RUTHFULLY YOURS

There is a growing fear that North Korea’s development and testing of nuclear weapons could trigger the use of nuclear weapons for the first time in seventy years.

But the catalyst to such a catastrophe may be not actions by North Korea but an ill-considered decision by the United States.

In frustration over the seeming intractability of the Korean nuclear “problem”, some analysts are proposing that the US cut and run and “fold up its extended nuclear umbrella” over South Korea.

This despite the fact that our collective deterrent with our allies has kept the peace in the western pacific since the end of the Korean War.

One particular strange idea comes from Doug Bandow in an April 19, 2016 essay in the Huffington Post. Bandow has long pushed for the US to leave our South Korean allies to the tender mercies of Pyongyang.

He now fears that the DPRK might indeed use its nuclear weapons against the Republic of Korea and as a result, drag the United States into defending Seoul. That is because for the past many decades, the United States had pledged to protect South Korea by placing our nuclear umbrella over their country to dissuade any adversary such as North Korea from attacking Seoul.

Thus Bandow concludes our nuclear deterrent umbrella should be quickly “folded up” and put away.

In short, nuclear deterrence provided by the United States, having succeeded for 60 years, is now no longer valuable.

Why?

Even with the US nuclear umbrella over Seoul, Bandow thinks it may not be enough to deter Pyongyang. He has the strange idea that North Korea, with perhaps dozens of nuclear weapons, would attack South Korea and risk war with the United States, which has nearly two thousand deployed nuclear weapons in its strategic arsenal.

This special edition of The Glazov Gang was joined by Stephen Coughlin, the co-founder of UnconstrainedAnalytics.org and the author of the new book, Catastrophic Failure.

He came on the show to discuss How “Rules of Engagement” Get U.S. Soldiers Killed, unveiling the disgraceful and deadly cost America pays for obeying Islamic laws in Afghanistan.

Don’t miss it!http://jamieglazov.com/2016/04/26/how-rules-of-engagement-get-u-s-soldiers-killed-on-the-glazov-gang-2/

Reprinted from Hoover.org.

The sudden death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has reminded us of the great divide in opinion over how the Constitution should be interpreted. Scalia was the most influential and consequential adherent of “originalism” or “textualism.” In Planned Parenthood vs. Casey (1992), he succinctly defined this approach: “Texts and traditions are facts to study, not convictions to demonstrate about.” Since the Constitution is a written text, a judge has the obligation to discern “the plain, original meaning of the constitutional text,” as he said later in NLRB vs. Canning (2014). The alternative is to substitute “freewheeling interpretations” that serve politics and ideology rather than the Constitution’s precepts and principles, and the traditional understanding of its words. “The Constitution,” Scalia said in a speech in 2012, “is not a living organism. It’s a legal document, and it says what it says and doesn’t say what it doesn’t say.”

Scalia was a foe of the idea of the “living Constitution,” as his phrase “living organism” shows. Progressive President Woodrow Wilson was one of the first to espouse the view Scalia rejects. The Founders’ Constitution, with its balance of powers, Wilson said, was a “variety of mechanics” founded on the “law of gravitation.” But a government is a “living thing” that falls under “the theory of organic life” and so is “modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, [and] shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life.” Thus, according to the influential progressive writer Herbert Croly, to better govern and improve the nation, the people had to discard the “strong, almost dominant tendency to regard the existing Constitution with superstitious awe, and to shrink with horror from modifying it even in the smallest degree.” The assumption is that the Founders could never have anticipated the novel technological and social changes in America that had rendered the Constitution an anachronism.

That same assumption underlies much “living Constitution” jurisprudence today. Changing social mores have led Supreme Court justices to tease out of the Constitution “rights” it never mentions. In Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965), Justice William O. Douglas discovered a right to privacy in the Constitution’s “emanations” and “penumbras,” and in Casey vs. Planned Parenthood (1992), Anthony Kennedy found “the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Subsequent decisions on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage have followed the same imperative to “plug the gaps,” as Judge Richard Posner has put it, left in the Constitution by changes in technology and progress in social habits, values, and beliefs.

This conflict between how the Constitution should be interpreted, however, is the result of a deeper, more ancient clash of ideas––how we understand human nature. Are core human attributes––particularly the destructive appetites and passions––permanent aspects of the human condition? Or is human nature “plastic” and able to be improved once environmental obstacles like poverty or ignorance are removed, and after better political, economic, and social institutions are created?

President Obama faces contentious meetings with European and Gulf state leaders during his trip this week to Europe and Saudi Arabia. Why? Because of his continuing refusal to adopt a serious strategy to defeat ISIS, confront Iran’s increasingly belligerent behavior, and his inexplicable comments published in an April 2016 Atlantic article that blamed Europe and Gulf states for his administration’s growing list of foreign policy failures.

The Atlantic article will lead to some awkward questions for Mr. Obama from the leaders of America’s closest allies.

For example, the president will undoubtably be asked by European and Gulf state leaders to explain how, after his administration ignored the growing crisis in Libya for the past four years and his 2011 “leading from behind” strategy during the Libyan civil war, he can criticize European and Gulf states of being “free riders” and not having “skin in the game” in the Libyan situation.

I imagine British Prime Minister Cameron will say to the president, “But Mr. Obama, France and the United Kingdom took the lead in fighting that war because you refused to.”

Saudi leaders are more concerned about Obama’s comment in the Atlantic article that Saudi Arabia needs to find a way to “share the neighborhood” with Iran and “institute some sort of cold peace.” These incoherent remarks must have enraged Saudi officials in light of the July 2015 nuclear deal with Iran which they strongly oppose and a recent surge in Iranian missile tests.

Obama’s tin-eared comments about Saudi Arabia may be why Saudi King Salman was not there to greet him when the president’s plane landed in Riyadh Wednesday. The King did greet other heads of state when they arrived, according to Reuters.

Given the way he has ignored Saudi security concerns and tilted toward Iran during his presidency, I assume the Saudis have written off Mr. Obama and recognize that most experts in Washington – Republican and Democrat – do not share his radical and disjointed foreign policy views. The Saudis know their strong relationship with the United States will survive Barack Obama’s presidency. But even if they do understand this, Saudi leaders also know that this president’s failed Middle East policies did enormous damage to Middle East security that they will have to live with for many years to come.

“If Mr. Obama left office today he’d leave the relationships with America’s three most important partners worse than when he found them; and relations with one of Washington’s erstwhile adversaries – Iran — better.”

Life’s about learning, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young famously sang. And it may well be that in the last year of his presidency, Barack Obama is finally learning that imperfect partners in the Middle East are better than no partners at all, particularly for a president disinclined to invest in a large U.S. presence in the region.

None of this means that relations with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel will fundamentally improve before 2017 — too many divergent interests preclude that. But recent U.S. efforts suggest that Mr. Obama may at least want to stabilize them. With the Middle East a mess, he can’t afford to hand to his successor three relationships in crisis.

Mr. Obama’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia – his fourth since taking office (he’s visited Israel and Egypt only once) reflects the continued importance of the Kingdom in U.S. foreign policy, however strained the relationship has become. Declining dependence on Arab hydrocarbons, differences over Iran and Syria, and the famously missing 28 pages in the 2002 Congressional report that might contain damning information on official Saudi knowledge or role in 9/11 have injected tension into the relationship. Still, the president’s visit wasn’t a disaster and led to new areas of cooperation between the U.S. and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Mr. Obama is likely to hand over to his successor a U.S.-Saudi relationship that, while still fraught with significant divides, is functional and working to the advantage of both.

Wait till Putin gets going on the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

Since one tribe of cavemen began to observe another, it’s been the norm for one tribe or nation to covertly gather information on another. We live in the age of spy satellites and the interception of telephone, email and social media conversations. But these are (unless Hillary Clinton has access to them) kept secret both from our adversaries and the public.

It’s very rare for a new window on our adversaries to open to the public. For years, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has been giving us a view into the otherwise unavailable, untranslated media of the Arab world and Iran. Its translations of newspaper articles, speeches by nations’ leaders — and in the case of many Islamic nations, their terrorist proxies — has been an enormous gift to journalists who take the trouble to avail themselves of them.

Thanks to MEMRI, we have been able to read and research materials that told us, for example, that while Yassir Arafat was preaching peace to the United Nations, he was also, at home, shouting in Arabic that Arabs would go to Jerusalem as “martyrs by the millions.” We knew that Iran’s ayatollahs demanding that crowds chant “death to America” wasn’t like Americans singing “take me out to the ballgame,” it was a religious statement demanded of their people. The vast majority of the source material of my book In the Words of Our Enemiescame from MEMRI.

Now, our friends at MEMRI have opened another window, this time on Vladimir Putin’s Russia through MEMRI’s “Russian Media Studies Project.” Like MEMRI’s studies of Middle Eastern media, MEMRI-Russia provides a lot more than propaganda published at home to the Russian people. It gives considerable insight into what Russian leaders are arguing to each other and to the Russian oligarchy.

Deployments of U.S. forces continues despite the claims of drawdown and withdrawal. The numbers may be on the decline and the use of Special Forces may be on the rise, but the issue that is emerging is why are our military forces in harms way at all. From Rand Paul to Barack Obama, from Donald Trump to Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public, many are asking a fundamental question: What is the benefit to the United States of overseas deployments? It was once a question easily addressed within the context of the Cold War. But at a time when there is a quagmire in the Middle East and modest European expenditures for self-defense, the question emerging directly, and often inadvertently, is why the U.S. is burdened with defending the civilization. Why is President Obama now sending an additional 250 troops into Syria?

Isolationists from Robert Taft to Charles Lindbergh have asked the question and their answer came in Nazi jack booted invasions across Europe and the attack on Pearl Harbor. Today the threat is more complicated and subtle. It does not necessarily rely on nation states. There is also a backdrop of weapons of mass destruction. And much of the enemy’s imperial drive is promoted through religious prescriptions. Hence conventional war may have its place, but it is not likely to be dispositive.

Moreover, the internationalists are also in an odd position. Former Vice President Cheney said we should clean out the “swamp” to prevent attacks here in the United States. The problem, of course, is that attacks have already occurred, “sleepers” are probably in our midst and whatever we do in the Middle East may not forestall future violence at home. The threat has metastasized making it far more difficult to confront. It is also a threat that manifests itself on and off the battlefield. Radicalization of individuals is often as notable a challenge as those firing AK47s.

What has emerged is a void, a giant whole in the foreign policy apparatus. Military officials deploy their troops efficiently and effectively, but they are not engaged in the making of policy. Policy is in the realm of an uninvited guest at a dinner party.

In March, the State Department quietly released records relevant to the Obama administration’s response to the September 11, 2012, Benghazi terrorist attack. Included are transcripts of the telephone call then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had on September 12, only hours after the attack ended, with then-Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil. As explained by Judicial Watch, whose Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the “most transparent administration in history” forced the belated disclosure, Mrs. Clinton flatly told Mr. Kandil, “We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack – not a protest.”

Kandil responded, “You’re not kidding. Based on the information we saw today, we believe the group that claimed responsibility for this is affiliated with al-Qaeda.”

Of course, “the film” Clinton was referring to was “Innocence of Muslims,” an obscure anti-Islamic video trailer that she, President Obama, and the administration tirelessly blamed for the attacks despite – let’s quote Clinton again – “know[ing] the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film.”

The al-Qaeda affiliated group to which the Egyptian prime minister referred as having claimed responsibility was Ansar al-Sharia. (On ties between Ansar al-Sharia and al-Qaeda, and between al Qaeda affiliates and Ahmed Abu Khatallah, the only suspect charged in the Benghazi attack, see Tom Joscelyn’s Long War Journal reports, here and here.) The fact that a jihadist organization tied to al-Qaeda had carried out the attack, in which jihadists killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans working at U.S. government facilities (the purpose of which has still not been adequately explained), was also well known to Clinton from the earliest hours of the siege – while she and the Obama administration were publicly blaming the video.

The collapse of the West is accelerating. The secular, leftist, multiculturalist elites have subverted Europe so successfully that the clash of civilizations is ending not with a bang, but with a whimper. The continent’s leaders have imported a violent, virulently anti-Western horde in the form of mass male Muslim migration; a rape culture and terrorist mayhem are becoming the new normal; and the best self-defense the Europeans can muster is ragtag bands of vigilantes. Here in America the cultural decay is less dramatic but gathering momentum as the radical left’s half-century war on American exceptionalism takes its toll.

As the West commits slow-motion suicide, and fundamentalist Islam advances, the questions arise: what can we do to recover our cultural self-confidence? How can we restore the vigor and greatness of Western civilization? How do we revive the unique values of our culture and push back against the barbarians at (and within) the gate?

A new book from Canadian publisher Mantua Books addresses these urgent concerns: Back to the Ethic: Reclaiming Western Values, by Diane Weber Bederman. Bederman is a multi-faith endorsed, hospital-trained chaplain who contributes regularly to CanadaFreePress and the Times of Israel, as well as maintaining her own blog.

Back to the Ethic is both a personal memoir and a broader cultural prescription. From the author’s own death-defying struggle with illness and depression to her meditations on a secularized culture that itself is mortally ill, the book stresses our need to return to the Judeo-Christian ethical monotheism that is at the root of Western civilization’s success.

Bederman begins by simply stating what I noted at the outset of this review – that “our belief systems are under attack.” Those belief systems, she writes, derive from our “foundational story,” the Bible. “The Hebrew Bible, filled with these teachings, the Gospels, and the New Testament make up the backbone of the Judeo-Christian ethic as practiced today in the Western world.”

Ethical monotheism, the 3500-year-old value system that began with Moses and the Israelites wandering in the desert, spread outward from that humble beginning to transform the earth. “And the world’s greatest transformation,” claims Bederman, “has been the knowledge that we humans are individually accountable for our actions.” It taught us that “we each have intrinsic value – we matter because we exist.”

Every age preceding ours sanctioned acts that we find morally stupefying. So it is reasonable to assume that there are at least some things we are presently doing — possibly while flush with moral virtue — that our descendants will regard with exhalations of “What were they thinking?” Anyone interested in our age should wonder what these modern blind spots might be — those things akin to slavery or the Victorians’ shoving children up chimneys. As an entry into this category, you could do worse than consider the case of Nathan (born Nancy) Verhelst.

This was a Belgian who as a little girl felt that her brothers were favored over her. In adulthood she chose to “transition” into a man. She underwent hormone therapies as well as surgical operations. These were insufficiently successful for Nancy’s liking and left considerable scarring. Nathan — as he then was — became depressed. In September 2013, when Nathan was 44 years old, the Belgian state killed him by lethal injection because of his “unbearable psychological suffering.”

Perhaps we can leave the ethics of trying to turn women into men for another day. But it seems likely that any future civilization will look back on the practice of euthanasia in the Western liberal democracies in the early 21st century and sense an awesome moral chasm: “Let me get this right, the Belgian health service tried to turn her into a man and then killed her?” Strangest of all might seem the fact that this killing was done in a spirit not of malice or cruelty, but of kindness.

Several advanced Western countries now practice some form of euthanasia. The State of Oregon allows a version that was much cited in the United Kingdom last year, when there was an unsuccessful attempt to introduce a euthanasia bill in the parliament. But nothing yet equals the practice of euthanasia in the two most liberal democracies of Western Europe: Belgium and Holland. In both countries, deciding (or, in cases of dementia, having decided for you) the date of your death has become, in the eyes of euthanasia advocates, a positive — indeed a liberal — act. The generation of Baby Boomers in the Low Countries that led the way in advancing the rights of sexual and other minorities are the same generation that then advanced the “right” to die. For them, it is the last right. As with some other rights arguments, the case puts the rights of the individual over those of the community irrespective of the impact this may have on wider society.

Even so, no other “right” can be said to have anywhere near the implications of this last one. The “right to death” makes every other right look like a plaything by comparison, because enjoying the right to death changes almost everything about the way a society views not only death but also life and the very purpose (or otherwise) of existence.