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An Obama parting gift to Israel?‎

October 2, 2016

An Obama parting gift to Israel?‎ Israel Hayom, Richard Baehr, October 2, 2016

(Please see also, Another area where Congress must be ready to oppose the president. — DM)

U.S. President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State John ‎Kerry all flew off to Israel and attended the funeral of Shimon Peres, the ‎last remaining ‎political figure from modern Israel’s founding generation. ‎Former Secretary ‏of State Hillary Clinton‎, ‎the current Democratic Party nominee for president‎, had at one point been listed to attend‎, ‎but did not make the trip‎.‎

The United States is fewer than six weeks away from the conclusion of what is now ‎a ‎tight presidential contest. The race conceivably could soon lean more toward ‎Clinton ‎after the widely watched first debate last Monday night (84 million viewers) ‎between Clinton ‎and Republican nominee Donald Trump, which most pundits ‎suggested she won, a ‎conclusion supported by results from the first polls released after the debate.

However, it has ‎been an unusual and surprising election contest, and there are no ‎guarantees that the ‎broader voting public saw things the same way their ‎media superiors expected it to see them. ‎

The high-level attendance at the funeral by Obama and Bill Clinton will ‎certainly be a plus for Hillary Clinton’s prospects to win a large share of ‎the Jewish vote in ‎closely contested states such as Florida and Pennsylvania. Obama ‎won ‎about seven of every 10 Jewish votes in 2012, down from about eight in 10 in 2008. ‎Bill ‎Clinton scored even higher than this in his two runs for the White House, in 1992 ‎and ‎‎1996, so Hillary Clinton can only benefit from association with presidents with far ‎more ‎popular support than she has demonstrated so far. Both Obama and Bill Clinton issued ‎statements full ‎of praise for Peres’ long career and also his commitment both to ‎keep Israel strong but ‎also to seek peace.‎

Obama’s tribute may be a harbinger of something more to come, ‎presumably in the nine ‎weeks he has left in the White House after the Nov. 8 vote has been ‎cast. ‎The president has just concluded an agreement with ‎Israel for a 10-year military aid bill. ‎The most contentious part of that agreement ‎was Israel’s acceptance that if Congress ‎votes for more assistance in the first ‎two years of the agreement than the agreed $3.8 billion ‎annual amount, it ‎would have to return the excess to the United States. There are ‎constitutional separation-of-‎powers issues that arise from the agreement, and already Trump has said ‎he does not consider himself bound by the limits, a view also ‎taken by a large ‎number of members in Congress.

In any case, with this settled, Obama ‎may feel free ‎to try his hand at some legacy-building on the Israeli-Palestinian track, an ‎area in ‎which his record of failure follows a long pattern of presidents who thought ‎they ‎had the magic elixir to achieve the two-state solution.‎

What has been rumored, with no denials offered by either the State Department or ‎the ‎White House, is that Obama may seek to obtain passage of a Security Council ‎resolution ‎in which the president offers his view on the parameters of the deal ‎between the two ‎parties who should end the conflict. As with all such two-state ‎plans, Israeli settlement ‎activity is viewed as the primary culprit in the conflict. ‎Members of the Senate, ‎anticipating some new initiative of this sort, have now sent ‎a letter to the White House, ‎signed by 88 members from both parties, requesting ‎that the president, for the duration of ‎his term, continue traditional American policy, ‎which has been to block any one-sided ‎U.N. resolutions targeting Israel.‎

‎”Even well-intentioned initiatives at the United Nations risk ‎locking the parties into ‎positions that will make it more ‎difficult to return to the negotiating table and make ‎the ‎compromises necessary for peace,” the senators wrote, ‎adding that the U.S. “must ‎continue to insist that neither we ‎nor any other outsider substitute for the parties to ‎the ‎conflict.”‎

Quoting from a 2011 address Obama gave to the U.N. General ‎Assembly in which he said that ‎‎”peace will not come ‎through statements and resolutions at the United Nations,” ‎the ‎senators reminded him that his ‎‎”administration has consistently upheld the ‎long-standing ‎U.S. policy of opposing — and if necessary vetoing — one-‎sided U.N. ‎Security Council resolutions.”‎

Longtime peace processor Dennis Ross, a likely appointee ‎to a Clinton administration if ‎she wins in November, ‎argued that the president’s willingness to try to obtain ‎a ‎resolution with a defined peace plan would be far higher if Trump wins ‎the presidential contest. Then the ‎initiative could be seen as a way to try to bind the incoming ‎president to an Obama-preferred course of action. Further ‎evidence that such a plan is in ‎the works, conceivably ‎regardless of who wins the White House, was a statement ‎by an ‎unusually angry Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry, busy as always ‎attending to his many other ‎diplomatic failures — the never-ending Syrian carnage, ‎the ‎continued appeasement and excuse offering for the ‎behavior of the U.S.’s new Iranian ‎‎”partners,” relations with ‎Russia, seemed ready to pounce once more into the ‎Israeli-‎Palestinian diplomatic wasteland by condemning Israeli ‎settlement activity, as well ‎as offering a standard (for ‎appearance of balance) criticism of Palestinian incitement. ‎

It is hard not to see this as laying the groundwork for the ‎president cynically offering the ‎‎”Obama peace plan” as his ‎final tribute to the late Shimon Peres, who was ‎always ‎committed to the two-state solution and achieving peace. ‎The United Nations is of ‎course a vipers’ nest of Israel hatred ‎with its obsessive and uniquely hostile treatment of ‎the ‎Jewish state on any number of issues. ‎

Other than a Security Council resolution that President Jimmy ‎Carter allowed to get ‎through in 1980 by abstaining on a ‎resolution calling Israel’s unification of Jerusalem ‎illegal, ‎America’s role in Security Council ‎debates on Israel has generally been to try to water ‎down ‎condemnations of Israel. Failing that, the U.S. has ‎vetoed one-sided ‎resolutions aimed at Israel. ‎

Carter’s acquiescence in the U.N. Security Council resolution ‎cost him with Jewish voters. ‎He won only 45% of the Jewish ‎vote, to 39% for Ronald Reagan and 15% for third-‎party ‎candidate John Anderson, on his way to losing 44 states, the ‎worst defeat ever for ‎an incumbent president. No Democrat ‎since 1920 has performed worse among Jewish ‎voters. This ‎presumably is why Obama’s latest attempt to squeeze ‎Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ‎will come, if it does, after the presidential election, when it can do no immediate ‎electoral ‎damage to his party or preferred candidate. ‎

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Obama made ‎clear that he plans to be an activist former president, pursuing the ‎causes he cares about. Attacking police and the ‎criminal ‎justice system for their alleged racism is a near certainty. ‎Climate change ‎seems to be a big matter for Obama, as well. ‎

But eight years of bad relations with Netanyahu did not come from nowhere. Obama is ‎one of ‎the more ideological presidents the U.S. has had (Reagan, ‎Carter, and ‎Franklin Roosevelt are others). His vision of Israeli-Palestinian ‎relations comes out ‎of his “Third World” view of ‎colonialism, and the power of the strong versus the ‎weak, ‎their victims. If he can take one more shot at what he ‎regards as balancing ‎the scales and weighing in on the side ‎of the Palestinians, he will. Those last nine ‎weeks of the Obama presidency are a red-alert warning to Israel and many ‎others.‎

Categories: 2016 presidential debates, Hillary Clinton and Israel, Israel, Israel settlements, Obama and Israel, UN Security Council
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In Debate, Hillary Dodges Blame for Libya, What Obama Called His “Greatest Mistake”

September 27, 2016

In Debate, Hillary Dodges Blame for Libya, What Obama Called His “Greatest Mistake”, Counter Jihad, September 27, 2016

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The first Presidential debate revealed a Democratic candidate who believes she has all the answers even though her failed performance as Secretary of State led directly to the formation of the Islamic State (ISIS), aided the rise of Iran, and furthered much of the chaos in the Middle East.  She cannot learn anything while she believes she already knows everything.  Electing her promises more of the same, and ‘the same’ has been a disaster.

The Republican challenger, meanwhile, has much still to learn about the security structure he would command as President.  Clinton’s strongest moment against him on foreign policy came as she chided him for appearing to suggest that America would not honor its mutual defense treaties with Japan or South Korea.  Nothing is more important to the world than the reliability of America’s word.  Clinton should know that:  it was her former boss, President Obama, who personally kicked off the refugee crisis bedeviling Europe by failing to enforce his red line against Syria’s use of chemical weapons against its own people. His failure to keep his word on a security agreement gave the Syrian regime free rein to wage war on its own population, putting millions on the road to Europe.

Trump’s strongest moment against Clinton came when he accused her of bad judgment in the formation of ISIS.  She attempted to respond by saying that George W. Bush had negotiated the withdrawal from Iraq, and that “the only way that American troops could have stayed in Iraq is to get an agreement from the then-Iraqi government that would have protected our troops, and the Iraqi government would not give that.”

That’s all true, but whose job was it to obtain such an agreement?  That was her job.  She was the one who was supposed to obtain that agreement, and she failed utterly.  As our earlier coverage states:

It was her job to negotiate an arrangement with the Iraqi government that would do two things:  allow a stabilizing US military presence to remain in Iraq, and allow the US Department of State the freedom of movement it would need to step up as guarantors of the peace.  The peace, you see, had been purchased not only by the US military’s victory on the battlefields, but also by its patient negotiation with militants formerly aligned with al Qaeda in Iraq.  These tribes, mostly but not exclusively Sunni, had rejected the terrorism of al Qaeda in Iraq in return for promises of fair treatment from the Iraqi central government.  This included jobs, assistance for communities recovering from the war, and many other things that the government promised to provide in return for the support of these former enemies.  The United States helped to negotiate all these agreements, and promised to see that they would be kept faithfully.

Instead, the Secretary of State failed to produce either a new Status of Forces agreement that would permit US troops to remain in Iraq, or an agreement that would allow State Department personnel to move about the country safely to observe whether agreements were being kept.  In the wake of the precipitous withdrawal of US forces, Prime Minister Maliki moved to arrest Sunni leaders in government, and broke all his promises to the tribes.

The result was that the western part of Iraq once again became fertile ground for an Islamist insurgency.

Clinton was similarly unreflective when she argued that Trump had supported “the actions we took in Libya,” without pausing for a moment to acknowledge what a destabilizing mistake it was.  Effecting regime change with no capacity to control the outcome is what allowed radical groups, including ISIS, to expand into the vacuum.  That one is also her fault personally, as she pushed President Obama to take this action.  Her own President says that he considers ataking her advice on Libya to be his “worst mistake.”  Yet again, she has learned nothing, and does not seem to be aware that there is even anything to learn.

A similar failure to understand the lessons of the recent past occurred in their exchange on NATO.  Trump is right to be critical of the institution’s continuing relevance, but he is criticizing it on the wrong grounds.  That the other nations do not pay their way is true, but it is not the problem with NATO.  That it does not focus on terrorism is partly true, but it does not render the organization obsolete because a resurgent Russia remains a security challenge for western Europe.

Nevertheless, Clinton’s smug response is un-reflective and wrong.

You know, NATO as a military alliance has something called Article 5, and basically it says this: An attack on one is an attack on all. And you know the only time it’s ever been invoked? After 9/11, when the 28 nations of NATO said that they would go to Afghanistan with us to fight terrorism, something that they still are doing by our side.

What Clinton fails to mention here is that, like all of NATO’s decisions, invoking Article 5 must be done unanimously.  The reason to question NATO’s continued relevance is that the Turkish drift into Islamist politics makes it unlikely that a unanimous vote could still be reached.  Turkey has also shown signs recently of falling into Russia’s orbit.  If Turkey becomes a Russian ally in the way that China is, NATO may be rendered obsolete simply because it can never take a decision.  If Turkey becomes a Russian satellite, NATO will indeed have been rendered obsolete.  In either case, NATO’s continued relevance turns on figuring out how to swing Turkey away from Islamist thought and Russian influence, eliminating the unanimity requirement on NATO actions, or else developing a mechanism to expel the Turks from the alliance.   None of that exists, and since Turkey would have to agree to any of those changes, none of it is likely to come to exist.

Finally, on Iran, Clinton is wedded to a policy that Trump rightly describes as a disaster.

You look at the Middle East, it’s a total mess. Under your direction, to a large extent.

But you look at the Middle East, you started the Iran deal, that’s another beauty where you have a country that was ready to fall, I mean, they were doing so badly. They were choking on the sanctions. And now they’re going to be actually probably a major power at some point pretty soon, the way they’re going.

The horror show in Syria is linked to the Iran deal, as Obama decided to let Syria fester in order to pursue Iran’s approval of his deal.  Clinton’s role in this deal is something she herself has celebrated, so she cannot walk away from it.  Since then, Iran has developed new ballistic missiles that make sense only as a delivery mechanism for nuclear payloads.  It has bought advanced anti-aircraft missiles, and installed them around one of the nuclear sites allegedly to be made harmless by this wonderful “deal.”  Why is it hardening this site against air strikes if it intends to live by the deal?  Why develop a delivery mechanism for weapons you don’t intend to build?

Clinton cannot even ask these questions, because she is wedded to her failures.

Categories: 2016 elections, 2016 presidential debates, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Iran scam, Iraq, Islamic terrorism, Libya, Syria
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After First Debate, ‘Nobody Knows Anything’

September 27, 2016

After First Debate, ‘Nobody Knows Anything’ PJ Media, Roger L Simon, September 26, 2016

I can’t say I’m surprised, as others have noted (okay I took a few peaks), that moderator Lester Holt asked no questions about Hillary’s emails, Benghazi, or the Clinton Foundation. That’s what the mainstream media are paid for — to be silent and practice omertà concerning anything embarrassing to Democrats. (Ironically, this leaves a big opening for one person — Julian Assange. And don’t think he doesn’t know it.)

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In his Adventures in the Screen Trade, screenwriter William Goldman famously wrote of Hollywood that “Nobody knows anything.”

He was mostly right about the movie business, except that sequels of Star Warsdo tend to make a lot of money (until they don’t).

But applied to politics, his words are one hundred percent correct. Nobody does know anything. Nevertheless, as in Hollywood, a lot of people are paid big bucks to pretend they do.

Goldman’s was the first phrase that came to my mind after watching the Greatest Debate That Ever Lived or whatever anyone wants to call the extravaganza Monday night that turned out not to be nearly as dramatic as some were expecting.

Who won? Beats me. Does it matter? Also beats me. (Well, I do have a suspicion, but I’ll get to that in a minute.)

I do notice that as of this moment (8:20PM PT) the Drudge Report is showing Donald up 90% to 10% in its online poll.  That’s basically meaningless considering the source.  If Drudge’s poll had shown Trump winning by less that 80% it would have spelled disaster.

As for the pundits, I can’t stand watching them. They make my head explode.  And they’re basically useless. No one is more disconnected from the American public than a television pundit. When have you ever heard one say something you haven’t thought of a hundred times before? Well, maybe once in a blue moon. (You’re free to dial off me now.  I’m no better.)

But, being a good pundit, I will say the painfully obvious. Both candidates basically got what they wanted.  Hillary didn’t have a coughing fit or fall over. Donald seemed plausibly presidential. He didn’t assault Clinton or bite her head off (not that she didn’t deserve it). In the end, he may have gotten more.  (As I said, more of that in a moment)

I can’t say I’m surprised, as others have noted (okay I took a few peaks), that moderator Lester Holt asked no questions about Hillary’s emails, Benghazi, or the Clinton Foundation. That’s what the mainstream media are paid for — to be silent and practice omertà concerning anything embarrassing to Democrats. (Ironically, this leaves a big opening for one person — Julian Assange. And don’t think he doesn’t know it.)

What did surprise me is that Trump barely brought much of this up himself. He had a huge opportunity when the subject of cyber security came up but didn’t take it.  Was this deliberate or an oversight?  If the former,  and I suspect it largely is, it’s a clever strategy. Everyone knows about Hillary’s email/Foundation veracity issues. Trump didn’t have to make a big deal about them, especially if his goal was to appear presidential, to not seem crazy or mean to those few remaining independent voters who are not attracted to Hillary but want to be reassured about Trump. And we have to remember, the polls at this moment show him practically even or ahead and surging, a great position.

Interestingly, as I continue to write, Drudge has abandoned his own poll and is linking to another online poll being run by Time magazine. It is currently showing Trump ahead 60-40 with well over 540,000 votes cast. That’s a significant number with a big spread and, unlike Drudge, Time is no conservative icon.

What does this mean? Well, there was a link from Drudge and it may be his fans coming over. As I said, “Nobody knows anything.” Another round of polls will be coming out in a few days and we will be told what to think.

Meanwhile there’s this: Trump concentrated his fire on Hilary actually having done nothing of substance in her 30 (later corrected to 26) years of public service — just talk talk talk. That approach may ultimately prove more lethal than the more obvious “Crooked Hillary.” I wonder if it was poll-tested. We’ll have to ask Kellyanne.

But before I sign off, I have to comment on what I think was the most significant moment of the debate and it came at the end. Hillary had just gone after Donald on the sexism issue — the beauty contest nonsense, etc. — and it seemed for a moment that Trump was going to come back at her on her dreadful family life the whole world knows about.  But then he stopped himself.  He didn’t turn into the mean Donald and turn off a whole bunch of people.

On Fox, immediately after the debate, Trump explained his decision to Sean Hannity. The candidate saw Chelsea in the audience and decided it was the wrong thing to do. Well done, Donald.  This is the moment that may resonate in the weeks to come.

So now I have one last online poll to report.  It’s from the ultra-liberal Slate and shows Trump in the lead by 9% with 42,000 votes cast. I assumed there were no Drudge links, but I checked anyway. There weren’t.

So did Trump win?  Possibly. He seems not to have lost anyway, which was all he needed.

But remember, in 2012, after the first debate, the pundits (mostly the same ones) were pronouncing Obama dead. All together now, “Nobody knows anything.”

Categories: 2016 elections, 2016 presidential debates, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Lester Holt, Media and Donald Trump, Media and Hillary Clinton
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Trump Takes on Holt and Hillary

September 27, 2016

Trump Takes on Holt and Hillary, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, September 27, 2016

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Like small boys jumping into a mud pile, media personalities had been urging each other on for weeks to abandon even the pretense of objectivity and just go after Trump. That’s what Holt did in his awkward and impotent way. And it proved to be ineffective as he quickly lost control of the debate. Holt, like the rest of his media cohort, had failed to understand that overt bias makes them less effective.

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Donald Trump’s main opponent in the first presidential debate wasn’t Hillary Clinton. It was NBC anchor Lester Holt. Hillary, with forced smiles as brittle as china and an eerie fake laugh, continued her primary debate strategy of repeating canned talking points while waiting for the moderator to knock off her opponent. Hillary wasn’t there to debate, but to once again seem like the only possible option.

Holt’s job was to make her seem like the only possible option by targeting Trump.

There were fears that Lester Holt would be another Candy Crowley. That was unfair to Crowley. The entire debate was structurally biased. Its general topics were framed in narrow left-wing terms, instead of discussing the economy and moving the country forward, Holt defined the topics as class warfare and racial divisiveness. Even national security was narrowed down to Obama’s favorite battlespace, cyberspace, rather than the actual battlefield.

Trump was hit with repeated personal attacks and gotcha questions by Holt, who then took to arguing with him over the facts. Hillary, despite having been under investigation by the FBI, received only a perfunctory offer from Lester Holt to comment on her emails after Trump had raised the issue.

But Holt’s overt bias also proved to be his undoing. Candy Crowley had been effective because her interjection into the debate between Obama and Romney had come as something of a surprise. Holt made his agenda clear at the outset. And it also made him easy to ignore, as Trump frequently did.

Like small boys jumping into a mud pile, media personalities had been urging each other on for weeks to abandon even the pretense of objectivity and just go after Trump. That’s what Holt did in his awkward and impotent way. And it proved to be ineffective as he quickly lost control of the debate. Holt, like the rest of his media cohort, had failed to understand that overt bias makes them less effective.

Hillary’s role in the debate was to grit her teeth and smile awkwardly, then deliver a few scripted attacks and lines that would allow her media allies to hail her as the winner. It was an easy job that she botched.

The media headlines were pre-scripted. And the same stories would have run even if Hillary had gone full Linda Blair spinning her head around 360 degrees or been devoured by a herd of wild dingoes during the debate. Here’s CNN. “Clinton puts Trump on defense at first debate.” And here’s the Washington Post. “Trump vs. Clinton: Her jabs put him on the defensive in first debate.”  This is what happens when the Clinton campaign writes your stories for you. They all sound the same.

But the only thing Hillary accomplished was to remind Americans of how unpleasant, insincere, untrustworthy and irritating she was. The pathological sense of entitlement, the political narcissism, the empty promises, the hollow rhetoric and the artificial attempts to connect to people whom she clearly despised were all on display here. The lady in red had nothing new to offer, either in policy or in her attacks on Trump. Like her, it was all reruns. And it was grating enough not to bear rewatching.

Hillary claimed to want to discuss policy, but she launched the first personal attack and between her and Holt, these supposedly serious personalities took the debate into the arena of petty malice. A country full of people who had lost hope had not tuned in to hear about Trump’s taxes or his comments about Rosie O’Donnell. In a particularly surreal moment, Hillary claimed to have brought an architect who had suffered at Trump’s hands. Because whom could working class people relate to better than an architect.

And it was obvious why Hillary and Holt had to embark on these desperate stunts.

Hillary’s message was a contradictory mess of promises to fix problems that existed for inexplicable reasons under Obama. Everything is already okay and she has a plan to fix all that. When Trump exploited this contradiction, her messaging completely collapsed into its own black hole.

The real agenda of the debate was to discredit Trump. Instead he came out appearing presidential, patiently listening to another Hillary rant, gamely sipping a glass of water every time she touted her website, and enduring it with the same wry expression that much of the audience was wearing.

Trump was at his best when puncturing the media and Hillary’s hypocrisy. Asked about his taxes, he demanded that Hillary release her emails. Challenged on Iraq, he pushed back on Libya. Where Hillary offered artificial bonhomie, pasting on plastic smiles and uploading fake laughs, he was natural. Nothing about Trump’s reactions or responses were faked. And that still remains a shock to the system.

And it is very much a system that we saw on display here tonight. It’s a system that Lester Holt and Hillary Clinton are a part of. It’s a system that has run this country deep into the ground.

Instead of destroying Trump, Holt’s bias brought the system out onto the stage. It reminded everyone that the national election was being hijacked just as the Democratic primaries had been. It showed viewers that the system was rigged and that it was rigged to select Hillary Clinton for the White House.

The fundamental question of this election is whether this country will be run by the people or the system. Trump reminded everyone that he was not the candidate of the system. The media’s post-debate analysis will tell us what the system thinks about the debate. But everyone already knows that. The system wants its own perpetuation. It wants, in Hillary’s words, more “investments.” That is the system’s euphemism for spending. It wants to export more jobs and import more migrants.

It wants to transform America into a grotesque reflection of its own warped processes.

Hillary Clinton is the perfect embodiment of the system. Artificial, unnatural and corrupt. And Lester Holt took on his role as the system’s feeble gatekeeper. But it’s not the system that the public wants. It seeks someone to smash the system. That is the source of Trump’s popularity. It is what makes him so threatening.

The debate was not about any of its topics, not the official ones or unofficial ones. It was about the subtext of the system. It was about what the system does to protect itself. Instead of a debate, what the people witnessed was the media hive trying to destroy an intruder while protecting its queen.

And once again, the system failed. Its media gatekeeper drone failed. The queen is in check.

Categories: 2016 elections, 2016 presidential debates, Hillary and media, Trump and media
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