RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/343731/iraq-war-ten-years-later-editors

AT THE RISK OF SOUNDING LIKE JOHNNY ONE NOTE…WE HAD NO CLEAR AGENDA….AND GEORGE BUSH REFUSED TO NAME THE ENEMY GOING SO FAR AS TO EXPUNGE THE WORDS JIHAD, SHARIA AND ISLAM FROM DEFENSE MANUALS…..HE DID NOT LIE ABOUT WMD…HE LIED THAT THE MISSION WAS ACCOMPLISHED…AND HE LEFT OBAMA NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO BUILD ON …..RSK

Ten years ago this week, the United States launched the Iraq War. A decade later, thanks to the mismanagement of the Bush administration, the indifference of the Obama administration, and the inherent difficulties of Iraqi society, it is clear that we expended great blood and treasure for an unsatisfactory outcome.

Saddam Hussein and his regime of torture and mass murder are gone. He started a war by invading a neighbor and sought dominion over the global oil supply. He was an ongoing threat to the region and in flagrant violation of his international commitments. If he no longer had weapons of mass destruction, it wasn’t for lack of trying. He was undermining the strictures that kept him from restarting his weapons programs. Even the harshest critics of the war are loath to admit that their alternative would have left Saddam atop Iraq.

The war was popular at the beginning, supported by the public, by Democrats in Congress, and by many of the liberal and conservative commentators who eventually turned against it.

The notion that Bush “lied” about Saddam’s weapons is itself a dastardly lie. That Saddam had WMD was a matter of bipartisan and international consensus. His presumed possession of these weapons was widely considered intolerable in the context of the September 11 attacks, which taught a bitter lesson in allowing threats to fester. Bush launched the war for good reason, and in its initial phase, it was a rapid and undeniable triumph.

Then things went wrong. We didn’t know enough about the country we had taken over. We underestimated the devastation that had been wrought in Iraqi institutions and civil society by Saddam’s rule. We couldn’t get our act together as bureaucracies crossed signals and pursued rival agendas. We faced a determined Sunni insurgency. With insufficient troops using ill-advised tactics, we couldn’t impose order. The country spun out of control and into a sectarian war that threatened to rip it apart and to give al-Qaeda in Iraq an operating base in the heart of the Arab world.

With the war slipping away, President Bush ordered the surge, an infusion of additional troops to clear and hold territory in keeping with classic counterinsurgency doctrine. Bush acted against the fierce opposition of Democrats and with only the lukewarm support of his own party (with the honorable exception of John McCain, whose advocacy for the surge was his finest moment). Critics predicted the surge’s inevitable failure and the direst consequences. Instead, we dealt al-Qaeda a significant defeat. We won over the Sunni tribes and suppressed the Iranian-backed Shia militias. Violence dropped dramatically. We afforded the Iraqi government enough stability to establish its authority and legitimacy.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/343728/geopolitical-adhd-mark-steyn

SHOCK AND AWE BECAME AW SHUCKS WHEN THE GENERALS McCHRYSTAL AND PETRAEUS INSTITUTED RULES OF ENGAGEMENT BASED ON EXQUISITE SENSITIVITY TO MUSLIM TERROR WHILE PUTTING OUR OWN SOLDIERS’ LIVES AT RISK …IT BECAME A WAR WITHOUT PURPOSE, WITHOUT THE WILL TO DEMAND VICTORY, WITH A RIDICULOUS NOTION THAT DEMOCRACY WAS JUST ONE MORE PURPLE VOTER’S FINGER AWAY IN A REGION INCREASINGLY DOMINATED BY RADICAL JIHADIS….WE STARTED IT BUT LOST THE WILL TO FINISH IT….AND LIKE OTHER UNFINISHED WARS SUCH AS KOREA THE LEGACY WILL BE DISASTROUS…..RSK

Ten years ago, along with three-quarters of the American people, including the men just appointed as President Obama’s secretaries of state and defense, I supported the invasion of Iraq. A decade on, unlike most of the American people, including John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, I’ll stand by that original judgment.

None of us can say what would have happened had Saddam Hussein remained in power. He might now be engaged in a nuclear-arms race with Iran. One or other of his even more psychotic sons, the late Uday or Qusay, could be in power. The Arab Spring might have come to Iraq, and surely even more bloodily than in Syria.

But these are speculations best left to the authors of “alternative histories.” In the real world, how did things turn out?

Three weeks after Operation Shock and Awe began, the early-bird naysayers were already warning of massive humanitarian devastation and civil war. Neither happened. Overcompensating somewhat for all the doom-mongering, I wrote in Britain’s Daily Telegraph that “a year from now Basra will have a lower crime rate than most London boroughs.” Close enough. Major General Andy Salmon, the British commander in southern Iraq, eventually declared of Basra that “on a per capita basis, if you look at the violence statistics, it is less dangerous than Manchester.”

Ten years ago, expert opinion was that Iraq was a phony-baloney entity imposed on the map by distant colonial powers. Joe Biden, you’ll recall, advocated dividing the country into three separate states, which for the Democrats held out the enticing prospect of having three separate quagmires to blame on Bush, but for the Iraqis had little appeal. “As long as you respect its inherently confederal nature,” I argued, “it’ll work fine.” As for the supposedly secessionist Kurds, “they’ll settle for being Scotland or Quebec.” And so it turned out. The Times of London, last week: “Ten Years after Saddam, Iraqi Kurds Have Never Had It So Good.” In Kurdistan as in Quebec, there is a pervasive unsavory tribal cronyism, but on the other hand, unlike Quebec City, Erbil is booming.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/blurred_image_how_even_free_speechs_defenders_must_defer_to_islam.html On March 19, 2013, in Washington, D.C., the Heritage Foundation screened the new film: Silent Conquest: The End of Freedom of Expression in the West. A panel discussion by four of the film’s participants, namely Center for Security Policy (CSP) founder Frank Gaffney, the Heritage Foundation’s Steven Groves, Free Press Society president Lars Hedegaard, […]

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS Weizmann scientists can save your vision. To mark “Save Your Vision Month”, Weizmann Institute’s vision research projects include sensory whiskers, glaucoma medication, photon analysis and brain imaging. http://www.weizmann-usa.org/tomorrow-lab/news/article-detail/13-03-01/Vision_Research_at_the_Weizmann_Institute_of_Science.aspx Bladder cancer treatment success. Israel’s Biocancell Therapeutics Ltd has reported success in the Phase IIb clinical trial of BC-819 for the treatment of […]

http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2013/03/23/terror-flotilla-part-i-turkey-and-the-terrorist-ihh-organization-champions-of-hamas/?print=1 This is the first installment of a two-part series on the terrorist campaign, supported by Turkey’s Islamic-supremacist government, to break Israel’s blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza. Part II will run here on Ordered Liberty on Monday. As further discussed in the introduction to this series (here), Israel, under pressure from the Obama administration, has apologized […]

http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2013/03/23/obama-pressures-netanyahu-into-humiliating-apology-to-terror-supporting-turkey-over-flotilla-confrontation/ The lowlight of President Obama’s Middle East trip is his strong-arming of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into a humiliating apology to Turkey’s Islamic-supremacist government over Israel’s defense in 2010 of its blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza. The blockade was subjected to a terrorist offensive camouflaged as a humanitarian flotilla. The spearhead of the siege […]

An open letter to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Prime Minister of Turkey Dear Mister Prime Minister: On behalf of all of the people of Israel, I would like to apologize to you for the cowardice and fathomless idiocy of the Prime Minister of Israel. As you know, this weekend Benjamin Netanyahu sent you an “apology” for […]

http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2013/03/22/why-conservatives-should-be-critical-of-obamas-middle-eastern-policy-but-no-longer-attack-him-as-an-enemy-of-israel/?singlepage=true

Gee thanks Ron for the admonition….looks like you have been sugar whipped by the President’s silky rhetoric….If a man will not openly denounce the anti-Semitic rantings of his Minister/friend; sides openly with the Arabs, overlooking their Jihadist rants; compares the “struggles” of the murderous Palestinian Arabs with the American civil rights movement which was spurred by peaceful American Blacks; and following his staged “Zionist” speech to gullible Israelis he presses Netanyahu to apologize the the Turks and promoted the dismemberment of Israel he is an antagonist…You don’t want to use the word enemy? You were not so timid when outing the American protagonists of Communism….the useful idiots…..rsk

I, along with other supporters of Israel, have for the past few years rightfully been critical of President Obama and his position on the Middle East, beginning with his disastrous Cairo speech and his misguided decision to combine a wooing of the Arab world with a decision to put U.S. pressure first and foremost on Israel. Particularly, Obama chose to make settlements the most important issue regarding the peace process.

The major change during his two days in Israel was a decisive shift in approach, which many of his ardent supporters have been loath to acknowledge. This shift was succinctly pointed out by veteran foreign affairs analyst Leslie Gelb:

In Israel, Obama went further than ever in trying to placate Bibi’s position. The president said that the issue of Israeli settlements on the West Bank, the hottest button for Palestinians, should not be dealt with in advance of negotiations, as the Palestinians demand, but should be placed on the table only after the negotiating groundwork has been set. Indeed, almost everything Obama has said on this trip backpedals on his earlier priority of freezing those settlements. This is a body blow to Abbas and his supporters that can be assuaged only by a real Washington push for negotiations, one that involves U.S. positions disliked by Bibi and bound to cause moaning among many Israelis.

If one puts this truth first, Obama’s speech the next day to leftist students may be seen as the other side of the coin. Roger L. Simon is not alone in responding favorably to Obama’s words. It was, as David Horovitz, editor of The Times of Israel perceptively points out, a “left-wing Zionist speech,” perhaps the most cogent statement of such a viewpoint that the Israeli public has heard since the old days of Habonim and Hashomer Hatzair, the two most important Zionist left-wing youth groups of the ’50s, ’6os, and Israel’s early period of labor Zionism.

Obama may indeed have stirred the hearts of the hand-picked leftist students who were present at the event, but garnering their wild applause is one thing; the hard reality of trying to make peace with the Palestinians, led by Abbas — not to speak of Hamas — is another. As Horovitz says, the problem is that Obama’s utopian vision “is hardly consensual”:

This speech was the “reset” of Obama’s personal relationship with Israel. It was the speech in which he showed his knowledge of Israel, quoting its religious texts and its political visionaries, recalling the suffering of exile, the yearning for the homeland. It was the speech in which he acknowledged the extent of the hostility tiny Israel has faced and continues to face in this region, the relentless series of wars it has been forced to fight for its survival.

He knew, he told the listening Israelis, that you live in a region in which many have rejected your very right to exist. He knew, he said, that the security of the Jewish people in Israel cannot be taken for granted. He knew Israel had seized opportunities for peace with Egypt and Jordan under Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin, and tried hard to make peace with the Palestinians, including under Ehud Olmert at Annapolis. He knew that the 2000 Lebanon pullout and the 2005 Gaza withdrawal had been met with rocket fire, and that “the hand of friendship” had too often been met with rejectionism and terror.

Having set this up to woo Israelis, the president then moved on to tell them to keep working for the Palestinian state that would be in the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians, and which he argued the Palestinians deserved as a matter of justice.

And that is the rub.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/in-syria-western-illusions-lead-to-ill-advised-action/?print=1 The signs are now unmistakable: both openly and behind the scenes, a major Western effort to bring the Syrian civil war to a close with the defeat of the Assad regime is now underway. This is being undertaken with intentions of ending the stalemate in the war, and of preventing the dominance within the […]

EVERYTHING YOU EXPECT IT TO BE
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
Obama’s Israel trip was everything you expected it to be. 40 pounds of flattery with a few ounces of poisonous substance.

In between all the scripted compliments about Israel, Obama pushed a diplomatic solution with Iran, concessions to terrorists and a softer line on Hamas. He hinted at having his own peace plan that he wanted to impose.

And after he left, he oversaw a phone call in which Netanyahu apologized to Turkey’s Islamist thug for the interception of a Turkish pro-Hamas boat on the way to Gaza and agreed to give its Islamist regime a role in Gaza.

It was a disgusting act of appeasement by a man who has become Israel’s own version of Bush.

Netanyahu gave Hamas a major victory by making the Shalit deal. He gave Islamist Turkey a major victory over Israel with his apology. He gave Islamist Egypt an earlier victory by calling off a ground operation.

While Netanyahu allowed Obama and Erdogan to push him around, he allowed Barak to demolish Jewish homes and in has decided now to declare war on Haredi Jews. And he presided over an election in which a left wing party became the dominant player in his coalition.

As a technocrat, Netanyahu has done a good job on the economy. But he’s been terrible on national defense, maintaining a status quo while repeatedly talking about how someone should do something on Iran. It may not have occurred to him that, that someone is him. It certainly won’t be Obama.

The real problem among Israeli conservatives, as among American conservatives, is a lack of leadership. When Netanyahu is the default choice, there is something very wrong with the process. Bennett showed some promise, but has been flailing since. Perhaps he’ll grow into it, but that is so long as he doesn’t turn out to be another Netanyahu.

After Begin and Shamir, the right needed a technocrat. It needed someone who could talk to foreign leaders and understand some of the bigger issues. But it also needs principles.

The Likud needs a post-Netanyahu plan and it doesn’t have one. (And no, not Feiglin. I mean a realistic electable plan.) Instead the country is tied up in the usual factitious politics with no end in sight. Haredi and Dati Leumi leaders shriek at each other as if the country’s biggest problem were girls schools. The left exploits social dicontents while the right has tried and failed to steal the Shinui vote by trying to draft the undraftable.