RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/could-end-afghanistan-misadventure-finally-be-hand-robert-spencer/

Afghanistan “is not going to become Switzerland overnight,” an American official said as the U.S. and the Taliban signed a peace accord on Saturday morning, and you have to admire his understatement. The United States has sacrificed the lives of numerous heroic service members and squandered trillions for nearly two decades now in the fond hope that it could remake Afghanistan into Switzerland, and the one good thing about this “peace accord” with the Taliban is that it heralds the long-overdue end of this fool’s errand.

The old assumptions, although they have led to policies that have multiply failed, are still prevalent. The usual objections are being made. In its story on the peace accord, the Washington Free Beacon reported that “a group of Republican members of Congress” had petitioned the Trump administration, asking the President not to go through with the agreement. “They and other critics say the Taliban cannot be trusted to implement peace and that the moment U.S. forces vacate the country, terror forces will again rise to power.”

This echoed a statement from former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who said: “We are never going to get the U.S. military out of Afghanistan unless we take care to see that there is something going on that will provide the stability that will be necessary for us to leave.”

The unnamed American official said: “Everybody has the same goals. No one wants to see the return of the Islamic Emirate.” Well, sure. Everybody, that is, except the Taliban, who are still determined to reestablish their Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan. Once the American troops finally leave, “terror forces” will indeed make every effort to “again rise to power.” There will not be “stability” in Afghanistan. Does that mean that we have to keep troops there forever? Or should the United States focus on what is best for America in Afghanistan, working to ensure that the Taliban cannot engage in international jihad terror activity, and otherwise leaving the Afghans to their own devices?

https://www.foxnews.com/media/gen-jack-keane-taliban-deal-afghanistan-us-troops

Gen. Jack Keane, a Fox News senior strategic analyst, reacted Sunday to a new U.S. deal with the Taliban that could see a reduction in violence and lead to the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.

“We gotta have a healthy dose of skepticism,” Keane told “America’s News HQ.” “Our government officials know the Taliban can’t be trusted… everybody’s clear right there.”

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the deal “looks very promising” but it was not without risk. Esper also told reporters that U.S. troop levels could be reduced to about 8,600 — from 12,000 currently in the country — if the 7-day truce is successful. However, Defense Department officials said counterterrorism operations will continue in the country.

Esper stressed that the possibility of a more permanent peace deal could be discussed.only after assessing the outcomes of this new agreement.

“This the beginning of a very long and challenging process,” Keane explained. “A reduction in violence is not a ceasefire. The Taliban can’t hold their hardcore organization from fighting… they’re not a monolithic organization,” he added.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/02/18/breaking-pompeo-responds-to-reports-democrats-secretly-met-with-iranian-terrorist-in-germany-n2561462

Speaking to reporters during a joint press conference with Ethiopian Foreign Minister Gedu Andargachew Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded to reporting that a number of Democrat Senators secretly met with Iranian Javad Zarif during the Munich Security Conference. 

“I have seen that piece about some senators meeting with Foreign Minister Zarif. This guy is designated by the United States of America. He’s the foreign minister for a country that shot down a commercial airliner and has yet to turn over the black boxes. This is the foreign minister of a country that killed an American on December 27. And it’s the foreign minister of a country who is the largest world sponsor of terror and the world’s largest sponsor of anti-Semitism,” Pompeo said. “If they met, I don’t know what they said. I hope they were reinforcing America’s foreign policy and not their own.” 

The news of the alleged secret Zarif meeting was first reported by Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist.  

“Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and other Democratic senators had a secret meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the Munich Security Conference last week, according to a source briefed by the French delegation to the conference. Murphy’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment by press time,” the outlet reported. 

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/pompeo-calls-out-the-democrats-over-secret/91020/

Good going to Secretary of State Pompeo for calling out a group of Democrats — including, apparently, Secretary of State Kerry — for reportedly meeting with the Iranians on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, and in secret. Mr. Pompeo was responding to a report of the parley in the Federalist. “If they met,” the secretary said, “I don’t know what they said. I hope they were reinforcing America’s foreign policy, not their own.”

Fat chance. The notion that they might be reinforcing America’s foreign policy was mocked by Senator Christopher Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat who led the delegation. He had been stonewalling reports of the meeting for days. Then Mr. Murphy posted confession to meeting the Iranian, though he did, according to the Times, acknowledge that he lacks standing to “conduct diplomacy on behalf of the whole of the U.S. government.”

Mr. Murphy’s view is that “if [President] Trump isn’t going to talk to Iran, then someone should.” In other words, he’s going to defy the decision of the elected government of America to refrain from rushing into talks with the Iranian camarilla. He’s going to instead take it upon his own unauthorized self. Mr. Murphy says he has “no delusions” about Iran, but his actions belie that boast.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-campaign-against-bureaucratic-bloat-in-u-s-foreign-policy-11581974339?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The press has been focused recently on Lt. Col Alexander Vindman’s departure from the National Security Council. But less noticed is the substantive overhaul of the council’s staffing practices, announced last fall by national security adviser Robert O’Brien. President Trump’s renovation of the White House’s top advisory body could help streamline American security for years to come.

The problems that plague the NSC trace to before its founding in 1947. The White House has long sought to centralize decision-making to overcome the political jockeying that often takes place within the national-security establishment. I have lived half of my professional life in the policy world of Washington and half in the financial world of New York. The former is much more Hobbesian and bitter than the latter—and always has bee

After securing victory in World War II, for example, federal policy makers were at each other’s throats over whether to share nuclear technology with the Soviet Union through the Baruch Plan. The branches of the armed services feuded over roles, missions and funding. President Truman and congressional leaders nonetheless produced a few lasting achievements, including the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

But the bitter postwar years also featured terrible blunders in China and Korea. Truman’s radical strategy to shrink the Navy, while declaring Korea outside America’s vital interest, led almost immediately to the Korean War. Journalist John Osborne told me that during those years he was run ragged between the White House and the Pentagon. Both were leaking classified information aimed at opponents in government.

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/480649-washington-needs-to-anticipate-irans-next-provocation

Signs are mounting that in Tehran, which faces rising pressures at home and abroad, the country’s powerful hardline conservatives are circling the wagons, raising the odds of still more Iranian global provocations. The question is whether Washington – which continues to tighten the economic screws on Tehran – is ready for what might come next.

In the latest conservative effort to solidify power, the country’s Guardian Council recently barred 9,500 prospective candidates (almost two-thirds of the 14,500 prospective candidates) in next month’s parliamentary elections, from running. The 12-member Guardian Council – an unelected body that includes six designees of the nation’s ultimate authority, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – routinely bars hundreds if not thousands of would-be candidates from elections because they’re not conservative enough or committed enough to the regime’s revolutionary goals. This time, however, the barred candidates include nearly a third of the current parliament. The signal was clear. The Council not only wants to prevent new reformist candidates from winning office; it also wants to purge the parliament of members it considers too moderate.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/02/10/must-america-be-in-the-middle-east/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

Yes, but the strategic considerations have changed

Since World War II, the United States has identified a number of national interests in the Greater Middle East, a region often defined quite loosely as the Arab nations (including those of North Africa), Israel, and sometimes Turkey, as well as Iran, the Horn of Africa countries, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

During the Cold War period, from 1946 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, American bipartisan foreign policy identified a strategic need for the region’s petroleum. Gulf oil was seen as critical in augmenting America’s own seemingly finite supply or ensuring the free world’s access to it. Thus was born the post-war U.S. realist interest in the Middle East — a region that after the 15th-century discovery of the New World lost the strategic global position it had held since classical antiquity.

The United States backed most prominently the House of Saud and neighboring Persian Gulf monarchies and dictatorships on the rationale that they would endlessly pump oil and sell it to the West at a fair price. British Petroleum enjoyed a more or less controlling oil interest in Iran, and U.S. oil companies had a free hand in Saudi Arabia; both nations maneuvered with other regimes to develop oil-exporting industries. The ensuing conspiracy theories, coups, and succession scraps of Arab and Persian strongmen fueled a half century of “Great Satan” chanting and the burning of American flags on the Middle East street.