RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Obama administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East and parts of North Africa has been a series of disasters – at times spectacular disasters – almost since day one. It is ironic that a man who claims to respect the dignity of every human being should have such an egregious record of abandoning people in need of his help, up to and including those specifically looking to him for aid. One needs only to point to a Middle Eastern country to find an example of his international incompetence.

No such discussion is complete without mentioning the site of some of Obama’s most flagrant failures to act: Iran. In 2009, arguably millions of Iranian protesters took to the streets demanding freedom, democracy, and human rights in what has come to be known as “The Green Movement.” Angered by the highly suspicious re-election of then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, this overwhelmingly peaceful outburst of popular demonstrations has taken on a life of its own, standing for the fundamental dignity of a people and their right to self-govern. Rightly idolizing the United States for the principles of liberty and justice that are so basic as to be taken for granted by most Americans, the Iranian protesters began emulating their Western counterparts, dressing in jeans and other modern U.S. apparel. They even specifically sought help from President Barack Obama, chanting, “Obama, Obama, ya ba oona ya bama” (Farsi for “Obama, you are either with them or with us”) in the streets.

Many savvy political analysts believe the Democrats have a built in advantage in the Electoral College. Democrats have won four of the last six Presidential elections, and in all six races, they have won a collection of 18 states plus the District of Columbia, now totaling 242 Electoral College votes. These states include all of the New England states except New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia. Democrats have won 5 of the last 6 Presidential contests in New Hampshire, Iowa, and New Mexico, three states with 15 Electoral College votes. Since 270 Electoral College votes are needed for victory, if history is a guide, Democrats start off with a collection of states that puts them very close to victory. The blue wall is not mythology.

President Obama is concerned with burnishing his legacy during this second term of his presidency. One major part of his legacy will be the way his “divider and conqueror” political tactics have highlighted the many pathologies plaguing black urban culture in this country, and have brought about a massive deterioration in “race relations.”

These pathologies did not originate with Obama. They have been half a century in the making, and may be traced to the mid-1960s when the legitimate civil rights movement was co-opted by the Left under the twin rubrics of the “War on Poverty” and the “Great Society.” If indeed we have been engaged in a “war on poverty,” it is long past time for us to acknowledge that poverty has been winning.

The most recent manifestations of this to shock the nation are the riots in Baltimore, and the multifarious excuses for them made by Baltimore Mayor (and secretary of the Democratic National Committee) Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. Yet, despite her posturings and those of other Democratic apologists, the one thing clear beyond doubt in the case of the Baltimore disturbances is that “white racism” has little or nothing to do with the problem.

Despite warnings by moral conservatives, advances in genetics and reproductive technology have created the conditions for a consumer-driven mass eugenics industry. Like it or not, science is about to pose a slather of moral, ethical and societal dilemmas.

A legal, social and biological revolution is taking place worldwide without much serious thinking of the consequences. Consider this: in Britain the House of Commons recently approved the use of “three-parent IVF” to remove defective mitochondrial DNA from babies.[1]

Each year in Britain about 100 children are born with mutated mitochondrial DNA, resulting in about ten cases of fatal disease to the liver, nerves or heart. A new in vitro fertilisation (IVF) technique developed at the University of Newcastle allows doctors to replace a mother’s defective mitochondrial DNA with that of a healthy donor, presumably using pre-implantation sequencing and microscopic operation on the zygote. Mitochondrial DNA does not affect appearance, personality or intelligence, and it reduces kinship—genetic similarity—by only about 1 per cent. Still, the resulting child, though its nuclear DNA would come from its main parents, would have three parents.

Critics warned that this would set society off down a slippery slope to eugenics and “designer babies”. A government official, the “British Fertility Regulator”, replied to this warning with the observation that most people support the therapy. This was intended to assuage the concerns expressed. In fact it would seem to confirm them, since widespread support for a product or service indicates a readiness to adopt it. Sure enough, though there had been little public discussion in advance of the Commons debate, the new techniques were nonetheless approved by a large parliamentary majority. Australian scientists have since called for the British policy to be emulated.[2]
Despite half a century of warnings by moral conservatives, advances in genetics and reproductive technology have created the conditions for a consumer-driven mass eugenics industry. Here is the Oxford dictionary definition of “Eugenics”: “the science of improving a population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics”. It has a bad historical reputation because authoritarian governments have denied civil liberties in the name of eugenics. But as we shall see, both the definition and the reputation of eugenics have been overtaken by advances in science, medicine and marketing. Eugenics has since reappeared in many countries in the form of voluntary genetics counselling—a medical service provided to help parents avoid genetic disorders in their children[3]; and IVF has become a sizeable industry that offers parents the genetic screening of embryos and other eugenic choices.

I left Israel last week just before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a new coalition with the Bayit Yehudi (“Jewish Home”) and religious parties, with the slimmest of parliamentary. The response from the punditeska was a predictable as the emergence of a gumball after one introduces a quarter and turns the knob: Netanyahu and the ogres from the settlements are the supposed obstacle to peace. Inside Israel, the matter looks otherwise. I don’t meddle in Israeli politics, but the reason Israelis support a tough government should be obvious to the casual observer.

Writing in the May 7 Financial Times, former Obama Middle East aide Philip Gordon warns Netanyahu against “expanding settlements, punishing the Palestinian Authority for its quest for international recognition, [and] insisting on an indefinite presence of Israeli forces on the West Bank and intervening militarily in Gaza. The risk is that this could ultimately lead to the collapse of the PA, Israeli reoccupation of West Bank cities and expanded global efforts to isolate Israel.”

M.K.Bhadrakumar writes off-line: “Interesting! How could the international community have got Israel so hopelessly wrong? Anti-Semitism?” There is enough of that, particularly among Europeans (who will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz), but it is ridiculous to think that Chancellor Angela Merkel, by far the most poweful European leader, is anti-Semitic. Nor for that matter is Indian Prime Minister Modi, who congratulated Prime Minister Netanyahu on his re-elction in a Hebrew-language message, and who in any case may abandon support for a Palestinian state at the UN. The League of Nations did not betray China in 1931 out prejudice towards Chinese, but out of cynicism.

David Archibald, a visiting fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of Twilight of Abundance (Regnery, 2014)

Humans, we’re a strange species — not least for the peculiar inherited traits and propensities that so often seem innate as the colour of eyes and hair. Social engineers advocate legislation as the great leveller, but stubborn genes just aren’t listening.

So, if there are far more deleterious mutations than beneficial ones in each generation, how did we get a far as we did? How that happened is detailed in Gregory Clark’s “A Farewell to Alms”. Human society has traditionally been run as a meritocracy with assortative mating amongst the more productive members of society. Pre-contraception, more productive members of society had larger families than less productive people, who barely scraped by. So, while everyone suffered from the same mutational load, the effects of assortative mating could overcome that and the genetic makeup improved. The replacement fertility rate to keep population steady is considered to be 2.3 children per woman. That is purely in terms of numbers. Including the mutational load, the number might be 2.5 or higher.

“[B]oth the ISIS and Islamic Republic use rape as a political weapon against Kurdish women on the basis of ethnicity, gender, and religion. The only difference is that the Islamic Republic denies its well-documented abuses while ISIS publically defends its enslavement of Kurdish women and girls.” — Dr. Amir Sharifi, Director, Kurdish Human Rights Advocacy Group.

“Women in Iran as a whole, and Kurdish women in particular, have very little legal protection against sexual harassment or violence.” — Dr. Amir Sharifi, Director, Kurdish Human Rights Advocacy Group.

One of the most savage forms of state-sponsored human rights abuse aimed at women in custody in Iran is the raping of virgins prior to execution.

Sixty-nine years after the fall of the Kurdish Republic, the fate of Kurds in Iranian Kurdistan is still in the hands of a regime hostile to them and to all the values of the West.

The rape and torture of Kurdish and dissidents in Iran — both women and men — is now widespread and systematic.

Saudi monarch’s decision signals that the Arab states aren’t on board with nuclear accord.

WASHINGTON—Saudi Arabia’s monarch pulled out of a summit to be hosted by President Barack Obama on Thursday, in a blow to the White House’s efforts to build Arab support for a nuclear accord with Iran.

King Salman’s decision appeared to ripple across the Persian Gulf. Bahrain said on Sunday that its ruler, King Hamad bin Isaa Al Khalifa, had opted not to travel to Washington.

The only two monarchs from the six countries confirmed to attend the summit at the White House and the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., were the emirs of Qatar and Kuwait.

At stake for the White House is Mr. Obama’s key foreign-policy initiative, an Iran pact that is proceeding toward a June 30 deadline without support from regional powers. King Salman’s decision signals that the Arab states aren’t on board and could continue to act on their own to thwart Tehran, as Saudi Arabia has done in leading a military coalition against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen.

America after World War II practiced containment. U.S. foreign policy now is self-containment.On Saturday Russia marked the 70th anniversary of victory in Europe during World War II, with Moscow’s Red Square looking like a staging area for blitzkrieg. With 15,000 soldiers, 200 tanks and missile launchers, and 140 combat aircraft, the parade was a spectacle of bluster and intimidation.

The rest of the world was not amused. Barack Obama stayed away, as did the leaders of Britain, France and Germany. Not even North Korea’s Kim Jong Un showed up. It was Vladimir Putin home alone.

If President Obama had a sense of history, he might have thrown, in Washington, a more heartening party, to which V-E Day would serve only as prologue. Pride of place would go to the beginning of the most glorious chapter in American foreign policy, the Pax Americana that has held for 70 years and benefited not only the United States, but also the rest of the world.

The American-built postwar order is not ancient history; the story comes with a thoroughly modern moral. Success was not foreordained. As today, the U.S. in 1945 was tired and eager to go home. Meeting with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at Yalta, Franklin D. Rooseveltconfided to “Uncle Joe” that he might give away the store. The U.S. would withdraw from the travails of the world; its troops would not stay in Europe for more than two years. Let Britain, France, Russia and the U.N. do it.