EXCLUSIVE: Ted Cruz Discusses His Plan to Keep America Safe By Roger L Simon

Although several presidential primary debates have been held by Republicans and Democrats, little light has been thrown on the issues, particularly in the key area of foreign policy. This shallowness is not particularly the fault of the candidates but of the formats and the moderators who often seem more bent on generating food fights than on illuminating issues. Nevertheless, recent events in Paris have only served to reiterate that 2016 is, above all, a foreign policy election and that the next president had better be ready to assume the role of commander-in-chief “on day one.”

To add some depth to the discussion, PJ Media (via this Mad Voter) submitted four foreign policy questions to a few of the leading Republican candidates. The first response is from Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Please note that we formulated these questions (and Senator Cruz received them) before the ISIS attack in Paris, although the senator refers to those horrific events in one of his answers. Look for more responses to the questions from leading candidates at the Diary of a Mad Voter in the days to come.

PJM: An October 21 letter from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to its president Hassan Rouhani details nine new Iranian demands for fundamental changes to the supposedly agreed-upon Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA) already unpopular with the American public. Alterations would include the immediate permanent lifting of all sanctions with no possibility of “snapback“ and abandonment of any investigation into Iran’s past nuclear activities by the IAEA, making it impossible to understand what they have done previously, rendering present inspections moot. Further, the JCPOA called for a whole series of reductions of Iran’s nuclear stockpiles by December 15 (centrifuges, enriched uranium, etc.), none of which appears to have even started. Does Obama’s vaunted Iran Deal actually exist and, if not, what should Congress do now and how would your administration deal with Iran on your election?

SENATOR CRUZ: It is increasingly clear President Obama’s nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is illegal and non-binding on future presidents. It does, however, exist. And its existence, given Tehran’s track record of clandestinely pursuing nuclear weapons, cheating on United Nations Security Council Resolutions (most recently #1929 when they tested a ballistic missile last month) and 36-year track record of implacable and violent hostility to America and our allies, especially Israel, is the single greatest national security threat faced by the United States.

Trojan Horses at a Gallop By G. Murphy Donovan

Islamic fanatics struck another blow for cynicism last Friday night in Paris — wholesale and gratuitous slaughter in the name of their sanguinary Muslim god. History teaches few lessons these days.

We say “Muslim god” because most other religions forsook ritual religious slaughter centuries ago. Indeed, the nearest historical comparison is actually political. Before contemporary jihad, the Nazis were the last imperial movement to use industrial scale pogroms to underwrite an ideological message. Ironically, the EU now opens its borders to religious fascism more virulent than the political strain that led to the Holocaust and associated carnage of WWII. Angela Merkel does the ironic walk of shame here.

Alas, any distinction between politics and religion in a Muslim context is now moot. Politics are mostly religious in the Ummah and dystopic religion seems to be the only relevant politics permissible in much of the Muslim world.

Obama: “Not Interested in Winning” By Daniel John Sobieski

Tell us something we don’t know, Mr. President. We could have guessed as much by the puny air campaign more worthy of the Grand Duchy of Fenwick in The Mouse That Roared than by what was once the world’s only superpower. We wouldn’t be mounting any air campaign at all, had not the radical Islamists of the “JV team” Islamic State had not cut off the heads of two American journalists, Steven Sotloff and James Foley.

Our delusional commander-in-chief, who still believes the massacre at Ft. Hood by jihadist Nidal Hasan is a case of “workplace violence” and that the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris was a case of random violence and of victims being in the wrong place at the wrong time, pathetically proclaimed at the G-20 Conference in Antalaya, Turkey, as the Federalist reports:

“What I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with that has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people and to protect the people in the region who are getting killed and to protect our allies and people like France,” Obama said. “I’m too busy for that.”

Too busy, the same as you were too busy resting up for a Las Vegas fundraiser the night Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods, and Sean Smith were murdered by a terrorist attack in Benghazi, an attack you and you’re Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, told the parents of the deal was caused by a video?

Jews need an Anti-Anti-Defamation League By Ed Straker

Jewish people need an organization to stand up for them. They should create one called the Anti-Anti-Defamation League, which can start by fighting the Anti-Defamation League, which ostensibly is supposed to speak up for the survival of the Jewish people but is actually advocating for their destruction.

The Anti-Defamation League said Monday that it is “deeply disappointed” with a slew of governors moving to block Syrian refugees from resettling in their states.

“This country must not give into fear or bias by turning its back on our nation’s fundamental commitment to refugee protection and human rights,” the group’s chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement.

“Now is precisely the time to stand up for our core values, including that we are a proud nation of immigrants. To do otherwise signals to the terrorists that they are winning the battle against democracy and freedom,” he added.

The problem is that many of these refugees do not believe in democracy or freedom. Many of them believe in repressive sharia law, which calls for subjugating all non-Muslims to Islam. And a subset of those are terrorists who will try to kill Americans, especially Jews. Greenblatt is strongly advocating bringing in people, many of whom want to oppress and kill Jews, as they are doing in France right now.

Iran: Nuclear Deal Going, Going, Gone? by Lawrence A. Franklin

Iranian military commanders, security chiefs and conservative media outlets are coming close to questioning the competence and loyalty of those in the Iranian regime who favor the JCPOA.

The surreal irony, of course, is that President Obama keeps assuring the world — as recently as last week again, when he met with Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu — that he is “preventing” Iran from getting nuclear weapons, while the truth is that his “deal” — if the Iranians ever sign it — not only green-lights Iran’s nuclear program, but in fact finances it.

Iran’s hardliners are pressing their attack on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which has not yet been approved by Iran. Iran’s opponents of the JCPOA have succeeded in halting any steps toward implementation of Tehran’s responsibilities under the July14 settlement reached in Vienna by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the US, the UK, France, China and Russia, plus Germany (the so-called P5+1). But who appointed them?

While some reports indicated that Iran was beginning to take off the production line some of the uranium-enrichment centrifuges in the Natanz and Fordow facilities, contradictory reports suggested that any such action was halted due to pressure from Iran’s hardliners, and that dismantling the centrifuges had not been authorized by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and was therefore premature. Another report suggested that only a small number of outdated centrifuges had been decommissioned.

The True Cost of Europe’s Muslim “Enrichment” by George Igler

The United Nations, in 2000, advocated the “replacement” of Europe’s population by Muslim migrants.

There seems to be an economic premise underlying this view: that importing the Muslim world en masse into Europe is mutually beneficial. For decades, the mass immigration of Muslims into Europe has been labelled “enrichment.” Shouting “Islamophobia” does not negate how it is virtually impossible to think of a country actually made richer by it.

Even in a country with an established Islamic population such as Britain, Muslim unemployment languishes at 50% for men, and 75% for women.

Those using an economic rationale to implement Europe’s demographic transformation fail to recognize the complexities of Islam: they ignore the fundamentalist revival that has been ongoing for over a century. One feature of this growing embrace of literalism is a belief — validated by scripture — that Muslims are entitled to idly profit from the productivity of infidels.

The idea that with time, Islam’s religious tenets will somehow moderate and dissolve, merely by being lodged in Europe, is wishful thinking, especially in communities where Muslim migrants already outnumber indigenous Europeans.

RUTHIE BLUM: THE FRENCH CONNECTION

When Islamist leaders condemned Friday night’s Paris attacks, which left more than 132 people dead and hundreds of others critically wounded, you just had to laugh through your tears.

Terror masters in Iran, Turkey, Syria and the Palestinian Authority actually had the gall to talk as if they themselves are not responsible for the ongoing murder of innocent people.

But hypocrisy, mendacity and lying as a matter of course are not the only reasons for their public expressions of solidarity with France during this frightful hour. In fact, what really bothers them is the fear that a rival group may be beating them at their own game. And hell hath no fury like a scorned, power-hungry radical Muslim with hegemonic aims and weapons with which to achieve them.

Such monsters, some in suits and ties to throw you off, are able to get away with playing the West for fools — particularly when the so-called leader of the free world keeps kowtowing to them, while espousing denial as a policy. Indeed, in the immediate aftermath of the bloodbath in Paris, U.S. President Barack Obama made a statement that put a smug smile on the faces of jihadists everywhere.

In the first place, he called the carnage “an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.” This is an amazing assertion, since I don’t even share Obama’s values, let alone those of a great portion of “humanity” inside and out of Washington, D.C. You know, like the multimillions of anti-Semites, Christian-killers, women-subjugators and child-abusers who are trying to win the war over the world’s character and soul.

Obama Adamant His is the Right Strategy By: Lori Lowenthal Marcus

U.S. President Barack Obama had everyone’s attention with the major world leaders and international journalists attending the G-20 Summit in Antalya, Turkey on Monday, Nov. 16.

In the wake of Friday’s Paris massacres carried out by ISIS and its supporters which led to hundreds dead and wounded civilians, it is not an exaggeration to say that people were anticipating a statement of strength and resolve from a man in the position which has long been considered the leader of the free world.

That is not the message they heard from Obama.

Instead, Obama appeared to be digging in his heels, refusing to consider that he may have misjudged ISIS and may have pursued the wrong strategy thus far with the growing barbaric and now global threat to civilization, ISIS.

Clark Whelton Hungry for Armageddon Isis knows what it wants—do we?

A day after the slaughter in Paris, Fusion.net blogger Manu Saadia lamented that the Isis murderers had added insult to injury by concentrating their attacks on neighborhoods where “young and hip Parisians gather to drink and socialize.” Struggling to understand the politics of the massacre, Saadia deployed every buzzword in the liberal handbook. He was indignant that neither “tolerant, progressive” views nor the amulet of political correctness had protected these “hipster socialists” against the violence. As if to chastise Isis for its gory faux pas, Saadia pointed to the “ethnically mixed” neighborhoods themselves, which had retained the “authenticity” of their “proletarian” origins.

What Do Palestinians Want? Daniel Polisar

It’s time to take a close look at an often ignored subject: what ordinary Palestinians think about Israel, Jews, and terrorist attacks on civilians.

he most recent wave of Palestinian terror attacks, now entering its second month, has been mainly the work of “lone wolf” operators running over Israeli civilians, soldiers, and policemen with cars or stabbing them with knives. The perpetrators, many in or just beyond their teenage years, are not, for the most part, activists in the leading militant organizations. They have been setting forth to find targets with the expectation, generally fulfilled, that after scoring a casualty or two they will be killed or badly wounded. What drives these young Palestinians, experts say, is a viral social-media campaign centered on claims that the Jews are endangering the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and that Israel is executing Palestinian children.

Pundits and analysts in Israel and the West, struck by the elements that make this round of violence different from its predecessors over the past decade-and-a-half—which typically featured well-orchestrated shootings, suicide bombings, or rocket fire—have focused on the motivations of individual attackers, on how and why the Palestinian political and religious leadership has been engaging in incitement, and on what Israeli officials or American mediators might do to quell the violence.

Absent almost entirely from this discussion has been any attempt to understand the perspective of everyday Palestinians. Yet it is precisely the climate of public opinion that shapes and in turn is shaped by the declarations of Palestinian leaders, and that creates the atmosphere in which young people choose whether to wake up in the morning, pull a knife from the family kitchen, and go out in search of martyrdom. Whether commentators are ignoring the views of mainstream Palestinians out of a mistaken belief that public opinion does not matter in dictatorships, or out of a dismissive sense that they are powerless pawns whose fate is decided by their leaders, Israel, or regional and world powers, the omission is both patronizing and likely to lead to significant misunderstandings of what is happening. In this essay I aim to fill the lacuna by addressing what Palestinians think both about violence against Israelis and about the core issues that supply its context and justification.