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Humor | Hillary is Transparent and Open

January 31, 2016

Hillary is Transparent and Open, Dan Miller’s Blog, January 31, 2016

(The views expressed in this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or any of its other editors. — DM)

President Obama claimed to be the most open and transparent president ever but did not follow through. During her term as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton showed her persistent openness and transparency to friend and foe alike.

Right.

Clinton emails

Hillary demonstrated her openness and transparency to the entire world  — friend and foe alike — through her use of an unsecured home-brew server for e-mails containing classified national security information. As of late December, more than 1,200 e-mails found on Hillary’s server had been deemed classified. More continued to be found.

According to a report by Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III dated January 14th, “‘several dozen’ additional classified emails — including specific intelligence known as ‘special access programs’ (SAP)” had been discovered.

That indicates a level of classification beyond even “top secret,” the label previously given to two emails found on her server, and brings even more scrutiny to the presidential candidate’s handling of the government’s closely held secrets.

As of January 29th, at least twenty-two of the most recently discovered e-mails were top secret and contained such damaging information that not even redacted copies can be released to members of the Congress.

With such undiscriminating openness to our enemies, Hillary demonstrated unprecedented impartiality. By doing so, she helped to dispel vicious rumors that America helps only its few remaining friends. The State Department, now under the direction of John Kerry, was unwilling to extend the same courtesy to the Congress, doubtless a greater enemy than any foreign nation. This may have been hard for him to do. But then, sometimes it’s hard to be John Kerry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M6YvDXQcgQ

Hillary’s principal opponent in the race for the Democrat presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders, merely says that to be true socialists we must share everything. Hillary does more than talk; she shares.

A vote for Hillary is a vote for openness. Due to her exceptional devotion to non-discriminatory transparency, our enemies will love us even more, perhaps even until death do us part.

Categories: Democrats, Foreign policy, Hillary Clinton, Humor, Intelligence community, Iran scam, national security, Obama's America, U.S. Congress
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Comments: 1 Comment

Off Topic | Trump, Conservative Ideolgues and Populists

January 24, 2016

Trump, Conservative Ideolgues and Populists, Dan Miller’s Blog, January 24, 2016

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

Conservative ideologues want to keep things essentially as they are, making only marginal and generally ineffective changes. Populists want to change things to be more consistent with what “we the people” want. Often, what we the people want is better than what our “leaders” want or try to provide. Under these definitions, Trump is a populist, not a conservative ideologue. That’s good.

According to Dictionary. com, these are attributes of “conservatives:”

Disposed to preserve existing conditions, restore traditional ones, and to limit change.

According to the same source, “populism” means:

Any of various, often anti-establishment or anti-intellectual political movements or philosophies that offer unorthodox solutions or policies and appeal to the common person rather than according with traditional party or partisan ideologies.

Grass-roots democracy; working class activism; egalitarianism.

National Review recently published an entire special edition devoted to attacking Trump on the ground that he is insufficiently conservative. Whom did National Review support in 2008 and 2012? Guess or go to the link. He did not win.

NR - Trump

Writing at PJ Media about National Review’s special issue, Roger L. Simon argued that 

Many of their arguments revolve around whether Trump is a “true conservative.” Instead of wading into the definitional weeds on that one — as they say on the Internet, YMMV [Your Milleage May Vary] — allow me to address the macro question of what the purpose of ideology actually is. For me, it is to provide a theoretical basis on which to act, a set of principles. But that’s all it is. It’s not a religion, although it can be mistaken for one (communism). [Insert and Emphasis added.]

Ideology should function as a guide, not a faith, because in the real world you may have to violate it, when the rubber meets the road, as they say. For those of us in the punditocracy, the rubber rarely if ever meets the road.  All we have is our theories. They are the road for us. If we’re lucky, we’re paid for them.  In that case, we hardly ever vary them. It would be bad for business.

Trump’s perspective was the reverse. The rubber was constantly meeting the road. In fact, it rarely did anything else. He always had to change and adjust. Ideological principles were just background noise, barely audible sounds above the jack hammers. [Emphasis added.]

When National Review takes up arms against Trump, it is men and women of theory against a man of action. The public, if we are to believe the polls, prefers the action. It’s not hard to see why. The theory has failed and become increasingly disconnected from the people. It doesn’t go anywhere and hasn’t for years. I’m guilty of it too. (Our current president is 150% a man of theory.) Too many people — left and right — are drunk on ideology. [Emphasis added.]

Were the “old White men” who wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence, and those who fought for the colonies in the Revolutionary War, conservative ideologues? Did they want to preserve existing conditions under the King of England, his governors and military? Or were they pragmatic populists, as well as men of action, who opposed the King’s establishment and offered unorthodox solutions appealing to the “common” people? It took a lot of pushing from such revolutionaries as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, but the pragmatic populists won.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3TGbKfkwGA&list=PLqWUmyBq_P8LZ1jP9XwPuv_4xWhMPiKs1

I don’t want to suggest that Donald Trump is this generation’s George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin. Times are now sufficiently different that doing so would be frivolous. Among other differences, there should be no need to go to war now because we still have an electoral process, flawed though it may be. Nor are we ruled by an unelected, hereditary king; we are ruled by an elected president who considers Himself a king, ignores or twists the Constitution to fit His needs, often ideological, and acts by royal executive decree when the Congress declines to do His bidding or goes about it too slowly to suit Him.

Be that as it may, what’s wrong with the populist notion encouraging members of the governed class — the “vulgarians” — to have greater voices in how they are governed than those who govern them, often to their own benefit, while mocking those whom they govern? Sometimes we the people make mistakes and sometimes we get it right. Ditto our dear leaders. Why not give us a chance for a change?

Into which category — conservative ideologue or populist — if either, does Donald Trump fit, do we need him now and, if so, why?

Here’s the 2012 video Whittle referred to in the video above:

Which of the current Republican candidates has taken, or is the most likely to take, positions comparable to those suggested in the above video?

In September of last year, I wrote an article titled To bring America back we need to break some stuff. There, I quoted Daniel Greenfield for the following proposition:

What we have now is not a movement because we have not defined what it is we hope to win. We have built reactive movements to stave off despair. We must do better than that. We must not settle for striving to restore some idealized lost world. Instead we must dream big. We must think of the nation we want and of the civilization we want to live in and what it will take to build it. [Emphasis added.]

Our enemies have set out big goals. We must set out bigger ones. We must become more than conservatives. If we remain conservatives, then all we will have is the America we live in now. And even if our children and grandchildren become conservatives, that is the culture and nation they will fight to conserve. We must become revolutionaries. [Emphasis added.]

I also suggested that if we don’t seek real — even revolutionary — change we might as well try to join the European Union. That would keep things pretty much as they now are and would, therefore, be more the “conservative” than the populist thing to do.

Our unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy could merge with that of the EU and our Congress could merge with the impotent EU Parliament.

Here’s a new Trifecta video about a proposal by the Governor of Texas to amend the Constitution which, he contends, has been broken by those who have improperly increased the power of the Federal Government while diminishing that of the states.

The Constitution is not broken. It’s just been poorly interpreted, twisted and otherwise ignored. In recent years Obama — who claims to be a “constitutional scholar” — has done more to ignore, twist and misinterpret it than any other president I can remember. Depending on what amendments might be adopted and ratified, an Obama clone (Hillary Clinton?) might well do the same; perhaps even worse. A president can personally stop that process by not doing it. A president can halt poor judicial interpretations only by nominating judges unlikely to make them.

Conclusions

Trump is not perfect; nobody is. However, he says what he thinks rather than spew multiculturally correct pablum. Few are sufficiently thick-skinned to do that. A “vulgarian,” he is not politically correct. Others are because they don’t want to offend. Trump recognizes that Islam is the religion of war, death and oppression and does not want the further Islamisation of America, which is already proceeding apace. Few leaders of either party are willing to take that position, mean it and act on it effectively if elected.

We are mad, not insane. We want to give we the people a bigger and stronger voice in how and by whom we are governed. If, by voting to make Trump our President, we make a big mistake so be it. Worse candidates with fewer qualifications have been elected and reelected. During His first and second term as President, Obama has gone far in His quest to transform America fundamentally and in the wrong directions. If Trump does not come sufficiently close to correcting course to meet our expectations during his first term, we won’t vote to reelect him. In the meantime,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ6XdwGt7Ls

Opps. I almost forgot this

Categories: Conservatives, Democrats, Domestic policy, Donald Trump, Foreign policy, Immigration, Islam and human rights, Islamic culture, Islamisation, Multiculturalism, Obama, Obama's legacy, Political correctness, Populists, U.S. 2016 elections, U.S. Constitution
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House Democrats Turn to the Wrong Muslims for SOTU

January 12, 2016

House Democrats Turn to the Wrong Muslims for SOTU, Investigative Project on Terrorism, January 11, 2016

As many as 25 House Democrats are expected to have Muslim guests during Tuesday night’s State of the Union speech. It’s in response to a call from Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim voted into Congress, to counter an “alarming rise in hateful rhetoric against Muslim Americans and people of the Islamic faith worldwide.”

The gesture might not generate much more than a shrug, except that in at least two cases, Democrats invited officials from a group the FBI formally avoids due to historic ties to a Hamas support network. Delray Beach Rep. Alcee Hastings invited Nezar Hamze, regional operations director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Florida. And San Jose, Cal. Rep. Zoe Lofgren invited Sameena Usman, a 10-year veteran government relations official with CAIR’s San Francisco chapter, the Investigative Project on Terrorism has learned.

CAIR officials routinely accuse federal law enforcement of entrapping otherwise innocent and peaceful Muslims in order to gin up terrorism prosecutions. Hamze’s colleagues in CAIR-Florida are helping a family sue the FBI over the 2013 fatal shooting of a terror suspect who attacked agents after extensive questioning.

Usman’s office published a notorious poster urging Muslims to “Build a Wall of Resistance [and] Don’t Talk to the FBI.” For its part, the FBI cut off contact with CAIR, except in investigations, in 2008 based on evidence its agents uncovered which placed CAIR in a Hamas-support network in the United States. Until it can be shown that those connections no longer exist, an FBI official explained in 2009, CAIR is not “an appropriate liaison partner.”

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In addition, several CAIR officials have compared Israel to ISIS.

Calls to press contacts in Lofgren and Hastings’ offices were not returned Monday.

Last month, the IPT provided exclusive details from eyewitness accounts about CAIR’s creation, including an account of how a co-founder sought approval from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood for CAIR’s bylaws, and how Executive Director Nihad Awad’s move to Washington was “in order to represent Hamas.”

Hastings and Lofgren either failed to check out their guests’ employer or they don’t care. These connections have nothing to do with the faith of CAIR officials. But the organization has a record that elected officials stubbornly insist should be ignored.

Unfortunately, this is part of a pattern of outreach House Democrats seek out with the wrong people. Last month, CAIR-Florida’s Hassan Shibly was invited to the White House for a discussion about religious discrimination. Then, as with the State of the Union speech, no one from the new Muslim Reform Movement – which issued a declaration clearly rejecting “interpretations of Islam that call for any violence, social injustice and politicized Islam” and standing for “peace, human rights and secular governance.”

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In 2012, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sat with Awad, the only executive director in the organization’s history, at a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

A seat in the House chamber for the State of the Union bestows undeserved clout to the CAIR officials. And, in trying to show the public that American Muslims are not a monolithic group of radicalized Islamists, Hastings and Lofgren are doing their cause more harm than good.

Categories: CAIR, Democrats, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic State, Islamisation, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, U.S. Congress
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Iran Deal Backers Embarrassed By Obama Admin’s Sanctions Blunder

January 4, 2016

Iran Deal Backers Embarrassed By Obama Admin’s Sanctions Blunder, Washington Free Beacon, , January 4, 2016

Hassan Rouhani

A last minute delay last week in the implementation of new Iran sanctions has some prominent congressional backers of the nuclear deal accusing the Obama administration of capitulating to Iranian demands, according to sources both on and off Capitol Hill.

Senior Obama administration officials at the White House’s National Security Council told Congress Wednesday morning that new sanctions were coming as a result of Iran’s repeated ballistic missile tests, which violate current United Nations Security Council Resolutions prohibiting such activity.

However, the administration quietly walked back its announcement, telling lawmakers that the sanctions would be indefinitely delayed.

The move sparked a fierce backlash among prominent congressional leaders who have served as chief advocates for the administration’s efforts to ink a nuclear deal with Iran.

Sources who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon about the delay claim that the administration has repeatedly allowed Iran to dictate the terms of the deal out of fear that the Islamic Republic will ditch the deal before it is officially implemented later this month.

Iranian leaders have made clear that any new U.S. sanctions will force it to walk away from the nuclear agreement. In the wake of the new sanctions debate, Iranian military leaders announced over the weekend they are working to increase the strength and destructive power of the country’s arsenal.

The White House’s initial message to Congress on Wednesday morning offered tough rhetoric chastising Iran’s ballistic missile program and its recent test firings.

“Iran’s ballistic missile program poses a significant threat to regional and global security, and it will continue to be subject to international sanctions,” Adam Szubin, the Treasury Department’s acting under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in an embargoed statement that was forwarded to congressional offices that morning and viewed by the Free Beacon.

“We have consistently made clear that the United States will vigorously press sanctions against Iranian activities outside of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—including those related to Iran’s support for terrorism, regional destabilization, human rights abuses, and ballistic missile program,” Szubin maintained in the statement, which was later scrapped.

Hours after that initial communication was sent to the Hill, the administration nixed the announcement, saying in a subsequent communication that the new sanctions—which were to hit 11 entities and individuals known to be enabling Iran’s missile program—would be indefinitely delayed.

Lawmakers who just that morning had applauded the new sanctions were not pleased.

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D., Md.), a leading supporter of the Iran deal, blasted the move, expressing disappointment with the administration’s efforts to appease Iran.

“I am disappointed that the Administration has delayed punitive action in response to Iran’s recent ballistic missile tests,” Hoyer said in a statement. “We are always in a sensitive moment in our dealings with Iran, and there is never a perfect time to undertake such actions. But Iran must know with certainty that violating U.N. Security Council resolutions, both inside and outside the scope of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), will be met with serious consequences.”

Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.), another leading deal supporter who initially praised the new sanctions, also expressed dismay at the administration’s move to delay the effort.

“I believe in the power of vigorous enforcement that pushes back on Iran’s bad behavior,” Coons told the Wall Street Journal. “If we don’t do that, we invite Iran to cheat.”

When asked to address the issue on Sunday, a senior Obama administration official told the Free Beacon that there are still “remaining issues” that need to be addressed before new sanctions are announced.

“As we’ve said, we’ve been looking for some time‎ at options for additional actions related to Iran’s ballistic missile program based on our continued concerns about its activities, including the October 10th launch,” the senior official explained, reiterating the White House’s commitment to sanctions.

“We are considering various aspects related to additional designations, as well as evolving diplomatic work that is consistent with our national security interests,” the official said. “As always, we keep Congress informed about issues related to Iran sanctions, and will continue to do so as we work through remaining issues.”

A State Department spokesman echoed this stance, telling the Free Beacon that it continues to explore ways to increase sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile program.

Sanctions expert Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Free Beacon that the administration might reconsider new sanctions once it strikes a “side deal” with Iran.

“I would expect that the administration will return to these sanctions after cutting some kind of side deal with the Iranians offering even more unilateral concessions,” Dubowitz said.

Critics of the move remain skeptical.

“To push back against Iran’s repeated missile and human rights provocations, Congress should pass the Menendez-Kirk bill to immediately renew a critical Iran sanctions law that expires this year,” said Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), an opponent of the Iran nuclear deal.

One consultant who has worked with Congress on issues pertaining to the nuclear deal told the Free Beacon that the administration fears Iran’s threats to break the deal.

“First the Obama administration strong-armed congressional Democrats into approving a politically toxic nuclear deal, under the pretense that at least the White House would fight Iranian aggression in other ways,” the source said, explaining that lawmakers who have defended the deal were made to look foolish by the sanctions delay.

“People like Coons and Hoyer went home and told constituents that they’d at least make sure Iranian terrorism and missile work was punished,” the source said. “Now the Obama team has deprived them of even that fig leaf. They’re going to have to defend total capitulation to their constituents.”

Meanwhile, Iran announced on Friday that it is working to significantly boost “the destruction power and precision” of its missiles, according to comments carried in the country’s state-controlled press.

Iran President Hassan Rouhani instructed the country’s military leaders to strengthen the missile program following rumors that the United States was contemplating new sanctions.

“Following [on] the president’s letter, we held numerous meetings with the executive officials, commanders, and officials in the missile sector and decided work out appropriate plans as soon as possible to enhance the defensive power and capability as well as the effective deterrence power of our missiles contrary to the will of the hegemonic system which seeks to restrict the Islamic Republic militarily,” Hossein Dehqan, Iran’s defense minister, said.

Categories: Democrats, Iran - sanctions, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Obama and Iran, U.S. Congress
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House Democrats Mover to Criminalize Criticism of Islam

December 29, 2015

House Democrats Mover to Criminalize Criticism of Islam, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, December 29, 2015

(Please see also, Islam: Hate, Honor, Women’s Rights and Congress. — DM)

clinton-oic

December 17, 2015 ought henceforth to be a date which will live in infamy, as that was the day that some of the leading Democrats in the House of Representatives came out in favor of the destruction of the First Amendment. Sponsored by among others, Muslim Congressmen Keith Ellison and Andre Carson, as well as Eleanor Holmes Norton, Loretta Sanchez, Charles Rangel, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Joe Kennedy, Al Green, Judy Chu, Debbie Dingell, Niki Tsongas, John Conyers, José Serrano, Hank Johnson, and many others, House Resolution 569 condemns “violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims in the United States.” The Resolution has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.

That’s right: “violence, bigotry and hateful rhetoric.” The implications of those five words will fly by most people who read them, and the mainstream media, of course, will do nothing to elucidate them. But what H. Res. 569 does is conflate violence — attacks on innocent civilians, which have no justification under any circumstances – with “bigotry” and “hateful rhetoric,” which are identified on the basis of subjective judgments. The inclusion of condemnations of “bigotry” and “hateful rhetoric” in this Resolution, while appearing to be high-minded, take on an ominous character when one recalls the fact that for years, Ellison, Carson, and his allies (including groups such as the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR) have been smearing any and all honest examination of how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to incite hatred and violence as “bigotry” and “hateful rhetoric.” This Resolution is using the specter of violence against Muslims to try to quash legitimate research into the motives and goals of those who have vowed to destroy us, which will have the effect of allowing the jihad to advance unimpeded and unopposed.

That’s not what this H. Res. 569 would do, you say? It’s just about condemning “hate speech,” not free speech? That kind of sloppy reasoning may pass for thought on most campuses today, but there is really no excuse for it. Take, for example, the wife of Paris jihad murderer Samy Amimour – please. It was recently revealed that she happily boasted about his role in the murder of 130 Paris infidels: “I encouraged my husband to leave in order to terrorize the people of France who have so much blood on their hands […] I’m so proud of my husband and to boast about his virtue, ah la la, I am so happy.” Proud wifey added: “As long as you continue to offend Islam and Muslims, you will be potential targets, and not just cops and Jews but everyone.”

Now Samy Amimour’s wife sounds as if she would be very happy with H. Res. 569, and its sponsors would no doubt gladly avow that we should stop offending Islam and Muslims – that is, cut out the “bigotry” and “hateful rhetoric.” If we are going to be “potential targets” even if we’re not “cops” or “Jews,” as long as we “continue to offend Islam and Muslims,” then the obvious solution, according to the Western intelligentsia, is to stop doing anything that might offend Islam and Muslims – oh, and stop being cops and Jews. Barack “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” says it. Hillary “We’re going to have that filmmaker arrested” Clinton says it. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, certain that anyone who speaks honestly about Islam and jihad is a continuing danger to the Church, says it.

And it should be easy. What offends Islam and Muslims? It ought to be a simple matter to cross those things off our list, right? Making a few sacrifices for the sake of our future of glorious diversity should be a no-brainer for every millennial, and everyone of every age who is concerned about “hate,” right? So let’s see. Drawing Muhammad – that’s right out. And of course, Christmas celebrations, officially banned this year in three Muslim countries and frowned upon (at best) in many others, will have to go as well. Alcohol and pork? Not in public, at least. Conversion from Islam to Christianity? No more of that. Building churches? Come on, you’ve got to be more multicultural!

Everyone agrees. The leaders of free societies are eagerly lining up to relinquish those freedoms. The glorious diversity of our multicultural future demands it. And that future will be grand indeed, a gorgeous mosaic, as everyone assures us, once those horrible “Islamophobes” are forcibly silenced. Everyone will applaud that. Most won’t even remember, once the jihad agenda becomes clear and undeniable to everyone in the U.S. on a daily basis and no one is able to say a single thing about it, that there used to be some people around who tried to warn them.

Categories: CAIR, Democrats, Freedom of speech, Hate speech, Human rights, Islam, Islamic supremacy, Islamophobia, U.S. Congress, U.S. Constitution
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Islamic activists say 9/11 and San Bernardino were terrible — because of their effects on Muslims.

December 23, 2015

Islamic activists say 9/11 and San Bernardino were terrible — because of their effects on Muslims. National Review, Anne Bayefsky, December 22, 2015

Over at the United Nations, they are laying the groundwork for the 2016 American presidential election — on behalf of the Democratic party. The perceived golden ticket? Playing the victim card. Wild and repeated accusations are being hurled against the GOP of systematic racism, xenophobia, and, in particular, “Islamophobia.”

On December 18, 2015, the U.N. hosted two panels under the title “The Changing Dynamics of Islamophobia and Its Implications on Peaceful and Inclusive Societies.”

The predominant theme was victimhood. There were frequent mentions of 9/11, but not of the 2,977 who died, or their families. The alleged victims of 9/11 of interest to the U.N. gathering were the entirety of American Muslims. MuslimGirl.net editor Amani Al-Khatahtbeh told the U.N. audience: “I was in fourth grade when 9/11 happened. So I had to endure the height of Islamophobia during my formative years.” Wajahat Ali of Al Jazeera America said that 9/11 was “a baptism by fire. . . . As a result of that pain and trauma of 9/11, for my generation there is always a pre- and post-9/11.”

Each instance of radical Islamist terror was flipped the same way. Co-host Ufuk Gokcen, the U.N. representative of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, had a long list of incidents bracketed by events in America: “9/11 terrorist attacks . . . and San Bernardino terrorist attacks. The level that Islamophobia has reached, and its mainstreaming into media and political discourse, is terrifying us.”

Terrifying who?

The idea was repeated in another form by his co-host, Sally Kader, head of the U.S. Federation for Middle East Peace, an NGO. She told the receptive crowd: “The FBI census on all the hate crime has always been against Jews, and, of course, blacks, and now we top everything. It’s about Muslims.”

Actually, the FBI census for 2014, released November 16, 2015, still found that 57 percent of anti-religious hate crimes were motivated by “anti-Jewish bias” and that 16 percent of victims were the object of “anti-Islamic (Muslim) bias.”

Then came the excuses. According to Joyce Dubensky, head of the Tanenbaum Center, “people talk about violent extremists and extremists as crazy. . . . I think that that’s an error. I think that’s a stereotype as well. They are also complex human beings, which is why we want to try to talk with them as well.”

One shudders to think of a meeting between Ms. Dubensky and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Scratch the surface of this latest batch of U.N. talking heads and the promotion of terrorism and anti-Semitism isn’t hard to find. The Muslimgirl.net site of Palestinian Al-Katahtbeh includes justifications of the “martyrdom” of Palestinian mothers and a drawing of the fashionable woman with a purse filled with knives, rocks, and a petrol bomb. Another speaker, journalist Haroon Moghul, wrote in the Huffington Post in January 2015 that he advocates terminating a Jewish state altogether: “A one-state solution . . . is the only option.”

Throughout the proceedings, one could have mistaken “impartial” U.N. New York headquarters for a Democratic political rally. Moghul was applauded for his political take on the GOP debate of December 15: “The Republican debate . . . was kind of terrifying and traumatizing,” and the GOP was “a political party that is increasingly indulging in open racism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia.”

Another crowd pleaser from the Al Jazeera America journalist was this: “If certain people with wavy hair became president . . . we might end up in concentration camps. We can brand it and call it Trump centers.”

So how did all this go down for the diplomat who represented the United States?

Here is Laurie Shestack Phipps when she took the microphone from the floor:

I’m from the U.S. Mission to the U.N., and I wanted to assure the audience and all the speakers that the U.S. government shares many of the concerns that you’ve expressed about the growing anti-Muslim discrimination in this country and around the world. . . . I did want to emphasize the position of the U.S. government very much in line with the focus of these two panels.

Remarkably, when this American diplomat could not manage to defend her country following hours of America-bashing — because her bosses don’t know the difference between humility and submission, or decorum and capitulation — she was put to shame by an Irish diplomat who could.

Speaking also from the floor, Michael Sanfey said:

Concerns were expressed for the state of American religious pluralism, but isn’t it still incredibly more pluralistic? Where is the religious pluralism in some of the Muslim-majority lands? It just seems to me there is no pluralism whatever. Couldn’t it help to combat Islamophobia if greater diversity was promoted in those lands where the churches [a]re absolutely forbidden?

The profoundly embarrassing spectacle makes the punch line perhaps less surprising.

Moderator Kader revealed to American taxpayers what happened to some of their half billion dollars that were used to renovate the U.N. in Turtle Bay. The event wrapped up on early Friday afternoon by announcing Friday prayers. It turns out that a part of the U.N. building has been taken over, in Kader’s words, for “Muslims to pray.”

No women allowed. Hillary and the U.N. A hell of a plan for 2016.

Hillary and the U.N. A hell of a plan for 2016.

Categories: Democrats, Islam, Islam and women, Islamophobia, Obama and Islam, Obama's America, Republicans, United Nations
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Donald Trump and the American Future

December 22, 2015

Donald Trump and the American Future, Front Page Magazine, David Horowitz, December 22, 2015

dt_1

I have to confess that of late I have become increasingly pessimistic about the future of our country. For awhile I was hopeful that the electorate would finally cut through the fog of political correctness: the racist, collectivist, America-and-white people-are-guilty party line of the Democratic Party. Not so any more. Both the conservative punditry (with a few notable exceptions) and the Republican establishment are proving as feckless in resisting the left’s attacks, and as unfocused on the Democratic adversary as the Republican congress. The Democrats are at it full bore. Having gotten away with disarming the nation in the face of its enemies, and with promoting systematic racial discrimination, along with racist lynch mobs in the streets, the Democrats are busy on the attack. In their election campaign year, they are accusing Republican candidates of being racist and recruiters for ISIS. The only serious – i.e., bloody-minded – fire coming from the Republican side is directed at Donald Trump.  (Think about it – all the Democrats need is a damaged Trump. Then they can condemn Republicans for merely associating with him.) If Republicans want to join Democrats and match their viciousness in taking down the Republican front-runner, Hillary Clinton is going to be our next president.

The most recent explosion of outrage at Trump is his proposal for a temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration “until we figure it out” – i.e., figure out how to vet Muslim immigrants so that we don’t allow anymore Tashfeen Malik’s into the country where they are determined to kill innocent Americans. Otherwise perfectly intelligent conservatives have joined the Democrat smear squad in denouncing Trump’s suggestion as unconstitutional, illegal, and un-American. In fact, as a cursory Internet search should convince anyone free of anti-Republican bigotry, Trump’s proposal is not only constitutional (foreigners seeking entry into the country have no rights under the US Constitution – only US citizens do. It is also perfectly legal. There is an actual U.S. code that says the president has the authority to ban “any class” of individuals he deems a threat to the American citizens.

Moreover, Trump’s proposal is obviously sensible – i.e., is justified by a realistic confrontation with the facts. According to a Pew Poll, 64% of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan believe that leaving the Muslim faith should be punished by death. In Afghanistan the figure is 78%. While 64% of Muslims are not active terrorists, there was not a single member of the Muslim community in San Bernardino willing to alert authorities to the hateful, indeed murderous ideas of the shooter couple. Punishing apostasy by death is only a crystallization of the jihadists’ belief that all non-Muslims who refuse to submit to the Islamic faith should be killed. That is what the war that Islamists have declared on us is about. Donald Trump has done the country a service by putting this issue – previously unmentionable – before the American public. Thus far he is the only candidate with the guts to do this, and that is why he is leading in the polls by a wide margin.

According to a 2009 “World Opinion Poll” conducted by the University of Maryland, between 30% and 50% of Muslims in Muslim countries approve of the terrorist attacks on America. If 64% of Muslims think that infidels deserve death – and an impressive percentage approve of the attacks on America and the West – that amounts to between 500 million and 800 million sworn enemies of our country and our culture.  Say it’s only a tenth of those numbers. That’s 50 million or more potential killers for Allah, and supporters of killers for Allah. Keep in mind that these terrorists already have chemical and biological weapons. Is there any person not blinded by leftwing ideas that doesn’t think this presents a vetting problem for us in dealing with Muslim immigrants and visitors? Moreover, a vetting problem that we obviously haven’t begun to solve? However, perhaps Trump’s blanket ban, though constitutional, legal and temporary – is also impractical. The details as Trump himself would be the first to admit are still negotiable. A practical plan even one of reduced scope is better than none.

So why are conservatives treating Trump as a pariah? Clinton and Obama have the blood of hundreds of thousands of Christians and non-ISIS Muslims on their hands not to mention the American victims of their rules of engagement. It is they and their party who have undermined the war on radical Islamists for 22 years since Bill Clinton refused to visit the thousand victims of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Democrats have fought to try terrorist soldiers in civil courts where they would be given the rights of American citizens; they have fought to close Guantanamo, and have deliberately released terrorist generals to return to the battlefield and kill more Americans; Democrats have fought to abandon our military presence in Iraq, surrendering a hard won victory to ISIS and Iran; Obama and Hillary overthrew – illegally, immorally and unconstitutionally – the anti-al Qaeda government of Libya and turned that country into a terrorist hunting ground. Where are the Republican litanies high-lighting these betrayals?

In the meantime, jihadist mosques protected by Democrats continue to function – including the one attended by the San Bernardino shooters – the city of New York continues to bar first responders from monitoring mosques to see what they are preaching, 350 Sanctuary cities still refuse to cooperate with Homeland Security. All under the enemy-friendly doctrine that all Muslims belong to a protected species that cannot be scrutinized about their commitment to a religion that preaches hatred of non-Muslims, particularly Jews, and whose avowed goal is the political submission of the entire world to the Islamic faith.  On the other side, a Republican/conservative chorus has so tarred and feathered the Republican front-runner who is doing by default the work that they should be doing, that they have made it virtually impossible for him to win a general election. And make no mistake, they have also made it virtually impossible for any Republican candidate to speak frankly about the Democrats’ perfidy and the danger it poses to our country.

How much innocent blood do Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have on their hands? How much innocent blood will be spilled in the next four years if Clinton is elected? These are the questions Republicans should be asking, not whether Donald Trump is a bigot. He obviously is not.  Impolitic yes. Racist no. Donald Trump has many faults but lack of political courage is not one of them. He seems motivated by concern for the pit into which this country has fallen under an administration with catastrophic priorities and uncertain loyalties. That is what Republicans need to think about when framing their next attacks. Otherwise the future is dim indeed.

Categories: Democrats, Donald Trump, Islamic immigration, Islamic jihad, Republicans
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Column One: Rubio, Cruz and US global leadership

December 18, 2015

Column One: Rubio, Cruz and US global leadership, Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick, December 17, 2015

For the first time in a decade, Americans are beginning to think seriously about foreign policy; But are they too late?

At some point between 2006 and 2008, the American people decided to turn their backs on the world. Between the seeming futility of the war in Iraq and the financial collapse of 2008, Americans decided they’d had enough.

In Barack Obama, they found a leader who could channel their frustration. Obama’s foreign policy, based on denying the existence of radical Islam and projecting the responsibility for Islamic aggression on the US and its allies, suited their mood just fine. If America is responsible, then America can walk away. Once it is gone, so the thinking has gone, the Muslims will forget their anger and leave America alone.

Sadly, Obama’s foreign policy assumptions are utter nonsense. America’s abandonment of global leadership has not made things better. Over the past seven years, the legions of radical Islam have expanded and grown more powerful than ever before. And now in the aftermath of the jihadist massacres in Paris and San Bernadino, the threats have grown so abundant that even Obama cannot pretend them away.

As a consequence, for the first time in a decade, Americans are beginning to think seriously about foreign policy. But are they too late? Can the next president repair the damage Obama has caused? The Democrats give no cause for optimism. Led by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential hopefuls stubbornly insist that there is nothing wrong with Obama’s foreign policy. If they are elected to succeed him, they pledge to follow in his footsteps.

On the Republican side, things are more encouraging, but also more complicated.

Republican presidential hopefuls are united in their rejection of Obama’s policy of ignoring the Islamic supremacist nature of the enemy. All reject the failed assumptions of Obama’s foreign policy.

All have pledged to abandon them on their first day in office. Yet for all their unity in rejecting Obama’s positions, Republicans are deeply divided over what alternative foreign policy they would adopt.

This divide has been seething under the surface throughout the Obama presidency. It burst into the open at the Republican presidential debate Wednesday night.

The importance of the dispute cannot be overstated.

Given the Democrats’ allegiance to Obama’s disastrous policies, the only hope for a restoration of American leadership is that a Republican wins the next election. But if Republicans nominate a candidate who fails to reconcile with the realities of the world as it is, then the chance for a reassertion of American leadership will diminish significantly.

To understand just how high the stakes are, you need to look no further than two events that occurred just before the Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate.

On Tuesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency voted to close its investigation of Iran’s nuclear program. As far as the UN’s nuclear watchdog is concerned, Iran is good to go.

The move is a scandal. Its consequences will be disastrous.

The IAEA acknowledges that Iran continued to advance its illicit military nuclear program at least until 2009. Tehran refuses to divulge its nuclear activities to IAEA investigators as it is required to do under binding UN Security Council resolutions.

Iran refuses to allow IAEA inspectors access to its illicit nuclear sites. As a consequence, the IAEA lacks a clear understanding of what Iran’s nuclear status is today and therefore has no capacity to prevent it from maintaining or expanding its nuclear capabilities. This means that the inspection regime Iran supposedly accepted under Obama’s nuclear deal is worthless.

The IAEA also accepts that since Iran concluded its nuclear accord with the world powers, it has conducted two tests of ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons, despite the fact that it is barred from doing so under binding Security Council resolutions.

But really, who cares? Certainly the Obama administration doesn’t. The sighs of relief emanating from the White House and the State Department after the IAEA decision were audible from Jerusalem to Tehran.

The IAEA’s decision has two direct consequences.

First, as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday, it paves the way for the cancellation of the UN’s economic sanctions against Iran within the month.

Second, with the IAEA’s decision, the last obstacle impeding Iran’s completion of its nuclear weapons program has been removed. Inspections are a thing of the past. Iran is in the clear.

As Iran struts across the nuclear finish line, the Sunni jihadists are closing their ranks.

Hours after the IAEA vote, Turkey and Qatar announced that Turkey is setting up a permanent military base in the Persian Gulf emirate for the first time since the fall of the Ottoman Empire a century ago. Their announcement indicates that the informal partnership between Turkey and Qatar on the one side, and Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State on the other hand, which first came to the fore last year during Operation Protective Edge, is now becoming a more formal alliance.

Just as the Obama administration has no problem with Iran going nuclear, so it has no problem with this new jihadist alliance.

During Operation Protective Edge, the administration supported this jihadist alliance against the Israeli-Egyptian partnership. Throughout Hamas’s war against Israel, Obama demanded that Israel and Egypt accept Hamas’s cease-fire terms, as they were presented by Turkey and Qatar.

Since Operation Protective Edge, the Americans have continued to insist that Israel and Egypt bow to Hamas’s demands and open Gaza’s international borders. The Americans have kept up their pressure on Israel and Egypt despite Hamas’s open alliance with ISIS in the Sinai Peninsula.

So, too, the Americans have kept Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at arm’s length, and continue to insist that the Muslim Brotherhood is a legitimate political force despite Sisi’s war against ISIS. Washington continues to embrace Qatar as a “moderate” force despite the emirate’s open support for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and ISIS.

As for Turkey, it appears there is nothing Ankara can do that will dispel the US notion that it is a credible partner in the war on terror. Since 2011, Turkey has served as Hamas’s chief state sponsor, and as ISIS’s chief sponsor. It is waging war against the Kurds – the US’s strongest ally in its campaign against ISIS.

In other words, with the US’s blessing, the forces of both Shi’ite and Sunni jihad are on the march.

And the next president will have no grace period for repairing the damage.

Although the Republican debate Wednesday night was focused mainly on the war in Syria, its significance is far greater than one specific battlefield.

And while there were nine candidates on the stage, there were only two participants in this critical discussion.

Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz faced off after weeks of rising contention between their campaigns.

In so doing, they brought the dispute that has been seething through their party since the Bush presidency into the open.

Rubio argued that in Syria, the US needs to both defeat ISIS and overthrow President Bashar Assad.

Cruz countered that the US should ignore Assad and concentrate on utterly destroying ISIS. America’s national interest, he said, is not advanced by overthrowing Assad, because in all likelihood, Assad will be replaced by ISIS.

Cruz added that America’s experience in overthrowing Middle Eastern leaders has shown that it is a mistake to overthrow dictators. Things only got worse after America overthrew Saddam Hussein and supported the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi and Hosni Mubarak.

For his part, Rubio explained that since Assad is Iran’s puppet, leaving him in power empowers Iran. The longer he remains in power, the more control Iran will wield over Syria and Lebanon.

The two candidates’ dispute is far greater than the question of who rules Syria. Their disagreement on Syria isn’t a tactical argument. It goes to the core question of what is the proper role of American foreign policy.

Rubio’s commitment to overthrowing Assad is one component of a wider strategic commitment to fostering democratic governance in Syria. By embracing the cause of democratization through regime change, Rubio has become the standard bearer of George W. Bush’s foreign policy.

Bush’s foreign policy had two seemingly contradictory anchors – a belief that liberal values are universal, and cultural meekness.

Bush’s belief that open elections would serve as a panacea for the pathologies of the Islamic world was not supported by empirical data. Survey after survey showed that if left to their own devices, the people of Muslim world would choose to be led by Islamic supremacists. But Bush rejected the data and embraced the fantasy that free elections lead a society to embrace liberal norms of peace and human rights.

As to cultural meekness, since the end of the Cold War and with the rise of political correctness, the notion that America could call for other people to adopt American values fell into disrepute. For American foreign policy practitioners, the idea that American values and norms are superior to Islamic supremacist values smacked of cultural chauvinism.

Consequently, rather than urge the Islamic world to abandon Islamic supremacism in favor of liberal democracy, in their public diplomacy efforts, Americans sufficed with vapid pronouncements of love and respect for Islam.

Islamic supremacists, for their part stepped into the ideological void without hesitation. In Iraq, the Iranian regime spent hundreds of millions of dollars training Iranian-controlled militias, building Iranian-controlled political parties and publishing pro-Iranian newspapers as the US did nothing to support pro-American Iraqis.

Although many Republicans opposed Bush’s policies, few dared make their disagreement with the head of their party public. As a result, for many, Wednesday’s debate was the first time the foundations of Bush’s foreign policy were coherently and forcefully rejected before a national audience.

If Rubio is the heir to Bush, Cruz is the spokesman for Bush’s until now silent opposition. In their longheld view, democratization is not a proper aim of American foreign policy. Defeating America’s enemies is the proper aim of American foreign policy.

Rubio’s people claim that carpet bombing ISIS is not a strategy. They are right. There are parts missing from in Cruz’s position on Syria.

But then again, although still not comprehensive, Cruz’s foreign policy trajectory has much to recommend it. First and foremost, it is based on the world as it is, rather than a vision of how the world should be. It makes a clear distinction between America’s allies and America’s enemies and calls for the US to side with the former and fight the latter.

It is far from clear which side will win this fight for the heart of the Republican Party. And it is impossible to know who the next US president will be.

But whatever happens, the fact that after their seven-year vacation, the Americans are returning the real world is a cause for cautious celebration.

Categories: Democrats, Foreign policy, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Islamism, Middle East, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Republicans, U.S. 2016 elections
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Who’s the crazy one?

December 10, 2015

Who’s the crazy one? Front Page Magazine, David Horowitz, December 10, 2015

dt

Donald Trump’s great contribution is saying the unsayable; putting things on the table that would otherwise be buried; calling a spade a spade in a time when political correctness has made us unable to discuss things that have to do with our basic national survival.  This is the crux of the issue.  Every time he creates a controversy like this he also tells this country that its emperors, Republican and Democrat, have no clothes. That they prefer propriety over defending the country.  That they are dedicated only to keeping the lid on a cauldron of threat and challenge they have allowed to boil over.

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Presidential candidate Donald Trump has called for a moratorium on Muslim immigration until we can figure out why Islamic terrorists have been able to enter our country and devised ways to protect ourselves. This has caused the left and right establishments to dogpile on Trump. Echoing the sentiments of virtually all Democrats and many Republicans, aWashington Post editorial has declared that Trump’s proposal disqualifies him as a candidate because in the Post’s view what he recommends is unconstitutional and therefore un-American. But President Obama has issued executive orders – as it happens orders that sabotage our borders – that he himself has called unconstitutional (“I don’t have the authority to stop deportations”).  Has the Post editorialized that this is un-American and disqualifies him for the presidency? Has it called for Obama to be impeached? Have Democrats ridiculed Obama for his un-American prescriptions?

Consider the nature of the threat. A 2009 “World Opinion” survey by the University of Maryland showed that between 30 and 50% of Muslims in Jordan, Egypt and other Islamic countries approved of the terrorist attacks on America and that only a minority of Muslims “entirely disapproved” of them. ISIS has acknowledged its plans to use refugee programs to infiltrate its terrorists into the United States and other infidel countries. In Minneapolis we have a Somali refugee community many of whose members have returned to Syria to fight for ISIS. Other Muslim immigrants like Major Hassan and Tashfeen Malik have carried out barbaric acts of terror here at home. Today Muslim terrorists are using assault rifles and pipe bombs, but we know they have Sarin gas and other chemical weapons which they might use tomorrow. The terrorists inexorably arrive along with the other immigrants, no one in authority apparently knowing who’s who. Who, then, in his right mind does not think that Muslim immigration poses a serious security threat to us?

The outrage against Trump should properly have been directed at our president who refuses to identify the enemy as Islamic terrorism, who has opened the door to nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to the Islamic America-haters in Iran, whose policies have created the vacuums that ISIS has filled, and who even after Paris and San Bernardino is determined to bring 100,000 immigrants from Syrian war zones to our unprotected shores. This outrage is missing and it is precisely because it is missing that Trump’s unconstitutional proposal resonates with so many rightly concerned Americans. When the man in charge of our security is by general consensus out to lunch in regard to fighting the war on Islamic terror, or protecting us at home, a proposal like Trump’s, which at least recognizes the threat, is going to resonate with the public.

In middle of a crisis of national security, the Democratic Party seems to think that climate change and especially gun ownership are greater threats to our survival than the one that comes from hundreds of millions of Muslims who think America should be attacked and who believe the whole world should be put under medieval Islamic law. In the face of this threat, the Democratic Party and its leaders seem to have no problem with the fact that we have more than 350 “Sanctuary Cities” that are dedicated to sabotaging our immigration laws; that we have no southern border and as a result have 179,000 illegal alien criminals and who knows how many terrorists in our country today.

Once again we have Trump to thank for changing the surreal conversation about whether having a border at all is compatible with American values, and forcing people to focus on the dangers we face. Republicans are generally defenders of this country, but not in this controversy over Donald Trump. Would that they would use the same ridicule and outrage over the Democrats’ many betrayals of our country and its citizens through proposals to expose us to our enemies as they do over a proposal to protect us from them. Trump’s idea may be unconstitutional and unworkable, but it springs from a desire that is honorable and patriotic. The appropriate response would be to propose alternatives that recognize the same dangers and serve the same ends but do so within constitutional limits.

Donald Trump’s great contribution is saying the unsayable; putting things on the table that would otherwise be buried; calling a spade a spade in a time when political correctness has made us unable to discuss things that have to do with our basic national survival.  This is the crux of the issue.  Every time he creates a controversy like this he also tells this country that its emperors, Republican and Democrat, have no clothes. That they prefer propriety over defending the country.  That they are dedicated only to keeping the lid on a cauldron of threat and challenge they have allowed to boil over.

The 2016 election will be a referendum on the defense of this country and its survival. Let’s see who answers the call.

Categories: Democrats, Donald Trump, Islamic invasion, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Obama and Islam, Republicans
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Our World: Obama’s new counter-terrorism guru

November 24, 2015

Our World: Obama’s new counter-terrorism guru, The Jerusalem Post, Caroline B. Glick, November 23, 2015

ShowImage (17)MICHAEL GERSON. (photo credit:Wikimedia Commons)

Since the Islamic State attacks in Paris on November 13, we have seen the development of a new, and strange justification for the Obama administration’s insistent refusal to jettison its manifestly failed strategy of contending with IS specifically and with Islamic terrorism generally.

In broad terms, Obama’s strategy for dealing with radical Islamic terrorism and jihadist movements is to ignore their motivating ideologies, take minimal action to combat them, criticize other governments for failing to destroy IS and its jihadist brethren on their own, and attack Republicans for criticizing Obama’s strategy for defeating radical Islamic terrorism.

The new justification for Obama’s refusal to revise his strategy was first uttered by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton at the Democratic presidential debate on November 14. Five days later, the Democratic National Committee produced an ad attacking Republican presidential candidates based on this new rhetorical theme.

Obama himself resonated the new message during his press conference in Malaysia on Sunday.

According to the new talking points, Republicans have no right to criticize Obama, or Clinton, for their failure to contend with the nature of the enemy because in ignoring the enemy’s doctrine, ideology and strategic goals, they are merely following in president George W. Bush’s footsteps.

During the Democratic presidential debate, Clinton argued that refusing to identify the radical Islamic nature of the enemy that attacked the US on September 11 and in the months and years that followed “was one of the real contributions – despite all the other problems – that George W. Bush made after 9/11, when he basically said – after going to a mosque in Washington – we are not at war with Islam or Muslims.”

In its new ad, the DNC attacks five Republican presidential candidates that have stated in recent days that radical Islam is the force that is warring against the US and its allies.

To prove that the candidates are “unpresidential,” for naming the enemy, the DNC ad includes a clip of Bush’s speeches in praise of Islam as “a religion of peace,” which he delivered in the days immediately following the September 11 attacks.

The Democrats’ invocation of Bush as their counterterrorism authority and as a means to justify their refusal to use the term “radical Islam” is more than a bit ironic, of course, since they have spent the past 14 years pillorying Bush’s counterterrorism policies.

But it is also extremely helpful. By aligning with Bush to justify their refusal to discuss the radical Islamic foundations of the terrorist scourge facing the free world and devouring large swaths of the Middle East, the Democrats have given us the opportunity to consider what that refusal has meant for the US’s ability to lead the free world in its war against the forces of radical Islam.

At the time of the September 11 attacks, and for the first five years of Bush’s war on terrorism that followed them, Michael Gerson served as Bush’s chief speechwriter.

Gerson authored Bush’s statements about Islam being a religion of peace.

In November 2014, Gerson participated in a debate vabout the nature of Islam and the war on terror. Gerson explained that Bush’s decision to ignore the nature of the enemy emanated from a strategic calculation.

Bush believed that radical Islam was but a marginal force in the Muslim world. By embracing Islam as a whole, and insisting that the terrorists from al-Qaida and other groups did not reflect the authentic nature of Islam, Bush hoped to draw the non-radical Muslims to America’s side against the jihadists.

In Gerson’s words, “Every religious tradition has forces of tribalism and violence in its history, background and theology; and, every religious tradition has sources of respect for the other. And you emphasize, as a political leader, one at the expense of the other in the cause of democracy.”

Gerson continued, “That is a great American tradition that we have done with every religious tradition that comes to the United States – include them as part of a natural enterprise and praise them for their strongly held religious views, and emphasize those portions that are most compatible with those ideals.”

The flaws in this reasoning began surfacing immediately.

When Bush made his remarks about Islam after the September 11 attacks, he was flanked by Muslim leaders who were in short order exposed as terrorism apologists and financiers.

On the battlefield, by failing to acknowledge, let alone discredit the enemy’s world view, Bush made it all but impossible for Muslims who oppose radical Islam to stand up against it. After all, if the Americans didn’t think it was a problem, why would they? Since the Americans refused to admit the existence of radical Islam, the US refused to favor non-radical forces over radical ones. And so, in the 2005 Iraqi elections, while Iran spent a fortune financing the campaigns of its supporters, the US did nothing to support the Iraqi forces that shared the US’s goal of transforming Iraq into a multi-denominational, pluralistic democracy.

The results were preordained. The elected government took its cues from Iran, and as soon as US forces withdrew from Iraq, all of America’s hard won gains were squandered. The Iraqi government became an Iranian puppet. And in areas where Iran didn’t care to assert its control, al-Qaida-aligned forces that now comprise Islamic State rose once again.

Obama’s refusal to discuss radical Islam stems from a different source than Bush’s refusal to do so. Unlike Bush’s position, Obama’s insistence that IS, al-Qaida, Hamas, Boko Haram and their brethren have nothing to do with Islam does not owe to a strategic calculation on how to win a war. Rather, it stems from an ideological conviction that the US and the rest of the Western world have no right to cast aspersions on jihadists.

As Obama sees things, the problems in the Middle East, and the Middle Eastern terrorism plaguing the rest of the world, are the result of past Western imperialism and chauvinism. All anti-Western movements – including jihadist movements – are legitimate responses to what Obama perceives as the crime of Western power.

Obama’s peevish response to the massacre in Paris and his assaults on Republicans who argue that the religious convictions of Syrians requesting asylum in the US are relevant for determining whether or not to let them in have brought his refusal to identify the enemy to the forefront of the US debate on how to defeat IS.

This debate is clearly uncomfortable for liberal US media outlets. So they have sought to change the subject.

As the Democratic Party adopted Bush as its new counterterrorism guru, the liberal media sought to end discussion of radical Islam by castigating as bigots Republicans who speak of it. The media attempt over the weekend to claim falsely that Republican frontrunner Donald Trump called for requiring American Muslims to be registered in a national Muslim database marked such an attempt to change the subject.

The common denominator between Bush’s strategic decision to lie about the nature of the enemy, Obama’s apologetics for IS and the media’s attempt to claim that Republicans are anti-Islamic racists is that in all cases, an attempt is being made to assert that there is no pluralism in Islam – it’s either entirely good or entirely evil.

This absolutist position is counterproductive for two reasons. First, it gets you nowhere good in the war against radical Islam. The fact is that Islam per se is none of the US president’s business. His business is to defeat those who attack the US and to stand with America’s allies against their common foes.

Radical Islam may be a small component of Islam or a large one. But it certainly is a component of Islam. Its adherents believe they are good Muslims and they base their actions on their Islamic beliefs.

American politicians, warfighters and policymakers need to identify that form of Islam, study it and base their strategies for fighting the radical Islamic forces on its teachings.

Bush was wrong to lie about the Islamic roots of radical Islam. And his mistake had devastating strategic consequences for the world as a whole. It is fortuitous that the Clinton and the Democratic Party have embraced Bush’s failed strategy of ignoring the enemy for justifying their even more extreme position. Now that they have, they have given a green light to Republicans as well as Democrats who are appalled by Obama’s apologetics for radical Islam to learn from Bush’s mistakes and craft an honest and effective strategic approach to the challenge of radical Islam.

Categories: Democrats, Foreign policy, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Michael Gerson, Middle East, Obama and Islamic State, Obama and Islamic terrorism
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