RUTHFULLY YOURS

So whose fault is the implosion of Iraq? Bush? Obama?

Back in the real world, Republicans don’t lose wars and Democrats don’t lose wars; America loses wars – which is how US allies and enemies alike judge what’s happening in Iraq right now, and how it will be recorded in the history books. Tthere is certainly something to Robert Tracinski’s analysis – that this was a wish-fulfilling prophesy for Obama, and that, in some deep primal sense, for the Democrats it was necessary ultimately for the Iraq war to be lost. Undeniably lost. And to be seen to be undeniably lost – even if it took five-and-a-half years after Bush’s departure from office, or about the length of the entire Second World War.

Let it be said that there is more than enough blame to go round. I see Senator Lindsey Graham has been all over the airwaves saying we need to work with Iran to help save Iraq from ISIS. This is the same Lindsey Graham who’s been calling for the US to assist Syrian rebels in trying to overthrow Assad, Iran’s client. The Syrian resistance is dominated by the same guys currently overrunning Iraq – the Sunni jihadists of the “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”. Consider the now largely erased Syrian/Iraqi border: On the eastern side of this vanished line, a disaffected Sunni who takes up arms against an Iranian client in Baghdad is an enemy of the United States whom we must join with Iran in destroying; but, on the western side of this vanished line, a disaffected Sunni who takes up arms against an Iranian client in Damascus is a plucky Arab Spring freedom fighter entitled to the full support of the United States. Granted that this isn’t the easiest part of the world in which to distinguish friend from foe, the way around this abiding problem is not to locate both of them within, literally, the same person.

So Senator Graham is making even less sense than usual.

Let it also be said that President Obama’s antipathy to meaningful military action undoubtedly commands the support of the American people, who after 13 years of slow-motion unwon wars have had enough. By the way, even we supporters of the Afghan and Iraqi interventions are not in favor only of war. There’s a whole section of America Alone (personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available, etc, etc), beginning on page 158, on the other elements of national power through which an effective sovereign state prosecutes its interests – diplomatic, economic, legal, informational, cultural… They’re what medium-rank nations call “soft power” and Hillary Clinton calls “smart power”. The problem is simple: As inept as they might think the Republicans’ deployment of hard power is, the Democrats’ use of soft power is even lousier. Effective soft power requires great clarity and cunning, neither of which President Obama, Secretary Kerry or anybody else seems to possess.

Hence the chain of dominoes:

She says she didn’t make security decisions on Benghazi. But that’s the secretary of state’s job.

In her interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer last week, Hillary Clinton said “I was not making security decisions” about Benghazi, claiming “it would be a mistake” for “a secretary of state” to “go through all 270 posts” and “decide what should be done.” And at a January 2013 Senate hearing, Mrs. Clinton said that security requests “did not come to me. I did not approve them. I did not deny them.”

Does the former secretary of state not know the law? By statute, she was required to make specific security decisions for defenseless consulates like Benghazi, and was not permitted to delegate them to anyone else.

The Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 1999, or Secca, was passed in response to the near-simultaneous bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on Aug. 7, 1998. Over 220 people were killed, including 12 Americans. Thousands were injured.

Bill Clinton was president. Patrick Kennedy, now the undersecretary of state for management, was then acting assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security. Susan Rice, now the national security adviser, was then assistant secretary of state for African affairs.

As with the Benghazi terrorist attacks, an Accountability Review Board was convened for each bombing. Their reports, in January 1999, called attention to “two interconnected issues: 1) the inadequacy of resources to provide security against terrorist attacks, and 2) the relative low priority accorded security concerns throughout the U.S. government.”

Just as U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens did in 2012, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, Prudence Bushnell, had made repeated requests for security upgrades in 1997 and 1998. All were denied.

Such is America’s strategic disarray in Iraq that the Obama Administration has come up with a new version of an old idea—court Iran as an ally. So in order to defeat Sunni extremists who want to form a potentially terrorist state, we are going to get in bed with a terrorist-sponsoring Shiite regime that wants to dominate the Middle East.

“Let’s see what Iran might or might not be willing to do before we start making any pronouncements,” Secretary of State John Kerry told Yahoo News on Monday in discussing a rapprochement with the mullahs. “I think we are open to any constructive process here that could minimize the violence, hold Iraq together—the integrity of the country—and eliminate the presence of outside terrorist forces that are ripping it apart.”

***

The mullahs must be astonished at their strategic good fortune. A year ago they were isolated by global sanctions and scrambling to save their endangered client Bashar Assad in Syria. Then President Obama agreed to spare Assad’s airfields from bombing in return for promising to give up his chemical arms. The chemicals aren’t all gone, but Assad has used the reprieve to retake much of the country.

Now the sanctions on Iran have been eased as part of nuclear talks, and the U.S. is negotiating to be the air force for Iran’s Quds Force that is helping to prop up the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. This is the same Quds Force that fashioned the deadly roadside bombs that killed so many Americans after the fall of Saddam Hussein. It is the same Quds Force that arms Hezbollah and Hamas to attack Israel, and the same Quds Force that planned to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. in a Washington, D.C., restaurant. In last year’s report on “state sponsors of terrorism,” Mr. Kerry’s State Department noted that the Quds Force “is the [Iran] regime’s primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting terrorists abroad.”

America does have an interest in defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, that has captured much of Sunni Iraq. But that doesn’t mean the U.S. has shared interests with Iran in the region. The mullahs consider America the “great Satan” for a reason. The U.S. lost 4,489 troops and spent billions of dollars to make Iraq a unitary, Western-leaning and independent state. Iran wants the Shiite portions of Iraq as a satrapy.

The jihadist butchers (see here, here, here) of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)—supported by a much broader Sunni insurgency (see here, here, and here) against the Shiite-dominated, U.S. mid-wived al-Maliki government—continue their Baghdad-bound carnage.

Predictably—confirming obvious trends I documented 8-years ago—Maliki’s longstanding patron (and puppet-master) Iran, has committed (and pledged even more) military assets against the Sunni assault. Eli Lake of the The Daily Beast reported today (6/17/2014):

“The offer to help us with everything we need has been made from the highest levels of the Iranian government,” a senior Iraqi official told The Daily Beast.

Lake added,

This official stressed that Iran’s offer to assist Iraq’s fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham (ISIS) [the Levant/ (ISIL)] was not conditional on Maliki making any immediate reforms or changes to his government.

An indelible, “unconditional” feature of the Iranian, and indeed the entire region’s “religiously” imbued Muslim mindset, which transcends the bitter, violent Shiite-Sunni divide, was simultaneously on display today: conspiratorial Islamic Jew-hatred. General Hassan Firouzabadi, Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, insisted Tuesday (6/17/14, in Tehran) Israel—i.e., in regional parlance, Jews/“Zionists”—had created and supported ISIL, while further claiming,

The ISIL is Israel’s cover up for distancing the revolutionary forces from Israeli borders and creating a margin of security for the Zionists, and the Zionist media have also admitted this fact

One year ago, a Sunni cleric also blamed the Jews—from his own Jew-hating Islamic sectarian perspective—for the internecine Sunni-Shiite bloodshed taking place in Syria. The good cleric, preaching at the renowned Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, invoked conspiratorial Jew-hating themes from the Koran and traditions of Muhammad—i.e., Jews as prophet-killers (which includes being murderers of Muhammad himself), who allegedly violated their agreements with Muslims, driving Muslims astray (from Islam), and sowing “corruption” throughout the world—before inculpating them directly for the carnage in Syria.

Barack Obama could use a little relief. The world is crumbling around him, much of it the result of his presidential misfeasance at home and abroad.

The chickens coming to roost on Pennsylvania Avenue are neither ideological nor partisan. Evil men are bold and quick to take advantage of timidity and weakness. There’s a growing consensus, and it includes Democrats — the president is in over his head. He probably scares himself.

Like all second-term presidents, Mr. Obama naturally feels liberated from partisan concerns, free to do what he likes. He can thumb his nose at public opinion because he never again has to face an angry voter. He can follow the Clinton model and get rich making speeches. He’ll be good at it.

But he needs a break today. His approval ratings have sunk into the low 40s. Vladimir Putin laughs at him. When Hillary Clinton accepts an invitation to lunch at the White House she insists on using the back door. The family dog growls at him.

He clearly needs a public-relations triumph. Fortunately for him, there’s a candidate at hand. A 27-year-old woman is languishing in a filthy prison in Sudan, together with her son, aged 20 months, and a daughter, aged 3 weeks. The mother’s only crime is that she is a Christian and won’t convert to Islam, and she is regarded as an adulterer because she married a Christian, and the marriage is not recognized in Sudanese law. Meriam Ibrahim is to be hanged as soon as she weans her newborn, and before the noose is tightened around her pretty neck she must be flogged with 100 lashes. Life in the Islamic world often sounds like something from a blood-and-thunder horror movie, and the abuse of Mrs. Ibrahim is living proof of how horrible a horror movie can be.

Other leaders in the West have given Mr. Obama the cover he needs to stand up like a man eager to defend the innocent and the helpless. The plight of Mrs. Ibrahim has shocked and offended the Europeans. British Prime Minister David Cameron says the treatment of Mrs. Ibrahim “has no place” in the world. “Religious freedom is an absolute, fundamental human right. I urge the government of Sudan to overturn the sentence and immediately provide appropriate support and medical care for her and her children.”

The ICRC has turned the international community against Israel – unfortunately, without a significant response from the prime minister.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Anton Camen (“Why the law prohibits settlement activities,” May 27) Israeli presence in and control of Judea and Samaria are illegal. But what is “the law” to which he refers? Camen says the law defining and governing occupation is the Hague Regulation (1907). He writes that “the law of occupation… is defined by Article 42 of the Hague Regulations….”

That’s a half-truth. Article 42, Section III, Military Authority Over The Territory Of The Hostile State, states: “Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.”

The title of this section, however, refers to territory belonging legitimately to a sovereign state; that was not the case in 1967.

Moreover, Camen ignores Article 43, which states: “The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.”

This means that “occupation” occurs when the “legitimate power” of one country is usurped by another. Since Jordan’s invasion and occupation was not legitimate, Israel’s acquisition of Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem in 1967 cannot be considered illegal.

The ICRC, however, differs – and here is the problem. The ICRC decided unilaterally and behind closed doors that Israel had violated the Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC). They made that “the law,” as if nothing preceded Jordan’s illegal conquering of the area which was renamed the “West Bank.”

In an essential article published on June 16, one of the key architects of the Iraq war, former ambassador John Bolton, argued that “US focus must be on Iran as Iraq falls apart.” He is unapologetic about the war itself, saying that “inevitably, analysts are rearguing George W. Bush’s decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein, Barack Obama’s complete withdrawal of U.S. forces, and virtually everything else Iraq-related in between.”
To start with, this is a remarkable admission. The war was to remove Saddam, then, and not about Iraq’s WMD’s, or Iraq’s links with the terrorists, as claimed ad nausem at the time. “In-between” is dismissed as some past unpleasantness, unfit to be mentioned in polite company. “None of the parties to Iraq’s current conflict have anything to recommend them,” Bolton says, but excludes himself from the unnamed “parties.” It is not done to claim that what has come to pass in Iraq and its region since March 2003 would not have happened… but for the war.
This reasoning is frankly outrageous, but there’s more surreality to come. According to John Bolton, “This is all beside the point, for today’s decision-makers confronting the question of what, if anything, to do as Iraq nears disintegration. America must instead decide what its national interests are now, not what they were five or ten years ago.” In his scheme of things, we should be looking forward, not back, with the same old crew offering advice that created the disaster in the first place.
For a seasoned foreign policy analyst like myself, the word “incredibly” does not come easy. Incredibly, Bolton suggests the United States to pursue her “national interests” by putting the rampaging ISIS – now in charge of a contiguous swath from north Aleppo to the outskirts of Baghdad – on the back burner, and refocus on Iran, the same country that is helping Nouri Al-Maliki’s Shiite militias beat back the Sunni jihadist onslaught:
[O]ur objective should be to remove the main foe, Tehran’s ayatollahs, by encouraging the opposition, within and outside Iran, to take matters into their own hands. There is no need to deploy U.S. military power to aid the various opposition forces. We should instead provide them intelligence and material assistance, and help them subsume the political differences that separate them. Their differences should be addressed when the ayatollahs’ regime lies in ashes. And as Iran’s regime change proceeds, we can destroy ISIL.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=8755

On Monday morning, I met with the editor of a New York newspaper.‎

‎”Isn’t it hard being away from Israel right now, with all that’s going on?” he asked, ‎referring to Thursday night’s abduction of three teenagers — Naftali ‎Frenkel, 16, Gil-ad Shaer, 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19 — who were on their way home for the weekend from yeshivas ‎they attend in Gush Etzion and Hebron.‎

“Yes,” I said. “But there is always something critical happening there.”‎

Indeed, I have yet to visit my family in the United States without either leaving behind, ‎or greeting upon my arrival, a worrisome event that is dominating the news in Israel. And ‎my first response, like that of all Israeli parents, is to locate each of my children to make ‎sure they are safe, or to find out whether they have been called up for reserve duty.‎

This is not simply a function of Jewish motherhood, however. It is not due to hysteria ‎over the ills that might befall our offspring. No, this is not how we Israelis live at all. If ‎anything, we are experts at compartmentalizing danger, clucking our tongues at existential ‎crises, while fretting over grocery shopping and bad-hair days.‎

Until something horrific happens to snap us out of our stupor, that is. Like the kidnapping ‎of “our” boys at the hands of bloodthirsty terrorists. It is then that we turn off the soccer ‎matches on TV and gather together to cry with and pray for the victimized families, fully ‎aware that they could be us, that the only thing differentiating them from us is an ‎accident of fate.‎

It is during such moments that reality hits home, yet again: Israel is under enemy attack, ‎as it has been since its inception.‎

This fact is continually obfuscated, however, both unwittingly and on purpose. The ‎former is understandable. Israeli democracy is among the most vibrant and successful in ‎the world. In spite of glitches that would be called “growing pains” in any ‎other fledgling state established a mere 66 years ago, it has a viable economy, a passable ‎education system, reasonable health care, a vigilant legal system, a free press, and ‎attention to social justice. It absorbs massive amounts of legal immigrants, and contends, ‎as humanely as possible, with the illegal ones.‎

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/north-dakota-2014-candidates-for-congress-where-they-stand
Whatever you do please don’t say “What difference does it make?” because only one candidate is running- incumbent Republican Kevin Cramer will vote on critical issues affecting all of us not just his state. Every district counts. rsk
North Dakota: 2014 Candidates for Congress – Where They Stand

To see the actual voting records of all incumbents on other issues such as Foreign Policy, Second Amendment Issues, Homeland Security, and other issues as well as their rankings by special interest groups please use the links followed by two stars (**).

U.S. Senate

John Hoeven (R) Next Election in 2016.
Heidi Heitkamp (D) Next Election in 2018.
At Large

Kevin Cramer (R) Incumbent

http://www.kevincramer.org/view/ http://cramer.house.gov/

http://www.ontheissues.org/house/Kevin_Cramer.htm**

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

HEALTHCARE I believe the individual health insurance mandate contained in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act represents a significant overreach by the federal government. It is also fiscally irresponsible. The new taxes and burdensome regulations in this law are driving the cost of healthcare even higher for working families, and straining our healthcare providers and small businesses.

I support reforming healthcare with market-based solutions to empower patients and doctors, and malpractice reforms to protect consumers and provide incentives for best medical practices.

ENERGY Supports construction of the Keystone Pipeline without limiting amendments. Reducing our Middle East energy dependence is a major step toward increasing our national security. With this in mind, making the United States energy secure from other nations is one of my highest priorities as your Congressman. North Dakota is blessed with the resources to lead the charge toward energy security, and I am proud of the hard work done by our oil producers in North Dakota each day to make this goal possible. I remain firmly committed to advancing this goal on a national level as a member of two important energy subcommittees, and the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulations. I am also pleased to be chosen by the House Majority Leader to serve on the newly formed House Energy Action Team (HEAT).

DEFENSE AND NATIONAL SECURITY House Legislation Ends Mass Collection of Americans’ Phone Records May 22, 2014 – Press Release – Washington, D.C. – The House of Representatives today passed legislation to end the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records and impose other limitations on government intelligence gathering. The USA FREEDOM Act received bipartisan support in the House, and a statement yesterday from the White House indicated President Obama intends to sign the legislation after it is passed by both chambers of Congress.

Defense Authorization Bill Passes House, Includes Missile Protections – May 22, 2014 – Press Release Washington, D.C. – The House of Representatives today passed the annual authorization bill for U.S. military activities. Congressman Kevin Cramer said the Fiscal Year 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) spends $30 billion less than the 2014 enacted NDAA while rejecting reduced military pay increase, TRICARE cuts, housing allowance cuts, and commissary cuts proposed by the President.
George Sinner (D) Challenger

http://sinnerforcongress.com/

Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/north-dakota-2014-candidates-for-congress-where-they-stand#ixzz34tYYSG4u
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

I APPRECIATE THE WORK OF PROFESSOR JACOBSON…AND TO BUTTRESS HIS CASE PLEASE READ :Product Details

The BDS War Against Israel: The Orwellian Campaign to Destroy Israel Through the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions… by Jed Babbin and Herbert I London (May 28, 2014)

This Tuesday evening in Los Angeles, Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors is hosting Cornell law professor William A. Jacobson as he presents “The Case for Israel and Academic Freedom.” At the forefront of the fight against the American Studies Association (ASA) academic boycott of Israel, Jacobson will argue that the boycott is anti-educational, anti-peace, and based on misconceptions and omissions about the history and legality of the conflict.

Prof. Jacobson is the founder and publisher of two popular websites, Legal Insurrection and College Insurrection, which have covered the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement for years. He has been cited in major publications such as The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, Forbes, National Review, Commentary, and elsewhere. Through Legal Insurrection, Jacobson was instrumental in obtaining rejections of the academic boycott by over 250 University Presidents, and has filed a challenge to the ASA’s tax exempt status.

I asked him a few questions in advance of Tuesday’s event.

Mark Tapson: First, tell us briefly about Legal Insurrection and College Insurrection, and their purpose.

William Jacobson: Legal Insurrection went live on October 12, 2008, less than a month before the presidential election. There was no long-term plan to start it. Rather, it reflected my growing frustration with what I saw as blatant media bias in favor of Obama, and a general mania surrounding the Obama campaign. Since then, we have covered a wide range of political and legal issues, concentrating on those areas in which the two overlap. We have earned a name for ourselves by grabbing onto issues and candidates and doing the type of in-depth research and exhaustive follow-up that are hard to find these days.

As an example, our coverage of Elizabeth Warren drove many of the issues with which she struggled in her 2012 Senate campaign and was so extensive that we preserved the research in a separate website, ElizabethWarrenWiki.org.

College Insurrection was started in August 2012, as we found ourselves focusing more and more on the problems non-liberal students faced on campuses. Unlike Legal Insurrection, which focuses on creating original content, College Insurrection is more of an aggregator, pulling stories from college newspapers and other media.