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Muslim medical staff didn’t save Rabbi stabbed to death next to clinic

October 17, 2015

Muslim medical staff didn’t save Rabbi stabbed to death next to clinic, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, October 17, 2015

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The medical team did not go out to provide treatment to the wounded

The media has tried to emphasize the role of Muslim medical personnel in treating Jewish victims some of the latest Muslim terror attacks.

The reality however is much less politically correct.

Health Minister Ya’akov Litzman (United Torah Judaism) ordered an investigation on Friday to check suspicions that Arab medical staff at a clinic in Jerusalem’s Old City did not go out to help Jewish victims, who were stabbed right next to the clinic.

The incident in question is the brutal murder of Aharon Banita Bennett (21) and Rabbi Nehemia Lavi (41), which took place on Hagai Street on October 3. Bennett’s wife was seriously wounded and his two-year-old son was lightly wounded in the Arab terrorist attack.

While Bennett’s wife’s condition has since improved, it is likely that immediate medical treatment could have lessened the seriousness of her wounds and possibly saved the life of her husband and of Rabbi Lavi, who was stabbed as he came to try and save the young couple and their son.

The Arab-run health clinic located adjacent to the stabbing was open at the time of the attack and medical staff was present inside, reports Channel 2.

However, the Arab medical team did not go out to provide treatment to the wounded, despite their occupational obligations to treat the wounded, just as Magen David Adom (MDA) medics treat Arab terrorists at the scenes of attacks.

This was how it happened.

Miriam Gal, the mother of Benita’s wife Adel, spoke at the funeral to Lau about what her daughter had told her of the incident.

“My daughter tried to run away with a knife in her neck. She tried to escape but they [Palestinians at the scene] wouldn’t let her and shouted at her “hopefully you’ll die too,” recalled Gal who was inconsolable with grief.

“Such cruelty. The Jewish people should not be foolish, wake up. This [the Palestinians] is a nation of murderers. There entire essence is blood, blood, blood, Jewish blood. They have nothing else. Anyone who speaks of peace is an idiot, there is no other word,” she cried.

Health Minister Litzman really stepped up to the plate in another more important way to expose an Abbas lie.

Israel reacted with fury on Thursday to a claim by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas that it had killed a 13-year-old Arab stabbing suspect in a “cold-blooded execution”.

Ahmed Manasra and his cousin Hassan were filmed on CCTV appearing to stab an Israeli teenager, also 13, outside a sweet shop in the East Jerusalem of Pisgat Ze’ev. In another video filmed shortly afterward, Ahmed is seen lying covered in blood on the rails of the Jerusalem tram.

In a televised speech on Wednesday night, Mr Abbas condemned the “occupation and aggression of Israel and its settlers” who “execute our boys in cold blood, as they did with the boy Ahmed Manasra”.

It later emerged that Ahmed is still alive, after Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem released photos and video footage of him being treated, sitting upright in bed with a bandage on his head.

In the video footage filmed at the hospital, readers can see a nearly-healed, eating and drinking 13-year-old Ahmed Manasra — who stabbed and critically wounded a boy two months shy of his 13th birthday and a man age 25 — thus disputing the claim by Abbas that he was “executed.”

On Thursday morning, in an apparent retreat, the Palestine Liberation Organisation circulated an updated version of Mr Abbas’s speech, where the word “execution” was changed to “shooting in cold blood”.

Israel says Ahmed was not shot, but rather hit by a car during the ensuing chase. Hassan, 15, was shot dead by police.

While Hadassah hospital is being credited for it, the real credit goes to Litzman.

Health Minister Yaakov Litzman ordered Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital to allow photographers to the room of the terrorist – in order to prove that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas lied when he claimed that security forces executed him. Litzmann’s order came after the hospital refused to allow photographers,

Hadassah Ein Kerem has had issues for a while, particularly with covering up terrorist attacks. There needs to be accountability, not just in clinics, but in hospitals.

Categories: Abbas, Human rights, Islam's war on Jews, Islamic jihad, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians
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Saudis Sentence Brit to 350 Lashes for Possession of Wine

October 13, 2015

Saudis Sentence Brit to 350 Lashes for Possession of Wine, The Clarion Project, October 13, 2015

(The UN Human Rights Council, of which Saudi Arabia is the head, must be very proud of that splendid nation’s human rights achievements. — DM)

Karl-Andree-640-320Karl Andree, right. (Screenshot from video)

In a case that has recently become public, a British citizen was sentenced to 350 lashes and one year in jail by the Saudi regime after morality police found homemade wine in his car.

All alcohol is strictly prohibited in the Gulf kingdom which enforces sharia law as state law.

Karl Andree, 74, has already served the one year in prison. The sharia court which sentenced him mandated that the flogging would occur at the end of his prison time and in public.

Andree is in poor health, and it is not believed he will survive the flogging. He is being held in Jeddah’s Briman prison. Prior to his arrest he was an oil executive who worked in Saudi Arabia for 25 years.

His three children, Hugh, 46, Kirsten, 45, and Simon, 33, have now gone public with the story, though the incident took place last year in the port city of Jeddah. They are now calling on UK Prime Minister David Cameron to intervene with Saudi Arabia to secure his release.

“Our father has given 25 years of his working life to Saudi Arabia, and this is how he is treated” they said in a statement reported by The Sun. “Until his arrest, he has always been happy working there and felt safe.”

“He is 74 years of age, has had cancer three times and his wife is dying in a home in the UK. He now needs medical care for his cancer and asthma, and there is no doubt in our mind that 350 lashes will kill him. We implore David Cameron to personally intervene and help get our father home. The Saudi government will only listen to him.”

Saudi Arabia has recently drawn fire for its appalling human rights record, with two cases in particular causing an international outcry:

  • Blogger Raif Badawi was sentenced to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for running a website critical of the government. The sentence was upheld by an appeals court in June, leaving him no further legal recourse other than a royal pardon. He received the first batch of 50 lashes in January, which incapacitated him. The rest have been temporarily postponed due to his ill health and an international outcry.
  • Human rights activist, Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, now 21, was sentenced to beheading and crucifixion for taking part in pro-democracy protests during the Arab Spring in 2011 when he was just 17.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5iMttRf-jc

Categories: Britain, Human rights, Saudi Arabia, Sharia law
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Right Turn Opinion Our ‘Baghdad Bob’ president

October 7, 2015

Right Turn Opinion Our ‘Baghdad Bob’ president, Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin, October 7, 2015

(Ms. Rubin is WaPo’s token conservative. Do go to the link and read the generally unfavorable comments about her article. — DM). 

So it has come to this: We now can recognize that Carter was not malicious or indifferent to American influence; he was simply slow to catch on. If Carter, widely regarded as the weakest foreign policy president of the second half of the 20th century, looks good in comparison, you can understand how daft is Obama’s worldview. Had he been in Carter’s shoes, I suppose he would have cheered rather than take steps to mitigate imperialistic aggression. Umm, thank goodness Carter was in the White House and not Obama? Yes, it has come to that.

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Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, better known as “Baghdad Bob,” was the unintentionally hilarious Iraqi information minister who, no matter what evidence to the contrary, emphatically predicted evisceration of U.S. forces during the Iraq war and denied any news suggesting otherwise. As NBC News recalled, “His last public appearance as information minister was on April 8, 2003, the day before the fall of Baghdad, when he said that the Americans ‘are going to surrender or be burned in their tanks. They will surrender, it is they who will surrender.’ ”

Baghdad Bob now seems to be the model for the Obama White House. Ramadi falls to the Islamic State? No bother, we are winning! Russia invades Ukraine? Russian President Vladimir Putin — take this! — is on the “wrong side of history,” is only going to “wreck his country’s economy and continue Russia’s isolation,” was “desperate” to talk to Obama (and the next day commenced bombing U.S.-backed rebels in Syria) and is about to get “stuck in a quagmire” in Syria. Russia moves more forces into Syria, changing the dynamic in the Middle East? President Obama brushes it aside. Putin is acting out of “weakness,” you see. Next thing you know, the Russians will have to “surrender or be burned in their tanks.”

One is tempted to assume, is hopeful even, that the president and his spokesmen don’t believe what they are saying. It is less frightening to imagine this is ham-handed excuse-mongering for a failed foreign policy than to imagine Obama thinks things are going swimmingly. If Obama actually believes we have Putin just where we want him, why not concede all of Ukraine — or the rest of the former Soviet Union, even. If it’s to our advantage to have Russia prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and destroy the U.S.-backed rebels, then we should be thrilled Russia is now being invited into Iraq to bomb the Islamic State. For that matter, why not welcome Iranian domination of Iraq and a new Shiite-Russian-Iranian crescent?

This is the bizarre parallel universe in which U.S. marginalization is good, chaos is nothing to worry about, the worst human rights offenders are our partners and traditional U.S. allies (Israel, Sunni states, even Turkey) will just have to lump it. It’s a world in which the system of nation-state sovereignty is subsumed to zones of influence — without the United States getting a zone. About the only politician willing to buy into such insanity is Donald Trump, who thinks it is a swell idea to have Putin fighting the Islamic State (except he is not fighting the Islamic State).

You can see why conservatives consider Obama a sharp departure from decades of American foreign policy under Democratic and Republican presidents. Instead of acting as a guarantor of the West’s security, the friend of free peoples and a check against rogue states, we rationalize weakness and abandon innocents. We tend to describe the president’s foreign policy as “feckless,” but it is worse: It is monstrous.

Even Jimmy Carter woke up, it is said, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. He did not think it was a good thing that the Soviets were invading an independent nation or that the West should huff and puff but take no action.

To the contrary, in what was surely the best speech of his presidency, Carter told the country: “This invasion is an extremely serious threat to peace because of the threat of further Soviet expansion into neighboring countries in Southwest Asia and also because such an aggressive military policy is unsettling to other peoples throughout the world. This is a callous violation of international law and the United Nations Charter. It is a deliberate effort of a powerful atheistic government to subjugate an independent Islamic people.” Unlike Obama, Carter grasped the danger in letting aggressors succeed: “The United States wants all nations in the region to be free and to be independent. If the Soviets are encouraged in this invasion by eventual success, and if they maintain their dominance over Afghanistan and then extend their control to adjacent countries, the stable, strategic, and peaceful balance of the entire world will be changed. This would threaten the security of all nations including, of course, the United States, our allies, and our friends.” He went on to announce a series of concrete steps — “defer further consideration of the SALT II treaty,” “delay opening of any new American or Soviet consular facilities, and most of the cultural and economic exchanges,” “halt or to reduce exports to the Soviet Union,” suspend licensing of “high technology or other strategic items,” end grain sales, pull out of the Olympics and “provide military equipment, food, and other assistance to help Pakistan defend its independence and its national security against the seriously increased threat it now faces from the north.”

More important, unlike Obama, who is emphatic that we stay on the path of slashing our military, Carter began repairing our military and extending covert efforts, as historian Arthur Herman recalls:

The first was pledging that US defense spending would rise by 4.6 percent per year, every year for five years, starting in 1980. This shocked and infuriated his fellow Democrats — and greased the wheels for President Ronald Reagan’s military buildup. (In the event, Reagan wound up increasing defense outlays less than Carter had planned.)

The second step came in the 1980 State of the Union Address, with announcement of the Carter Doctrine: The United States would use military force if necessary to defend our interests in the Persian Gulf.

To back this up, the president authorized the creation of the first Rapid Deployment Force — the ancestor of US Central Command or CENTCOM, the wheelhouse from which the United States would direct Desert Storm in 1991 and the fall of Saddam Hussein a decade later, and which keeps the Straits of Hormuz, vital to global energy markets, safe and open today.

The last step was authorizing the first covert military aid to Afghan guerrillas fighting their Soviet occupiers. That marked the start of the Soviet quagmire in Afghanistan — a major landmark in the ultimate undoing of the Soviet Union.

You see, a “quagmire” happens only when a power is confronted, stalls and undergoes unjustified losses. Otherwise, it is called a successful invasion.

So it has come to this: We now can recognize that Carter was not malicious or indifferent to American influence; he was simply slow to catch on. If Carter, widely regarded as the weakest foreign policy president of the second half of the 20th century, looks good in comparison, you can understand how daft is Obama’s worldview. Had he been in Carter’s shoes, I suppose he would have cheered rather than take steps to mitigate imperialistic aggression. Umm, thank goodness Carter was in the White House and not Obama? Yes, it has come to that.

Categories: Carter, Denial, Foreign policy, Human rights, Ideology, Iran - Middle East, Iran - Syria war, Middle East, Obama - Middle East, Obama - rogue president, Obama's America, Obama's foreign failures, Obama's weakness, Putin, Right and wrong sides of history, Russia - Middle East, Russia - Syrian war, U.S. allies, U.S. politics
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Salman Rushdie invite to Frankfurt Book Fair against freedom of expression: official

October 6, 2015

Salman Rushdie invite to Frankfurt Book Fair against freedom of expression: official, Tehran Times (Iran), October 6, 2015

(To what extent do western “democracies” share variants of this view? To what extent are anti-immigrant and other “Islamophobic” comments becoming unlawful or prohibited de facto? — DM)

TEHRAN — Deputy Culture Minister for Cultural Affairs Seyyed Abbas Salehi has said that Frankfurt Book Fair’s plan to invite Salman Rushdie violates freedom of expression.

Earlier last week, the organizers of the book fair, which is the world’s largest event in the publishing industry, said, “On the significance of freedom of expression for authors and the book industry”, Rushdie will give the keynote address at the opening press conference of the fair on October 13.

Rushdie is the author of “The Satanic Verses”, a blasphemous novel about Islam, which was published in 1988.

The book sparked Muslims’ outrage, which culminated in a fatwa by Imam Khomeini, the founder of Islamic Republic, calling for Rushdie’s death.

“If we want freedom to turn into a sustainable issue and not an overture to violence, we should provide the necessary prerequisites,” Salehi told the Persian service of MNA on Monday.

“A basic prerequisite is respect for the sanctities of every religion,” he noted.

He warned the organizers of the Frankfurt Book Fair about the Rushdie invite and said, “The plan to invite Salman Rushdie would provoke feelings whose results would not be clear.”

Salehi said that Iran has sent a letter to Frankfurt Book Fair Director Juergen Boos, asking him to cancel their plans for Rushdie’s speech. However, there has been no response from him so far.

He said that Iran has also called upon other Muslim countries to protest against the Frankfurt Book Fair’s plans for Rushdie’s speech.

The Frankfurt Book Fair is slated to take place from October 14 to 18.

In addition, dozens of independent Iranian publishers are scheduled to showcase their latest offerings at the fair, which is the world’s largest event in the publishing industry.

Categories: Freedom of Expression, Human rights, Iran - human rights, Iran scam, Islamic culture, Islamic supremacy, Salman Rushdie
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Off Topic? | A new global police to fight “Violent Extremism” in the U.S.?

October 6, 2015

A new global police to fight “Violent Extremism” in the U.S.? Front Page Magazine, Matthew Vadum, October 6, 2015

(Not long ago, I would have thought this a nutty conspiracy article. Now, not so much. With the UN and Obama involved, what could go wrong?  — DM)

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The Obama administration plans to create a global police force that counters “violent extremism” in the United States and elsewhere.

The problem is that in Obama-speak “violent extremism” refers not only to jihadists wishing to harm Americans but also to conservatives and Tea Party activists. Just ask all the law-abiding right-of-center nonprofit groups targeted by Lois Lerner’s IRS during the Obama presidency.

Ominously, President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch unveiled the Strong Cities Network last week at the United Nations.

America’s chief executive, who speaks in hushed and reverent tones when discussing the Muslim faith, said the U.S. will use “all of our tools” to fight Islamic State terrorists.

“This is not an easy task,” Obama said. “This is not a conventional battle. This is a long-term campaign — not only against this particular network, but against its ideology.” The United States and a coalition of 60 other countries are “pursuing a comprehensive strategy” for dealing with Islamic State, he said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice teased the Strong Cities Network in a press release:

Cities are vital partners in international efforts to build social cohesion and resilience to violent extremism.  Local communities and authorities are the most credible and persuasive voices to challenge violent extremism in all of its forms and manifestations in their local contexts.  While many cities and local authorities are developing innovative responses to address this challenge, no systematic efforts are in place to share experiences, pool resources and build a community of cities to inspire local action on a global scale.

“The Strong Cities Network will serve as a vital tool to strengthen capacity-building and improve collaboration,” Lynch was quoted saying. “As we continue to counter a range of domestic and global terror threats, this innovative platform will enable cities to learn from one another, to develop best practices and to build social cohesion and community resilience here at home and around the world.”

The media release continues:

The SCN will include an International Steering Committee of approximately 25 cities and other sub-national entities from different regions that will provide the SCN with its strategic direction.  The SCN will also convene an International Advisory Board, which includes representatives from relevant city-focused networks, to help ensure SCN builds upon their work.  It will be run by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a leading international “think-and-do” tank with a long-standing track record of working to prevent violent extremism …

Although the European scene is different from the American, the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue doesn’t come across at first glance as a neutral observer.

Its website, which is filled with left-wing buzzwords, warns

The tragic attacks in Norway on 22 July, 2011 drew Europe’s gaze to the dangers of the growing presence of far-right extremism across Europe and the increasing legitimisation of anti-immigration and anti-Islamic discourses within mainstream European politics. The blurred relationship between violence from the extreme right and broader trends of Islamophobia and anti-immigration sentiment poses several challenges for policy makers seeking to address the increasing risk of violent right-wing extremism.

And although American conservatives might not quibble with a new U.S.-based initiative aimed at “violent extremism” outside America’s borders, they have ample reason to be concerned about one that targets organizations within the United States.

Conservative champion Pamela Geller railed against the Strong Cities Network in a column at Breitbart News.

This plan “amounts to nothing less than the overriding of American laws, up to and including the United States Constitution, in favor of United Nations laws that would henceforth be implemented in the United States itself – without any consultation of Congress at all.”

Announcing the plan at the United Nations is curious she writes, because the UN “is a sharia-compliant world body, and Obama, speaking there just days ago, insisted that ‘violent extremism’ is not exclusive to Islam (which it is).”

It is unlikely the new body will be used as a “global police force” to crush counter-jihad forces, she wrote.

After all, with Obama knowingly aiding al-Qaeda forces in Syria, how likely is it that he will use his “global police force” against actual Islamic jihadists?

I suspect that instead, this global police force will be used to impose the blasphemy laws under the sharia (Islamic law), and to silence all criticism of Islam for the President who proclaimed that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

Geller and other conservatives are painfully aware that in the parlance of the Left, “violent extremism” refers to conservatives and other patriotic Americans.

If you are opposed to enlarging the redistributive state and spreading the wealth around then by definition you’re a potential terrorist.  If you’re a conservative or a libertarian, if you believe in gun rights or don’t support abortion rights or an immigration amnesty, if you don’t like high taxes or welfare programs or if you dare to believe that the Constitution actually limits the power of the government, you’re at risk of turning to terrorism.

In 2009, Janet Napolitano, then head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security gave her blessing to a spurious DHS report titled, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.”

Drawing heavily from so-called research by the loony-left Southern Poverty Law Center, the report lumped Ku Klux Klansmen and violent militias together with good government types and members of the Federalist Society. This law enforcement guidance claimed that large swaths of the nation that did not vote Democratic in the last election were boiling over with hatred and intolerance.

Anticlimactically, the report noted that there is no actual evidence “that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence.” Nonetheless the report speculated, using language that would later be embraced by the violent Occupy Wall Street movement, that “the economic downturn and the election of the first African American president” might help these “rightwing extremists” gain new recruits.

Guffaws from Republicans and some of her fellow Democrats forced Napolitano to disavow the report but in the intervening years Obama’s DHS has kept up the pressure on patriotic Americans in an attempt to stigmatize and marginalize conservative beliefs.

As recently as this past February, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson released a report on what CNN called the grave “domestic terror threat from right-wing sovereign citizen extremists.”

“The government says these are extremists who believe that they can ignore laws and that their individual rights are under attack in routine daily instances such as a traffic stop or being required to obey a court order,” the news network reported.

To the Obama administration, zealous civil libertarians and ornery old guys in pickup trucks are a much greater threat to the homeland than Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, al Qaeda, and Islamic State combined.

CNN paraphrased Mark Potok, a senior fellow at — you guessed it, the Southern Poverty Law Center — hailing the report.

“Potok said that by some estimates, there are as many as 300,000 people involved in some way with sovereign citizen extremism. Perhaps 100,000 people form a core of the movement, he said.”

Around the same time counterinsurgency and counterterrorism expert Sebastian Gorka ridiculed the obviously politicized DHS report for going off the deep end.

Gorka, a professor who lectures on irregular warfare at the College of International Security Affairs at the National Defense University, said over the last two decades he could not remember right-wing extremists flying jumbo jets into buildings, bombing a marathon, or beheading Christian hostages.

“It really is the most egregious politicization of national security,” Gorka opined. “We’re going to be looking for right-wing extremists when ISIS prepares to attack us? It’s outrageous.”

“We have tens of thousands of people in the Middle East and elsewhere and here in America who have committed themselves to the destruction of this great nation. And we’re going to be focusing on the small cluster of right-wingers here in the United States?” he said. “This could endanger American lives.”

All of this brings to mind the jarringly strange thing then-Senator Obama said on the campaign trail in October 2008.

“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set,” he said. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”

Is the Strong Cities Network the civilian national security force Obama mentioned just once and then never brought up again?

We’re about to find out.

Categories: Europe, European Union, Human rights, Ideology, Islamic culture, Islamic immigration, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Obama - rogue president, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Sharia law, Strong Cities Network, United Nations, Violent extremism
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No moral outrage in the military

October 6, 2015

No moral outrage in the military, Washington Times, James A. Lyons, October 5, 2015

105_2015_b3-lyon-obama-shiel8201_c0-0-2933-1710_s561x327Obama Decimates the U.S. Military Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

[T]he degradation of our military’s core principles must be viewed in a much broader perspective. Actually, it is a key element in President Obama’s declaration to fundamentally transform America. When you want to take down a country, the first thing you do is weaken its military.

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Recent articles highlighting horrifying child abuse atrocities inflicted on defenseless children by our Afghan military and police partners are but the latest examples of how President Obama is destroying U.S. military forces.

Our military leadership’s response to these blatant acts of pedophilia by our so-called Afghan partners has been shocking. In short, the guidance provided to our Army and Marine Corps personnel was to just ignore these Muslim and Afghan seventh-century customs and traditions. They have been instructed to not interfere, even when such horrific acts are being committed on our own bases.

Those U.S. military personnel. whose moral outrage will not let them ignore these atrocities and instead act to stop these unconscionable acts against children, are either disciplined or forced to leave the service. In other words, even if you find a young boy chained to a bed so that a local police commander can sodomize him every night and you hear the screams, you are told to look the other way. This is not only un-American but an act against humanity.

Even the Taliban outlawed such practices and freed a number of children, thereby earning the gratitude of village elders. Does the Taliban with its seventh-century mentality have a higher moral code than the U.S. military leadership? It should be clear to any thinking person that when our honorable military personnel are forced to ignore these crimes against humanity, they are viewed as being complicit.

To those who have followed our involvement in Afghanistan, the current policy to ignore acts of pedophilia should come as no surprise. When “green on blue” attacks gained national attention, our military leadership tried to explain it away by claiming the friction that developed between the two forces was because our military personnel were not sensitive enough to Afghan culture and traditions. In other words, if our Afghan partners conduct violence or kill U.S. military personnel, it is our fault. What nonsense.

Other Afghan cultural idiosyncrasies our military personnel are forced to accept without reservation include wife-beating, rape, drug use, thievery, dog torture, desertion and collusion with the enemy, the Taliban. Furthermore, under no circumstances can our military discuss Islam in any form. The genesis for this goes back to the purging of all our training manuals and instructors who presented Islam in an unfavorable light or linked it to terrorism. It is totally against our core principles and everything we stand for as Americans. It clearly has an adverse impact on individual and unit morale, which affects the ultimate goal of the “will to win.” The bottom line is that we are forcing our great military to submit to Islam and its governing Shariah law, or possibly die.

This is exactly the choice offered to infidels who have been vanquished by Islamic jihad. Our military’s silence and acquiescence, particularly by the leadership, is the humiliating price for our coexistence with our Afghan partners. This is unacceptable.

However, the degradation of our military’s core principles must be viewed in a much broader perspective. Actually, it is a key element in President Obama’s declaration to fundamentally transform America. When you want to take down a country, the first thing you do is weaken its military. We cannot ignore the fact that with or without sequestration, the Obama administration has unilaterally disarmed our military forces and, consequently, our capabilities. Further, the social engineering imposed on our military forces — to include the acceptance of gay, lesbian and soon transgender personnel — further undermines the moral fiber of our military and constitutes a further degradation of our military effectiveness. Forcing women into combat roles only further degrades the situation. The restricted rules of engagement imposed on our forces has reduced our military’s effectiveness and caused unnecessary loss of life and debilitating injuries.

Likewise, the pin-prick attacks on the Islamic State cast a shadow over what a dedicated air campaign could accomplish. It projects an image of weakness and ineffectiveness of our true capabilities. It has taken the “awe” of our invincibility and overwhelming force capabilities out of the equation. The net result is that our enemies no longer fear us, and our allies can no longer trust us.

The imposed limit on the application and capability our military force is not limited to the Middle East. For example, in the Western Pacific, to challenge China’s illegal actions in the South China Sea, the Obama administration has restricted the U.S. Navy from enforcing its freedom of seas concept that has been a fundamental principle of the U.S. Navy for more than 238 years. Our Asian allies in the Western Pacific watch carefully how we respond to China’s aggressive actions. Our directed restraint clearly will not raise their confidence level.

Our national security is being deliberately jeopardized. President Obama’s bloviating to Vladimir Putin at the recent U.N. session that he leads the most powerful military in the world was only true on the day he took office. Since then, Obama has systematically degraded our capabilities. The chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services Committee must take forceful action now to prevent further emasculation of our military capabilities.

Categories: Afghanistan, Arab culture, Combat troops, Department of Defense, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Free world, Human rights, Islamic culture, Middle East, Multiculturalism, Obama - Middle East, Obama and morality, Obama and US military, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Progressives, Rules of war, U.S. Military
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Palestinian Authority celebrated UN bid w/murder of Rabbi in front of his children

October 2, 2015

Palestinian Authority celebrated UN bid w/murder of Rabbi in front of his children, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, October 2, 2015

(Please see also, Satire | Three cheers for Terroristine and Mahmoud Abbas: Jews “Have No Right to Defile the Al-Aqsa Mosque with Their Filthy Feet.” These two Jews won’t.  — DM)

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After the UN flew the flag of Terroristine over New York, the killers of the Palestinian Authority celebrated the only way they knew how.

This is what Palestine means. This is what it has always meant. Palestine is Terroristine. It stands for the murder of Jews. That is its only real objective and goal. After Abbas disavowed negotiations with Israel and the Oslo Accords at the UN, after the UN flew the flag of Terroristine over New York, the killers of the Palestinian Authority celebrated the only way they knew how.

By murdering more Jews.

A horrific terror attack has claimed the lives of an Israeli mother and father Thursday evening after their car came under fire by Palestinian terrorists.

Rabbi Eitam Henkin and Naama Henkin leave behind six orphaned children, four of whom – aged 4 months, 4 ,7 and 9 years – were in the vehicle at the time of the attack.

According to investigators, Naama was killed immediately. Eitam managed to step out of the vehicle, open the back door of the car, and ordered his children to flee the scene of the attack. He then collapsed on the road and died.

Off-duty medic Tzvi Goren had been driving along the road from Itamar to Elon Moreh in Samaria on Thursday night when he saw a car flashing its headlights and honking.

Goren immediately knew something was going on.

“I pull over and see a man armed with an M-16 and recognize him as a friend of mine,” he said. “I asked him what was going on, he said there was a terror attack, there are kids in the back.”

Goren had arrived at the scene mere minutes after Fatah (PLO/Palestinian Authority) terrorists murdered Rabbi Eitam and Naama Henkin.

“I looked and saw that the wounded appeared to be in critical condition, so we decided to put the kids in my car for the time being; my friend meanwhile stood guard.”

When he arrived, all four children seemed to have understood that something had happened, he said, and the eldest cried bitter tears while saying that someone murdered his parents.

“I had imagined you would eulogize me,” Rabbanit Chana Henkin said on Friday morning as she stood by the body of her son Eitam and his wife Na’ama, who were killed the night before as they drove home with their four children after a visit with friends.

She stood on a small makeshift stage that had been set up under the hot noon sun, as she described how the extended family had gathered just 24 hours earlier at Eitam and Na’ama’s home in the West Bank settlement of Neria.

They went on a hike and hung out in the house while the children played nicely on the rug.

“We said goodbye yesterday leisurely, with happiness and smiles,” said Chana. “And then you were killed. This parting, is very hard.”

The couple fell in love very young. Chana recalled that Na’ama was just 18 when they met her – bright, beautiful, capable and modest. A talented graphic artist, Na’ama ran her own graphics business that had just started to receive international attention.

She was a loving mother to her four small sons Matan Hillel, Nizan Yitzhak, Notah Eliezer and Itamar, said Chana.

Just last Shabbat she had told Na’ama how amazing it was to see the special connection she had with her youngest son, Itamar, who was only eight months old.

“You listened intensely to a son, who thought you were the most important person in the world,” Chana said. She added, Itamar who is still nursing, “won’t remember his mother’s love.”

“Eitam and Na’ama, you found each other very early. You built a house. You brought four children in to the world. You did everything right and then you were killed, because of your love of the land of Israel,” Chana said.

The Palestinian Authority’s Fatah claimed credit for the brutal murder.

The “armed wing” of Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction claimed responsibility for the horrific murder of a young couple outside Itamar in Samaria on Thursday night, but an Israeli response to Abbas has yet to be formulated by the government.

The Martyr Abdul-Qader al-Husseini Brigades, associated with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and likewise affiliated with Fatah, openly posted on its Arabic-language internet site that it claims full responsibility for the “heroic operation.”

There’s nothing more heroic than murdering two parents in front of their children. This is what Muslim heroism looks like.

Senior Fatah official Mahmoud Al-Aloul, who is a member of the Fatah Central Committee, was revealed by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) as having announcing responsibility the night before on Facebook for the murder of Rabbi Eitam and Naama Henkin outside Itamar in Samaria.

“The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement Fatah, accepted responsibility for the Itamar operation (i.e. the murder – ed.) carried out against settlers, leading to their deaths,” wrote Al-Aloul in an open admission.

The Martyr Abdul-Qader al-Husseini Brigades is the particular faction of Fatah which claimed responsibility for the murder of the Henkin couple.

Abdul-Qader al-Husseini was an Islamist who was closely related to Hitler’s Mufti. His son, Faisal Husseini, was a PLO terrorist who headed Fatah.

And the PLO’s backers in Brussels and Washington D.C. are on it.

European Union (EU) High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini on Friday released a condolence statement over the horrific murders of Rabbi Eitam and Naama Henkin late Thursday night, but not without calling on both Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to impose “calm” despite the crime.

“Today we mourn once again the loss of human lives,” Mogherini said. “The killing of an Israeli couple has left four young children orphaned and, once again, civilians have been targeted so as to cause terrible suffering and to try to undermine any possibility of a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

“The EU expresses its condolences to the Henkin family,” she continued. “The perpetrators of this act must be brought to justice.”

The perpetrators of the attack are funded by the EU. Their boss just appeared at the UN.

“We extend our condolences to the victims’ family. We urge all sides to maintain calm, avoid escalating tensions in the wake of this tragedy, and work together to bring the perpetrators to justice,” the US State Department said.

The perpetrators are being aided by the State Department.

Steven Flatow, a victim of terror, has some harsh words for this hypocrisy.

The depressingly familiar post-terrorist attack ritual is already unfolding before our eyes. The Obama administration has issued a formalistic condemnation, adding its standard, amoral appeal: “We urge all sides to maintain calm…” (As if “all sides” are to blame for disrupting the “calm” in the first place.) The news media will portray the murders as a response to something that some Israeli did or is suspected of doing or might have done, somewhere, at some point.

What usually happens next, however, is that the news of the murders retreats from the headlines, the memories of the victims fade from public consciousness, and we all collectively turn the page and shift our attentions elsewhere.

But it shouldn’t be that way. We must not become the turn-the-page business-as-usual generation. There are concrete actions that American Jews can take in response to the Henkin murders.

Urge President Barack Obama to put Fatah on the official terror list

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is the military division of Fatah, has publicly boasted that it committed the murders. Fatah is the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is the parent body of the Palestinian Authority. (Mahmoud Abbas is chairman of all three: Fatah, the PLO, and the PA.) When the State Department first created its official list of “Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations” in 1997, it left Fatah off—otherwise, it would have been illegal for the U.S. to keep sending $500 million to the PA every year.

But the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade committed so many suicide bombings and other major terrorist attacks in the years to follow, that eventually the U.S. could no longer turn a blind eye. So it opted to play a little game—to pretend that the Brigade was not connected to Fatah. The Brigade was added to the Terrorist Organizations list in 2002. Fatah was not.

In 2003, a BBC investigation of PA documents captured by Israel proved that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade is directly financed by Fatah. In June 2004, the PA’s prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, declared, “We have clearly declared that the Aksa Martyrs’ Brigades are part of Fatah. We are committed to them and Fatah bears full responsibility for the group.” The U.S. ignored that and hoped nobody would notice. To this day, Fatah is still left off the list. It’s time to urge President Obama to put Fatah on the list.

Advocate for action against killers of Americans

Rabbi Eitam Henkin was the son of the renowned educators Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbanit Chana Henkin, both of whom grew up in the U.S. More than 100 Americans have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists since the 1960s, most of them in recent years. The U.S. government has a special legal and moral responsibility when American citizens are victimized by terrorists. Yet in all these years and after all these Palestinian attacks, not a single Palestinian murderer of Americans has been indicted by the American government or extradited to the U.S. America has not even taken symbolic steps, such as insisting that the PA stop naming schools, parks, and sports tournaments in honor of killers of Americans. We must demand that the Obama administration take action.

Obviously Obama will not take action, but the issue must be put out there so that Republican candidates pick up on it and even some Democrats are shamed into action.

Categories: Abbas, Death to Israel, Fatah, Filthy Jews, Foreign policy, Human rights, Islamic slaughter, Obama and Israel, Obama's legacy, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians
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Benjamin Netanyahu • United Nations Address • 10/1/15

October 1, 2015

Benjamin Netanyahu • United Nations Address • 10/1/15 via You Tube, October 1, 2015

 

 

According to the blurb at You Tube,

October 1st, 2015 • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu renewed his warning that the Iranian nuclear deal threatens to destabilize the Middle East and will make a war more likely. He cautioned that already Iran is ramping up efforts to fund terror cells worldwide, while also arming Islamists in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories.

Netanyahu told that Iran was already building up its own armament stockpiles and that billions of dollars in sanctions relief would only fuel the effort. He reminded the nations of the world that Iran already has the capability to target Israel with ballistic weapons and that it’s current ballistic efforts can only be meant to threaten Europe and the United States.

The Prime Minister chastised the member states of the U.N. for their failure to speak out against Iranian threats to destroy Israel, and that the silence was deafening. Netanyahu emphasized the point by staring at the delegates in silence for 45 seconds.

Netanyahu responded to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s declaration the previous day that it would no longer honor the Oslo Peace Accords by offering to reopen peace talks with the PA without any conditions. He also rejected the assertion by Abbas that Israel intended to change the status of the al-Asqa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a Palestinian allegation that has recently fomented violent incidents.

Prime Minister Netanyahu pleaded with U.N. member states to cease decades of anti Israeli rhetoric, and to undertake an honest effort to work toward an Israeli – Palestinian peace agreement.

He also urged the United Nations to advance peace in the Middle East after decades of the UN working against Israeli interests.

Categories: Abbas, Defense of Israel, Human rights, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama - Middle East, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians, Peace process, Two state solution, United Nations
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Satire | Three cheers for Terroristine

October 1, 2015

Three cheers for Terroristine, Sultan Knish Blog, Daniel Greenfield, October 1, 2015

(He refers, of course, to “Palestine.” — DM)

We need a terrorist state. Where the politicians are terrorists, the police are terrorists and even the men sitting at the desk when you come in to drop off a form are terrorists.

3egypt081613

There are states that support terrorists, and give safe harbor to them, but that’s not good enough. We don’t want another Pakistan or Iran. We’re not half-assing it this time. What we want is the genuine article. Terrorists from the top down. Terrorists everywhere. A state where every branch of government and the entire country is nothing but terrorists.

Terroristine has been an ancient dream since 1973 or was it 1967. A generation of keffiyah draped thugs, KGB operatives and human rights activists have looked out into the darkness and called it into being. It is a vision of a country where everyone is a murderer and children are taught from a very young age that their purpose in life is to die killing people who don’t share their religion.

And now after decades of negotiations, treaties, suicide bombings, mutilations, billions of dollars in vanishing into Swiss bank accounts and the death of its Egyptian born leader of AIDS– Terroristine is closer than ever to coming into being.

Abbas, its unelected dictator, who has struggled long and hard so that one of his sons might have his own cigarette monopoly in Gaza, has come to the UN to promise that Terroristine will have “will actively contribute to the achievement of economic, cultural, and humanitarian progress of civilization.”

And who can doubt him? Certainly not Terroristinians who don’t have elections or a free press.

Terroristine, whose noble flag (that looks like nearly every other Arab flag) flies over the UN, has done wonders for civilization. Consider the airplane hijacking. The suicide bomber. Has there ever been a civilization that did as much for civilized living as the Terroristinians?

Every time you get groped at an airport, thank Terroristine. Without the Terroristinian contribution to civilization, you might actually be able to get on a plane in peace. Or visit the Twin Towers.

The Terroristinian contribution to human progress is unquestionable. But only one thing stands in the way of it unleashing its full Terroristinian potential for all mankind.

Them. Those pesky people who live in that country that is always in the way. You know the ones, with too many Nobel prizes, newly invented tomatoes and microchips. They stand in the way of the great cultural contributions of Terroristine. They must die so that Terroristine must live.

They must be thrown out of their homes, village by village and city by city, so that the noble Terroristinians can plant their rockets on the rubble of their houses, the charred remains of their fields, and point them at their cities.

Trying to end terrorism by creating a terrorist state makes is like trying to put out a fire with more fire. It can’t work, but we must try. So that we can say that we tried. Over and over again. We’ll keep trying until we run out of land to try with. And people to try with.

Until there’s nothing left but Terroristines everywhere. Until all the world is Terroristine. The question is can we make it happen? Yes, we can. Oh sweet Allah, yes we can.

Israel must return to the 1967 borders, which are really the 1948 borders. Why are the borders of the 1948 war, so much better than the borders of the Six Day War? Because the Terroristinians came closer to winning that war. Came closer to driving the Yahood into the sea and ululating over miles  of their corpses.

boy_bomb.preview

But the dream failed. Farmers armed with outdated rifles. Volunteer pilots from America and Canada. Refitted cargo ships filled with half-dead men, women and children straight from the camps. Used Czech artillery. They held off the armies of seven Terroristinian nations. Farm by farm, they stood off tanks and infantry. In Jerusalem, they fought for every house. And so the Zionist entity survived.

Allah curse them. They survived.

But now it’s back to 1948 again. Every war undone. Every defeat turned to victory. Cut Jerusalem in two. Drive out the farmers. Burn their land. Dig up their graves. March the borders back to 1948. And fly the Terroristinian flag over dust and rubble. Had they won in 1948 or 1967 or 1973, there would be no Israel and no Terroristine. The land would have become part of Syria, Egypt and Jordan. And only when the mobs of the faithful would drive out the tyrants to replace them with Islamic states, would there finally be a Terroristine.

But despite what Abbas says, there is still hope for a two state solution. And we must do everything in our power to salvage the two state solution so that there will be a state of civilization on one side and a state of terrorists on the other. Hospitals here, launching pads there. Schools here, bomb factories there. Life here, death here. We all know the story. Olive trees and bomb belts. Rocks and dead families in burning cars by the side of the road. Children with their throats cut.

A dream. A nightmare. Who even knows anymore.

Why do we need Terroristine? Peace. There can be no peace without a terrorist state. Not a chance of it. The only way we’ll ever have peace is to give the terrorists a country of their own. A country dedicated to terrorism. Only then will the Terroristinians finally give up on all the killing, and dedicate themselves to medical research, quantum mechanics and the arts. It hasn’t happened yet to. But it’s bound to.

After decades as an autonomous territory, spreading death and destruction, it’s time for Terroristine to finally be recognized as an independent state. With contiguous borders cutting Israel in half. It is the only hope for peace in the region. Would Sunnis and Shiites be killing each other from Yemen to Iraq? Assuredly not. The moment the flag of Terroristine rises above the wounded hills, and its peaceful anthem, “Palestine is My Revenge” is heard in the land, then a great echoing sigh will rise up from the mouths of one billion Muslims. And the violence will cease.

The international community is impatient. They want Terroristine and they want it now. Whatever Israel has offered in the past, it isn’t enough. It must offer more and more. Whatever it takes. We know the Terroristinians want their own state. Every time they walk out of negotiations or end them with a round of terrorist attacks, it shows their deep and abiding passion for a state. They want it so badly they aren’t willing to make a single concession for it. Or even negotiate for it.

That’s how committed they are to realizing their great dream to Terroristine. And who can blame them? Have any people suffered the way the Terroristinians have? (Besides all the people the Terroristinians have killed over the last 1,400 years.) Have any other people been wholly subsidized by a UN agency dedicated only to them? Have any other people inspired such a stylish fashion statement? No more excuses. The world demands Terroristine. Middle East peace demands Terroristine.

How much longer can Israel expect to draw out the necessary concessions with weak justifications about terrorism. We know they’re terrorists. That’s why we’re giving them a state. If they weren’t terrorists, they could go to the back of the line with the Jews, Kurds and Armenians.

From one corner of the Muslim world to the other, a cry goes out. “We Are All Terroristinians.” They cry it it Cairo and Damascus, in Tehran and Islamabad, in Dubai and Paris. They mosques go up, the asses go up and the bombs go off. And off to the peace negotiations we go.

Islam will dominate the world

Everyone is impatient. Everyone is on fire. Especially the Terroristinians. Jewish store windows are smashed in London, Terroristinians butcher Rabbis in Jerusalem synagogues, fuming Terroristinians shoot up American recruiting centers. And the crowds cheer. “We Are All Terroristinians Now.”

It is a great day, I tell you. A great day for negotiating. ISIS impatiently beheads infidels to create its own Islamic Terroristine. In Afghanistan the word goes out, “We are the Taliban, we are the Afghan people, we are Terroristinians.” In Egypt and Turkey, they cry, “Khaybar Ya Yahood”. Churches burn. Soldiers die. The smoke rises to heaven. A man waits in line at the airport. His passport is Dutch, Welsh, German, American, it doesn’t matter. He is a Terroristinian. Yallah.

One day the borders of Terroristine will stretch from Spain to Pakistan. Or beyond Why settle for Jerusalem, when we can have London, Paris and Hamburg too. Why settle for anything at all? Allah is generous to the believers. Our people are in Africa. Even China. The Great Satan himself bows toward Mecca. The old governments are falling. The pawns of the Kufir are fleeing before our eyes.

We are all Terroristinians now. There is no other book on our shelves than the Koran. No law but Sharia in our hearts. And no nation but Terroristine. The ghost of Chamberlain stands outside No. 10 Downing Street promising peace. A Terroristinian refugee beheads him and holds up his spectral head to the cheers of the crowd. Rockets sail through the sky. The crowd cheers. Hip Hip Hooray. Hierosylma Est Perdita. Three cheers for Terroristine.

Categories: Abbas, Death to Israel, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Human rights, Iranian proxies, Islam's war on Jews, Islamic culture, Islamic jihad, Islamic nations, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Jerusalem, Jewish occupation of Israel, Jews, Moderate Muslims, Multiculturalism, Obama - Middle East, Obama's foreign failures, Obama's legacy, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian elections, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians, Peace process, Political Islam, Religion, Religion of Peace, Satire, Sharia law, Terrorism, United Nations
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Putin Plays Mideast Chess as Obama Looks On

October 1, 2015

Putin Plays Mideast Chess as Obama Looks On, American Thinker, Jonathan F. Keiler, October 1, 2015

(Unfortunately, Obama was “in the game” which led to the nuke “deal” with Iran. There, he was not incompetent; he got what he sought. — DM)

Obama has made a lot of foreign policy mistakes in office, but his capitulation on the Iranian nuclear talks followed by Russia’s move into Syria is impossible to explain away as anything but a stupendous strategic fiasco.  Incompetence is too nice a word.  Obama was never even in the game.

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It is sometimes said that in negotiations with foreigners, American leaders play checkers, while their wilier opponents play chess.   There is perhaps some truth to this, as American leaders sometimes chase short-term political results, a consequence of democratic governance and constantly changing leadership.  By contrast, despotic Persians are credited with inventing chess, and in modern times autocratic Russians have been its master, and so it is tempting to say of President Obama’s dealings with those two countries that the analogy holds.

But that is way too charitable.  As Vladimir Putin skillfully reasserts Russian power and influence in the Middle East with Islamic Persian Iran as a willing partner, a more apt analogy might be that while the Russians and Iranians move their chessmen, isolating and threatening opposing pieces, Obama is not even at the table, but rather childishly looking on, as he pushes diplomatic dirt around the Middle East sandbox.

For over 150 years, a primary objective of Western diplomatic and military strategy was to keep the Russians out of the Middle East and Southwest Asia.  In the 1850s, the British and French went to war in Crimea to protect the Ottomans from Russian predation and to preserve the balance of power.  Later, the so-called “Great Game” centered on similar British efforts to frustrate Russian domination of Iran and Afghanistan.  A century later, the United States took up the task, offsetting Russian influence in newly socialist Arab dictatorships by backing Israel and more traditional Arab monarchies in the Middle East, while openly and successfully opposing the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan.

Today, one can’t even say there remains any Western strategy regarding Russia.  Western Europe has mostly forfeited its military and political influence overseas to support decadent welfare states, even as it is being progressively and deliberately overwhelmed by millions of Islamist migrants.  Under Obama, who supports and admires Europe’s demise, the United States has increasingly joined in the decline.  The laughable Libyan campaign, “fought” by Europeans while the U.S. led from behind, set an example of pursuing a feckless, feel-good military campaign without regard for consequences or traditional strategic concerns.  Obama’s encouragement of the so-called Arab Spring and its Islamist provocateurs almost lost Egypt and did lose Syria, with catastrophic humanitarian and geopolitical results.

Putin is taking advantage of American weakness and inaction.  A half-century of successful American effort to keep the Russians out of the Middle East has been forfeit in a few months of breathtaking American diplomatic and military incompetence.  Obama’s capitulation in the Iran deal effectively completed the groundwork for the Russian move, Putin having carefully monitored America’s year-long and ineffectual air campaign against ISIS.  Putin now claims that Russia’s push into Syria is to redeem the campaign against ISIS with Russian troops fighting with Syria and Hezb’allah.  Embarrassed by Putin at the U.N., Obama gave up any pretense of strength, effectively welcoming the Russian “intervention” against ISIS.  Unexplained is why a large percentage of Russian anti-ISIS forces are heavily equipped with anti-aircraft weapons, something that even a flaccid NATO command cannot ignore, inasmuch as ISIS have an air force.  Those weapons are useful only against NATO or Israeli aircraft.

So lost was Obama before his meeting with Putin at the U.N. that his stated strategy for dealing with the Russian strongman was to ask him what he was doing.  From the stiff and awkward body language of the president following the meeting (a painful handshake and awkward smile) it is clear that Putin told Obama at least some of the story, whether Obama liked it or not.  Most particularly, his client Bashar Assad will remain in power with Russian backing, regardless of Obama’s view on the matter.  But likely Obama had known what he was in for, and just going through the motions.  The day before, Secretary of State of State John Kerry responded to a question about how long the U.S. could tolerate the survival of Assad, saying, “… it doesn’t have to be on day one or month one or whatever.”  Right, dude, whatever.  Between Obama and Kerry, it is now fair to assume that our much muddled and irresolute Syrian policy is “whatever,” which means we just don’t care.  We take our toys and go home.

If Obama was hoping, as he and his supporters implied, that the Iranian deal would produce a more moderate, cooperative Iran, Putin and the mullahs are doing all they can to demonstrate how wrong he was.  If he was hoping that “international pressure” and the conflict in Ukraine would moderate Putin’s aggressive strategies, he was wrong again.  And if he thinks that by quitting, he has left Putin an unwinnable game, the Russian leader aims to prove him wrong again.  And since Obama is almost always wrong when it comes to foreign policy, it’s a fool’s errand to bet against Putin.

In chess, before going for the opponent’s king, typical strategy calls for supporting one’s important pieces, while threatening and isolating opposing pieces.  The Russians and Iranians are now going about this with a vengeance, without the United States or the West making any noticeably effective counter-moves.  Russia is backing and protecting Assad and has closely allied itself with a newly empowered (thanks largely to Obama) Iran.  Meanwhile, traditional American allies in the region, Israel, Egypt, and the Arab monarchies are indeed increasingly threatened and isolated.  The stage is being set for a Russo-Iranian endgame that could prove disastrous to America’s traditional allies and the West in general.

Some of Obama’s liberal supporters dismiss such analysis as over the top, and insist that Putin’s moves have more to do with domestic politics than a long-term Middle Eastern power play.  They point out Putin’s problems at home, and the relative weakness of the Russian military.  However, relative Russian weakness means little when moving into a power vacuum created by Obama’s flight from international responsibilities and, to a large extent, reality.  And besides, this has been the basic way liberals have sought to excuse Obama whenever he is pushed around by a foreign leader (which is almost always).  Putin’s got problems, so he invades Ukraine, threatens the Baltic States, and moves into Syria.  The Chinese have problems, so they push naval vessels into American waters and fortify disputed Western Pacific archipelagos.  Korea’s got problems, Iran’s got problems, and none of their aggressive actions has anything to do with the dilettante in the White House.  It’s all about solving problems at home with international temper tantrums.

Obama has made a lot of foreign policy mistakes in office, but his capitulation on the Iranian nuclear talks followed by Russia’s move into Syria is impossible to explain away as anything but a stupendous strategic fiasco.  Incompetence is too nice a word.  Obama was never even in the game.

 

Categories: Assad, Death to America, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Free world, Human rights, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Obama - Middle East, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, Obama's foreign failures, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Putin, Russia, United Nations
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