RUTHFULLY YOURS

THERE IS A LENGTHY COLUMN IN VANITY FAIR: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2002/01/osama200201

“The Osama Files” September 11 might have been prevented if the U.S. had accepted Sudan’s offers to share its intelligence files on Osama bin Laden and the growing al-Qaeda threat. Recently unearthed documents reveal that the Clinton administration repeatedly rejected the help of a country it unwisely perceived as an enemy. By David Rose”

In a memorably explosive 2006 interview with Chris Wallace, former President Bill Clinton went off on a finger-wagging “tear,” as Wallace put it, when questioned about whether he had done enough during his terms in office to get Osama bin Laden. “I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since,” growled a furious Clinton. Now a recently-released audiotape confirms that Clinton did indeed have at least one clear opportunity to kill the world’s most wanted man in 1998 – and passed on it, allowing bin Laden to live to mastermind the 9/11 attacks.

Last week Australian Michael Kroger, the former head of the Liberal Party in the state of Victoria, unveiled on Australia’s Sky News a never-before-released audio of Clinton speaking to a group of businessmen in Melbourne on September 10, 2001, recorded a mere ten hours before the first plane hit the World Trade Center. In that recording, made with the former president’s knowledge according to Kroger, Clinton responded thusly in response to a question about international terrorism:

And I’m just saying, you know, if I were Osama bin Laden — he’s a very smart guy, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about him — and I nearly got him once. I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him. And so I didn’t do it.

Questioned by Fox News about the Clinton recording, Michael Scheuer, chief of the bin Laden unit from 1995 to 1999, replied that Clinton was a “disgrace” and a “monumental liar” for claiming that he didn’t kill bin Laden because of the collateral damage. He asserted that only Taliban and bin Laden and his crew would’ve died if Clinton had given the go-ahead for a missile strike on the region in December of 1998. But Clinton didn’t act, said Scheuer, because he’s a “coward morally” and because he’s “more concerned, like Obama, with what the world thinks about him.”

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Dinesh D’Souza, acclaimed conservative author and filmmaker who is the author of the new book, America: Imagine a World Without Her – which is also a major motion picture currently playing in theaters everywhere.

Dinesh discussed “Progressives’ Tactic of Camouflage and Deception,” shedding light on Obama’s and Hillary’s strategy of pretending to be like the people they hate and seek to destroy. He also deconstructed the Left’s flawed “theft” accusation, analyzed the significance of Saul Alinsky paying tribute to Lucifer in his manual, “Rules for Radicals,” and focused on many more of the themes explored in his new book and film.

Don’t miss it!

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/dinesh-dsouza-on-alinsky-satan-and-the-community-organizer-of-resentment-on-the-glazov-gang-1-1/

At the height of Operation Protective Edge, prominent American lawyer and pro-Israel advocate Alan Dershowitz penned a largely overlooked article entitled, “Has Hamas ended the prospects for a two-state solution?” (Gatestone Institute, July 22.)

His ostensible motive was Hamas’ targeting of Ben Gurion airport with a rocket that fell some 2 kilometers away, an act which he designated as a war crime.

In response, the Federal Aviation Administration made the questionable call of banning all US air traffic into and out of Israel for some 36 hrs. Many European airlines followed suit, causing a mass cancellation of flights, thereby providing Hamas with what Israel’s transportation minister described as a “victory for terror.”

A life-long proponent of the peace process, Dershowitz has in the past promoted a “two-state solution that does not compromise Israel’s security.” In the article in question, he elaborates in a seemingly unprecedented manner on what measures this should entail, which are replete with potentially landmark political implications.

The targeting by Hamas of Israel’s economic lifeline, Dershowitz argues, will justifiably make Israel “more reluctant than ever to give up military control over the West Bank, which is even closer to Ben Gurion Airport than is Gaza.”

“When Israel removed both its civilian settlements and its military presence in Gaza,” he explains, “Hamas took control [and] fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilian targets.… Israel could not accept the risk of a Hamas takeover of the West Bank.”

That this would be the most likely outcome of an IDF withdrawal from the territories should be clear. One needs only to recall the events of 2007, some two years after Israel’s military unilaterally vacated the Strip, when vastly outnumbered Hamas fighters laid waste to a US-trained Palestinian security force, in a coup that ousted Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party from the coastal enclave and brought the Islamist terror group to power.

Jerusalem has repeatedly expressed fear of a growing Hamas foothold in the West Bank, most recently in the wake of the formation of the Palestinian unity government.

It turns out these concerns were well-founded.

As an example of what the insightful commentator Melanie Phillips referred to as a “dialogue of the demented” in her book, The World Turned Upside Down, since Israel launched Operation Protective Edge some three weeks ago, the streets of American and European cities have been crammed with activists intent on expressing their collective indignation for Israel’s perceived crime of defending its citizens from slaughter from the genocidal thugocracy of Hamas.

Rowdy and sometimes violent demonstrations have taken place in Berlin, Paris, Toronto, London, and Madrid, where blatantly anti-Semitic chants of “Death to Jews!,” “Hitler was right!,” “Gaza is the real Holocaust,” “end Israeli apartheid,” and “Jew, Jew, cowardly swine, come out and fight on your own!” could be heard, with similar events taking place in such U.S. cities as Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Seattle.

Joined with Muslim supporters of those wishing to destroy Israel and murder Jews were the usual suspects of peace activists, Israel-haters, social justice advocates, and labor unionists who decried Israel’s “genocide” against Gaza as well as the militarism, oppression, imperialism, and brutality imbued in Zionism itself. These radical, Israel-loathing groups include, among others, the corrosive, ubiquitous ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), Code Pink, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Students for Justice in Palestine.

What was particularly revealing, and chilling, about the hate-filled rallies was the virulence of the chants and messages on the placards, much of it seeming to suggest that more sinister hatreds and feelings—over and above concern for the current military operations—were simmering slightly below the surface. Several of the morally self-righteous protestors, for instance, shrieked out, to the accompaniment of drumbeats, “Long live Intifada,” a grotesque and murderous reference to the Second Intifada, during which Arab terrorists murdered some 1000 Israelis and wounded more than 14,000 others.

That pro-Palestinian student activists, those who purport to be motivated by a desire to bring “justice” to the Middle East, could publicly call for the renewed slaughter of Jews in the name of Palestinian self-determination demonstrates quite clearly how ideologically debased the human rights movement has become. Activists on and off U.S. campuses, who never have to face a physical threat more serious than getting jostled while waiting in line for a latte at Starbucks, are quick to denounce Israel’s very real existential threats and the necessity of the Jewish state to take counter measures to thwart terrorism. And quick to label the killing of Hamas terrorists by the IDF as “genocide,” these well-meaning but morally-blind individuals see no contradiction in their calls for the renewed murder of Jews for their own sanctimonious cause.

Other protestors were less overt in their angry chants, carrying signs and shouting out the oft-heard slogan, “Free, Free Palestine,” or, as they eventually screamed out, “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea.” That phrase suggests the same situation that a rekindled Intifada would help bring about, namely that if the fictive nation of “Palestine” is “liberated,” is free, there will, of course, be no Israel between the Jordan River and Mediterranean—and no Jews.

Three weeks into its war against Hamas, Israel sits in official French Cold-Shoulderland.

If you’re looking for an omen concerning how the French government will deal with what it calls a new kind of anti-Semitism in the country, take a look at its determination to bring hard-nosed reform to its enfeebled economy.

Pierre Gattaz, the head of Medef, the French employers’ association, offered this update last month: “The country’s economic situation is catastrophic. If France were a business it would be close to liquidation.”

President François Hollande, once quoted as saying the economic cycle would assure a recovery—think of sunrise and sunset—announced “a pickup” three weeks ago. Since then, the president has been undercut by his own national statistics agency, which lowered probable French growth this year to 0.7%—hardly enough to stabilize joblessness at 10% or to meet the European Union’s requirements for members cutting their deficits and debts.

This self-propelled economic failure can be rationally explained through an irresolute government’s incompetence, creating a vast crater in its authority.
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Not reassuring: The National Front?s Le Pen leads in a new presidential poll. Zuma Press

But the treatment of the anti-Semitism that has taken root in that crater is of another dimension, embarrassing and inadequate. The problem isn’t really new, and it is easily identifiable as bred in the housing projects at the edges of big cities where France’s five-to-seven million Muslims live. In a country tortured about its declining status and identity, anti-Jewish violence and hatred have now stabbed at French civilization’s lingering notions of universality—while the excesses are being handled with maybe-this-will-go-away caution.

The left-of-center of Le Monde, the newspaper of the French establishment, gave the impression of discovering sliced bread when it wrote in a front-page editorial: “You’ve got to stare the truth straight in the face: There’s a new anti-Semitism in France. It’s as repulsive as what raged in Europe in the 20th century.”

Our long-time allies in northern Iraq deserve U.S. military support.

Another day, another Middle Eastern defeat. On Sunday the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, ousted Kurdish forces from three towns in northern Iraq and laid siege to the country’s largest dam. The question now is whether the Obama Administration will abandon our long-time Kurdish allies as they battle the jihadist army.

Earlier this summer ISIS routed the Iraqi army in Mosul, and its success against the Kurdish peshmerga militia is another ominous turn. Kurdistan has been an island of relative peace and prosperity in Iraq that was thought to be beyond the Islamist reach. But ISIS is gaining strength the longer it is unchallenged, and the oil city of Kirkuk that is defended by the peshmerga is a tempting future target. An Islamist caliphate with oil revenues is a scary prospect.

The U.S. protected the Kurds from Saddam Hussein for a decade with a no-fly zone after the first Gulf War. And after Saddam fell in 2003, the Kurds invited the U.S. to set up a permanent military base in their territory.

Washington had planned to equip the peshmerga directly as recently as 2010, but it deferred to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite who has pursued the disastrous strategy of starving the non-Shiite parts of Iraq. Since President Obama withdrew all U.S. forces in 2011, the U.S. has provided more than $1 billion a year in military aid and sold $10 billion in hardware to Baghdad. But the Kurds have seen little of it. The Baghdad government has also denied the Kurds their share of oil revenues, so the Kurds have sought to export oil themselves, which the U.S. has also tried to block.

The world is outraged by Israeli self-defense but only ‘concerned’ when Muslims kill Muslims.

What follows are excerpts from a June 30, 2014, news account by Tim Craig, the Washington Post’s bureau chief in Pakistan:

“Pakistan’s military launched a major ground offensive in the northwestern part of the country Monday, beginning what army commanders say will be a ‘house-to-house search’ for terrorist leaders and other militants.

“The offensive began after two weeks of airstrikes in North Waziristan. . . .

“In a statement, Pakistan’s military said its soldiers discovered ‘underground tunnels’ and ‘preparation factories’ for explosives during the initial hours of the ground assault. . . .

“Backed by artillery and tanks, troops killed 17 terrorists Monday, the army said. Combined with the toll from airstrikes that began June 16, a total of 376 terrorists have died in the offensive, the army said. . . .

“More than a half-million residents fled North Waziristan ahead of the ground offensive. The mass evacuation of the area, which has a population of about 600,000, was intended to limit civilian casualties during the operation. The military also set up checkpoints in the area to trap militants.”
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Underground tunnels, explosives factories, weeks of airstrikes, artillery bombardment, mass displacement of civilians—leaving aside the probability that this is the first that you’ve heard of any of this, does it ring a familiar bell? If so, maybe the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the various self-described antiwar groups that marched near the White House on Saturday to protest Israel’s military campaign in Gaza can organize another big rally outside the Pakistani embassy. No more U.S. aid to Islamabad! Boycott Pakistani products! Divest from Pakistani companies!

From the president on down, a worldwide movement.

Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip are winding down so, as Newtonian physics prescribes, an equal and opposite reaction is on the rise from Hamas’s cheerleaders. They’re taking the media stage with what have become shibboleths of the global left, starting with the idea that Israel is the villain of the latest war.

Some of the cheerleaders are just useful idiots. Others are a significant danger to Israel’s existence. Some are simply the latest incarnation of the sort of anti-Semitism that Jews have faced for thousands of years.

Navi Pillay, head of the UN’s misnamed Human Rights Council, is about to end her term in that post. From 2006 to 2012, the UNHRC has condemned Israel some 47 times. It doesn’t mention Hamas, far less condemn it. Ms. Pillay apparently wanted to end her chairmanship with a bang. She proclaimed that Israel had an obligation to share its anti-rocket and anti-missile Iron Dome system with the “governing body” of Gaza, namely the Hamas terrorists.

Her demand that Israel share the secrets of its Iron Dome rocket and missile defense system with Hamas is as absurd as an American president sharing our missile defense secrets with Putin. Okay, wait a minute: Obama has already promised to do that, and the effort is under way.

Other “useful idiots” are found across the street from the White House, as well as in it, and on cable news. Radical leftist Cornel West headlined a high-profile pro-Hamas demonstration in Lafayette Square the other day. It featured the burning of an Israeli flag and, reportedly, anti-Jewish epithets shouted at a small band of pro-Israel counter-demonstrators. According to one report, the pro-Israeli group had to be evacuated by police. Apparently their First Amendment rights aren’t as important as the pro-Hamas demonstrators’.

Least noticed among the useful idiots, simply because nobody watches MSNBC who isn’t compelled to do so, is the crew of “Morning Joe,” headed by faux-conservative Joe Scarborough. His co-hostess, Mika Brzezinski, interviewed Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer and ended the segment with the comment, “Keep it right here on Morning Jew, Joe.” Scarborough, the next day, attacked Israel’s Gaza Strip actions, alleging they are an indiscriminate attack on women and children.

More useful idiots are leading South American countries. Lefty leaders such as Brazil’s Dilma Roussef condemned Israeli operations in Gaza as a “massacre,” Uruguay President Jose Mujica demanded that Israeli forces be withdrawn from Gaza and Bolivia’s neo-communist Evo Morales recently listed Israel as a terrorist state. Presidents of Peru, Chile, El Salvador, and Ecuador have withdrawn their ambassadors from Israel.

Has President Barack Obama ‘got Israel’s back’? When policy is compared to rhetoric, the answer is no. Thus, when Hamas, a terrorist organization which calls in its Charter for the worldwide murder of Jews, launched a new round of rocket assaults on Israel, Obama declared, “We support [Israel’s] military efforts … No nation should accept rockets being fired into its borders or terrorists tunneling into its territory.”

But Obama’s policy is entirely different –– imposing what he calls “an immediate, unconditional humanitarian cease-fire that ends hostilities now.” Moreover, Secretary of State John Kerry informed Hamas via Qatar that Hamas’ demands for weakening the Israeli blockade would be met. In attempting to reach this cease-fire, Obama has bypassed the Palestinian Authority and Egypt –– Hamas antagonists–– and worked closely with Qatar and Turkey –– both munificent Hamas supporters.

In short, the idea that Israel should stop defending its citizens and territory from Hamas assault is not President Obama’s policy position –– merely his policy objective.

It is surely obvious that if one supports a country dealing militarily with terrorist assault, then calling for an immediate cease-fire that preserves the terrorists’ infrastructure and awards them concessions flatly contradicts and nullifies this support.

Other developments in recent weeks also suggest that Obama has Hamas’ back, not Israel’s:

1. He supported the formation of a Hamas/Fatah Palestinian Authority (PA) unity regime, meaning that Hamas, a Nazi-like terrorist organization that calls in its Charter for the worldwide murder of Jews, would be part of the PA.

2. He had Secretary of State John Kerry announce last week $47 million in additional aid to Gaza, which, as Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has observed, “is in effect $47 million for Hamas … Aiding Hamas while simultaneously isolating Israel does two things. One, it helps our enemy. Two, it hurts our ally.”

3. He had the the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) impose, not merely a warning, but an astonishing ban on flight to Israel –– something not see on far more hazardous destinations like Iraq, Pakistan or Ukraine –– creating the suspicion that it was a form of pressure on Israel to agree to his ceasefire.

Having entered the 21st century with 9/11, wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the threat from Iran, confronting Islamist terrorism is the defining mark of Western civilization.

The war. We are consumed by it. Our sons and theirs are dying; ours to protect us and theirs to kill us.

Sirens warning of missile and rocket attacks wail across Israel. Alerts of impending attacks interrupt Israeli radio and TV broadcasts. News on Internet sites and cellphones informs us of what is happening.

We are all in information tunnels filled with stories, unable to satisfy our need to know, pushed and pulled by fear and loathing, unable to escape the bondage of the unknown, like remaining at a horror movie because we want to know how it ends.

Like shoppers waiting for a sale, we crave good news and try to avoid the bad. Like addicts, we are driven by impulse, our instincts trying to measure details, the need to make sense of chaos. We join the fight in our imagination, breathing battle smoke in the careless breeze that swirls around us, clinging to reality.

It is not enough. It is too much. We try to balance what cannot be balanced, the scales always tipping against us, pain and grief weighed against survival, losses and wins, miracles and tragedies. War is a casino of life and death; we hope that we will come out with something in our pockets, with our hearts still intact, our minds still able to think.

Only the insane start a war; only the sane finish it. And even then, in victory parades and honors, we know deep down that it’s not over; enemies don’t disappear – they only change places, clothing, faces.

For us, and them, it is a holy war; our holiness against their holiness. Righteousness against Evil. If we do not win, they will slaughter us.