WarSclerotic

The impossible Abbas Op-ed: While ostensibly warning against a religious war, the PA leader has deliberately fueled the flames of the new, murderous Al-Aqsa-centered terror wave

By David Horovitz

October 4, 2015, 2:52 pm

Source: The impossible Abbas | The Times of Israel

abu mazen the Jew killer .

Mahmoud Abbas speaks at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on September 30, 2015. (AFP/Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Benjamin Netanyahu can’t be an easy prime minister for Mahmoud Abbas to deal with. Unlike, say, Ehud Olmert.

Netanyahu hasn’t offered to relinquish Israeli sovereignty in the Old City in favor of an international tribunal, like Olmert did. Netanyahu has at times intimated some readiness for compromise in Jerusalem, but he hasn’t offered to divide the city into Israeli and Palestinian neighborhoods, like Olmert did. He’s indicated a readiness for West Bank territorial compromise, but not for a return to the pre-1967 lines with one-for-one land swaps, like Olmert did.

Except that Abbas didn’t accept Olmert’s dramatic, unprecedented 2008 peace offer. As Olmert subsequently detailed, Abbas failed to respond to it at all, even though it met all his professed territorial goals for a Palestinian state.

In a November 1, 2012, interview with Israel’s Channel 2 television, Abbas swore that, territorially, he had no demands on pre-1967 Israel. “Palestine now for me is ’67 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. This is now and forever,” he said. So why not take the Olmert deal?

In that same interview, Abbas declared that although he was born in Safed, in northern Israel, he did not feel he had a right to go back and again make it his home. “It’s my right to see it, but not to live there,” he said. So why, in the ill-fated John Kerry-brokered 2013-14 attempt at peacemaking, did Abbas insist that a “right of return” be available to millions of Palestinian refugees and their second, third and fourth generation descendants, a “right” that, if exercised, would constitute the death of Israel as a Jewish state?

Finally in that TV interview, Abbas vowed that so long as he was in power, there would be no third armed intifada uprising against Israel. “Never,” he swore. “We don’t want to use terror. We don’t want to use force. We don’t want to use weapons. We want to use diplomacy. We want to use politics. We want to use negotiations. We want to use peaceful resistance. That’s it.” So why, a year ago at the UN, did he falsely and despicably accuse Israel of pursuing a policy of “genocide in Gaza” — a charge guaranteed to ratchet up Arab and especially Palestinian hostility to Israel? And why, last week at the UN, while disingenuously warning Israel against transforming the conflict “from a political to a religious one,” did he intensify his campaign to do precisely that — with predictably murderous consequences?

Last Wednesday in New York, Abbas culminated a series of incendiary allegations in recent months about purported Israeli plots against al-Aqsa Mosque by telling the world and, most relevantly, his own watching people that, in Jerusalem, “extremist Israeli groups are committing repeated, systematic incursions upon Al-Aqsa Mosque.” The Israeli government, he went on, is pursuing a “scheme” to impose “a new reality” at the Temple Mount, “allowing extremists, under the protection of Israeli occupying forces and accompanying ministers and Knesset members, to enter the Mosque at certain times, while preventing Muslim worshipers from accessing and entering the Mosque at those times and freely exercising their religious rights.” In fact, Israel, after capturing the Mount in 1967, capturing the holiest site in Judaism, chose to permit the Muslim authorities to continue to administer its holy places, and barred Jews from praying there. These are arrangements it maintains to this day; arrangements it is, to put it mildly, hard to imagine any other conquering force in such circumstances initiating and preserving.

Those who retain some sympathy for Abbas note that he is, at time of writing, maintaining his Palestinian Authority security forces’ coordination with their Israeli counterparts. They say it’s hard for him to condemn the latest acts of Palestinian terrorism because he is already widely seen by his public as an Israeli stooge. They argue that it is not Abbas inciting Palestinian terrorism, but rather Arab media reports and a relentless social media emphasis on alleged Israeli attacks at Al-Aqsa.

But the fact is that Abbas has never sought to counter his predecessor Yasser Arafat’s assertion that there were no Jewish temples in Jerusalem and thus, by extension, there is no historic legitimacy for Jewish sovereignty here. The fact is that Abbas has allowed no sense of Jewish connection to the Temple Mount to complicate the Palestinian narrative of Israeli-Jewish illegitimacy there. The fact is that Abbas never moved decisively to prevent vicious anti-Israeli incitement in the Palestinian media. The fact is that Abbas’s PA continued the practice of honoring terrorists and “martyrs.”

The fact is that Abbas, whom many in Israel have even after 2008 insistently wanted to believe is a partner for peace — including Olmert himself, to this day — has long since failed his people and ours.

The fact is that Abbas has quite deliberately fueled the flames of this latest Al-Aqsa-centered terror wave.

Bleak and bitter, paralyzed between his empathy for the settlement enterprise and his concern at Israel becoming a binational state, Netanyahu is not an easy prime minister for a Palestinian leader genuinely seeking a viable, lasting peace agreement.

But Mahmoud Abbas is no such Palestinian leader.

The State Dept. also is “concerned about mounting tensions” on the Temple Mount, without suggesting the source of the conflict.

By: Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu

Published: October 4th, 2015

Source: The Jewish Press » » Politically Correct: US Condemns ‘Tragic Stabbings in Jerusalem’

The U.S. State Dept. once again has condemned the murders of Jews by Jerusalem and Palestinian Authority Arabs without using the politically incorrect word “terror.”

A statement from Washington declared:

The United States strongly condemns all acts of violence, including the ‎tragic stabbing in the Old City of Jerusalem today that left two victims dead and two injured.

We call for all perpetrators of violence to be swiftly brought to justice.

We are very concerned about mounting tensions in the West Bank and Jerusalem, including the Haram al Sharif/Temple Mount, and call on all sides to take affirmative steps to restore calm and avoid escalating the situation.

About the Author: Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu is a graduate in journalism and economics from The George Washington University. He has worked as a cub reporter in rural Virginia and as senior copy editor for major Canadian metropolitan dailies. Tzvi wrote for Arutz Sheva for several years before joining the Jewish Press.

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U.S. STRATEGY PLAN CALLS FOR INSURING NO RIVALS DEVELOP

By PATRICK E. TYLER,

Published: March 8, 1992

Source: U.S. STRATEGY PLAN CALLS FOR INSURING NO RIVALS DEVELOP – NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON, March 7— In a broad new policy statement that is in its final drafting stage, the Defense Department asserts that America’s political and military mission in the post-cold-war era will be to insure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia or the territory of the former Soviet Union.

A 46-page document that has been circulating at the highest levels of the Pentagon for weeks, and which Defense Secretary Dick Cheney expects to release later this month, states that part of the American mission will be “convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.”

The classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy. Rejecting Collective Approach

To perpetuate this role, the United States “must sufficiently account for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order,” the document states.

With its focus on this concept of benevolent domination by one power, the Pentagon document articulates the clearest rejection to date of collective internationalism, the strategy that emerged from World War II when the five victorious powers sought to form a United Nations that could mediate disputes and police outbreaks of violence.

Though the document is internal to the Pentagon and is not provided to Congress, its policy statements are developed in conjunction with the National Security Council and in consultation with the President or his senior national security advisers. Its drafting has been supervised by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the Pentagon’s Under Secretary for Policy. Mr. Wolfowitz often represents the Pentagon on the Deputies Committee, which formulates policy in an interagency process dominated by the State and Defense departments.

The document was provided to The New York Times by an official who believes this post-cold-war strategy debate should be carried out in the public domain. It seems likely to provoke further debate in Congress and among America’s allies about Washington’s willingness to tolerate greater aspirations for regional leadership from a united Europe or from a more assertive Japan.

Together with its attachments on force levels required to insure America’s predominant role, the policy draft is a detailed justification for the Bush Administration’s “base force” proposal to support a 1.6-million-member military over the next five years, at a cost of about $1.2 trillion. Many Democrats in Congress have criticized the proposal as unnecessarily expensive.

Implicitly, the document foresees building a world security arrangement that pre-empts Germany and Japan from pursuing a course of substantial rearmament, especially nuclear armament, in the future.

In its opening paragraph, the policy document heralds the “less visible” victory at the end of the cold war, which it defines as “the integration of Germany and Japan into a U.S.-led system of collective security and the creation of a democratic ‘zone of peace.’ ”

The continuation of this strategic goal explains the strong emphasis elsewhere in the document and in other Pentagon planning on using military force, if necessary, to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in such countries as North Korea, Iraq, some of the successor republics to the Soviet Union and in Europe.

Nuclear proliferation, if unchecked by superpower action, could tempt Germany, Japan and other industrial powers to acquire nuclear weapons to deter attack from regional foes. This could start them down the road to global competition with the United States and, in a crisis over national interests, military rivalry.

The policy draft appears to be adjusting the role of the American nuclear arsenal in the new era, saying, “Our nuclear forces also provide an important deterrent hedge against the possibility of a revitalized or unforeseen global threat, while at the same time helping to deter third party use of weapons of mass destruction through the threat of retaliation.” U.N. Action Ignored

The document is conspicuously devoid of references to collective action through the United Nations, which provided the mandate for the allied assault on Iraqi forces in Kuwait and which may soon be asked to provide a new mandate to force President Saddam Hussein to comply with his cease-fire obligations.

The draft notes that coalitions “hold considerable promise for promoting collective action” as in the Persian Gulf war, but that “we should expect future coalitions to be ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted, and in many cases carrying only general agreement over the objectives to be accomplished.”

What is most important, it says, is “the sense that the world order is ultimately backed by the U.S.” and “the United States should be postured to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated” or in a crisis that demands quick response.

Bush Administration officials have been saying publicly for some time that they were willing to work within the framework of the United Nations, but that they reserve the option to act unilaterally or through selective coalitions, if necessary, to protect vital American interests.

But this publicly stated strategy did not rule out an eventual leveling of American power as world security stabilizes and as other nations place greater emphasis on collective international action through the United Nations.

In contrast, the new draft sketches a world in which there is one dominant military power whose leaders “must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” Sent to Administrators

The document is known in Pentagon parlance as the Defense Planning Guidance, an internal Administration policy statement that is distributed to the military leaders and civilian Defense Department heads to instruct them on how to prepare their forces, budgets and strategy for the remainder of the decade. The policy guidance is typically prepared every two years, and the current draft will yield the first such document produced after the end of the cold war.

Senior Defense Department officials have said the document will be issued by Defense Secretary Cheney this month. According to a Feb. 18 memorandum from Mr. Wolfowitz’s deputy, Dale A. Vesser, the policy guidance will be issued with a set of “illustrative” scenarios for possible future foreign conflicts that might draw United States military forces into combat.

These scenarios, issued separately to the military services on Feb. 4, were detailed in a New York Times article last month. They postulated regional wars against Iraq and North Korea, as well as a Russian assault on Lithuania and smaller military contingencies that United States forces might confront in the future.

These hypothetical conflicts, coupled with the policy guidance document, are meant to give military leaders specific information about the kinds of military threats they should be prepared to meet as they train and equip their forces. It is also intended to give them a coherent strategy framework in which to evaluate various force and training options. Fears of Proliferation

In assessing future threats, the document places great emphasis on how “the actual use of weapons of mass destruction, even in conflicts that otherwise do not directly engage U.S. interests, could spur further proliferation which in turn would threaten world order.”

“The U.S. may be faced with the question of whether to take military steps to prevent the development or use of weapons of mass destruction,” it states, noting that those steps could include pre-empting an impending attack with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons “or punishing the attackers or threatening punishment of aggressors through a variety of means,” including attacks on the plants that manufacture such weapons.

Noting that the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is up for renewal in 1995, the document says, “should it fail, there could ensue a potentially radical destabilizing process” that would produce unspecified “critical challenges which the U.S. and concerned partners must be prepared to address.”

The draft guidance warns that “both Cuba and North Korea seem to be entering periods of intense crisis — primarily economic, but also political — which may lead the governments involved to take actions that would otherwise seem irrational.” It adds, “the same potential exists in China.”

For the first time since the Defense Planning Guidance process was initiated to shape national security policy, the new draft states that the fragmentation of the former Soviet military establishment has eliminated the capacity for any successor power to wage global conventional war.

But the document qualifies its assessment, saying, “we do not dismiss the risks to stability in Europe from a nationalist backlash in Russia or effort to re-incorporate into Russia the newly independent republics of Ukraine, Belarus and possibly others.”

It says that though U.S. nuclear targeting plans have changed “to account for welcome developments in states of the former Soviet Union,” American strategic nuclear weapons will continue to target vital aspects of the former Soviet military establishment. The rationale for the continuation of this targeting policy is that the United States “must continue to hold at risk those assets and capabilities that current — and future — Russian leaders or other nuclear adversaries value most” because Russia will remain “the only power in the world with the capability of destroying the United States.”

Until such time as the Russian nuclear arsenal has been rendered harmless, “we continue to face the possibility of robust strategic nuclear forces in the hands of those who might revert to closed, authoritarian, and hostile regimes,” the document says. It calls for the “early introduction” of a global anti-missile system. Plan for Europe

In Europe, the Pentagon paper asserts that “a substantial American presence in Europe and continued cohesion within the Western alliance remain vital,” but to avoid a competitive relationship from developing, “we must seek to prevent the emergence of European-only security arrangements which would undermine NATO.”

The draft states that with the elimination of United States short-range nuclear weapons in Europe and similar weapons at sea, the United States should not contemplate any withdrawal of its nuclear-strike aircraft based in Europe and, in the event of a resurgent threat from Russia, “we should plan to defend against such a threat” farther forward on the territories of Eastern Europe “should there be an Alliance decision to do so.”

This statement offers an explicit commitment to defend the former Warsaw Pact nations from Russia. It suggests that the United States could also consider extending to Eastern and Central European nations security commitments similar to those extended to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Arab states along the Persian Gulf. And to help stabilize the economies and democratic development in Eastern Europe, the draft calls on the European Community to offer memberships to Eastern European countries as soon as possible.

In East Asia, the report says, the United States can draw down its forces further, but “we must maintain our status as a military power of the first magnitude in the area.

“This well enable the United States to continue to contribute to regional security and stability by acting as a balancing force and prevent the emergence of a vacuum or a regional hegemon.” In addition, the draft warns that any precipitous withdrawal of United States military forces could provoke an unwanted response from Japan, and the document states, “we must also remain sensitive to the potentially destabilizing effects that enhanced roles on the part of our allies, particularly Japan but also possibly Korea, might produce.”

In the event that peace negotiations between the two Koreas succeed, the draft recommends that the United States “should seek to maintain an alliance relationship with a unified democratic Korea.”

Photo: Paul D. Wolfowitz, the Pentagon’s Under Secretary for Policy, who has overseen the drafting of a policy statement on the nation’s mission in the post-cold-war era. (The New York Times) (pg. 14) Map of the world indicating areas where U.S may need to retain its military power. (pg. 14) Chart: “Maintaining a One-Superpower World” According to a draft document being circulated by the Pentagon, part of the American military mission in the era after the cold war will by “convincing potential competitions that they need not aspire to a greater role,” thus insuring that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge. 1. Cuba and North Korea The U.S. must be prepared for what the report describes as irrational acts from Cuba and North Korea, which are viewed as “entering period of intense crisis” in the economic and political spheres. 2. Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan and India The U.S. “may be faced with the question of whether to take military steps to prevent the development or use of weapons of mass destruction.” 3. Russia The U.S must continue to aim nuclear arms at “those assets and capabilities that current — and future — Russian leaders or other nuclear adversaries value most.” 4. Europe The U.S must preserve a strong presence to maintain NATO alliance and Extend Western defense commitment into Eastern Europe “should there be an Alliance decision to do so.” 5. Japan The U.S. must “remain sensitive to the potentially destabilizing effects” in East Asia if our allies there, “particularly Japan but also possibly Korea,” take on enhanced roles as regional powers. (pg. 14)

The Mind of Mr. Putin

Friday – October 2, 2015 at 12:15 am

Source: The Mind of Mr. Putin – Patrick J. Buchanan – Official Website

By Patrick J. Buchanan

“Do you realize now what you have done?”

So Vladimir Putin in his U.N. address summarized his indictment of a U.S. foreign policy that has produced a series of disasters in the Middle East that we did not need the Russian leader to describe for us.

Fourteen years after we invaded Afghanistan, Afghan troops are once again fighting Taliban forces for control of Kunduz. Only 10,000 U.S. troops still in that ravaged country prevent the Taliban’s triumphal return to power.

A dozen years after George W. Bush invaded Iraq, ISIS occupies its second city, Mosul, controls its largest province, Anbar, and holds Anbar’s capital, Ramadi, as Baghdad turns away from us — to Tehran.

The cost to Iraqis of their “liberation”? A hundred thousand dead, half a million widows and fatherless children, millions gone from the country and, still, unending war.

How has Libya fared since we “liberated” that land? A failed state, it is torn apart by a civil war between an Islamist “Libya Dawn” in Tripoli and a Tobruk regime backed by Egypt’s dictator.

Then there is Yemen. Since March, when Houthi rebels chased a Saudi sock puppet from power, Riyadh, backed by U.S. ordinance and intel, has been bombing that poorest of nations in the Arab world.

Five thousand are dead and 25,000 wounded since March. And as the 25 million Yemeni depend on imports for food, which have been largely cut off, what is happening is described by one U.N. official as a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

“Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years,” said the international head of the Red Cross on his return.

On Monday, the wedding party of a Houthi fighter was struck by air-launched missiles with 130 guests dead. Did we help to produce that?

What does Putin see as the ideological root of these disasters?

“After the end of the Cold War, a single center of domination emerged in the world, and then those who found themselves at the top of the pyramid were tempted to think they were strong and exceptional, they knew better.”

Then, adopting policies “based on self-conceit and belief in one’s exceptionality and impunity,” this “single center of domination,” the United States, began to export “so-called democratic” revolutions.

How did it all turn out? Says Putin:

“An aggressive foreign interference has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions. … Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster.

Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life.”

Is Putin wrong in his depiction of what happened to the Middle East after we plunged in? Or does his summary of what American interventions have wrought echo the warnings made against them for years by American dissenters?

Putin concept of “state sovereignty” is this: “We are all different, and we should respect that. No one has to conform to a single development model that someone has once and for all recognized as the right one.”

The Soviet Union tried that way, said Putin, and failed. Now the Americans are trying the same thing, and they will reach the same end.

Unlike most U.N. speeches, Putin’s merits study. For he not only identifies the U.S. mindset that helped to produce the new world disorder, he identifies a primary cause of the emerging second Cold War.

To Putin, the West’s exploitation of its Cold War victory to move NATO onto Russia’s doorstep caused the visceral Russian recoil. The U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine that overthrew the elected pro-Russian government led straight to the violent reaction in the pro-Russian Donbas.

What Putin seems to be saying to us is this:

If America’s elites continue to assert their right to intervene in the internal affairs of nations, to make them conform to a U.S. ideal of what is a good society and legitimate government, then we are headed for endless conflict. And, one day, this will inevitably result in war, as more and more nations resist America’s moral imperialism.

Nations have a right to be themselves, Putin is saying.

They have the right to reflect in their institutions their own histories, beliefs, values and traditions, even if that results in what Americans regard as illiberal democracies or authoritarian capitalism or even Muslim theocracies.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Americans had no problem with this, when Americans accepted a diversity of regimes abroad. Indeed, a belief in nonintervention abroad was once the very cornerstone of American foreign policy.

Wednesday and Thursday, Putin’s forces in Syria bombed the camps of U.S.-backed rebels seeking to overthrow Assad. Putin is sending a signal: Russia is willing to ride the escalator up to a collision with the United States to prevent us and our Sunni Arab and Turkish allies from dumping over Assad, which could bring ISIS to power in Damascus.

Perhaps it is time to climb down off our ideological high horse and start respecting the vital interests of other sovereign nations, even as we protect and defend our own.

Senators call U.S. effort to train Syrians to fight ISIS ‘a joke’

Source: Senators call U.S. effort to train Syrians to fight ISIS ‘a joke’ | McClatchy DC

Army Gen. Lloyd Austin on Capitol Hill Wednesday. Pablo Martinez Monsivais AP

WASHINGTON

Russian Air Force hits 50 ISIS targets in Syria over 3 days, ‘significantly’ damaging militants

Published time: 3 Oct, 2015 09:00 Edited time: 3 Oct, 2015 16:42

Source: Russian Air Force hits 50 ISIS targets in Syria over 3 days, ‘significantly’ damaging militants — RT News

Trump: We Have the ‘Dumbest and Worst’ Foreign Policy in U.S. History

by Pam Key

3 Oct 2015

Source: Trump: We Have the ‘Dumbest and Worst’ Foreign Policy in U.S. History – Breitbart

Saturday on Fox News Channel’s “Cashin’ In,” Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump declared the United States has “probably the dumbest and worst foreign policy in history, certainly in the history of our country.”

Donald Trump said bringing in 200,000 Syrian refugees could possibly lead to a “military coup” in the United States saying, “This could be one of the greatest military coups of all time.”

He repeated his promise that if he was elected he would send any Syrian refugees back.

He continued, “What happened with Qaddafi. What happened with Saddam Hussein. Look at all these people we are going to replace all of these people with these wonderful people. Libya is a total mess. Iraq is a total mess. And that after we spent two trillion and thousands of lives, two trillion and thousands of lives —wounded warriors all over the place and what do we have we have nothing. We have absolutely nothing And what happened is what I predicted  in 2003 2004. We should have gone in there and Iran has taking over Iraq. It’s as simple as that. And they are taking over the largest oil reserve in the world and ISIS has the oil from different sections So I would say we probably have the dumbest and worst foreign policy in history certainly in the history of our country.”