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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; credibility</title>
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		<title>The Demise of Pax Americana</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/caroline-glick/the-demise-of-pax-americana/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-demise-of-pax-americana</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Nov 2013 04:34:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[credibility]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[foreign policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[power]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=210836</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Only Congress can salvage America's credibility now. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/090613_obama2_600.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-210839" alt="090613_obama2_600" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/090613_obama2_600-450x337.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/COLUMN-ONE-The-demise-of-Pax-Americana-331803">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p>What happened in Geneva last week was the most significant international event since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The collapse of the Soviet Union signaled the rise of the United States as the sole global superpower. The developments in the six-party nuclear talks with Iran in Geneva last week signaled the end of American world leadership.</p>
<p>Global leadership is based on two things – power and credibility. The United States remains the most powerful actor in the world. But last week, American credibility was shattered.</p>
<p>Secretary of State John Kerry spent the first part of last week lying to Israeli and Gulf Arab leaders and threatening the Israeli people. He lied to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the Saudis about the content of the deal US and European negotiators had achieved with the Iranians.</p>
<p>Kerry told them that in exchange for Iran temporarily freezing its nuclear weapons development program, the US and its allies would free up no more than $5 billion in Iranian funds seized and frozen in foreign banks.</p>
<p>Kerry threatened the Israeli people with terrorism and murder – and so invited both – if Israel fails to accept his demands for territorial surrender to PLO terrorists that reject Israel’s right to exist.</p>
<p>Kerry’s threats were laced with bigoted innuendo.</p>
<p>He claimed that Israelis are too wealthy to understand their own interests. If you don’t wise up and do what I say, he intoned, the Europeans will take away your money while the Palestinians kill you. Oh, and aside from that, your presence in the historic heartland of Jewish civilization from Jerusalem to Alon Moreh is illegitimate.</p>
<p>It is hard to separate the rise in terrorist activity since Kerry’s remarks last week from his remarks.</p>
<p>What greater carte blanche for murder could the Palestinians have received than the legitimization of their crimes by the chief diplomat of Israel’s closest ally? Certainly, Kerry’s negotiating partner Catherine Ashton couldn’t have received a clearer signal to ratchet up her economic boycott of Jewish Israeli businesses than Kerry’s blackmail message, given just two days before the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht.</p>
<p>Kerry’s threats were so obscene and unprecedented that Israeli officials broke with tradition and disagreed with him openly and directly, while he was still in the country. Normally supportive leftist commentators have begun reporting Kerry’s history of anti-Israel advocacy, including his 2009 letter of support for pro-Hamas activists organizing flotillas to Gaza in breach of international and American law.</p>
<p>As for Kerry’s lies to the US’s chief Middle Eastern allies, it was the British and the French who informed the Israelis and the Saudis that far from limiting sanctions relief to a few billion dollars in frozen funds, the draft agreement involved ending sanctions on Iran’s oil and gas sector, and on other industries.</p>
<p>In other words, the draft agreement exposed Washington’s willingness to effectively end economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for Iran’s agreement to cosmetic concessions that will not slow down its nuclear weapons program.</p>
<p>Both the US’s position, and the fact that Kerry lied about that position to the US’s chief allies, ended what was left of American credibility in the Middle East. That credibility was already tattered by US fecklessness in Syria and support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.</p>
<p>True, in the end, Kerry was unable to close the deal he rushed off to Geneva to sign last Friday.</p>
<p>Of course, it wasn’t Iran that rejected the American surrender. And it wasn’t America that scuttled the proposal. It was France. Unable to hide behind American power and recognizing its national interest in preventing Iran from emerging as a nuclear armed power in the Middle East, France vetoed a deal that paved the way a nuclear Iran.</p>
<p>Kerry’s failure to reach the hoped-for deal represented a huge blow to America, and a double victory for Iran. The simple fact that Washington was willing to sign the deal – and lie about it to its closest allies – caused the US to lose its credibility in the Middle East. Even without the deal, the US paid the price of appeasing Iran and surrendering leadership of the free world to France and Israel.</p>
<p>Just by getting the Americans to commit themselves to reducing sanctions while Iran continues its march to a nuclear weapon, Iran destroyed any remaining possibility of doing any serious non-military damage to Iran’s plans for nuclear weaponry. At the same time, the Americans boosted Iranian credibility, endorsed Iranian power, and belittled Israel and Saudi Arabia – Iran’s chief challengers in the Middle East. Thus, Iran ended Pax Americana in the Middle East, removing the greatest obstacle in its path to regional hegemony. And it did so without having to make the slightest concession to the Great Satan.</p>
<p>As Walter Russell Mead wrote last week, it was fear of losing Pax Americana that made all previous US administrations balk at reaching an accord with Iran. As he put it, “Past administrations have generally concluded that the price Iran wants for a different relationship with the United States is unsustainably high. Essentially, to get a deal with Iran we would have to sell out all of our other allies. That’s not only a moral problem. Throwing over old allies like that would reduce the confidence that America’s allies all over the world have in our support.”</p>
<p>The Obama administration just paid that unsustainably high price, and didn’t even get a different relationship with Iran.</p>
<p>Most analyses of what happened in Geneva last week have centered on what the failure of the talks means for the future of Obama’s foreign policy.</p>
<p>Certainly Obama, now universally reviled by America’s allies in the Middle East, will be diplomatically weakened. This diplomatic weakness may not make much difference to Obama’s foreign policy, because appeasement and retreat do not require diplomatic strength.</p>
<p>But the real story of what happened last week is far more significant than the future of Obama’s foreign policy. Last week it was America that lost credibility, not Obama. It was America that squandered the essential component of global leadership. And that is the watershed event of this young century.</p>
<p>States act in concert because of perceived shared interests. If Israel and Saudi Arabia combine to attack Iran’s nuclear installations it will be due to their shared interest in preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear arsenal. But that concerted action will not make them allies.</p>
<p>Alliances are based on the perceived longevity of the shared interests, and that perception is based on the credibility of international actors.</p>
<p>Until Obama became president, the consensus view of the US foreign policy establishment and of both major parties was that the US had a permanent interest in being the hegemonic power in the Middle East. US hegemony ensured three permanent US national security interests: preventing enemy regimes and terror groups from acquiring the means to cause catastrophic harm; ensuring the smooth flow of petroleum products through the Persian Gulf and the Suez Canal; and demonstrating the credibility of American power by ensuring the security of US allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia. The third interest was an essential foundation of US deterrence of the Soviets during the Cold War, and of the Chinese over the past decade.</p>
<p>Regardless of who was in the White House, for the better part of 70 years, every US government has upheld these interests. This consistency built US credibility, which in turn enabled the US to throw its weight around.</p>
<p>Obama departed from this foreign policy consensus in an irrevocable manner last week. In so doing, he destroyed US credibility.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter who succeeds Obama. If a conservative internationalist in the mold of Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan is elected in 2016, Obama’s legacy will make it impossible for him to rebuild the US alliance structure. US allies will be willing to buy US military platforms – although not exclusively.</p>
<p>They will be willing to act in a concerted manner with the US on a temporary basis to advance specific goals.</p>
<p>But they will not be willing to make any longterm commitments based on US security guarantees.</p>
<p>They will not be willing to place their strategic eggs in the US basket.</p>
<p>Obama has taught the world that the same US that elected Truman and formed NATO, and elected George H.W. Bush and threw Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, can elect a man who betrays US allies and US interests to advance a radical ideology predicated on a rejection of the morality of American power. Any US ally is now on notice that US promises – even if based on US interests – are not reliable. American commitments can expire the next time America elects a radical to the White House.</p>
<p>Americans uninterested in surrendering their role as global leader to the likes of Tehran’s ayatollahs, Russia’s KGB state and Mao’s successors, must take immediate steps mitigate the damage Obama is causing. Congress could step in to clip his radical wings.</p>
<p>If enough Democrats can be convinced to break ranks with Obama and the Democratic Party’s donors, Congress can pass veto-proof additional sanctions against Iran. These sanctions can only be credible with America’s spurned allies if they do not contain any presidential waiver that would empower Obama to ignore the law.</p>
<p>They can also take action to limit Obama’s ability to blackmail Israel, a step that is critical to the US’s ability to rebuild its international credibility.</p>
<p>For everyone from Anwar Sadat to South American democrats, for the past 45 years, America’s alliance with Israel was a central anchor of American strategic credibility. The sight of America standing with the Jewish state, in the face of a sea of Arab hatred, is what convinced doubters worldwide that America could be trusted.</p>
<p>America’s appalling betrayal of Jerusalem under Obama likewise is the straw that has broken the back of American strategic credibility from Taipei to Santiago. If Congress is interested in rectifying or limiting the damage, it could likewise remove the presidential waiver that enables Obama to continue to finance the PLO despite its involvement in terrorism and continued commitment to Israel’s destruction. Congress could also remove the presidential waiver from the law requiring the State Department to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Finally, Congress can update its anti-boycott laws to cover new anti-Israel boycotts and economic sanctions against the Jewish state and Jewish-owned Israeli companies.</p>
<p>These steps will not fully restore America’s credibility.</p>
<p>After all, the twice-elected president of the United States has dispatched his secretary of state to threaten and deceive US allies while surrendering to US foes. It is now an indisputable fact that the US government may use its power to undermine its own interests and friends worldwide.</p>
<p>What these congressional steps can do, however, is send a message to US allies and adversaries alike that Obama’s radical actions do not represent the wishes of the American people and will not go unanswered by their representatives in Congress.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
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		<title>The Syria Confidence Trick</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-syria-confidence-trick/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-syria-confidence-trick</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-syria-confidence-trick/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Sep 2013 04:43:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[credibility]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=203160</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The world won’t be fooled by Obama.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/try.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-203162" alt="try" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/try.jpg" width="284" height="189" /></a>There isn&#8217;t much enthusiasm for Obama&#8217;s plan for Syria and even the experts have trouble explaining why the attacks will do any good. The debate has congealed down to credibility.</p>
<p>The only real argument in favor of hitting Syria is that Obama laid down a red line and Congress is obligated to protect his credibility when making poorly thought out threats for the sake of national security.</p>
<p>But it&#8217;s not Congress&#8217; job to protect Obama&#8217;s credibility for the sake of the nation. It was Obama&#8217;s job to protect the nation’s credibility by not setting a red line until he had Congressional approval.</p>
<p>Bush was able to go to Congress and receive an authorization to use force against Iraq that was contingent on Saddam continuing to flout United Nations Security Council resolutions.</p>
<p>Obama could have done the same thing on Syria. He could have done it any time after his red line remark a year ago. Bush got his authorization half a year before the war. Obama had twice as much time to get his.</p>
<p>But Obama didn&#8217;t bother with authorization in Libya and he had no intention for asking for one in Syria. Instead he chose to wait until the last minute when an incident occurred that would force his hand, only to then backtrack by taking it to Congress, a move that his people repeatedly rejected until it became politically convenient.</p>
<p>And now Congress is supposed to somehow salvage his credibility from this mess.</p>
<p>What credibility?</p>
<p>While the media lectures Congress on its obligation to pretend that the emperor is wearing pants for the sake of the empire, they&#8217;re forgetting that there were never any pants to begin with.</p>
<p>We&#8217;re not dealing with a case of suspected emperor nudity to be covered up. The world has already seen video of the emperor flashing everyone on the National Mall since his first inauguration.</p>
<p>Americans may be the captive audience of his media, but the enemies he needs to impress aren&#8217;t.</p>
<p>Obama didn&#8217;t impress our enemies with his inability to make up his mind about Afghanistan. The firing of multiple generals, the mounting death toll and the clumsy attempts to negotiate with the Taliban took away his credibility.</p>
<p>The people he needs to impress, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Ayatollah Khamenei have already taken his measure and are unimpressed. If Congress belatedly approves his strikes on Syria, none of them are going to run off and hide under their desks or confuse the messy delayed outcome with a show of real strength.</p>
<p>Credibility isn&#8217;t just about making and keeping threats. It&#8217;s about knowing which threats to make and why to make them.</p>
<p>Our enemies don&#8217;t doubt that we can bomb. They doubt that we know whom to bomb and why.</p>
<p>No one doubts that America has lots of cruise missiles. After Obama&#8217;s sequester, we don&#8217;t have as many as we used to, but our capabilities are not really in dispute. What is in dispute is are we are capable of conducting a credible foreign policy. It&#8217;s hard to characterize a belated bombing of Syria on behalf of a Free Syrian Army that everyone but us knows is our enemy as a credible policy.</p>
<p>Credibility is about more than bombs. It&#8217;s about the perception that your opponent knows what he&#8217;s doing. Announcing that you have to bomb another country to demonstrate your credibility is begging for your bluff to be believed.</p>
<p>No act of Congress can buy Obama any kind of credibility and no amount of bombs will put the mom jeans back on the naked emperor. It&#8217;s too late for that.</p>
<p>The recurring argument that Iran is watching Syria and that its nuclear program hangs in the balance has no credibility.</p>
<p>Iran knows that Obama isn&#8217;t trying to bomb Syria because he really believes that WMD use is a red line. Its leaders know that the proposed attacks, like the arms being supplied to the rebels, are part of Obama&#8217;s support for the Sunni opposition at the behest of the Sunni oil states who have a death grip on Washington.</p>
<p>Obama will not bomb Iran. The Democrats did everything possible to stop Bush from doing it. They are not about to do it themselves. Killing the myth that Syria is a gateway to Iran is good for Israel. It means that Israel may finally realize that Obama will not step in and do the right thing at the last minute once every ounce of diplomacy has been squeezed out and the sanctions have been tightened as much as they will go. And then it may finally look after its own interests.</p>
<p>Americans and Israelis have been fooled by a confidence trick played with the discredited policies of soft power and nation building through Islamist democracy. And those policies have even less credibility than Obama does.</p>
<p>And it&#8217;s the credibility of policies that was the real issue all along.</p>
<p>Obama did not have a credible policy on Syria, just like he didn&#8217;t have one on Libya or Egypt. This is not an administration that is capable of foreseeing the unexpected consequences of its actions abroad. Instead it operates with the arrogant dogmatism of the left by assuming that ideological credibility will translate into results.</p>
<p>Obama would like to bomb Syria, while his advisers admit that there is no real plan for Syria.</p>
<p>Obama bombed Libya and now the Muslim Brotherhood has forced the elected government out of power while militias battle for control over its major cities. The media won&#8217;t report that, just as it skims across the surface of Benghazigate, because it might give people the idea that bombing a place without having a plan for the aftermath is a bad idea.</p>
<p>The constant calls for protecting Obama&#8217;s credibility are really demands that Congress enlist in the media&#8217;s spin brigade by protecting his image for the sake of national security. But the only people being fooled by this show are other Americans. The spin corps isn&#8217;t protecting American credibility abroad; it&#8217;s promoting America credulity at home.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s media defenders insist on selling Americans on the myth of his competence. That is the confidence trick they want to pull off with the help of Congress. The trick is not being played on Assad or Putin or the rest of the world; instead it will once again be played on America.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>High Noon in Marjah</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ryan-mauro/high-noon-in-marjah/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=high-noon-in-marjah</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Mar 2010 05:18:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Administration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Baluchistan Province]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Baradar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bastions]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Karachi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[leadership]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[local governance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marjah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[military success]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mullah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North Waziristan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Northwest Frontier Province]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Omar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peshawar]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=52464</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The battle will be won in Pakistan.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/us.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-52467" title="us" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/us.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="241" /></a></p>
<p>The aggressive new strategy in Afghanistan embraced by the Obama Administration, modeled on the successful “surge” in Iraq, is costly, with a <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/61811">third</a> of all American casualties in the conflict occurring since the first reinforcements were sent in May 2009. The latest offensive in Marjah in Helmand  Province is going slower than anticipated due to fierce resistance, and it is only a warm-up for a much larger battle in the coming months in Kandahar, the Taliban’s stronghold. And Pakistan remains the key to victory.</p>
<p>As tough as the fighting is in Marjah, the more difficult phase will be capitalizing on the military success by establishing local governance and civil institutions that have credibility with the Afghan people. The national flag now <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2010/02/26/afghans_take_control_of_taliban_stronghold/">waves</a> above the city and a new <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0222/Marjah-offensive-New-Afghan-governor-takes-office-as-battle-rages">governor</a> has taken power, and the fact that for every two foreign soldiers in the offensive there were three Afghan soldiers is very helpful. Roughly a quarter of the city still remains to be taken, but the last bastions of the Taliban forces are said to be running out of ammunition.</p>
<p>The international and Afghan forces now <a href="http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/asia/General-NATO-Controls-Marjahs-Main-Roads-and-Markets-84783537.html">control</a> the main roads and markets, but a significant amount of mines and roadside bombs planted by the Taliban still need to be located and dismantled. Afghan police forces, soldiers, and government workers from elsewhere in the country are being brought into Marjah, and over 2,000 people have <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-afghan_26int.ART.State.Edition2.4b81d3a.html">taken</a> jobs with the new administration.</p>
<p>The effort in Afghanistan is much more difficult because of the national government’s lack of credibility. The population, including many of those who voted for Karazai, is disenchanted because of the widespread fraud in the last election. Karzai’s latest <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/opinion/24wed2.html">decision</a> to take control of the Electoral Complaints Commission so that he appoints all five members is a further blow to his credibility and that of the government. Unfortunately, transgressions such as these mean that the links between a national government and the people that are required for a functioning democracy probably cannot be re-established until Karzai leaves office. Luckily, the Taliban’s own failures will provide a sharp contrast to what the local administrations can offer, leaving open an opportunity for such links to be developed on the ground level that can prevent the Taliban from returning.</p>
<p>The Pakistani crackdown on the Taliban actually holds more long-term significance than the offensive in Marjah. The <a href="../2010/02/17/breaking-the-taliban/">capture</a> of Mullah Baradar, the second-in-command of the Taliban, is extremely significant as he had close control over every area of management. Subsequent analysis focused heavily on what caused the Pakistanis to finally arrest such figures operating on their soil, but new information helps to provide a clearer picture of what happened.</p>
<p>Mullah Baradar was not the target of the raid, and just happened to be among those arrested in what one American official <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/world/asia/19intel.html?ref=world">described</a> as a “lucky accident.” The Pakistani ISI intelligence service refused to allow the CIA to directly question him until two weeks after he was caught. Contrary to proving Pakistan’s credibility as an ally, the arrest of Baradar and their conduct in handling his interrogation actually indicts them, leaving no room for them to claim that the Taliban’s leadership isn’t in their country. It is certain that Baradar knows where Mullah Omar is located, and it is likely he has information on Bin Laden’s location as well, if reports that he was staying in Quetta last fall are accurate. The ISI’s delay and possible coaching of Baradar so their complicity can remain hidden may have led to losing some crucial opportunities.</p>
<p>The embarrassment of Baradar being captured in Karachi is a major factor in the arrest of several other figures in Pakistan, but it is still very possible that this tougher stance will be short-lived. Large amounts of Pakistani territory, particularly in Baluchistan, still need to be cleansed before the Taliban can be defeated, but this will require a lengthy, bloody battle that could quickly lose public support and exhaust the military’s resources.</p>
<p>Pakistan’s long-term commitment to the fight against the Taliban and other terrorist groups is in doubt, but their short-term cooperation is dealing the movement a mighty blow. Seven of the 15 members of the Quetta Shura Council that acts as their central headquarters have been captured by the Pakistanis. As <em>The Long War Journal</em> <a href="http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2010/02/pakistan_detains_4_additional.php">points out</a>, this does not necessarily mean that half of the Taliban’s leadership has been eliminated, as there are four regional shuras and 10 committees that the Quetta Shura oversees. The four <a href="http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2010/02/the_talibans_top_lea.php">shuras</a> are located in Quetta in Baluchistan  Province; Peshawar in Northwest Frontier  Province; Miramshah in North  Waziristan; and the Gerdi Jangal refugee camp in Baluchistan  Province. These captures are important, but the leadership has not been decapitated.</p>
<p>The drone strikes in Pakistan are also making the enemy pay a heavy toll. A son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a top Taliban commander, was recently killed in one. The Obama Administration is now <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/02/10/obama-the-hawk/">launching</a> three strikes a week on Pakistani soil on average, a three-fold increase from the days of the Bush Administration.</p>
<p>One more development on the Pakistani side deserves more attention. The Pakistani government wants to <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=9935027">revise</a> its law that charges those guilty of insulting Islam with blasphemy, carrying a penalty of death. This is a rebuke to extremists that argue that non-Muslims (which includes those they view as apostates) need to be violently targeted. President Zardari isn’t going to repeal the law, which would be truly bold, but it is positive that the government is trying to counter the viewpoint that such oppression is acceptable under that circumstance.</p>
<p>These successes provide much room for optimism, but that doesn’t mean the second phase of the surge in Afghanistan targeting Kandahar won’t be significantly bloodier. The Taliban’s strength has <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/22/nato-neglect-lets-taliban-build-35-more-strength/print/">increased</a> by 35 percent in the past two years, and now is estimated at about 27,000 fighters. The blood of Afghan and international soldiers and civilians is going to take the headlines, and their sacrifice can indeed prevent the Taliban from seizing parts of the country and bring stability to that country so that the West can be much safer. These sacrifices must be matched by sacrifices on the Pakistani side and the U.S. must make clear that if our soldiers are going to die in this war, we will accept nothing less than full cooperation from the Pakistanis.</p>
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		<title>Endangering Lives to Sell Newspapers</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/alan-m-dershowitz/endangering-lives-to-sell-newspapers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=endangering-lives-to-sell-newspapers</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Feb 2010 05:05:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan M. Dershowitz]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[How some Israeli and American Jewish media incite violence.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/goldstone-043009.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-49980" title="goldstone-043009" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/goldstone-043009.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="314" /></a></p>
<p>It all began with an innocent enough request for an interview about the Goldstone report and my <a href="http://www.alandershowitz.com/goldstone.pdf">49 page response</a> to it. The Israeli Army radio station asked to interview me.  The interview was conducted by an experienced host, Razi Barkai.  Unbeknownst to me, Barkai had an agenda.  He wanted to get me to say that I thought that Goldstone was a “moser.”  He wanted me to use this Hebrew word, whose meaning I did not understand, because in Israel, this obscure theological term has taken on a meaning of its own.  According to The Forward, “the term moser entered Israeli political discourse in 1995 in the wake of Rabin’s assassination by radical settler supporter Yigal Amir, when Amir cited some rabbis’ designation of Rabin as a moser as part of his justification for carrying out the murder.”  The Forward quoted Michael Karpin, an Israeli journalist and the author of a book on Rabin’s assassination, as follows: “After the assassination, when Amir was interviewed by the police and he mentioned the term moser, people tried to find out what it is…Nobody used it here before the assassination.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I was totally unfamiliar with the “inside baseball”—or in this case “inside Israel”—use of this esoteric term.</p>
<p>Several times during the interview, Barkai tried to get me to agree that Goldstone was a moser, a word he pronounced with a thick accent.  Since the interview was being conducted in English, I thought he was asking me to agree with him that Goldstone was a “monster.”  I would never use the term “monster” since it suggests an inherent, even genetic, flaw in a person, without regard to what he has said or done.  I was clear throughout my interview that I believed that Goldstone had exploited his Jewishness to lend illegitimate credibility <a href="http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/dershowitz/entry/arguments_ad_hominem_in_defense">to a false report</a>. In this respect, he had betrayed his people and deserved to be condemned in the marketplace of ideas.  Accordingly, when Barkai asked me the following question, “Do you hint, Professor, that he is a moser, someone who betrays his own people?,”  I focused on the part of the question I understood.  Believing that he is someone who betrays his own people, I answered the question in the affirmative.  Barkai had sprung the trap.  Now he had me.  He could send out press releases indicating that I had called Goldstone a moser, even though I never used the word and had no idea what it meant.</p>
<p>The story spread quickly around the world, and I was condemned, largely by the extreme left, for advocating Goldstone’s murder.  As soon as I heard this, I immediately demanded a clarification from Barkai, which he ran on the air.  I repeatedly emphasized, in subsequent interviews, that “I certainly did not mean to imply that any physical harm should come to Goldstone.”  But this didn’t stop the incitement by those in the media more interested in sensationalism than truth.</p>
<p>M.J. Rosenberg, the former Director of Policy Analysis for Israel Policy Forum, wrote in his Palestine Note blog that I was “calling for Goldstone’s murder.”  Even more insidiously, the Forward, a mainstream Jewish newspaper, ran a lengthy piece strongly implying that I must have known the theological (or “Halachic”) implications of “moser.”  They went so far as to find an elementary school classmate at Etz Chayim Yeshiva in Boro Park who told them, quite erroneously, that I “must have heard it as a child.”  (Another classmate wrote the Forward a letter confirming that he too had never heard it—and he was a <span style="text-decoration: underline;">good</span> Yeshiva student!)  The Forward then went on to quote another rabbi to the effect that “a moser can become a capital crime” under certain circumstances.  At the very bottom of the article, so as not to detract from its sensationalism, the Forward included the following disclaimer:</p>
<p>“I do not want any harm to come to Richard Goldstone,” Dershowitz said.  “I want him to be responded to in the marketplace of ideas.”</p>
<p>An article in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by Ron Kampares was even more irresponsible.  It “reported” the following:</p>
<p>“Most recently, Alan Dershowitz likened him to a “moser”, a Jewish traitor deemed in some interpretations as worthy of a death sentence.”</p>
<p>This was written days <span style="text-decoration: underline;">after</span> I had made it clear that I wanted no harm to befall Goldstone.  A response to the JTA article by Debra DeLee, President and CEO of Americans For Peace Now, accused me—also days after I made my position clear—of calling Goldstone a “moser,” which she said is “a term reserved in traditional Jewish law for a Jewish traitor who should be killed.”</p>
<p>She also showed her ignorance of the fact that I had written a 49 page substantive response to the Goldstone report, by saying that I “could have—and should have—aired substantive disagreements about the report that Judge Goldstone authored following the Gaza War.”</p>
<p>Finally, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (Bradley Burston) described me as “Kahane-sounding,” a reference for the radical rabbi who did in fact call for violence—as contrasted for my call for peace based on a two-state solution and the end of civilian settlements.  But no matter, its sells newspapers.</p>
<p>It’s bad enough that there are some religious extremists on both sides who actually incite their followers to commit violence.  But when elements of the mainstream Israeli and Jewish media twist the truth in the interest of sensationalism to imply—or state outright—that I am calling for the murder of Richard Goldstone, it is those irresponsible members of the media (and of Americans For Peace Now) who become the inciters.</p>
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		<title>Curious Defenses of the Goldstone Report</title>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:04:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan M. Dershowitz]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Goldstone invokes his Jewishness, Zionism, his daughter’s residence in Israel and his connection to Hebrew University.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p align="center"> </p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-48620" title="Richard Goldstone" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Richard-Goldstone.jpg" alt="Richard Goldstone" width="450" height="436" /></p>
<p>Even before the Goldstone Report was released, Richard Goldstone was arguing for its credibility by invoking his Jewishness, his Zionism, his daughter’s residence in Israel and his connection to Hebrew University.  It was the mirror image of the classic fallacy known as the argument ad hominem, which is defined as follows:  A substantive argument should not be rejected solely because of who has offered it.</p>
<p>It follows of course from this fallacy that an argument should also not be accepted because of who offered it.</p>
<p>A close relative of the ad hominem fallacy is what I have called “the argument by ethnic identity,” which I have defined as follows:  An anti-Israel argument is made stronger if offered by a Jew.  (“See, even a Jews agrees that…)</p>
<p>These are precisely the fallacious arguments being offered in defense of the Goldstone report by Richard Goldstone and his supporters.  Goldstone has even elicited his daughter’s help.  This is what she has said:  “Had Richard Goldstone not served as the head of the UN inquiry into the Gaza War, the accusations against Israel would have been harsher.”  She continued.  “My father took on the job, for peace, for everyone and also for Israel.”  She told the Jerusalem Post, “My dad loves Israel and it wasn’t easy for him to see and hear what happened.  I think he heard and saw things he didn’t expect to see and hear….”</p>
<p>The problem is not what Goldstone saw and heard.  It’s what he willfully and deliberately refused to see and hear.  He refused to watch videotapes, easily accessible on the internet, that show conclusively that Hamas terrorists routinely fired rockets from behind human shields.  He refused to credit eye witness reports published by refutable newspapers and even admissions by Hamas leaders.  He willfully refused to listen to the testimony of one of the world’s leading experts on how democratic militaries fight asymmetrical warfare against terrorists who hide behind civilians, who said:</p>
<p>“I don’t think there has ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza.”</p>
<p>Instead of defending the report against the many substantive arguments offered against it, Goldstone has repeatedly cited his Jewishness as both a shield against the criticism and a sword with which to continue to attack Israeli actions.</p>
<p>Had Goldstone not been the author of the United Nations Human Rights Council report on Israel, it would be tossed in the trash barrel along with other one-sided and biased reports by this prejudice group which targets only Israel for human rights violations.  But those seeking to defend this indefensible report point to Goldstone’s authorship as proof that it <em>must</em> have credibility because a Jew wrote it (“See, even a Jew….)</p>
<p>In a criminal trial, it is impermissible to attack the character of the defendant <span style="text-decoration: underline;">unless</span> he has placed his character at issue.  That is precisely what Goldstone has done in his campaign to lend credibility to his mendacious report by constantly invoking his Jewishness.  The appropriate response to an ad hominem positive argument is an ad hominem negative argument.  That is why, in addition to providing a 49 page substantive response to the arguments and methodology of the Goldstone report, I have raised questions about Goldstone’s motivations in accepting leadership of the mission and signing his name to a report which is so demonstrably false and one-sided.</p>
<p>In light of the hard evidence, that is easily accessible online and in the media, Goldstone cannot possibly believe that Hamas did not intentionally use human shields, have their fighters deliberately dress in civilian clothing and use mosques and hospitals to store rockets and other weapons.  Videotapes conclusively prove these charges, and Hamas acknowledges—indeed boasts of—them.  He cannot possibly believe that Israel used the thousands of rockets that Hamas directed against its children as an excuse, or a cover, for its real goal, namely to kill as many Palestinian civilians as possible.  Nor could he possibly believe that the Israeli government made a policy decision, at the highest levels, to deliberately target Palestinian babies, young children, women and the elderly for murder.  All the evidence points away from these wild charges.  Yet he signed a report asserting that those demonstrably false conclusions were true.  Shame on him.  And even more shame on him for exploiting his Jewishness to get others to believe these defamations against the Jewish state.</p>
<p>The Goldstone report should be rejected on its demerits.  The added fact that it was authored by a Jew—selected precisely because he is a Jew with aspirations to be honored by the international community—should diminish, rather than increase, its credibility.</p>
<p>I have challenged Goldstone to debate the substantive points in his report.  I promise not make any ad hominem arguments against the report if he stops making ad hominem arguments in its favor. Or as Adlai Stevenson once promised a political opponent:  “If you stop lying about me, I will stop telling the truth about you.”</p>
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