RUTHFULLY YOURS

Decatur took charge of the schooner Enterprise at the age of 25. He is the youngest man to reach the rank of captain in U.S. Navy history.

Stephen Decatur’s challenge was to prevent pirates from using a captured 36-gun U.S. frigate. America had been battling the city-states along the Barbary Coast of North Africa, which for 300 years had waylaid merchant ships and taken hostages for ransom.

Europeans found it cheaper to pay protection money than fight.

America, with its tiny navy, had gone along — until it launched the First Barbary War in 1801 to try to stop the extortion.

Two years later, that frigate — the Philadelphia — ran aground in Tripoli’s harbor, with its 307 sailors taken prisoner.

Enter Decatur. In February 1804 he captured a pirate ship and hid 80 Marines on it to sail up next to the Philadelphia without suspicion.

Then he led them aboard the frigate and set it ablaze. The American force took heavy fire as it escaped, but Decatur didn’t lose a single man.

It was a turning point in the war, although Tripoli didn’t surrender until the next year.

“It was America’s first war on terrorism, and his innovative approach to dealing with the Philadelphia against overwhelming odds was successful because of careful planning and his ability to communicate his intentions to the crew,” Terry McKnight, a retired rear admiral and the author of “Pirate Alley: Commanding Task Force 151 Off Somalia,” told IBD.

One analyst is now using the language of Captain Ahab and the great white whale, from Herman Melville’s 1851 novel “Moby Dick,” to describe U.S. President Barack Obama’s obsessive pursuit of a nuclear agreement with Iran.

An alternate analysis might be Obama as Captain Queeg from the movie “The Caine Mutiny,” as he is currently displaying the same kind of paranoia seen in that erratic, vengeful captain. In Obama’s case, he appears to be motivated by a need to punish anyone who might interfere with his plans for securing a nuclear deal with Iran, whatever its terms, before he leaves office. Today, the list of enemies interfering with Obama’s plans includes U.S. Republicans, Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Iran’s Houthis to Control Critical Naval Chokepoint
Houthis are a small step from surging south-ward to the Port of Aden, and controlling the Yemeni side of the critical Mandab Strait.

Following the Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi rebels’ occupation of the mostly Sunni Yemeni city of Ta’izz in south-west Yemen, the Houthis are a small step from surging south-ward to the Yemeni Port of Aden, and effectively controlling the Yemeni side of the critical naval chokepoint of Bab el-Mandeb, or Mandab Strait.

From Janet Levy my eagle eyed e-pal:”It is such a shame to discredit an excellent source such as TheReligionofPeace.com as “unreliably anti-Muslim.” (How does he come to that conclusion? Does he disparage “Jihad Watch?”) Plus, I believe that “The Religion of Peace” is the only site that tries to chronicle and tally every deadly terrorist attack worldwide since 9/11.” J.L.
January’s murderous attacks in Paris on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket Hyper Cacher evoked not only fear, indignation, and defiance from Western leaders and publics, but also a second stream of reactions: anxious assertions that the killings bore no relation to Islam and expressions of worry that the Muslim identity of the killers would stoke the flames of “Islamophobia.”

French President François Hollande declared that “these terrorists, these fanatics have nothing to do with the Islamic religion.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel echoed him, saying that the perpetrators “have nothing to do with Islam.” Secretary of State John Kerry opined that “the biggest mistake we could make would be to blame Muslims for crimes…that their faith utterly rejects.” President Obama’s spokesman, Josh Earnest, evinced reluctance to conclude that the Paris gunmen even believed they were acting for Islam. On the evening of the first attack, he declared that despite the perpetrators’ widely reported cries of “Allahu Akbar” and “we have avenged the Prophet,” the White House “was still trying to figure out exactly…what their motivations were.” At a subsequent briefing he would go only so far as to acknowledge that having committed an act of terrorism, “they later tried to justify that act of terrorism by invoking the religion of Islam,” as if they might have contrived the invocation merely as a post-hoc rationalization.

The humiliating denouement to America’s involvement in Yemen came over the weekend, when U.S. Special Forces were forced to evacuate a base from which they had operated against the local branch of al Qaeda. This is the same branch that claimed responsibility for the January attack on Charlie Hebdo and has long been considered to pose the most direct threat to Europe and the United States.

So who should Barack Obama be declaring war on in the Middle East other than the state of Israel?

There is an upside-down quality to this president’s world view. His administration is now on better terms with Iran—whose Houthi proxies, with the slogan “God is great, death to America, death to Israel, damn the Jews, power to Islam,” just deposed Yemen’s legitimate president—than it is with Israel. He claims we are winning the war against Islamic State even as the group continues to extend its reach into Libya, Yemen and Nigeria.

He treats Republicans in the Senate as an enemy when it comes to the Iranian nuclear negotiations, while treating the Russian foreign ministry as a diplomatic partner. He favors the moral legitimacy of the United Nations Security Council to that of the U.S. Congress. He is facilitating Bashar Assad’s war on his own people by targeting ISIS so the Syrian dictator can train his fire on our ostensible allies in the Free Syrian Army.

“Do you remember the pride bordering on chills you experienced when Neil Armstrong stepped off Apollo 11’s lunar landing module onto the moon’s surface in 1969? We were the world leader in space exploration!Under the Obama regime, space operations have been supplanted by outreach to Muslims and support for the global warming agenda.With the space shuttle in storage, the U.S. must rely on a tyrannical Communist regime with a 10 to 1 tactical nuclear weapons advantage over the U.S. (thanks to unilateral disarmament) to place astronauts in orbit.Sad beyond words!

Janet Levy,Los Angeles”

THE BATTLE FOR NASA

The debate over America’s human presence in space has begun.Since the start of the Obama Administration, NASA’s emphasis has altered dramatically, as financial support for exploration and space operations, including human flight, has been slashed by 7.9%. Meanwhile, earth science, including both legitimate research as well as questionable endeavors primarily designed to bolster the President’s climate change agenda, experienced a 41% increase. A General Accounting Office study found that “NASA had not matched resources to requirements” for programs related to human space flight.

In addition to funding shifts, ideological changes were imposed as well. NASA chief Charles Bolden made a bizarre remark in 2010 that one of NASA’s chief goals was to reach out to Moslems.

Critics have not hidden their disdain for the course NASA has been given under the current White House. John L. Casey, a former White House space policy advisor, stated in a recent exclusive interview on the Vernuccio/Novak Report that NASA was engaging in “data doctoring” to support global warming theory advocates and essentially ignoring its core mission.

Michael Hayden led the Central Intelligence Agency from 2006 to 2009 and the National Security Agency from 1999 to 2005. Olli Heinonen is a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

As negotiations between Iran and the great powers press forward, Secretary of State John F. Kerry seems to have settled on this defense of any agreement: The terms will leave Iran at least a year away from obtaining a nuclear bomb, thus giving the world plenty of time to react to infractions. The argument is meant to reassure, particularly when a sizable enrichment capacity and a sunset clause appear to have already been conceded. A careful assessment, however, reveals that a one-year breakout time may not be sufficient to detect and reverse Iranian violations.

E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one) is the phrase on the Great Seal of the United States. It was adopted (appropriately), by Congress in 1782 as the fledgling nation’s de facto motto. It held that position until 1956 when Congress enacted a law that designated “In God We Trust” to be the official motto for the U.S.

While we are a God-trusting people, in my opinion E Pluribus Unum more accurately reflects our citizens. We are a nation of immigrants – a pluralistic country – a people that have arrived from all over the world. In 1664, when the British acquired Manhattan from the Dutch, there were 18 languages spoken on the Island. In 1776, when colonists first met in Philadelphia, there were over 40 languages spoken in Pennsylvania. The Founders, all of whom spoke English, avoided any reference to language in the Constitution. It was only in 1906 that English-speaking ability became a requirement for naturalization. (It still is, unless one gets an exemption or waiver.) Nevertheless, immigrants continue to arrive. At the Julian Curtis Magnet School in Greenwich, which four of my grandchildren either attend or have attended, over 50 languages are spoken. More than 200 languages are spoken in New York City today, and half the households in the City speak a language other than English. Collectively we are a polyglot nation.

There can be no free society without trust. ‘Can I trust what the president says? That’s a yes-or-no question.” So inquired U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in response to having been lied to by the Obama administration. The administration wants to use a presidential decree to enact an amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants; half of the states have rallied behind Texas in arguing that this is unconstitutional, that the president is arrogating to himself a legislative power that is properly Congress’s. Lawyers for the Justice Department, led by Kathleen Hartnett, assured the court that no action on DAPA — Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents — would be taken until Judge Hanen had made a ruling on whether to issue an injunction against it. “Like an idiot, I believed that,” the judge says. The Obama administration, being what it is, ignored its promise to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas and began handing out reprieves as fast as it could, issuing more than 100,000 of them.
When the annoyed judge demanded to know why the Department of Justice had lied to a federal court, Hartnett argued that the reprieves were being handed out under a different set of guidelines. The judge was not buying it. Among other things, the administration is offering three-year grants of immunity, which are not authorized by the earlier authority under which it purports to be operating. It is easy to understand why the administration is in a hurry to sign up as many people for its illegal amnesty as it can: The more beneficiaries there are, the more difficult it becomes to revoke the amnesty, even when it is confirmed as being illegal and unconstitutional. Judge Hanen already has sided with the states on a substantial issue, handing down that injunction he had been considering. That Barack Obama and those he holds near have a funny way with the truth is not news. The president famously claimed in a speech in 2007 that the great civil-rights march in Selma, Ala., led to his conception: “There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge.

Is President Obama reassessing America’s stance toward Israel because of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s congressional address and campaign statements? Or is Obama simply using Netanyahu’s actions as pretexts to undercut an American-Israeli alliance that he has never truly supported to begin with? NR’s editors suggest that Obama has largely “manufactured” the current crisis in the special relationship between America and Israel. John Podhoretz argues that Obama is twisting Netanyahu’s words to create a wedge between liberal American Jews and Israel: “a wedge to give him space to make a major policy pivot from the special relationship—one for which he has hungered since he came into office.”