RUTHFULLY YOURS

Barack Obama, during the 2008 presidential campaign, was presented to the people of the United States—and, more broadly, to the people of the world—as the candidate best suited to play the role of unifier. President George W. Bush had been the Great Divider but now the time had come for everyone to put those discordant days behind us and embrace the one we had been waiting for, and so begin an era of repair and restoration. A sizeable proportion of Americans continue to approve of President Obama—close to 50 per cent in some polls—and yet the blistering populist campaigns pursued by Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump (and, in a sense, Ted Cruz) throughout the current presidential campaign season suggest that his time in office has increased discord in the country.

Barack Obama positioning himself as the Healer-in-Chief was always a problematic notion. Edward Klein’s The Amateur (2012) is vitriolic in tone and underestimates Obama’s political savvy, and yet his rationalisation of Obama’s original popular appeal—masterminded by political consultant David Axelrod—remains relevant:

[Axelrod] performed a brilliant piece of political legerdemain … He devised a narrative for Obama in which the candidate was presented as a black man who would heal America, not divide it, a moderate non-partisan who would rescue America, not threaten it.

Candidate Obama, the politician with the most radical voting record in the US Senate, could be trusted by mainstream America to bring the nation together.

President Obama has failed as national peacemaker because he is not a “centrist” or mediator. The provenance of his systematic worldview can be found in the thinkers of the New Left, from Frank Marshall Davis and Edward Said to Jeremiah Wright. The Reverend Wright’s “God damn America!” outburst encapsulates the New Left’s aversion to the fundamentals of America’s capitalist democracy. America is not to be healed so much as reconfigured. The great ideological fissure in the United States, then, is between their so-called libertarian-socialism—the “spirit of 1968” as Dinesh D’Souza has tagged it—and a revolution with far deeper roots: the “spirit of 1776”.

Edward Klein’s insight is only one explanation for why so many Americans failed to grasp the sharp nature of Barack Obama’s ideology. Not the least of these is that the forty-fourth president long ago took a leaf out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals (1971). President Obama, in short, eschews the pitfalls of the “rhetorical radical”. He avoids the undisguised anger and belligerence common to many activists and, in its place, adopts the public persona of what Alinsky called the “radical realist”. This could be summed up in four words: Don’t frighten the horses. Thus, Barack Obama typically expresses himself with the poise and equanimity of a venerable conciliator, and yet a more contentious outlook is invariably at work.

Socrates is rumored to have said that the only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing, and maybe we should adopt a version of the Greek philosopher’s motto when it comes to the nuclear deal with Iran. To wit, we are learning again that what the Obama Administration says Iran can do under the agreement, and what Iran is allowed to do, are almost never the same.

The latest discrepancy was revealed Thursday in a report by David Albright and Andrea Stricker of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a think tank in Washington D.C. that specializes in nuclear issues. The agreement specifies that Iran is to limit its stockpile of reactor-grade, low-enriched uranium (LEU) to no more than 300 kilograms for 15 years. Tehran shipped more than 11 tons of LEU to Russia last year, and the Administration has trumpeted the Islamic Republic’s supposed compliance with the deal as a way of justifying wider sanctions relief.

But as Mr. Albright and Ms. Stricker note, Iran‘s “compliance” came about thanks to a series of secretive exemptions and loopholes that the Administration and the deal’s other signatories created for the mullahs sometime last year. Had those exemptions and loopholes not been created out of thin air, the authors report, “some of Iran’s nuclear facilities would not have been in compliance” with the deal.

Among the exemptions: Iran was allowed to keep more than 300 kilos of low-enriched uranium provided it was in various “waste forms.” The deal was also supposed to cap Iran’s production of heavy water at 130 tons, but another loophole now allows Iran to exceed that. In a third exemption, Iran was allowed to maintain 19 large radiation containment chambers, or hot cells, which are supposed to be used for producing medical isotopes but can be “misused for secret, mostly small-scale plutonium separation efforts.”

The White House has waved off the ISIS report by insisting it “did not and will not allow Iran to skirt” its commitments. The non-denial would be more credible if the Administration hadn’t last year agreed to a secretive process in which Iran was allowed to inspect its own nuclear-related military facilities.

Donald J. Trump met today with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto and later flies to Arizona for a much- anticipated speech on immigration. On these and similar occasions, it would behoove the Republican presidential nominee to go beyond the usual concerns about Mexican and Central American migrants crossing America’s southern “border.” Trump should focus, privately and publicly, on what U.S. officials call “Other Than Mexicans.”

OTMs consist of all sorts of people who break into the United States from countries all around the world. These include such colorful locales as Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.

In fact, federal agents in 2014 apprehended 4,930 individuals who hailed from the four nations that Washington listed as “state sponsors of terrorism,” plus the ten countries that the Transportation Safety Administration had designated as “of interest.” Foreigners who arrive legally from those places are subject to enhanced passenger screening. A total of 69,599 people from those 14 countries were arrested while trying to enter America illegally, from fiscal years 2005 through 2014, according to the 2014 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, published this month by the Department of Homeland Security.

While these figures involve all of America’s frontiers, among the 486,651 illegal aliens caught entering the United States, 479,371 (or 98.5 percent) were nailed along the southern Boundary. It probably is safe to assume that a similar proportion of illegal aliens from these worrisome nations also were captured waltzing in from Mexico.

An American Muslim who investigated the historical evidence for Islam and Christianity discovered an astounding truth: the evidence is “entirely incompatible” with Islam, while it supports the three greatest arguments for Christianity.

“It was not just that history did not support the traditional narratives of Islam, but rather that history proved to be entirely incompatible with Islamic origins,” writes Nabeel Qureshi (emphasis his), author of the book No God But One: Allah or Jesus? A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam & Christianity. The book, released Tuesday, provides a deep investigation of the key differences between the two faiths and delves into the historical evidence (or lack thereof) for each.

Qureshi investigates five basic claims, each disputed by either side. He asks the question of whether there is enough evidence that “an objective observer” would conclude in favor of Christianity or Islam. The arguments for Christianity: that Jesus died on the cross, that his disciples believed he rose from the dead, and that he claimed to be God. The arguments for Islam: that Muhammad is a prophet of Allah, and that the Quran is inspired by Allah.

As the Quran is the “why” of the Islamic faith, I will begin there, and move to Muhammad. Then, I will dive into Qureshi’s arguments for Christianity.
1. Is the Quran the word of God?

The Quran is more important to Muslims than the Bible is to Christians — so much so that burning the Quran invites anger and even violence, while no one riots when the Bible is burnt. Qureshi lays out five common arguments for the inspiration of the Quran: its literary excellence, its fulfilled prophecies, the miraculous scientific knowledge in the text, mathematical marvels, and the perfect preservation of the book across the centuries.

Most of these arguments come down to a subjective twisting of the Quranic text. Many so-called prophecies are quoted out of context, and the one clear prophecy was predictable and took too long to occur. The miraculous scientific knowledge is also used out of context, and relies on rejecting specific scientific statements which have been proven false. Finally, in order to argue for mathematical wonders in the text, Muslims have to reject the rules of Arabic grammar and discard entire verses from the Quran.

This draws the literary excellence of the Quran into doubt. Qureshi quotes the scholar Gerd Puin, an expert on the Arabic of the Quran: “Every fifth sentence or so simply doesn’t make sense.” At every turn, when a challenger would attack the literary excellence of the text, Muslims would redefine the test to protect it from scrutiny. In the end, this claim to literary excellence is subjective — it will not convince someone who does not already believe it.

Finally, the history of the Quran is fraught with mistakes. Qureshi tells the story of the Caliph Uthman (ruled 644-655 A.D.), who recalled all Quranic manuscripts, burned them all, and issued official, standardized copies. Records of dissenting Muslims persist to this day.

Also, when the Quran — which was originally oral — was first being written down, some chapters were nearly lost, and great reciters of the Quran such as Ubay and Abdullah ibn Masud (who was named by Muhammad as one of the four best teachers of the Quran) disagreed with the final written text. Some of the Muslim world still has Qurans with readings different from the best known version, which was promulgated in 1924 – the Royal Cairo Edition.
2. Is Muhammad the prophet of God?

The Shahada, or Islamic statement of faith, is one of the five pillars of Islam, and it declares, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.” Qureshi listed three main arguments for Muhammad’s prophethood: his excellent life and character, Bible prophecies about him, and miraculous scientific knowledge.

As stated above, the claims to scientific knowledge are very problematic. One particular section in the Quran which Muslims argue to be uniquely ahead of its time deals with embryology — how a baby develops in the womb. Yet the terms in the verses are far from scientific, and the requisite knowledge long predates Muhammad: Aristotle’s On the Generation of Animals is more scientific and detailed, and came 1,000 years before Islam. Also, the Greek scientist Galen shows a similarly nuanced scientific description clearer than Muhammad’s.

The Bible prophecies that Muslims claim to be about Muhammad are clearly about Jesus and the Holy Spirit, when studied in context. In Deuteronomy 18, God promises to lift up “a prophet from among their brethren,” which Muslims interpret as meaning “from the tribe of the brother of Isaac, i.e. Ishmael.” But the text in question clearly refers to the Israelites, and the word translated “brethren” means “countrymen.” Indeed, a section right before this promise explicitly differentiates between foreigners and Israelites. This verse promises a Jewish prophet, not an Ismaelite one.

Abu Muhammad al Adnani, one of the most important figures in the Islamic State terror network, has been killed in Syria. As Tom Joscelyn reports in a Long War Journal profile of Adnani, the jihadist was recently targeted in a “precision” air strike in Aleppo province. His death has been confirmed in an ISIS “martyrdom statement.”

As Tom elaborates, Adnani rose through the ranks of ISIS’s predecessor organization, al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), under the notorious jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He became a significant figure in al Qaeda’s jihadist operations against American troops in Iraq, which were strongly supported by Syria’s Assad regime and its sponsor Iran. Subsequently, when AQI rebranded as the Islamic State of Iraq (then ISIS, and ultimately IS) and split with the al Qaeda mothership, Adnani became a significant figure in IS’s lethal rivalry with al Qaeda, and in its jihadist operations against the Iran- (and Russia-) supported Assad regime – as well as against U.S.-backed rebel groups (extensively infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood, al Qaeda and other jihadists, in addition to some secular elements).

Adnani came to international prominence as a spokesman for the Islamic State. His role, however, was far more consequential than that. Four weeks ago, the New York Times published an eye-opening report about how the Islamic State had built a “global network of killers.” The network, identified as “the Emni,” has been operating under the direct command of Adnani. Drawing on accounts provided by a defector from the group, a German named Harry Sarfo, the report described Emni as:

A multilevel secret service under the overall command of the Islamic State’s most senior Syrian operative, spokesman and propaganda chief, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani. Below him is a tier of lieutenants empowered to plan attacks in different regions of the world, including a “secret service for European affairs,” a “secret service for Asian affairs” and a “secret service for Arab affairs[.]”…

Based on the accounts of operatives arrested so far, the Emni has become the crucial cog in the group’s terrorism machinery, and its trainees led the Paris attacks and built the suitcase bombs used in a Brussels airport terminal and subway station. Investigation records show that its foot soldiers have also been sent to Austria, Germany, Spain, Lebanon, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia.

With European officials stretched by a string of assaults by seemingly unconnected attackers who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, Mr. Sarfo suggested that there may be more of a link than the authorities yet know. He said he was told that undercover operatives in Europe used new converts as go-betweens, or “clean men,” who help link up people interested in carrying out attacks with operatives who can pass on instructions on everything from how to make a suicide vest to how to credit their violence to the Islamic State.

The group has sent “hundreds of operatives” back to the European Union, with “hundreds more in Turkey alone,” according to a senior United States intelligence official and a senior American defense official, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.

It would be foolish to think IS will be critically wounded by the loss of even someone as vital to its operations as Adnani. IS is an extensive network with global reach that has been more successful in a shorter period of time than any terrorist organization in history in terms of territory and assets captured. It has a history of flourishing despite losing leaders as influential as Zarqawi himself, so it will certainly withstand Adnani’s loss. That loss will nevertheless hurt, but IS won’t be “degraded and destroyed” unless and until there are many more like it.

WASHINGTON — All Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee warned President Obama today that he is releasing “increasingly dangerous terrorists” in his rush to fulfill his vow to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

Earlier this month, the Defense Department announced the transfer of 15 detainees to the United Arab Emirates, a dozen Yemenis and three Afghans.

The UAE said it plans to send the men and their families through a rehabilitation program launched in November. The program includes psychiatrists, social workers and clergy. Terrorism-related crimes carry penalties up to capital punishment in the UAE. The emirates accepted five Yemeni detainees last year and a UAE citizen back in 2008.

“As you continue to draw down the prisoner population at Guantanamo Bay you are releasing increasingly dangerous terrorists who are more closely linked to al-Qaida and attacks against the U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan,” the lawmakers, led by chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), wrote in the letter to Obama. “This largest-ever release includes several who trained in al-Qaida training camps, were bodyguards for Usama bin Laden, and fought at Tora Bora. They were non-compliant with their interrogators and hostile towards the Joint Task Force Guantanamo guards.”

They noted that the Periodic Review Board report for Obaidullah, an Afghan detainee who goes by one name, said he was “mostly compliant” because he committed “less than 100 infractions since his arrival-a low number relative to the other detainees.”

“If 100 infractions is considered a low number, then the bar for acceptable behavior has skewed far from reality,” the Intelligence GOPs wrote. “Obaidullah was part of an al-Qaida-associated improvised explosive device cell that targeted coalition forces in Khowst, Afghanistan, and was captured with 23 antitank landmines and a notebook containing electronic and detonator schematics involving explosives and mines. His lack of stated intent to re-engage in terrorist activities is due to his lack of candor with his interrogators who admit that they ‘lack insight into his current mindset.’ That is no rationalization for his transfer.”

“Your justification for emptying Guantanamo, despite the significant known risks, are not credible,” the letter continued. “Nearly one third of detainees released from Guantanamo have reengaged in terrorist activities; the costs associated with maintaining the facility have not significantly diminished because of the transfers; and the facility does not feature prominently in terrorist propaganda or recruitment efforts.” CONTINUE AT SITE

In the current issue of Commentary my friend Rabbi Meir Soloveichik discusses J.R.R. Tolkien’s fascination with the Jews, who are of course the Dwarves in the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, as Tolkien himself stated in a 1971 BBC interview. Tolkien was no anti-Semite (not, at least, according to the canonical definition, namely someone who hates the Jews more than is absolutely necessary). His views in The Hobbit were typical of the philo-Semites of the 1930s: the Jews/Dwarves are “calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not, but are decent enough people…if you don’t expect too much.”

In The Lord of the Rings, completed after the Holocaust, Tolkien turned more sympathetic, depicting a great Elf-Dwarf friendship, and presaging (as Rabbi Soloveichik points out) a Jewish-Christian alliance against the forces of evil. One might add that in The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s early (but posthumously published) compendium of Middle-Earth mythology, the Dwarves were created before the Elves, just as the Jews came before the Christians–but by mistake, in Tolkien’s account.

In the Dwarves’ quest for their ancient homeland in the Lonely Mountain, Rabbi Soloveichik observes, Tolkien evinces a certain sympathy for Zionism.

But all this begs the question of what put the Jews at the center of Tolkien’s attention in the first place. Part of the answer is to be found in Tolkien’s lifelong effort to undo the pernicious influence of Richard Wagner, whose “Ring of the Nibelungs” is the most influential art work of the past two hundreds years (and in my view also the most pernicious). Wagner plundered the ancient Norse and Germanic sagas in the service of a revived paganism. Tolkien by contrast set out to repurpose the old pagan stories to make them a sounder foundation for the Christianity that would succeed them.

In Wagner’s pageant of gods and heroes, the aristocracy (the gods) establish their rule by treaties (covenants). But in order to maintain their rule they must hire the Giants (capital and labor) to build their fortress Valhalla, and steal the cursed gold of the Nibelung dwarves (the Jews). Wagner made clear in his writings and correspondence that the nasty Nibelungen were the Jews, whom he really, really hated. In one of his last writings he claims that the point of the Eucharist is to purge the communicant of pollutants to Aryan blood, in particular to remove the stain of Jewish blood from Jesus himself. Wagner stole the plot of his breakthrough opera “The Flying Dutchman” from one Jew (Heinrich Heine) and its musical portrayal of the sea from another Jew (Felix Mendelssohn), and then published a pamphlet alleging that Jews could only imitate but not create new art. CONTINUE AT SITE

Secretary of State John Kerry wants to keep the American people in the dark regarding the global jihadist terrorist threat we are facing. Referring to terrorism in remarks he made at the Edward M. Kennedy Center in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a country that has recently experienced its own encounter with Islamist terrorists, Kerry said, “Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”

Kerry was just reflecting his boss’s bizarro worldview. In an interview with Vox, for example, Obama agreed “absolutely” with the proposition posed by the questioner that “the media sometimes overstates the level of alarm people should have about terrorism and this kind of chaos…”

Knowing too much about what is really going on under President Obama’s watch, after all, might make us realize just how bad the Obama administration’s foreign policy failures have metastasized into a worldwide catastrophe.

Obama and Kerry want us to think that climate change is the real number one security threat, not jihadists determined to kill us by any means possible. “No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” said Obama in his 2015 State of the Union speech. During his April 18, 2015 weekly address on climate change, Obama said that “today, there’s no greater threat to our planet than climate change.”

The president who derisively referred to ISIS as a “jayvee” team does not believe the jihadist terrorists represent a serious threat to Americans’ safety, even as they seek weapons of mass destruction to annihilate us. “They’re not coming here to chop our heads off,” Obama reportedly told his close adviser, Valerie Jarrett, back in 2014 after she had raised with him the concerns felt by the American people as they witnessed beheadings of Americans abroad.

In his April 2016 Atlantic article entitled “The Obama Doctrine,” Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that “Obama frequently reminds his staff that terrorism takes far fewer lives in America than handguns, car accidents, and falls in bathtubs do.” Goldberg quoted Obama as saying that “for me to satisfy the cable news hype-fest would lead to us making worse and worse decisions over time.”

In his remarks in Bangladesh on Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry explicitly asked the media to cover terrorism less, so “people wouldn’t know what’s going on.” The line also drew applause from the audience.

While discussing terrorism, Kerry said “it’s easy to terrorize … you can make some noise.” He then suggested, “Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”

Here is the context of his remark (from the official State Department transcript):

Remember this: No country is immune from terrorism. It’s easy to terrorize. Government and law enforcement have to be correct 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. But if you decide one day you’re going to be a terrorist and you’re willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people. You can make some noise. Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on. (Applause.)

In emphasizing the difference between government and terrorists, the secretary of State made a good point: that it is easier for a terrorist to grab people’s attention than for the government to do so. The reasons for this are obvious: terrorists threaten life and limb, while government should not do so. In reality, government does abuse its citizens, but since its primary aim is to serve them, such scandals are comparatively rare.

Terror attacks happen nearly every day around the world, however, and they more easily draw media attention. But here’s the rub — they deserve media attention.

The media’s job isn’t to ignore these events, no matter how much the terrorists want the media to focus on them. Indeed, the job of the press is exactly the opposite of what Kerry is explicitly calling for — that “people wouldn’t know what’s going on.” Journalism exists to let people know what’s going on, even if the events in question were caused by an insane radical.