RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Campaign Against Serbia in 1999 Averaged 138 Strike Sorties Daily. Against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria: Seven.

Since U.S. planes first struck targets in Iraq on Aug. 8, a debate has raged over the effectiveness of the Obama administration’s air campaign against Islamic State. The war of words has so far focused on the need to deploy American boots on the ground to provide accurate intelligence and possibly force ISIS fighters to defend key infrastructure they have seized, such as oil facilities. But debate is now beginning to focus on the apparent failure of airstrikes to halt the terror group’s advances in Iraq and Syria—especially Islamic State’s pending seizure of Kobani on the Syrian border with Turkey.

While it is still too early to proclaim the air campaign against Islamic State a failure, it may be instructive to compare it with other campaigns conducted by the U.S. military since the end of the Cold War that were deemed successes. For instance, during the 43-day Desert Storm air campaign against Saddam Hussein’s forces in 1991, coalition fighters and bombers flew 48,224 strike sorties. This translates to roughly 1,100 sorties a day. Twelve years later, the 31-day air campaign that helped free Iraq from Saddam’s government averaged more than 800 offensive sorties a day.

By contrast, over the past two months U.S. aircraft and a small number of partner forces have conducted 412 total strikes in Iraq and Syria—an average of seven strikes a day. With Islamic State in control of an area approaching 50,000 square miles, it is easy to see why this level of effort has not had much impact on its operations.

Of course, air operations during Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom were each supported by a massive coalition force on the ground. Thus it may be more appropriate to compare current operations against Islamic State with the 78-day air campaign against Serbian forces and their proxies in 1999, or the 75-day air campaign in Afghanistan that was instrumental in forcing the Taliban out of power in 2001.

A mix of the far-left, the far-right, radical Islam, and a dysfunctional political class.

A recent survey conducted by a British firm, ICM Research, and published on August 14 by the Russian press agency Rossiya Segodnia, tested European opinion toward the jihadist Sunni organization now known as Islamic State (IS). Reassuringly, the poll showed solid majorities in France, Germany, and the UK opposed to IS and what it stands for. Presumably, this would have satisfied Rossiya Segodnya’s primary interest in the exercise, since IS is a foe both of the Assad regime in Syria (a Russian ally) and of Iran (a Russian partner).

But what did the survey reveal about the minority of Europeans who are favorably disposed to IS? That is the more interesting terrain. In Britain, the figure for those holding “positive” views of IS stood at a moderately low but still disquieting 7 percent, which included the 2 percent whose views were “very positive.” In Germany, the comparable figures were significantly lower: 2 percent and zero percent. But in France, by contrast to both countries, they rose to an impressive 16 percent and 3 percent. Buried in the survey report, moreover, was an even more unsettling contrast: of those under the age of twenty-four, fully 27 percent in France declared themselves supporters or admirers of IS, versus only 4 percent and 3 percent in the UK and Germany.

ICM Research is a highly respected pollster, and its findings—which strikingly confirm Robert Wistrich’s sober analysis of the French situation in his Mosaic essay, “Summer in Paris”—cannot be easily dismissed. Indeed, for the past many weeks they have formed the subject of ongoing discussion among French political scientists and others.

The one positive thing — pretty much the only positive thing — about having a leftist president is the assumption that he will champion human rights.

How, then, to explain President Obama’s nonexistent response to the massive pro-democracy demonstrations currently underway in Hong Kong? After all, more than 200,000 people are in the streets, refusing to accept the revocation of Chinese promises of greater freedom, and yet, not a word of moral support for them from the president of the United States? Chinese communism is facing a growing existential threat, and the supposed greatest representative of liberty — the American president — is silent.

Why?

Three things happened in Mr. Obama’s first year-and-a-half in office that signaled to the Chinese communist leadership that he would allow it a free hand in the way it treated its own people and the way it behaved in the Pacific Rim as well as globally.

Episode 1: In 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton turned her back on victims of Chinese oppression when she gave a speech that suggested we’d look the other way on human rights as long as we could deal productively on economic and strategic issues. The Chinese heard the message loud and clear, and subsequently ramped up their policy of jailing, torturing and killing democracy advocates, ethnic minorities and Catholics, among others. By early 2011, she had backed off from her “see no evil” position.

Mr. Obama, however, has utterly failed to take on the Chinese on the issue. In 1993, I was in the room in Beijing when former President Richard Nixon blasted the communist leadership on human rights. Their only counterargument was a lame point about the need to control more than 1 billion people. Nixon wasn’t having it, and neither should Mr. Obama. Human rights is the one area in which we actually do have some leverage with the Chinese, and yet Mr. Obama has been an AWOL moral warrior.

There are two mistaken tropes about artistic genius that suffuse the screenplay of Whiplash: one is that it is enhanced by suffering and the other is that it borders on madness. This is a movie about a young drummer determined to gain immortality through his dedication to excellence; it is also a movie about a teacher rationalizing his own sadistic psychoses by pretending that abject humiliation is an effective tool for weeding out the merely talented from the truly great. It’s Rocky meets The Great Santini within the academic halls of the best music school in America.

Andrew arrives at Shaffer Conservatory (read Julliard) as a naive young man, ill at ease with girls and anxious to gain the favor of Fletcher, the charismatic teacher who heads the prestigious jazz band. Played by J.K. Simmons as the most tightly wound marine sargeant since Full Metal Jacket, the teacher gives Andrew the nod, inviting him to participate in this inner sanctum. From this point on, we cringe as Andrew and other students suffer the consequences of Fletcher’s abuse – staccato tirades of vulgar, homophobic invenctive mingled with the outing of each individual’s personal weakness or tragedy. The phoniness of this plot point can best be illustrated by referencing what’s happened to football coaches and owners of basketball teams in our politically correct culture. Racism and homophobia are the ultimate sins – the punishments for these “hate crimes” are more severe than for theft, drug abuse or plain physical assault. The chair-hurling, gay-bashing Fletcher would last at a prestigious music school for as much time as it takes for students to video his outbursts and post them online.

States with key Senate races face double-digit premium hikes

Those planning to purchase health insurance on the Obamacare exchange will soon find out how much rates have increased — after the Nov. 4 election.

Enrollment on the Healthcare.gov website begins Nov. 15, or 11 days after the midterm vote, and critics who worry about rising premium hikes in 2015 say that’s no coincidence. Last year’s inaugural enrollment period on the health-care exchange began Oct. 1.

“This is more than just a glitch,” said Tim Phillips, president of free-market Americans for Prosperity, in a Friday statement. “The administration’s decision to withhold the costs of this law until after Election Day is just more proof that Obamacare is a bad deal for Americans.”

Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, said in a Monday column in USA Today that “when it comes to a lack of openness and transparency about Obamacare, this administration has no peer.”

Even so, details about cost increases are trickling out in states with pivotal Senate contests: Alaska, Iowa and Louisiana. All three states are wrestling with double-digit premium hikes from some state insurance companies on the exchange, which has fueled another round of Republican attacks on the Affordable Care Act.

Adam Andrzejewski is the founder of OpenTheBooks.com a project of American Transparency 501(c)3.

In 2011, the Chicago Tribune exposed a pair of Illinois teacher union lobbyists, Stephen Preckwinkle and David Piccioli, who substitute taught for one day and stood to collect nearly $1 million in state teacher retirement pensions from a severely underfunded system. The five Illinois pension systems have a $100 billion liability and the teachers fund may run out of money as early as 2029. Newspaper editorials, elected officials, the governor and citizens cried foul. Legislation was quickly passed to stop the abuse.

When Gov. Pat Quinn signed the pension “reform” legislation into law on January 5, 2012, he said. “The pension abuses unearthed were flagrant. They needed to be stopped immediately and prevented from ever happening in the future.”

Mission accomplished, or so it seemed.

Even though all Illinois citizens were led to believe that the pension abusers had been stopped, within twenty-four months after the “reform” legislation passed, the union lobbyists retired and received their lifetime Illinois state teacher pensions.

Even in Illinois, how this could have happened? The governor and the entire statewide media and political class took credit for stopping these abuses in late 2011 through January 2012.

A couple of weeks ago, we spotted Preckwinkle and Piccioli within a long list of 30 state retirees from the Illinois Federation of Teachers (private sector teachers union). Sure enough, in 2014, Piccioli is receiving $30,564 and Preckwinkle $37,416 pensions (click here for their life expectancy pension payouts of nearly $1 million each). The experience was a bit overwhelming, even for our seasoned team of forensic investigators.

In order to understand this massive pension “reform misunderstanding,” we questioned the Public Relations Spokesman for the Teachers Retirement System (TRS) David Urbanek, who explained:

In Vegas, at least, there are rules and there are limits.

Yes, I am a sinner and occasionally I like to put two dollars on a horse. I know the people and have even written books on gambling. In a recent novel I touched on addicts. I offer these credentials to warn future players that there is no sorrier longshot than Gaza. This is a hopeless bet so long as the same Hamas and Palestinian Authority goons run the show.

Alas, too late.

Last week the world’s leading compulsives met in Cairo and, without checking the Past Performance chart, they put down $5.4 billion to rebuild (rearm) the joint. They can’t kick the habit, these guys and dolls – and these include Qatar, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and all of the rest of them who would have been safer in Vegas.

John Kerry offered $212 million dollars. That, plus another $200 million…Your tax dollars at work, Mr. and Mrs. America.
In Vegas there are rules and there are limits. They show you the door if you bet like a drunken sailor.

The New York Times is offering a pricey, 13-day excursion to the “once-forbidden land of Iran,” one of a series of its Times Journeys tours. However, if you’re an Israeli, joining the “Tales of Persia,” trip, “once-forbidden,” is still forbidden, and letting anyone know you’re Jewish, or gay, isn’t particularly recommended, either, a representative told The Algemeiner on Monday.

When this reporter called the number provided on their website to ask about details of the trip – specifically for Israeli passport-holders – a representative who gave her name as Megan hurriedly turned the call over to Kevin, who stated definitively that “…anyone with a page in their passport with an Israeli visa will be declined.”

The nearly $7,000 junket, organized by the newspaper that claims to publish “All The News That’s Fit To Print,” is led by journalist Elaine Sciolino, and promises a “Journey with on-the-ground experts who will help untangle this nation’s complicated timeline.”

That timeline, however, skips over the regime’s decades-long cat-and-mouse game with the west and the United Nations over nuclear weapons development, its avid support for international terrorism, its hosting of antisemitic international conferences and boosting of raw Jew hatred, its sworn desire to eradicate the Jewish State, its public lashings and flogging of women, hangings of gays from construction cranes, and persecution of Bahais and opponents of the regime.

“You will travel with Elaine Sciolino, she was the Paris bureau chief for the New York Times, and has been traveling to Iran since 1979,” the representative noted, adding that “She’s been writing about the history and the revolution…

“She’d be a great person to talk about contemporary Iran while you’re traveling there,” Kevin added, helpfully.

Portrait of a Psychopath
Review: It’s All About Muhammad: A Biography of the World’s Most Notorious Prophet, by F.W. Burleigh. Portland, OR: Zenga Books, 2014. 555 pp. Illustrated.

Cover illustration: Artist’s rendering of Muhammad entering either Medina after his flight from Mecca in 622, or entering Mecca on his return in 630 on a pilgrimage prior to his compelling its surrender and conversion to Islam. Illustrator unknown.

As a “prophet,” Muhammad was a late bloomer. He didn’t begin hearing voices or having hallucinations about Allah’s prescription for living and dying until 610 A.D., when he was forty years old. Twelve years later he and a handful of his converts and followers took an urgent powder from Mecca, populated by the Quraysh, who were hostile to his blasphemy against their numerous pagan gods, and fled to Medina (then called Yathrib), populated by the Khazraj tribe. It was in Medina that he developed Islam by having numerous personal sessions with Allah through the medium of an angel, Gabriel (aka, Jibreel). Or so he would claim at the drop of a turban, which was often.

Islam, after closer examination, was and still is all about Muhammad. And about nothing else. You had to take his word for everything he said had happened or will happen. He insisted on it, forcefully. Like a berserker. There isn’t a single totalitarian regime that wasn’t also a personality cult. Islam fits that description. Muhammad is its personality, and Islam is his cult.

He was the Billy Sunday of his time in that region, or if you like, a supreme showman in the way of P.T. Barnum. By the time of his death in July 632 at the age of sixty-two, Muhammad had converted all of the Arabian Peninsula to Islam, by hook, crook, military conquest, banditry, torture, extortion, genocide, terror, and murder. He was born in 570, the “Year of the Elephant,” but very likely had never seen or heard of an elephant. But Islam, especially after his demise and because of the missionary efforts of his successors, spread through the Peninsula and all compass points like scalding coffee through a cheap paper towel.

Another appropriate comparison would be that Muhammad was the Jim Jones of his time, skillful in manipulating the gullible, but his Kool-Aid was Islam, which didn’t poison men, but instead their minds, and turned them into “Walking Dead” zombies.

Or, picture Muhammad as a kind of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, ranting to his congregation about hell and damnation and God-damning the Jews and Christians and all unbelievers, his Koran-thumping eliciting vocal expressions of spontaneous fervor among the flock. That was, more or less, Muhammad’s preaching style. He was a master of working his credulous converts into near hysterics, if not into a revival tent, rolling-on-the-ground lather and foaming at the mouth for salvation.

The Drudge Report is filled these days with alarming stories about the Ebola epidemic. A recent banner headline read: “Most Severe Health Emergency in Modern Times.” On Monday, a Hazmat crew boarded an Emirates plane from Dubai that landed at Boston’s Logan Airport, after a few passengers were isolated with flu-like symptoms.

After the first Ebola death in America, the debate about allowing flights from the most afflicted countries in Africa into America, or whether to allow anyone who has been in these countries recently to enter the United States, has picked up in intensity. There are loud voices on cable news programs claiming the country is unprepared to deal with the disease if it appears in multiple locations. A group that supports Democrats is running an ad in several battleground states where the midterm races are close, arguing that Republicans are responsible for pretty much anything bad that comes from the Ebola outbreak now, since their call for cuts in federal spending led to reductions in appropriations at the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. Of course, the ad conveniently neglects to mention the role of the White House and Democratic leaders in Congress in negotiating the terms of sequestration that created many of the alleged cuts.

The Sunday TV news programs this week addressed the Ebola story, and also the apparent failure of U.S. airstrikes to in any way change the dynamic of the advances by the Islamic State group in Iraq, now threatening the capitalBaghdad as well as in Kurdish towns in Syria, borderingTurkey.

In the only debate held between then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his opponent, former California Governor Ronald Reagan in 1980, Reagan asked the American voters whether they were better off than they were four years ago. Some analysts think the question, mishandled of course by the unusually inept Carter, led to Reagan pulling away in the contest. In a nasty black humor attempt to address the current political climate, one tweet on Twitter asks: “Are we more likely to be beheaded or infected than we were 6 years ago??”

Added to the mix is the potentially most volatile issue that could impact many American cities. A grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri will decide whether there is enough evidence to indict Darrin Wilson, the policeman who shot and killed 18-year-old Mike Brown, a black resident of the city. Last week another black resident of St. Louis was shot and killed by a St. Louis policeman in what the police claim was an exchange of gunfire. Civil rights leaders are picking up the pace of demonstrations in the area, and already there have been confrontations at the city’s symphony orchestra and an uglier one outside the Cardinals’ baseballstadium. There are fears in the St. Louis area about rioting and violence if the policeman from the Ferguson shooting isnot indicted. Clearly, this could spread to other cities with large black populations.