legislative or oversight competence. With that comes a corresponding power to enforce its inquiries. The justices wrote in Barenblatt v. U.S. (1959) that the scope of Congress’s power of inquiry “is as penetrating and far-reaching as the potential power to enact and appropriate under the Constitution.”

Similarly, in McGrain v. Daugherty (1927), the court held that “the power of inquiry—with the process to enforce it—is an essential and appropriate auxiliary to the legislative function.” That’s why lawmakers passed a law to make contempt of a congressional subpoena a crime, punishing anyone who willfully refuses to answer “any question pertinent to the question under inquiry.”

The subpoenas to state attorneys general regarding their climate crusade easily fall within Congress’s legislative and oversight competence. The House Science Committee has jurisdiction over matters relating to scientific research. Its rules authorize the chairman to issue subpoenas on behalf of the committee. CONTINUE AT SITE

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U.S. Embassy, U.N. Forces Abandon Americans Targeted in Sudan Rape Rampage How State Department officials are trying to cover up inexcusable inaction. Ari Lieberman

Posted By on August 20th, 2016

In 1983, Marxist unrest in the tiny Caribbean Island of Grenada threatened the safety of roughly 1,000 Americans residing there. Many of them were medical students at the island’s medical school. President Ronald Reagan did not hesitate. He dispatched 6,000 U.S. troops to evacuate the Americans and secure the island. Within a week, U.S. objectives were met. The Americans were safe, the Cuban mercenaries were expelled and rule of law was reestablished.

There was a time when being a U.S citizen held significance and carried weight, when two-bit dictators and petty thugs would think twice before harming Americans. In the age of Obama, that time remains but a distant, faded memory. Holding U.S. citizenship now is not only meaningless, it paints a broad target on one’s back. The Benghazi debacle serves to reinforce this view.

The brazen, preplanned September 11, 2012 terror attack against the American consulate in Benghazi needlessly cost the lives of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, the first U.S. ambassador killed in the line of duty since 1979. Obama’s State Department, run by his inept and malevolent secretary of state, is largely to blame. Indecisiveness, bureaucratic bungling and poor intelligence led to a series of mistakes that hampered relief efforts.

The extreme ineptitude demonstrated by the Obama-Clinton duo in protecting Americans during the Benghazi fiasco recently repeated itself in a disturbing incident eerily similar to events unfolding on that hot September night. On July 11, rampaging South Sudanese “soldiers” – savages would be a more appropriate term – attacked a sprawling hotel compound in the capital city of Juba inhabited by Western relief workers, journalists and South Sudanese elites. In the following 24 hours, the Westerners as well as some South Sudanese were forced to endure gang rape and torture. One South Sudanese journalist was shot dead while an American woman was raped by as many as 15 South Sudanese soldiers. Americans were singled out for particular cruelty.

Unbelievably, the carnage could have been prevented. There was a significant United Nations force staffed by Chinese, Ethiopian and Nepalese troops stationed nearby, just a few minutes’ drive away. Minutes after the South Sudanese soldiers forced their way into the Terrain Hotel complex; UN forces as well as the U.S. embassy in Juba were deluged with frantic calls for help. Emails, Facebook messages and texts were inexplicably ignored. One American who succeeded in escaping in the early stages of the assault made his way to the nearby UN compound but his pleas too fell on deaf ears.

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Why the Ayatollah Thinks He Won The U.S. hoped that the nuclear deal would boost Iran’s moderates, but after more than a year, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his allies seem to be the big winners By Jay Solomon

Posted By on August 20th, 2016

Since the completion last year of a landmark deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program, the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has lashed out again and again at the U.S. for its supposed failure to live up to its end of the bargain. But a speech he gave on Aug. 1 in Tehran took his anti-American rhetoric to a new level. He accused the Obama administration of a “bullying policy” and of failing to lift sanctions in a way that benefited “the life of the people.” Mr. Khamenei ruled out cooperation with the U.S. in the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, telling his audience that Iran’s experience with the nuclear deal “showed us that we cannot speak to [the Americans] on any matter like a trustworthy party.” Many in the crowd chanted anti-U.S. slogans.

Is Iran preparing to walk away from the accord? It’s unlikely. Mr. Khamenei’s speech was classical political posturing intended to rally his hard-line followers. But more than that, his bluster conceals a deeper strategic calculus. For all his complaints about American treachery, Mr. Khamenei and his allies recognize that the nuclear deal has produced significant benefits for their hobbled theocracy and may serve to further entrench the regime brought to power in the 1979 revolution.

President Barack Obama defined the nuclear deal primarily as an arms-control exercise, designed to constrain Tehran’s nuclear program for at least a decade and to keep the U.S. from becoming embroiled in yet another Middle East war. But the White House and its top diplomats, including Secretary of State John Kerry, also quietly suggested that the agreement might open the door to a broader rapprochement between Tehran and Washington and empower Iran’s moderate political forces, particularly its elected president, Hassan Rouhani.

U.S. officials have always cautioned that it would take time for the salutary effects of engagement with Iran to take effect. They have even conceded that, in the short term, the agreement might energize hard-liners opposed to engagement with the West—and that, indeed, seems to be what is happening. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Now the Clintons Tell Us The family foundation has done its job. Now they can pretend to honor ethical limits.

Posted By on August 20th, 2016

After years of claiming that the Clinton Foundation poses no ethical conflicts for Bill and Hillary or the U.S. government, Bill Clinton now admits the truth—sort of. If his wife becomes President, he says the Super PAC masquerading as a charity won’t accept foreign or corporate contributions. Bill will also resign from the foundation board, and Chelsea will stop raising money for it.

Now they tell us.

If such fund-raising poses a problem when she’s President, why didn’t it when she was Secretary of State or while she is running for President? The answer is that it did and does, and they know it, but the foundation was too important to their political futures to give it up until the dynastic couple were headed back to the Oval Office. Now that Hillary is running ahead of Donald Trump, Bill can graciously accept new restrictions on their pay-to-play politics.

Bill must be having a good laugh over this one. The foundation served for years as a conduit for corporate and foreign cash to burnish the Clinton image, pay for their travel expenses for speeches and foreign trips, and employ their coterie in between campaigns or government gigs. Donors could give as much as they wanted because the foundation is a “charity.”

President Obama may have banished Sidney Blumenthal from the State Department, but Bill could stash his conspiratorial pal at the foundation, keeping him on the family payroll while Sid flooded Hillary with foreign-policy advice. Her private email server was supposed to hide their email traffic—until that gambit was exposed last year. But FBI Director James Comey let Hillary off the hook on the emails, and he declined to investigate the foundation, so it looks like they’re home free.