According to the July 30, 2014 Rasmussen Reports , 59% of likely US voters believe that there is a global conflict between the Muslim World and Western civilization, only 17% disagree and 24% are undecided. Likely voters also believe that the “Arab Spring” does not bode well for the US.
The US posture of deterrence played a key role in bolstering Western civilization in face of intensifying threats, checking global violence and instability, bolstering the confidence of US allies, and constraining the maneuverability of rogue regimes.
However, the current perception of the US posture of deterrence among US Arab allies is reflected by a July 27, 2014 OpEd in the leading Saudi daily, A-Sharq al-Awsat, which is one of the most influential Arab newspapers, owned by the Saudi royal family: “…. Secretary John Kerry is representing a weak US administration…. He visits Baghdad to represent an administration that lacks decision-making. He shuttles between Tel Aviv and Cairo as a mediator with no real clout…. Barack Obama’s weak foreign policy is weighing on the deteriorating situation across the world…. Washington’s position on Egypt has changed over the course of the past three years in a manner which demonstrates America’s confused vision and weak foreign policy…. Obama did not even bother to issue a statement regarding the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) forcing Mosul’s Christians to flee. Obama’s increasingly isolationist policy is damaging Kerry’s credibility….”
World attention has riveted on as many as 40,000 Yazidis (Yezidis), half of whom may be children, trapped on Mount Sinjar, northwestern Iraq, without water or food, after being targeted by the latest jihad rampages of the “Islamic State” (ISIL) butchers. The Yazidis are an indigenous, ancient, pre-Islamic non-Muslim religious minority whose syncretic beliefs derive, in part, from Zoroastrianism.
Reports indicate that as per President Obama’s address last (Thursday, 8/7/14) evening, today (Friday 8/8/14), the U.S. has begun both humanitarian air-drops to those refugees stranded on Mount Sinjar, and bombing runs against ISIL positions outside Erbil, Kurdistan.
Sadly, ISIL’s current bloody attacks on the Yazidis reflect a continuum of religiously-inspired, chronic Islamic oppression of this minority group, interspersed with paroxysms of violence no less brutal than what is now taking place.
Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894) was a British polymath—archaeologist, author, politician, and diplomat—perhaps best known for his the excavations in northern Mesopotamia, contemporary Iraq.
Layard recorded the following, based upon first hand observations, and historical assessments, about the chronic plight of the Yazidis (Yezidis) under Islamic domination in his 1849, Nineveh and Its Remains. His focus, appropriately, given the time frame, was upon the depredations against the Yazidis during the allegedly “tolerant” Ottoman Muslim era: massacre, pillage, and deportation and enslavement of their male and female children, for “service” in the vast Ottoman slave institutions, including harem slavery.
They [the Yazidis] have the choice between conversion and the sword, and its is unlawful even to take tribute [jizya, per Koran 9:29, the deliberately debasing poll-tax, and related regulations imposed upon non-Muslim Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians subjugated by jihad] from them. The Yezidis, not being looked upon as “Masters of a Book,” [i.e., scriptures, “acknowledged,” at least in part, by Islam] have been exposed for centuries to the persecution of the Mohammedans. The harems of the south of Turkey have been recruited from them. Yearly expeditions have been made by the governors of provinces into their districts; and whilst the men and women were slaughtered without mercy, the children of both sexes were carried off, and exposed for sale in the principal towns. These annual hunts were one of the sources of revenue…and its was the custom of the Pashas of Baghdad and Mosul, to let loose the irregular troops upon the ill-fated Yezidis, as an easy method of satisfying their demands for arrears of pay.
You have to be made of stone or be a Clinton (think Rwanda) not to be outraged and moved by the scene of thousands of children from Central America being held in terrible conditions with uncertain futures. Our President, whose hemoglobin is higher than his approval ratings, did not deign to visit them or comment on their need for attention, medical screening, inoculations , treatment or ultimate destiny. Instead, he is planning some form of diktat on blanket amnesty while Congress is in recess.
And, these children are his human shields- and he will shamelessly use their plight to promote his agenda on immigration while putting children last….rsk
By any historical standard, Israel’s air attacks were a model of restraint.
Condemnation of Israel for its conduct of Operation Protective Edge in Gaza continues unabated. The chief accusation, heard time and again, is that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have either been cavalier about civilian casualties or are intentionally inflicting them. Israel and its defenders, for their part, have been at pains to point out the great lengths the IDF has gone to avoid injuring civilians, while at the same time noting the innumerable ways in which Hamas has violated the laws of war.
The debate over these matters has been almost as intense as the fighting itself. All too often, historical and moral perspective have been lost in the rhetorical smoke. No nation can survive with hundreds of rockets raining on its cities day after day while its borders are simultaneously penetrated by armed fighters seeking to spirit out hostages via underground tunnels. Once again, Israel has found itself waging a war for its survival. In such a war, the question becomes: What is forbidden and what is permitted?
As is well known but bears restating, the campaign Israel has been conducting to suppress Hamas rocket fire and destroy its tunnel network employs precision guided munitions. The attacks from land, air, and sea are designed to destroy Hamas’s command and control facilities and those structures in or from which it has been manufacturing, storing, or firing its huge arsenal of rockets. Before the IDF attacks any buildings where civilians are known to be living or congregating, it issues numerous alerts by dropping leaflets, making telephone calls and sending text messages, and firing warning shots.
In a conflict in which its adversary employs innocent women and children as human shields and fires offensive weapons from or near hospitals, schools, and U.N. shelters, Israel’s effort to reduce civilian casualties has clearly not succeeded in every case. But the effort itself, if not unique in the annals of warfare, is certainly far from the norm. Notably, it stands in the starkest possible contrast to the way Great Britain and the United States conducted their own war for survival.
The Germans in World War II may have initiated the carpet bombing of civilian centers, but it did not take long for the Allies to respond in kind. Days after the German bombing of Rotterdam, Winston Churchill’s war cabinet settled on the initiation of “unrestricted air warfare,” openly casting aside concern for civilian life so long as military objectives would be realized. What followed over the next years, as is well known, was the destruction of more than half of Germany’s urban centers.
“Whenever Israel does anything to defend itself, it is accused of acting disproportionately or committing war crimes. That there is a new form of anti-Semitism at work here is unquestionable” • An interview with my father, Norman Podhoretz.
Ruthie Blum
Since the 1980 U.S. presidential election, Norman Podhoretz has been called — along with the late Irving Kristol — one of the two “founding fathers of neoconservatism.” A member of the Democratic Party disillusioned with what he and a growing group of other liberals viewed as a radical shift away from the values they held dear, Podhoretz supported Republican candidate Ronald Reagan.
A mere four years earlier, he had voted for Jimmy Carter — who ran against incumbent Gerald Ford — on the grounds that “when in doubt, go for the Democrat; he will at least be better for Israel, and probably for America.”
Podhoretz’s complete about-face on this score was a gradual process, however, that began during the Vietnam War. Though initially opposed to it, he became increasingly disgusted by the anti-war movement. When fellow members of the intellectual Left began to spew vitriol against America — even likening it to Nazi Germany — Podhoretz was not on board, to put it mildly.
The editor-in-chief of Commentary magazine between 1960 and 1995, and the author of hundreds of controversial articles and 12 books (among them “World War IV: The Long Struggle against Islamofascism”), Podhoretz was awarded the 2004 Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush, and the Guardian of Zion award by the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies at Bar-Ilan University in 2007.
He is married to author and social critic Midge Decter, whose own political journey from Left to Right coincided and was enmeshed with his. Separately and together, they have been vilified for their politics and vindicated by them.
They also happen to be my parents. And in spite of having been accused decades ago by ideological foes of “dual loyalty” to the U.S. and Israel, when I made aliyah in 1977, my father, now 84, was not happy about it.
”You are the only person I know with downward mobility,” he quipped at the time.
Since then, he has made his peace with my move, often joking that my columns in Israel Hayom “are liable to turn me into the kind of Zionist everyone has accused me of being.”
During an interview with him at his home in New York in June — a few weeks before the outbreak of Operation Protective Edge — Podhoretz summarized his complex worldview in a nutshell: “When in doubt, go for the Republican; he will at least be better for Israel — and certainly for America.”
As to motivation – I am not a theist. To channel Groucho, I wouldn’t belong to a group that would have me as a member. But my self-study of intelligent design, including cosmology, has nailed down my deism).
According to celebrity physicists Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss humanity is luckier than my beating a healthy Tiger over 18 holes. They assert that the Universe is undirected and purposeless. This is one of two early- to mid-twentieth-century axioms. The other was an infinite Universe. But the infinite part started falling away in 1917 when Einstein’s calculations showed him the universe was collapsing onto itself (therefore not infinite) causing him to falsely create a fudge-factor, adding a cosmological constant (anti-gravity factor) that kept infinity in play. After a lot of intrigue, Einstein officially admitted his trickery in 1929. As a sign of cosmic- serendipity, physicists concluded in 1998 that this constant was indeed needed, but this time supported by the data.
This constant is one of many (~ 34) that combine with the vast math/physics’ laws. One slight variance from any of these and there are no galaxies, stars, planets, earth or you. With apologies to most cosmologists, it is as certain that you (the reader) exist as it is that the Universe has purpose. Many leading cosmologists begrudgingly, sort-of admit (with feet shuffling and throat clearing) that “there is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the Universe is in several (sic) respects ‘fine-tuned’ for life” (physicists Paul Davies), then comes the “however…”: But this “broad agreement” is as solid as vapor.
Their Harlem Globetrotter hide-the-fine-tuned Universe tricks, makes researching this topic for a novice (me) like Mr. Magoo finding the right bathroom at night in a Donald Trump house. Instead of a reasonably direct line from: nothing-to-everything in a split second (Big-Bang); expansion; formation of stars; galaxies forming; death of stars; solar systems; earth; and finally humans, I had to wade through: but for the grace of undirected fortune, carbon-based humans would be silicon-based boobs in a different galaxy: singularity-did-it, bubble universes; string-theory: M theory, multi-universes: dark matter; Higgs boson; inflation; g-spot (just kidding) etc. Hawking, Krauss et al. really want don’t want us to make the obvious connection between a cosmos-from-nothing to sentient humans figuring out the math/physics of the universe at the exact place and time to do this. (Our position in the Universe is ideal for observation and much earlier or later we couldn’t see back to the beginning).
Separating the wheat-from-the-chaff became easy with some experience. The chaff comes from the atheism-or-materialism-as-an-ideology crowd (both scientific based and whackos), new-earth Christians and cosmologists proselytizing their special hypothesis. The most informative are thoughtful / reasonable Christian sites. For me, the most helpful is a Catholic site with a specific science/cosmology section http://www.strangenotions.com/science/cosmology/ whose contributors are truly experts, some who challenge the “company line” that generates stimulating debate. I especially like the often skillful and insightful comments (lots of them). This site is involved in a bit of a dust-up over banning and deleting hard-core and vicious atheist comments. Bully for them!
There is a battle waging in Washington, the outcome of which may be far more consequential than the media and most Americans realize. On one side are those that see government as a guarantor of our God-given rights to life, liberty and property. The other side sees government as the provider of comforts and happiness of its citizens.
The first favor a government limited in its authority by the checks and balances that were integral to the founding of the federal government, and by the federalist nature of its structure which assigns power to state and local authorities. The second believe that government is Darwinian; that it must adapt to cultural and societal changes, in a compassionate way. The latter has a political philosophy that reaches back at least as far as the late 19th Century when the Progressive movement began – a movement popularized by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and was manifested in the adoption in 1913 of the 16th and 17th Amendments. The first gave Congress the power to levy and collect taxes on income and the other called for the direct election of U.S. Senators. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society strengthened the bonds of centralized government. Mr. Obama is intent on furthering that legacy. But compassion increases dependency and it costs money. Half of all Americans today are dependent in some form on government assistance. Taxes and debt have risen. The paying for promised entitlements will fall on the shoulders of our children and grandchildren.
Progressives have been successful, in large part, because their job is more pleasant. It is easier to play Santa Claus than to teach dialectics. A government that takes from the few and gives to the many will generally win the support of the majority. A new study recently released by the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) looked at tax returns for 2010. The study found that the top 40% of households in 2010 paid 106.2% of federal income taxes. The bottom 40% paid -9.1%. The latter number is negative because on average those households received $18,950 in myriad government transfer payments.
Bruce Thornton, a research fellow at the Hoover Institute, recently published a book, Democracy’s Dangers & Discontents, in which he warns against “moral busybodies.” He writes: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” It is the gradual but insidious assumption of responsibility for the well-being of its citizens that increases dependency of the people, while strengthening the hand of government.
Cranky opponents of the Iron Dome Israeli missile defense claim the system doesn’t work. Some in the arms control community have latched on to such criticism to smear missile defense work in general especially that in the United States.
What happened then to the nearly 3000 Hamas rocket warheads that if not intercepted largely landed somewhere in Israel? The same critics say not only did Iron Dome not work, but the Hamas rocket warheads didn’t work either!
Except when Hamas rockets fired at Israel mistakenly landed in Gaza itself, the Hamas leaders tried to blame the destruction-shown in vivid pictures-on Israel counter strikes.
A great friend of the United States is retired Israeli Ministry of Defense top missile defense guru, Uzi Rubin. In the following piece he demolishes the critics of Iron Dome as effectively as Iron Dome itself demolishes Hamas rockets.
This missile defense system brought from research phase to deployed in the field in less than 4 years, allowed Israeli’s government to seek the best way to both minimize the damage to Israel, plan and carry out an effective strategy to eliminate as much as possible future Hamas missile strikes, and to the extent possible, limit the strikes on Gaza and save Palestinian lives.
Without an effective missile defense, Israeli might very well have to re-occupy Gaza and effectively eliminate Hamas’s military capability all together. This would be a very tough job and lead to thousands of additional casualties.
Iran has now bragged about providing both the financing and weaponry for the Hamas rocket attacks, as well as the help in building the terror tunnels now largely destroyed by the IDF. That is what the axis of evil looks like.
Here is Uzi Rubin’s August 5, 2014 piece in Reuters.
President Obama is impatient. Congress won’t act on immigration, he says, and therefore he will. The White House is coy as to exactly what the president will do. But the leaks point to an executive order essentially legalizing an enormous new class of illegal immigrants, perhaps up to 5 million people.
One doesn’t usually respond to rumors. But this is an idea so bad and so persistently peddled by the White House that it has already been preemptively criticized by such unusual suspects as (liberal) constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley, concerned about yet another usurpation of legislative power by the “uber presidency,” and the Washington Post editorial page, which warned that such a move would “tear up the Constitution.”
If this is just a trial balloon, the time to shoot it down is now. The administration claims such an executive order would simply be a corrective to GOP inaction on the current immigration crisis — 57,000 unaccompanied minors, plus tens of thousands of families, crashing through and overwhelming the southern border.
This rationale is a fraud.
First, the charge that Republicans have done nothing is plainly false. Last week, the House of Representatives passed legislation that deals reasonably with this immigrant wave. It changes a 2008 sex-trafficking law never intended for (and inadvertently inviting) mass migration — a change the president himself endorsed before caving to his left and flip-flopping. It also provides funds for emergency processing and assistance to the kids who are here.
Second, it’s a total non sequitur. Suspending deportation for millions of long-resident illegal immigrants has nothing to do with the current wave of newly arrived minors. If anything, it would aggravate the problem by sending the message that if you manage to get here illegally, eventually you’ll be legalized.
‘Stop just hatin’ all the time.” If you haven’t been following the news, you might not know whether this bon mot was uttered by a character on the ABC Family show Pretty Little Liars or by the president of the United States.
Of course, it was the leader of the free world at a Kansas City, Mo., rally last week, imploring congressional Republicans to start cooperating with him. The line struck a characteristically — and tellingly — juvenile and plaintive note.
How many books and articles have been written by conservatives seeking to divine the philosophical beliefs and psychological motivations lurking beneath the president’s smooth exterior?
It’s certainly true that the president is much further left than he’d ever admit, but the deepest truth about Obama is that there is no depth. He’s smart without being wise. He’s glib without being eloquent. He’s a celebrity without being interesting. He’s callow.
It’s a trope on the right to say that Obama has quit, that he’s not interested in the job anymore. It isn’t true. If you are smug and unwilling to bend from your (erroneous) presumptions of how the world works, this is what presidential leadership looks like.
Obama is incapable of the unexpected gesture or surprising departure. He evidently has no conception of the national interest larger than his ideology or immediate political interests. In terms of his sensibility, he’s about what you’d get if you took the average writer for The New Yorker and made him president of the United States.
The notion that Obama might be a grand historical figure was always an illusion, although at the beginning his rousing words lent it some superficial support. Once the magic wore off, it became clear he’s not really an orator. His greatest rhetorical skill turns out to be mockery.
The man who once promised to transcend political divisions is an expert at the stinging partisan jab. What Winston Churchill was to thundering statements of resolve, he is to snotty put-downs.
