RUTHFULLY YOURS

Diplomacy is the US president’s preferred weapon. Now he must prove he can wield it

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ca3e8250-a067-11e3-8557-00144feab7de.html#axzz2utpBBQRJ

In the dying days of the Soviet Union, President George H W Bush gave a speech in Kiev urging Ukrainian nationalists not to provoke Moscow. US conservatives dubbed it his “chicken Kiev” speech. Having long since been branded America’s appeaser-in-chief, President Barack Obama now confronts his own chicken Kiev moment. Can Mr Obama stand up to Vladimir Putin, the Russian fox circling the chicken coop? It is unclear whether he has the will and the skill – let alone the means – to do so. Yet the future of his presidency depends on it. There can be little doubt that Mr Putin wants to restore the boundaries of the Russian empire. Mr Obama must somehow find a way to frustrate him.

It will require a very different Mr Obama from the semi-detached one the world has grown used to. Even before Mr Obama became president, critics accused him of appeasing a revanchist Russia. John McCain, his Republican opponent, seized on Russia’s semi-invasion of Georgia in 2008 as an example of where he would draw the line against Moscow’s expansionist creep. Mr Obama’s unwillingness to match his opponent’s hawkishness chimed far better with the US public mood. Americans were tired of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Mr Obama promised to end them. He has done so.

If anything, Americans are even warier of entanglements today. Yet Russia’s occupation of the Crimea dramatically changes the landscape. Everything that Mr Obama wants – nation building at home, a nuclear deal with Iran, a quiescent Middle East and the pivot to Asia – hinges on how he responds to Mr Putin. At the start of his presidency, Mr Obama offered to “reset” US-Russia relations. That is now in tatters. Along with many others, Mr Obama has consistently underestimated Mr Putin’s readiness to challenge the status quo. As recently as last Thursday, the White House dismissed predictions of a Russian incursion into Crimea. In a 90-minute phone call on Saturday, Mr Putin hinted to Mr Obama he was prepared to extend Russia’s Crimean occupation into eastern Ukraine. It would be naive to assume he will not.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/defender-of-israel-responds-to-racist-attack/print/

Today’s FrontPage Interview guest is Chloe Simone Valdary, a junior and international studies major at the University of New Orleans (UNO). In her short time on campus, Ms. Valdary has distinguished herself as a passionate defender of Israel and Zionism, creating the organization Allies of Israel, one of the lone pro-Israel groups at her university. Ms. Valdary is also the assistant director of special programs for the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel (ISBI) and blogs for Arutz Sheva and the Times of Israel. In addition to being featured by the Jewish Press, BET.com, Breitbart.com, the Jerusalem Post, among others, Algemeiner named Ms. Valdary one of the top 100 people positively affecting Jewish and Israeli life. Recently, Ms. Valdary’s advocacy has elicited the ire of anti-Israel activists, one of whom resorted to racist attacks against her.

FrontPage Magazine: First off, thanks so much for speaking with FrontPage. You’re doing such impressive work fighting anti-Israel and anti-Semitic extremism on campuses today, which is very serious and, unfortunately, growing. When did you decided to take on this cause and what was the trigger for you?

Chloe Simone Valdary: I grew up in a philo-Semitic house. I am a Christian, but one of a different breed, some may say. I grew up observing Shabbat, keeping kosher dietary laws, and observing the Holy Days like Succot and Yom Kippur. So I was always learning about Israel from a historical standpoint. Throughout high school, I became fascinated with Jewish literature. I remember picking up a book called “Choose Life” by Rabbi Bernard Mandelbaum from my library. It was a collection of sayings from famous people which were all very positive and inspiring.

Another important moment in my life was watching the film “Freedom Writers.” I can now say retrospectively that film changed my life for ever. Because what occurs in that film is a class of students changing their lives for the better, and the turning point in the film is when they begin to learn about the Shoah. So that had a huge impact on me.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/sacrificing-the-military-to-entitlements/print/

Vladimir Putin, playing geopolitical chess while our president plays tiddlywinks, has effectively taken over Crimea. Armed men, looking suspiciously like Russian military personnel, have seized both airports and established border checkpoints decorated with Kalashnikovs and Russian flags. This comes after other armed men seized two government buildings and raised Russian flags, as the legislature appointed a pro-Russian regional leader. Meanwhile Russian military forces are gathering on the border, with Russia’s parliament unanimously voting to approve deploying troops in Ukraine.

This is just Putin’s latest revanchist expansion of Russian power throughout the region. He’s been at this for a while. Remember that during the Bush administration he stole chunks of Moldova and Georgia, using the same argument of ethnic self-determination that served Hitler so well in 1938, when he made the Sudeten Germans the pretext for gobbling up Czechoslovakia. Remember when in 2005 Putin said that after the collapse of the Soviet Union––the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century, as he put it–– “tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory”? And just as England and France did nothing except talk about Hitler’s aggression, so too the West has blustered and threatened and indulged “diplomatic engagement” in response to Putin’s depredations. So we shouldn’t be surprised that Vladimir is dismissing Obama’s flabby threat of “costs” and damage to Russia’s “standing in the international community” if Russia annexes part of Ukraine––as if the ruthless Putin, currently arming and backing the Syrian butcher Assad and the genocidal mullahs in Iran, gives a hoot about his international reputation. And after so many of Obama’s toothless “deadlines,” “red lines,” “game-changers,” “I don’t bluffs,” and “no options are off the table,” who can possibly take this administration seriously?

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-enters-putins-world/print/

At the beginning of February, Fred Kaplan, the Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, headlined a Slate article, “Obama Isn’t Disengaged From the World: He just has a better understanding of how power works in the modern world.”

Power, as it turned out, worked much the same way in the modern world as it did back in the horses and bayonets era as Putin demonstrated when he did what no one in the West believed he would do by sending men and armor into Crimea.

Since one doesn’t get to be an Edward R. Murrow fellow by sitting on one’s hands, Kaplan dashed off to pen a follow-up article headlined: “There’s Nothing Obama Could Have Done to Stop Putin.” Kaplan’s advice to Obama was to avoid threatening Putin with “consequences.”

“Obama should be looking for common interests. One such interest is ending the bloodshed,” Kaplan suggested.

If the Russian dictator is known for anything it’s his tender heart and opposition to bloodshed.

“Even Putin couldn’t want to send troops to the Ukrainian heartland,” Kaplan wrote. Unless of course Putin, whom foreign policy experts assured us couldn’t possibly want to send troops into Crimea, turns out to be ignorant of “how power works in the modern world” and does it anyway.

If that happens then the same experts who told us he wouldn’t do it, will tell us that we can’t do anything about it. It’s not in the nature of “power in the modern world”.

http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2014/03/crimea-through-iranian-eyes/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=c97d4b9d88-2014_3_3_Sorek_Start&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-c97d4b9d88-41165129

Today’s news from Ukraine is grim. It’s increasingly clear that Putin believes he has an opportunity to move in the Crimea, and perhaps to take eastern portions of Ukraine for Russia, while destabilizing the new government in Kiev. So far the American reaction has been pathetically weak: a few words from Kerry and Obama but no action. Not even diplomatic action like a UN Security Council session or a meeting of the NATO Council, or a Kerry visit to Kiev.

The administration’s inaction and Putin’s aggressive conduct may teach some lessons: that the Obama administration seeks above all to avoid confrontations, at whatever cost; that its efforts to engage dictators and repressive regimes appear always to end in grief; that friends and foes alike see us as increasingly disengaged and weak; that this appearance of weakness tempts enemies of the United States to act. The very week that Putin acts in Ukraine is the week when the Obama administration unveils its plan for the smallest U.S. Army since the Second World War.

Those who are wondering whether we need to pass sanctions legislation now and put more pressure on Iran should take all this into account. Like Putin, the ayatollahs likely see our failure to act in Syria (indeed our willingness to be “rescued” from action by Putin) as a sign that they can drive a hard bargain indeed with us over their nuclear weapons program, giving up nearly nothing and getting sanctions relief. And now they see us reacting (so far) to Russian aggression in Ukraine, sending troops across the border into the Crimea, with tut-tutting.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/zionists-who-love-jesus/#ixzz2utj5dPjr

In a recent essay in Mosaic Magazine, I called upon Jews and evangelical Christians to put aside their differences and stand together in support of Israel. Naturally I was delighted to receive positive feedback from four prominent experts, all of whom endorsed the core thesis of my argument. Yet I was sorely disappointed upon reading some of the readers’ comments that appeared below my essay, especially those from Jews espousing the very myths and fears about evangelicals that I hoped the essay would debunk. Each of them fixated on the menacing specter hidden inside the “Trojan Horse” of Christian Zionism:

As a Jew/Israeli, I like the political support for Israel. But I do find the undercurrent drive to convert us, in that political support, disgusting. Martin Luther at first liked us. But when we didn’t convert, he called on his followers to burn us. . . . Will they love us when we don’t convert?

If you want the truth, I don’t trust you. It’s as simple as that. . . . When your church stops preying on Jews to lead them into your faith and destroying ours, when you stop financing these missionary factories to wipe out our faith and our culture, then and only then might I start to believe you actually don’t have the age-old ulterior motive.

I dislike the idea I must agree with evangelicals, whose main purpose is to convert me, because they support Israel. . . . Sorry but why would I support or form a strategic alliance with someone who supports me only so far as it fits his purposes and, more than likely, would throw me under a bus if I didn’t?

These readers are clear: Christian Zionism is only tolerable insofar as it disclaims any belief that the Jewish people need Jesus. The dark history of Jewish-Christian relations is too tragic to allow for anything less. Do I blame these readers for feeling this way?

Honestly, not really. Because it’s true: many people claiming the name of Christ, including Martin Luther, have said and done things to Jews over the centuries that are unspeakable. Yet it’s also true that a fundamental tenet of Christianity, especially evangelical Christianity, is telling the world about the arrival of the Messiah. Regrettably, at least as far as some Jews are concerned, “the world” also includes the Jewish people. As an evangelical who affirms both the “Great Commission” and the right of the Jewish people to govern themselves in their ancient homeland (yes, it is possible to hold these two things in one’s head at the same time), I would submit to my Jewish friends that they needn’t fear. A few points:

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4201/ukraine-crisis-eu-russia-jews

The situation might have been different if in April 2008 the West had extended NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia. Russia would never have dared to deploy troops on NATO territory.

Give that Europe opposed the admission of Ukraine to NATO, it should not then have tempted the Ukrainians with EU membership, exacerbating the divisions between the Ukrainians and their ethnic Russian minority.

It seems to be a tragic but hard lesson of history that Jews are often forced to play the role of canary in the mineshaft. Today, we are witnessing that phenomenon in Ukraine.

As the situation in Ukraine, where nationalists last week deposed pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, is worsening, Jews are receiving blows from both sides. They are distrusted by the Ukrainian nationalists as well as the pro-Russian separatists.

With Ukraine descending into civil war, people on both sides are blaming “Jewish conspiracies” and attacking Jewish targets. The Jews, however, are not to blame for the crisis in Ukraine. The European Union is to a large extent to blame. Ukraine is an ethnically mixed country, with a large Russian minority. Preserving the balance succeeded relatively well until the EU began to foment trouble.

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2014/03/01/ukraine-is-hopeless-but-not-serious/ There isn’t going to be a war over Ukraine. There isn’t even going to be a crisis over Ukraine. We will perform our ritual war-dance and excoriate the Evil Emperor, and the result would be the same if we had sung “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” on a road […]

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/new-global-warming-report-a-disgrace/

The report “Climate Change: Evidence & Causes [1],” which was released on Thursday by the Royal Society (RS) and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), does a serious disservice to science and society. Rather than using the conditional language of real science, it engages in what amounts to propaganda, making absolute assertions concerning topics about which we have little knowledge.

For example, the report proclaims, “Continued emissions of these gases [carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases] will cause further climate change, including substantial increases in global average surface temperature and important changes in regional climate.”

Not “may cause,” or even “probably cause,” but “will cause.” This is not the language of science. While it is common to see such absolute, one-sided assertions from totalitarian regimes trying to sway public opinion, it is appalling that two of the world’s foremost science bodies should engage in such unconditional rhetoric. Sir Isaac Newton, the Royal Society’s most famous member and its president until 1727, would be furious about such a violation of the scientific tradition he cherished.

Continuing in the same tone, the RS/NAS report next says that “long-term climate change over many decades will depend mainly on the total amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases emitted as a result of human activities.” And then, to ensure extensive coverage from mainstream media, which are already reporting uncritically on the document [2], “If the rise in CO2 continues unchecked, warming of the same magnitude as the increase out of the ice age [i.e., 7 to 9 °F] can be expected by the end of this century or soon after.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/372348/four-truths-international-relations-tom-rogan ‘The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” President Obama told Mitt Romney on October 22, 2012. And now Ukrainians are calling to ask for their country back. The pictures tell a tale. Ukrainian Marines besieged in their barracks. Russian troops patrolling ports and towns and entrenching on the border. […]