<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Russia</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/tag/russia/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com</link>
	<description></description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 06:51:03 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en-US</language>
		<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
		<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	
	<item>
		<title>Russian Nativity Play: A Tale of Two Josephs</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/oleg-atbashian/russian-nativity-play-a-tale-of-two-josephs/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=russian-nativity-play-a-tale-of-two-josephs</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/oleg-atbashian/russian-nativity-play-a-tale-of-two-josephs/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Dec 2014 05:40:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Oleg Atbashian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christmas play]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Joseph]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nativity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stalin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248317</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What happens to a Christmas play when Joseph Stalin is more known than the biblical Joseph.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Joseph.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248319" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Joseph-293x350.jpg" alt="Joseph" width="221" height="264" /></a>This &#8220;life imitates the People&#8217;s Cube&#8221; moment comes from St. Petersburg, Russia. What seems to be a spoof is a legitimate story via <a href="http://ria.ru/society/20141225/1040186712.html">RIA Novosti</a>, a Russian news agency. As a historical footnote, Nativity plays are a new concept in Russia, where Joseph Stalin is more known than the biblical Joseph, which occasionally causes Freudian slips like this one.</p>
<p>A St. Petersburg student mistakenly showed up dressed as Joseph Stalin to the Christmas play where he was supposed to play the biblical character of Joseph.</p>
<p>&#8220;Yesterday, my 12-year-old son participated in a school play. He told us ahead of time that he got the role of Joseph Stalin who is talking to some woman. It wasn&#8217;t a big surprise to us, as he has played parts in school plays before, and once he was even a watermelon,&#8221; wrote the student&#8217;s father Fyodor Gavrichenko on his <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10205116943470500&amp;set=a.1318879219340.47466.1451565715&amp;type=1&amp;fref=nf">Facebook page</a>.</p>
<p>Gavrichenko said the whole family worked on making the costume &#8211; especially the grandmother, who sewed trouser stripes to the pants, found some old army boots, made a generalissimo mustache and a red folder with a big star.</p>
<p>They didn&#8217;t realize the mistake until the last moment because the play was in German as part of the boy&#8217;s foreign language class, and no one understood what the son&#8217;s lines meant. Apparently, the boy hadn&#8217;t been paying attention in class either. Instead of bringing the costume to school before the play, he showed the teacher its picture on his cell phone. The teacher thought it was a joke and said that the costume &#8220;rocks.&#8221;</p>
<p>The family sensed trouble when they saw their son&#8217;s classmate dressed as Magi. &#8220;Who are you?&#8221; asked the Magi. &#8220;I&#8217;m Mary&#8217;s husband… Joseph Stalin,&#8221; said the boy. His confidence shaken, the classmate went to the teacher: &#8220;Our Joseph turns out to be Stalin… Is that a good thing?&#8221; &#8220;What?&#8221; asked the teacher, as he pulled the curtain revealing the Nativity scene with Joseph and Mary. It was too late to change.</p>
<p>The plot thickened before the drama began. According to the father, Stalin&#8217;s outfit was a smash. The boy&#8217;s lines were accompanied by fits of hysterical laughter through the tears from other parents, some of whom reportedly fell off their chairs.</p>
<p>Those who can read the original Facebook post in Russian will notice that the father knows as little about the Nativity story as his son, confusing characters and their roles in the story. This is rather a norm in Russia, where erstwhile official atheism is only now being replaced by the official Orthodox Church. This St. Petersburg father couldn&#8217;t tell the shepherds from angels even if his son&#8217;s play weren&#8217;t in German. But at least he&#8217;s trying.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><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"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><strong>Subscribe</strong></a><strong> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <em>The Glazov Gang</em>, and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>LIKE</strong></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>Facebook.</strong></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/oleg-atbashian/russian-nativity-play-a-tale-of-two-josephs/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>14</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Raymond Ibrahim on Islam and the West&#8217;s Paralysis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/raymond-ibrahim-on-islam-and-the-wests-paralysis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=raymond-ibrahim-on-islam-and-the-wests-paralysis</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/raymond-ibrahim-on-islam-and-the-wests-paralysis/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Dec 2014 05:05:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[aggression]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genocide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247981</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Shillman Journalism Fellow discusses Islamic aggression and what the West must do about it. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c6.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247983" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c6-450x334.jpg" alt="140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c6" width="350" height="260" /></a>Last week, Shillman Fellow Raymond Ibrahim was interviewed on “Steel on Steel” by John Loeffler.  Topics include Russian moves to combat Islamism, Western projections on Islam, and the ongoing Christian genocide.  </span><a style="color: blue;" title="" href="http://www.jcis.net/~bgwireless/SOSPreview/so2014-1220.mp3" target="_blank" data-href="http://www.jcis.net/~bgwireless/SOSPreview/so2014-1220.mp3" data-type="1"><span class="zw-portion link">Click here to listen to the 20-minute interview</span></a><span class="zw-portion">.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion EOP"> </span></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>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/raymond-ibrahim-on-islam-and-the-wests-paralysis/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
<enclosure url="http://www.jcis.net/~bgwireless/SOSPreview/so2014-1220.mp3" length="54470225" type="audio/mpeg" />
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Obama Administration Trusts Russia on Iran</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/obama-administration-trusts-russia-on-iran/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-administration-trusts-russia-on-iran</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/obama-administration-trusts-russia-on-iran/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 06 Nov 2014 05:45:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bomb]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244609</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Another catastrophe in an administration's catastrophic foreign policy. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/po.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244613" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/po-450x253.jpg" alt="po" width="343" height="193" /></a>The Obama administration is so desperate to reach a nuclear deal with Iran by the current deadline of November 24<sup>th</sup> if at all possible that it is willing to trust Russia to play a key implementation role. In the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s duplicity with regard to Ukraine and Putin&#8217;s increasingly aggressive stance towards the West that harkens back to the Cold War, the Obama administration is deluding itself into thinking that it can trust Putin to keep his word on ensuring that much of Iran&#8217;s uranium stockpile is converted into a relatively harmless end product.</p>
<p>According to an article on November 4<sup>th</sup> in the <em>New York Times</em>, the Obama administration is encouraged by Iran’s purported willingness to ship much of its huge stockpile of uranium to Russia, which would convert it to fuel rods. The idea is that fuel rods are much more difficult to use in making nuclear bombs. Iran&#8217;s current stockpile of uranium is estimated to be in the range of 28,000 pounds, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.</p>
<p>The <em>New York Times</em> article quoted an unnamed American it claims to be deeply involved in the negotiations as saying that &#8220;if the Iran-Russia deal works, it could be the cornerstone of something much larger.&#8221;</p>
<p>The <em>New York Times</em> also quoted from a recent speech delivered by Wendy R. Sherman, the chief American negotiator with Iran, in which she presumably alluded indirectly to the proposed Russian involvement in uranium conversion, stating that &#8220;we have made impressive progress on issues that originally seemed intractable.&#8221;</p>
<p>A senior National Security Council official praised Russia&#8217;s role in the negotiations with Iran. The official, quoted by the <em>New York Times</em>, said that &#8220;it is accurate to say that the Russians have played a very helpful role during these negotiations.&#8221;</p>
<p>Mind you, this is the same Russia whose president lied outright about the presence of Russian military forces in Crimea and has recently added to his barrage of insults against the United States by accusing the U.S. of supporting &#8220;neo-fascists&#8221; and &#8220;Islamic radicals.” Putin has cultivated alliances with both the Iranian and Syrian regimes in order to enhance Russia’s own influence in the Middle East.</p>
<p>This past September, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak announced a series of bilateral projects agreed to between Iran and Russia, worth seventy billion euros. In clear defiance of the U.S.-led international economic sanctions against Iran, Russia’s closer ties with Iran will include cooperation in the energy sector, which Novak described as “mutually beneficial” to the two countries. Areas of cooperation include power, oil and gas and what Novak described, in a meeting with his Iranian energy counterpart, as “the peaceful use of nuclear energy.&#8221;</p>
<p>Even if Putin were somehow miraculously sincere in his intentions this time, which is virtually impossible for the Russian leader who is trying to re-create the Russian empire, he cannot control what Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran&#8217;s supreme leader and ultimate decision-maker, will actually do. Khamenei torpedoed a similar deal worked out between the Obama administration and Iran in 2009 that would have involved the shipment of some of Iran&#8217;s nuclear fuel out of Iran. Moreover, Iran has refused to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency unfettered access to conduct inspections anywhere in the country, meaning that Iran would be free to hide some uranium and assets used to produce weapons grade enriched uranium in undisclosed covert locations. Its centrifuges would keep spinning. And Iran&#8217;s alternative route to a nuclear arms capability &#8211; its heavy water plutonium reactor &#8211; would not be affected by a uranium conversion deal with Russia.</p>
<p>Iran’s supreme leader Khamenei, who must sign off on any final deal, said this past May that those Iranians who promote negotiations with the United States are committing “treason.” He also committed his country to jihad against the United States:</p>
<p>“Battle and jihad are endless because evil and its front continue to exist. … This battle will only end when the society can get rid of the oppressors’ front with America at the head of it, which has expanded its claws on human mind, body and thought. … This requires a difficult and lengthy struggle and need for great strides.”</p>
<p>President Obama wants a deal at all cost with Iran to tout as his significant foreign policy achievement. The potentially tragic consequences will be the next president’s problem. The Obama administration thinks that it can get away with even a bad deal, because it assumes that the primary opponents of such a deal – Israel and many members of both parties in Congress – are too powerless to stop it. The administration believes that it is too late for Israel to take unilateral military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities and that the U.S. Congress can be end-run.</p>
<p>In his October 28<sup>th</sup> article in <em>The Atlantic</em> entitled “The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here,” Jeffrey Goldberg quoted a senior Obama administration official’s epithet accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of cowardice. The charge derives in part from the Obama administration’s belief that Netanyahu is not willing or able to launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities at this time.</p>
<p>“It’s too late for him to do anything,” Goldberg quoted another senior Obama administration official as saying, referring to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s purported hesitation “to pull the trigger.”</p>
<p>As for the Congress, the Obama administration has sent strong signals that it believes it does not have to seek formal Senate ratification of any agreement the administration reaches with Iran because such an agreement would not constitute a formal treaty. Moreover, the Obama administration believes that the president has the executive power to unilaterally suspend most sanctions against Iran.</p>
<p>President Obama has no compunctions about thumbing his nose at Congress and countenancing vile insults hurled by his senior lackeys against Israel’s prime minister. But he appears willing to trust one proven liar and aggressor, Putin, to help implement a key part of an agreement with a regime whose supreme leader, a fanatic theocrat, has vowed jihad to destroy the United States.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><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"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><strong>Subscribe</strong></a><strong> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <em>The Glazov Gang</em>, and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>LIKE</strong></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>Facebook.</strong></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/obama-administration-trusts-russia-on-iran/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>17</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Islamic State &#8211; ISIS Now Looking at an Alliance with Russia</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/islamic-state-isis-now-looking-at-an-alliance-with-russia/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islamic-state-isis-now-looking-at-an-alliance-with-russia</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/islamic-state-isis-now-looking-at-an-alliance-with-russia/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2014 14:13:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242380</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Islamic State needs options. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Obama-nostrategy.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-242381" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Obama-nostrategy-450x337.jpg" alt="Obama nostrategy" width="450" height="337" /></a></p>
<p>The Islamic State needs options. It&#8217;s been picking fights with everyone, including its backers Qatar and Turkey. It dragged Obama into a war that he didn&#8217;t want only to realize that American air power may not be destroying it, but it is closing off some options for it.</p>
<p>(This is a lesson that countless Islamic terrorist groups keep painfully relearning without ever learning, whether it&#8217;s when taking on the US, Russia or Israel.)</p>
<p>One<a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/islamic-state-said-to-eye-irans-nuclear-secrets/"> of its wackier ideas seems to be </a>an alliance with Russia.</p>
<blockquote><p>The report said that the manifesto, which Western security officials have deemed authentic, proposed offering Moscow access to an IS-held gas field in Iraq in exchange for “Iran and its nuclear program.”</p>
<p>Russia, a close ally of the Islamic Republic, built and helps operate the nuclear power plant at Bushehr in Iran. It is also already in possession of the largest proven gas reserves in the world.</p>
<p>The proposal also reportedly stated that in order to gain access to the gas field, located in Anbar province, the Kremlin would have to start backing the Sunni Gulf states against Shiite Iran and another Kremlin ally: the embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad.</p></blockquote>
<p>The plus side is that if Russia were to back such a move, it would potentially end US influence over the Sunni Gulf states which would be quickly overrun by ISIS if given half a chance forcing the US to either begin a prolonged Iraq x 10 war or give up.</p>
<p>Not that this is ever going to happen.</p>
<p>For one thing even Russia isn&#8217;t crazy enough to hand nukes over to ISIS. It thinks that Iran&#8217;s nuclear weapons are more of a threat to the West than to it. It just hasn&#8217;t thought too deeply about the problem with the &#8220;more&#8221; part. However ISIS has plenty of Chechens on board.</p>
<p>And it is a long term threat to Russia.</p>
<p>Trading Iran and Syria, a sure and decent bet, respectively, for a gamble on ISIS would be very much a long shot bet on the Islamic State being able to not only hold, but expand dramatically. Otherwise IS is basically trading Iraq and Syria to Russia, which it already has via Iran.</p>
<p>But this shows that ISIS is brainstorming possibilities, albeit ridiculous ones, and is more flexible than it has been given credit for.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/islamic-state-isis-now-looking-at-an-alliance-with-russia/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>25</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Global Map, 2017</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ben-shapiro/the-global-map-2017/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-global-map-2017</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ben-shapiro/the-global-map-2017/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Sep 2014 04:56:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[allies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[earth]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[foreign policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240656</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama's radical transformation hasn't stopped with America. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/world-on-fire-creative-commons.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240660" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/world-on-fire-creative-commons.jpg" alt="world-on-fire-creative-commons" width="314" height="228" /></a>Barack Obama pledged to radically transform America when he took office. He didn&#8217;t stop at America. President Obama&#8217;s greatest legacy may be the radical reshaping of the global map.</p>
<p>Fast forward three years. Here&#8217;s where we stand.</p>
<p>Given Europe&#8217;s failure to stand up to Russian aggression in Crimea, Russia&#8217;s borders have expanded to include Eastern Ukraine, northern Kazakhstan and larger portions of Moldova. As of 2014, Russia had consolidated its hold on Transnistria, the Eastern region of Moldova, which is heavily Russian; Russia had annexed Crimea; Russia had placed troops inside Eastern Ukraine.</p>
<p>But it didn&#8217;t stop there. Russia began squeezing Georgia again, and pro-Russian regimes are consolidating their power in Kazakhstan and Belarus. Belarus asked the Russian government to place 15 warplanes inside the country in 2014; Kazakhstan got into a tiff with Russia over comments Putin made unsubtly suggesting a possible invasion of the country, then complied with Putin&#8217;s demands when the West did nothing.</p>
<p>Thus far, Putin has not invaded any NATO countries. But that could change, given the high Russian population in Latvia and Estonia.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Jordan&#8217;s kingdom has fallen, replaced by a radical Islamist regime. That Palestinian Arab regime has attempted to consolidate its power by forming an alliance with Hamas in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. In Lebanon, the Iranians and Syrians have effectively annexed southern Lebanon. Israel&#8217;s only quiet border is now its southern border with Egypt.</p>
<p>In Syria, Bashar Assad has retained a measure of power by essentially conceding territory to ISIS in the eastern part of the country; after a halfhearted intervention against ISIS, the international community went quiet as ISIS formed its sought-after caliphate in eastern Syria and northern Iraq.</p>
<p>In response, Iran essentially invaded southern Iraq, and Turkey launched covert action against the Kurds in order to prevent the formation of a broader Kurdistan encompassing parts of Turkish territory.</p>
<p>With the withdrawal of the United States and its allies from Afghanistan, Pakistan has once again made its presence felt. The Taliban have effectively taken control of large swaths of territory, with the help of the Pakistani regime, which has shifted leadership but not position with regard to radical Islam.</p>
<p>In the most stunning international move, China has threatened full-scale annexation of Taiwan, barring access to the South China Sea from Western countries and cutting off Taiwan&#8217;s trade routes. The West has refused to leverage China, fearing financial retaliation. China has made similar moves against the Philippines.</p>
<p>Come 2017, this will be President Obama&#8217;s legacy: a world of redrawn borders, all to the benefit of some of the worst regimes on the planet. When America retreats from the world, its enemies expand.</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>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ben-shapiro/the-global-map-2017/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>14</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Obama&#8217;s Foreign Policy of Empty Words</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/obamas-foreign-policy-of-empty-words/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-foreign-policy-of-empty-words</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/obamas-foreign-policy-of-empty-words/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Sep 2014 04:30:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democracy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[foreign policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NATO]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240424</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For America's enemies, actions speak louder than rhetoric. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/1393766471000-AP-Obama-Budget-001.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240426" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/1393766471000-AP-Obama-Budget-001-450x337.jpg" alt="1393766471000-AP-Obama-Budget-001" width="316" height="237" /></a></p>
<p><em>“When force threatens, talk is no good.”</em></p>
<p>That line from John Ford’s classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance contains wisdom everyone from peasant to king knew before our modern age and its smug illusions. Go back 2,400 years, and you can hear it from the Athenian orator Demosthenes as he chastises his fellow citizens for responding to Macedonian aggression by “forever debating the question and never making any progress” and issuing “empty decrees.” “All words, apart from action,” Demosthenes warned, “seem vain and idle, especially from Athenian lips: for the greater our reputation for a ready tongue, the greater the distrust it inspires in all men.” We’ve had several years now of watching Obama and his foreign policy team prove this eternal truth as they have feebly and fecklessly responded to crisis after crisis in Ukraine, Syria, and a dozen other venues.</p>
<p>Just in the last few weeks we have heard a lot of bluster about Islamic State, the rampaging jihadists in northern Iraq who have left in their wake a trail of traditional Muslim mayhem–- sectarian cleansing, forced conversion, slaving, rape, torture, slaughter, and Koran-inspired beheadings, including two American journalists. In response to these decisive deeds, Obama has thundered that he will “degrade and destroy” the “cancer.” In an op-ed co-written with British Prime Minister David Cameron, he has vowed that the allies “will not be cowed by barbaric killers.” His vice president Joe Biden, with his usual trite hyperbole, has threatened, “We will follow them to the gate of hell until they are brought to justice.” And Secretary of State John Kerry, after the beheading of journalist James Foley, has warned, “The world must know that the United States of America will never back down in the face of such evil. ISIL and the wickedness it represents must be destroyed, and those responsible for this heinous, vicious atrocity will be held accountable.” “By whom” is the question the passive voice artfully leaves unanswered.</p>
<p>To paraphrase Demosthenes, the greater this administration’s ready tongue, the greater distrust it inspires in our allies, and the greater boldness it creates in our enemies. Or to put it in my old man’s more earthy terms when I smarted off, “Don’t let your mouth write checks your ass can’t cash.” Obama has been bouncing foreign policy checks from Ukraine to the South China Sea, and most points in between.</p>
<p>Indeed, the deeds necessary to back these loud boasts have been few. That should not surprise us, since Obama has said and done much to tell the world that we will not act decisively, relying instead on verbal processes and gestures of force like bombing some trucks to create a telegenic illusion of action. He started his presidency with the “apology tour,” on which he called the U.S. “arrogant, dismissive, derisive,” confessed that we are “still working through some of our own darker periods in our history,” proclaimed that we “will be willing to acknowledge past errors where those errors have been made,” confessed that “too often we set [our] principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford” and so “we went off course,” and promised that we “are working to improve our democracy.” How could such a tainted and flawed state have the moral authority to act with the confidence and decisiveness that his recent rhetoric implies?</p>
<p>Likewise his domestic deeds have undercut the capacity to enforce his tough foreign policy words. Because of cuts to the military budget––inspired in part by his desire to reduce the U.S. to merely one unexceptional member of an international coalition that supposedly can maintain global order and create collective security––our military capacity is destined “to be an increasingly hollow force,” as Bret Stephens writes, “with the Army as small as it was in 1940, before conscription; a Navy the size it was in 1917, before our entry into World War I; an Air Force flying the oldest—and smallest—fleet of planes in its history; and a nuclear arsenal no larger than it was during the Truman administration.”</p>
<p>Commensurate with this undercutting of America’s armed forces have been Obama’s empty bluster and careless language, something dangerous coming from the Commander-in-Chief of the greatest military power in history. “Leading from behind” in Libya, the vanishing “red line” in Syria, the juvenile scolding of Putin “that in the 21st century, the borders of Europe cannot be redrawn with force, that international law matters,” the “no strategy” gaffe about the “jayvee” jihadists of the Islamic State–– all were instantly refuted and discredited by facts on the ground created by hard men of brutal action. Libya is not a democracy, but the jihadist version of Road Warrior. Syria’s Bashar al Assad is winning in Syria by slaughtering close to 200,000 men, women, and children. The Islamic State still controls northern Iraq and Syria, and still sits at the gates of Baghdad. And Putin has snatched Crimea and is closing in on eastern Ukraine. Throw in Obama’s penchant for berating allies like Israel, ignoring the interests of others like Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, undercutting vulnerable states like Poland and the Czech Republic, and appeasing genocidal mullahs in Iran, and is it any surprise that his words “inspire greater distrust” in everyone except our enemies?</p>
<p>Of course, Obama’s habit of using words to substitute for politically risky deeds is universal in the West. We just saw a NATO confab in which a lot of big talk for the reporters end up so much smoke when the details are parsed. NATO leaders have agreed “to establish a so-called spearhead force of several thousand troops designed to move into trouble spots at short notice,” as The Wall Street Journal reported. Talk about closing the barn door after the Russian bear has got loose. I’m sure Putin is trembling over the thought of “several thousand” NATO troops that someday might materialize to stop his adventurism. If NATO isn’t acting now, what makes anyone think this special “spearhead force” will act in the future, even if NATO members do create it? As Charles Krauthammer writes, the force “is a feeble half-measure. Not only will troops have to be assembled, dispatched, transported and armed as the fire bell is ringing, but the very sending will require some affirmative and immediate decision by NATO. Try getting that done. The alliance is famous for its reluctant, slow and fractured decision-making.”</p>
<p>And haven’t we heard this sort of braggadocio before from Europe? Remember the 60,000-man “rapid reaction force” the EU was going to create so that they could avoid any further embarrassment of having “cowboy” Americans pull their foreign policy irons out of the fire, as happened in Bosnia and Kosovo? Given that only three European NATO members honor the 2% of GDP minimum for military spending, it’s unlikely that the money for creating this alleged “deterrent” will ever be budgeted, not with EU economies in the doldrums, and widespread grumbling over “austerity” budgets. No wonder that, as the Journal reports, “most details of the force . . . remained to be settled.” But don’t worry, NATO leaders have “committed” to spending the 2% on defense they “committed” to in 2002 and subsequently ignored. Better read the fine print: the commitment is non-binding and will be implemented over a 10-year period. Who knows how much more of the old Soviet Empire Vladimir will have taken back by then.</p>
<p>“Word, words, words,” as Hamlet says. But words useful for politicians who want to avoid the risk and uncertainty of action, and don’t want to face disgruntled voters at the polls. And when this perennial calculus is joined to the progressive belief that an exploitative, racist, neo-imperialist America is disqualified by its sins from being the guarantor of global order and stability, you get the world we are rapidly becoming––a Darwinian jungle of feral violence, illiberal hegemons, thug-nations, and nuclear-armed terrorist states.</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>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/obamas-foreign-policy-of-empty-words/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>9</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Putin’s Unchecked Aggression</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/putins-unchecked-aggression/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=putins-unchecked-aggression</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/putins-unchecked-aggression/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Sep 2014 04:12:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crimea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[invasion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ukraine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[United Nations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239947</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How to avoid Russia's checkmate. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/1392924232400.cached.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239961" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/1392924232400.cached-400x350.jpg" alt="1392924232400.cached" width="307" height="269" /></a>Russia has expanded the scope of its military intervention in Ukraine. Following on the heels of its illegal occupation and annexation of Crimea and arming of the separatists fighting the Ukrainian government in eastern Ukraine, Russian regular troops have now joined the separatists’ fight. They are equipped with heavy weaponry, including armored personnel carriers. And a new southeastern front has been opened by the Russian-backed separatists which would enable Russia to gain effective control over a vital land link between Russia and Crimea.</p>
<p>Determined not to allow Ukrainian forces to quell the separatist rebellion, which they were well on their way to doing, Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to use more Russian military might to tip the scales in the separatists’ favor.</p>
<p>On August 26<sup>th</sup> – the same day that Putin was meeting with Ukrainian President Poroshenko in Minsk, Belarus to talk about peace &#8211; satellite imagery showed Russian combat units southeast of Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine.  Ukraine also detained regular Russian Army personnel from the 9th brigade, whom Russia claimed had mistakenly wandered into Ukraine.</p>
<p>A separatist leader boasted that three or four thousand Russian soldiers have joined their fight, whom he claimed were using their vacation time to help their comrades. NATO has estimated that at least 1,000 Russian troops were present in Ukraine. Dismissing Russia’s “hollow denials,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on August 29<sup>th</sup> that</p>
<blockquote><p>it is now clear that Russian troops and equipment have illegally crossed the border. This is a blatant violation of Ukraine&#8217;s sovereignty and territorial integrity. It defies all diplomatic efforts for a peaceful solution.</p></blockquote>
<p>United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, in his briefing to an emergency session of the UN Security Council on August 28th, referred to the “deeply alarming reports of Russian military involvement in this new wave of escalation. If confirmed, it would constitute a direct contravention of international law and of the UN Charter.”</p>
<p>Mr. Feltman added that, “as arms and heavy weaponry reportedly continue to flow unabated into Ukraine from Russia,” illegal armed groups operating in the Donetsk region</p>
<blockquote><p>have reportedly intensified their activities over the last two days, spreading violence along Ukraine’s southern coast, in the direction of the key strategic port of Mariupol…The southward spread of fighting, along the border with the Russian Federation and the Sea of Azov, marks a dangerous escalation in the conflict.</p></blockquote>
<p>After Mr. Feltman spoke, each member of the Security Council, as well as the Ukrainian UN representative, chimed in with their remarks. Lithuania, which had requested the emergency meeting, went first. Its ambassador accused Russia of committing multiple violations of international law in its “aggression” in Ukraine. She demanded that Russia remove its fighters from Ukraine.</p>
<p>U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power lambasted Russia for ignoring the repeated calls of the Security Council to stop its aggressive actions. “Instead of listening, instead of heeding the demands of the international community and the rules of the international order, at every step, Russia has come before this Council to say everything except the truth,” Ambassador Power said. “It has manipulated. It has obfuscated. It has outright lied.”</p>
<p>Ambassador Power warned that the United States and its partners will work together &#8220;to ratchet up the consequences on Russia.&#8221; France’s UN representative concurred.</p>
<p>British UN Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, the Security Council president during August, said: &#8220;Now we see irrefutable evidence of regular Russian forces operating inside Ukraine.&#8221; He reeled off numbers of heavy weaponry in the hands of the separatists, most of which was supplied by Russia, including 100 tanks, 80 armored personnel carriers, 500 anti-tank weapons and more than 100 artillery pieces.</p>
<p>During the Security Council meeting, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin did his best to fend off the condemnations of Russia’s actions coming from other members of the Council and the Ukrainian representative.  Sure, there were Russian “volunteers” present in eastern parts of Ukraine, Ambassador Churkin said. &#8220;No one is hiding that,&#8221; he claimed. But then, in an apparent game of turnabout is fair play, Ambassador Churkin called on the United States to be more forthcoming about what he asserted to be the presence of 1000 Western advisers in Ukraine. He said that he wanted to &#8220;send a message to Washington: Stop interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states.&#8221;</p>
<p>Russia will be sending another “humanitarian” convoy into Ukraine, Ambassador Churkin declared. And he challenged the other members of the Security Council to adopt the text of his proposed press statement calling for an immediate unconditional ceasefire, inclusive dialogue and stepped up humanitarian relief. The Lithuanian ambassador said that her country would need more time to review the text, but it appeared to be deficient in not calling specifically for the separatists to stop impeding the flow of humanitarian aid.</p>
<p>Ambassador Churkin tried to maintain an even demeanor as he delivered the official Russian line in response to the sharply critical speeches that preceded his remarks. His strongest rhetoric was reserved for the Ukrainian government in Kiev, which he accused of engaging in “a war against its own people.” Ambassador Churkin also dismissed the Ukrainian government’s call for a ceasefire and for the separatists to lay down their arms as a sham.</p>
<p>President Putin’s decision to up the ante has reversed the tide of momentum that had been going the Ukrainian government’s way. Now the Ukrainian military forces are on the defensive and at risk of losing control of a wide area of coastal territory. Putin praised the separatists’ resurgence “in intercepting Kiev’s military operation.” He called the separatists the fighters of Novorossiya – meaning the territory Putin likes to refer to as “New Russia,” based on what he claims belongs historically to Russia.</p>
<p>Putin talks out of both sides of his mouth. While single-handedly providing enough weapons and troops to keep the rebellion going against the duly elected government of Ukraine in Kiev, he talks about opening humanitarian corridors and wanting peaceful dialogue. Putin has no interest in peace except on his terms. His goals are to take effective control over as much of the eastern portion of Ukraine as he can, keep the remainder of Ukraine as weak as possible to make it too much of a burden for Western Europe to bail out, and continue to expand the territory of “New Russia.”</p>
<p>“The question is to ensure the rights and interests of the Russian southeast,” Putin said in a nationally televised interview last April after his aggressive occupation of Crimea. He continued:</p>
<blockquote><p>It’s New Russia. Kharkiv, Lugansk, Donetsk, Odessa were not part of Ukraine in czarist times, they were transferred in 1920. Why? God knows. Then for various reasons these areas were gone, and the people stayed there. We need to encourage them to find a solution.</p></blockquote>
<p>Expanding the reach of the Russian empire to that of the czarist glory days is Putin’s idea of the right solution. And nobody should even think of taking any military actions against Russia in return. &#8220;It&#8217;s best not to mess with us,&#8221; he warned on Friday. “I want to remind you that Russia is one of the leading nuclear powers.&#8221;</p>
<p>To justify his imperialistic ambitions, Putin brazenly invoked Russia’s own suffering at the hands of the Nazis during World War II. Referring to Ukrainian current military actions against Ukraine’s southeastern cities, he told students last week that “[I]t reminds me of World War II, when German forces encircled Russian cities like Leningrad and hit residential quarters with heavy artillery.”</p>
<p>Putin’s Nazi reference in his remarks to students is ironic to the say the least, considering that his own Ukraine strategy is an echo of Hitler’s Anschluss. Also, he had no comment on the civilians killed by rockets imported from Russia or the depraved public parading and humiliation of captured Ukrainian soldiers by the separatists in violation of the Geneva Conventions. And Putin has apparently moved beyond the tragedy of the passengers and crew who lost their lives aboard the commercial Malaysian plane shot down by a surface-to-air missile launched from an area controlled by Russian-backed separatists.</p>
<p>The United Nations Security Council has met 24 times on the subject of Ukraine. It has turned into bad theater. All we hear is the predictable rhetoric from Russia and its critics. Russia’s veto power prevents anything of real substance from being accomplished.</p>
<p>Increasingly severe economic sanctions have been imposed by the United States and its Western European allies against Russian individuals, businesses and the financial and arms industries. However, aside from some tough-sounding rhetoric, European leaders are equivocating on exactly what new stronger economic measures they would be willing to take against Russia and when they would do so, worrying about the impact of such measures on their own economies. President Obama may impose more sanctions on his own if need be, but he would prefer to reach a consensus with Europe on next steps. Either way, as a senior U.S. diplomat told me, sanctions do not appear to be making much of a difference in changing Putin’s calculations.</p>
<p>President Obama has ruled out any direct overt U.S. military confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, which makes sense. But with economic sanctions not fazing Putin and direct military confrontation out of the picture, one U.S. official was quoted by The Telegraph as saying: &#8220;If Putin is immune to economic pain and we are not willing to use military force, then he&#8217;s got us in check mate, doesn&#8217;t he?&#8221;</p>
<p>Putin has us in check mate only if we ignore what Winston Churchill counseled about the Russians in his 1946 “Sinews of Peace” speech. He said that “there is nothing they admire so much as strength.”</p>
<p>What we need to do is to find creative ways to display the kind of strength that will get Putin’s attention and give him pause.</p>
<p>First, we can provide more sophisticated arms and training to Ukraine’s beleaguered military forces together with more sharing of intelligence information. Second, we can utilize covert operations in support of dissidents in Crimea and anti-Russian Ukrainians in eastern Ukraine to create a counter-force that would undercut Putin’s assumption of a low-cost occupation.</p>
<p>Third, and perhaps most important of all, Obama should now deploy the mobile missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, which he had mistakenly decided not to do in his first term as part of his failed attempt to “re-set” relations with Russia in a more positive direction. In fact, Obama should add Hungary and the Baltic states to the list. In other words, do to Putin what he has been most afraid of. Contain him with an encirclement strategy.</p>
<p>There are no guarantees that these measures will work.  But one thing is for sure. If we do nothing but add a few more sanctions, Putin will not stop his aggression with eastern Ukraine.</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>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/putins-unchecked-aggression/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>11</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Putin Storms Ukraine</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/putin-storms-ukraine/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=putin-storms-ukraine</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/putin-storms-ukraine/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Aug 2014 04:51:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[invasion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rebel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[separatist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ukraine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239778</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A bad situation turns seriously worse.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Screen-Shot-2014-08-28-at-10.30.26-PM.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239782" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Screen-Shot-2014-08-28-at-10.30.26-PM.png" alt="Screen Shot 2014-08-28 at 10.30.26 PM" width="303" height="245" /></a>Yesterday, Ukrainian President Petro O. Poroshenko <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/29/world/europe/ukraine-conflict.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">declared</span></a> that Russia had invaded his nation. Col. Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the Ukrainian military, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russian-and-ukraine-troops-battle-in-south-prompting-fears-of-widescale-invasion/2014/08/28/04b614f4-9a6e-40f4-aa21-4f49104cf0e4_story.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">confirmed</span></a> that two armored columns of Russian forces, replete with tanks and armored fighting vehicles, captured the town of Novoazovsk on the Sea of Azov near the Russian border. Ukrainian troops were forced to retreat in the face of superior fighting power that included Grad missiles launched from Russian territory. “Our border servicemen and guardsmen retreated as they did not have heavy equipment,” Lysenko said in a statement.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">NATO released a <a href="http://usnato.tumblr.com/post/96003086125/new-satellite-imagery-exposes-russian-combat-troops"><span style="color: #1255cc;">series</span></a> of satellite images further confirming that at least 1,000 soldiers and Russian artillery units were operating in Ukraine. Captured in late August, the images show the artillery units moving through the Ukrainian countryside and establishing firing positions near Krasnodon, Ukraine. &#8220;Over the past two weeks we have noted a significant escalation in both the level and sophistication of Russia’s military interference in Ukraine,” said Dutch Brigadier General Nico Tak, director of the Comprehensive Crisis and Operations Management Centre (CCOMC), Allied Command Operations. &#8220;The satellite images released today provide additional evidence that Russian combat soldiers, equipped with sophisticated heavy weaponry, are operating inside Ukraine’s sovereign territory.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Tak further noted the overall scope of the invasion was much wider than the current effort. &#8220;We have also detected large quantities of advanced weapons, including air defense systems, artillery, tanks, and armored personnel carriers being transferred to separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine,” he explained. &#8220;The presence of these weapons along with substantial numbers of Russian combat troops inside Ukraine make the situation increasingly grave.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The motive for doing so was also illuminated. &#8220;Russia is reinforcing and resupplying separatist forces in a blatant attempt to change the momentum of the fighting, which is currently favoring the Ukrainian military,” Tak added. &#8220;Russia’s ultimate aim is to alleviate pressure on separatist fighters in order to prolong this conflict indefinitely, which would result in further tragedy for the people of Eastern Ukraine.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">President Poroshenko cancelled a scheduled trip to Turkey and <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/ukraines-poroshenko-says-russia-forces-invaded-ukraine-100653464.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">convened</span></a> an emergency meeting of the Ukrainian security and defense council to determine what steps his government would take to address the crisis. &#8220;I made the decision to cancel a working visit to the Republic of Turkey in connection with the rapidly deteriorating situation in Donetsk region, in particular in Amvrosiyivka and Starobesheve, as Russian troops have actually been brought into Ukraine,&#8221; he said in a statement on the presidential website. Poroshenko also requested the meeting of the U.N. Security Council that took place yesterday afternoon.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Lysenko stated that Russian troops began entering Ukraine shortly after midnight, adding that “Russian servicemen” are in control of several other localities around Novoazovsk. There are also reports of a Russian BM-27 Uragan missile system in the area.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The satellite images paint a grim picture. In addition to the strategic setups in and around Krasnodon, the images show a steady buildup of Russian forces on the Russian side of the border near Rostov-on-Don, approximately 31 miles from the Dovzhansky, Ukraine border crossing. Between June and late August, a conglomeration of battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, cargo trucks and tented accommodations were established, with NATO insisting it represents &#8220;one example of the multiple encampments that Russia has positioned near its border with Eastern Ukraine.” Another image shows what appear to be a half dozen Russian 153mm 2S19 self-propelled guns located in Russia near Kuybyshevo, which sits only four miles south of the Ukrainian border, near the village of Chervonyi Zhovten. According to NATO the guns are pointed north, &#8220;directly towards Ukrainian territory.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Ukrainian forces are fortifying their positions 28 miles west of Novoazovsk, around the port city of Mariupol, anticipating that Russian forces will attempt to secure a road link to Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed last March. If successful, Russia and/or the separatists would gain a direct land corridor to the peninsula, as well as control of the entire Sea of Azov, thought to contain extensive gas and mineral deposits. National Guard spokesman Ruslan Muzychuk told the AP in Mariupo that Ukrainian troops currently control the area, even as he too insisted his government had proof the Russians were moving large amounts of weaponry into Novoazovsk, presumably headed for Mariupo and a seemingly critical confrontation.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Aleksandr Zakharchenko, a rebel commander and the prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, also confirmed the presence of 4,000 Russian troops in Ukraine, but insisted that many of them were active-duty soldiers on leave who have “volunteered” to fight for freedom. “There are active soldiers fighting among us who preferred to spend their vacation not on the beach, but with us, among their brothers, who are fighting for their freedom,” he said in an interview on Russian state-run television.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Unsurprisingly, Russia has once again denied the incursion is happening. A spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry <a href="http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0828/639813-ukraine/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">told</span></a> Russia media sources that &#8220;this information has no relation to reality,” and that units on the Ukrainian side of the border were simply engaged in &#8220;tactical training exercises on their own and outlying ranges” and that such efforts &#8220;were the normal work of any army.” Andrey Kelin, Russian representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) also toed the company line, contending that “no Russian involvement has been spotted, there are no soldiers or equipment present.” “Accusations relating to convoys of armored personnel carriers have been heard during the past week and the week before that,” he added. “All of them were proven false back then, and are being proven false again now.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Not quite. On Tuesday, Ukraine <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11057540/Capture-of-Russian-paratroopers-in-Ukraine-overshadows-talks-with-Russia.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">announced</span></a> the Monday capture of ten Russian paratroopers who had “accidentally” crossed the border, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. &#8220;These servicemen really did take part in a patrol of a section of the Russian-Ukrainian border, crossing it likely by mistake at an unequipped and unmarked point,” a Ministry source told Russian media.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Ella Polyakova, a member of President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s advisory council on human rights, contradicted those assessments, insisting that a Russian invasion is taking place. &#8220;When masses of people, under commanders&#8217; orders, on tanks, APCs and with the use of heavy weapons, (are) on the territory of another country, cross the border, I consider this an invasion,” she said.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">European leaders were on board with Polyakova’s characterization. German Chancellor Angela Merkel phoned Russian President Vladimir Putin demanding an explanation. French President Francois Hollande characterized Russia&#8217;s actions as “intolerable” and warned of further sanctions if they continue. &#8220;Russia cannot simultaneously aspire to be a world power in the 21st century and not play by the rules,” he <a href="http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2014/8/28/international-news/ukraine-vows-defend-itself-russian-invasion"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> in a speech to French ambassadors. He was echoed by British Prime Minister David Cameron who also spoke of unspecified “consequences” if Russian continued its “large scale incursions.” Cameron insisted that Putin’s stated desire to end the conflict peacefully “is not credible when Russia is supporting pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine with arms and troops,” even as he warned the effort &#8220;must cease immediately.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Obama administration also accused Russia of orchestrating the fighting, with State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki <a href="http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/international/europe/2014/08/russian_columns_enter_ukraine_leader_urges_calm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">contending</span></a> the latest incursions &#8220;indicate a Russian-directed counteroffensive is likely underway in Donetsk and Luhansk.” Donetsk is the largest city held by rebel forces and 11 people were reported killed by shelling Wednesday night.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">At yesterday&#8217;s U.N. Security Council meeting, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Power continued leveling accusations at the Russians. &#8220;Russian soldiers, tanks and air defense have supported and fight alongside separatists as they open a new front in a crisis manufactured and fueled by Russia,” she declared, further noting that Russia had been called to account on other occasions. &#8220;At every step, Russia has become before this council to say everything but the truth. It has manipulated, obfuscated and outright lied,” she added.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Power also urged the Security Council to take immediate action. &#8220;How can we tell those countries that border Russia that their peace and sovereignty is guaranteed if we do not make our message heard on Ukraine?&#8221; she asked. &#8220;The cost of inaction is unacceptable.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">NATO is apparently preparing for action. Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/26/nato-east-european-bases-counter-russian-threat"><span style="color: #1255cc;">announced</span></a> that the organization will for the first time deploy forces at new bases in Eastern Europe, to counter Putin’s aggression and protect Baltic States that were former Soviet satellites. The plan is to be unveiled at a meeting in Wales next week when NATO seeks to overcome divisions within the alliance, with the ultimate aim of securing an agreement to station troops along the Russian border. &#8220;We will adopt what we call a readiness action plan with the aim to be able to act swiftly in this completely new security environment in Europe,” said Rasmussen. &#8220;We have something already called the NATO response force, whose purpose is to be able to be deployed rapidly if needed. Now it&#8217;s our intention to develop what I would call a spearhead within that response force at very, very high readiness.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">He also illuminated sobering reality. &#8220;We have to face the reality that Russia does not consider NATO a partner,” he explained. &#8220;Russia is a nation that unfortunately for the first time since the second world war has grabbed land by force. Obviously we have to adapt to that.” So does Putin, who is sure to be infuriated by the move.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Late yesterday afternoon the <i>New York Times</i> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/29/world/europe/ukraine-conflict.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">reported</span></a> that President Poroshenko ordered mandatory conscription into the Ukrainian army, which was suspended last year, be reinstated. “The situation is certainly extremely difficult and nobody is going to simplify it,” Mr. Poroshenko said. “Still, it is controlled enough for us to refrain from panic.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Perhaps it is—for now. Yet one is left to wonder how long such “control” can be maintained. Vladimir Putin’s expansionist urges have been extremely popular among the Russian people who <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/opinion/why-russians-back-putin-on-ukraine.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">share</span></a> his vision of a resuscitated “empire.” How far he and they are willing to go to maintain that worldview may determine the fate, not just of Russia and Ukraine, but the entire continent of Europe. It wouldn’t be the first time national pride ignited a widespread conflagration.</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>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/putin-storms-ukraine/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>59</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Hillary’s Two-Faced Foreign Policy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hillarys-two-faced-foreign-policy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hillarys-two-faced-foreign-policy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hillarys-two-faced-foreign-policy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Aug 2014 04:53:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[foreign policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[United Nations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239113</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Obama rerun.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hill3.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239152" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hill3-450x270.jpg" alt="hill3" width="293" height="176" /></a>Ever since Hillary broke with Barack over the virtues of doing stupid stuff, the editorial columnists have been pretending that she has some new and exciting foreign policy.</p>
<p>She doesn&#8217;t.</p>
<p>The left has denounced her as an interventionist. They just can&#8217;t explain how she is any more of an interventionist than her boss who bombed Libya, is bombing Iraq and wanted to bomb Syria. And all that is without mentioning his attempt to implement the Arab Spring&#8217;s regime changes.</p>
<p>The closest thing to a disagreement between them was over Syria and considering that Obama was days away from getting into Syria, that&#8217;s not much of a firewall.</p>
<p>Hillary took a cheap shot at Obama. The media spent so much time discussing the hugging summit that it completely ignored the fact that it was a cheap shot with no substance to it. Hillary and Obama have the same ideological DNA and get their ideas from the same narrow circles. Hillary doesn&#8217;t have a better or worse foreign policy. They both have the same foreign policy.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton is trying to distance herself from the foreign policy of an administration in which she served as Secretary of State. Hillary is trying to distance herself from her own approach to international relations. That&#8217;s a level of schizophrenia that is a bit extreme even for a woman who sheds accents, identities and sports team affinities the way that a snake sheds its skin.</p>
<p>Hillary isn&#8217;t disavowing Obama. She&#8217;s disavowing Hillary.</p>
<p>The new Hillary is suddenly pro-Israel after spending years berating the Jewish State. She suddenly realized the importance of having a coherent foreign policy after having the same confused position on Iraq as John Kerry. And she&#8217;s somehow more of an interventionist than Obama even though they were both intervening in the exact same places.</p>
<p>Hillary is an interventionist. But so is Obama.</p>
<p>The non-interventionist, like the pacifist, is a mythical woodland creature who appears in the fables of many cultures. He isn&#8217;t however to be found in the vicinity of Washington D.C.</p>
<p>Break down the arguments of the non-interventionist and you will find a set of conspiracy theories explaining why every previous intervention was motivated by bad faith, secret agendas and racism. The non-interventionist doesn&#8217;t reject intervention; instead he contends that every previous intervention failed because it was carried out at the behest of the banks, the military-industrial complex, the CIA, the Jews, American arrogance and the oil industry.</p>
<p>But the non-interventionist who makes it into the White House is free to intervene as much as he likes because his motives are pure. He isn&#8217;t trying to secretly build oil pipelines or put money into Haliburton. By assigning evil motives to all his predecessors, he never actually learns anything from them and instead intervenes out of an unrealistic sense of self-confidence in his own judgment.</p>
<p>Because he is certain that they were evil and he isn&#8217;t, he believes that he can do no wrong.</p>
<p>A true non-interventionist would reject intervention wholesale. Our fake non-interventionists turn up their noses at it when their political opponents do it. But once they have the power, they intervene out of entirely pure motives like helping the Muslim Brotherhood take over countries.</p>
<p>Obama is a non-interventionist because he spends a lot of time hesitating and apologizing for each intervention. He doesn&#8217;t however bother getting permission from Congress or even UN approval. Why should he? His motives are pure.</p>
<p>Hillary&#8217;s crime is that she currently sounds somewhat less apologetic and uncertain about intervention, but that&#8217;s not policy, that&#8217;s pose. Hillary&#8217;s husband boasted on the day before September 11 that he passed on killing Bin Laden because of the collateral damage. And Bill Clinton is more of a hawk than his wife.</p>
<p>Anyone who thinks that Hillary is a hawk has forgotten how American personnel in Benghazi were left in a precarious security situation on her watch. It&#8217;s quite possible that Hillary might decide to bomb Syria. But don&#8217;t expect her to bomb in defense of American national interests.</p>
<p>She&#8217;s not that kind of interventionist.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton knows that many voters are unhappy about American weakness. They don&#8217;t actually want war, but they want someone in the White House whom Putin will take seriously. And they know that isn&#8217;t Obama.</p>
<p>Hillary is temporarily talking tough to convince them that she&#8217;s the woman to make Vladimir respect America again. That doesn&#8217;t mean that she can stand up to Putin any better than Obama. Or that she will. But she needs uncertain Democrats to believe that the new boss will be different than the old boss, when the new boss is really the old boss in a pantsuit and with worse posters.</p>
<p>Unfortunately Democrats and Republicans don&#8217;t currently differ very much on foreign policy. Where they differ is orientation. And that&#8217;s more significant than it sounds.</p>
<p>Both Obama and McCain would have backed the Arab Spring, but McCain would have done it out of a misguided sense that it was in America&#8217;s national interest, while Obama did it to undermine American national interests.</p>
<p>The significance is not so much in the outcome as in attitude and in the tools that they use.</p>
<p>Obama and McCain would have both bombed Libya, but Obama holds the military in contempt and treats it that way. Obama and McCain would have both endorsed the Arab Spring, but Obama did it in a way that signaled American weakness. That is why Obama&#8217;s approach has weakened America even more than the actual outcome of his policies.</p>
<p>A country can survive bad policy. We&#8217;ve had bad foreign policy for much of the 20th century. But a leader who communicates that the bad policy is a symptom of national weakness is a disaster on a whole other scale. Both Carter and Reagan made mistakes, but Carter and Reagan sent two very different messages about American power even while they made their mistakes.</p>
<p>Leadership isn&#8217;t always about what you do. It&#8217;s about how you communicate your values.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton is trying to package her old Obama policies with a new attitude, but underneath is the same old lefty radical who smooched Arafat&#8217;s wife, brought a Reset Button to Russia and apologized to Pakistan for a YouTube video.</p>
<p>We&#8217;ve already seen Hillary&#8217;s foreign policy on display in Pakistan, Russia and Benghazi. All the cheap shots at Obama won&#8217;t change the fact that Hillary&#8217;s foreign policy is another Obama rerun.</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>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hillarys-two-faced-foreign-policy/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>45</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Who Was Yuri Andropov? Ideologue, Policeman, Apparatchik</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/vladimir-tismaneanu/who-was-yuri-andropov-ideologue-policeman-apparatchik/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=who-was-yuri-andropov-ideologue-policeman-apparatchik</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/vladimir-tismaneanu/who-was-yuri-andropov-ideologue-policeman-apparatchik/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Aug 2014 04:35:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Vladimir Tismaneanu]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Andropov]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[KGB]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Soviet Union]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=238843</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why a deceased Soviet butcher has an ever-growing mini-cult following.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/moscow-kremlin.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238846" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/moscow-kremlin-450x337.jpg" alt="moscow-kremlin" width="277" height="207" /></a>We should not be surprised that, in Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’s Russia, Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov –born a hundred years ago, on June 15, 1914– enjoys an ever-growing mini-cult following, shaped and upheld from the very top. For Putin and the mafia surrounding him – all characters coming from the middle-level structures of the KGB– Yuri Andropov represents the strength of a system which, they believe, was not meant to collapse. In Andropov, they admire the virility, vitality, stamina, robustness of the system that collapsed in December 1991. Worshiping Andropov, they lionize their own youth.</p>
<p>The triumphalist fantasies of the Soviet years continue to haunt the Kremlin’s imagination. Resorting to the myth of Andropov is in fact an attempt at legitimization by way of history. Obviously, what we are dealing with is a history forged, doctored, counterfeited. In short, a history rigged, distorted, and mystified.</p>
<p>According to this secret police worldview, Andropov’s reforms – carefully supervised by their initiators in the party and security apparatus – were unlikely to lead to a massive breakdown of the ideocratic party-state institutional structure. Andropov was a bureaucrat hardened during the Stalinist purges following WWII. He was a true believer in the USSR’s mission as a “bastion of world socialism.” Like so many other apparatchiks, he had adored Stalin. He had been the protégé of Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov, the most dogmatic of the official ideologues. Andropov’s election in November 1982 as General Secretary of the CC of the CPSU and president of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, thus nominal head of the Soviet state, was a big change in the pattern of succession. This was the first time that a former chief of the secret police had made it to the helm of the totalitarian regime called the USSR. Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria had come within reach of this position, but – as we well know – he was finished off before being able to fill it. Arrested in June 1953, a few months after Stalin’s death, Beria was executed as a spy in December of that same year.</p>
<p>Andropov’s career began under the auspices of Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov, the supreme ideologue of Stalinism unleashed. Zhdanov was directly in charge of the Karelian-Finnish Autonomous Republic, where Andropov steeply climbed up the party hierarchy. I emphasize this because Zhdanov was the most influential exponent of the Leningrad faction, brutally purged after his death in 1948. The political mythology of Leningrad&#8217;s communists matters a great deal in this particular version of history. Vladimir Putin himself comes from that town, as do many members of his close entourage.</p>
<p>After a stage as a Central Committee bureaucrat, Andropov was sent to Hungary as an ambassador, where he was given the particularly sensitive mission to oversee political dynamics throughout the crucial year 1956. Presumably Andropov himself had suffered a shock following the disclosures in Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev’s “Secret Report” at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU in February 1956. On the other hand, ideologically speaking, his convictions were shatterproof and unflinching, made ​​of reinforced concrete. He was not a man of doubts, he lacked the courage to question the thorniest issues in the history of the party that he had served with<em> perinde ac cadaver </em>devotion. He was a fanatic communist, a true believer.</p>
<p>In the Soviet Embassy in Budapest, in 1956, one of Andropov’s subordinates was KGB officer under diplomatic cover, Vladimir Kryuchkov, who later became himself head of the State Security Committee. Astutely friendly and seemingly benevolent, Andropov played the openness card and thus managed to put the suspicions of Imre Nagy and the other reformist group members to sleep. When the revolution broke out on October 23, 1956, Andropov simulated a conciliatory stance and accepted the claims issued by the new government. He was calm and affable, a world-class impersonator. The friendly act was in fact hiding the huge anxiety of Moscow’s envoy.</p>
<p>In truth, Andropov was one of the most adamant activists; he strongly supported the idea of ​ Soviet military intervention. He then gave the legal government members assurances that, if they were to come out of the Yugoslav embassy’s building where they had taken refuge after the second Soviet military intervention, on November 3, 1956, they would be granted freedom and would be able to go home with their families. Right after Nagy and his friends left the embassy premises, giving credence to Andropov’s promises, they were captured, thrown into Soviet trucks, and shipped to Romania. The official story was that they had requested political asylum. In reality, the whole thing was a gangster-like operation, namely the kidnapping of still legitimate officials of a state which had dared to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. Andropov was also the one who convinced János Kádár to break with Nagy and form the so-called “Workers’-Peasants’” Quisling government.</p>
<p>As a reward for his contribution to destroying what the communist propaganda called “the Hungarian counter-revolution,” Andropov was put in charge of the CPSU’s international relations department, a position from which he struggled to maintain Soviet hegemony within the world communist movement. As secretary of the CC, he collaborated with Suslov for the consolidation of a hardline ideology. He was one of the most active critics of the Chinese Communist Party, accused of political adventurism, as well as Yugoslav “revisionism.” He loathed any deviation from Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. The 1968 Prague Spring gave him nightmares, he fervently supported military intervention to suppress what has gone down in history as the attempt to pursue with a human face. He tried unsuccessfully to organize a world communist conference to excommunicate Mao&#8217;s party. He had become the Kremlin&#8217;s most sophisticated expert in world communist affairs.</p>
<p>Precisely because he was a most reliable, disciplined, and faithful apparatchik, Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksey Kosygin – the tandem who ended up at the pinnacle of the Soviet dictatorship after Khrushchev’s departure (in October 1964) – appointed Andropov succeed Vladimir Semichastny’s as chairman of the KGB in 1967. Maximum efficiency was needed and Andropov had proven that he was a highly effective defender of the nomenclature.</p>
<p>The one who suggested his appointment as chief-policeman of the USSR was red cardinal Mikhail Suslov, the ideological pontiff who had sensed the risk of the official monolithic doctrine’s disintegration. Andropov’s main mission was to suppress the human rights movement, to nip in the bud any dissident initiative. He was a champion of the most abject misinformation and recklessly cultivated criminal “special methods.”</p>
<p>As shown by <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/vladimir-tismaneanu/the-virtue-of-lucidity-yuri-glazov-and-the-fate-of-communism/">dissident intellectual Yuri Glazov</a> in his illuminating writings, Andropov was a paradigmatic<em> Homo Sovieticus</em>. His main opponents were the great dissidents Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov. He personally conducted disinformation campaigns against them. He also handled the terrorist actions against Pope John Paul II. In the history of the Cold War, the methodically stubborn bureaucrat Andropov endures as one of the most sinister characters.</p>
<p>When he became secretary general, the KGB started a disinformation campaign in the Western media which sought to advertise him as a secret reformist, “a closet liberal”, a man who, in his heart of hearts, admired Western cultural values, loved jazz, and was by no means the tenacious, obtuse, and dogmatic monster described in previous accounts. In fact, the inflexible Yuri Andropov came to power an exhausted and seriously ill individual– as exhausted and seriously ill as the system that he so badly wished to save. His reforms were modest, half-hearted, lacking vigor and vision, and mainly targeted at strengthening discipline in factories. They did not transcend some trivial doctrinal touch-ups. His formula was “acceleration” (<em>uskorenie</em>).</p>
<p>Andropov was definitely not tempted to encourage the transparency which, under Gorbachev, would become known as glasnost. As secretary general – we learn from Kryuchkov’s memoirs – he opposed the return of the anti-Stalinist party intellectual Aleksandr Yakovlev from the Canadian diplomatic exile. As far as party intellectuals go, he was close to Yevgeny Primakov and Georgy Arbatov, whom he deemed trustworthy not only for party leadership, but also for the KGB. Primakov, the future prime minister of Russia between 1998 and 1999, was probably even an undercover KGB officer.</p>
<p>Andropov personally conducted the frenzied reactions of the official propaganda after the downing of the South Korean airliner in 1983. He died in 1984, mourned by no one except his former KGB underlings, including, most likely, the up-and-coming Vladimir Putin. Perhaps his only merit was promoting Gorbachev, thus speeding up – involuntarily, of course – the ruin of a despotic regime, a totalitarian experiment responsible for the death of over twenty million human beings.</p>
<p>In a rare moment of honesty, Andropov said that there can be no greater error than reopening the public debate on the “accursed question.” He was referring to the Stalin question. Forced by the logic of the struggle for power, Gorbachev reopened this Pandora box and expedited the USSR’s downfall. This denouement was something the KGB abhorred. Years later, Andropov’s fan Vladimir Putin, a former KGB lieutenant-colonel, spoke about the end of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe in the history of the twentieth century.”</p>
<p><em>This essay was broadcast by the Moldovan service of Radio Free Europe. It was translated from Romanian into English by Monica Got.</em></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><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"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><strong>Subscribe</strong></a><strong> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <em>The Glazov Gang</em>, and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>LIKE</strong></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>Facebook.</strong></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/vladimir-tismaneanu/who-was-yuri-andropov-ideologue-policeman-apparatchik/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Putin&#8217;s Secret Message to Obama</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/truthrevolt-org/putins-secret-message-to-obama/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=putins-secret-message-to-obama</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/truthrevolt-org/putins-secret-message-to-obama/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Aug 2014 04:45:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[TruthRevolt.org]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Truth Revolt]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=238111</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A Truth Revolt video. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/0oesPD7rNXw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p style="color: #000000;">In which our multilingual host translates a secret videogram from Russian President Vladimir Putin to American President Barack Obama on the current state of Russian/American relations.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">TRANSCRIPT:</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">I’m Andrew Klavan and this is the Revolting Truth.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Ever since President Obama took office, he’s been making friendly overtures to the Russians, trying to “press the reset button” in relations between our two countries.  In 2012, the president was even caught on an open mike promising he’d have more “flexibility” to cave in to Russian demands after he was re-elected.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded warmly to Obama’s gestures by warmly cheating on our arms treaties, warmly supporting our enemies in Syria, warmly annexing Crimea, and warmly abetting the destruction of a Malaysian airliner while warmly threatening to invade Ukraine.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Is there some subtle miscommunication between Russia’s leader and our own?  In search of an answer, we at the Revolting Truth have obtained a classified videogram sent from Putin to Obama that may shed some light on the current state of US/Russian relations.  The video is in the original Russian but I’ll do my best to translate.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Dear President Obama&#8230;  Thank you for offer of great flexibility&#8230;  I am believing in you&#8230;   because women are more flexible than men and I think of you&#8230;  as weak woman who I am slapping in face&#8230;  like Chechnyan prostitute.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Unfortunately, since my scrumptious devouring of Crimea&#8230;  you are making squeaky mouse noises&#8230;  threatening sanctions from&#8230; imagined storybook place called international community&#8230; which coming from former community organizer girl like yourself makes ex-KGB man like me laugh ha-ha-ha.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Ha-ha.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Ha.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">I am very much enjoying when you offer me so-called “off-ramp” of my Crimea invasion as if re-building mighty Soviet borders was just big silly boo-boo I am making&#8230; I will certainly very soon say “oops” and withdraw my armies&#8230;  no&#8230;  Just kidding.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">I am also liking very much when you tell me I cannot invade Ukraine because this is 21st century&#8230;  I am glad you are owning calendar so you will not be late for playing golf game&#8230; in girly shorts.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Now I must fly to Havana to lease fighter jets to Castros and establish military bases there&#8230;  In words of great American Jew songwriter Irving Berlin, I will See You in C.U.B.A.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Goodbye funny little president girl.  I thank you for joking at Mitt Romney when he called Russia U.S. enemy.  You are good friend to me and great lollipop&#8230;  No&#8230;  no&#8230;  sucker&#8230;  and you can kiss my mighty Russian donkey.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">That must be some sort of old slavic expression or something.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Well&#8230; I hope that clears things up.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">I’m Andrew Klavan with the Revolting Truth.</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>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/truthrevolt-org/putins-secret-message-to-obama/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>18</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Long-Awaited Investigation into Alexander V. Litvinenko&#8217;s Murder</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/britain-launches-investigation-of-alexander-v-litvinenko-murder/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=britain-launches-investigation-of-alexander-v-litvinenko-murder</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/britain-launches-investigation-of-alexander-v-litvinenko-murder/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Jul 2014 04:49:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alexander V. Litvinenko]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Investigation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[poison]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=237045</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Formal inquiry finally launched into the killing of a KGB-agent-turned-dissident.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/yTYYn.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-237047" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/yTYYn-437x350.jpg" alt="yTYYn" width="275" height="220" /></a>On Tuesday, nearly eight years after former KGB officer-turned-dissident Alexander V. Litvinenko was killed by radioactive poisoning, the British government <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/britain-opens-investigation-litvinenko-assassination-n162661"><span style="color: #1255cc;">announced</span></a> it was opening a formal investigation into the matter. The decision is likely to further strain already tenuous relations between Russia and Great Britain, who are at odds regarding Russia’s annexation of Crimea, their support of Bashar Assad in Syria, and their possible complicity in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The move represents an about-face for Home Secretary Theresa May, following the London High Court’s decision in February <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/54344161/ns/world_news-europe/t/uk-court-quashes-decision-not-hold-litvinenko-poisoning-inquiry/#.U9DxjKjFm3c"><span style="color: #1255cc;">rejecting</span></a> her refusal not to hold a public inquiry. May’s reluctance had stemmed from concerns about what effect it would have on British-Russian relations, which have long been strained by the murder. But despite denials by British Prime Minister David Cameron, it appears the murders of 298 passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over an area controlled by pro-Russian separatists has provided the ultimate impetus for reconsideration.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">&#8220;I am announcing today the government’s decision to establish an inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 to investigate the death of Mr. Alexander Litvinenko in November 2006,” May <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/announcement-in-relation-to-the-death-of-mr-litvinenko"><span style="color: #1255cc;">announced </span></a>on the <a href="http://uk.gov/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">uk.gov</span></a> website. “The inquiry will be established by the Home Office. The inquiry will be chaired by Sir Robert Owen, a senior judge who is the current Coroner in the Inquest into Mr. Litvinenko’s death.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">During the long legal process leading to May’s announcement, Owen insisted the British government possessed documents that “establish a prima facie case as to the culpability of the Russian state in the death of Alexander Litvinenko.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">A <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17246562/ns/dateline_nbc/t/litvinenko-assassins-likely-escape-justice/#.U9D3UajFm3c"><span style="color: #1255cc;">history</span></a> of bad blood between Litvinenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin goes back to 1998. At the time Putin, a former KGB officer, was appointed to head the FSB, which is what the KGB became after the fall of the Soviet Union. Litvinenko had also been a KGB officer working in counterintelligence before getting a 1997 promotion to senior operational officer in the FSB department investigating organized crime at the new agency. Litvinenko incurred Putin’s wrath when he and four other FSB agents conducted a news conference during which they accused the head of the organized crime directorate of ordering the assassination of Boris Berezovsky. Berezovsky was a powerful businessman and political operative allied to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">After Litvinenko warned Berezovsky about the plot, he was fired and subsequently arrested three times. After spending a month in jail he was released after promising not to leave Russia. But he acquired a forged passport and fled with his wife and son seeking asylum in Britain on Nov. 1, 2000.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Over the next six years, Litvinenko became an anti-Kremlin journalist, accusing the Russian government of abuses during their battles with Chechen separatists in the 1990s, and the FSB’s alleged 1999 bombing of 300 people in explosions at apartments in Russia that was used to justify its second war against Chechnya. He also claimed two of the Chechen separatists who took hostages at a theater in Moscow in October 2002 during which 162 people died were working for the FSB. He also pointed the finger at the FSB for having trained al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. In addition, he accused Putin of pedophilia.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Yet what might have set the wheels in motion for Litvinenko’s murder was his investigation into the October 2006 murder of fellow Russian Anna Politkovskaya. Politkovskaya was also a journalist who had built an international reputation for her own exposés of the Russian government’s activities in Chechnya. After she was gunned down outside her home, Litvinenko began his investigation, and ultimately accused Putin of ordering Politkovskaya’s assassination.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">On November 1, 2006, six years to the day after he arrived in London, Litvinenko met with former Russian army officer Dmitri Kovtun at the Millennium Hotel in central London, where he drank tea from a pot poisoned with polonium-210. Afterwards it was discovered that the pot, the teacup, the hotel bar and several members of the bar’s staff had been contaminated with polonium 210.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">From that day until his death on Nov. 23, Litvinenko, 43, slowly wasted away, from the long distance runner he was into a bald and frail husk, one excruciating day after another. On his deathbed, Litvinenko, who had predicted Russia would assassinate him, blamed Putin for his poisoning. Putin has dismissed the allegation.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">At the time, investigators believed that the plot to kill Litvinenko had been orchestrated by Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB agent. Lugovoi, who is now a member of the Russian Parliament, denied any involvement in the plot, as did Kovtun. A document filed with the Crown Prosecution Service by police in 2007 characterized the killing as “state sponsored.” And despite Russia dismissing the accusations against Kovtun and Lugovoi as irrelevant, it began its own investigation, which ultimately had the effect of hampering the British one, despite British police and prosecutors contending there was enough evidence to charge to both men.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">On Tuesday, everything changed. Previous contentions by the British government that it was necessary to withhold evidence it characterized as classified and potentially detrimental to the national interest have apparently been resolved. The inquiry will <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-k-to-probe-who-was-behind-alexander-litvinenkos-death-1406028786"><span style="color: #1255cc;">proceed</span></a> beginning July 31 and should conclude by the end of 2015, according to British Prime Minister David Cameron. Some of the proceedings may be held in private when classified material is being considered. And while Cameron claims that the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 played no part in the decision, there is little doubt that Russia will see it that way.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">May noted the inquiry will not include questions regarding whether Britain could have, or should have, taken measures to prevent Litvinenko’s death. &#8220;It is more than seven years since Mr. Litvinenko’s death, and I very much hope that this inquiry will be of some comfort to his widow,” she said in a written statement to Parliament.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It should be noted that Boris Berezovsky, who engendered the initial acrimony between Putin and Litvinenko, and was himself a critic of Putin and Russia following his own exile to London, was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/world/europe/boris-a-berezovsky-a-putin-critic-dies-at-67.html?pagewanted=all"><span style="color: #1255cc;">discovered</span></a> dead in a luxury home outside the city last year. The coroner could not determine wether his death was a suicide or a murder. &#8220;I can either return a verdict that Boris Berezovsky has committed suicide, or that he was killed, <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_03_27/British-coroner-left-the-question-open-regarding-cause-of-Berezovskys-death-1777/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> coroner Peter Bedford. “Any of these versions should definitely be supported with evidence. I do not have sufficient evidence to confirm any of these versions. So I&#8217;ll leave the verdict open.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Litvinenko’s widow, Marina Litvinenko, was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/23/world/europe/britain-to-announce-inquiry-into-killing-of-ex-kgb-officer-reports-say.html?hp&amp;action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&amp;module=second-column-region&amp;region=top-news&amp;WT.nav=top-news&amp;_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">elated</span></a> by the decision to investigate her husband’s murder. “I am relieved and delighted with this decision,” she said in a statement. Referring to her husband by his nickname, she continued. “It sends a message to Sasha’s murderers: No matter how strong and powerful you are, truth will win out in the end, and you will be held accountable for your crimes.”</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>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/britain-launches-investigation-of-alexander-v-litvinenko-murder/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>14</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Atrocity Over Ukraine</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/atrocity-over-ukraine/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=atrocity-over-ukraine</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/atrocity-over-ukraine/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Jul 2014 04:58:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Airplane]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[down]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jetliner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[missile]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rebel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ukraine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236550</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A surface-to-air missile massacres 295 people on a Malaysia Airlines jetliner.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/APTOPIX-Ukraine-Plane-2.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236553" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/APTOPIX-Ukraine-Plane-2-450x331.jpg" alt="APTOPIX Ukraine Plane-2" width="261" height="192" /></a>Yesterday, the conflict between Russian separatists and the Ukrainian government may have escalated to its most dangerous level to date. A Malaysia Airlines passenger jet carrying 295 people was <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/07/17/malaysia-airlines-passenger-jet-shot-down-over-ukraine/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">shot down</span></a> by a surface-to-air missile over Ukraine, approximately 35 miles from the Russian border. All 280 passengers and 15 crew members on board were killed, and burning wreckage and bodies were scattered <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/malaysian-air-loses-contact-passenger-plane-ukraine/story?id=24599558"><span style="color: #1255cc;">over</span></a> a 10-mile radius near the town of Shakhtars’k. Responsibility for the downing has yet to be determined, but separatist groups who have reportedly blocked Ukrainian officials from the scene claim the plane&#8217;s flight data recorder has been sent to Moscow.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Ukrainian government claims Russia was behind the atrocity. &#8220;According to the General Staff of Ukrainian Armed Forces, the airplane was shot down by the Russian Buk missile system as the liner was flying at an altitude of 10,000 meters,” <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/malaysian-air-loses-contact-passenger-plane-ukraine/story?id=24599558"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> a statement from the Foreign Ministry in Kiev. &#8220;Ukraine has no long-range air defense missile systems in this area. The plane was shot down, because the Russian air defense systems was affording protection to Russian mercenaries and terrorists in this area. Ukraine will present the evidence of Russian military involvement into the Boeing crash.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Defense Minister Valery Heletey and National Security and Defense Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko reminded the world that this was not an isolated incident. On Monday, Heletey <a href="http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/213496.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">alerted</span></a> Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that a AN-26 military transport plane had been shot down in the Luhansk region during an anti-terrorist operation. Heletey insisted that the plane’s altitude of 6.5 kilometers put it above the threshold of a man-portable air defense system, meaning &#8220;the plane was struck by another, more powerful missile that was probably launched from Russian territory.” Lysenko <a href="http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2014/07/17/Malaysia-Airlines-crash-prompts-Ukrainian-President-Poroshenko-to-investigate/3711405614458/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">insisted</span></a> that Russia was also to blame for a Ukrainian SU-25 fighter plane shot down Wednesday. &#8220;A military aircraft of the Russian Armed Forces launched a missile strike against an SU-25 aircraft of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which was performing tasks on Ukrainian territory,” he said.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Those assessments cannot be confirmed. Furthermore, it is being <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/rebel-suggests-insurgents-shot-down-malaysia-plane-mistake-174750060.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">reported</span></a> a social media site attributed to Ukrainian rebel commander Igor Strelkov that took credit for downing the AN-26 on June 14, killing 49 government soldiers, also claimed to have downed an additional &#8220;army transporter” yesterday—at the location where the Malaysia airliner crashed. An earlier post removed from the same site claimed they had seized the Russian-made Buk missile system from the Ukrainian army. The Buk is capable of downing an airline at the altitude at which the Malaysian airliner was flying. The deleted post had also noted that separatist fighters &#8220;had warned (the Ukrainian armed forces) not to fly in &#8216;our sky.’ And here is a video confirming that a &#8216;bird fell,’” it stated.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">American intelligence confirmed that a surface-to-air missile was fired at the plane, but remained <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/101838653"><span style="color: #1255cc;">divided</span></a> over its source of origin. Another separatist leader, Alexander Borodai, told Russia&#8217;s state-run Rossiya 24 TV that the plane was &#8220;truly shot down by the Ukrainian Air Force,’’ but offered no proof in that regard. He was aware of the reports about fellow rebels seizing the Buk missile, but noted that even if they did, no one was capable of operating it.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Educated guesses about what occurred were in plentiful supply. &#8220;To bring down an airliner from 33,000 feet you need a good air defense weapon, not just a missile itself and also the radar,” Retired Col. Ken Allard told CNBC. &#8220;That says Russian, and that says to me either a separatist element or the Russians themselves.” KT McFarland, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan, blamed the separatists themselves. &#8220;I think it’s far more likely it was rebel forces in eastern Ukraine trying to get the Russians back involved,” she contended.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters pointed the finger directly at Russia. &#8220;It wasn&#8217;t the separatists, although Russia will try to blame them, or blame the Ukrainians,&#8221; Peters said. &#8220;The Russians have not given the separatists complex, high-altitude air-defense systems. If this airliner was flying at 34,000 feet or any altitude close to that, it was shot down by Russian military air-defense systems perched on the Ukrainian border.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Complicating the assessments of Allard and Peters is an AP report <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/ukraine-air-force-jet-downed-russian-missile-24598894"><span style="color: #1255cc;">noting</span></a> that aviation experts &#8220;have questioned whether the stricken transport plane was flying at the altitude Ukrainian officials had claimed.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">However, much like the assertion at the separatist website, Peters also believed the downing was a case of mistaken identity. He also took an indirect shot at the Obama administration in the process. &#8220;Russia has a small number of elite forces, but most of the Russian military is ill-trained, sloppy and marginally disciplined,&#8221; he explained. &#8220;With no Western response to them shooting down Ukrainian aircraft, they just got trigger happy.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Peters is exaggerating—but only a little bit. The Obama administration initially <a href="http://fox2now.com/2014/07/16/obama-imposes-new-sanctions-on-russia-over-ukraine/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">imposed</span></a> sanctions on Russia last spring, when Putin annexed Crimea and massed troops along the Ukrainian border. Those sanctions consisted of asset freezes and travel bans. On Wednesday, Obama upped the ante, targeting two major Russian banks, Gazprom Bank and VEB, and two energy companies, Novotek and Rosneft. Four Russian government officials are also on the list, as are eight Russian weapon companies that make small arms, mortars&#8211;and surface-to-air missiles. Yet once again, Obama stopped short of imposing sanctions that would completely cut off key sectors of Russia&#8217;s oil-dependent economy.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Putin is complaining that the additional targeting will hurt U.S.-Russian relations, as well as businesses in both countries. But if a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/16/us-russia-cuba-base-idUSKBN0FL1LZ20140716"><span style="color: #1255cc;">report</span></a> by <i>Reuters</i> is accurate, he is not about to abandon his expansionist agenda: Moscow has ostensibly reached an agreement with Cuba to reopen a Soviet-era base once referred to by <a href="http://news.usni.org/2012/10/24/soviet-navys-caribbean-outpost"><span style="color: #1255cc;">naval historians</span></a> as the &#8220;most sophisticated Soviet spy base outside the Eastern Bloc.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Putin and Obama spoke yesterday morning, and the only thing White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest would <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/17/lawmakers-say-there-will-be-hell-to-pay-if-russia-is-behind-malaysian-crash/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">confirm</span></a> is that &#8220;President Putin near the end of this morning&#8217;s phone call with President Obama noted the early reports of a downed passenger jet near the Russia-Ukraine border.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Members of Congress also weighed in on the tragedy. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) noted the missile was consistent with Russian technology, but he wasn’t certain “which jerk” shot the plane down. Sen. John McCain warned “there would be hell to pay” if the Russians were involved, but that leaping to that conclusion &#8220;could be very embarrassing and really inappropriate until we have more information.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Senior Intelligence Committee member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) warned that if Russian separatists are responsible, it “represents a tragic and dramatic escalation in this conflict.” Yet Schiff also pointed the finger at Putin. “It’s been clear from the beginning that notwithstanding Putin’s duplicitous statements to the contrary, Russia has continued to stoke the conflict and allow violent separatists in eastern Ukraine access to an array of Russian armaments,” he told Fox News.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It’s not hard to understand why, considering the Obama administration’s Orwellian determination to see the world as they wish to see it, rather than the way it is. Nothing spoke to that reality more forcefully than Press Secretary Earnest’s incredible assertion Monday. When asked by Fox News reporter Ed Henry how the White House reacts to the notion that Obama is a “bystander” with regard to the various crises metastasizing on his watch, Earnest <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/wh-weve-substantially-improved-tranquility-global-community"><span style="color: #1255cc;">insisted</span></a> that &#8220;there have been a number of situations in which you’ve seen this administration intervene in a meaningful way, that has substantially furthered American interests and substantially improved&#8230;the tranquility of the global community.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Obama himself <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2696366/It-looks-like-terrible-tragedy-Obama-briefly-addresses-Malaysian-plane-crash-emerges-23-U-S-passengers-board.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">briefly</span></a> addressed the &#8220;terrible tragedy” while attending a political event in Delaware yesterday afternoon, adding that the administration is working to determine how many of the 23 American citizens contained in the plane’s passenger manifest were actually on board. But in the latest testament to his fundamental unseriousness, the president quickly returned to his latest stump speech, replete with jokes and complaints about Republicans.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That callowness did not sit well with the public. He was excoriated on Twitter by thousands of users, including Obama-phile Piers Morgan. &#8220;President Obama massively dropped the ball just now,&#8221; Morgan tweeted. &#8220;23 Americans killed and he says &#8216;it looks like a terrible tragedy&#8217; then back to jokes?”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Sadly, the joke is on a rapidly destabilizing world where the murder of 295 innocent people, including at least some Americans, is apparently insufficient to gain the full attention our Commander-in-Chief.</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>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/atrocity-over-ukraine/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>131</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Czar Putka&#8217;s Imperial Delusions</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/vladimir-tismaneanu/czar-putkas-imperial-delusions/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=czar-putkas-imperial-delusions</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/vladimir-tismaneanu/czar-putkas-imperial-delusions/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Jul 2014 04:49:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Vladimir Tismaneanu]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[KGB]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tyrant]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236533</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A new book unveils the dark world of a brutal tyrant driven by messianic delusions.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/putin.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236568" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/putin-383x350.jpg" alt="putin" width="311" height="284" /></a>Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has a past and an ideology. He is the head of a mafia-like association of thugs, mountebanks, and experts in manipulation, often described as &#8220;political technologists.&#8221; In other words, in spite of the masterfully crafted image of &#8220;The Man Without a Face,&#8221; to use the title of Masha Gessen&#8217;s gripping biography, Putin is not the elusively enigmatic individual propelled by anonymous forces to the rudder of the Russian boat in one of the most turbulent periods of the country&#8217;s history. Putin is the offspring of the political culture of the Soviet secret police and inherits from that constellation of passions, emotions, and phobias his political techniques and the deep contempt for individual rights.</p>
<p>In his book &#8220;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fragile-Empire-Russia-Vladimir-Putin/dp/0300181213"><em>Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin</em></a>&#8221; (Yale University Press, 2013), journalist Ben Judah succeeds admirably in deconstructing the origins, dynamics, and ramifications of the Putin regime, from the early days in Sankt Petersburg, when the teenager &#8220;Putka&#8221; was a street bully, through the KGB career, to the transmogrification into a supporter of Anatoly Sobchak, the flamboyant advocate of glasnost in the morose city on the river Neva. Not that Sobchak was a choir boy: he rose to prominence in association with the visible and invisible authoritarians in that city and engaged in reckless populism and shady economic deals. He relied on the former KGB lieutenant-colonel Putin and Putin found in Sobchak a man intimately associated with Boris Yeltsin&#8217;s bid for power, a consistently supportive patron. Judah mentions several times that Putin is fiercely loyal to those who are faithful to him. In fact, he showed this psychological feature in his relation with Sobchak.</p>
<p>In addition to the Sobchak group. Putin benefited from the enthusiastic trust bestowed upon him by the Machiavellian, power-thirsty tycoon Boris Berezovsky, the driving force in the Kremlin during Yeltsin&#8217;s second, agonizingly inept presidency. What Berezovsky needed, and Putin seemed to offer, was a disciplined, self-effacing, ascetic leader, able to restore a certain sense of hope among the increasingly disillusioned Russians, sick and tired with corruption, cynicism, and rampant plundering of the state. Nothing in Putin&#8217;s past suggested his cupitdy, greed, even rapaciousness. His KGB past indicated admiration for such paragons of austerity as the Cheka founder, Feliks Dzerhinsky, and the orgaization&#8217;s head during the persecution of the dissidents in the 1970s, Yuri Andropov. He seemed malleable and, most important, controllable. Berezovsky was terribly wrong, he misread Putin&#8217;s mind and paid for this huge mistake. Putka was interested in both power and money. He saw the oligarchs as a means to achieve these two objectives. Those who accepted his iron fist continued to thrive. Those who, like Brezovsky, did not understand that Yeltsin&#8217;s times of senile debauchery were over, were forced into exile. Putin&#8217;s nemesis, billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, paid with years of labor camp for the reckless ambtion to challenge the new czar. Power for Putin is indivisble and unsharable.</p>
<p>The best chapters in the book deal with Putin&#8217;s circle and his views on state, history, and Russia&#8217;s role in the world. Obviously, he is not a sophisticated doctrinaire. His main ideas come from dubious sources such as the maniac of Eurasian imperialism, Aleksandr Dugin. Judah mentions Dugin, but only passingly. In fact, it has been Dugin who articulated, in most virulent terms, the doctrine of imperial conservatism that Putin adopted wholeheartedly. Add to this the bizarre fascination with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn&#8217;s vision of a resurrected Russian empire that would necessarily incorporate the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus, and northern Kazakhstan. Ironically, the same Solzhenitsyn, a main voice of Soviet dissent in the 1970s, the author of &#8220;The Gulag Archipelago,&#8221; chose to endorse Vladimir Putin as a genuine Russian patriot. He accepted honors from Putin that he had rejected when offered by Boris Yeltsin. The former dissident was thrilled to see the former KGB officer espouse his nationalist ideas and anti-liberal ideals.</p>
<p>Understanding Putin&#8217;s behavior in recent years, including his repudiation of the Ukrainian Revolution in 2014 and the invasion of Crimea, means to grasp his authoritarian mindset, including his conviction that might creates right. His values are macho-like, vertically-authoritarian, militaristic, opposed to tolerance and diversity. He despises the democratic opposition (people like Boris Nemtsov, Gary Kasparov, and Aleksey Navalny) and deeply distrusts intitiatives from below, civil society, and Western liberalism. Helped by immensely cynical operators like Sergey Markov and Vladislav Surkov, a cult of Putin&#8217;s personality has emerged as a pillar of this authoritarian-kleptocratic system. Judah documents impressively how the promise of a &#8220;dictatorship of law&#8221; evaporated into a cronyist system with an ideological camouflage reminiscent of Fascism.</p>
<p>Is there any light of this somber tunnel? Can one hope that democratic parties and movements will one day, sooner or later, prevail and create a state based on rule of law? Putin&#8217;s panic-ridden and fiercely aggressive reaction to the Ukrainian Revolution shows that he is aware of the deep trends within the Russian society. He knows that his quasi-dictatorial regime, based on lies, intimidation, and scorn for civic values, can be overthrown by a popular revolution. Judah concludes his brilliant book with these foreboding words: &#8220;There is paranoia everywhere and a presence in Putin&#8217;s office, one whose shadow is so huge that encompasses everything to the point it cannot be seen. The ghost of Boris Yeltsin. All Putin&#8217;s career has been about not being Yeltsin.&#8221; (p. 329).</p>
<p>Revolutions happen suddenly, swiftly, and unpredictably. One day, Putin may wake up and realize that all his impersonation of imperial grandeur has turned out to be another Russian mirage, a fatally bankrupt effort to derail his country&#8217;s advance toward democratic normality. As I write this review, analogies with Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini abound. From Zbigniew Brzezinski to Hillary Clinton, a consensus seems to coalesce regarding Putin as a new totalitarian dictator. Ben Judah&#8217;s book is a perfect companion in any endeavor meant to explain Putin&#8217;s seemingly absurd actions. He does not live in a non-real world, as Angela Merkel put it, but rather in his own reality, haunted by conspiratorial obsessions and driven by messianic delusions. He sees himself as Russia&#8217;s redeemer and indulges therefore in fervid fantasies of salvation.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><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"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><strong>Subscribe</strong></a><strong> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <em>The Glazov Gang</em>, and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>LIKE</strong></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>Facebook.</strong></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/vladimir-tismaneanu/czar-putkas-imperial-delusions/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>21</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Foresight of Patton</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-orlando/the-foresight-of-patton/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-foresight-of-patton</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-orlando/the-foresight-of-patton/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 24 Jun 2014 04:10:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Orlando]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Europe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[general]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[George S. Patton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[WWII]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234351</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A man who could see Stalin's real agenda long before the rest of the world caught on. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #1a1a1a;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/bourke-white-margaret-gen-george-patton.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234354" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/bourke-white-margaret-gen-george-patton-283x350.jpg" alt="bourke-white-margaret-gen-george-patton" width="228" height="282" /></a>Nearly 70 years after the untimely death of U.S. General George S. Patton, suspicions linger as to the nature and circumstances surrounding the demise of this formidable military genius.  On a war-torn, two-lane highway in Mannheim, Germany, Patton’s car was struck on December 21, 1945 by a two-ton Army truck less than six months after the end of WWII hostilities in Europe.  The accident left Patton clinging to life in a Heidelberg hospital during a crucial period when the Allies were attempting to transition from the ravages of war to a sustained peace in Germany.  Within three weeks, Patton would lose his final battle, and the fate of post-war Germany would be sealed for several decades.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">At the time of his death, Patton had been relegated to a desk job, overseeing the collection of Army records in Bavaria.  That he had been an outspoken critic of Stalin and a vocal proponent of liberating Berlin and the German people from certain communist aggression triggered his sudden removal from the battlefield.  In the aftermath of war, the Western powers sought to sideline the mercurial Patton and his incendiary views.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">But Patton despised the politically driven circus and the media minions that carried out their dirty work.  Still, he continued to speak out against the Russians as an American witness to their brutality during and after the war.  As Stalin devoured Eastern Europe, Patton remarked, <i>“</i><span style="color: #1d1d1d;"><i>I have no particular desire to understand them except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them… …the Russian has no regard for human life and they are all out sons-of-bitches, barbarians, and chronic drunks.”</i></span></p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">In early May 1945, as the Allies shut down the Nazi war machine, Patton stood with his massive 3rd Army on the outskirts of Prague in a potential face off with the Red Army. He pleaded for General Eisenhower’s green light to advance and capture the city for the Allies, which also would have meant containment of the Russians. British Prime Minister Churchill also thought the move a crucial and beneficial one for post-war Europe and insisted upon it, but to no avail. Eisenhower denied Patton’s request, and the Russians took the region, which would pay dearly for years to come.  Earlier that year, at the February conference in Yalta, President Roosevelt, with Churchill at his side, extended the hand of friendship to “Uncle Joe” Stalin and signed his Faustian pact.  In so doing, the destiny of millions was reduced to mass starvation, blood revenge, and distant gulags. At the time, Patton understood the tragedy of this event and wrote, “<span style="color: #1d1d1d;"><i>We promised the Europeans freedom. It would be worse than dishonorable not to see that they have it. This might mean war with the Russians, but what of it?”</i></span></p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">Berlin also was given to Stalin’s Army as red meat to feed the dictator’s appetite for killing Germans. To some, including Patton, this was an unnecessary and devastating concession.  In late April 1945, Patton claimed he could take Berlin in just “two days,” an assessment shared by the commander of the 9<sup>th</sup> Army, General William H. Simpson. As with Prague, Patton’s request to secure Berlin was denied. Sadly, after Patton finally reached the ravaged city, he wrote his wife on July 21, 1945, <i>&#8221; for the first week after they took it (Berlin), all women who ran were shot and those who did not were raped. I could have taken it (instead of the Soviets) had I been allowed.&#8221;</i></p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">Conventional wisdom holds that Eisenhower’s choice not to capture the eastern capital cities was sober decision-making or that he was bound by the Yalta agreements, though he originally planned for Berlin and Prague. Many would argue that in the spring of 1945 the U.S. was fatigued with war and its military was in no condition to fight World War III. <span style="color: #000000;">The Americans also needed the Russians to</span><span style="color: #000000;"> join the</span><span style="color: #000000;"> fight in the Pacific </span><span style="color: #000000;">w</span><span style="color: #000000;">ar, though the Russians never fulfilled th</span><span style="color: #000000;">at</span><span style="color: #000000;"> promise. Yet, </span>the “what ifs” of history echo in Patton’s words: <i>&#8220;The American Army as it now exists could beat the Russians with the greatest of ease, because, while the Russians have good infantry, they are lacking in artillery, air, tanks, and in the knowledge of the use of the combined arms, whereas we excel in all three of these.”</i></p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">Moreover, Patton’s notion of meeting the enemy “now, rather than later” in retrospect seems not the mere wiles of a warmonger unable to embrace peacetime, but rather a worthy and prudent strategy of a seasoned tactician, even if a gamble. Stalin’s own records prove that he told his leaders to “play down” the Berlin invasion, aware that it was Europe’s crown jewel. Eisenhower, for all his discernment and skill at war management, did not see the Russians coming as did Patton and Churchill, who both recognized the wisdom of stopping Stalin in his tracks and perhaps offering Eastern Europe a chance at liberation.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">Stalin had promised to liberate the capitals of Eastern Europe—Berlin, Prague, and Vienna—as well as Eastern Poland and the Baltic states. In his public broadcast dating back to November 1943 he promised, “The day is not far off when we will completely liberate the Ukraine, and the White Russia, Leningrad and Kalinin regions from the enemy; we will liberate . . . the people of the Crimea and Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldavia and Karelo-Finnish Republic.”  Instead, history proves that Stalin was responsible for the murder and/or starvation of some 40 million Russians and Ukrainians during his reign of terror.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">In light of the Red Army’s 20th century rampage, with unprecedented carnage and devastation and arguably the darkest time in Western history, was Patton not the sober warrior speaking truth to a political expediency or human fatigue?  Was he not correct about Russian post-war intentions? Would not his attempt to push back his future foes and prevent further genocide have been worth the risk of another battle to secure the eastern capitals? We know the answer now, but Patton knew the answer then.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">By the end of the war Patton was defeated. As Eisenhower prepared for the political stage, every misspoken or emotionally charged word uttered by his greatest fighting general threatened to undermine Eisenhower’s credibility and authority, as well as the progress of a post-war order. Patton’s outspoken and unsolicited opinions, coupled with his unwillingness to punish all German citizens during the de-Nazification period, caused Eisenhower to sideline the general. Patton believed in the righteous cause of the military and revealed his plans to fight those who were destroying its morale and who endangered America&#8217;s future by not opposing the growing Soviet threat.  As a result, he was silenced. He would later say, <i>&#8220;when I finish this job, which will be around the first of the year, I shall resign, not retire, because if I retire I will still have a gag in my mouth . . .”</i></p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">Never short on words or the courage to deliver them, one wonders what secrets Patton might have revealed to the world had he not met a premature end. His diaries are littered with criticisms of Eisenhower and General Omar Bradley, and at times he found fault with how the war was executed at what he believed was at the expense of American GIs? Were these convictions enough of a threat to put his own life in danger with his peers? Is it plausible that the Russians, weary of his anti-Soviet rhetoric, might have employed the NKVD for the ultimate dirty job?</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">In light of those who opposed Patton—enemies and allies alike—is it any wonder why 70 years later many still would question his untimely death?</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">Even today, his silence can be heard.</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>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-orlando/the-foresight-of-patton/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>130</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Hillary: Reset Button was &#8220;Brilliant Stroke&#8221; Until Putin Invaded Another Country</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hillary-reset-button-was-brilliant-stroke-until-putin-invaded-another-country/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hillary-reset-button-was-brilliant-stroke-until-putin-invaded-another-country</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hillary-reset-button-was-brilliant-stroke-until-putin-invaded-another-country/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Jun 2014 16:23:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vladimir Putin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234165</guid>
		<description><![CDATA["In retrospect it appears even more so, because look at what we accomplished," Hillary said.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/3.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-234168" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/3-450x337.jpg" alt="3" width="450" height="337" /></a></p>
<p>You would think that the Clintons, of all people, <a href="http://weaselzippers.us/189700-no-joke-hillary-clinton-calls-her-widely-mocked-russian-reset-button-a-brilliant-stroke/">would have a better grasp on how power works</a>. But like most liberals, they are ruthless domestically and clueless internationally.</p>
<blockquote><p>QUESTION: “You famously pressed the reset button. Are you embarrassed by that now, that gesture?”</p>
<p>CLINTON: “No I think it was a brilliant stroke which in retrospect it appears even more so, because look at what we accomplished. Between the Russian invasion of Georgia in August 2008, which of course torpedoed relations between United States and the Russia for good reason. We come into office, and for that period of time, the interregnum if you will, Medvedev is President, Putin is Prime Minister, and there were jobs that we wanted to get done. We wanted to get Russia on board with tough sanctions against Iran. We wanted to have a new START Treaty to limit nuclear weapons. We wanted to get their help in transiting across through huge country to get things we needed into Afghanistan. We got all that done. Putin comes back. Look where we are now. He invaded another country, so yes, but while we had that moment, we seized it, we used it, and succeeded.”</p></blockquote>
<p>It doesn&#8217;t occur to Hillary that Putin might not have invaded another country without that silly reset button theater.</p>
<p>And what did the US get in exchange?</p>
<p>1. The worthless sanctions that are letting Iran go nuclear.</p>
<p>2. A treaty to limit nuclear weapons that the Russians are determined to cheat on.</p>
<p>3. The Northern Distribution Network, which is useful, but was a bad idea because a supply line that can be cut off by your geopolitical rival is a weakness. That vulnerability likely gave Putin the confidence to act more aggressively.</p>
<p>Of these only NDN was actually an accomplishment. Unfortunately Afghanistan itself became a disaster under Obama/Hillary.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hillary-reset-button-was-brilliant-stroke-until-putin-invaded-another-country/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Russia Challenges Obama&#8217;s Asia Pivot with &#8216;Top Gun&#8217; Encounter</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/russia-challenges-obamas-asia-pivot-with-top-gun-encounter/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=russia-challenges-obamas-asia-pivot-with-top-gun-encounter</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/russia-challenges-obamas-asia-pivot-with-top-gun-encounter/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Jun 2014 20:12:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=233205</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It was an aerial clash not seen since the Cold War.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/medium.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-233206" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/medium-443x350.jpg" alt="medium" width="443" height="350" /></a></p>
<p>Putin is going to keep pushing Obama. The more he senses weakness, <a href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/collision-course/">the harder he&#8217;s going to push.</a> The Taliban release only emboldens America&#8217;s enemies further.</p>
<p>A pivot to Asia means that you have to back up your words. If you have a history of talking the talk on Syria and Ukraine, but not walking the walk, your enemies will push to humiliate you by calling your bluff. And they can&#8217;t be stopped with a hashtag or accusations of racism or EPA regulations.</p>
<blockquote><p>A Russian Su-27 jet flew dangerously close to a U.S. reconnaissance plane over the Pacific northeast recently in an aerial clash not seen since the Cold War.</p>
<p>An Air Force RC-135 electronic intelligence jet was flying a surveillance run some 60 miles off the Russian Far East coast, north of Japan, on April 23 when the incident occurred, according to defense officials familiar with the incident.</p>
<p>The Su-27 flew to follow the RC-135, and at one point rolled sideways to reveal its air-to-air missile before flying within 100 feet of the cockpit in an attempt to unnerve the crew.</p>
<p>A defense official said the incident was a “reckless intercept” and one of the most dangerous aerial encounters for a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft since the Cold War.</p>
<p>The RC-135 flight was part of Air Force efforts to increase regional spying under the U.S. pivot to Asia.</p></blockquote>
<p>Which will lead to more intercepts, until eventually a plane is taken down. Bush handled that one disastrously and Obama will handle it even worse.</p>
<p>So get ready for the next crisis.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/russia-challenges-obamas-asia-pivot-with-top-gun-encounter/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>44</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>America: The Come Back Story</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/america-the-come-back-story/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=america-the-come-back-story</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/america-the-come-back-story/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Jun 2014 04:57:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Asia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fracking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[natural gas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OIL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[steve moore]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=233275</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Steve Moore sheds light on the heart of the U.S. economy -- and how Obama is destroying it. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Editor’s note: Below are the video and transcript to Stephen Moore&#8217;s address at the Freedom Center’s 2014 Texas Weekend. The event took place May 2nd-4th at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas.</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/96508783" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Steve Moore:</strong> So, I am upbeat, Michael. I do think that things are going to get better. I agree with Pat Caddell. I guess my message is that we are really one election away from a real economic renaissance in this country. And I feel very strongly about that. And I kind of want to walk you through this.</p>
<p>And I&#8217;ll start by talking &#8212; I was chatting with some people at breakfast about this. I mean, there is so much good news actually that&#8217;s going on in America that doesn&#8217;t get enough attention. It gets a lot of attention here in Texas. And I know a lot of you in this room are Texans.</p>
<p>But if you look at the US economy over the last six years, there is one industry that has almost literally been carrying the rest of the economy on its back. And what industry is that?</p>
<p><strong>Unidentified Speaker:</strong> Oil.</p>
<p><strong>Steve Moore: </strong>Yeah, the energy industry, the oil and gas industry. And this is an amazing story. And it&#8217;s not just a story about America being, you know, so richly endowed with natural resources; we are. There&#8217;s no question about it. But other countries have natural resources. This story of American renewal and energy production is really about American ingenuity, it&#8217;s about entrepreneurship, it&#8217;s about technological progress.</p>
<p>And by the way, it&#8217;s not the big oil companies &#8212; the Chevrons and the Exxons and the BPs &#8212; that have made this possible. These are small and medium-sized wildcatters who went out there and found this oil, the shale oil and gas, and found a way to get at these natural resources that have been there for millions of years; we just never had the technological capacity to get at it.</p>
<p>And, you know, many of you heard me tell many times the story about my trip about two or three years ago to North Dakota. How many of you have ever been to North Dakota, by the way? Raise your hand. About half of you have. I had never been to North Dakota. I&#8217;d been to every continental state in the United States. And I go to North Dakota, because of course North Dakota sits atop the Bakken Shale, which is the biggest oil find in North America in at least 50 years. And it&#8217;s an amazing place to go to.</p>
<p>You go to this little town of Williston, North Dakota, it feels like what it must&#8217;ve been like during the Gold Rush era in California. I mean, literally, it&#8217;s a town that just &#8212; bigger and bigger and bigger almost every day. And they just can&#8217;t keep up with the incredible population growth. And it&#8217;s just a stunning thing to spend time with the geologists to explain what&#8217;s happening.</p>
<p>By the way, you all know, right, that North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country. Right? I mean, North Dakota&#8217;s unemployment rate officially &#8212; the statistics that came out yesterday &#8212; you saw the unemployment numbers came out yesterday &#8212; they say that the unemployment rate in North Dakota is 3.1 percent. I&#8217;m here to tell you that&#8217;s a bald-faced lie. The unemployment rate is not 3.1 percent in North Dakota; it is negative. It is negative. That is to say there are about 15,000 more jobs in North Dakota than there are people to fill those jobs.</p>
<p>Whenever I see panhandlers in Washington, DC or New York, I say &#8212; go to North Dakota. That&#8217;s where the jobs are.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>So it&#8217;s a great story. And it&#8217;s all being driven, of course, by these two incredible technologies &#8212; horizontal drilling &#8212; which all of you have heard about, where these drills now can go in any direction. And that is a huge seismic breakthrough in terms of the productivity and efficiency of our oil exploration. And the other, of course, is hydraulic fracturing.</p>
<p>And you know, I just have to say this. This is an amazing thing. I was giving a talk in Florida a few weeks ago to a kind of community group. And they actually had me talk to the valedictorians at the high school in the area. And these were all really impressive kids, 18- and 19-year-old kids, and really smart kids, and very inquisitive. And I was really impressed with them, about 20 kids in the room.</p>
<p>And we were just chatting about the things that were going on in America. And I talked a little bit about this energy revolution. And then it kind of occurred to me that they were kind of skeptical about this. And so I said to these kids &#8212; again, these are the smartest kids in the schools in Florida &#8212; I said &#8212; how many of you kids know what fracking is? They all raised their hand. And then I said &#8212; how many of you kids think that fracking is a good thing? Two of them raised their hand. Two of them. How many of you think fracking is a bad thing? Fifteen of them raised their hand.</p>
<p>We are losing this kind of propaganda &#8212; there is a left-wing propaganda campaign against the greatest innovation, I would argue, in 30 years, in any area. I mean, to be against fracking, to put it very simply, is like being against a cure for cancer. Right? I mean, this is a huge, huge thing.</p>
<p>Now, what I would say about this is a couple things &#8212; one, because of these new technologies &#8212; by the way, it&#8217;s not just happening in North Dakota. You all know it&#8217;s happening big time here in Texas. And the great story about Texas is that in the last four years, in just four years, Texas has almost tripled its oil and gas output. That&#8217;s an amazing thing to think about. It&#8217;s happening in Oklahoma. Oklahoma has doubled its oil output.</p>
<p>You all know about the Marcellus Shale on the East Coast. The Marcellus Shale is the biggest natural gas find in the world that we&#8217;ve had any time in the last hundred years. The Marcellus Shale, by the way, has 150 years&#8217; worth of natural gas. One hundred fifty years. And by the way, every time they drill, they&#8217;re finding more of it.</p>
<p>President Obama &#8212; by the way, one thing that&#8217;s really interesting about this &#8212; if you had gone back five and six years ago, nobody saw this coming. Nobody in their right mind thought that the United States would become the number-one natural gas producer in the world. It&#8217;s a perfect example of the problem of government central planning. Because what were they all doing five and six years ago? I mean, in fact, as recently as three years ago, President Obama&#8217;s running around the country telling the American people we&#8217;re running out of oil and gas.</p>
<p>Ladies and gentlemen, we are not running out of natural gas and oil; we are running into it, right, in a big, big way. And by the way, nobody &#8212; I mean, even people on our side &#8212; nobody saw it coming. It was these entrepreneurs who made it happen.</p>
<p>Now, the cool thing about this story &#8212; we are way, way ahead of the rest of the world in these technologies. And so, it gives us a huge strategic advantage in terms of our ability to produce these natural resources.</p>
<p>And imagine, by the way, how big this would be, how huge this would be, if we actually had a President who wanted it to happen. Right? I mean, we have a President who is more hostile to the fossil fuels industry than any President in American history. I mean, this is a President who really hates fossil fuels. He believes that if we keep burning these fossil fuels, the oceans are going to rise, and we&#8217;re going to have hurricanes, and all these things. He really buys into that. So everything that he has done has been to try to stop this from happening.</p>
<p>Now, that is a tragedy. Because if we want this economy to grow &#8212; let me just show you one &#8212; got to show you this chart, because this is pretty amazing. This is the US economy, this is job production in the US over the last, oh, six or seven years. Look at this &#8212; the red line is all industries, except oil and gas. The blue line is the oil and gas industry. You know, I know some of you in the oil and gas industry &#8212; congratulations, you helped reelect Barack Obama. Because if it had not been for the oil and gas boom, there is no way that Barack &#8212; we would still be &#8212; let me put it very simply. If it were not for this boom that we&#8217;re seeing in oil and gas, we would still effectively be in a recession today. The US economy would not be growing at all.</p>
<p>So that&#8217;s an amazing thing to think about. I mean, it is stunning &#8212; and by the way, these are good jobs. That&#8217;s the other thing. We&#8217;re not talking about $30,000- or $40,000-a-year jobs. We&#8217;re talking about jobs that pay $70,000, $80,000, $90,000, $100,000 a year.</p>
<p>One of the most dastardly acts that I&#8217;ve seen in the last two or three years in politics is President Obama saying he&#8217;s not going to build the Keystone XL pipeline. I mean, this is craziness. And by the way, he&#8217;s not even a good &#8212; you know, we always say that Barack Obama is a Saul Alinskyite, you know, &#8220;Rules for Radicals?&#8221; He&#8217;s too ideological to even be an Alinskyite. I mean, Saul Alinsky would say build that pipeline, you know, get the issue behind them. But he will not do it.</p>
<p>And this is one of the themes that I think Republicans should really be pushing hard on. And a lot of you are instrumental opinion leaders in America. Republicans, I believe, have an incredible opportunity in the next two elections to win back the old blue-collar Reagan Democrats.</p>
<p>Because there is a crackup right now that is just starting to emerge in the Democratic coalition that we have to exploit. And that crackup is between the radical Greens, who fund the party &#8212; the people like Tom Steyer, and the billionaire Democrats who really don&#8217;t care about these people whose jobs they&#8217;re destroying &#8212; we need to go to the union halls, the blue-collar industrial &#8212; and I&#8217;m not talking about the teachers&#8217; unions and the public sector unions. They&#8217;re always going to be the bedrock of the Democratic Party. I&#8217;m talking about people who actually do industrial jobs &#8212; pipefitters, teamsters, construction workers, people like that; and say &#8212; we care about your job; they don&#8217;t care about your job. We care about protecting your livelihood; they don&#8217;t.</p>
<p>Are you with me on that? Shouldn&#8217;t we be doing that? We should be going out and saying we&#8217;re the party that will protect your livelihood. And so it&#8217;s an important story with respect to that.</p>
<p>Now, let me show you another kind of interesting thing. If you look at the second panel here, what you&#8217;re looking at is the &#8212; the first one is just total production. But look at the growth in production.</p>
<p>And by the way, just so I&#8217;m bipartisan here &#8212; because I know this is a bipartisan &#8212; a nonpartisan group &#8211;</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>&#8211; some of the craziness that&#8217;s gone on in energy policy actually started under George W. Bush.</p>
<p>I mean, George W. Bush invested hugely in these crazy green energy policies. A lot of this started in 2005 and 2007. So under Bush and Obama, over the last six years, we have spent $100 billion of taxpayer money, $100 billion, on wind and solar power, to try &#8212; because these are infant industries, right? I mean, windmills. We never had windmills before. But you know, this is a technology that goes back to the Middle Ages, and they say it&#8217;s an infant technology.</p>
<p>But in any case &#8212; so we&#8217;ve spent $100 billion on this, and look at what&#8217;s happened. Have we gotten anything in return for that money? I mean, there&#8217;s almost been no growth. And then look at the oil and gas output, which, by the way, gets almost no subsidy, zero subsidy. In fact, the oil and gas industry pays more taxes to the federal government than any other industry in America. And look at the difference in the growth.</p>
<p>An interesting question for you all, because I want this to be a little bit participatory &#8212; after spending $100 billion on wind and solar energy, anybody in this room want to take a guess at what percentage of our electricity production in America today comes from wind and solar power? I heard somebody say one, I heard two, three. We&#8217;re up to 2.6 percent. So we spent $100 billion; we&#8217;re up to 2.6 percent.</p>
<p>Let me just put it very simply &#8212; we have an $18 trillion industrial economy. We are not going to power this industrial economy of $18 trillion with windmills and solar power. It&#8217;s just not going to happen. We need to power this with what we&#8217;ve got, right? Which is &#8212; we are the Saudi Arabia of coal, we&#8217;re the Saudi Arabia of natural gas, and we&#8217;re becoming the Saudi Arabia of oil. And we can do this. And the fact that we&#8217;re holding it back is such a tragedy.</p>
<p>Now, here&#8217;s the exciting thing about this story. I think &#8212; you know, when I started talking about this a few years ago at these conferences, people kind of, you know, were stunned by this. I don&#8217;t think you&#8217;re so stunned by it today, because it&#8217;s become almost a conventional wisdom. But within five years &#8212; by the year 2020, if not before &#8212; the United States of America is going to move from being an oil and gas import country to an oil and gas export country.</p>
<p>Now, that is huge. That is a game-changer in terms of our economy. What do we spend more money importing than anything else in the world? Oil. We spend about $300 billion. You&#8217;ve been hearing the last couple days from foreign policy experts who know a lot more about it than I do.</p>
<p>But think about what this means for our national security, if we actually start selling this stuff rather than buying it. Think about what it means, how it changes the whole geopolitics of the Middle East. Think about the countries that hate us, that harbor terrorists &#8212; countries like Venezuela, countries like Saudi Arabia, countries like Iran. If we don&#8217;t have to buy this stuff from them but sell it, it&#8217;s huge.</p>
<p>And it also changes the whole geopolitics of what&#8217;s happening in Europe. Right? I mean, what is Ukraine really about? It&#8217;s about pipelines, it&#8217;s about oil and natural gas. The pipelines go right through Crimea, which is why Russia &#8212; and Russia supplies 80 to 90 percent of the natural gas and oil to Western Europe. That&#8217;s why this is a big deal. Guess who should be supplying the oil and gas to Europe? We should. And we have the capacity to do that. We don&#8217;t just need pipelines &#8212; hell yes, we need pipelines &#8212; we also need to be building LNG terminals so we can liquefy this stuff, send it over to Europe.</p>
<p>I keep making a line on Fox almost every day &#8212; if you really want to break the back of Putin, who is such a monster, start selling this stuff to Europe, so they&#8217;re not wholly dependent on Russia for gas.</p>
<p>So this is a good-news story. And by the way, it has huge ramifications for all of the other industries in America that will benefit from this. So we&#8217;re seeing &#8212; I don&#8217;t know how many of you are aware of this, but there is a mini-renaissance going on in this country in manufacturing. America&#8217;s making things again. You know, we&#8217;ve complained for the last 25 years we don&#8217;t make anything anymore? We do make stuff.</p>
<p>I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan last month. Grand Rapids is going through a boom period. They&#8217;re producing steel, they&#8217;re producing all sorts of light manufacturing products, the auto industry parts and assembly materials. And that&#8217;s all &#8212; not all of it, but a big part of that is happening because &#8212; guess what country in the world today has the lowest electric power costs? We do. We do. This has given us a huge strategic advantage.</p>
<p>So for example, our natural gas prices are $4; they pay $8 to $10 in Europe, and they&#8217;re paying $12 in Asia. So when we compete against the Chinese, when we compete against the Indians, when we compete against the Germans and the French and the Italians, this has put American companies at a huge, huge strategic advantage.</p>
<p>So we&#8217;ve got to go full speed ahead with this. And I think if you got a President who actually wanted it to happen, it would an amazing thing for the US economy.</p>
<p>So, what&#8217;s the next part of this story? This is something I really want to stress so importantly. Because again, this is the sound bite we have to keep using over and over and over again when we debate the Left. And I always try to make these charts as simple and as concise as possible. And by the way, this doesn&#8217;t even include the numbers that just came in this week. I haven&#8217;t quite updated this yet; I have to do this.</p>
<p>So, I was in a debate. We all know who Paul Krugman is, the leftie from the New York Times? So I was debating Paul Krugman about Keynesian economics and so on. And I showed this chart, and it infuriated him. I mean, I knew I was making a strike, because he was getting so angry about this.</p>
<p>But here&#8217;s the point &#8212; we&#8217;ve had two Presidents in the last 30 years who&#8217;ve come into office during great periods of economic crisis. How many of you remember 20 percent mortgage interest rates and 14 percent inflation, America de-industrializing in the late &#8217;70s? When Ronald Reagan stepped into office, the American economy was in a collapse. We had suffered a 12-year bear market; stocks in real terms had lost 60 percent of their value. You couldn&#8217;t even get a job as a college graduate. I remember this, because I graduated college at this time. Even as a burger-flipper, things were so bad.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s also true Barack Obama stepped into office. He says this every day, right? I came into office &#8212; we&#8217;d lost seven million jobs, the stock market was in collapse. No question.</p>
<p>So we have a great natural experiment here, right? Two Presidents came in during a complete collapse. And then you ask the question &#8212; well, which &#8212; and by the way, they used completely opposite strategic attempts to get us out of this crisis. Reagan came in, and you all know the story. What did he do? He cut tax rates significantly &#8212; the top rate (inaudible) from 70 to 28 percent. We deregulated the economy, we got government spending under control, we got control of the money supply. We depended on the supply side of the economy, the producers and the businesses, to get us out of this terrible recession.</p>
<p>Obama comes in and does exactly the opposite. Right? You all remember the $830 billion stimulus plan. Then we had Obamacare. Remember Cash for Clunkers? Remember that program, where government paid you to buy cars?</p>
<p>You know, the other day, Joe Biden made another one of his crazy &#8212; I mean, almost every day he&#8217;s saying something stupid. And so, there was a great cartoon in the Washington Times, I don&#8217;t know if you all saw it. But President Obama&#8217;s carrying Joe Biden around like he&#8217;s a piece of lumber. And he goes to this window, it says Cash for Clunkers.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>I love that.</p>
<p>But anyway, Obama and Reagan do exactly the opposite. And then you ask the question &#8212; which worked? You know, which strategy worked? And this is an amazing statistic. So what this is saying is that if the economy under Barack Obama had grown as fast as it did under Ronald Reagan, the American economy today would be &#8212; the new number is $2.1 trillion larger. $2.1 trillion. Now, these are numbers that are so large they&#8217;re hard to comprehend. But let me just put this in kind of a context for people. If we were to divide that $2.1 trillion every year evenly among every household in America, every household in America would have about $15,000 more income.</p>
<p>So this is a huge loss. This is the growth deficit that we&#8217;ve seen under Barack Obama. And it&#8217;s getting worse; it&#8217;s not getting better. We have 0.1 percent GDP growth next month. So we&#8217;re not in a recession; we&#8217;re just not growing nearly fast enough.</p>
<p>And by the way, Krugman has no response to this. Barack Obama has no response. Liberals have no way of explaining this. If their ideas work so well, explain why we have this $2 trillion deficit. And there is no response, except for the fact that their ideas don&#8217;t work.</p>
<p>Now, let me show you this. This is a fun one. So I have a new book out that I just did with Arthur Laffer, on the &#8212; it&#8217;s called &#8220;The Wealth of States.&#8221; And the story is the red-versus-blue states phenomena. And you all know what&#8217;s going on. The red states &#8212; the states of the south are getting richer, they&#8217;re getting more and more people.</p>
<p>Did you all see the story the other day about Toyota moving out of California into Texas? This is just a &#8211;</p>
<p>(Applause)</p>
<p>Yeah, that&#8217;s great news, right? So this is happening day after day after day.</p>
<p>And so, what I did &#8212; this one chart really summarizes the whole book. I still want you to stimulate the economy by buying the book. But this chart really summarizes the argument, which is &#8212; red states have got it right. Right? I mean, Texas is such a prototype state that does almost everything right.</p>
<p>But here&#8217;s the point &#8212; the red states, you know, are low-tax states, they&#8217;re states that are right-to-work states, they&#8217;re states that don&#8217;t have heavy regulation, they&#8217;re states that are going full speed ahead with drilling and so on. And the blue states just do the opposite &#8212; they&#8217;re raising tax rates, they&#8217;re not right-to-work states, they&#8217;re [forced] union states. They have high government spending, high government debt. They give a huge amount of power to the public sector employee unions, and so on and so forth.</p>
<p>Now, what&#8217;s the point of this? So, this is just job growth over the last 20 years. Job growth over the last 20 years. And the nice thing about this &#8212; this is another wonderful national experiment. Because it turns out, our four biggest states in America &#8212; of these four states &#8212; Texas, Florida, California and New York &#8212; they account for one third of the population of the US. So these are huge mega-players in the US economy. And it turns out, just by sort of luck, as a statistician, that two of those states are red states, and two of them are blue states.</p>
<p>So all I did was I said &#8212; Arthur and I said &#8212; well, let&#8217;s look at what&#8217;s happening in these states &#8212; which model works better? Texas and Florida have basically created about four times as many jobs over the last 20 years as [New York and California]. Now, what possible explanation is there for that?</p>
<p>I&#8217;ll tell you what Paul Krugman said in our debate, because he didn&#8217;t like this argument too much, either. Because they don&#8217;t have much of a response to this. So he said &#8212; Steve, this is happening because of the weather. Right?</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>I mean, you know, he said that people &#8212; and by the way, there is some truth to this, right? I mean, there&#8217;s a lot of truth to this. I mean, would you rather live in Minneapolis, Minnesota; or would you rather live in Fort Lauderdale? There&#8217;s no question people are &#8212; especially as we get older, people are moving to warmer climates, no question about that.</p>
<p>But it certainly doesn&#8217;t account for everything. And I had so much fun with Krugman. Because you know, he&#8217;s such an asshole. I mean, I just cannot &#8211;</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>&#8211; he&#8217;s such an arrogant jerk. Sorry, Mike. I know we&#8217;re not supposed to use that kind of language at these, but he really is.</p>
<p>So you know, he says to me &#8212; so he says it&#8217;s all weather-related. And so, I just zinged him. I said okay. Dr. Krugman &#8212; I was very respectful &#8212; I said &#8212; I didn&#8217;t call him an asshole at this meeting.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>I said &#8212; Dr. Krugman, if you think this is all a result of the weather, then please explain this to me, Dr. Krugman, with your Nobel Prize in economics &#8212; why is it that people are moving from San Diego to Houston? Because they&#8217;re not moving from San Diego to Houston for the weather. Right? And he was like &#8212; he had no response to that at all.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>I mean, don&#8217;t you all agree this is great vindication and validation of our ideas? We have to keep pushing this metric.</p>
<p>The cool thing about this, by the way, is that that Toyota example &#8212; I mean, this is happening every single day in America. So the red states are getting more prosperous; the blue states &#8212; and by the way, I&#8217;m from a blue state. I&#8217;m from the state of Illinois. I mean, it&#8217;s tragedy what&#8217;s happening in our state. It&#8217;s just a tragedy.</p>
<p>When I was growing up, Illinois was one of the richest states in the country. Illinois is getting bled dry because of preposterous policies. You know, five years ago, the highest income tax rate in Illinois was three percent. So we had a flat-rate income tax of three percent. The governor just recently raised it to six percent. And now, there&#8217;s going to be an initiative on the ballot sponsored by the teachers&#8217; unions to raise it to nine percent. To nine percent.</p>
<p>Now, I talked to Mike Pence the other day &#8212; you know, the governor of Indiana who&#8217;s a great dark horse for the Republican candidacy for President. And I asked him, I said &#8212; Mike, what do you think of this? And he was so great. He said, you know &#8212; Steve, I&#8217;ve got to tell you this. He said &#8212; living next &#8212; being a neighboring state to Illinois, here in Indiana, it&#8217;s like living down the street from the Simpsons.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>I just thought that was a great line, you know.</p>
<p>But anyway, these things have to be &#8212; we have to keep pushing the red state message. Because I think it is so important.</p>
<p>One or two other points if I may, and then I&#8217;ll open it up to some questions for you. I just thought I&#8217;d show this to you. This is an indication of where &#8212; or kind of forecast of which states &#8212; not which states have grown the most, but based on our kind of formula of which policies are the most pro-growth in states. I just thought I&#8217;d show this to you because so many of you are from different states.</p>
<p>I know a lot of you are Texans. By the way, I always get asked &#8212; why is Texas 21 on this list? It&#8217;s because Texas is so good already, it&#8217;s hard to find policies much to improve here. But you know, over the last 10 years, you&#8217;ve grown much, much faster than any other state.</p>
<p>But the point is, you look at the states that are growing and have the best forecast &#8212; Utah, South Dakota, Indiana, North Dakota, Idaho, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Wyoming. What do all those states have in common? They are red states that are growing.</p>
<p>Look, just cast your eyes, if you will, on the bottom six or seven states. You guys probably can&#8217;t read this, so let me read it for you &#8212; New Jersey, Minnesota, California, Illinois, Vermont, New York. Those states, every year after year, are losing people, they&#8217;re losing businesses, they&#8217;re losing capital.</p>
<p>And by the way, how many of you here are from California? How many &#8212; a lot of you are. Mike, maybe you can explain this to me &#8212; how do you screw up California? I mean, really? I mean, I love &#8212; every time I go out for your conferences and visit you out there, it&#8217;s like &#8212; this is like heaven on earth. Right? I mean, beautiful mountains and beautiful beaches, and beautiful, 70-degree weather and sunshine, and beautiful women. I mean, what&#8217;s not to like about this great, great state of California?</p>
<p>And it really shows how politicians can screw a place up. So, tragically, the people want to actually move out of this great state.</p>
<p>The next point I want to make &#8212; I know I am running out of time &#8212; I just want to show you one other quick thing, if I may. Oh, by the way, I don&#8217;t know how many have seen this. This is the new flat tax that Barack Obama just came up &#8212; how much money did you make? Send it in.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>It&#8217;s a &#8212; I mean, can it get any simpler than this? You can put that on a postcard.</p>
<p>But I wanted to show you one other thing. Oh, okay. So we were chatting a little bit about this at breakfast, about what&#8217;s happening in the money supply. And I think Pat Caddell mentioned this, about Americans really concerned about our money supply. They should be. They should be.</p>
<p>Look at this. We&#8217;ve never seen anything like this before in the country&#8217;s history. This is the supply of money. Look at what happened in 2009 &#8212; I mean, 2008. That was during the meltdown of the economy. And then, you can see QE1, QE2, QE3. And those are just fancy terms for saying what we&#8217;re doing is just printing more and more money. Right?</p>
<p>And this is unchartered territory. We&#8217;ve never seen anything like this before. We&#8217;ve more than doubled and tripled the supply of dollars in the economy.</p>
<p>Now, you all know this from your Economics 100 course &#8212; what is the likely impact of all that money printing? Inflation, right? You reduce the value of your currency. And that&#8217;s what&#8217;s been happening in America.</p>
<p>By the way, I don&#8217;t know how many of you saw &#8212; there was a report that came up from the New York Times. It&#8217;s somewhat suspect, because the New York Times reported this. But they were basically saying that the average Canadian is now &#8212; did you all see this? The average Canadian has a higher living standard than the average American. Now, I don&#8217;t believe that to be true. But it is true, over the last 10 years, Canada&#8217;s been catching up in a big way.</p>
<p>And this reporter put 2,500 words into this, talking about this. And they came up with all sorts of explanations. But one of the explanations that they did not mention, which is one of the key factors for why Canada lately has been doing so much better than the United States &#8212; have you all been seeing what&#8217;s happened to the Canadian dollar versus the US dollar? The Canadian dollar has gone way up. I mean, remember 20 years ago, the Canadian dollar was, what, 65 to 70 cents for a dollar. Now, it&#8217;s &#8212; actually, it went above the US dollar, didn&#8217;t it, for awhile. I think right now, it&#8217;s at about par.</p>
<p>When you devalue the value of your currency, what happens to the standard of living of people? Right? And that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re doing here.</p>
<p>And by the way, if I showed you that chart, and I didn&#8217;t even tell you what country that was, you know, you&#8217;d probably say &#8212; that&#8217;s Argentina. Right? That&#8217;s Mexico, that&#8217;s Bolivia. I mean, that&#8217;s what countries do when they get in a debt crisis. And it&#8217;s a &#8212; I would make a case to you, it&#8217;s a very, very dangerous situation.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ll just show you one more on this money stuff. It&#8217;s kind of interesting. These are the interest rates in the US. You all see the &#8217;70s &#8212; remember when the interest rates went up and up and up and up? And then, look what happened when Reagan came into office. Anybody remember who the Fed chairman was in 1981? Volcker. So this is the Reagan-Volcker disinflation, one of the great economic triumphs of the last 50 years.</p>
<p>And look at this. Look at what &#8212; you want to see a beautiful picture, look at the last 30 years &#8212; down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down go interest rates. You know, and now they&#8217;re &#8212; this is a little out of date &#8212; we&#8217;re at about 2.5, 2.75 on the Ten Year Treasury Bond.</p>
<p>But I will make a bet to any and all of you in this room. If, let&#8217;s say. we were to re-gather two or three or five years from now &#8212; I&#8217;m willing to bet $100 to any and all of you that interest rates are going to be higher then than they are today.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>Anybody want to take me up on that? I mean, it&#8217;s not a very bold bet. We are &#8212; and by the way, I&#8217;m an optimist. I am an optimist. But I will say this &#8212; one of the things that keeps me up at night &#8212; think about what happens if those interest rates start to rise just to the average of where they&#8217;ve been in the last 30 years. So let&#8217;s say the Ten Year Treasury bill goes from 2.5 to 4.5 or five percent. What institution in the world is the biggest debtor in the world? The US government. Right? So what country is the most exposed to an interest rate effect? We are.</p>
<p>If you see those interest rates go up to, say, five percent &#8212; which again, that would only be the average of what they&#8217;ve been over the last 40 years &#8212; if those interest rates go up from 2.5 to five percent, that will increase the national debt, our borrowing, our deficit over the next 10 years, by $2.5 trillion.</p>
<p>So we are extremely susceptible to an interest rate shock. We got to stop borrowing.</p>
<p>Just quickly show this. Some of you have seen this. But if you want to see where prices are out of control on the American economy, it&#8217;s education and healthcare. You know, if you look at basic consumer items, they&#8217;ve actually been falling in price. Software and computers and clothing and vehicles, and almost anything you can buy at a Walmart &#8212; those things are falling in price, which is a good thing. Isn&#8217;t it interesting &#8212; the two industries in America where prices are completely out of control are healthcare and education.</p>
<p>Now, who runs those two industries? The government does, right? And you want to see &#8212; healthcare prices are going to continue to go up.</p>
<p>Did you see, by the way, what President Obama said when the GDP report came out on Wednesday? He said &#8212; this is really good news, because healthcare spending went way up. And that shows that Obamacare is working. I mean, he actually &#8212; I&#8217;m not kidding, he actually made this statement.</p>
<p>Now, wait a minute! Then he told us that if we put in Obamacare, it would cause the prices to fall! And he&#8217;s celebrating the fact that they&#8217;re rising.</p>
<p>Education and healthcare. How many of you in this room have a son, daughter, grandson or granddaughter, in college today? Raise your hand. The greatest scam in America today is how much universities are charging in tuition, right? And Republicans should be doing something about that.</p>
<p>And I have a great article in the paper next week about a school, College of the Ozarks, that charges zero for tuition. You know how they do it? The kids work. The kids work. Isn&#8217;t that a dramatic idea?</p>
<p>So, I can tell that Michael&#8217;s hyperventilating a little back in the room, because I&#8217;ve used more time than I should. I&#8217;ll simply say this &#8212; there is only one thing standing between America and an incredible economic renaissance, like we had in the &#8217;80s and &#8217;90s, where the economy just booms, the stock market rockets, and America becomes the number-one competitive country in the world. Only one thing stands in our way. And that is Hillary. We have to beat Hillary.</p>
<p>But if we do, if we do &#8212; and I think we are going to beat her &#8212; if we win that 2016 election, you&#8217;re going to see the biggest boom in this country you ever saw.</p>
<p>Thank you very much. Great pleasure to be with you.</p>
<p>(Applause)</p>
<p>Is there any time for questions, or &#8211;? Two or three. Okay. Really quickly, I&#8217;ll try to get through &#8212; yes. Go ahead. [Edelle]?</p>
<p><strong>Unidentified Audience Member:</strong> Assuming the boom scenario &#8212; at what pace would the federal debt reduce? What&#8217;s the offset to the money supply and the federal debt?</p>
<p><strong>Unidentified Speaker:</strong> I&#8217;ll let you ask your question now.</p>
<p><strong>Unidentified Audience Member:</strong> Some bloggers think that deflation is a higher probability than inflation. What is your opinion on that?</p>
<p><strong>Steve Moore:</strong> I think those people are absolutely crazy. I mean, if you&#8217;re printing more and more money, how does that lead to deflation? Right?</p>
<p>Now look, it is true inflation is very low right now. I mean, the CPI indicator&#8217;s only going up by 1.5 percent. But that&#8217;s only because the economy&#8217;s growing so slowly. Right? The money isn&#8217;t turning over.</p>
<p>One of the things that&#8217;s going to kind of retard this boom that I&#8217;m talking about &#8212; as people start spending more money, as investors start investing and as banks start lending it, what&#8217;s going to happen to the inflation rate? It&#8217;s going to start to go up. Right?</p>
<p>So anybody who thinks we&#8217;re in an era of deflation &#8212; I think you&#8217;re &#8212; I just don&#8217;t see it. I think the debt is too high &#8212; and by the way, one of the things that&#8217;s scary is, if we actually had a rush of inflation, the government actually benefits from that. Because it reduces the real value of the debt. So I just don&#8217;t &#8212; how many of you think we&#8217;re going to see deflation over the next &#8212; how many think we&#8217;re going to see inflation? So, I think you&#8217;re right. I would go with you on that.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m sorry, (inaudible) &#8211;</p>
<p><strong>Unidentified Audience Member: </strong>(Inaudible)</p>
<p>Oh yeah, right. Look, here&#8217;s the thing &#8212; we should be on a four percent growth path. This is what Reagan created. Reagan created an American growth path of four percent for seven years.</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t know how many have ever read the book by my hero, Bob Bartley, who was the original Wall Street Journal Editorial Page editor. But Bartley wrote a great, great, great book. If you want to read a great history book, read &#8220;The Seven Fat Years.&#8221; It was about the incredible success of what happened when Reagan cut tax rates. When he deregulated the economy, when he got money under control and inflation fell, we saw the biggest boom in this country ever. And it hit every class &#8212; the low-income people, the middle-class people, the people in the upper class. We can do that again.</p>
<p>And you get back to four percent growth, and then the deficit will fall very dramatically. You will see people&#8217;s incomes start to rise. I mean, I was struck &#8212; I didn&#8217;t hear all of Pat Caddell&#8217;s comments this morning, but I heard a few of them. And he is so right. Americans &#8212; the most amazing statistic &#8212; and he talked a little bit about this &#8212; over half of Americans today, 52 percent according to the latest Fox poll, think America&#8217;s still in a recession. Wait a minute &#8212; this recovery began in June of 2009. We&#8217;re almost five and six years into this recovery, and half of Americans think we&#8217;re still in a recession. Why is that? Why is that?</p>
<p>Well, I&#8217;ll tell you. If you look &#8212; the Left always talks about &#8212; oh, we care about the middle class and so on. The middle class has gotten crushed under Obama. The average middle-class family has lost $1,800 in income during this so-called recovery. So they aren&#8217;t getting richer; they&#8217;re getting poorer. They are getting creamed by Obama policies. And that is the message Republicans have to say over and over.</p>
<p>One last one, and then I promise I&#8217;ll end, Mike. Go ahead.</p>
<p><strong>Unidentified Audience Member:</strong> (Inaudible question &#8212; microphone inaccessible) &#8211;</p>
<p><strong>Steve Moore:</strong> Oh, this is &#8211;</p>
<p><strong>Unidentified Audience Member:</strong> (Inaudible question &#8212; microphone inaccessible).</p>
<p><strong>Steve Moore:</strong> Well, I am worried about &#8212; on this electricity issue, our electric prices should be falling very dramatically. Because we&#8217;re &#8212; you know, look, where do we get most of our electricity from today? There&#8217;s two sources that we get 80 percent of our electricity from. What are they? Coal and natural gas, right? And about 40 percent comes from coal and about 40 percent from natural gas.</p>
<p>This is a roundabout way of answering the question, but I got to tell you a statistic. Can I just take two more minutes? I know you&#8217;re running behind, but I bet this will stun everyone in this room, and it&#8217;s a great thing to throw in the face of liberals.</p>
<p>So they say all they care about is global warming, got to stop the oceans from rising, and so on. If you look over the last five years &#8212; I bet, if you read The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, you probably know this &#8212; over the last five years, what country in the world, of all the developed countries, do you think has reduced its carbon emissions the most?</p>
<p><strong>Audience:</strong> We have.</p>
<p><strong>Steve Moore:</strong> We have. Now, that&#8217;s stunning, right? How could we have reduced our carbon emissions more than Europe and Asia? We never signed the Kyoto Treaty, right? We never passed Cap and Trade. We never did, you know, the carbon tax, all the stuff &#8212; for the last 10 years, Europe has been talking so sanctimoniously &#8212; oh, we&#8217;re doing all this stuff to stop global warming. We&#8217;ve done more to reduce carbon than they have! Why? What&#8217;s going on? Why is it our carbon emissions have fallen so much?</p>
<p>Natural gas!</p>
<p><strong>Unidentified Audience Member:</strong> &#8212; [50] percent coal, and now we&#8217;re 40 percent (inaudible) &#8211;</p>
<p><strong>Steve Moore:</strong> Exactly. You&#8217;ve got it exactly right, sir.</p>
<p>And so what&#8217;s going on is natural gas &#8212; it turns out natural gas is a wonder-fuel. Right? This is like the most amazing fuel ever invented. Why? Number one, it&#8217;s abundant. Right? We&#8217;ve got hundreds and hundreds of years&#8217; worth of natural gas. Number two, it&#8217;s American. We have more natural gas than anybody else in the world. It&#8217;s homemade energy supply. Number three, it&#8217;s cheap. Right? And number four, it emits very few carbons into the atmosphere. Right?</p>
<p>So you would think &#8212; right &#8212; you would think that the Left would be celebrating the natural gas revolution. This is the solution to global warming. But do they like natural gas? They hate it, right?</p>
<p>My view is that the Left has a very, very sinister campaign going on here. It is not about global warming, it is not about cleaning the air or cleaning the water. What is this really about? It is stopping growth, it is stopping capitalism, and it is stopping progress.</p>
<p>And this gets back to the point that I just want to stress one last time before Michael punts me over the goal &#8212; we can win back sensible middle-class Americans. Because when I talk to Democrats who are not in office, or who talk to me off the record, you know what they tell me? Steve, our party, the Democratic Party, we&#8217;re on the wrong side of the energy issue. They are. Right? They bet the farm on wind and solar power, and it doesn&#8217;t work! Right? It can&#8217;t possibly compete with this natural gas and oil revolution.</p>
<p>We&#8217;ve got to shove this down their throats, and say &#8212; we are going to create millions and millions of high-paying jobs in this country that are going to bring back the middle class.</p>
<p>And the Democrats, and these wackos like Tom Steyer &#8212; do you all know who Tom Steyer is? He&#8217;s given $100 million to the Democratic Party. Those are the opponents of the American Dream.</p>
<p>Thank you very much. Been great to be here.</p>
<p>(Applause)</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>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/america-the-come-back-story/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>11</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>John Bolton: &#8216;The Biggest Threat to National Security Is in the White House&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/john-bolton-the-biggest-threat-to-national-security-is-in-the-white-house/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=john-bolton-the-biggest-threat-to-national-security-is-in-the-white-house</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/john-bolton-the-biggest-threat-to-national-security-is-in-the-white-house/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Jun 2014 04:55:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[foreign policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Bolton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=226695</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Amb. John Bolton discusses the threat within at the Freedom Center's Texas Weekend. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Editor&#8217;s note: Below are the video and transcript to Ambassador John Bolton&#8217;s address at the Freedom Center&#8217;s 2014 Texas Weekend. The event took place May 2nd-4th at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas. </strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/96452968" height="281" width="500" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>Daniel Pipes:</strong> Please join me in welcoming John Bolton.</span></p>
<p>(Applause)</p>
<p><strong>John Bolton:</strong> Thanks, Daniel.  Thank you.  Thank you very much.  Thank you.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m always delighted to be able to be part of a Freedom Center event.  The work that everybody does is just so important, and becomes more important.  So for all of you who are supporters, believe me, it&#8217;s support that&#8217;s put to very good use.  I can assure you of that.</p>
<p>I wanted to talk for just a little bit tonight about some of the problems that the United States and its friends in the world face.  And I&#8217;m acutely conscious that I&#8217;m the only thing now that stands between you and dinner.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>So I&#8217;ll try and make these remarks as pointed as I can.</p>
<p>It is a very dangerous time for the United States and its friends in the world.  And in large measure, it&#8217;s not because of the individual crises that we see in the world around us.  The biggest threat to our national security is sitting the White House.  And it&#8217;s &#8211;</p>
<p>(Applause)</p>
<p>It&#8217;s something that we never could&#8217;ve predicted.  It&#8217;s unquestionably the case in my view that the President&#8217;s the most radical President that we&#8217;ve ever had, and not just on domestic issues.  He has a fundamentally different view of America&#8217;s place in the world than any other President in history, to the point where I think most of us already look back at the Jimmy Carter Administration in the late 1970s as the good old days.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>Which tells you something right there.</p>
<p>So before I get into some of the specifics, I want to talk about what it is about this President that makes him different, and the particular reasons that his worldview is so contrary to our national interest.</p>
<p>I think, to start with, it&#8217;s important to understand that the basic concept is he just doesn&#8217;t believe in American exceptionalism.  Now, this is a subject that&#8217;s controversial sometimes even with our friends when we talk about American exceptionalism.  My view it&#8217;s not a statement or a belief in American superiority; it&#8217;s a recognition that our history has been fundamentally different from virtually every other country around the world.</p>
<p>And it wasn&#8217;t the United States or its citizens that first proclaimed American exceptionalism; it was a Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, who, in &#8220;Democracy in America,&#8221; his insightful analysis of the United States in the first part of the 19th century, said that it may be said of the Americans that they are truly exceptional, in that no other democratic people will repeat their experience.  And it&#8217;s right.  And it has shaped our view of America and America&#8217;s role in the world.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s sometimes controversial.  But the fact is that it&#8217;s been so widely shared among Americans that nobody&#8217;s ever really given it serious thought, until we got Obama.  And the views that he picked up during his time at Columbia and Harvard Law School, and working as a community organizer in Chicago, have made him fundamentally different.</p>
<p>Now, it&#8217;s quite interesting &#8212; in his first trip to Europe as President, a British reporter asked him if he believed in American exceptionalism.  That&#8217;s how apparent it was to the rest of the world that he didn&#8217;t that the reporter actually put the question to him.  And Obama&#8217;s answer, which a number of people have commented on since 2009, is worth reviewing again as we look at the policies he pursues today.  In response to this question, he said &#8212; yes, I believe in American exceptionalism, just as the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.</p>
<p>Now, let&#8217;s parse this sentence, which is classic Obama.  In the first third, he says &#8212; yeah, I believe in American exceptionalism.  So all those people who say that I don&#8217;t are wrong.  But then, in the second two thirds of the sentence, he takes it back by referring to the British and Greek views.</p>
<p>You know, there are 193 countries in the United Nations.  And he certainly could&#8217;ve gone on &#8212; just as the Papua New Guineans believe in Papua New Guinean exceptionalism &#8211;</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>&#8211; just as the Burkina Fasians believe in Burkina Fasian exceptionalism.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>The point&#8217;s clear.  If everybody&#8217;s exceptional, then nobody&#8217;s exceptional.  And that&#8217;s what he really thinks.</p>
<p>He&#8217;s not the first Democratic Party leader to believe that.  I think if you go back to 1988, George H.W. Bush said about Michael Dukakis &#8212; &#8220;my opponent believes that the United States is a nice country out there somewhere on the UN roll call between Albania and Zimbabwe.&#8221;  In other words, just one more country.  That&#8217;s what they think.</p>
<p>And so, in his view, since America&#8217;s not exceptional, since we&#8217;re not different than any other country &#8212; we have our interests, they have their interests &#8212; he looks at American strength as part of the problem in the world &#8212; that we&#8217;re too much &#8212; we&#8217;re too assertive, too dominant, too successful, really, over the years.</p>
<p>And so in the Obama view, because our strength is part of the problem, one way to get to a more peaceful, more stable environment is for the United States to withdraw, to be less assertive, to be less in the world.</p>
<p>Now, I think this is like looking at the world through the wrong end of the telescope.  It&#8217;s not American strength that&#8217;s the problem; it&#8217;s American weakness that&#8217;s the problem.  And certainly, Obama is proving that on a daily basis.</p>
<p>He&#8217;s not, though &#8212; although his policies get you to a declining, withdrawing America, it&#8217;s not that he&#8217;s an isolationist, in the sense that we see a rising isolation in some parts of the Republican Party; he&#8217;s a multilateralist.</p>
<p>And he doesn&#8217;t view what happens in the world through a nationalist prism.  He said &#8212; and these are really chilling words, when you think about it &#8212; he said in 2009, in his first speech to the United Nations &#8212; it is my deeply held belief that in the year 2009, more than at any point in human history, the interests of nations and peoples are shared.  No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed.  No balance of power among nations will hold.</p>
<p>Now, that is a statement that essentially says everything that we&#8217;ve seen in, you know, roughly 100,000 years of human history doesn&#8217;t apply anymore.  Coincidentally, 2009, more than at any point in human history, when Barack Obama becomes President &#8212; which is when history begins for Barack Obama &#8211;</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>&#8211; these are core beliefs of his.  And they are reflected in his policy.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve worried for a long time what he meant when he said no world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed.  I wondered, what is he talking about there?  What does he really mean?  And the more I looked it, it finally came to me &#8212; he&#8217;s talking about us.  He&#8217;s talking about us.  We&#8217;re one nation elevated over another, that&#8217;s not going to succeed.  So his determination is to make sure that in fact we are not the dominant power in the world.</p>
<p>Now again, this is not the first person to hold this view.  I think it&#8217;s very similar to what Woodrow Wilson believed, and caused us so much trouble.  Wilson said, in his famous Fourteen Points speech &#8212; the interests of all nations are also our own.  He talked about peace without victory in 1918.  And Wilson said &#8212; there must be not a balance of power, but a community of power.  And he wasn&#8217;t even a community organizer.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>Not organized rivalries, but an organized common piece based on &#8212; listen to this &#8212; the moral force of the public opinion of the world.</p>
<p>Now, nobody&#8217;s ever told us how to get the public opinion of the world, unless you&#8217;re Woodrow Wilson or Barack Obama and you know it.  I mean, it speaks to you.  This is a very, very precarious and dangerous basis for a President of the United States to make policy.  It is detached from the interest and views of the American people.  Because he&#8217;s listening to the public opinion of the world.</p>
<p>Now, the opposite view on this was expressed very clearly at the time by Theodore Roosevelt, when he was asked &#8212; well, what do you think of this business of making the world safe for democracy?  And Roosevelt, the Republican Roosevelt, said in response &#8212; first, we&#8217;re to make the world safe for ourselves.</p>
<p>And that is the real bedrock, or should be the bedrock, of American foreign policy.  We can&#8217;t shape the rest of the world, but we can shape it adequately to defend ourselves and to defend our interests around the world.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s why when I hear within the Republican Party voices that hark back to the isolationism of the 1930s, I get worried.  Because by moving away from the Theodore Roosevelt view, they end up &#8212; although they start with a very different analytical premise &#8212; they end up in the same place as Barack Obama &#8212; that it&#8217;s America that causes the problems, and that if indifference to the world, withdrawing from the world, makes us less provocative, that that&#8217;s what we ought to do.</p>
<p>You know, that leads to a real absence of thinking about American national security.  We already see in the Democratic Party, they don&#8217;t have a national security wing anymore.  There&#8217;s no Scoop Jackson wing, there isn&#8217;t even a Joe Lieberman wing anymore.</p>
<p>And yet, we see within the Republican Party today a view of America&#8217;s place in the world that will fundamentally leave us in the same position as the Obama view, which is a weaker, less outward-looking, declinist America.</p>
<p>This is fundamentally the opposite of Ronald Reagan&#8217;s view of the world &#8212; the view that brought us to a successful conclusion in the Cold War, which rejected multilateralism, which rejected isolationism and which, in the phrase that Reagan used over and over again, was based on peace through strength.  That is, to achieve American objectives without the use of military force.</p>
<p>It is a way that protects America and its friends and allies because of the strength, military, political and economic, of our position.  It dissuades and deters adversaries from trying to take advantage of us.  And it recognizes that you are best able to achieve peace when you are strong &#8212; that it&#8217;s not American strength that&#8217;s provocative; it&#8217;s American weakness that&#8217;s provocative.  And that&#8217;s something that Obama, and some people in the Republican Party today, unfortunately, have never really understood &#8212; that it&#8217;s the first duty of the sovereign, as Adam Smith said, to protect the society against the violence of other societies.</p>
<p>So it&#8217;s a basic chore of government, and it&#8217;s something that really our way of life, our standard of living in the United States, depend on.  Whatever minimal order and stability there is in the world &#8212; and there&#8217;s very little of it &#8212; is because of the United States and its structure of alliances.  If we don&#8217;t fulfill that role, you&#8217;re going to have others attempting to fill the void, or you&#8217;re going to have anarchy.  And it&#8217;s going to be the worse for us here.</p>
<p>Now, many people complain &#8212; and rightfully so &#8212; that other countries benefit from this and don&#8217;t pay their fair share, they don&#8217;t bear their fair share of the burden; that&#8217;s true.  And it&#8217;s something we should try and fix.  But let&#8217;s be clear &#8212; we&#8217;re not doing this for them; we&#8217;re doing it for us.  And there isn&#8217;t anybody else that can cover our back if we&#8217;re not able to do it.</p>
<p>And I&#8217;m afraid that the proof of this is something that we see around us in the world almost everywhere.  And I think that, in fact, I worry that over the next three years, the pace and the scope of the challenges that the United States faces is going to grow.  Because our adversaries and our friends have watched the Obama Administration in its first nearly five years in office.  They fully understand what the President&#8217;s about.  And those who want to take advantage of us understand that the 2016 election may bring something very, very different.  So if you want to move on your agenda contrary to American interests, this is the time to do it.</p>
<p>And you can pick so many places around the world where this is evident.  Let&#8217;s just start with Russia and Ukraine.  You know, this problem has been evident for quite some time.  If you go back to 2006, when he was last president of Russia, Vladimir Putin said &#8212; the breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century and a tragedy for the Russian people.  He was saying even then that his objective was to reestablish Russian hegemony within the space of the former Soviet Union.  Not necessarily to take it over again, because I don&#8217;t think he wanted the problems that the newly independent republics had.  But he wanted Russian domination.</p>
<p>And I think the West understood that.  I think that&#8217;s one reason we expanded NATO membership to Eastern and Central Europe.  I think it&#8217;s why we put the Baltic Republics in NATO.  But we failed to follow our own logic.  We left a gap between NATO&#8217;s eastern border and Russia&#8217;s western border &#8212; Ukraine, Georgia, and other countries.</p>
<p>George W. Bush moved to try and fill that gap in April of 2008 &#8212; to bring Georgia and Ukraine on a clearly defined path to NATO membership, to end the ambiguity and to allow those countries to join the West, and to pick up that space for Europe and the United States.  The Europeans, even then fearful of what Russia might do with their oil and gas supplies, rejected the Bush proposal.</p>
<p>And four months later &#8212; this is kind of like a laboratory experiment you don&#8217;t often get in international affairs &#8212; four months later, the Russians invaded Georgia and carved off two provinces of Georgia that they still hold onto.</p>
<p>Now, at the time of that Russian attack, Barack Obama, candidate for President of the United States, was asked what he thought about it.  And his first response &#8212; he later walked away from it, but his first response was to call on both Russia and Georgia to exercise restraint.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>I mean, just think about that for a minute.  He had to &#8212; as I say, he had to reverse that position.  But in the Kremlin, they took very careful note of what his first reaction was.</p>
<p>So, Obama comes into office.  He could be thinking about the strategic implications of what Russia had just done in Georgia.  But instead, he spends his time pressing the famous reset button, giving up bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, where we would&#8217;ve put missile defense assets to protect the United States itself, to protect us in the homeland, against the potential for ballistic missile attack with nuclear warheads from rogue states in the Middle East.  He gave that up.  Because the Russians were afraid of it.</p>
<p>He gave the Russians the New START Arms Control Treaty.  Very ill advised.  He gave concession after concession to the Russians in controversy after controversy.  And as was entirely predictable and in fact predicted by some of us, the Russians did what they did during the Cold War.  They took one concession after another.  They put it in their pocket and said &#8212; what have you got for me next?</p>
<p>So Obama today is utterly unprepared for what Vladimir Putin is doing in Ukraine.  Putin suffered a setback when the Yanukovych government was overthrown.  And he&#8217;s systematically, for the past three months, going about reversing that.  And he&#8217;s accomplishing it.  Even the New York Times today had to admit that the economic sanctions the President&#8217;s put in place have been utterly ineffective in deterring Russian conduct.</p>
<p>And let&#8217;s be clear what Putin has done here.  First, in 2008 &#8212; but even more boldly in the past few months &#8212; he has used military force on the continent of Europe to change international boundaries.  And in response, the West has done nothing.  So that the signal to Putin and all the other former Soviet Republics is basically &#8212; you&#8217;re on your own.</p>
<p>Moreover &#8212; and we have to acknowledge the problem &#8212; the European response, if anything, has been weaker than Obama&#8217;s.  That&#8217;s not an excuse for anybody.  It&#8217;s a cause of a cyclical problem, where Obama can say &#8212; well, you know, the Europeans really aren&#8217;t up for tough sanctions.  And therefore, I don&#8217;t have to do anything.  And the Europeans can say &#8212; well, the Americans aren&#8217;t leading.  So we&#8217;re not going to lead, either.  And this downward cycle simply encourages Putin to continue his agitation, his destabilizing of Ukraine, to achieve the objective he wants, which is regime in Kiev that&#8217;s compliant with his wishes.</p>
<p>But the signal to others, to the Baltic Republics who are NATO members, leaves them in fear.  Because they now worry that Obama, even though they&#8217;re NATO members, won&#8217;t protect them, either.  And I think Putin didn&#8217;t start out this way.  But he sees a chance &#8212; potentially, potentially &#8212; to shatter the NATO alliance, something he never could&#8217;ve dreamed of four or five years ago.</p>
<p>So when you add to the internal problems of the European Union, the possibility of the post-Cold War arrangement in Europe coming unstuck, I think is rising.  And it&#8217;s rising in substantial measure because of the absence of any American leadership.</p>
<p>Now, there&#8217;s no country in the world watching what&#8217;s happening in Ukraine, other than the participants themselves &#8212; nobody watching it more closely than China.  Because China is engaged in its own expansionist effort in the waters off its seacoast.  And this is an issue vastly underreported in the United States, even with the President&#8217;s recent trip to Asia.  It&#8217;s like it just &#8212; it&#8217;s too hard for people in the media to cover.</p>
<p>Certainly, Obama didn&#8217;t give them any reason to cover it while he was in Asia, because he simply repeated the same policies that his administration has pursued for five years.  And they are policies that are failing in the face of an increasingly assertive China.</p>
<p>You know, in the government, and even in American business circles, there&#8217;s a kind of a mantra that China&#8217;s engaged in a peaceful rise, and it&#8217;s going to be a responsible stakeholder in world affairs.  Well, okay.  That&#8217;s possible; a lot of things are possible.</p>
<p>But that&#8217;s not the most likely scenario by a long shot.  In fact, China&#8217;s modernizing its army, it&#8217;s building up its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons capabilities.  It&#8217;s creating a blue-water navy for the first time in 600 years.  It has one of the world&#8217;s &#8212; certainly the most aggressive and one of the most sophisticated programs in cyber warfare.  It has developed anti-satellite weapons to blind our capabilities to surveil China from space.  It has extensive development of what are called anti-access area denial weapon capabilities to push the US Navy back from the Western shores of the Pacific, where we&#8217;ve been dominant since World War II.  And all the while, it is making territorial claims in the East and South China Sea that make what the Russians are doing in Ukraine look timid.</p>
<p>Now, people say that these claims are these little rocks and reefs and islands that are barely above water at low tide, and that&#8217;s true.  But they&#8217;re not the issue.  The issue is whether China can break free of the island chain that prevents it from getting out into the Pacific, and whether they can turn the South China Sea into a Chinese lake, taking it from being international waterways to being Chinese water.</p>
<p>What difference does that make?  Well, if you&#8217;re in Japan or South Korea or Taiwan, all of your oil from the Middle East comes through the South China Sea.  So if China makes that a territorial lake, they&#8217;ve got their hands around the throats of the economy of Japan and the other countries, and puts them in an enormous position to affect Southeast Asia, which is obviously &#8212; all of the trade and investment and commerce we have with East and Southeast Asia is at risk.  And this is at a time when the American Navy has the lowest number of warships at sea since 1916.</p>
<p>And you know, Romney tried to raise this during the debate with Obama.  And Obama&#8217;s response was again &#8212; it&#8217;s very revealing.  He didn&#8217;t have an answer; he had snark.  He said &#8212; well, you know, our ships are much more sophisticated than the ships of 1916.  We have submarines, we have aircraft carriers.  So, you know, you&#8217;re just counting numbers.</p>
<p>Well, that would be a good answer if the ships of our adversaries had been built in 1916.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>Unfortunately, they&#8217;re not.  They&#8217;re building ships that are just as sophisticated as ours are.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s where the blindness of Obama&#8217;s vision is so important.  He just doesn&#8217;t see how declining American strength affects others &#8212; the Japanese are very worried, the Koreans, the Taiwanese, obviously, most worried of all.  The Indians are now very worried about what this rising Chinese capacity means.  And they see no answers from the United States.  And when they look at Ukraine, and they see actual military territorial aggression, and no American response, you can imagine what conclusion they draw.</p>
<p>But to me, the biggest threats that we face in the near term are the continuing threats of international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction &#8212; nuclear weapons especially.</p>
<p>And here, the Obama Administration has failed completely.  They&#8217;ve failed to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program, they&#8217;ve made a deal with Iran that essentially legitimizes Iran&#8217;s uranium enrichment capability.  Iran made superficial, easily reversible concessions on its nuclear program.  And in return, they blew a hole through the international sanctions, which were not slowing down the nuclear weapons program but were imposing a cost on the Iranian economy.</p>
<p>They&#8217;ve done nothing in the White House to stop the North Korean program.  And there&#8217;s ample evidence that Iran and North Korea are cooperating on ballistic missiles for sure, and quite possibly on the nuclear weapons side as well.</p>
<p>This is, again, a huge lesson to our adversaries &#8212; to any would-be nuclear weapon state &#8212; that if you are simply persistent enough, you too can have nuclear weapons.  And the threat that that poses to Israel, to friendly states in the Middle East, is really extraordinary.</p>
<p>You know, Israel is a small country.  Half a dozen nuclear detonations &#8212; there is no more Israel.  That&#8217;s why Ariel Sharon once described it to President Bush as the threat of a nuclear holocaust.  And he was not exaggerating.</p>
<p>The Iranian nuclear weapons program is not Israel&#8217;s problem; it&#8217;s our problem.  Because we&#8217;re the only country ultimately that can stop would-be proliferators from getting the capability.  And yet, we&#8217;re doing nothing, which is why the spotlight is on Israel to take the very hard decision, whether they will, as they have twice before in Israel&#8217;s history, strike a nuclear weapons program in the hands of a hostile state.</p>
<p>Frankly, if I were in Israel, I&#8217;d have done this five years ago.  And I think they&#8217;re wasting time.</p>
<p>(Applause)</p>
<p>And I think it will be incredibly important for the United States to come to Israel&#8217;s defense if we wake up one morning and find that they are already attacking Iran.  This will be an entirely legitimate exercise of Israel&#8217;s inherent right of self defense.  And the United States ought to say that immediately after we learn that the attack has begun.  We ought to resupply Israel militarily immediately.  And frankly, we ought to do a lot more.  I just don&#8217;t think the Obama Administration will do anything.</p>
<p>And the Iranians understand that.  They don&#8217;t believe the President when he says all options are on the table.  I don&#8217;t even think the President believes the President &#8211;</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>&#8211; when he says that.</p>
<p>And the Iranian nuclear threat is not simply a regional threat in the Middle East.  It forms the basis of the risk of a perfect storm with terrorists &#8212; that Iran would supply nuclear weapons to al-Qaeda or others that they don&#8217;t need a ballistic missile to deliver, that they can put in a boxcar, put in a ship, sail it into any harbor in this country or anywhere in the world and detonate it.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s where, really, the threat of international terrorism remains so acute.  Now, we&#8217;ve had developments just this week on one of the central issues of the war on terrorism &#8212; the attack on Benghazi on September the 11th, 2012, with the revelation of what we knew all along &#8212; that the White House had no intention of being candid about what happened in that attack.  But also, today, as I think most of you probably heard, Speaker Boehner has finally announced the formation of a select committee in the House which will unify &#8211;</p>
<p>(Applause)</p>
<p>&#8211; the investigative efforts from six committees, six committees, into one.</p>
<p>And as I said to a few of you before dinner, I was at the Justice Department when we had to face in the Reagan Administration the Iran Contra select committee.  And let me tell you, it is a powerful, powerful tool in the congressional arsenal.  And the fact that we&#8217;re finally going to have it, I think, could make a real difference.</p>
<p>But the fundamental point on the ground in the region remains that the threat of international terrorism is just as acute today as it was before 9/11.  The administration&#8217;s own Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, said as much two months ago in testimony before Congress.  It&#8217;s a different structure for al-Qaeda than it was before the first 9/11.  But if anything, it&#8217;s a graver threat because it&#8217;s metastasized into countries all over the region.  And other terrorists have come along.  We&#8217;ve seen what they&#8217;ve been able to do in Iraq, what they&#8217;re doing today in Syria.</p>
<p>And so the whole approach of the administration, which is to say &#8212; well, we&#8217;ve hurt al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we were able to kill Osama bin Laden &#8212; and therefore, what they define as core al-Qaeda has been weakened.</p>
<p>Now, it&#8217;s not like al-Qaeda sat around in caves in Afghanistan drawing corporate organization charts and working out exactly how they were going to do things.  They had objectives.  They knew that different people would be attracted to their efforts for different reasons, and they accepted that.  And that&#8217;s what&#8217;s happened since 9/11.</p>
<p>While Obama has focused on defining terrorism down to Al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda down to core al-Qaeda, and core al-Qaeda down to Osama bin Laden so he can take credit for it; the rest of the terrorists have been ignoring this esoteric discussion and conducting terrorist operations.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s what the attack in Benghazi was, and why it was such a threat to the administration&#8217;s entire tissue fabric of argument that al-Qaeda was on the run, Osama bin Laden was dead and General Motors was alive.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>They knew that if people really understood what had happened at Benghazi, the American public would understand that the threat of international terrorism is very real.</p>
<p>So the whole argument about how they had failed to understand that Libya was dissolving into anarchy, that the terrorists had come back to use it for training and for base camps; and that therefore, the notion that the Arab Spring had brought progress to the Middle East and reduced the threat of terrorism was fundamentally wrong.  They did nothing in the months before the September 11th attack to build up capabilities in the region to protect not just our diplomats but American citizens who are even more vulnerable than people in the embassies and consulates.</p>
<p>You know, in February of 2011, we withdrew all civilian personnel from Libya.  This was at the time Khadafi was about to fall.  Things were very dangerous.  We didn&#8217;t have naval assets that could bring those people out.  We had to rent a ferryboat in Greece and bring it to Tripoli to pull the Americans out.</p>
<p>So from February of 2011 to September of 2012, what did we do to put capabilities in the region to protect Americans who might be at risk?  Zero.  That&#8217;s what we did.  Zero.</p>
<p>You know, Americans don&#8217;t realize that the Sixth Fleet, our Mediterranean fleet, on a permanent basis, consists of one ship &#8212; the flagship in Italy.  The rest of the Sixth Fleet is whatever happens to be going between the Strait of Magellan and the Suez Canal at any given time.  We don&#8217;t have the capability in the Mediterranean anymore.  And that&#8217;s the result of years of budget cuts.  And it is a tragedy, and it&#8217;s embarrassing.  And we saw the impact on 9/11 in Benghazi.</p>
<p>Could we have done anything on that day?  People whose military judgment and understanding out of respect say no.  I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s an excuse; I think it&#8217;s a confirmation that we failed in the months before that attack to be ready for it and to protect Americans in danger elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East.</p>
<p>But the worst part of it is not the failure before 9/11, not the failures on 9/11; but the failures since the attack in Benghazi.  And this to me is both the most troubling and the most indicative of what&#8217;s wrong with the Obama foreign policy.</p>
<p>You know, an American ambassador in a foreign country not only presides over an embassy staff from all different departments &#8212; Agriculture, Defense, as well as State &#8212; the ambassador is the President&#8217;s personal representative to the country where he or she is accredited, the President&#8217;s personal representative.  When the ambassador drives around the capital city, the American flag flies from the right front fender of their car.  Everybody knows what the American ambassador does.</p>
<p>So, let&#8217;s be clear &#8212; what happened in Benghazi, with four Americans being murdered, was a tragedy for all of them.  But in particular, it showed that the terrorists could kill the personal representative of the President of the United States and have nothing happen to them &#8212; that under Barack Obama, you can murder his personal representative and get away scot free.</p>
<p>That is a terrible lesson for the terrorists, the state sponsors of terrorists, and our adversaries generally, to learn.  It is a sign for 20 months &#8212; 20 months!  We&#8217;ve done nothing.  Not only have we not arrested anybody; there&#8217;s no revenge, no retaliation, no retribution, and no prospect that anything&#8217;s going to happen.</p>
<p>So this signal of American weakness, I think, is something they understand in the Kremlin.  They understand it in Beijing, they understand it in Tehran, they understand it all around the world.  They understand it in the capitals of our allies, too &#8212; that if the Obama Administration won&#8217;t even go after people who are killing his representative, who are they going to come to defend?  How can you trust the word of the United States to meet its commitments when they won&#8217;t even defend their own people?</p>
<p>This is something that I think we need much more discussion of at the national level.  And maybe this select committee will help jog the national media into doing it.</p>
<p>But fundamentally, it&#8217;s for American citizens.  You know, we get the kind of government that we deserve.  And if we don&#8217;t make national security a higher priority going forward, if we don&#8217;t insist that our candidates for President and Senate and House explain to us how they&#8217;re going to protect America, then we&#8217;re not doing our job.</p>
<p>So I think, looking forward to this November, looking forward to the 2016 election, we&#8217;ve got to re-center this debate.  And we&#8217;ve got to demand of candidates at the presidential and congressional level that they explain whether or not they agree with Ronald Reagan&#8217;s view of peace through strength, and that a strong America is the best way not only to protect our interests, but to protect our interests and preserve the peace.  This is absolutely critical to ourselves and our friends around the world.</p>
<p>Thank you very much.</p>
<p>(Applause)</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>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/john-bolton-the-biggest-threat-to-national-security-is-in-the-white-house/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>112</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Obama Undoctrine</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-obama-undoctrine/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-obama-undoctrine</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-obama-undoctrine/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 May 2014 04:58:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[foreign policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[west point]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=226472</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Foreign policy that stands for everything and nothing. And has accomplished nothing.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/BN-CX877_Obama0_G_20140523133623.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-226482 alignleft" alt="BN-CX877_Obama0_G_20140523133623" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/BN-CX877_Obama0_G_20140523133623-450x300.jpg" width="315" height="210" /></a>Afghanistan is lost, Iraq and Libya are in the middle of civil wars, Russia is carving off pieces of Ukraine and China is escalating its conflict with the rest of Asia. There isn’t a single element of Obama’s foreign policy that has proven successful. Instead it’s been one international disaster after another.</span></p>
<p>Obama just smiles into the camera and announces that “America has rarely been stronger relative to the rest of the world.” Anyone who disagrees is engaging in partisan politics. Or reading statistics.</p>
<p>Having signed off on Iran’s nuclear program while its Supreme Leader boasts that the holy war will only end with America’s destruction, he claims that the “odds of a direct threat against us by any nation are low.”</p>
<p>“From Europe to Asia, we are the hub of alliances unrivaled in the history of nations,” he proclaims. Meanwhile Russia and China humiliate our European and Asian allies for their worthless alliance hub.</p>
<p>“When a typhoon hits the Philippines, or schoolgirls are kidnapped in Nigeria, or masked men occupy a building in Ukraine, it is America that the world looks to for help,” he boasts.</p>
<p>And yet the masked men go on occupying buildings and Boko Haram goes on killing Nigerians. America has never been stronger than under Obama. And yet it’s incapable of actually doing anything, except maybe joining New Zealand, Sweden, Taiwan, Israel and Chile in providing disaster aid to the Philippines.</p>
<p>And if that doesn’t work, he can always sanction the typhoon. It should do as much to stop the wall of water it as it did to stop Russia and Iran.</p>
<p>Obama’s speeches come from a world that exists only inside his own teleprompter. Another leader might have been reeling from a string of international failures, but he boldly triumphs over reality. The worse things are, the bigger the party he throws to celebrate his victories.</p>
<p>Obama’s speech focuses on Afghanistan, but never mentions the Taliban. Imagine an FDR speech that pretended that Japan didn’t exist. That’s the depth of denial it takes for Obama to claim victory.</p>
<p>After using up the lives of 1,600 American soldiers fighting the Taliban without ever defeating them, he takes a victory lap for defeating Al Qaeda in Afghanistan when the CIA had told him back in 2009 that there were at most 100 Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Thousands of Americans have been lost to an enemy whose existence Obama won’t even acknowledge as he takes another victory lap for losing another war.</p>
<p>With the VA scandal reminding everyone that he doesn’t just throw away the lives of soldiers abroad, but also at home, Obama is changing the subject with one Mission Accomplished speech after another. Like a politician caught with his mistress who begins taking his wife everywhere, he is suddenly in love with the military and can’t get enough photo ops with anyone wearing a uniform.</p>
<p>Even if they work for the post office.</p>
<p>In Obama’s teleprompter reality, a withdrawal is equivalent to success. Setting a withdrawal timeline with no regard for results deserves a victory parade. He wants credit for withdrawing from Afghanistan by the end of his term. Not only is he repeating the timeline mistake of his disastrous surge, but the timeline is once again pegged to a political, rather than a strategic, date.</p>
<p>Obama takes credit for troop removals, rather than outcomes. But if he doesn’t care that Al Qaeda in Iraq is more powerful than ever or that the Taliban control the future of Afghanistan, why didn’t he immediately withdraw the troops? Are we supposed to cheer his inability to either commit to winning a war or pull out? Is indecisiveness the virtue of a great leader?</p>
<p>Do we really need more applause lines about how long it took him to lose a war?</p>
<p>The West Point commencement address dresses up past failures as new successes and lays out a vision for the future by a lame duck leader who has failed at every foreign policy initiative. The address is an expanded version of his 2002 anti-war speech as a Chicago state senator that first brought him to the attention of his future backers. It straddles an awkward line between anti-war and interventionism.</p>
<p>Twelve years later, Obama hasn’t changed.</p>
<p>He’s still posturing as a fake centrist by setting up interventionist and isolationist straw men on both sides. Instead of defending his policies on their merits, he tries to make them seem reasonable by depicting his critics on the right and the left as extremists. After six years of foreign affairs failures, Obama is still talking as if he’s the &#8220;reasonable&#8221; centrist trying to steer a&#8221;‘sensible common sense&#8221; path.</p>
<p>At least those are the favorite buzzwords that his speechwriters throw in to influence the “folks.”</p>
<p>Obama wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants applause for being an interventionist and for being a non-interventionist. In one sentence he sounds like JFK and in another like Eugene McCarthy.</p>
<p>He wants to send in the troops and then get credit for pulling them out. He wants to threaten other countries and then appease them at the negotiating table. He wants to set red lines he doesn’t stand behind and apply sanctions that mean nothing. And he wants to pass off this game in which the bad guys always win and America always loses as his smart power doctrine.</p>
<p>That’s not a doctrine. That’s an undoctrine.</p>
<p>The Obama Undoctrine is all things to all people. It respects international opinion, except when it doesn’t. It doesn’t believe in military solutions, but sometimes it does. It believes in taking military action to protect our interests, rather than foreign human rights, except when it believes the opposite.</p>
<p>In Libya, Obama sent in the jets when Libyans in Benghazi were threatened, but not when Americans in Benghazi were threatened.</p>
<p>The world may look to America for help, but Americans shouldn’t.</p>
<p>The shiny new Obama Undoctrine proposes such groundbreaking ideas as partnering with countries fighting terrorism. This is a bold new idea from the &#8217;50s. Other bold new ideas include using international institutions like the League of Nations, ahem, the United Nations, to stop new wars from starting.</p>
<p>Anyone who wants an example of the “leadership” and “strength” of the Undoctrine should look at Iran. That’s not some nasty Republican sneering at the Undoctrine.</p>
<p>It’s Obama’s assertion in his address.</p>
<p>After admitting that any nuclear agreement with Iran is a long shot, he says of his appeasement, “This is American leadership. This is American strength.”</p>
<p>Obama’s idea of American leadership and strength is being repeatedly humiliated and led around by the nose by a bitter enemy determined to obtain nuclear weapons in order to destroy the United States.</p>
<p>If that’s Obama’s idea of leadership and strength, just imagine his idea of weakness.</p>
<p>Then there’s NATO. He describes it as “the strongest alliance the world has ever known.” That would have sounded more impressive before NATO staked out Ukraine for the bear and went home.</p>
<p>And if you want something more effective, try the UN. While Obama cuts the military to the bone, he will be “investing” more money in UN peacekeeping operations.</p>
<p>If we’re going to spend all that money on a military, it should be one that doesn’t run away at the first sign of trouble. That way we would at least be getting some bang for our buck. But maybe a small army of child molesters spreading cholera that runs away at the first sign of trouble embodies the Undoctrine.</p>
<p>“I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,” Obama declared. “But what makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it is our willingness to affirm them through our actions.”</p>
<p>Or as his nursery school teacher probably put it, “You’re special. Just like everyone else.”</p>
<p>This mess of contradictions is the Obama Undoctrine. It stands for everything and nothing. And it has accomplished nothing.</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>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-obama-undoctrine/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>141</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>

<!-- Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache. Learn more: http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/

Object Caching 1379/1399 objects using disk
Content Delivery Network via cdn.frontpagemag.com

 Served from: www.frontpagemag.com @ 2014-12-31 02:13:05 by W3 Total Cache -->