RUTHFULLY YOURS

The White House must restore trust in the military, and Congress should increase defense spending.

Mr. Obama enters the last quarter of his presidency with the Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress. This guarantees friction at a time when a bellicose Russia has shattered stability in central Europe and when we are fighting a haphazard war in the Middle East. There are two steps that the president and the Congress could take to enhance our national security, reduce risk, and improve the relationship between the two branches of government.

First, repair the distrust between the White House and our military. Two successive secretaries of defense — the moderate Republican Robert Gates and the staunch Democrat Leon Panetta — issued the same public critique: The White House staff has usurped too much power in national-security matters and manifests a distrust of the military. Our common security has been badly served by this development.

The solution is obvious. Mr. Obama should appoint as his national-security adviser a centrist with an impeccable professional reputation and a long-standing relationship with the military. There are many well-qualified candidates. Our intent is not to place any particular name forward. Rather, it is to point to previous examples, including retired general Brent Scowcroft during George H. W. Bush’s term and retired ambassador Frank Carlucci during President Reagan’s second term.

Why is a change needed now? To put it bluntly, Mr. Obama needs someone skillful to mold policy to fit military realities. In Afghanistan, the administration has promised to withdraw all U.S. troops by the end of 2016. No experienced commander believes it is wise to pull out completely. The risk is simply too great.

Indeed, because we did pull out of Iraq, that country fell apart, and we were compelled to go back in. But we have done so in a haphazard way. The president’s promise that no American will engage in ground combat is too extreme. Our warriors are both professional and volunteers. They want to fight for us. Yes, the vast bulk of fighters against the Islamists should be Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. But consider what happened in Afghanistan in November of 2001. A handful of our Special Forces teams, some on horseback, called down America’s awesome aerial firepower upon the Taliban and al-Qaeda, enabling local forces to take over. Similarly, we should not tie one arm behind our back in Iraq. A few small American teams protected by our powerful air support would provide a vast psychological and physical leverage.

First, he was courageous; second, the jihadists are waging an absolute and global war.

In life, Peter Kassig sacrificed to alleviate the suffering of strangers. In death, he rendered proof to a sacred creed of courage: “Surrender is not a Ranger word.”

Concluding their latest video, released yesterday, a man who appears to be “Jihadi John” of the Islamic State mocks the former U.S. Army Ranger, Mr. Kassig with this taunt: “doesn’t have much to say.” Peter’s decapitated head is then shown at the feet of Jihadi John. This is the Islamic State’s holy humor.

Nevertheless, Kassig’s silence says much about this fine man. It suggests that he denied his murderers the pleasure of a kneeled submission. With this act of courage, he perhaps lessened the terrible pain of his family.

We must pay heed to this latest atrocity because it is yet another grisly testament to the threat we face. In keeping with previous Islamic State (IS) videos, this latest is overlaid by jihadist soundtracks, and its high production expenditures are obvious, including slow-motion shots, multiple camera angles, and extensive editing. At one point, a line of IS fighters — each grasping a captive from the Syrian military — proceeds toward a box of knives. Each fighter grabs a knife and keeps walking. Next, the prisoners are shown on their knees, gazing at the camera with blank stares. The terrorists twirl their knives perversely. Then, the masked coward, Jihadi John, rants. The captives are slowly beheaded. The videographers make particular effort to emphasize their pain.

In its pure grotesqueness, this video illuminates the Islamic State’s agenda. First on its list is the recruitment of more jihadists; the staged murder is persuasive propaganda to those who fetishize death. As I’ve noted before, IS videos are systematically designed to attract to the jihadist cause a particular minority of young, angry, socially disconnected Muslims. This latest installment in the videography of evil implies that IS intends to escalate its terrorism.

But there’s more here than meets the eye. What’s also notable is that Jihadi John’s eyes are shown in a close-up during the beheadings. This shows that IS is aware that this man’s identity is known to Western intelligence services. The mask now serves not to disguise his identity but to add to the lore of the masked jihadist: It proffers the idea that Jihadi John could be anyone and that the Islamic State is truly a global organization.

Damn Americans. They just don’t see the wisdom of surrendering to experts the power they need to remake the country into a progressive paradise.

Sighing with regret, liberals like Jonathan Gruber admit that they’re forced to hoodwink the citizens. For their own good.
Gruber, the MIT economist who (in the words of The New York Times) “put together the basic principles of” ObamaCare and helped Congress “draft the specifics of the legislation” is one of a long line of liberals driven by the belief that the stupidity of the American people is so insurmountable that persuasion is futile.
Liberalism: the place where compassion blurs into condescension.
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage and basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass,” Gruber said, in a newly unearthed 2013 video that went viral last week.

Gruber’s jocular tone wasn’t surprising. In explaining why a huge tax increase was disguised to conceal it from the American people, he was admitting what was obvious to close observers: The law is really just a redistribution scheme.
Even the Democrats didn’t think ObamaCare could pass by being so described.
That’s why deception, as Gruber says, was central to its design.
Profiting from deceit

Except Gruber got it wrong: The people weren’t actually fooled. Most Americans are not wonks. They simply suspected that the law was too good to be true.
ObamaCare will cut your premiums? By $2,500 a year? And reduce the deficit? While giving gold-plated coverage to tens of millions more people? Who won’t have to pay much? And none of this will result in anyone losing their current plan?
To the average person, Obama sounded like a used-car dealer shouting, “Free Ferrari. Gets 100 miles to the gallon! Did I mention it runs on rainwater?”

Americans didn’t buy it. Never did. At no time has approval for ObamaCare hit 50% in the Gallup poll.

Keynote Muslim Sermon Recites Koranic Themes of Conquering and Condemning Christians and Jews at National Cathedral “Ecumenical” Event

This past Thursday (11/3/14) in anticipation of a midday Friday Islamic service, to be held, November 14th in the National Cathedral I noted the willful obliviousness to a grim centennial remembrance: November 11, 1914, when the Ottoman Sheikh ul-Islam (supreme Muslim religious authority) issued fatwas (religious edicts) declaring a jihad against non-Muslim state enemies of the last Muslim “Caliphate.”

Subsequent Ottoman Muslim fatwas (see here; here) promulgated during the World War I era would target Christian minorities, under Sharia-based Ottoman Muslim rule, for genocidal jihadism against these hapless non-Muslim victims. The Ottoman jihad ravages were as barbaric and depraved as the recent horrific spate of ISIS atrocities in Iraq and Syria, and far more extensive. Occurring, largely between 1915-16 (continuing through at least 1918), some one million Armenian, and 250,000 Assyro-Chaldean and Syrian Orthodox Christians were brutally slaughtered, or starved to death during forced deportations orchestrated by their Ottoman Muslim rulers, through arid wastelands.

Following the Friday November 14th event (which can be viewed in its entirety, here; or here; see also this useful written summary account), Dean of the National Cathedral, Gary Hall, when questioned about this cruelly ironic timing, conceded, “I did not know that it was that anniversary”—but then segued into an unconscionable immoral equivalence defending the “ecumenical” Muslim prayer service.

But knowing it now, it actually seems to be more appropriate to have an event that is on an anniversary of a hard time… There have been atrocities on both sides. There have been extremists on both sides.

After viewing Friday’s ostensible exercise in “ecumenism” at The National Cathedral, it is impossible for me to discern whether the Christian event organizers are more ethically, or intellectually cretinous. Consider the main khutbah (or sermon) delivered by Muslim South African Ambassador to the U.S. (and champion of the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood), Ebrahim Rasool.

Iran is racing forward with its nuclear-bomb making effort. The Obama administration is racing forward with its effort to get the ayatollahs to sign a piece of paper promising peace in our time. The only thing Secretary of State Kerry’s diplomacy is missing these days is the same kind of hat that Neville Chamberlain held in his hand as he met with Herr Hitler in Munich and begged him to be reasonable.

What alternatives exist for stopping Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon? Several years ago, U.S. and Israeli intelligence attempted to derail Iranian nuclear progress by introducing the Stuxnet virus into Iran’s uranium processing facility at Natanz. If the operation’s objective was to stop Iran in its nuclear tracks, it failed. But it might have temporarily slowed the Iranians down. A fascinating new book, Countdown to Zero Day, has assembled what is known about the cyber-attack. You can read my review of it in the Wall Street Journal . G.S.
Hacking the Ayatollahs
The Stuxnet virus opened and closed valves on Iranian centrifuges and adjusted their power supply as false readings were fed to operators.

In early 2010, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency noticed a problem at Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz, Iran. The centrifuges employed to separate enriched uranium—the precursor to bomb-grade material—from uranium hexafluoride gas were breaking down at a startling rate. What the inspectors did not know was that the facility was under attack by Stuxnet, a computer virus designed by American and Israeli intelligence agencies under the code name Operation Olympic Games. “Countdown to Zero Day” by Kim Zetter, a reporter for the technology magazine Wired, gives a full account of this “hack of the century,” as the operation has been called. Exhaustively researched, the book goes well beyond its ostensible subject to offer a hair-raising introduction to the age of cyber warfare.

What about Mohammedus Vespuci, And Mohammedo Magellan, and Mohammed Leif Ericson???? rsk

President Erdogan also claims that Columbus reported on a mosque on a hill in Cuba.

From our “Some Muslims Believe the Craziest Things” department comes words of wisdom from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Giving a speech before some Latin American Muslims, Erdogan decided to give a little history lesson. He claims that America was discovered by Muslims in the 12th century — there’s even proof via none other than Christopher Columbus, who supposedly wrote in his journal about a mosque on a hill in Cuba.

AFP reports:

“Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th century. Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus,” the conservative president said in a televised speech during an Istanbul summit of Muslim leaders from Latin America.

“Muslim sailors arrived in America from 1178. Columbus mentioned the existence of a mosque on a hill on the Cuban coast,” Erdogan said.

Erdogan said that Ankara was even prepared to build a mosque at the site mentioned by the Genoese explorer.

“I would like to talk about it to my Cuban brothers. A mosque would go perfectly on the hill today,” the Turkish leader said.

History books say that Columbus set foot on the American continent in 1492 as he was seeking a new maritime route to India.

A tiny minority of Muslim scholars have recently suggested a prior Muslim presence in the Americas, although no pre-Columbian ruin of an Islamic structure has ever been found.

Driver’s licenses for illegals is defeated by a 2-1 margin.

Little noticed after the midterm vote, which saw the GOP take control of the Senate and increase their majority in the House, was a referendum in sky blue Oregon to repeal the law that granted illegal immigrants the right to obtain a driver’s license.

Even though the Democrats increased their majority in the state legislature and a Democratic governor was reelected, the measure for repeal passed by a 2-1 margin.

This is a stark warning to President Obama and the Democrats that if he acts alone to amnesty 5 million illegals, his march to irrelevancy will be complete, and the party he leads could pay an awful price in 2016.

The Associated Press reports:

The state law had seemed to be popular. It easily passed last year with bipartisan support in the Democratic-controlled Legislature and was signed Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber, who was re-elected Nov. 4.

Opponents barely gathered enough signatures to put the repeal question on the ballot. Immigrant rights groups outspent their opponents 10-1.

Still, the measure failed in every county but the state’s most liberal one, Multnomah, home to Portland. Even there it trailed significantly behind other Democratic candidates and causes.

“It was really the epitome of a grassroots effort,” said Cynthia Kendoll, one of the activists who led the campaign against licenses. “There’s such a disconnect between what people really want and what’s happening.”

Obama made his postelection pledge on immigration despite the drubbing that Democrats took across the country. He said he had to act because Congress has deadlocked on immigration for years.

A bipartisan Senate bill to provide citizenship to many of the 11 million people in the U.S. illegally died in the Republican-controlled House, and with the GOP now holding a majority in the Senate, many believe it is unlikely any broad immigration measure could make it to Obama before the end of his term.

As Jonathan Gruber knows, the health-care law is a tax machine. The ‘Cadillac’ levy will hit the middle class.

Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist, is making himself a household name, and not in a good way. A series of videos have emerged in recent days showing Mr. Gruber—an architect of the Affordable Care Act—telling college audiences that major parts of the law were designed purposely to mask its true cost to individual Americans.

As Mr. Gruber put it, speaking last year at a conference at the University of Pennsylvania: “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”

One example cited by Mr. Gruber is the so-called Cadillac tax, as the ObamaCare excise tax on high-value employer health plans is known. The tax, which he helped devise and will take effect in 2018, imposes a 40% levy on individual health plans worth more than $10,200, and on family plans worth more than $27,500. As Mr. Gruber’s remarks were unearthed last week, economist Mark Wilson and I released a study of the excise tax that shows he is right about its deceptive design. The tax is likely to hit many people who don’t have high-end coverage.

Mr. Gruber says in one video that his real aim was to reduce the tax break available to those who get employer-sponsored insurance, about 170 million Americans. He lamented that it would be hard to persuade Congress to reduce people’s tax breaks: “You just can’t get through. It’s politically impossible.” True enough—the excise tax does the job instead. It is a stealthy way to reduce the tax preference for health care without taking it away from employers.

If the White House press corps wants to keep government honest, here’s a question to ask as President Obama prepares to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants by executive order: Has he sought, and does he have, any written legal justification from the Attorney General and the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) for his actions?

This would be standard operating procedure in any normal Presidency. Attorney General Eric Holder is the executive branch’s chief legal officer, and Administrations of both parties typically ask OLC for advice on the parameters of presidential legal authority.

The Obama Administration has asked OLC for its legal opinions on such controversial national security questions as drone strikes and targeting U.S. citizens abroad. It was right do so even though the Constitution gives Presidents enormous authority on war powers and foreign policy.

But a Justice-OLC opinion is all the more necessary on domestic issues because the President’s authority is far more limited. He is obliged to execute the laws that Congress writes. A President should always seek legal justification for controversial actions to ensure that he is on solid constitutional ground as well as to inspire public confidence in government.

Yet as far as we have seen, Mr. Obama sought no such legal justification in 2012 when he legalized hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. The only document we’ve found in justification is a letter from the Secretary of Homeland Security at the time, Janet Napolitano, to law enforcement agencies citing “the exercise of our prosecutorial discretion.” Judging by recent White House leaks, that same flimsy argument will be the basis for legalizing millions more adults.

It’s possible Messrs. Obama and Holder haven’t sought an immigration opinion because they suspect there’s little chance that even a pliant Office of Legal Counsel could find a legal justification. Prosecutorial discretion is a vital legal concept, but it is supposed to be exercised in individual cases, not to justify a refusal to follow the law against entire classes of people.

The truth is that there has never been an Israeli genocide against Palestinians, and that Israel has done everything in its power apart from not going to war at all — that is, apart from surrendering — to spare innocent lives, including the lives of people trying to destroy it.

Israel simply became a safe haven for a persecuted religious minority who sought statehood after having concluded that no state could guarantee their safety except for a Jewish state.

That Israel is not even any kind of player in this Muslim Sunni-Shia “ISIS War” apparently did not occur to Wijenberg.

As is so often true when vilifying Israel, “Israel” is, at bottom, most likely just a transparent fig-leaf for again vilifying “Jews.”

An increasingly popular argument, when certain Dutch officials and Muslim commentators discuss Islamic State [IS] jihadists from Europe, is that these jihadists are really no different from European Jews who choose to serve in the Israel Defense Forces [IDF].

In The Netherlands this trend seems to have started when an op-ed, entitled, “Jihad for Israel,” written for Al-Jazeera by Columbia University PhD. candidate Hanine Hassan, was translated into Dutch for the website “Wij Blijven Hier,” which means “We Are Here To Stay.” The website is hugely popular among Dutch youths from a Muslim background.

The main thesis of the op-ed was that serving in the IDF should be as punishable as joining IS, as the IDF, too, is a genocidal regime, just like IS.