RUTHFULLY YOURS

“We can not win this war by killing them,” Marie Harf said on MSNBC.

Reversing thousands of years of battlefield experience in which wars were won by “killing them”, the State Department spokeswoman argued that you can’t defeat ISIS by killing its fighters.

“We can not kill our way out of this war,” she said. “We need in the medium and longer term to go after the root causes that lead people to join these groups, whether it is lack of opportunity for jobs.”

War is one of the few things in life we can reliably kill our way out of. The United States has had a great track record of killing our way out of wars. We killed our way out of WW1. We killed our way out of WW2. The problem began when we stopped trying to kill our way out of wars and started trying to hug our way out of wars instead. Progressive academics added war to economics, terrorism and the climate in the list of subjects they did not understand and wanted to make certain that no one else was allowed to understand. Because the solution to war is so obvious that no progressive could possibly think of it.

Harf’s argument is a familiar one. There was a time when progressive reformers had convinced politicians that we couldn’t arrest, shoot, imprison or execute our way out of crime.

On March 3rd, despite conflicting opinions on the wisdom of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s addressing the U.S. Congress on Iran without specific U.S. presidential approval, Netanyahu is scheduled to address the concerns of Israel, many members of Congress and world leaders and will emphasize that no deal with the Iranian ayatollahs would be safer than a bad deal which would dismantle the sanctions regime even further leaving one of the world’s leading state sponsors of global terrorism to become a threshold nuclear power.

An argument rarely heard to support his Congressional presentation (despite the absence of proper diplomatic protocol) is that President Obama himself hosted British Prime Minister David Cameron recently at the White House and used him to lobby lawmakers to oppose new sanctions on Iran even though Cameron is involved in the run-up to the British General Election this spring. Nor is Cameron an exception. Obama also met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in June 2009, just three months before her country held elections, and when President Clinton was in the White House, he hosted then Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres of the Labor Party less than a month before the 1996 elections. That meeting was perceived as support for the dovish prime minister who ended up losing to Netanyahu in any event. It seems Netanyahu’s crime is not so much a breach of diplomatic protocol, but rather, opposing the Administration’s position on making concessions to Iran.

A few weeks back the US Senate approved the appointment of “Rabbi” David N. Saperstein as Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, to head the Office of International Religious Freedom in the United States Department of State, an office that tracks the denial of religious freedom to people around the world. The Obama administration has been bragging about its high-minded pluralism in appointing a Jew to the office, the first time it was held by a non-Christian.

A past leader in the “Rabbis for Obama,” Saperstein long headed the so-called “Religious Action Center” (RAC) of the American Reform synagogue movement. Despite its name, there is nothing remotely religious about the RAC. It is a liberal-leftist advocacy center, a lobby for the entire range of politically correct social causes, occasionally dressing up its agitprop with perfunctory attribution to “Jewish ethics.” Many of its positions are explicitly and diametrically opposed to the text of the Torah and to traditional Jewish values.

Obama’s Summit to Counter Violent Extremism was one of the most schizophrenic events on record. Its overall strategy was to counter Islamic radicalization while claiming that it had nothing to do with Islam. Even the King of Saudi Arabia and the leaders of a number of Muslim countries are willing to talk about Islamic terrorism. Obama isn’t. But he is rolling out a strategy to influence the theology of Muslims.

How do you change the beliefs of a religion which you can’t even name? You can’t and you don’t.

The whole premise of CVE subdivides “violent extremism” from Islam and then further subdivides violent extremism from extremism. Barbers split fewer hairs than this. CVE tells us that the best way to fight violent extremists is with “non violent extremist” Salafi clergy who have the most influence on them. We’re supposed to fight the ISIS Caliphate with supporters of another kind of Caliphate.

While much of the media has been obsessed with tracking down Republican positions on such crucial issues as evolution and President Obama’s religion, one searches in vain for hints of Hillary Clinton’s position on . . . pretty much anything. That is not to say that potential Republican candidates haven’t botched what should have been easy, commonsense answers, but shouldn’t there be at least a little bit of curiosity about where the all-but-inevitable Democratic nominee stands on actual issues that will affect the future of this country? It is early, of course, and Republicans themselves have not yet laid out detailed positions on most issues. It’s no surprise, therefore, that Hillary has not yet put together a specific platform for her campaign. Still, there are enough hints out there to discern a flavor of what she will offer. Clinton has flirted with Elizabeth Warren–style populism, even declaring, “Don’t let anyone tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.” But populism is not an easy fit for the crony-capitalist Clintons, so she appears to be settling into something called “inclusive capitalism.”

It isn’t the fossil-fuel companies that are polluting climate science. Citing documents uncovered by the radical environmental group Greenpeace, a group of media outlets — including the New York Times and the Boston Globe — have attacked global-warming skeptic Wei-Hock (Willie) Soon for allegedly hiding $1.2 million in contributions from “fossil fuel companies.” The articles were the latest in an ongoing campaign by greens and their media allies to discredit opponents of the warming agenda. But in allying themselves closely with activist groups with which they share ideological goals, reporters have fundamentally misled readers on the facts of global-warming funding. In truth, the overwhelming majority of climate-research funding comes from the federal government and left-wing foundations. And while the energy industry funds both sides of the climate debate, the government/foundation monies go only toward research that advances the warming regulatory agenda.
With a clear public-policy outcome in mind, the government/foundation gravy train is a much greater threat to scientific integrity. Officials with the Smithsonian Institution — which employs Dr. Soon — told the Times it appeared the scientist had violated disclosure standards, and they said they would look into the matter. Soon, a Malaysian immigrant, is a widely respected astrophysicist, and his allies came quickly to his defense. “It is a despicable, reprehensible attack on a man of great personal integrity,” says Myron Ebell, the director of Global Warming and International Environmental Policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who questioned why media organizations were singling out Soon over research funding.

The president’s actions are often at odds with his professed affection for America and Americans. Does President Obama love America and the American people? Debate on this matter has roared since former New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said Wednesday night at a private dinner in Manhattan, “I do not believe that the president loves America. . . . He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me.” While people loudly have defended and denounced Giuliani’s remarks, the correct answer to this question is: “Who knows?” The valid measure of Obama’s love for this country and its citizens — from, say, 0 to 100 percent — cannot be discerned by Giuliani, White House spokesman Josh Earnest, or anyone else.
No one can get inside of Obama’s mind to divine the truth behind this query. It is, however, perfectly fair to ask if Obama’s statements and actions parallel what one reasonably would expect from someone who loves the United States and those who call it home. • If Obama loves America, why does he associate closely with those who remain proud of bombing its most enduring institutions? Obama began his race for the Illinois state senate with a 1995 reception at the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, co-founders of the Weather Underground. In the 1960s and ’70s, this violent, rabidly anti-American terrorist group bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the headquarters of ITT and the NYPD — among many other targets. “I don’t regret setting bombs,” Ayers has said. “I feel we didn’t do enough.” He also declared: “I’m a radical, leftist, small ‘c’ communist.” “Kill all the rich people,” Ayers demanded in 1970. “Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents.”

The senators who blocked Antonio Weiss must fight to defend their prerogatives So bitter and pronounced has become President Barack Obama’s distaste for the separation of powers that he is now riding roughshod over Madison’s handiwork at the expense of his own party. “Eight days after joining the Treasury Department as an adviser, Antonio Weiss was the lead U.S. official listed at a meeting with Wall Street executives,” Bloomberg’s Ian Katz records today. “Typically,” Katz adds, such roles are “played by the undersecretary for domestic finance — the same post Weiss lost after Democratic senators stymied his nomination.” And yet “Weiss’s presence at that Feb. 3 meeting on quarterly debt sales shows him diving into many of the same tasks that would have come with the undersecretary’s job.”
Once a “failed nominee,” Katz confirms, Weiss has somehow “morphed” into a “key debt official” at the Treasury. Not since Jesus turned water into wine at Cana have we seen such a transmogrification. On the face of it, Weiss’s metamorphosis would appear to represent little more than the brazen bending of the rules. But, if you stop and think about it in a more nuanced fashion, “typically” is a horribly reactionary notion, isn’t it? Technically, Katz is correct to propose that Weiss’s role is traditionally “played by the undersecretary for domestic finance.” But, in the age of Obama, such asseverations smack of outmoded thinking, of fealty to constitutional tradition, of respect for the established order, and of what the backward-looking luddites who are at present attempting to destroy America from within like earnestly to refer to as “the law.” At first blush it must seem rather suspicious that the only functional difference between Weiss as undersecretary for domestic finance and Weiss as counselor to Secretary Lew is that the latter position “doesn’t require” the Senate confirmation that Weiss was so publicly denied.

It apparently takes a village of corporate marketing specialists to tell voters who she is. ‘Is Hillary Rodham Clinton a McDonald’s Big Mac or a Chipotle burrito bowl? A can of Bud or a bottle of Blue Moon? JCPenney or J. Crew?” That was the opening question of a front-page Washington Post story on Clinton’s effort to figure out her “brand.” To that end, she has recruited a team of corporate marketing specialists to “help imagine Hillary 5.0.” “It’s exactly the same as selling an iPhone or a soft drink or a cereal,” Peter Sealey, a longtime corporate marketing strategist, told the Post. “She needs to use everything a brand has: a dominant color, a logo, a symbol. . . . The symbol of a Mercedes is a three-pointed star.
The symbol of Coca-Cola is the contour bottle. The symbol of McDonald’s is the golden arches. What is Clinton’s symbol?” A columnist less charitable — and less constrained by the rules of publishing decorum — might be tempted to suggest some fitting symbols for Bill Clinton. But for Hillary, that’s a tougher question. Which is why the Hillary Industrial Complex is setting up a Manhattan Project to answer the question, “Who should Hillary be this time?” They’ll have their work cut out for them. More than any other politician in American life today, Hillary Clinton is an ironic figure. When she does or says anything, friends and foes alike ask, “Why did she do that?” “What was she thinking?”

The essays in Edward Alexander’s forthcoming Jews Against Themselves are an excoriating assault on Jewish “apostates”—Jews who, in the words of Maimonides, separate themselves “from the community” or “hold aloof from the congregation of Israel” and is “indifferent when they are in distress.” In Maimonides’s opinion, such no longer “belong to the Jewish people” and they have “no share in the world to come.”

Alexander’s apostates are Jews who are not only indifferent to the distress of Jews in Israel, but who join the anti-Israeli chorus. The genus comes in many species, and Alexander offers a brief taxonomy: “Jewish progressives against Israel; Jewish queers against Israel; Haredim against Israel; Holocaust survivors against Israel; children of Holocaust survivors against Israel; Jewish Voice for Peace; grandchildren of Holocaust survivors against Israel; survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto against Israel; J Street; Jewish postmodernists against Israel; Jewish Berkeley professors against Israel; post-Zionists against Israel; Jewish members of MESA (Middle East Studies Association) against Israel; Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (JBIG, also called, seasonally, London’s Jewish Christmas carolers against Israel); and so on and on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.”