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. […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/372352/print
Barack Obama is the second U.S. president in a row to badly misjudge Vladimir Putin. In 2001, after his first meeting with Putin, George W. Bush famously told Colin Powell, his secretary of state, that he thought the Russian leader was religious. “Powell, I looked into Putin’s eyes and I saw his soul.” To which Powell replied: “Mr. President, I looked into President Putin’s eyes and I saw the KGB.”
Barack Obama hasn’t made that mistake. But in the wake of Russia’s invasion of the Ukranian region of Crimea, it’s worth remembering that in 2008, Obama ridiculed John McCain for warning about Russia after its invasion of independent Georgia. In 2012, he mocked Romney for identifying Russia as our top geopolitical foe, sneering, “The Cold War has been over for 20 years.”
But Vladimir Putin has long acted as if he can’t wait to bring the icicles of the Cold War back. At their joint public meetings, Putin has dismissively looked away from Obama, treating him as someone he could dupe or roll over at will. Critics say that attitude was on display in Putin’s handling of Edward Snowden and in his moves regarding Syria. In both cases, he embarrassed the United States.
Senator John McCain says it is now obvious that not only Obama but also Hillary Clinton got Russia wildly wrong. Of Clinton, he says, “She believed there would somehow be a ‘reset’ with a guy who was a KGB colonel who always had ambitions to restore the Russian empire,” McCain told the Daily Beast. McCain noted that as late as last Thursday, Secretary of State Kerry and other U.S. officials accepted assurances from Russia’s foreign minister that Russia had no intention of violating Ukraine’s sovereignty. The occupation of Crimea began the following day.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304360704579415570387559300#printMode
Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Is ‘Incredible’
Secretary of State John Kerry on the CBS news show “Face the Nation,” March 2.
From Secretary of State John Kerry’s reply to a question about Russia’s actions in Ukraine on the CBS news show “Face the Nation,” March 2:
Well, it’s an incredible act of aggression. It is really a stunning willful choice by president Putin to invade another country. Russia is in violation of the sovereignty of Ukraine. Russia is in violation of its international obligations. Russia is in violation of its obligations under the U.N. charter, under the Helsinki Final Act. Its violation of its obligations under the 1994 Budapest agreement. You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext.
So it is a very serious moment, but it is serious not in the context . . . of Russia-U.S. It is serious in terms of sort of the modern manner with which nations are going to resolve problems.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304026804579413900968932702?mod=WSJ_Opinion_
Vladimir Putin’s Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula by force on the weekend and now has his sights on the rest of his Slavic neighbor. The brazen aggression brings the threat of war to the heart of Europe for the first time since the end of the Cold War. The question now is what President Obama and free Europe are going to do about it.
With a swiftness and organization that suggests the plans were hatched weeks ago, Mr. Putin is moving to carve up Ukraine after Russia’s satrap in Kiev, former President Viktor Yanukovych, was deposed in a popular democratic uprising. Russian troops have invaded Ukraine’s territory and now control all border crossings, ports and airports in Crimea. The Kremlin’s rubber-stamp parliament on Saturday approved Russian military intervention anywhere in Ukraine, which is nothing less than a declaration of war. The new government in Kiev responded by putting forces on high alert.
***
This is a crisis made entirely in Moscow. Speaking the day Mr. Yanukovych fled his palace in Kiev, Mr. Putin lied to President Obama about Russia’s actions and intentions. So did his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in calls with Secretary of State John Kerry. If the blitzkrieg succeeds, Russia’s assault could end Ukraine’s 22-year history as a unitary independent state. The peaceful European order that the U.S. has paid such a high price to establish after the collapse of the Soviet Union is also in danger.
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=7535
As the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference begins in Washington, the lobbying organization will once again break attendance records, with estimates of 14,000 attendees. But the conference will be a subdued event, regardless of the obligatory cheering for any speaker who says that Iran must not get the bomb. Cheering will not end the Iranian nuclear program. Unfortunately, neither the P5+1 nor U.S. President Barack Obama, assuming he ever really cared to accomplish this, are likely to do that either.
The president is sending Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to fly the administration’s colors and fake that all is well between the Obama administration, AIPAC and Israel. Lew is an observant Jew, but has had no real role since he joined the administration in either the Iranian nuclear issue or the Israeli-Palestinian talks. So his presence is window dressing.
Kerry is of course central to both issues, and he will attempt to reassure the assembled delegation that the White House is not blind to the realities of negotiating with Iran, and has not been giving away the store to the mullahs (despite much evidence to the contrary) in a desperate attempt to negotiate a deal, any deal that would bring Iran into the “community of nations.”
Ben Shapiro Crashes UCLA Divestment from Israel Hearing — On The Glazov Gang
TruthRevolt’s Editor-in-Chief blasts the Jew-Haters on the UCLA campus.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/ben-shapiro-crashes-ucla-divestment-from-israel-hearing-on-the-glazov-gang/
The Cool War Cometh http://yeoldecrabb.com/ No, Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin has not ushered in the return to The Cold War with his assault on the integrity of Ukraine. But he has confirmed that the United States and his Russian regime very likely as long as he lasts is engaged in a bitter […]
PLEASE REMEMBER THAT WHEN ISRAEL BOMBED AND DISARMED THE OSYRAK NUCLEAR REACTOR IN IRAQ THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION ABSTAINED FROM A UN RESOLUTION CONDEMNING ISRAEL INSTEAD OF VOTING AGAINST IT. ….RSK
CBS News reports that Obama administration officials want an end to the targeted killings, believed by many to be the work of Mossad.
The United States is reportedly pressuring Israel to stop assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists, a number of whom have been mysteriously killed in a campaign thought to be carried out by Mossad.
According to CBS News, Obama administration officials have communicated to Israeli intelligence their wish for a cessation of the targeting of scientists in order to allow diplomatic negotiations aimed at rolling back Iran’s nuclear program to take their course.
While Israel has never officially acknowledged that it was behind the killings, it is widely believed that Mossad agents carried out the hits in an effort to slow down Iran’s nuclear development as well as to deter the country’s top scientific minds from cooperating with the government’s clandestine weapons program.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/tell-the-basic-facts-over-and-over-again?f=must_reads
In June, 1976, during a visit to London, the former Israeli Prime Minister, Mrs. Golda Meir, was asked what needed most to be done for her country in the field of information. Her answer was, “Tell people the basic facts about Israel and Israel’s case over and over again.”
Most of the facts about the reconstituted Jewish state are self-evident but the relentless and enormous petro-dollar funded Arab propaganda campaign against embattled Israel have all but obscured the message.
Though the Arab and Muslim world repeatedly has sent its armies against Israel and failed in their genocidal aggression, and though unspeakable and barbaric terrorism against Israel’s civilian population has been the road map followed by the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians, all such campaigns of violence and hostility have failed.
But now, to paraphrase 19th century British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli’s, aphorism, lies, damned lies, and anti-Israel calumnies in descending order are being employed by a loathsome alliance of Muslim and Leftist anti-Semites. It is even more necessary now to follow Golda Meir’s advice and counter the myths of Muslim-Arab propaganda with the basic facts.
The Arab and Muslim world has consistently denied Israel its right to be a sovereign nation in its ancestral and biblical Jewish homeland. It is this that has made the Islam-Israel conflict (for that is what it is) the most one sided in history. Quarrels have been forced upon Israel, but Israel had quarrels with none. So let us look at a few of the many illegitimate charges that Muslim Arab propagandists have issued against the Jewish state and which, alas, many uninformed folks, especially those in the colleges and universities, have embraced without question.
Muslim Arab charge against Israel:
The Jews came to “Palestine” to dispossess the Arabs who owned 95% of the land and were the legitimate owners of the country.
The facts:
Jews have always lived in their ancestral homeland in whatever numbers they could sustain, even under a succession of alien conquerors. That their independence as a sovereign nation was ended under the brutal occupation by the Roman Empire did not mean that for the next 500 years they were still a large and significant population. Over the dark centuries of statelessness, Jews nevertheless continued to return to Zion (Jerusalem) and to all parts of their spiritual and physical homeland.
There is no single case of Jews returning armed with weapons or with any thought of using them, except in self-defense. Returning Jews in the 19th century began purchasing the arid and long neglected wastelands and wilderness that had lain fallow since Roman times. They were forced to pay exorbitant prices for acreage from absentee landlords – at a far greater cost, for instance, than the rich and productive soils of Iowa.
The British Government survey of Mandatory Palestine in 1946 gave the following facts: Land in the area, now known as Israel, and owned by Jews amounted to 8.5%. Land owned by Arabs amounted to 19.8%. More than 70% of the land was owned by Government – that of the British Mandate as the successor to the 400 year old occupation of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. The Arab claim of 95% ownership is patently false.
Muslim Arab charge against Israel:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/obama-us-wont-be-able-to-defend-israel-if-peace-talks-fail/
Why not bully Israel?…while the Ayatollahs, the North Koreans, the Russians and the Ukrainians and the Saudis and the Poles and the Zimbabweans, and the Somalis, and the Nigerians just scoff at your impotence…..rsk
Ahead of meeting with Netanyahu, president says unprecedented ‘aggressive settlement construction’ detrimental to peace process
Israel can expect to face international isolation and possible sanctions from countries and companies across the world if Benjamin Netanyahu fails to endorse a framework agreement with the Palestinians, US President Barack Obama cautioned on Sunday ahead of a meeting with the Israeli prime minister.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Obama stressed that time was running out for Israel to achieve a peace deal, and added that he believed Netanyahu had the capacity to rally Israel’s citizens behind an agreement.
But if Netanyahu “does not believe that a peace deal with the Palestinians is the right thing to do for Israel, then he needs to articulate an alternative approach,” Obama said.
“There comes a point where you can’t manage this anymore, and then you start having to make very difficult choices,” he said.
The president went on to stress that he would convey to Netanyahu, in the spirit of the Jewish sage Hillel the Elder, that the prime minister could lead Israel toward peace if he chose to do so.
