RUTHFULLY YOURS

Indeed, the babies are dying in Aleppo, as Robin Wright posted today:

Last month, four newborns in incubators fought for their lives in a small hospital in Aleppo, the besieged Syrian city.

Then a bomb hit the hospital and cut off power — and oxygen to the incubators. The babies suffocated.

In a joint letter to President Obama this month, fifteen doctors described the infants’ deaths: “Gasping for air, their lives ended before they had really begun.”

The doctors are among the last few in the eastern part of Aleppo, the historic former commercial center where a hundred thousand children are now trapped.

The photo of the bloody 5 year old boy, is one of the ugliest ones I’ve ever seen. We learned more about him later:

More than a third of all casualties in Aleppo are now kids, according to Save the Children.

Among them is Omran Daqneesh, the toddler with the moppish Beatles haircut whose picture captivated the world this week. He was shown covered with blood and dust after being dug from the debris of a bombing in Syria on Thursday. Rescuers placed him, alone, on an orange seat in an ambulance. His stunned, dazed expression mirrored the trauma of a war-ravaged generation. (On Saturday, we learned that Omran’s older brother Ali, who was ten, had died from wounds sustained in the attack.)

I understand that war is hell, as any veteran will tell you. However, this picture is more than the byproduct of bombs. It is the consequence of a foreign policy that has made the world a heck of lot unsafer than it was in 2009.

It started with a reckless withdrawal from Iraq in 2011. It was followed by tough talk about “red lines” that were never followed up. It did not take long for the bad guys in the region to find that President Obama was all about getting reelected in 2012 rather than U.S. national security.

As the invaluable David Pryce-Jones notes, Syria’s second-most important city, Aleppo, is the locus of heavy combat, pitting Russia and Iran, the forces propping up the Bashar Assad, against anti-regime fighters, also known as the “rebels.” David refers to reports that, as he summarizes them, “secular rebels appear to have liberated most of [Aleppo], maybe all of it.” Meanwhile, the estimable Charles Krauthammer observes that Russia is operating out of an air base in Iran (probably yet another violation of Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal with the mullahs). And who does Charles say Vladimir Putin’s air force is targeting? “It’s hitting a lot of the moderate rebels . . . in Aleppo.”

I have been arguing for years (and as recently as last weekend) that there are simply not enough moderate, secular rebels in Syria to overthrow the regime, much less to defeat both Assad and ISIS simultaneously. Suggestions to the contrary are wishful thinking. More important, such suggestions are counterproductive: The illusion of a vibrant secular, pro-Western opposition in Syria is the basis for urging that America throw its weight behind the “rebels,” on the theory that we would be undermining radical Islam.

In truth, we’d simply be empowering one set of anti-American Islamists against another.

At The Long War Journal, Tom Joscelyn, who for my money does the best job in America of analyzing the factions involved in the global jihad, takes a careful look at who is fighting against Assad in Syria. To what should be no one’s surprise — but will apparently be very surprising to many — the bulk of the opposition consists of Islamists.

As Tom explains, two coalitions are spearheading the campaign that has enjoyed recent success against the regime in Aleppo. The first is headed up by al-Qaeda and goes by the name Jaysh al-Fath (Army of Conquest). The al-Qaeda franchise in Syria, until recently known as al-Nusrah, has rebranded itself as Jabhat Fath al-Sham (JFS). It has a close alliance with a group called Ahrar al-Sham (Ahrar), which includes many al-Qaeda veterans and (as Tom notes) models itself after the Taliban (al-Qaeda’s close ally in Afghanistan). JFS and Ahrar run the Jaysh al-Fath coalition, which includes sundry other jihadist militias long affiliated with the al-Qaeda terror network.

Al-Qaeda is well aware of the West’s myopic focus on ISIS (the Islamic State — the al-Qaeda splinter group that began as al-Qaeda in Iraq). This myopia has the U.S. government and much of the commentariat turning a blind eye to other anti-American Islamists, even absurdly labeling them “moderates,” as long as they are not part of ISIS. The leaders of al-Qaeda realize that a great deal of financial and materiel support is to be had in the “moderate rebel” business but that the al-Qaeda brand could be problematic in maintaining the façade. So they have encouraged their franchises to obscure and soft-peddle their al-Qaeda connections — particularly by not brandishing “al-Qaeda” in their names.

It’s working.

A former brigadier general revealed on Fox News Monday some new information about the White House’s role in U.S. Central Command’s skewing of intelligence to downplay the threats of ISIS and Al Qaeda.

Last week, a House Republican task force concluded in a 15-page report that U.S. military leaders altered intelligence reports “to paint a rosier picture” of the U.S.-led fight against ISIS than intelligence analysts believed was warranted.

The report blamed “structural and management changes” at the intelligence directorate for the distortions, but stopped short of explaining WHY the changes were made. According to Defense News, “the problems followed the change in Central Command’s leadership from Marine Gen. James Mattis, as CENTCOM commander, to Army Gen. Lloyd Austin.”

U.S. Army Brigadier Gen. Anthony Tata (Ret.) filled in some blanks on Fox News Monday afternoon, and if his allegations are true, the scandal reaches all the way to the president’s inner circle.

Tata explained that since Obama withdrew troops from Iraq, “there’s been chaos all over the Middle East.” But because the president campaigned on getting out of Iraq, he didn’t want to hear anything that countered his narrative that it was the right thing to do.

When the official narrative contradicted the facts on the ground, members of the intelligence community cried foul and there was a meeting to deal with the issue.

Via Fox News Insider:

Tata revealed that a source verified to him that he was directed by an individual from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, who conducts the president’s daily briefing, to stop producing “products of record” that did not fit the administration’s narrative of a defeated Al Qaeda and a non-threatening enemy in ISIS.

Tata said that the president’s briefer told this individual to call him on secure line if he had any intelligence that portrayed ISIS in a stronger light than what the president had characterized to the public, which would not leave a paper trail.

He said that this distortion of intelligence on ISIS essentially led to the U.S. ignoring the growing threat and giving the terror group two years to take root.

Tata said that it was “highly irresponsible” for a senior official to downplay the intelligence because “now we have a real, valid national security threat that was borne out of this directive to Central Command.” He added that “now there are actually people being reprised against.”

“You have good American soldiers, sailors, Marines and civilians that are being isolated and targeted by people that are in the J-2 [CENTCOM’s intelligence directorate],” Tata said.

The U.S. announced the transfer of 15 detainees from U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Here is a look at the various ramifications of the move.

Who was transferred? Where were they sent, and why?

Fifteen prisoners—12 Yemenis and three Afghans—were transferred from Guantanamo to the United Arab Emirates. The 15 were longtime terrorism suspects, but were never charged with crimes and were part of a group of detainees that the Obama administration has been trying to move to make progress in its efforts to close the facility.
They were sent to the U.A.E. because the Obama administration doesn’t transfer prisoners to Yemen due to the civil war there. The U.S. has no blanket policy against repatriating detainees to Afghanistan, but officials said they defer to the guidance of senior military officials when making decisions about where to transfer them.

Is the administration increasing the tempo of transfers? If so, why?

The rate of transfers out of Guantanamo has picked up, although President Barack Obama’s pledge to shutter the prison has proved elusive, in part because of congressional restrictions against relocating prisoners to the U.S. Meanwhile, officials are trying to whittle the facility’s population by moving out all prisoners eligible for transfer—security conditions permitting—so that the remaining detainee population will make the prison appear too costly to run. The Obama administration also has sped up the parole-like process that is involved in clearing those who have never faced charges for release.

How many detainees are left, and who are they?

When President Obama received his Nobel Prize, he argued that he would regard nuclear proliferation as his primary challenge. This is hardly surprising since even as a Columbia College student he advocated a nuclear free world – a position consistent with the idealism of a student who knew very little about the ambitions of U.S. adversaries. Yet now after eight years in office, the president retains this same arms control illusion.

Since he assumed the oath of office in 2009 the president has pressed for the shrinking and weakening of the U.S. nuclear arsenal armed as evidence by this signing of the New Start Treaty with Russia and avoiding modernization of the aging nuclear platforms.

Japan, Taiwan, among others, reliant on the U.S. nuclear umbrella for security are increasingly uncomfortable with the direction in America policy and are dubious about the reliability of our pledge for nuclear assistance.

To make matters even more confusing for U.S. allies, it appears as if the president is prepared to declare a new policy of “no first use” – a doctrine that contends America would never use nuclear weapons unless an adversary does so first. This seemingly benign gesture undermines decades of intentional ambiguity and the basis of deterrence.

In fact, State Department officials questioned about the matter argue the president’s position is wrongheaded. The fatal weakness in his contention is that it signals to our enemies that they need not fear nuclear retaliation from the U.S. even if they attack us with conventional, chemical, or biological weapons. In any war gaming escalation scenario, our battlefield initiatives end where nuclear weapons might be entertained. No first use suggests to foes that they should act as aggressively as possible short of nuclear war.

Deterrence, which has kept the lid on nuclear weapons since 1945, is undergoing a monumental shift. The Obama Administration 2010 Nuclear Posture Review contended Russia was no longer an adversary, a contention that recent history in Crimea and Syria would challenge. Moreover, it is likely the president will overlook Constitutional restraints on this matter by submitting a proposal to the United Nations Security Council thereby usurping Senate Treaty power as he did with the Iran Nuclear deal.

Does this not describe the administration of Barak Obama? His eight-year tenure in the White House has been nothing less than a “train of abuses and usurpations,” abuses of the office of president and usurpations of Congressional authority. His “Object” has always been to reduce Americans under absolute Despotism.

“…A long train of abuses and usurpations….”

Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, in detailing the numerous charges against King George III, that “…mankind are disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Does this not describe the administration of Barak Obama? His eight-year tenure in the White House has been nothing less than a “train of abuses and usurpations,” abuses of the office of president and usurpations of Congressional authority. His “Object” has always been to reduce Americans under absolute Despotism.

In 1920, H.L. Mencken made some observations that have proven to be prescient and not altogether irrelevant to the character of today’s Social Justice Warriors, aspiring collectivists, and nation transformers:

“No doubt my distaste for democracy as a political theory is…a defect that is a good deal less in the theory than in myself. In this case it is very probably my incapacity for envy….The fact that John D. Rockefeller had more money than I have is as uninteresting to me as the fact that he believed in total immersion and wore detachable cuffs.

“Thus I am never envious, and so it is impossible for me to feel any sympathy for men who are. Per corollary, it is impossible for me to get any glow out of such hallucinations as democracy and Puritanism, for if you pump envy out of them you empty them of their life blood: they are all immovably grounded upon the inferior man’s hatred of the man who is having a better time. There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and the impulse is to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness – to bring him down to the miserable level of the ‘good’ men, i.e., of stupid, cowardly and chronically unhappy men. And there is only one sound argument for democracy, that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men…and the most heinous offense for him is to prove it.

“…Such an attitude is palpably impossible to a democrat. His distinguishing mark is the fact that he always attacks his opponents, not just with open arms, but also with snorts and objurations – that he is always filled with moral indignation – that he is incapable of imagining honor in an antagonist, and hence incapable of it himself….”*

Olivia Pierson’s Western Values Defended: A Primer, is just what its title says it is, a primer for those unread in what those values are that need to be upheld and defended. It is a short book, just a general survey of the Western values that are rooted in ancient Greece but which came to fruition in the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. It is only 71 pages long, but it is loaded with ideas which most people are not familiar with.

An Amazon review best describes Pierson’s opus: “Olivia Pierson is the author of To Love Wisdom – Gateway to the Heroic for the Young – is an introduction to philosophy for young people aged 10-13 and Western Values Defended: A Primer – a punchy and relevant overview of the greatest gems of Western civilization, and how they came to define the daily character of individual liberty in the West. She writes about politics, history and culture on her website oliviapierson.org. A reader wrote, “An exceptionally well-written defense of Western liberal philosophy and culture! At a time when Western values are overwhelmingly menaced, Ms. Pierson systematically explains just what Western values are, and why they’re so overwhelmingly important. The West today is massively under assault from the forces of socialism and religion, and Ms. Pierson persuasively and passionately explains how we all can — and must! — fight back against the horrifically threatening darkness.”

For any well-read adult who is conversant in the issues covered by Pierson, her book is “old news.” What they must remember is that it is an introduction to those issues. It would make an incomparable text book in elementary and high school as an antidote to the government-mandated multicultural pap being taught in schools today (at least in the U.S.). She introduces the issues in an elegant, compelling style, one which “old hands” on the subjects will find attractive and informative (I learned a few things about some of the issues I’d not encountered elsewhere). It was difficult for me to choose my favorite chapters in Western Values Defended: “Religious Tolerance” (which includes a moving and much-earned tribute to Hypatia of Alexandria, horridly martyred by early Christians because of her mind), “The Emancipation of Women and Sexual Freedom,” “Freedom of Speech and the Press,” “A Commitment to Scientific Inquiry,” or “Capitalism and Innovation.”

David Pryce-Jones’ writings span over five decades. Over that time, he has produced a series of books chronicling unusual lives with implausible loyalties and the destructive and self-destructive movements which attracted them.

Fault Lines
David Pryce-Jones, Criterion Books, New York, 2015, 364 pp., US$25.00

On the question of the underlying motif uniting such diverse individuals as Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Unity Mitford and Cyril Connolly, and such varied subjects as the Hungarian Revolt, Paris in the Third Reich, the Arab world and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Pryce-Jones said this in an interview with me more than 20 years ago: “I’m fascinated with the question – why do people do the very strange things they do?”

I and doubtless others have wondered how he came upon this fascination. Now, with his autobiography before them, readers will find their wait for an answer to that question well worth it. Pryce-Jones has given us a vivid yet understated portrait of the rarefied world into which he was born in Vienna in 1936, a world of country estates, lavish apartments on broad boulevards and liveried servants – and what happened to it.

It was his great-grandfather, the prominent entrepreneur Gustav Springer, who coined the advice, “Buy to the sound of cannons and sell to the sound of violins,” (often wrongly attributed to one of the Rothschilds – to whom Pryce-Jones is also connected). Wise choices of this kind led his forbears to accumulate a fortune and enter the Continent’s aristocracy. The offspring of an unlikely match between a British man of letters from a landed Welsh family, Alan Pryce-Jones, and a Jewish heiress, Thérèse (‘Poppy’) Fould-Springer, Pryce-Jones grew up in Royaumont, a home adjacent to a famed Cistercian abbey laid waste by the French Revolution.

Before the hyperventilating begins, let me stipulate that neither President Obama or Hillary Clinton ever sat down with Islamic State chieftain Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and signed the articles of incorporation. But were it not for their actions and inactions in facilitating a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, creating a vacuum ISIS would gladly fill, the terrorist groups’ caliphate arguably would not exist.

Trump now says he was merely being sarcastic when he said it:

Donald Trump charged President Barack Obama on Wednesday with being the founder of the Islamic State during a campaign rally in Florida.”In many respects, you know, they honor President Obama,” Trump said during a campaign stop in Fort Lauderdale. “He is the founder of ISIS.”Last week, his campaign tried to draw financial links between the Clinton Foundation and the terror group. Wednesday, he called Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton the group’s “co-founder.”

Trump has long accused Obama and Clinton for pursuing Middle East policies that created a power vacuum in Iraq that was exploited by Islamic State. He had criticized Obama for announcing he would yank U.S. troops out of Iraq, which Obama critics believe created the instability in which extremist groups thrive.

No more calls, we have a winner. Sarcasm or not, he is on the money. ISIS would not be the threat it is today were it not for the policies of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They should at least rate an honorable mention. The fact is that President Obama, who famously dismissed ISIS as a “JV team”, ignored the intelligence reports of the rise of the Islamic State and the danger it posed. As Investor’s Business Daily editorialized, Obama’s later promise to “degrade and destroy” ISIS was an empty threat by a President who could have destroyed ISIS in the cradle but didn’t:

Degrade? Degrading has been the foreign policy of a president who recently said that he didn’t have a strategy yet for dealing with the Islamic State’s butchery after watching it train and prepare for a year in its Syrian base before its “sudden” expansion into Iraq.

A former Pentagon official told Fox News that Obama received specific intelligence in daily briefings about the Islamic State’s rise. The information was said to be “granular” in detail, laying out IS’ intentions and capabilities for at least a year before it seized big chunks of Iraqi territory and started beheading Americans.

Obama’s indifference to the briefings was an issue during the 2012 campaign, when former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen observed that Obama personally attended only 44% of them. Obama’s perceived lack of interest in a terror war, which he claimed was won prior to the Benghazi attack, mirrors his reported lack of interest in the rise of the Islamic State.

The fact is President Obama willfully snatched defeat from the Iraq victory of President George W. Bush. The Islamic State’s capture of Ramadi was a long way from the purple fingers Iraqi women held aloft in the country’s first free and democratic elections: