RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/iran-theocracy-usual-tactics-arent-working-against-arab-enemies-and-west/

The theocracy grows more desperate by the day and can no longer rely on its usual tactics to thwart its Arab enemies and the West.

Iran has misjudged not only the toxic effects of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions on the regime but also the entire psychology of U.S. policy toward Iran. The result is that Iranian unemployment is soaring, its gross domestic product is tanking, inflation is raging, oil prices are crashing, and its friends are fewer than ever — and for the first time in 40 years, the regime believes that it must do something quite radical before it implodes.

2020 is not 1979, not 1983, not 1986, not 2004–2007, and not 2011 — all years when Iran variously pressured the U.S. by taking hostages, killing American personnel in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, threatening oil disruptions, and planning to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C. Now things are redefined for a variety of reasons, most of them apparently still underappreciated by the theocratic Iranian elite.

1) As the world’s largest oil and natural-gas producer, the U.S. is not vulnerable to cutoffs of oil from the Middle East. It, of course, cares about global free passage through the Straits of Hormuz, but not as much as do major importers such as Europe and exporters such as China.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/03/the-trump-doctrine-and-the-return-of-pax-americana/

Any serious reckoning of the Trump Doctrine will see the experts recoiling in horror or simply snickering at the very thought of attaching “doctrine” to the foreign policy initiatives of President Trump. What informs Donald Trump’s decision-making, according to most narratives, is nothing more than an incongruous compendium of braggadocio, narcissism, opportunism and impulsiveness. His America First worldview, in the opinion of the naysayers, cannot be configured as a coherent set of principles. The Obama Doctrine was ascribed to Barack Obama and the Bush Doctrine to George W. Bush, but to talk earnestly of a Trump Doctrine is to suggest a degree of lucidity in Donald Trump’s actions where none exists. As a consequence, the targeted killing on January 3 of Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Forces, foreign legion division of Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, can make no strategic sense in the eyes of the experts, though it could—and still might—trigger general war in the region. Maybe it is the anti-Trump narrative that lacks credibility.

Scepticism about President Trump’s judgment in foreign affairs runs very deep. We now know, thanks to revelations by the former US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, in her book With All Due Respect (2019), that Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump’s Secretary of State in the period 2017-18, questioned his judgment. In conjunction with John Kelly, Trump’s White House Chief of Staff for a time, Tillerson considered it his duty to impede President Trump’s inexpert ideas to save America and the world from calamity. Secretary Tillerson, astonishingly, attempted to enrol Ambassador Haley in an anti-Trump cabal operating at the very heart of the Trump administration: “Kelly and Tillerson confided in me that when they resisted the president, they weren’t being insubordinate, they were trying to save the country.” If even those close to him—or, at least, those who were close to him—have no confidence in President Trump, then why should anybody else make the case for a cogent Trump Doctrine? Haley’s disclosure gives credence to this sentiment, expressed in the aftermath of the Qasem Soleimani killing by the reliably anti-Trump journalist Joel McNally: “The most dangerous day of his presidency is always tomorrow.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/secstate-pompeo-confronts-un-secretary-general-joseph-klein/

Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo met on March 6th with United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres at UN headquarters in New York. Secretary Pompeo took the opportunity to condemn the UN’s highly biased pro-Palestinian decision to release its blacklist of companies doing business with Israeli firms operating in disputed areas of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which includes several U.S. companies.

According to the State Department’s readout of the meeting, Secretary Pompeo “reiterated his outrage at the decision by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet to publish a database of companies operating in Israeli-controlled territories.” The U.S. statement added that Secretary Pompeo “made clear that the United States will continue to engage UN officials and member states on this matter, will not tolerate the reckless mistreatment of U.S. companies, and will respond to actions harmful to our business community.”

As usual, the UN Secretary General tried to paper over significant objections to the UN’s moral failures with diplomatic niceties. His office’s readout of the same meeting made no mention of the blacklist controversy. “The Secretary-General expressed appreciation for the continued engagement of the United States in the United Nation,” the UN statement said. It ticked off as topics of discussion “a range of situations around the world, including Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, the Sahel and the questions related to the implementation of the host country agreement.” The reference to the host country agreement implementation may have alluded to a dispute over the denial or delay of visas issued by the U.S. to UN diplomats from certain countries, principally Russia and Iran, seeking to attend UN meetings in New York. However, the statement completely sidestepped the substance of the issue. Nothing was even hinted regarding any other differences between the United States and the United Nations.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/02/get-out-of-afghanistan/

Over the weekend, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tweeted out her condolences for the first known American to die from coronavirus. Recycling her two favorite yet still unconvincing words from impeachment—”sadly and prayerfully”—Pelosi mourned the loss of the still-unknown victim.

The Democratic leader has offered no such sympathy for Javier Gutierrez, Antonio Rodriguez, lan McLaughlin, or Miguel Villalon: All four are U.S. soldiers who were killed in fighting in Afghanistan this year. (Two additional service members died in a January plane crash.)

With few exceptions, America’s longest war is largely ignored by our political class while the costs and casualties mount. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) held a hearing last month on the Washington Post’s explosive and infuriating series on the war in Afghanistan: Only three of his colleagues bothered to attend. The sole Democrat in attendance was the committee’s ranking member, Senator Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.).

“Doing nothing is no longer an option for any senator or member of Congress with a conscience,” Paul said, perhaps during a moment of wishful thinking. 

The long-time proponent of ending the Afghanistan war ticked off the stats: Nearly 2,400 dead U.S. servicemen and women with more than 20,000 wounded. Soldiers who have faced numerous deployments since the war began in 2001. And nearly $1 trillion in U.S. tax dollars—an average of $50 billion per year for almost 20 years, as Paul pointed out—spent in a backward nation that still ranks near the bottom of the list of the world’s most economically and politically free countries.

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.