RUTHFULLY YOURS

What was Obama doing while terrorists attacked Americans in Benghazi?

You couldn’t help but feel for Robert Lovell. The retired brigadier general is haunted by the failure of AFRICOM, the U.S. military’s Africa Command, to respond when Americans were under siege in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. His congressional testimony this week was somber — no faux “What difference, at this point, does it make?” indignation, no “Dude, this was two years ago” juvenilia for him.

Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the State Department’s Sean Smith were killed in the early stage of the jihadist attack. By then, the actions that would surely have saved their lives — e.g., an adult recognition that Benghazi was no place for an American diplomatic facility, or at least the responsible provision of adequate security — had already been callously forsaken. It seems unlikely AFRICOM could have gotten there in time for them on that fateful night, though that does not come close to excusing the failure to try.

Former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty are a different story. They fought valiantly for many hours after our military learned, very early on, that the battle was raging. Unlike AFRICOM, the SEALs did not stand pat. They ran to the sound of the guns. After saving over 30 of their countrymen, they paid with their lives. The armed forces, General Lovell recalled, knew that terrorists were attacking them. Yet no one came to their aid.

Lovell bears the burden of their abandonment with a heavy heart. His moving testimony made that clear. Still, his version of events is deeply unsatisfying. Why did AFRICOM fail to respond? “Basically,” he stammered, “there was a lot of looking to the State Department.” Unfortunately, we’re told Secretary Hillary Clinton and her minions were unclear “in terms of what they would like to have.” Come again? “They didn’t come forward with stronger requests for action.”

This Foggy Bottom focus had me groping for my pocket Constitution. Sure enough, Article II was as I remembered it. Much as Hillary Clinton may desire to be the commander-in-chief of the United States armed forces, that job does not belong to the secretary of state.

It was the solemn duty of the president to come forward with not requests but commands for action. Why was AFRICOM hanging on the State Department’s preferences? Why were our troops hamstrung by what Lovell described as “deference to the Libyan people?” On the night of September 11, 2012, AFRICOM was not beholden to Mrs. Clinton or Tripoli. They answered to Barack Obama.

Of course, no one can answer to a commander-in-chief who abdicates his command, a commander-in-chief who is AWOL.

Deer Reader,

On Wednesday, Jay Carney explained — as if he was talking to a room full of children — that the Benghazi e-mail the White House refused to release until the White House was forced to release its Benghazi e-mails wasn’t in fact about Benghazi, even though the e-mail talks about Benghazi. This is Monty Pythonesque of “Dead Parrot” proportions. That’s not a Benghazi e-mail, it’s just an e-mail about Benghazi, in a folder marked “Benghazi” e-mails, idiot.

As I said on Fox yesterday, Jay Carney is a very strange creature for Washington. He’s an extremely confident liar — we’ve got a lot of those! — but he’s not very convincing. Usually, confidence = convincing. As George Costanza (and in his own way Bill Clinton) liked to say, it’s not a lie if you believe it when you tell it. But with Carney, he lies in a way that makes it seem not so much like he believes it but that you’re an idiot for not believing it. There’s a kind of the-joke’s-on-you feel to the way he talks that reminds me of that (X-rated and not safe for work) Onion article, “Why Do These Homosexuals Keep [Fellating Me]?”

Carney actually seems shocked and, well, disappointed to the point of contemptuousness, when reporters won’t believe him. It’s like no one told him he doesn’t have Jedi mind tricks at his disposal.

Carney: These are not the droids you’re looking for, idiots.

Ed Henry, Fox News: But Jay, these look exactly like the droids we’ve been looking for. In fact, the serial numbers match.

Carney: Ed, I understand your network is deeply invested in finding a story here. But the simple fact is that these are in no way the droids you’re looking for. Move along.

Henry: One last follow-up, Jay. The golden droid on the right just said, “Excuse me sirs, but we are in fact exactly the droids you’ve been looking for. Thank goodness you found us.”

Carney: No, no they didn’t. And besides — I used to be a journalist as you know — and it’s common knowledge among real journalists [Carney winks to the non-Fox reporters in the room] that one should never believe what droids tell them.

Jonathan Karl, ABC: Jay, related question: Here is a photo of you from last month holding up a picture of these exact droids with the quote in the caption reading, ‘Carney vows the White House will not rest until these droids are found.’ Also, ABC News has obtained footage of you from this morning, hugging the two droids right there, with you saying ‘Thank Obama we found you!’ Can you explain that?

[Carney rolls his eyes and then desperately tries to telekinetically choke everyone in the room.]

Henry: Uh, Jay are you okay? Why are you squinting? What’s up with that hand gesture . .

There are actually two more A words for Kerry….Arrogant Ass…e….rsk
More than exposing his personal prejudices, John Kerry’s recent remarks illustrate how biased against the Jews – i.e. anti-Semitic – the entire discourse on the Palestinian issue has become.

John Kerry Photo: REUTERS
A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state – or… a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state. Once you put that frame in your mind… which is the bottom line, you understand how imperative it is to get to the two-state solution.
– John Kerry before the Trilateral Commission, cited by The Daily Beast, April 27

John Kerry’s recent use of the term “Apartheid” in reference to Israel’s future was an anti-Semitic act.
– Caroline B. Glick, The Jerusalem Post, April 29

From the outset John Kerry was an ill-advised choice for the position of secretary of state. His history of embarrassing gaffes made his appointment as America’s top diplomat clearly imprudent and inappropriate.

Rage, reproach and ridicule

But for some reason, none of these prior lapses unleashed the same maelstrom of rage, reproach and ridicule as his leaked prognosis that, unless it hastens to embrace “the two-state solution,” Israel may become an “apartheid state.”

Kerry has, of course, been responsible for measures far more substantially detrimental to Israel than his facile forecast as to its future – such as the abhorrent release of convicted terrorists as a grotesque gesture to coax the Palestinians to the negotiating table. Yet, somehow it was his brandishing the specter of anticipated apartheid that precipitated an unprecedented assault on his competence and character, and even calls for his resignation Thus in a withering review of Kerry’s performance, acerbically titled, “Kerry challenging Biden for ‘most gaffe-prone’” (April 29), Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin wrote: “When ultra-conservative Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and super-liberal Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) are both blasting you, you know you’ve blown it… In a sense, Kerry’s latest debacle can’t really undermine his standing any further. His buffoon-like gaffes… already have made him the subject of derision.”

Rubin concludes her column with the caustic comment: “Kerry over and over again has proven himself to be, if not the worst secretary of state, then certainly the most error-prone.”

‘Apartheid’ & ‘anti-Semitism’ – Countervailing A-words?

“Apartheid” is an emotive “A-word” and Kerry’s use of it was pounced on by both friends and foes of Israel.

A headline on The Washington Free Beacon website, “Palestinians Echo Kerry on ‘Apartheid’: Kerry comments influencing region, harming Israel” summed up the situation its usage has created.

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2014/05/03/pakistani-muslims-protest-at-3rd-anniversary-of-bin-laden-killing-63-opposed-killing-70-see-us-as-enemy/

Pakistanis Protest at 3rd Anniversary of Bin Laden Killing; 63% Opposed Killing & 70% See US as Enemy

In April and May of 2011 (as summarized in USA Today), the Pew Center’s Global Attitudes Project conducted polls among 1,970 and then 1,251 Pakistanis, sampling areas that represented 85% of the country’s population. Here are the salient findings:

63 percent of Pakistanis disapproved of the bin Laden raid, while 10 percent approved and 27 percent gave no opinion.

70 percent of Pakistanis surveyed view the U.S. as an enemy, while fewer then 1 in 10 see it as a partner, both surveys showed.

Three in four have an unfavorable opinion of America, both polls showed.

That’s the unspoken, if not actively denied “background” for scenes like this today (5/3/14) in Pakistan, where Muslim protesters decried the U.S. on the third anniversary of the righteous killing of the jihad terrorist and mass murderer Osama Bin Laden.

Members of Kerry’s team slam Netanyahu, empathize with Abbas, warn Palestine will rise ‘whether through violence or via int’l organizations’
American officials directly involved in the failed Israeli-Palestinian peace process over the last nine months gave a leading Israeli columnist a withering assessment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the negotiations, indicated that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has completely given up on the prospect of a negotiated solution, and warned Israel that the Palestinians will achieve statehood come what may — either via international organizations or through violence.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to Nahum Barnea, a prominent columnist from Israel’s best-selling daily Yedioth Aharonoth, the officials highlighted Netanyahu’s ongoing settlement construction as the issue “largely to blame” for the failure of Secretary of State John Kerry’s July 2013-April 2014 effort to broker a permanent peace accord.

They made plain that US President Barack Obama had been prepared to release spy-for-Israel Jonathan Pollard to salvage the talks. And they warned that “the world will not keep tolerating the Israeli occupation.”

Barnea, who described his conversations with the American officials as “the closest thing to an official American version of what happened” in the talks, said the secretary is now deciding whether to wait a few months and try to renew the negotiating effort or to publicize the US’s suggested principles of an agreement.

Detailing how the US sought to solve disputes over the core issues of a two-state solution, Barnea wrote on Friday that, “Using advanced software, the Americans drew a border outline in the West Bank that gives Israel sovereignty over some 80 percent of the settlers that live there today. The remaining 20 percent were meant to evacuate. In Jerusalem, the proposed border is based on Bill Clinton’s plan — Jewish neighborhoods to Israel, Arab neighborhoods to the Palestinians.”

He quoted the Americans saying that while the Israeli government made no response to the American plan, and also failed to draw its own border outline, Abbas agreed to the US-suggested border outline.

Lord Caradon: ‘I know the 1967 line, and it’s a rotten line. you couldn’t have a worse line for a permanent international boundary.’
LORD CARADON: ‘We didn’t say there should be a withdrawal to the ’67 line.
On the eve of our Independence Day, an ultra-antagonistic independence – one that manifestly threatens to replace ours – is fast gaining ground. Many Israelis are appalled to see the Ramallah and Gaza splinters officially welcomed in UN-affiliated forums as the “State of Palestine.” However, given relentless global trends, this travesty was all but inevitable.

“Palestinian independence” had already been declared in Algiers on November 15, 1988, and within mere months the utterly fictional entity was recognized by 134 of the UN’s 193 then-members. All this took place before Oslo proved how a previously bad situation could be made disastrously worse.

By now, of course, few abroad challenge the popular axiom that a Palestinian state had existed in this country from time immemorial and that it was cruelly overrun in an act of unprovoked aggression by Israel on June 5, 1967.

Even since, it’s alleged, the state of Palestine had been under occupation.

In other words, Israel had violently extinguished Palestine’s flourishing sovereignty. This is today’s self-evident, universally worshiped gospel. No substantiation thereof is necessary and any deviation therefrom is sacrilege.

In fact, the truth is remarkably unwanted in this context lest it expose the entire fable as fake. No one wants to know that there never- ever was a Palestinian state – not in the entire annals of mankind. There are advantages to deception, especially when it yields realpolitik perks.

Thus the dysfunctional family of nations is more than happy to clasp to its selectively loving bosom another fabricated Arab addition.

Both these films are are true stories. Both deal with lesser-known aspects of the Second World War. Both feature epic sadism against innocents.

In The German Doctor — called Wakolda in Europe — an unwitting Argentinian family of hoteliers takes in a boarder, slowly becoming aware that the man is no mere medical practitioner. The doctor is a handsome and laconic man, evidently a WWII-era era, possibly a Nazi physician (Alex Brendemühl) now in Bariloche, Argentina, after having successfully disappeared for well over a decade in Buenos Aires. It is 1960.

On the barren, featureless road to Barriloche, he meets an Argentinian family, becoming fascinated with their daughter Lilith (Florencia Bado), a one-time preemie who is consequently smaller than her peers. Doctor ‘Helmut Gregor,’ becomes a guest of the family’s renovated lodging house. With mother Eva’s permission (Natalia Oreiro) and behind suspicious father Enzo’s (Diego Peretti) back, the imperious doctor starts to treat the 12-year-old with unheard-of growth hormone to get her to grow to ‘normal’ size.

Lilith (the name has outsize resonance for the Biblically conscious, as she was the “second woman” who supposedly lured Adam from Eve to his sinful MacIntosh experimentation) is delighted by the “help” she is getting from the formidable doctor. She can now begin to hold her own amongst the feral teens who deride her small stature and refuse to let her compete on an even plane with them.

The horror of who and what Dr. Gregor really is dawns gradually on the family members as it becomes clear to the viewer. The story becomes a chilling psychological suspenser that features no tricks or special effects, but an icy recognition of what was happening for decades under our noses in Argentina, (elsewhere in South America many nations delightedly took in Axis murderers, but few with the alacrity and open-armed hugs of the Argentinian powers-that-were). The film provides an unusual perspective, since South America does not immediately spring to mind as the venue for increasing malfeasance, secrecy, dread, and horror.

The principals in the film, directed by the deft and talented Lucia Puenzo, are genuine and affecting, and the film makes excellent use of real WWII grainy footage, authentic notebooks, and nefarious underground clots of brutal schemers from verminous Nazi nests. (We use the gentlest, sweetest vocabulary fitting for the occasion.) There is also a subplot love story, but the audience white-knuckles it until the denouement. Not a frou-frou film, but well-worth a visit.

Barack Obama’s chickens are coming home to roost in Asia. During his ongoing trip to America’s most important allies in the region, he has been buffeted by ill-concealed anxieties at every stop that, these days, it is better to be an enemy of the United States than its friend.

That is a formula for having more enemies, and fewer friends.

According to the Wall Street Journal, in the run-up to Mr. Obama’s visit to the Western Pacific, U.S. military planners were busy drawing up “muscular” contingency plans in the event Communist China or North Korea engage in further “provocations.”

Of course, what is worrying our allies is not simply the prospect of more provocations. It’s the steadily growing capacity of such hostile powers to act on their stated intentions to threaten America’s friends, their sovereign territories and vital interests.

The examples of U.S. responses the Journal says are under consideration involve various, mostly symbolic gestures. These include B-2 flights in the region, more port calls by naval forces and intensified exercises with allied forces. Among the other options that have, evidently, not yet been approved by the Commander-in-Chief are intensified surveillance near China and the transiting of carrier battle groups through the Strait of Taiwan.

Welcome as such gestures would be to nations in the Western Pacific who have been promised an American “pivot” to the region, but seen little evidence of it, they still fall far short of what is required to deter the increasing ability of China and its proxy, North Korea, to exercise hegemony over their neighbors. Even the laudable conclusion of an agreement with the Philippines (just in time for President Obama’s visit to the country) will allow renewed use of bases there by U.S. forces, but not a permanent presence.

Which brings us to the heart of the matter. Unless and until the Obama administration reverses course on the wrecking operation it has conducted against the American military over the past five years, the United States will be hard pressed to present a serious deterrent to Chinese aggression, both in its own right and via its North Korean cut-out.

Absent the wherewithal and resolve to maintain in-theater the sort of power-projection assets that would constitute a serious impediment in the future to the sorts of things Beijing and Pyongyang have engaged in of late – including declarations of sovereignty, seizures of territory, threatening actions at sea and ballistic missile tests – we must expect more of the same. And worse.

Dear Victor Davis Hanson,

You suggest in your syndicated column, “Harry Reid: A McCarthy for Our Time,” that we “ask Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., the same question once posed to Sen. Joseph McCarthy by U.S. Army head-counsel Robert [sic] N. Welch: ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?’”

First of all — that would be Joseph N. Welch, not Robert. Robert W. Welch was someone rather different — a founder of the John Birch Society. Second, I would like to ask you a question: Are you aware of the context of Joseph N. Welch’s showboating remarks?

M. Stanton Evans did the spadework in Blacklisted by History, his groundbreaking – no, orbit-reversing – book about the late Sen. McCarthy, who died in 1957. The book devastates the fact-devoid conventional wisdom (including the “no decency” fable) on McCarthy and reconstructs an evidence-based record. A very different person emerges from Evans’ research: a political leader who – alas for the purveyors of “court history” – in no way resembles the execrable Harry Reid.

Yes, Welch theatrically denounced McCarthy at a June 1954 Senate hearing for outing Welch’s assistant Frederick Fisher as a former member of a Communist front, the National Lawyers Guild. But weeks earlier, on April 16, 1954, Welch himself outed Fisher – confirming that he’d relieved Fisher from duty over his previous front membership – in the pages of the New York Times!

It sounds fantastic – it is fantastic – but somehow Welch’s baseless “no decency” accusation lingers, its staying power derived from wells of pure ignorance, laziness or mendacity. It cries out for correction.

Next, you equate Reid’s smear of the peaceful patriots supporting Cliven Bundy as “domestic terrorists” with what you describe as McCarthy’s “smearing his opponents with lurid allegations, while questioning their patriotism.” Peaceful patriots demonstrating about federal government overreach equals covert Communists infiltrating the federal government? Is that a logical pairing? Which peaceful patriots did McCarthy smear with “lurid allegations,” anyway?

I note that despite your being a widely respected historian, the historical record is not a part of this essay. That is, your examples of Reid’s allegedly McCarthy-like evil come down to the familiar buzz phrases – “Have you no decency?” and “lurid allegations,” the famous list of names, “un-American.”

Take Reid’s slander of Mitt Romney as a tax cheat and what you deservedly call Reid’s “pathetic rejoinder” on being asked for proof: “I’ve had a number of people tell me that.” You compare that to McCarthy’s 1950 list of Communists on the State Department payroll. You write: “One wonders how many names were on Reid’s McCarthyite ‘tell’ list – were there, as McCarthy used to bluster, 205 names, or perhaps just 57?”

Again, is this an apt historical parallel? Malicious slander against a GOP nominee and allegations about serious security lapses in the State Department? I don’t think so. If the implication in your use of the word “bluster” is that McCarthy had no list of names, I’m sorry, but the evidence laid out in “Blacklisted by History” (Chapter 14) tells us otherwise.

Your column continues: “When asked again to document the slur, Reid echoed McCarthy perfectly: ‘The burden should be on him. He’s the one I’ve alleged has not paid any taxes.’”

In what instance has “Reid echoed McCarthy perfectly”? Are you implying that McCarthy’s investigations into Communists in the federal government were based on evidence of no higher caliber or substance than Reid’s wholly unsubstantiated bombast?

On Wednesday, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations rejected J Street’s bid for membership. Of the 42 out of 50 members present at the vote, 17 were in favor, 22 opposed and three abstained.

Needing 34 supporting votes to gain entry “into the tent,” J Street would have lost even if the eight groups absent, together with those who had refrained from casting a ballot, had backed its entry.

It was, in other words, a resounding defeat.

Since its inception in 2008, J Street’s goal has been to compete with, undermine and eventually replace the American Israel Public Affairs Committee as the most influential Jewish lobby on Capitol Hill. And though initially this seemed to be too tall an order for the fledgling organization that called itself “pro-Israel and pro-peace” — a euphemism for pro-Palestinian and pro-Arab world — J Street began to gain momentum.

It certainly received media coverage for every one of its events, no matter how poorly attended; and its director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, became prominent on the lecture and panel circuit. This provided him the opportunity to attack Israel in the guise of defending it against the policies of its government, while accusing J Street’s critics of stifling healthy and robust debate.

Liberals are always suckers for such blackmail. Ben-Ami knows this and has tried, often successfully, to use it to his advantage.

But there is one crack in his armor and calculations: His operation is funded by radical left-wing billionaire George Soros.