Archive for January 26, 2017

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Josh Rogin The State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned

January 26, 2017

Josh Rogin The State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned, Washington Post, Josh Rogin, January 26, 2017

(According to WaPo, Secretary Tillerson’s job “Just got considerably more difficult.” Another way to look at it is that his job of draining the swamp just got considerably easier. — DM)

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s job running the State Department just got considerably more difficult. The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior foreign service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.

Tillerson was actually inside the State Department’s headquarters in Foggy Bottom on Wednesday, taking meetings and getting the lay of the land. I reported Wednesday morning that the Trump team was narrowing its search for his No. 2, and that it was looking to replace the State Department’s long-serving undersecretary for management, Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy, who has been in that job for nine years, was actively involved in the transition and was angling to keep that job under Tillerson, three State Department officials told me.

Then suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy and three of his top officials resigned unexpectedly, four State Department officials confirmed. Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Ambassador Gentry O. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Missions, followed him out the door. All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Kennedy will retire from the foreign service at the end of the month, officials said. The other officials could be given assignments elsewhere in the foreign service.

In addition, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr retired Jan. 20, and the director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, Lydia Muniz, departed the same day. That amounts to a near-complete housecleaning of all the senior officials that deal with managing the State Department, its overseas posts and its people.

“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” said David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry. “Department expertise in security, management, administrative and consular positions in particular are very difficult to replicate and particularly difficult to find in the private sector.”

Several senior foreign service officers in the State Department’s regional bureaus have also left their posts or resigned since the election. But the emptying of leadership in the management bureaus is more disruptive because those offices need to be led by people who know the department and have experience running its complicated bureaucracies. There’s no easy way to replace that via the private sector, said Wade.

“Diplomatic security, consular affairs, there’s just not a corollary that exists outside the department, and you can least afford a learning curve in these areas where issues can quickly become matters of life and death,” he said. “The muscle memory is critical. These retirements are a big loss. They leave a void. These are very difficult people to replace.”

Whether Kennedy left on his own volition or was pushed out by the incoming Trump team is a matter of dispute inside the department. Just days before he resigned, Kennedy was taking on more responsibility inside the department and working closely with the transition. His departure was a surprise to other State Department officials who were working with him.

One senior State Department official who responded to my requests for comment said that all the officials had previously submitted their letters of resignation, as was required for all positions that are appointed by the president and that require confirmation by the Senate, known as PAS positions.

“No officer accepts a PAS position with the expectation that it is unlimited. And all officers understand that the President may choose to replace them at any time,” this official said. “These officers have served admirably and well. Their departure offers a moment to consider their accomplishments and thank them for their service. These are the patterns and rhythms of the career service.”

Ambassador Richard Boucher, who served as State Department spokesman for Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, said that while there’s always a lot of turnover around the time a new administration takes office, traditionally senior officials work with the new team to see who should stay on in their roles and what other jobs might be available. But that’s not what happened this time.

The officials who manage the building and thousands of overseas diplomatic posts are charged with taking care of Americans overseas and protecting U.S. diplomats risking their lives abroad. The career foreign service officers are crucial to those functions as well as to implementing the new president’s agenda, whatever it may be, Boucher said.

“You don’t run foreign policy by making statements, you run it with thousands of people working to implement programs every day,” Boucher said. “To undercut that is to undercut the institution.”

By itself, the sudden departure of the State Department’s entire senior management team is disruptive enough. But in the context of a president who railed against the U.S. foreign policy establishment during his campaign and secretary of state with no government experience, the vacancies are much more concerning.

Tillerson’s job No. 1 must be to find qualified and experienced career officials to manage the State Department’s vital offices. His second job should be to reach out to and reassure a State Department workforce that is panicked about what the Trump administration means for them.

Categories: Department of State, Trump presidency
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Cartoons and Video of the Day

January 26, 2017

Via Capitol Steps

 

H/t Vermont Loon Watch

fail

 

pig

 

H/t Vermont Loon Watch

chubby

 

the-chop

 

safe-zone

 

Categories: Humor
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Law and Order Returns to the Border

January 26, 2017

Law and Order Returns to the Border, Front Page Magazine, Joseph Klein, January 26, 2017

trump4

President Donald Trump is doing something incredibly rare for a politician in Washington, D.C. He is keeping his word. Two of the most important of his campaign promises were to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into this country and to suspend the admission of “refugees” from countries prone to terrorism until a system of “extreme vetting” is put into place. On Tuesday night, President Trump tweeted out a teaser: “Big day planned on NATIONAL SECURITY tomorrow. Among many other things, we will build the wall!”

After eight long years of Obama administration policies that endangered the security of the American people, President Trump is placing Americans first — before illegal aliens and self-declared “refugees” from terrorist prone countries. 

The president began fulfilling his promises on immigration by signing two executive orders on Wednesday at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), whose responsibilities include overseeing immigration and border security. Mr. Trump also took part in a ceremony installing his new Secretary of Homeland Security, retired Marine General John Kelly. In his remarks following the signing, President Trump emphasized that DHS is a “law enforcement agency.” He added that “beginning today, the United States gets back control of its borders.”

The first executive order he signed redirected funds already appropriated by Congress towards paying for the construction of the border wall he has promised between Mexico and the United States. Additional funding appropriations will be required from Congress for completion of the project. However, President Trump still intends that Mexico will ultimately reimburse U.S. taxpayers for the expenditures through one means or another, including possibly redirecting monies presently slotted for foreign aid to Mexico or using revenue from border taxes. President Trump’s action came on the same day that Mexico’s foreign minister, Luis Videgaray, was due to arrive in Washington to help prepare for the visit of Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto later this month.

The order would end the “catch-and-release” policies the Obama administration utilized, under which illegals awaiting removal hearings were released. More detention facilities along the border are planned for construction. According to Immigration and Custom Enforcement figures cited by Fox News, 179,040 of the 925,193 illegal immigrants who have evaded a scheduled deportation had criminal convictions.

The Trump administration is anticipating roadblocks put in its way by legal challenges, including activists’ exploitation of environmental laws to block construction of the wall. However, the administration should be able to prevail and move forward expeditiously. The REAL ID Act of 2005 gives the Secretary of Homeland Security “the authority to waive all legal requirements such Secretary, in such Secretary’s sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads” along U.S. borders. Federal district courts have exclusive jurisdiction to hear challenges to the Secretary of Homeland Security’s determination, but a “cause of action or claim may only be brought alleging a violation of the Constitution of the United States.” Melinda Taylor, an environmental law professor with the University of Texas, said, “The new administration has a wild card they can pull and it’s in this law. The language in this law allows them to waive all federal laws that would be an impediment to building any type of physical barrier along the border, including a wall.” Actually, “the authority to waive all legal requirements” in the statute would extend to state and local laws and regulations, as well as federal laws. The president’s constitutional authority derives from his fundamental constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” – in this case, the nation’s existing immigration laws.

President Trump signed a second executive order addressing the so-called “sanctuary cities,” which have been openly defying federal immigration law enforcement. They may face the loss of certain federal funding if they continue their 21st century version of segregationist Governor George Wallace’s “stand in the schoolhouse door” in opposition to federally mandated school desegregation.

The orders also call for beefing up the number of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents used to apprehend migrants at the border and to arrest and deport illegal immigrants already living in the United States. The priority will be to identify for deportation illegal aliens in this country with a criminal record and to provide the State Department with additional tools to pressure countries to take back illegal immigrant criminals whom originally came from those countries.

Notably, neither immigration executive order sought to penalize the so-called “Dreamers.” President Trump has not yet rescinded Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive action. President Trump made his priorities clear in his DHS remarks, declaring “we’re going to get the bad ones out.” To put a human face on what he intended to accomplish, President Trump took time out during his remarks at DHS to recognize several parents who have had to endure the grief over their children killed by illegal immigrants. “They will always be remembered,” he said.

In his DHS remarks, President Trump also mentioned how he planned coordination and partnership with Mexico to save lives on both sides of the border. He said that the wall and actions to break up the drug cartels would help keep drugs and guns from flowing between the United States and Mexico. What a relief from the days of Operation Fast and Furious, when the Obama administration’s botched gunrunning sting allowed guns into Mexico that the Obama administration lost track of. U.S. border patrol agent Brian Terry may well have been killed by one of those guns.

In addition to the immigration executive orders, President Trump is planning later in the week to sign an executive order drastically reducing the number of refugees overall who are admitted to the United States for resettlement. It would also suspend the admission of refugees from “terrorist prone” countries such as Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, pending the institution of an effective “extreme vetting” process. Procedures for granting visas to residents from those countries will also be carefully re-examined. While leftists and other pro-Islamists will undoubtedly cry foul and may go to court in an effort to overturn this executive order as allegedly discriminating against Muslims on religious grounds, President Trump’s action is well within his legal authority. Refugees and visitors from other countries deemed dangerous by the president acting in his capacity as commander in chief should not have a constitutional right to enter the United States anyway.

“From a legal standpoint, it would be exactly within his legal rights,” said Stephen Legomsky, who was chief counsel at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Obama administration and currently a professor at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. Legomsky went on to say that he disagreed with President Trump’s planned suspension action from a public policy perspective “because there is such an urgent humanitarian need right now for refugees.” However, the Obama administration in which he served was discriminatory in its own “humanitarian” outreach to self-declared “refugees.” It virtually ignored the truly persecuted Christian minority population seeking an escape from genocide, and favored instead the one group of migrants from the Middle East who needed refugee protection the least– Sunni Muslims. Moreover, the Obama administration had no vetting procedures in place to ensure that some of these Sunni Muslims were not bringing their Wahhabi jihadist ideology with them.

Former President Obama put Americans’ lives in danger by his ill-advised immigration and refugee policies. He also released scores of suspected terrorists from Guantanamo Bay despite at least a 30 percent recidivist rate. President Trump, by contrast, is showing that he means what he says in making the protection of the American people his first priority.

Categories: Trump and immigration, Trump and Latin America, Trump and refugees, Trump and sanctuary cities, Trump and U.S. Southern Border, Trump's first weeks as President
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The World Turned Upside Down

January 26, 2017

The World Turned Upside Down, Town Hall, Victor Davis Hanson, January 26, 2017

bighands

“If summer were spring and the other way ’round,

Then all the world would be upside down.”

— Old English ballad

Legend has it that the British played “The World Turned Upside Down” after their unforeseen and disastrous defeat at the Battle of Yorktown.

Such topsy-turvy upheaval characterizes the start of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Everything is in flux in a way not seen since the election of 1932, in which Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover. Mainstream Democrats are infuriated. Even Republicans are vexed over the outsider Trump.

Polls, political pundits and “wise” people, guilty of past partisan-driven false prognostications, remain discredited. Their new creased-brow prophesies of doom for President Trump are about as credible as their past insistence that a “blue wall” would keep him out of the White House.

The media collusion with the Clinton campaign was endemic in the WikiLeaks email trove. The complicity blew up any lingering notion that establishment journalists are disinterested and principled, as they now turn from eight years of obsequiousness to frenzied hostility toward the White House.

In the media’s now radically amended progressive dictionary, Senate filibusters are no longer subversive, but quite vital.

Executive orders are no longer inspired, but dangerous. Bypassing Congress on treaties and overseas interventions, or refusal to enforce existing laws, is no longer presidential leadership. If Trump follows Obama’s example of presidential fiats, he will be recalibrated as seditious.

Protests against a sitting president are no longer near treasonous, but patriotic. Media collusion with the president is no longer natural, but unprofessional and dishonest. Cruel invective against the president and his family is no longer racist, but inspired.

The successful Obama electoral matrix of ginning up political support through identity politics may have been an atypical event, not a wave of the future. His two victories were certainly non-transferrable to most other liberal but non-minority candidates.

Obama’s legacy is the near-destruction of the Democrats as a national party, leaving them in a virtual civil war while most of his own initiatives will be rendered null and void — and perhaps soon forgotten.

Where do Democrats go now? Do they double down by going further leftward with Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren? Or do they reluctantly pivot to win back the clingers, deplorables and irredeemables whose defections cost them the big Rust Belt states?

On Nov. 7, “experts” were forecasting a Republican civil war: a disgraced presidential candidate, a lost Senate and a liberal Supreme Court for the next 30 years.

Two days and an election later, the world flipped. Republicans — with majorities in both houses of Congress, overwhelming majorities in the state legislatures and with governorships, and a likely slew of Supreme Court vacancies — haven’t been in a better position since the 1920s.

Just as importantly, former Sen. Harry Reid and President Emeritus Barack Obama weaponized Trump by respectively eroding the Senate filibuster and green-lighting presidential fiats by “pen-and-phone” executive orders.

For his Cabinet picks, Trump ignored Washington-establishment grandees, think-tank Ph.D.s, and academics in general. He owes no allegiance to the Republican pundits who despised him or to the big-name donors who chose not to invest in what they saw as a losing candidacy.

His style is not Washingtonian, but is born out of the dog-eat-dog world of Manhattan real estate. Trump’s blustering way of doing business is as brutal as it is nontraditional: Do not initiate attacks, but hit back twice as hard — and low — once targeted. Go off topic and embrace obstreperousness to unsettle an opponent. And initially demand triple of what is eventually acceptable to settle a deal.

Trump’s inaugural address was short, tough and nationalistic, reflecting his don’t-tread-on-me pledges to his supporters to fight both Washington and the world abroad to restore the primacy of the middle classes.

Trump aims through economic growth — hoping for 4 percent GDP growth rates through deregulation, tax reform, energy production and old-fashioned Main Street economic boosterism — to win a sizable chunk of the minority vote and thus chip away at the Democrats’ base. He counts on a good-paying jobs and higher family income mattering more to the inner-city than the Rev. Al Sharpton’s rhetoric or the demonstrations of Black Lives Matter.

The world has been flipped upside down abroad as well.

Weeks ago, analysts were offering Dr. Strangelove doomsday warnings of a no-fly zone in Syria imposed by a likely President Hilary Clinton on another nuclear power’s air force. But now, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is talking about joining American planes to destroy ISIS.

Who is friend, foe or neutral?

Could Trump coax Putin away from his Iranian and Syrian support, or will Trump appease his newfound friend’s aggressions? No one quite knows.

An American president now talks to Taiwan, doubles down on support for Israel, questions the reason to remain loyal to both the United Nations and European Union, and forces changes in NATO.

Not just policy, but the way policy is made, remains uncertain.

Up is down; down up. The future is blank.

Categories: 2016 elections, Media, Trump presidency
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Saudi Writer To Muslims In The West: Integrate Into Local Societies And Work Against Terrorism

January 26, 2017

Saudi Writer To Muslims In The West: Integrate Into Local Societies And Work Against Terrorism, MEMRI, January 25, 2017

In his December 27, 2016, column in the Saudi daily Al-Riyadh, titled “Muslim Minorities in the West – Have They Done Their Duty?” ‘Imad Al-‘Abad called on Muslims living in the West to inculcate in their children loyalty to the countries in which they had chosen to make their homes, and to work to eliminate terrorism in those countries by cooperating with local security forces, organizing anti-terrorism demonstrations, and launching goodwill initiatives for the benefit of their adopted societies.

alabad‘Imad Al-‘Abad (image: Al-Riyadh, Saudi Arabia)

Following are excerpts from his column: [1]

“In 2002 I visited Vancouver, Canada, and stopped at a restaurant owned by an Arab immigrant; we had a brief conversation. When he learned that I was new to Canada, he cautioned: ‘Be careful not to believe these infidels, because they aren’t looking out for your best interest.’ I left the restaurant pondering his viciousness. This man – who had tired of his own land and come [to Canada] seeking liberty, wellbeing, and security – has not even a minimum of loyalty to the country that took him in and granted him rights and privileges of which he had never dreamed. I was even more convinced of his viciousness after I had been [in Canada] for a whole year, during which I had found only good in these ‘infidels.’ Furthermore, I discovered that not all Arab and Muslim immigrants share that man’s [view].

“A friend of mine who is an emissary to Germany told me how he loathed the incitement and hatred that had been openly expressed in a Friday sermon by the imam of one of the mosques there. He said that the police cannot arrest him because it concerns free speech – a privilege granted to him by the country against which, and against whose people, he is inciting. This privilege is one of many others Germany gives refugees: a monthly stipend for each family member; free housing, electricity, and water; tax exemptions; free education; free passes for public transportation, and more, in order to maintain their dignity and respect their humanity.

“The horrifying terrorist incidents that plagued Europe this year have brought me back to [the issue of] Muslim minorities in the West. Although the vast majority of them are peaceful and, like most people, are seeking a quiet life, they neglect to integrate into, and coexist with, the societies in which they have chosen to settle. Moreover, they have been somewhat passive towards the terrorist incidents that took place in their societies. Whether in France, Germany, or Belgium, we have not heard that they held mass anti-terrorism demonstrations, or about great goodwill initiatives for society – but that they kept silent and continued to complain about racist harassment against them.

“Anyone who thinks that such initiatives, or expressions of anger at and opposition to terrorist crimes would mean [that the Arab immigrants are] apologizing for a crime they did not commit, is mistaken… On the contrary – it would be a goodwill initiative and a message to the society in which they live: ‘We and you are together, in the same good camp, against the criminal camp.’ This could strengthen the cooperation between them, and expel those despicable terrorist cells.

“Anyone who thinks that Muslim minorities are incapable of organizing such anti-terrorism demonstrations, forming a lobby to pressure those who incite [to terrorism] there, or launching important initiatives to improve their image in Western societies, would also be mistaken. Their responses to issues concerning Islamic symbols [clearly] show their ability to mobilize people and make their voices heard in the societies in which they live.

“Finally, Arab and Muslim minorities in the diaspora are usually good and innocent communities, that have in the past carried out beautiful and important initiatives – for example the one in Lens, France to protect churches during last year’s Christmas celebrations, which was very well received. But there are only few such initiatives, and much hard work and diligence is needed [in order to do many more].

“To this end, these minorities there must aspire to two goals: One, in the long term: To inculcate in their children loyalty to the land in which they settled and which has given them so much. Two, in the short term: To swiftly and seriously tackle the deeds carried out by the sons of immigrants, by means of cooperation with security elements and through [showing] solidarity with the society [that was targeted]. In this way, they will prove their vehement opposition to such base acts…”

 

[1] Al-Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), December 27, 2016.

Categories: Islamic integration, Saudi media
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Trump-Putin safe zones deal ousts Iran from Syria

January 26, 2017

Trump-Putin safe zones deal ousts Iran from Syria, DEBKAfile, January 26, 2017

syria_safezones

Russia had originally planned to deploy Syrian military, pro-Iranian Shiite militia and Hizballah forces in battles for the capture of land around the cities of Derra and Quneitra on the Syrian side of the Golan. That plan has been dropped and will be superseded by the deployment in southern Syria of US troops accompanied by Jordanian special forces and Syrian rebels, trained by American instructors in Jordanian military camps.

Israelis will breathe a sigh of relief over the removal of the threat of Iranian and Hizballah forces being deployed along their northern border with Syria.

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Syria stands on the threshold of dramatic changes that will directly impact on the strategic and military situation along the Syrian borders with Israel and Jordan, DEBKAfile reports exclusively. They derive from a deal struck this week by US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to establish US, Russian and Turkish security zones in Syria. This scheme will transfer military control of the country to those three powers. Each of them will be responsible for a zone whose borders will be defined and agreed upon by Washington, Moscow  and Ankara.

As part of this arrangement, all forces from the Iranian military, the pro-Iranian Shiite militias and Hizballah will be required to leave Syria.

The US military is to have two security zones – one covering the entire area east of the Euphrates River up to the Iraqi border including Kurdish areas (see attached map). This arrangement will partly resurrect the accord reached in late 2015 by US President Barack Obama and Putin, for the division of Syria into areas of influence. All territory east of the Euphrates was allocated to the US, with Russia taking responsibility for all areas west of the river until the Mediterranean coast.

Under the new deal, the Turkish area is to stretch about 650 kilometers along the entire Syria-Turkey border and extend between 35 and 50 kilometers into Syrian territory up to Al-Bab, the town where the Turkish military is engaged in its third straight month of fighting for its capture from ISIS.

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that the overriding change on the ground will be the establishment of a second US security zone adjacent to Syria’s borders with Israel and Jordan. It means that the approximately 7,500 US special operations forces troops currently in Jordan will be shifted northward into southern Syria.

Russia had originally planned to deploy Syrian military, pro-Iranian Shiite militia and Hizballah forces in battles for the capture of land around the cities of Derra and Quneitra on the Syrian side of the Golan. That plan has been dropped and will be superseded by the deployment in southern Syria of US troops accompanied by Jordanian special forces and Syrian rebels, trained by American instructors in Jordanian military camps.

Israelis will breathe a sigh of relief over the removal of the threat of Iranian and Hizballah forces being deployed along their northern border with Syria.

The Trump-Putin deal for Syria and its ramifications are explored in the coming issue of DEBKA Weekly (for subscribers) out Friday, with especially attention to the way it leaves Iran and Hizballah high and dry.

If you are not yet a subscriber, click here to sign on.

Categories: Golan, Iran - Syria war, Putin, Russia - Syrian war, Syria safe zones, Trump and Israel, Trump and Russia, Turkey - Syria war, U.S. Military
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CAIR: Refusing Refugee Admissions Is Equivalent To Slavery

January 26, 2017

CAIR: Refusing Refugee Admissions Is Equivalent To Slavery, Daily Caller, Alex Pfeiffer, January 25, 2017

(President Trump is unlikely to defer to CAIR on this or anything else. — DM)

WASHINGTON — The executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said Wednesday that refusing to accept Muslim refugees is the moral equivalent of slavery.

CAIR held a press conference in anticipation of executive orders from President Donald Trump to limit refugee entry from several Muslim-majority countries, block federal funds from sanctuary cities and start construction of a wall on America’s southern border.

Nihad Awad, CAIR’s national executive director, called the proposed border wall a “multi-billion dollar monument to racism.” Awad went on to say that President Trump’s proposal has nothing to do with national security and is strictly an “Islamophobic” proposal.

A rabbi at the press conference, Joseph Berman, was on the verge of tears and said that the proposal to bar the entry of refugees from several terrorist hotbeds such as Syria and Somalia is an “affront to God.”

The Daily Caller asked Awad if refugees have a right to come to the United States, and CAIR’s communications director Ibrahim Hooper claimed that under international law refugees have “rights beyond what normal immigrants have.” Awad added that the issue isn’t one “of legality,” but of “morality.”

The CAIR executive director then equated refusing refugee entry to former American policies of slavery and women not being able to vote. He said those actions were legal but “wrong.”

 

Categories: CAIR, Islamic refugees, National secuity, Trump and Islamic refugees, Trump and Islamists
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