RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Obama’s greatest Foreign Policy error was the same one that had been made by Bush and by numerous past administrations. The error was that the problem was not Islam, but Islamic violence. It was Obama however who took that error to its logical conclusion by pursuing a foreign policy meant to part Islamists from their violent tendencies by allowing them to win without the need for terrorism.
Violence, the thinking in diplomatic circles went, was inherently alarming and destabilizing. When Islamists don’t take over, they move to the West, preach radical theology, gather up followers and begin blowing things up. But let them take over their own home countries and they’ll no longer have any reason to draw up maps of London and New York, not when they’re beheading adulterers and burning churches back home.

The Arab Spring was to the Middle East what the betrayal of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis and the betrayal of the rest of Eastern Europe to the Communists was to 20th Century European history. It was the moment when all the diplomatic folly that had come before it came together in one great historical instant of national and international betrayal.

The diplomatic wunderkinds had never taken Islamist theology seriously, just as their predecessors had not considered the possibility that the Bolsheviks might be serious about their world revolution. And they had also failed to recognize that Islamic terrorism was not only a means to power, but also an end in and of itself, a way of harnessing the endless violence and instability in desert societies and turning them into power and profit.

What every Middle Eastern leader has always understood is that the violence, call it raids, terrorism, guerrilla warfare, gang activity, sectarian militias, military coups, desert banditry, was never going away. It was the tiger and the clever leader rides the tiger, rather than ending up inside it, harnessing and directing the violence, to remain in power.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/obamas-decidedly-unclear-foreign-policy/print/ President Barack Obama came out swinging at last night’s debate, repeatedly calling Governor Mitt Romney “reckless and wrong” on a range of foreign policy issues. But to extend the over-used boxing metaphor, Romney deflected many of Obama’s attacks, didn’t get caught in the corners, counterpunched often enough and relentlessly pivoted to the economy. Indeed, […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/david-j-rusin/when-romney-met-kenny-mitts-islamist-gamble/print/ Mitt Romney’s embrace of Kenny Gamble, an operator of Philadelphia charter schools who doubles as a prominent suit-and-tie Islamist calling himself Luqman Abdul Haqq, raises questions about a potential Romney administration’s readiness to identify and steer clear of smooth-talking radicals. The Republican candidate should treat this blunder as a learning opportunity. The lesson: never […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/nonie-darwish/obamas-allegiance-to-the-unholy-alliance/

I have never entertained the idea that Obama is a Muslim and I always believed he was a socialist. But Obama’s behavior over the last 4 years regarding Islam have convinced me that Obama definitely has a Socialist-Islamic centered world view. This combination is not uncommon in many parts of the Muslim world.

Having been a journalist in Egypt for 6 years in the seventies, I have witnessed socialism with an Islamic twist to be a popular political ideology, especially amongst Arab journalists and intellectuals. Socialism and communism have managed to survive in the ruthless Islamic political system and have blended together in the Baath Party in Syria, in Iraq and in socialist regimes in Egypt and Yemen.

One major difference between the two ideologies is that Islam uses Allah, while socialism uses atheism, to fight the God of Christianity. Free democracies, such as the United States, are alien to Islam and socialism because they regard government as a servant to the people and that human rights are from God and not from government or Sharia.

Both Sharia and Socialism unite in their envy of Western society and in their desire to change it. That is why Obama has become the savior of both Islam and socialism. He embodies both ideologies, socialism and Islam, and he was groomed for years to help the socialist and Islamic causes inside America. The claim that Obama is a Christian appears to be increasingly dubious. If it is an untruth, it makes sense, because such a deception works well for the greater cause of changing America to fit the goals of socialists and Islamists.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/ruth-king/high-noon-for-america-the-coming-showdown/

Reprinted From Family Security Matters.

To order High Noon For America, The Coming Showdown, click here.

While the nation was focused on the economy, Jamie Glazov, to his great credit, gathered a stellar group of intellectuals to conduct a series of roundtable discussions on the Middle East and Arab/Muslim extremism; Russia’s renewed aggressiveness; America’s possible military decline; the unending search for moderation in Islam; energy independence; and breaking away from the leftist cult and dogma.

Dr. Glazov, who holds a Ph.D. in History with specialties in U.S., Russian, and Canadian foreign policy, is editor of Frontpage.com where these symposiums appeared. They are now compiled in his new book, “High Noon for America: The Coming Showdown.” As harbingers of our present national crisis, they are essential reading.

How timely and ironic that the first chapter is titled “The Mismanaged War Against Libya” (March 2011) and deals with our response to the uprising against Qaddafi. Lt. General Miahil Pacepa was the highest official to defect from the Soviet Union. Here are his prescient words:

“All we know for certain about the “freedom fighters” opposing Gaddafi is that they fight with Kalashnikov in hand, and that Kalashnikovs have no history of promoting freedom…A recent article in Le Monde goes a step further, revealing that these “brave Libyan freedom fighters” are dominated by jihadists espousing the same complaints of “Westoxification” accompanied by the Jew-hatred and broader infidel-hatred that permeates the Arab world.”

For good measure Robert Spencer reminds us:

“But he (Obama) didn’t explain how acting forcibly to remove Gaddafi would indeed be in America’s best interests….It is unlikely that he will be succeeded by Thomas Jefferson. The fact that Gaddafi is a reprehensible human being and no friend of the United States does not automatically turn his opponents into Thomas Paine.”

In the chapter “The Shadow of the KGB” (February 2011), Glazov assembles a group of Soviet dissidents including Vladimir Bukovsky, Pavel Stroilov, Lt. General Ion Pacepa, with intellectuals and academics to discuss Russia’s renewed aggressiveness and nuclear buildup.

Glazov is a splendid moderator whose own background in the Soviet Union gives him a unique window into current policies. He begins the discussion by reminding the reader that the United States ostensibly uprooted evil Soviet ideology in 1991, and Russia is seen as a friend and discounted as an adversary although much of its ideology and government are still controlled former KGB officers and their acolytes. Not quite a “reset” as some would have it.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/insecure-obama-insecure-world/ The United States has had good presidents and bad, but it has never had a leader who came to a debate on national security with so much insecurity. It was a small petty man who sat on the other side of the screen, alternately smirking and scowling, grinding his teeth and launching attack after […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/331125/first-aid-living-bing-west A U.S. ambassador is missing and his diplomatic team is desperately fighting off terrorist attacks. Our commander-in-chief and his national-security team in Washington are listening to the phone calls from the Americans under attack and watching real-time video from a drone circling overhead. Yet the U.S. military sends no aid. Why? On September 11, […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/331305/tortoise-ties-hares-concerned-stanley-kurtz

During the first half of the debate, Romney was playing for a tie while Obama was playing for a win. That made a certain sense. As commander-in-chief, Obama has an inherent advantage on foreign policy. So long as Romney stands toe-to-toe and achieves a rough equality with a sitting president on foreign policy, he gains credibility and keeps his momentum in this race. Even so, there was a danger at first that Obama’s attacks and his generally strong posture would give him a win. (I mean “posture,” in part, literally. Some might not have liked Obama’s forward stare and general demeanor, but I thought it was effective.)

Partway through the debate, however, Romney started pushing for the win. His pivot to the economy might have seemed like evasion, but Obama followed him into domestic policy because he saw the risk of not answering the challenge. This put Romney on familiar ground and you could see his confidence grow.

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/331318

Dan Senor, a senior Romney adviser, says President Barack Obama’s criticism of Mitt Romney’s Israel trip was “pathetic.”Romney has been to Israel four times, Senor said tonight when speaking to reporters. Obama, he pointed out, has never been there as president. Obama’s posturing on Israel was thus a “cheap shot,” Senor said, and “sort of pathetic.”

“President Obama, as president, has been to over 40 countries. He hasn’t been to Israel,” Senor said. “He can talk all he wants about how significant his trip was as senator. But for presidents, geography is policy.”

In 2009, “[Obama] deliberately chose not to go to Israel,” Senor said. “On that outreach to the Arab world, he could have hopped on a 30- or 40-minute plane ride and made it clear that he stands shoulder to shoulder with Israel.”

Senor, an expert on U.S.-Israeli relations, advised Romney during debate prep, and has been a top aide to Paul Ryan on the campaign trail.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/habibi-a-moroccan-poet-sings-to-his-love/

Habibi: The Diwan of Alim Maghrebi [1] is a new book of poems by Canadian poet-essayist and frequent PJ Media contributor David Solway. It belongs to his acclaimed series of “translations” of imaginary foreign poets. In this case the ostensible poet, Alim Maghrebi, is a Moroccan who, as Solway tells us in his ostensible introduction, belongs to the (actually existing) school of “new Arab poetry” — “a poetic alloy…of ancestral themes and preoccupations modulated in the language of the street, the newspaper, movies, technology and the Internet.”

Moreover, the introduction tells us, Maghrebi alludes pervasively to the (historical) Meccan poet Umar ibn Abi Rabi’a (644-721), “who was famed for his lyrics lamenting the melancholy transience of love….” Habibi is, indeed, an extended paean and plaint to Maghrebi’s habibi (loved one)—a nameless young Moroccan woman who consumes his days with passions, exaltations, fears, and mortifications.

Habibi is also, simply, a delight from start to finish. Readers who may be chary of today’s often demanding poetry will find this book to be written in a simple and direct, yet poignant and musical language that rises and falls with Maghrebi’s mercurial responses to his fickle, often evasive lover.