RUTHFULLY YOURS

Last week’s cruise-missile strike against a Syrian air base in response to Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons has reopened debate about the wisdom of Barack Obama’s decision to forgo a similar strike, under similar circumstances, in 2013.

But the real issue isn’t about wisdom. It’s about honesty.

On Sept. 10, 2013, President Obama delivered a televised address in which he warned of the dangers of not acting against Assad’s use of sarin gas, which had killed some 1,400 civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta the previous month.

“If we fail to act, the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons,” Mr. Obama said. “As the ban against these weapons erodes, other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas, and using them. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of chemical weapons on the battlefield. And it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these weapons, and use them to attack civilians.”

It was a high-minded case for action that the president immediately disavowed for the least high-minded reason: It was politically unpopular. The administration punted a vote to an unwilling Congress. It punted a fix to the all-too-willing Russians. And it spent the rest of its time in office crowing about its success.

In July 2014 Secretary of State John Kerry claimed “we got 100% of the chemical weapons out.” In May 2015 Mr. Obama boasted that “Assad gave up his chemical weapons. That’s not speculation on our part. That, in fact, has been confirmed by the organization internationally that is charged with eliminating chemical weapons.” This January, then-National Security Adviser Susan Rice said “we were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile.”

Today we know all this was untrue. Or, rather, now all of us know it. Anyone paying even slight attention has known it for years.

In June 2014 U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power noted “discrepancies and omissions related to the Syrian government’s declaration of its chemical weapons program.” But that hint of unease didn’t prevent her from celebrating the removal “of the final 8% of chemical weapons materials in Syria’s declaration” of its overall stockpile. CONTINUE AT SITE

Editor’s Note: In the current issue of National Review, we have a piece by Jay Nordlinger on Vladimir Kara-Murza, the Russian democracy leader. This week in his Impromptus, Mr. Nordlinger expands that piece.

Two years ago, in May 2015, Vladimir Kara-Murza was poisoned. He fell into a coma. The doctors told his wife, Yevgenia, that he had just a 5 percent chance of surviving. He survived.

Almost two years later — in February 2017 — Kara-Murza was again poisoned. This time, the doctors induced a coma, to help him survive. They again told Yevgenia that her husband had just a 5 percent chance. Again, he survived.

I’m sitting in a Washington, D.C., restaurant with him. I tell him that I’m always happy to see him. (We first met last year.) But today I am especially happy to see him.

Smiling, Kara-Murza says, “I’m very happy, and very grateful, to be sitting here with you.”

“No cane!” I say. When I met him last year, he was walking with a cane, and limping. He is in weakened condition today, understandably. But no cane …

The poisonings — the attacks — took place in Moscow, where Kara-Murza is the vice-chairman of Open Russia, a civil-society group. This is the group started by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian businessman who crossed Vladimir Putin, spent ten years in jail, and is now in exile.

One by one, Kara-Murza’s colleagues have been exiled, like Khodorkovsky. Or imprisoned. Or killed. Kara-Murza is determined to press on, however, believing that he has important work to do. And if people shrink from doing it, how will it get done?

He is 35 years old, born in 1981 to a distinguished family. His peculiar name — Kara-Murza — means “Black Prince.” In all likelihood, it comes from Golden Horde days, centuries back.

Vladimir was just shy of ten in August 1991. That was a pivotal month in the history of Russia. Hard-liners in the Soviet government attempted a coup against the party leader, Gorbachev. Kara-Murza will never forget it. Those few days in August are stamped on him indelibly.

Tanks were in the streets of his hometown, Moscow — just as they had been sent to Budapest in 1956, as he says. And to Prague in 1968. And to Vilnius, earlier that same year, 1991 (January).

Thousands and thousands of people poured into the streets of Moscow — armed with nothing. They were fed up. Fed up with oppressive rule. They stood in front of the tanks — their own tanks, Russian tanks, or Soviet tanks. Those tanks turned around and left.

At the end of the year — Christmas — the Soviet Union dissolved.

“No matter how powerful the forces against them,” says Kara-Murza, “when people are prepared to stand up for what they believe, they succeed.” In fact, “that’s the basis of my hope for the future of Russia.”

We talk a little about Yeltsin — Boris Yeltsin, the president of Russia in the ’90s (1991-99). He is widely remembered as an alcoholic buffoon. But he was a lot more than that, as Kara-Murza says.

“He was in power for eight years — two terms — and then he left. Compare that with what we have now.” (Putin has been entrenched since 2000: 17 years.)

“We had a real parliament, not a rubber-stamp parliament. Compare that with what we have now.”

Arabs and Muslims have long lost faith in their leaders’ ability to deal with the crises plaguing Arab and Islamic countries. The civil war in Syria, which has been raging for more than five years and which has claimed the lives of more than half a million people, is seen as a shining best example of Arab and Muslim leaders’ incompetence and apathy.

Others are calling Trump “Lion of the Sunnis”, “Caliph of the Muslims” and “Defender of the Islamic Holy Sites.” Some wrote: “Blessed be the hands of Abu Ivanka al-Amiriki (Trump),” and expressed hope that he would do more to rid the Syrian people of their dictator. “We love you Trump” and “Trump is our hope” are two of many hashtags that have become extremely popular on social media, especially Twitter. Many of the writers are Syrians, Egyptians and Gulf citizens.

Many Arabs and Muslims perceive themselves to have been betrayed by the Obama administration. They felt, rightly, that the Obama administration turned its back on Washington’s friends and allies in the Arab world in favor of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.

A new hero has been born in the Arab world and his name is Donald Trump. And this is not a joke.

Arabs and Muslims love leaders who talk tough and do not hesitate to use force. In the Arab world, compromise is a sign of weakness.

Until recently, Trump was anathema to many Arabs and Muslims. So what happened? U.S. President Donald Trump did something Arab leaders have failed to do: he helped the Syrian civilians who were being gassed by their ruler.

Arabs and Muslims have long lost faith in their leaders’ ability to deal with the crises plaguing Arab and Islamic countries. The civil war in Syria, which has been raging for more than five years and which has claimed the lives of more than half a million people, is seen as a shining best example of Arab and Muslim leaders’ incompetence and apathy.

The most recent Arab League summit in Jordan, which brought together many Arab heads of state and monarchs, will be best remembered for the photos of leaders falling asleep during the discussions. These pictures, which have been circulating widely in the Arab media, feel like salt in the festering wound of Arab leaders’ indifference to their peoples’ plights.

The summit, which utterly failed to find a solution to the ongoing killings in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and other Arab countries, is now being sarcastically referred to by many Arabs as the “Sleep Summit.”

“According to one estimate, 10−15 percent of the world’s Muslims are Islamists. Out of well over 1.6 billion, or 23 percent of the globe’s population, that implies more than 160 million individuals.” – Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in her new book, The Challenge of Dawa.

That was Ronald Reagan’s major achievement in his long war against the Soviet Union: presenting communism as a joke — exposing the lies of the Soviet regime, exposing the misery under which its people were living, and explaining why Western values were preferable to Communist ones. This is exactly what the West, Hirsi Ali explains, should be doing with radical Islam.

Western civilization is a humanist vision in which Christianity integrated Jewish wisdom, Greek philosophy and Roman law, thereby giving Western culture its distinctive character: freedom of speech and of the press, equal justice under law, the primacy of the individual, separation of religion and state, freedom of religion and from religion, property rights, sexual equality, an independent judiciary, and independent education, among other values. This is what radical Islam wants to destroy. That is why terrorists are attacking our churches, the State of Israel and why they are subverting democracy to turn it into Islamic law, sharia.

Jihad is spreading violence — and succeeding. “Of the last sixteen years,” notes Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her new book, The Challenge of Dawa, “the worst year for terrorism was 2014, with ninety-three countries experiencing attacks and 32,765 people killed.”

“The second worst was 2015, with 29,376 deaths. Last year, four radical Islamic groups were responsible for 74 percent of all deaths from terrorism: the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), Boko Haram, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. Although the Muslim world itself bears the heaviest burden of jihadist violence, the West is increasingly under attack”.