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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; threat</title>
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		<title>Rep. Jim Bridenstine: &#8216;Weakness Is Provocative&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/rep-jim-bridenstine-weakness-is-provocative/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=rep-jim-bridenstine-weakness-is-provocative</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Dec 2014 05:51:02 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[GOP congressman unveils the chaos unleashed by America's retreat abroad at Restoration Weekend. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong style="color: #232323;">Below are the video and transcript to Congressman Jim Bridenstine&#8217;s keynote speech at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 20th Anniversary Restoration Weekend. The event took place Nov. 13th-16th at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Florida. </strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/114410255" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Rep. Jim Bridenstine: </strong>A lot of people might remember, it wasn&#8217;t too long ago, I went down to a military base in my state called Fort Sill.  I went down there to visit with the commanding general, and the reason I went is because the Department of Defense is being gutted right now.  The fires brigades and the air defense artillery folks that work down there, they&#8217;re getting cut drastically, and so I went down there and I wanted to meet with the commanding general, and when I was down there I said, hey, I&#8217;d like to take a visit of the UAC facility that&#8217;s here at Fort Sill, and the commanding general said you can go, but I&#8217;m not going to go with you.  If you would, by show of hands, do you remember this incident by chance, if you&#8217;d raise your hand if you&#8217;re remember.  I went down to Fort Sill to visit the UAC facility and I got rejected.  I got rejected.  Here I am a member of Congress, a representative of the people, a federal representative of the people going to a federal facility and seeing a federal mission, and they told me I couldn&#8217;t come in. They said you could come back in three weeks.  In three weeks you can come back and we&#8217;ll take you on a tour, and I said I&#8217;ve got to talk to somebody in your chain of command because this is not right, and you know what they said, they said, sorry, here&#8217;s the number for the guy in my chain of command and it was the Deputy Director of Communications, who also told me you&#8217;ve got to wait three weeks and we&#8217;ll take you on a tour, to which we immediately said, I told my staff I&#8217;m not one of these guys that runs to the media for every opportunity.  I don&#8217;t do that, but in this particular case, the First Amendment was given to us for a purpose, and it&#8217;s to petition the federal government, and I never realized that as a member of Congress I would be one of the people having to petition the federal government using the First Amendment.</p>
<p>In the next week and a half, we did 72 interviews on television. Seventy-two.  We were tired, but I can tell you this, after a week and a half we get an email from Health and Human Services and they said we&#8217;d like to take you on a tour of the HHS facility at Fort Sill housing the unaccompanied alien children.  It only took 72 interviews and a week and a half, and then they sent another email, and I&#8217;d ask everybody to get quiet because what this next email said is critically important.  I want you to listen to this.</p>
<p>The next email we got from HHS said we&#8217;re going to take you on a tour, but you can&#8217;t ask any questions, you can&#8217;t talk to the personnel that work there, you can&#8217;t talk to the staff, you can&#8217;t talk to the children, you can&#8217;t talk to the medical personnel.  We&#8217;re going to show it to you but you can&#8217;t ask any questions, to which we responded with an email of our own that we&#8217;re going to treat your restrictions the way the president is treating the law of the United States as a suggestion, and we gave them a list of everybody we expected to talk to once we got inside of this facility, and we got in and we started asking questions.  The No. 1 question I asked was how many children here have been abused.  We had a great panel with Dr. Fleming and Louie Gohmert and Jeff Sessions regarding the crisis on the southern border and immigration.  We had this great conversation.  Loved every minute of listening to these great folks talk about this issue, but here is why I have such a big concern.  The reports coming out of Lackland Air Force Base is as many as a third of the young girls had been abused, and when I talk about abuse I&#8217;m talking about sexual, I&#8217;m talking about horrible things that have happened to these young girls, and by the way they&#8217;re 12 years old.</p>
<p>So I wanted to find out in my state at Fort Sill the HHS facility how many of the children there had been abused, and I asked them, how many have been abused?  Well, we don&#8217;t have those numbers.  So I asked somebody else, how many children here have been abused?  Well, we don&#8217;t have those numbers.  I couldn&#8217;t get an answer.  Finally I asked a contractor and the contractor said it&#8217;s well over 25 percent, and then another contractor said, sir, it is well over 25 percent, and friends, here&#8217;s what everybody in this room needs to understand, the question is where is this abuse occurring?  It&#8217;s not happening in these facilities.  The abuse is occurring on the way to the United States, and the reason it&#8217;s occurring is because the children that were coming across our southern border, they already have parents that have been smuggled into the United States illegally, hundreds of thousands of them in 2014, and they made a decision that they want their family to come, including their children, and so they hire a coyote down in Mexico, and the coyote goes down to Central America to bring the children up to the northern border, and here&#8217;s what happens, and people in this room understand this.  The GAO has indicated, has said that we have operational control of over 44 percent of our southern border.  That means 56 percent of our southern border is not under operational control, and if we don&#8217;t control it, friends, somebody else does.  In this particular case, it&#8217;s controlled by drug cartels, transnational criminal organizations and when those children get to the northern border of Mexico, the southern border of the United States, then those transnational criminal organizations say we need more money.  If you&#8217;re going to come into the United States &#8212; and by the way, if you control the southern border of the United States you can make a ton of money, and they are doing it.</p>
<p>And so the children get up there, and the organized crime says they need $10,000.00 and we&#8217;ll let you across the border.  How many of these children do you think have $10,000.00 on them?  They call their parents, their parents don&#8217;t have $10,000.00.  They barely had enough money to pay the coyote, and ultimately the children have to come up with $10,000.00 and the drug cartels will get their money.  So they force the children into slave labor.  The force the children into prostitution.  Some of the children disappear altogether and it goes from smuggling into human trafficking, and some of the children just get killed.</p>
<p>People don&#8217;t realize it, friends, but there are, estimates are 70,000 to 100,000 dead bodies in Northern Mexico as a direct result of our open southern border.  We talk about all the crisis in the Middle East, Syria and Iraq.  Horrible stuff happening there, but on our southern border we&#8217;ve got 100,000 dead bodies just south of our border, and friends, here&#8217;s the deal.  When the organized crime starts making all of this money, which they are making a ton of money right now, they destroy civil society in northern Mexico.  Friends, if you&#8217;re a judge, and I know Louie Gohmert is a judge, you understand this as well as anybody.  If you&#8217;re a judge, a police officer, a politician, a mayor in northern Mexico, in many cases you are either on the payroll of the organized crime or you are dead, which is why there&#8217;s this 70,000 to 100,000 dead bodies, many in mass graves in northern Mexico right now.  The southern border is a national security issue as much as it is anything, and I&#8217;m going to talk for a second about civilized society and how it&#8217;s being lost because we&#8217;re unwilling to actually enforce the law.  The Secure Fence Act, which was passed before I got there, requires 100 percent operational control of the southern border, and yet the president doesn&#8217;t enforce that law.</p>
<p>But here&#8217;s the situation, I used to mention in the bio, I&#8217;m a Navy pilot.  I flew combat in Afghanistan in 2002.  I flew combat in Iraq in 2003. In 2010, I joined a reserve squadron and I started flying counter-narcotics missions in Central and South America.  My squadron alone, VAW77, the world famous Night Wolves, we used to bust $2 billion worth of cocaine every year on the high seas, $2 billion.  My squadron was one of many units in the military that did this kind of operation.  My squadron got eliminated.  That means $2 billion worth of cocaine is coming into our country that didn&#8217;t use to come into our country and $2 billion worth of cash is going to organized crime in northern Mexico and Central America.  What do you think that does to those countries?  And by the way, my squadron was one of many military units that have been cut under the sequester, and it is decimating the Department of Defense, in ways right now that the American public doesn&#8217;t realize, but I&#8217;ll give you an example.</p>
<p>Nicaragua calls the United States and they say we&#8217;re losing our civil society here in Nicaragua, our judges, our politicians, our police officers.  We&#8217;ve got high crime rates.  The organized crime is controlling our country.  We need your help with some counter drug operations, to which the United States says, sorry, can&#8217;t help you.  Who does Nicaragua call next?  The Russians.  The Russians are more than happy to provide the intelligence surveillance reconnaissance assets.  The Russians are more than happy to provide the ships on the ocean, to do the counter-narcotics operations.  The only thing the Russians are asking in return is military basing.  Do they want military basing for those assets to encounter drug operations?  No.  They want military basing for long-range strategic bombers in our hemisphere, and by the way, Nicaragua is not the only country in our hemisphere under negotiations for long-range strategic bombing for Russian bombers right now.  You&#8217;ve got Cuba and Venezuela.  Friends, all of this is a national security issue.</p>
<p>The other day, I looked up Homeland Security.  There&#8217;s leaked information from Homeland Security of how many folks have come across the southern border from Guinea and Sierra Leone and Liberia.  Friends, it&#8217;s almost 500 people that have been caught coming across the southern border in 2014 from those three countries which have the greatest outbreak of Ebola.  Almost 500 people caught.  The GAO says that one out of every five gets caught, which means there&#8217;s thousands in this country from those countries that are just unaccounted for completely.  Friends, the southern border of the United States is a national security issue.  It&#8217;s a national health security issue, and here&#8217;s the important thing I want everybody in this room to take away: The children are victims.  It is not their fault, and we don&#8217;t not like them.  The humanitarian thing to do, the right thing to do, the thing that will save lives and protect them is to enforce the law.</p>
<p>So when you think about foreign policy and national security, friends, it starts right here at home and I just talked about Nicaragua and the Russian military basing that is potentially going to occur there because of our absence, and I want to be really clear about what Russian is up to.  They&#8217;ve invaded Georgia.  They’re occupying South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia.  They&#8217;re moving the borders towards Tbilisi.  They&#8217;ve got 80,000 troops in Armenia.  They&#8217;ve cancelled energy contracts with Azerbaijan.  That&#8217;s all in the south caucuses.  You go over to Eastern Europe, the Baltic States.  Remember the Baltic States enthusiastically joined the European Union and NATO at the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Well, because of that Russia had to cut off their energy in the dead of winter.  People had to suffer.  People had to die.  In Poland in the Czech Republic they were building a missile defense shield.  Why were they building a missile defense shield in Poland?  It had nothing to do with the Russians.  It’s because Iran is building longer range missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads and the Europeans said, we’ve got to have a missile defense shield to which Vladimir Putin said, if you keep building that missile defense shield, he said this through his generals, he said, we&#8217;re going to have nuclear war in Poland and the Czech Republic, and I&#8217;m sure everybody in this room remembers when the President of the United States met with Medvedev after that incident. He said wait until after my next election.  I&#8217;ll have the flexibility to bring down that missile defense shield and guess what happened.  He got elected.  The missile defense shield came down and then the Russians moved very quickly to give Edward Snowden asylum.  Friends, here is the lesson, and every lesson of history teaches this: Weakness is provocative and the more we demonstrate weakness the more we will be taken advantage of and the more provocative the enemies of the United States will be.</p>
<p>Then we get to Ukraine, Yanukovych.  This was Thanksgiving.  It was a year ago.  Yanukovych was trying to enter into an agreement with the European Union.  It was social reform, political reform, economic reform.  He wasn&#8217;t joining the European Union, but it included trade, and if you remember Vladimir Putin himself flew to Kiev on our Thanksgiving Day and he said if you sign that agreement we&#8217;re going to cut your energy off, and remember it was going into winter.  It was Thanksgiving Day and they did this before December 31, 2005.  In Ukraine people suffered, people died, they did it in 2009 as well.  So now Yanukovych makes the decision okay I&#8217;m going to align with Moscow temporarily.  Why?  Because he wants to keep energy for his people through the winter.  His people revolt.  Why?  They want freedom.  They want independence.  As people revolt Kiev gets set on fire and then Russia uses that as an excuse to invade and occupy Crimea and make no mistake, regardless of what the State Department says, Russia is now occupying broader eastern Ukraine.  That is happening right now and let&#8217;s talk about where else Russia is active. They&#8217;re helping the Assad regime in Syria, propping them up.  The Mullahs in Iran.  They&#8217;re going around the sanctions because Russia is enabling it.  19,000 nuclear centrifuges in Iran.  I&#8217;m sorry, there is no peaceful nuclear program that needs 19,000 nuclear centrifuges, and under the President&#8217;s P5+1 Joint Plan of Action they&#8217;re going to continue to allow Iran to enrich uranium with 9,000 plus nuclear centrifuges. They&#8217;re not even mentioning the heavy water reactor for plutonium in Iraq. The facility in Parchin which is responsible for creating the devices that can fly on long-range missiles, and I&#8217;m talking about of course nuclear capabilities. None of these are being talked about in the P5+1 Joint Plan of Action on Iran and I&#8217;m going to anchor here for one second.</p>
<p>There is a reason what the President is doing right now to accommodate Iran is wrong and it is because it is extremely dangerous and destabilizing for the best ally the United States has in the Middle East, Israel.  And I will say this on Israel, the Land of Judea and Samaria is not occupied territory.  It belongs to the Jewish people who have had a relationship with that land for over 4,000 years.  And neither the President of the United States or the United Nations has any authority to give that land away.  Only Israel has the authority to negotiate over the land that belongs to Israel, period, end of story.  So you think about what&#8217;s happening in the world and you see that weakness is indeed provocative.  When you think about what Russia is doing, and by the way here&#8217;s an easy answer on the Russian issue.  People don&#8217;t realize this.  Russia relies on energy for 53 percent of its revenue to the Kremlin.  Fifty-three percent of the revenue to the Kremlin is from the export of energy and 84 percent of that energy is going to Eastern Europe, who by the way send ambassadors to my office in Washington, D.C. asking us to send our energy because they no longer want to be dependent on Moscow.  There is an easy way to solve this crisis.  We could dry up 53 percent of Russia&#8217;s revenue simply by exporting American energy.  And interestingly, it&#8217;s not Moscow that&#8217;s preventing us from exporting American energy.  It&#8217;s Washington, D.C.  Friends there are solutions here and, by the way, here&#8217;s the thing: That&#8217;s not a sanction, that&#8217;s allowing the free market to be free, and I know people in this room believe in free markets.  It doesn&#8217;t require firing a shot. It doesn&#8217;t require a sanction, and, oh, by the way, Russia has recently seen fit to send long-range bombers to the Gulf of Mexico.  I don&#8217;t know if you guys have read these reports, and interestingly they&#8217;re defense minister came back and said, well, that&#8217;s not going to work as long as energy prices are about $80.00 a barrel.  We can&#8217;t afford to do this.  Friends energy prices are going to come back and it&#8217;s up to the United States to actually fill the void that everybody understands is happening in Eastern Europe as it relates to energy.</p>
<p>I want to, I&#8217;m going to close here.  I know Ann told me not to take a long time so I&#8217;m not going to take a long time.  I want to close here. Actually, I&#8217;m going to say one thing.  I have to talk about ISIS.  I have to talk about the Middle East and then I&#8217;m going to close.  I flew combat in Afghanistan in 2002.  I flew combat in Iraq in 2003.  Our Americans, in 2002, or, actually, I don&#8217;t &#8212; it was early in the war &#8212; we damaged a guy named al-Zarqawi.  He was a Lieutenant to Osama Bin Laden.  You guys probably remember al-Zarqawi.  It was compliments of a 500-pound bomb, compliments of the United States Air Force, that damaged al-Zarqawi, and as a Navy pilot that pains me to say that the Air Force dropped that weapon, and I say that with all due respect to Governor Rick Perry who&#8217;s in the front row here who&#8217;s an Air Force pilot himself.  We&#8217;re good, he says we&#8217;re good.  Thank you. sir.  But here&#8217;s the important thing: al-Zarqawi was in Afghanistan, he was part of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. He was a Lieutenant to Osama Bin Laden, and when we damaged him, his ribs, his leg &#8212; he went to Uday Hussein&#8217;s hospital in Iraq.  That&#8217;s where he went to get his care, and at Uday Hussein&#8217;s hospital he got cured and then he became the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and ultimately he was killed compliments of two 500-pound bombs of the United States Air Force, but not before he trained his own lieutenant, al-Baghdadi, who now is the leader of ISIS.  Friends, this is an al-Qaeda affiliated force.  All of the authorities necessary to destroy it currently exist, and the President shouldn&#8217;t go on TV and give us a laundry list of everything he won&#8217;t do and, oh, by the way, when he gives us that laundry list he&#8217;s giving it to the enemies of the United States.  What he should do is he should go on TV and tell us what he&#8217;s already done to eliminate this threat, and it could have been eliminated, and if you go back to 2006 when Obama was a senator, he said these words.  He said a precipitous withdraw from Iraq would lead to &#8220;chaos, terrorism, ethnic cleansing, genocide.&#8221;  He said it would engulf broad swaths of the Middle East and endanger the United States of America.  Senator Obama in 2006.  Then he ran for President.</p>
<p>Well that message wasn&#8217;t going to work when you&#8217;re running for President, so then he said it was an unjust war.  That we took our eye off the ball, which was Afghanistan, and he&#8217;s going to be the President that would end this war.  Then he became President, and if you look at what happened next, he had his own Iraq team.  Ambassador Crocker, General Petraeus.  They said keep 20,000 to 24,000 troops in Iraq.  Keep them because we&#8217;ve had all these gains from the surge.  If you remember the Iraqi economy was growing. Things were at peace.  You had an inclusive government, stability and his team said keep 20,000 to 24,000 troops.  You have to have that or else we&#8217;re going to lose the gains of the surge, and the President said, no, I promised something else, give me a different plan, and they come back with a different plan, and they said keep 10,000 troops.  It&#8217;s going to require more risk.  By the way, when they say more risk, for those of us in the military that means more of us are going to suffer.  It will require more risk, but we can sustain the gains of the surge with 10,000 troops.  The President said, no, I promised something else.  Then it was the President himself in a phone call with Malaki who said that any status of forces agreement we come to has to be ratified by the Iraqi Parliament, and, friends, for those of us in the military the status of forces agreement is how we have diplomatic immunity.  It is how when we fight in a foreign country we fall under American law not under foreign law, and that&#8217;s critically important if you want to have a foreign fighter.  And the President, in a phone call with Malaki &#8212; historically all the status of forces agreement is, is an exchange of diplomatic letters.  It&#8217;s our State Department and their diplomats saying we&#8217;re going to exchange diplomatic letters, Americans have diplomatic immunity.  That&#8217;s all it had ever been, but because the President wanted a zero-two presence in Iraq, ultimately he said it has to be ratified by the Iraqi Parliament, knowing full well that the Iraqi Parliament can&#8217;t agree on what day of the week it is, let alone how many American troops need to be in Iraq.  The agreement was scuttled.  Every last troop came home.  And just as Senator Obama predicted in 2006, chaos, terrorism, ethnic cleansing, genocide.  It engulfs broad swaths of the Middle East and it&#8217;s a danger to the United States of America.</p>
<p>Al-Baghdadi has said himself that the next confrontation will be directly against the United States of America.  Friends, al-Qaeda was a terrorist organization.  ISIS is a caliphate.  It has an army.  It is well trained.  It is well financed.  It is well equipped.  They&#8217;re recruiting from throughout the world and they are looking for people that have American passports, and indeed they have recruited hundreds of Americans to join their ranks, many of which the administration has already admitted have come back to the United States.  Friends, this is a very real threat.  It has to be taken seriously, and what I will tell you is this: This idea that we are going to train and equip so-called &#8220;moderate Syrians&#8221; is not gonna work.  Here&#8217;s what they said, we&#8217;re gonna have 5,000 troops in a year; 5,000 moderate Syrian rebels in a year.  By the way, a lot of them have already fled and turned over weapons to ISIS and 5,000 &#8212; I gave a speech, in fact, I talked to Mike at the Red State Convention down in Fort Worth, Texas.  I hear a clap for Fort Worth. And at the time in that speech I was talking about how dangerous ISIS was because they&#8217;ve got 15,000 troops in their army.  Well now the CIA unclassified is saying that it&#8217;s 30,000 troops in a matter of just a couple of months, and again now they&#8217;ve got heavy armor, American tanks, Abrams Tanks, with ISIS flags flying on the top.  This idea that we&#8217;re gonna train and equip so-called moderates, it hasn&#8217;t worked.  If you look at what weapons they have right now, it&#8217;s because we train and equip the Iraqi Army, which fled at the first conflict.  Friends, this is going to require American leadership, and this is a critically important thing that America has to understand.  Without us, it&#8217;s only going to grow, and the longer we wait the worse it gets, and I want to be clear again why this is so dangerous not only to us, but ISIS has its sights set on Israel.  This is a threat to Israel, our greatest ally in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Now, sure.  I would like to, I&#8217;m gonna close now.  At this time I really am.  I see Mike standing over here.  I might take a few more minutes just to upset Ann Coulter.  Okay here&#8217;s a &#8212; I&#8217;m in such trouble.  When I first got elected a friend of mine came to me and he said, he worked really hard, he delivered all kinds of signs throughout the neighborhood.  I challenged an incumbent Republican in a Republican primary which is very difficult and it&#8217;s very hard to find friends when you&#8217;re doing that, but this guy was loyal to me from day one, he worked really hard and we overcame millions of dollars and 11 years of incumbency, and he said I will never ask from you for anything, but I just want one thing I said, and he said, it&#8217;s the only thing that I will ever ask for, he said I want you to get a group, a bipartisan group, Republicans and Democrats alike, and I want you to go down to Arlington National Cemetery and sit there for an hour together and reflect on all the sacrifice that has been given for this nation, and a couple of months ago we made that happen.  Four hundred thousand markers.  Hill after hill, row after row, mile after mile.  Freshman class Republicans and Democrats alike reflecting on the sacrifice and, friends, that is a very small portion of all the sacrifice that has been given for this great country.  One of the markers, there is a gentleman named Martin Treptow who fought in World War I.  Ronald Reagan talked about him in his first inaugural address, and he died on the Western Front delivering messages back and forth between battalions, and when they recovered his body they found on him a journal and in that journal they found these words.  It said &#8212; and he was a barber from Illinois who got drafted.  His words said:  &#8220;America must win this war.  Therefore I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure.  I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone.&#8221;</p>
<p>It wasn&#8217;t just a few weeks ago now I went down to a funeral for a friend of mine who died in the Middle East, and this was in Georgia, and my whole squadron &#8212; he got, he was sent, what we call individual augmentation.  He&#8217;s a Navy pilot, but he got sent on the ground to the Middle East, and there he died.  So we were at his funeral.  My whole squadron, VAW77, the Night Wolves, my squadron, which no longer exists to do the counter-drug operations that I&#8217;ve already talked about, but all the Night Wolves gathered and we spent time talking about our friend.  The last time I saw these guys I was just a pilot in the squadron and here I am with my buddies and now I&#8217;m a member of Congress.  Thanks.  And they looked at me and they said, &#8220;Jim, our country is in peril.  We have threats all over the world that will change the landscape for the next generation,&#8221; and it&#8217;s not just foreign, it&#8217;s also domestic.  They said, &#8220;We are willing&#8221; &#8212; they&#8217;re not with 77 anymore, but they&#8217;re all still serving in the reserves somewhere &#8212; &#8220;we are willing, but we&#8217;ve got to have leadership.  We need somebody that will stand up and tell us what needs to be done, &#8217;cause right now we are not feeling it.&#8221;  Friends there is an entire country of people who served this nation in uniform and every single one of them feels the way Martin Treptow felt when he wrote that in his journal and I got to tell you as a member of Congress who&#8217;s serving his first term, I got to tell ya, that is the one thing more than anything else that gives me hope and I really do have a lot of hope.  What is right about America, and I know this has been said before, can fix what is wrong about America and there&#8217;s an entire nation of people that are willing to do the right thing knowing that we need to handoff to the next generation what we ourselves inherited.  Thank you so much for having me.  It&#8217;s an honor to be here.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
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		<title>ISIS Calls for Poisoning and Running Down Westerners</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/danielle-avel/isis-calls-for-poisoning-and-running-down-westerners/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=isis-calls-for-poisoning-and-running-down-westerners</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Nov 2014 05:52:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Danielle Avel]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[car]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[France]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[poison]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[run down]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246044</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Terrorist group calls on Muslims in the West to do their duty. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/isis.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246076" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/isis-450x253.jpg" alt="isis" width="304" height="171" /></a>In a new video, ISIS threatens to murder Westerners through a wide range of new means, including poisoning of food and drink and hit-and-run attacks.  This marks an increase in ambitious threats as ISIS (also known as Islamic State, ISIL, and Daesh) calls on Muslims to wage “jihad in the path of Allah” using easily accessible weapons.</p>
<p>The seven-minute video, entitled, <i>What Are You Waiting For</i>, opens with a group of Francophone ISIS fighters denouncing the West and throwing their French passports into campfire. French is the spoken language in the video, which also contains Arabic and English subtitles.  One jihadi known as Abu Osama Al-Faranci, states: “This is a message from your French brothers who have made Hijra, to the Muslims who are still living in the land of Kufr.”  In other words, it is an appeal by ISIS fighters who have emigrated to lands controlled by the Islamic State to Muslims living in the land of the infidelity.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/unnamed1.jpg"><img class="aligncenter  wp-image-246046" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/unnamed1-450x293.jpg" alt="unnamed" width="413" height="269" /></a>Though the fighters in the video mostly speak to Muslims living in France, they also have a broader audience in mind; for instance, Abu Maryam al-Franci addresses “those Muslims in France and elsewhere.”</p>
<p>The jihadis featured in the video implore Muslims to make “Hijra” and emigrate to lands controlled by the Islamic State. But if Muslims do not emigrate, Abu Maryam (holding a machine gun and a machete) reminds them, “Indeed you have been ordered to fight the Kafir [unbeliever/non-Muslim] wherever you find him” and encourages Muslims in the West to attack civilians in their home countries.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/unnamed2.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-246049" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/unnamed2-450x293.jpg" alt="unnamed2" width="450" height="293" /></a>Abu Salman al-Faranci introduces new methods to entice potential terrorists living in the West to commit murder in France, telling them to “terrorize them and do not allow them to sleep due to fear and horror.” Abu Salman continues, “There are weapons and cars available and targets ready to be hit… Kill them [infidels] and spit in their faces and run over them with your cars.” He goes on: “Even poison is available, so poison the water and food of at least one of the enemies of Allah.”  Abu Maryam hopes that infidels “will even fear travelling to the market.”</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/unnamed3.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-246051" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/unnamed3-450x293.jpg" alt="unnamed3" width="450" height="293" /></a>ISIS has proven itself successful at recruiting thousands of fighters from Western countries to join its ranks.  Should this resonance continue and jihadis living in the West heed the new ISIS call, it would have dire consequences for non-jihadi Muslims; any driver, waiter, or grocery clerk could be perceived as a terrorist in waiting.  For all of us, ISIS’ latest message hopes to turn a stroll down the street into a walk of terror and to turn our food and drinks into recipes for murder.</p>
<p><i>Danielle Avel is an investigative researcher and photojournalist. She can be reached through her </i><a href="http://danielleavel.com/"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>website</i></span></a><i>, on </i><a href="https://twitter.com/DanielleAvel"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Twitter</i></span></a><i> @DanielleAvel and on </i><a href="https://www.facebook.com/Avel.Danielle"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Facebook</i></span></a><i>.</i></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Video: Michael Cutler on &#8220;The Immigration Crisis&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/video-michael-cutler-on-the-immigration-crisis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=video-michael-cutler-on-the-immigration-crisis</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Nov 2014 05:10:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Cutler]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Former Senior Special Agent of the INS unveils a hazardous threat facing our nation. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/kl.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245817" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/kl-450x260.jpg" alt="kl" width="286" height="165" /></a>Former Senior Special Agent of the INS unveils a hazardous threat facing our nation:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/pXthT43Cbok" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></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>
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		<title>Kerry: Global Warming World&#8217;s &#8216;Most Fearsome&#8217; Threat</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/kerry-global-warming-worlds-most-fearsome-threat/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=kerry-global-warming-worlds-most-fearsome-threat</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 04:30:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ebola]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[national security]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243005</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In the face of Ebola and ISIS, the Obama administration reveals its real priorities. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/132156075_21n1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243007" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/132156075_21n1-402x350.jpg" alt="132156075_21n" width="291" height="253" /></a>Speaking at the Wind Technology Testing Center in Boston Massachusetts on October 9<sup>th</sup>, the windsurfer and windbag-in-chief himself, Secretary of State John Kerry, pronounced that climate change, if left unaddressed, will result in the end of times: “Life as you know it on Earth ends,” Kerry said. Last February, Kerry claimed that climate change was the world’s &#8220;most fearsome&#8221; weapon of mass destruction. Not nuclear arms in the hands of the terrorist sponsoring regime of Iran or in the hands of ISIS or al Qaeda. Climate change is the real number #1 national security threat, according to Kerry.</p>
<p>Perhaps Kerry should take his head out of the clouds and take a hard look at the stark reality on earth that we are facing today. Think Ebola and global jihad for starts.</p>
<p>The World Health Organization called the Ebola outbreak &#8220;the most severe, acute health emergency seen in modern times.&#8221; The Ebola epidemic has already killed more than 4,000 people, mostly in the West Africa. But the Ebola virus has spread to other parts of the world, including the United States. A Liberian man who had traveled to the U.S. has already died of Ebola in a Texas hospital. Now we learn that a nurse who treated him at the hospital is infected herself with the virus.</p>
<p>As usual, the Obama administration is scrambling to deal with the crisis by holding lots of meetings and taking half-hearted measures. It has refused to heed calls by an increasing number of people, including a leading epidemiologist, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/06/epidemiologist-stop-the-flights-now/"><span style="color: #0463c1;">David Dausey</span></a>, who works on controlling pandemics and said that we must do “whatever it takes to keep infected people from coming here.” This should include an immediate ban on travel from the countries with the largest rates of infection to the United States. A majority of Americans agree, according to an NBC News online survey. Instead, the Obama administration is more worried about such bans being seen as racist and disrupting the economies of the affected countries in West Africa than protecting the American people and easing their fears.</p>
<p>“We don&#8217;t want to isolate parts of the world,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, earlier this month. John Kerry said that “we need borders to remain open,” while calling as usual for multilateral action by African nations to deal with the crisis. They are wrong. Except for vital medical supplies transported on military aircraft to help stem the further spread of the disease in West Africa, the borders should be closed. The breeding ground in West Africa for Ebola must be fully isolated lest the deadly disease turn into a global pandemic. To paraphrase John Kerry, an unchecked Ebola contagion will bring an end to many lives including possibly in the United States &#8211; a lot sooner than climate change.</p>
<p>ISIS is on the outskirts of Baghdad. It is also on the verge of capturing the key city of Kobani near the Turkish border. While apoplectic and apocalyptic all at the same time about climate change, Kerry sees the jihadist conquests as just part of the “ups” and “downs” there are “in any kind of conflict.” He has talked about so-called &#8220;climate refugees.&#8221; However, despite the threat of imminent ISIS conquest of Kobani and the flood of real refugees attempting to escape slaughter at the hands of the jihadists in Syria, Kerry said that the U.S. has other strategic objectives. “As horrific as it is to watch in real time what is happening in Kobani, you have to step back and understand the strategic objective,” he remarked. Exactly what that strategic objective is, neither Kerry nor President Obama have been able to clearly explain.</p>
<p>Last month at the United Nations headquarters in New York, Kerry told reporters that the U.S. was getting all that it needed in the way of support from Turkey. But that was not true. Turkey has been dragging its feet ever since Kerry made that remark. Only in just the last several days has Turkey finally agreed to allow the use of its bases by coalition forces fighting against ISIS. Turkey still is preventing Kurds living in Turkey from joining their besieged Kurdish colleagues in Syria to save Kobani. And although Turkey is the NATO member most directly threatened on its border by ISIS, its Islamist government has not been willing to date to contribute any of its own ground troops to fight ISIS and prevent an invasion across its border. If Turkey is invaded by ISIS, will it expect the U.S. and other NATO members to come to its aid with air and ground combat forces under the collective security provisions of the NATO treaty?  What good is Turkey as a member of NATO and purported “ally” of the United States anyway so long as it is led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who shares ISIS’s supremacist Islamist ideology, if not its methods, and has his own caliphate ambitions?</p>
<p>As for what is happening in Iraq – a direct consequence of the Obama administration’s decision to pull all U.S. troops out of the country in 2011 against the advice of military and policy advisers – Kerry said that it is up to the Iraqis to deal with what Kerry himself acknowledged was “an existential threat” to their country. U.S. airstrikes remain too little too late. And military supplies for the Kurds in Iraq to use in serving as the boots in the ground against ISIS in Iraq continue to be supplied through Baghdad rather than directly to the Kurds themselves.</p>
<p>During this past week’s international donor conference in Cairo concerning Gaza reconstruction, Kerry said casually that “There will be ups and there will be downs over the next days as there are in any kind of conflict.” But the conflict with ISIS is not just “any kind of conflict.” And ISIS and its jihadist cohorts are no ordinary combatants with local territorial, political or economic grievances. They are the carriers of the global ideology of Islamic supremacism that threatens, again to paraphrase Kerry, to end life as we know it in a civilized world.</p>
<p>Next to the immediate threats posed by Ebola and global jihad, climate change pales by comparison.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Thank You, ISIS</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/david-horowitz/thank-you-isis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=thank-you-isis</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 04:31:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[beheading]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242795</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The beheadings have achieved what all the warnings from conservatives never could. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bn.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242804" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bn-450x262.jpg" alt="bn" width="283" height="165" /></a><strong>Reprinted from <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/">National Review Online</a>.</strong></p>
<p>Beheadings of innocent human beings are unspeakable acts reflecting the barbaric savagery of the Islamic “holy war” against the West — against us. Yet despite the intentions of their perpetrators, they have had an unexpected utility. Their gruesome images have entered the living rooms and consciousness of ordinary Americans and waked them up.</p>
<p>The barbarity of the Islamic movement for world domination has actually been evident for decades: in the suicide bombing of the Marine compound in Lebanon in 1982, in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, in the suicide attacks on Jews — men, women, and children — during the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000, in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, and in the beheadings perpetrated in Iraq by al-Qaeda’s Abu al-Zarqawi and the Salafist group known as Ansar al-Islam during the Iraq War.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the response to these barbarities on the part of the Democratic party and the liberal elites has been to condemn and marginalize anyone who called them barbarous. In their eyes, it is racist to use the word “barbarism” to describe the acts of any Third World people. To associate Islam with the Islamists was Islamophobic. President Obama is still trapped in this time warp, denying in so many words that the Islamic State is Islamic. For America’s commander-in-chief to make such an obviously moronic statement about his country’s enemy in wartime reflects how deeply settled is the ideology of protecting the Islamists (and jeopardizing the innocent). Even Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, could not bring himself to describe the enemy as Islamic. Settling on “War on Terror” as a descriptive term was a way of eliding the fact that the savagery was motivated by not by nihilism but by Islamic faith. The Obama Democrats have gone even deeper into denial, eliminating “War on Terror” from the government vocabulary and replacing it with “overseas contingency operations.”</p>
<p>For more than a decade, a handful of conservatives, of whom I was one, tried to sound the alarm about the Islamist threat. For our efforts, we were ridiculed, smeared as bigots, and marginalized as Islamophobes. In 2004 I published a book called Unholy Alliance about the Islamist movement and the support it was receiving from the American Left. For my concern, Harvard professor and Islam expert Noah Feldman dismissed me as a “relic” in the New York Times Book Review. It was the last time the Times mentioned one of my books.</p>
<p>In 2006 and 2007, I organized nearly 200 “teach-ins” on American campuses, which I called “Islamo-Fascism Awareness” weeks. The idea was to legitimize the term “Islamo-fascist” as a description of the enemy confronting us. These demonstrations were attacked by the Muslim Students Association, which is a recruiting organization for the Muslim Brotherhood, and by Students for Justice in Palestine, a front for the terrorist party Hamas. They also inspired the contempt of the liberal Left. Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo devoted two YouTube videos to ridiculing me for holding the demonstrations. Campus leftists called the students who organized them racists, bigots, and Islamophobes.</p>
<p>Resolutions denouncing critics of Islamic misogyny and terror as “Islamophobes” were unanimously passed by leftist-run student councils at UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and a dozen other elite schools. Lengthy reports on the menace of Islamophobia targeted me and other speakers at our campus demonstrations, including Robert Spencer and Daniel Pipes. These reports, costing tens of thousands of dollars to produce, were published by FAIR, CAIR, the egregious Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Center for American Progress — the brain trust of the Democratic party.</p>
<p>And then came ISIS. The horrific images of the beheadings, the reports of mass slaughters, and the threats to the American homeland have accomplished what our small contingent of beleaguered conservatives could never have achieved by ourselves. They brought images of these Islamic fanatics and savages into the living rooms of the American public, and suddenly the acceptable language for describing the enemy began to change. “Savages” and “barbarians” began to roll off the tongues of evening-news anchors and commentators who never would have dreamed of crossing that line before, for fear of offending the politically correct.</p>
<p>Virtually every major Muslim organization in America is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, the fountainhead of Islamic terror. Huma Abedin, who was deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (and is still Clinton’s confidante and principal aide), comes from a family of Muslim Brotherhood leaders. Yet legislators who have the power to investigate these matters are still intimidated from even raising them. Representative Michele Bachmann, who did raise them, was excoriated as a racist not only by the Left but also by John Boehner and John McCain.</p>
<p>Language is a weapon in the battle against the threat we face. We cannot fight a war effectively when we cannot name the enemy or describe his methods or examine his influence on our own policy. The Islamic State has created an opportunity for common sense and realism to prevail. The tragedy is that it has taken the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Christians in the Middle East and the ongoing extermination of the Catholic presence in Iraq to begin to wake people up. And, unfortunately, the president is still asleep or, less charitably, is hostile to American purposes, is hostile to the military that defends us, and identifies more with the Islamic world that has produced these forces who would destroy us than with the country he is sworn to defend.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Obama’s Absurd West Point Speech</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/obamas-absurd-west-point-speech/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-absurd-west-point-speech</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 29 May 2014 04:56:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dwight C. Holton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[James Cole]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[threat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West Point Speech]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=226462</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Terrorism is our “most direct threat.” We just can’t talk about it.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/we.gif"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-226466" alt="we" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/we-450x280.gif" width="315" height="196" /></a>Barack Obama gave the commencement address at the United States Military Academy at West Point on Wednesday, and piled absurdity upon absurdity.</p>
<p>“For the foreseeable future, the most direct threat to America, at home and abroad, remains terrorism,” he said, but steadfastly refrained throughout his speech from explaining the source of that terrorism threat, much less its ideological foundation or goal. This is, of course, the President who in October 2011 placed off-limits any investigation of the beliefs, motives and goals of jihad terrorists, overseeing the scrubbing of all counter-terror training materials of all mention of Islam and jihad in connection with terrorism.</p>
<p>Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole <a href="http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/dag/speeches/2011/dag-speech-111019.html">declared at that time</a> that he had “recently directed all components of the Department of Justice to re-evaluate their training efforts in a range of areas, from community outreach to national security.” This “reevaluation” removed all references to Islam in connection with any examination of Islamic jihad terror activity.</p>
<p>At the same time, Dwight C. Holton, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon, <a href="http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/doj_official_holder_firmly_committed_to_eliminating_anti-muslim_training.php">emphasized</a> that training materials for the FBI would be purged of everything politically incorrect: “I want to be perfectly clear about this: training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for. They will not be tolerated.”</p>
<p>Holton said that he had spoken with Attorney General Eric Holder about FBI training materials <a href="http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/doj_official_holder_firmly_committed_to_eliminating_anti-muslim_training.php">that Holton claimed</a> were “egregiously false,” and that Holder was “firmly committed to making sure that this is over….we’re going to fix it.” Holton said that this “fix” was particularly urgent because the rejected training materials posed “a significant threat to national security, because they play into the false narrative propagated by terrorists that the United States is at war with Islam.”</p>
<p>Cole declared: “We must never allow our sorrow and anger at the senseless attack of 9/11 to blind us to the great gift of our diversity.” And this, he said, must involve a rejection of the stereotyping of Muslims: “All of us must reject any suggestion that every Muslim is a terrorist or that every terrorist is a Muslim.  As we have seen time and again – from the Oklahoma City bombing to the recent attacks in Oslo, Norway – no religion or ethnicity has a monopoly on terror.”</p>
<p>Of course, the controversial training materials did not really claim that all Muslims are terrorists or that all terrorists are Muslims, and it is noteworthy that Cole had to resort to dismissive caricatures to make his point. And the end result of this whitewashing effort, three years later, is that the President of the United States has to acknowledge that “the most direct threat to America, at home and abroad, remains terrorism,” but cannot bring himself to explain where that terrorism is coming from.</p>
<p>And the remedy he offered was no more realistic and showed no signs of being developed by people who were prepared to deal with harsh realities. “Today,” he announced at West Point, “…I am calling on Congress to support a new counterterrorism partnerships fund of up to $5 billion, which will allow us to train, build capacity and facilitate partner countries on the front lines.”</p>
<p>There is such a comic opera feel to all this, it’s a shame that Gilbert and Sullivan aren’t around. The U.S. is forking over another $5 billion to fight against those whom Obama referred to only as “terrorists” and “extremists” — that is, $5 billion to fight against a foe that U.S. officials are afraid to name, and officially forbidden to name.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, this radical new solution that Obama is proposing – spending money to help other countries fight against jihad terrorists (not that he ever called them that) – is nothing really new at all. It has been done for years. Right after 9/11, George W. Bush made a deal with then-President Parvez Musharraf of Pakistan, under which the U.S. gave billions to Pakistan every year to fight these shadowy “extremists,” only for the Pakistani government (which also affected high dudgeon at the killing of Osama bin Laden) to funnel a good bit of that money to those very same “extremists” — with no consequences from the U.S., of course.</p>
<p>Barack Obama is the very model of a modern U.S. President.</p>
<p>Also, if al Qaeda is “on the ropes” and all that, why do we need to spend another $5 billion to fight them?</p>
<p>Obama’s speech was full of the dissimulations and half-truths one would expect from someone who has steadfastly tried to ignore and deny reality, only to have it keep breaking in on his fantasies. He desperately hopes that with a few small adjustments to allow for undeniable realities, he could maintain the principal substance of his fantasies – but reality will keep breaking in, and chipping away at these cherished falsehoods, until there is nothing left of them at all. We may only hope that by the time that happens, there is something still left of us.</p>
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		<title>Russia&#8217;s Threat in the Americas</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/russias-threat-in-the-americas/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=russias-threat-in-the-americas</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Mar 2014 04:56:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hague]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Latin America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nicaragua]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[threat]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=222049</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Putin's disturbing military build-up in our own backyard. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/vladimir-putin-nicolas-maduro-evo-morales-cumbre-gas-rusia-foto-efe.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-222122" alt="vladimir-putin-nicolas-maduro-evo-morales-cumbre-gas-rusia-foto-efe" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/vladimir-putin-nicolas-maduro-evo-morales-cumbre-gas-rusia-foto-efe.jpg" width="280" height="186" /></a></span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">President Obama dismissed Russia as no more than a “regional power” in remarks he made to the press in The Hague on March 25</span><sup style="line-height: 1.5em;">th</sup><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, where he was attending a summit meeting on nuclear security. “Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors not out of strength, but out of weakness,” he said.</span></p>
<p>True, the Russian Federation is a shadow of the Soviet empire in its heyday. And Russia is not driven by a global Communist ideology that it seeks to spread to every part of the world in opposition to the capitalist democratic model, as the Soviet Union tried to do. But that does not make Russia a weak neighborhood bully posing little threat beyond its “immediate neighbors,” as President Obama seems to think. Mitt Romney was right when he said during the 2012 presidential campaign that Russia is “our number one geopolitical foe.”</p>
<p>First, consider Russia’s nuclear arsenal. According to a <a href="http://bos.sagepub.com/content/69/3/71.full.pdf">Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists study</a> published in May 2013, it was estimated that, as of March 2013, Russia had “a military stockpile of approximately 4,500 nuclear warheads, of which roughly 1,800 strategic warheads are deployed on missiles and at bomber bases.” Russia is also “modernizing its nuclear forces, replacing Soviet-era ballistic missiles with fewer improved missiles. In a decade, almost all Soviet-era weapons will be gone, leaving a smaller but still effective force that will be more mobile than what it replaced.”</p>
<p>While these are only estimates, since Russia is not transparent about how many nuclear weapons it has, the size of Russia’s arsenal and its ambitious modernization program do not connote the image of weakness that Obama wants to paint of Russia as a mere “regional” power. By way of comparison, the United States “has an estimated 4,650 nuclear warheads available for delivery by more than 800 ballistic missiles and aircraft,” according to a <a href="http://bos.sagepub.com/content/70/1/85.full.pdf">Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists study</a> published in January 2014.</p>
<p>These numbers and Russia’s modernization strategy should be placed in the context of a very disturbing statement made last December by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Dmitry Rogozin: “We have never diminished the importance of nuclear weapons—the weapon of requital—as the great balancer of chances.” Rogozin has said that Russia was prepared to use nuclear weapons if attacked first even by only conventional weapons.</p>
<p>Russia is also on the march far from its immediate neighborhood and much closer to the United States. According to Gen. James Kelly, commander of U.S. Southern Command, who discussed his concerns regarding the increased presence of Russia in Latin America at a Senate hearing earlier this month, there has been a “noticeable uptick in Russian power projection and security force personnel. It has been over three decades since we last saw this type of high-profile Russian military presence.”</p>
<p>Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced last month plans to build military bases in such countries as Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, as well as outside of Latin America including Vietnam, the Seychelles, and Singapore. “The talks are under way, and we are close to signing the relevant documents,” Shoigu said. Russia is also on the lookout for refueling sites for Russian strategic bombers on patrol.</p>
<p>Russia is already a major arms supplier to Venezuela, whose navy has conducted joint maneuvers with Russian ships. At least four Russian Navy ships visited Venezuela last August, the Venezuelan daily El Universal reported.</p>
<p>“Two Russian Tupolev Tu-160 Blackjack strategic bombers flew last October from an airbase in southwestern Russia and landed in Venezuela in routine exercise,” Russia&#8217;s Defense Ministry announced, according to the Voice of Russia. “The nuclear-capable bombers, which took off from the Engels airbase in the Volga region, ‘flew over the Caribbean, the eastern Pacific and along the southwestern coast of the North American continent, and landed at Maiquetia airfield in Venezuela,’ the ministry said in a statement.”</p>
<p>Nicolas Maduro, the President of Venezuela, is so enamored of Putin that he expressed support last year for the Russian president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. During a visit to Moscow by Maduro last summer, Maduro and Putin reaffirmed, in Putin’s words, &#8220;their wish for continuing their course towards strategic cooperation in all sectors.&#8221;</p>
<p>Putin was the first Russian president to visit Cuba since the collapse of the Soviet Union. <a href="http://english.pravda.ru/russia/politics/01-08-2012/121804-russia_army_base-0/">Pravda quoted Putin</a> as declaring in 2012 that Russia gained the consent of the Cuban leadership to place “the latest mobile strategic nuclear missiles ‘Oak’ on the island,” supposedly as a brush back against U.S. actions to create a buffer zone near Russia. Last month, according to a report by Fox News Latino, “the intelligence-gathering ship Viktor Leonov docked in Havana’s harbor without warning.” It was reportedly armed with 30mm guns and anti-aircraft missiles.</p>
<p>Left-wing Argentinian President Cristina Fernández is intent on forging closer relations with Russia, inviting Russia to invest in fuel projects. In return for Russia’s support of Argentina’s quest to annex the Falkland Islands, Fernández supported Putin’s grab of Crimea. Crimea &#8220;has always belonged to Russia,&#8221; she said, just as the Falkland Islands have &#8220;always belonged to Argentina.&#8221; She added that the Crimean referendum was &#8220;one of the famous referendums of self-determination.&#8221;</p>
<p>Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa praised Russia as a “great nation” during a visit to Moscow last October after Putin pledged to invest up to $1.5 billion into new domestic energy projects in Ecuador. Correa said Ecuador was also interested in buying Russian military equipment.</p>
<p>Brazil is planning to purchase short-to-medium-range surface-to-air Pantsir S1 missile batteries and Igla-S shoulder-held missiles from Russia. It has already bought 12 Mi-35 attack helicopters. This is all part of what Brazil views as a growing strategic relationship with Russia, as Brazil leads efforts to counter U.S. electronic surveillance that included alleged spying on Brazilian citizens. &#8220;More than buying military equipment, what we are seeking with Russia is a strategic partnership based on the joint development of technology,&#8221; said Brazilian Defense Minister Celso Amorim after meeting with his Russian counterpart.</p>
<p>After Daniel Ortega, the leader of the Sandinista revolution, returned to power in Nicaragua in 2007, Russia and Nicaragua have moved in the direction of a strategic economic and military relationship. In October 2013, for example, Nicaragua and Russia signed a memorandum of international security cooperation. Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev noted during his visit to Nicaragua that “Nicaragua is an important partner and friend of Russia in Latin America,” pointing to the coincidence of views of the two countries’ authorities “on many issues.” For his part, Ortega said: “We are very grateful and very much appreciate the Russian people’s support of our country.”  Ortega welcomed the arrival of two Russian strategic bombers Tupolev Tu-160.  Ortega added that Putin had sent him a letter, in which the Russian leader reaffirmed his “readiness to continue to work together with our country.”</p>
<p>According to a March 2014 report by the Strategic Culture Foundation, a progressive, pro-Russian think tank, Nicaragua’s</p>
<blockquote><p>parliament has ratified a cabinet resolution allowing Russian military divisions, ships and aircraft to visit the republic during the first half of 2014 for experience sharing and training of military personnel of the Central American republic. Furthermore, the parliament has approved the participation of Russian military personnel in joint patrols of the republic&#8217;s territorial waters in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean from January 1 through June 30, 2015.</p></blockquote>
<p>Russia is also forging a closer relationship with El Salvador, which has been led by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (“FMLN”) that arose out of a left-wing guerrilla movement from the country&#8217;s 1979-1992 civil war. Leftist ex-guerrilla Sanchez Ceren has just won the presidential election. He can be expected to build on the “Federal Law On Ratification of the Agreement on the Foundations of Relations” between the Russian Federation and the Republic of El Salvador, signed by Vladimir Putin in November 2012. It was the first interstate agreement between the two countries since they established diplomatic relations in 1992.</p>
<p>In fact, given Ceren’s background &#8211; one of five top guerrilla commanders during the civil war that left 76,000 dead and over 12,000 missing &#8211; we can expect a more avowedly anti-U.S. government that will welcome Russia’s outstretched arms. After all, the FMLN leadership during the civil war described its own ideology as “Marxism-Leninism.”</p>
<p>On a regional level, the Strategic Culture Foundation has reported that the Central American Common Market, which includes Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, “advocates the creation of a free trade zone with the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.”</p>
<p>Foreign ministers from members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and Russia declared their intention, after meeting in Moscow last May, that they were working to establish a means of continuous dialogue “to discuss and synchronize positions on international issues.” CELAC includes thirty-three countries in the Americas, but the United States and Canada are excluded.</p>
<p>&#8220;Imperial Russia never left, to be blunt,&#8221; Stephen Blank, senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council said as quoted in Deutsche Welle. “What they&#8217;re looking for in Latin America is great-power influence, they have never forsaken that quest. There&#8217;s no doubt that Moscow is dead serious about seeking naval bases and port access in Latin America.&#8221;</p>
<p>In the Middle East, also out of range of Russia’s “immediate neighbors,” Russia continues to prop up the Assad regime in Syria with increased shipment of arms. Reuters reported in January 2014 that “[I]n recent weeks Russia has stepped up supplies of military gear to Syria, including armored vehicles, drones and guided bombs.” Putin also managed to out-maneuver Obama regarding the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons program, buying more time for Assad and enhancing his legitimacy.</p>
<p>Moreover, Russia is running interference for Assad at the United Nations Security Council, where Russia, along with China, vetoed a series of resolutions aimed at condemning and sanctioning the Assad regime. Its veto power in the Security Council puts Russia in parity with the other four permanent members of the Security Council – the U.S., the United Kingdom, France and China. As Russia demonstrated with regard to Syria as well as the veto it recently exercised to block a Security Council resolution on Crimea, Russia is exploiting this lever of “soft power” to exert its influence on the global stage.</p>
<p>Russia is also continuing to cultivate stronger ties with Iran, while also participating in the negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program that include the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany. Russia is one of Iran’s leading trading partners, selling Iran nuclear technology and arms. When Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif visited Moscow last January he extended an invitation to Vladimir Putin to visit Tehran. Putin replied: “I hope to visit you in Tehran very soon. We have a large bilateral agenda. This relates firstly to our trade and economic ties, of course.” Putin also went out of his way to praise the Iranian regime, declaring that the nuclear negotiations were advancing because of “the efforts of the Iranian authorities and the stance of the Iranian authorities.” More recently, because of the mounting tensions over the Ukraine crisis, Russia has threatened to stop cooperating with respect to the nuclear negotiations with Iran. That may not mean very much, considering Russia’s existing back door dealings with Iran that reduce Iran’s economic incentives to negotiate in good faith. However, just by making this threat and having it paid attention to in Washington and other world capitals, Russia has made a point regarding its influence beyond its “immediate neighbors.”</p>
<p>Finally, there is the whole battleground of cyber warfare which has no geographical boundaries. An article in the winter 2014 publication of <i>inFocus Quarterly</i>, titled <a href="http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/4924/russian-cyber-capabilities">“Russian Cyber Capabilities, Policy and Practice”</a> by David J. Smith, Senior Fellow and Cyber Center Director at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Washington and Director of the Georgian Security Analysis Center in Tbilisi, paints a grim picture.</p>
<p>“Russia—its government and a motley crew of sometimes government-sponsored but always government-connected cyber-criminals and youth group members—has integrated cyber operations into its military doctrine,” according to Mr. Smith. Russia “has used cyber tools against enemies foreign and domestic, and is conducting strategic espionage against the United States.”</p>
<p>After describing the multifaceted Russian approach to information warfare and the government’s close links with the “thriving cyber-criminal industry” and extensive well-trained youth groups all too happy to sell their services to the government, Mr. Smith concluded:  “In sum, Russia—in its capabilities and its intent—presents a major cyber challenge to the United States.”</p>
<p>Russia is not a superpower on the order of the former Soviet Union. But Putin’s animosity towards the United States, coupled with Russia’s expanding role internationally through alliances with countries in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, Russia’s exploitation of its permanent member status on the UN Security Council and its nuclear arms and cyber warfare capabilities, all add up to a very dangerous geopolitical foe.  President Obama needs to wake up to the fact that Vladimir Putin will not be content to play only in his own neighborhood, and that he has a variety of tools at hand to cause serious mischief far from Russia’s own borders.</p>
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		<title>Surviving Obama</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/surviving-obama/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=surviving-obama</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/surviving-obama/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 07 Mar 2014 05:54:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[boycott]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jeffrey goldberg]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netanyahu]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=220529</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president abandons his facade of supporting Israel. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/gty_obama_netanyahu_press_conference_ll_130320_wg.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-220538" alt="gty_obama_netanyahu_press_conference_ll_130320_wg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/gty_obama_netanyahu_press_conference_ll_130320_wg-450x320.jpg" width="270" height="192" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Column-one-Surviving-Obama-344621">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p>Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg minced few words in discussing the interview that US President Barack Obama gave him on the eve of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s latest visit to Washington.</p>
<p>Speaking with journalist Charlie Rose, Goldberg equated Obama’s threat to stop supporting Israel in international forums to the talk of a mafia don. Obama told Goldberg that if Israel doesn’t cut a deal with the Palestinians soon, “our ability to manage the international fallout is going to be limited.” He added, “And that has consequences.”</p>
<p>That statement, Goldberg noted, was a “veiled threat” and “almost up there with, ‘Nice little Jewish state you’ve got there. Hate to see something happen to it.’” Goldberg saw the interview as Obama’s way of showing that he is beginning to abandon the pretense of supporting Israel, now that he no longer faces reelection. In Goldberg’s words, “It’s not that the gloves are coming off. It’s more that the mask of diplomatic language is coming off a little bit.”</p>
<p>Goldberg added that due to the fact that Obama “doesn’t have to run again for anything,” he doesn’t need to pretend feelings for Israel that he doesn’t have, by among other things, going to the AIPAC annual policy conference.</p>
<p>And indeed, Obama has achieved a comfort level with implementing anti-Israel policies. His threat to step aside and let Israel-haters have their way in places like the United Nations or in certain quarters of Europe is of a piece with several steps the he is already reportedly undertaking to harm Israel in various ways.</p>
<p>Before he was reelected in 2012, Obama felt it necessary to align his policies on Iran to the preferences of the US public. And as a consequence, although he voiced harsh criticism of congressional sanctions bills against Iran, he grudgingly signed them into law. (He then proceeded to use the sanctions he opposed but signed as proof that he supported Israel in speeches before Jewish audiences.) Now that he no longer has to concern himself with the wishes of the American public and its representatives in Congress, Obama has dropped the mask of opposition to Iran and forged ahead with a diplomatic process that all but ensures Iran will acquire nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>The same is apparently the case with joint US-Israeli missile defense programs. On Wednesday, it was reported that the administration has slashed funding of those programs by two-thirds for the 2015 fiscal year. Obama touted his previous willingness to fully fund those programs – manifested in his decision not to veto congressional appropriations, despite his stated desire to slash funding – as proof of his administration’s “unprecedented” security cooperation with Israel.</p>
<p>Then there are the low-level bureaucratic sanctions that Obama began enacting against Israel last year. These involve State Department activities that are not subject to easy congressional oversight.</p>
<p>For instance, last week it was reported that last year the State Department drastically decreased the number of Israeli tourist visa applications it approved. The rise in rejection rates has prevented Israel from participating in the visa waiver program.</p>
<p>Foreign Ministry officials told reporters they believe this is a deliberate, premeditated policy.</p>
<p>And this week we learned that last year the State Department rejected hundreds of visa requests from members of Israel’s security services.</p>
<p>Although White House spokesman Jay Carney was quick to claim that Israel’s interception of the Iranian missile ship en route to Gaza on Wednesday morning was the result of US-Israeli intelligence cooperation, the fact is that the US continues to undermine Israel’s covert operations in Iran. Earlier this week, CBS reported that the Obama administration has demanded that Israel stop its reported covert campaign to kill Iranian nuclear scientists in order to delay or block Iran’s nuclear progress.</p>
<p>Obama’s new willingness to threaten Israel and to take the actions he feels it is safe to take to downgrade Israel’s relations with the US will likely only grow after November’s midterm elections.</p>
<p>After the congressional elections, Obama will feel entirely free to attack the US’s closest ally in the Middle East.</p>
<p>So what can Israel do? How can Israel safeguard its interests at a time when the US president publicly trashes and threatens those interests and privately undermines them? Israel already did the most important thing in this regard when voters reelected Netanyahu to lead the government last year. During his trip to the US this week, Netanyahu made clear that he understands the challenge and is competent to handle it.</p>
<p>Since Netanyahu returned to the premiership in January 2009, he has implemented a policy of waiting Obama out. Over the past five years, the prime minister has only directly challenged Obama when he had no choice. And that has been the right course. Little good comes to Israel from open fights with the White House. Such fights should only be engaged when the consequences of having a fight are less bad than the consequences of not fighting.</p>
<p>In his speech at the AIPAC Conference on Tuesday, Netanyahu rebutted every position Obama has staked out on the Palestinians and Iran without ever mentioning Obama’s name. By doing so he energized Israel’s supporters while denying Obama the ability to claim that Netanyahu is unsupportive of his policies.</p>
<p>In other words, he humored the White House while staking out an independent Israeli policy for which he secured the support of Israel’s American backers.</p>
<p>But Netanyahu’s skill in maneuvering around Obama is not enough for Israel to safely weather his presidency. Israel needs an overall strategy for securing its interests.</p>
<p>Such a multi-pronged strategy begins with Iran.</p>
<p>Israel needs to directly attack Iran’s nuclear installations – by covert action as well as through overt military strikes, as required.</p>
<p>According to CBS, after Obama’s diplomatic capitulation to Iran became public, Netanyahu ordered Israel’s intelligence services to concentrate their efforts in Iran on exposing the fraudulence of Iran’s purported commitment to freezing its nuclear progress. But while this is important, exposing Iran’s duplicity is not nearly as important as incapacitating Iran’s nuclear sites.</p>
<p>With Obama now joining Secretary of State John Kerry in openly threatening to passively support a European trade war against Israel, it is imperative that Israel develop every economic opportunity it has to expand its markets. As Netanyahu made clear in his speech to AIPAC, Israel’s technological prowess has already made it a magnet for global investors. But these opportunities should be maximized through further economic liberalization.</p>
<p>In a conversation with Haaretz earlier this week, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz noted that “President Obama has been the president most hostile to the nation of Israel in modern times.”</p>
<p>In a conversation with this writer on Tuesday, Cruz placed the blame for Obama’s success in implementing his anti-Israel policies on the Senate Democrats, led by Majority LeaderHenry Reid.</p>
<p>In his words, “The challenge we are facing is that the number one protector of Obama’s foreign policy has been Harry Reidand the Senate Democrats.”</p>
<p>On the sidelines of the AIPAC conference, Cruz blasted the hypocrisy of Senate Democrats. “At the same time they block the Kirk-Menendez sanctions [bill against Iran] and blame Israel for the impasse in peace negotiations, they proclaim their support for Israel,” he said.</p>
<p>And Cruz is certainly correct.</p>
<p>There can be no doubt that Israel’s strongest supporters today are in the Republican Party.</p>
<p>But it is important to remember that most Democrats also support Israel. They are simply unable politically to withstand the pressures that Obama has brought to bear to force them to stand with him against Israel.</p>
<p>In his speech to AIPAC, Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, who chairs the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee confessed that he was forced to stand down on Iran sanctions due to partisan pressure.</p>
<p>In his words, “When it comes to Iran, I have stood with you and have stood against so many in my own party.”</p>
<p>Menendez’s admission that he couldn’t withstand the pressures that Obama and Reid brought to bear against him indicates that among some Democrats, support for Israel remains strong, but that under Obama, Israel’s Democrat supporters are weak.</p>
<p>While deeply problematic, this is a problem with a limited shelf-life.</p>
<p>If Obama views the midterm elections as the final restraint on his ability to act against the will of the American public, his fellow Democrats likely view the elections as the last time Obama will serve as the head of their party during an election cycle. In the 2016 elections, the Democrat presidential nominee will set the tone for the party, not Obama. Moreover, as the full economic impacts of Obamacare, Obama’s signature domestic policy, become known after the midterm elections, Obama will be even more severely weakened. Consequently, his ability to pressure his Democrat colleagues to toe his line will be diminished.</p>
<p>Finally, given Obama’s obsessive focus on demanding that Israel surrender its land to the Palestinians, it is imperative that Israel develop a strategy for waiting Obama out on this issue.</p>
<p>Obama told Goldberg that Israel must surrender to the Palestinians forthwith, because it has no other option. In his words, “I have not yet heard… a persuasive vision of how Israel survives as a democracy and a Jewish state at peace with its neighbors in the absence of a peace deal with the Palestinians and a two-state solution.</p>
<p>As I explain in my book The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, which was released on Tuesday, Israel has a viable alternative.</p>
<p>It involves applying Israeli law to all of Judea and Samaria and integrating the Palestinians into Israeli society.</p>
<p>Israel would not be endangered demographically or democratically if it adopted this approach, and it would certainly be better off militarily.</p>
<p>Netanyahu has stated his support for establishing a Palestinian state. But he has made clear that he will only agree to a peace deal that protects Israel’s vital interests. While maintaining faith with that position, it would be prudent for him to discuss publicly and at length the fact while a negotiated peace is his preference, there is a fine alternative to a Palestinian terror state in Israel’s strategic and historic heartland.</p>
<p>If the Palestinians are uninterested in negotiating a viable agreement with Israel, then Israel will feel free to adopt an alternative course of applying its laws to Judea and Samaria.</p>
<p>At a minimum, such a move by Netanyahu would discredit and end Obama’s demographic threats, which are based on falsified Palestinian census data. It would place pressure on the Palestinians to show their hand – either embracing peace in a genuine manner, or demonstrating the basic falsity of their protestations of peaceful intentions. Either way, Israel would be better off.</p>
<p>Obama’s newfound courage to begin abandoning his pretense of supporting Israel presents Israel with a new challenge. But it is far from insurmountable. With the proper mix of policies, Israel can absorb Obama’s blows and even to blunt them, as Obama becomes an independent, unrestrained, and weak lame duck president.</p>
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		<title>Obama’s Cold War Denial</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/obamas-cold-war-denial/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-cold-war-denial</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/obamas-cold-war-denial/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Mar 2014 05:35:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crimea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mitt romney]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Ukraine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=220109</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president's dismissal of Russia's threat comes back to haunt him.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/russian-troops-ground-crimea.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-220110" alt="russian-troops-ground-crimea" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/russian-troops-ground-crimea-441x350.jpg" width="309" height="245" /></a></span>President Obama was AWOL on Saturday when his national security team met to discuss the rapidly unfolding events in Ukraine, including Russia’s expanded military presence in the Crimea portion of Ukraine. Only a day before, President Obama had warned Russia that there would be “costs” if it violated Ukraine’s sovereignty. Saturday morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his answer. He thumbed his nose at Obama. Once again, the Obama administration’s vaunted button to “re-set” relations with Russia in a more positive direction has blown up in its face, as Putin continues to play by the rules of realpolitik while Obama flounders. This detached president did not even attend a key national security meeting called to figure out how to best deal with Putin’s latest maneuvers.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Ironically, during the 2012 presidential campaign, President Obama mocked the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for warning about Russia’s “geopolitical” threat. During one of the presidential debates Obama remarked condescendingly about Romney’s warning, “You said Russia. Not Al Qaida. You said Russia. The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because…the cold war’s been over for 20 years.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In words that Obama should repeat to himself every night before he goes to sleep, Romney responded: “Russia, I indicated, is a geopolitical foe…and I said in the same paragraph I said and Iran is the greatest national security threat we face. Russia does continue to battle us in the U.N. time and time again. I have clear eyes on this. I’m not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia or Mr. Putin…”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Romney was right on both counts. Iran, as it pursues its nuclear arms ambitions, is the greatest national security threat that we face. And, as Russia’s willingness to run interference for the Syrian regime at the UN and its present provocative actions in Ukraine prove, Russia under Putin represents a significant geopolitical threat. Obama unfortunately continues to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Iran, as he pursues fruitless negotiations that the Iranian regime is exploiting. And he is now just maybe beginning to take off his rose-colored glasses with respect to Putin’s Russia, as it increasingly flexes its muscles.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Former President George Bush also mistakenly had given Putin the benefit of the doubt back in 2001 when he said, after meeting with Putin, that he thought he could trust the Russian leader. But that was nearly thirteen years ago. Obama has had all the intervening years to observe Putin in action. It became obvious to anyone with his or her eyes wide open that the Russian president operated solely on the basis of realpolitik and was very expert in doing so, as Putin has shown in taking advantage of Obama’s perceived weakness and indecision time and time again.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">With respect to the Ukraine crisis, at Putin’s request, the upper house of the Russian Parliament formally granted him the authority to use military force, not just in Crimea but throughout Ukraine. The Russian parliamentary approval for Putin’s use of military force merely ratified the facts on the ground that had already been occurring, as thousands of armed Russian soldiers, often wearing masks and uniforms without any national insignia, reportedly surrounded the regional parliament building and other government facilities in the Crimean capital city of Simferopol. They also effectively closed the region’s two main airports and took control over key communications hubs.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">President Obama’s response to Putin’s maneuvers was to call the Russian leader on Saturday and urge him to pull back his military forces or risk isolation in the international community if he refused. Obama also laid out the initial “cost” of Russia’s provocative actions &#8211; the U.S. is suspending its participation in preparations for the upcoming Group of 8 economic summit in Sochi, Russia.</span></p>
<p>“President Obama expressed his deep concern over Russia’s clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, which is a breach of international law,” the White House said in its readout of the call. “The United States condemns Russia’s military intervention into Ukrainian territory. The United States calls on Russia to de-escalate tensions by withdrawing its forces back to bases in Crimea and to refrain from any interference elsewhere in Ukraine.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Kremlin provided its own readout of the call. It said that Putin pointed out to Obama the “real threat to the lives and health of Russian citizens” currently in Ukraine, and referred to “the provocative and criminal actions on the part of ultranationalists who are in fact being supported by the current authorities in Kiev.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Meanwhile, at United Nations headquarters in New York, an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council was held on Saturday afternoon to discuss the Ukrainian crisis – the second such meeting in two days. For the first two hours, the Security Council members wrangled behind closed doors on whether they should hold their discussions in public or in private consultations. They reached a compromise of sorts – a brief public meeting followed by much lengthier closed door consultations.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">During the open meeting, UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson called for restoration of calm and dialogue among all concerned parties. “Now is the time for cool heads to prevail,” he advised. His advice was promptly ignored. The verbal sparks were flying, reminiscent of Cold War sparring in the Security Council that had often paralyzed the UN body from taking any effective action.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Ukrainian ambassador to the UN, Yuriy Sergeyev, who was invited to attend the open meeting on Saturday, accused Russia of “an act of aggression” in “severe violation of international law.”  He added that the “Russian Federation brutally violated the basic principles of Charter of the United Nations obliging all member states to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” He called for the members of the Security Council to take a stand against Russian aggression that interfered with Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. He repeated these themes in remarks to the press after his Security Council statement. He also defended the legality of the Ukrainian parliament’s removal of the ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who has sought refuge in Russia.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told the Security Council that Russia had acted at the request of the regional authorities in Crimea, making a dubious distinction in claiming that Russian troops could be deployed &#8220;on the territory of Ukraine,&#8221; but not &#8220;against Ukraine.&#8221; In response to calls for Russia to refrain from intervention to protect its interests, he said that &#8220;[W]e can&#8217;t agree with this at all.&#8221; Churkin lashed out at the “radicals” in the &#8220;illegal&#8221; government in Kiev who were allegedly threatening peace and security in Crimea. He questioned the legality of the manner in which Yanukovych was removed from office, noting that Yanukovych had been democratically elected.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Churkin did not speak to reporters on Saturday, but the previous day he had told reporters that the new government in Kiev was not representative of all political factions of Ukraine and was trying to impose its political will on the rest of the country. He accused the European Union of treating Ukraine as its “province” and charged that it was the West’s interference that had helped cause the Ukrainian crisis in the first place.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power expressed the strong support of the U.S. for the new government of Ukraine in her remarks to the Security Council on Saturday. Russia’s “intervention is without legal basis &#8211; indeed it violates Russia&#8217;s commitment to protect the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence of Ukraine,” she said. “It is time for the Russian intervention in Ukraine to end.” Ambassador Power also accused the Russians of double standards with regard to its position on national sovereignty. “It is ironic that the Russian Federation regularly goes out of its way in this Chamber to emphasize the sanctity of national borders and of sovereignty,” she said, “but Russian actions in Ukraine are violating the sovereignty of Ukraine and pose a threat to peace and security.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Ambassador Power proposed that international monitors and observers &#8211; including from the UN and OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, in which Russia and Ukraine are members] be sent to Ukraine. “That&#8217;s the best way to get the facts, monitor conduct, and prevent any abuses,” she said.  Russia so far has shown little inclination to accept this proposal.</span></p>
<p>In remarks to the press after the completion of the Security Council’s closed door consultations, Ambassador Power said that Russia’s “military presence in Crimea is a violation of international law.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">While the situation on the ground in Ukraine continues to deteriorate, including the Ukrainian naval chief’s pledge of allegiance to the Crimean pro-Russia authorities who are defying the authority of the new central government in Kiev, the war of words from the Obama administration continued to escalate on Sunday. Secretary of State John Kerry warned on “Meet the Press” that Russia was facing isolation and opprobrium from the international community, which could result in trade and investment penalties, asset freezes, denial of visas, and even possible expulsion from the G-8. He accused Putin of “possibly trying to annex Crimea” and said that Russia was displaying 19</span><sup style="line-height: 1.5em;">th</sup><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> century behavior in the 21</span><sup style="line-height: 1.5em;">st</sup><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> century by committing “aggression” on a “phony pretext.” That said, any military option by the U.S. in response to Russia’s actions appears to be off the table at least for now.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">What is evident from this serious crisis is that President Obama’s attempt to reset relations with Russia at the outset of his first term has been a dismal failure. He demonstrated weakness when he dropped plans to locate missile interceptors and a radar station in Poland and the Czech Republic without getting anything in return. In March 2012, Obama was overheard on an open mike telling outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that, since he would not be running again for president after the 2012 election, he would have “more flexibility” in dealing with Russia on such matters as missile defense. Medvedev replied: &#8220;I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir,&#8221; a reference to the real power in Russia, Vladimir Putin, who would soon re-assume the presidency. Putin has taken Obama’s measure and is out-maneuvering him at every turn.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/cold-war-rematch-in-kiev/">prior article</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> I theorized that perhaps Obama had decided to support the protests against the Russian-allied ousted president Yanukovych in order to put Russia on defense and “divert Putin’s attention away from the Middle East by causing him to redirect money and resources closer to home.”  If so, the strategy appears to be backfiring since Putin is proving that he is perfectly capable of deploying a few thousand troops in Crimea while still continuing to provide active support to the Assad regime. He is simply allowing the presence of Russian troops, without any full-scale Russian occupation, to catalyze a popular movement in Crimea by its Russian speaking majority to push for breaking away completely from Ukraine.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">More likely, there was no real Obama offensive strategy playing out in Ukraine and no clear-eyed thinking on what real national security and geopolitical threats we face, much less on how to handle them. Instead, President Obama is reverting to his lead-from-behind, reactive approach to most major foreign policy crises he has faced. Obama owes Mitt Romney an immediate apology.</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>
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		<title>Obama’s War on Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-war-on-israel-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-war-on-israel-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Feb 2014 05:55:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[boycott]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=218579</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The modern Left's defining foreign policy: boycott Israel, not Iran. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/obama-kerry_2747856b.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-218618" alt="obama-kerry_2747856b" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/obama-kerry_2747856b-437x350.jpg" width="262" height="210" /></a>If the left’s foreign policy these days had a slogan, it would be, “Boycott Israel, not Iran.” The double standard, dishonest as it is ugly, is also the motto of Obama’s foreign policy, which benevolently blesses Iran’s nuclear program with one outstretched hand in the name of peace and chokes concessions out of Israel to the terrorists with the other also in the name of peace.</span></p>
<p>Both peace plans are going disastrously according to plan.</p>
<p>Iran has made it clear that it will dismantle nothing and that it will go on developing ballistic missiles and nuclear technology. Its military commanders threaten to attack the United States and boast that their ships are encroaching on America’s maritime borders.</p>
<p>The Palestinian Authority has shed the last vestiges of democracy as its leader begins the tenth year of a four-year term and its elected legislature has been discarded in favor of the PLO Council. Instead of a representative government, the Palestinian Authority has reverted back to what it always was; the PLO.</p>
<p>A Palestinian state has receded into the figment of a dream as elections have become a distant memory and Hamas continues to hold Gaza, leaving a PLO mafia in the West Bank to maintain its monopoly on cigarettes and other commodities while passing around Western aid money to its terrorist militias.</p>
<p>The more Kerry pressures Israel, the more bellicose PLO leaders have become. Fatah officials have accused Kerry of threatening to poison Abbas, the Palestinian Authority’s current President-for-Life. The accusation is ridiculous, but the PLO, like Iran, is feeling emboldened by American weakness.</p>
<p>The softer American power gets, the harder its enemies hit.</p>
<p>Obama Inc. however has eyes only for Israel. Its officials and its allied media apparatus in New York and Washington have decided to hold Israel’s Prime Minister personally accountable for any criticism of Kerry and Obama not only by Israeli Jews … but also by American Jews.</p>
<p>An Obama Inc. official said that Obama and Kerry were disturbed over “Jewish activism in Congress” and that the administration had informed Israel of its displeasure over criticism of them by American Jews.  Holding Netanyahu accountable for the comments of American Jewish leaders is an ugly Alinskyite tactic in which Obama uses Israel as a hostage in order to silence domestic Jewish criticism.</p>
<p>“Shut up or the Jewish State gets it.”</p>
<p>The constant monitoring and suppression of Israeli criticism was so pervasive that Kerry’s handler, Jen Psaki, denounced a comedy video mocking his disastrous diplomacy put out by an Israeli political group, sight unseen, while discussing expectations that Israeli leaders would rein in criticism of Kerry.</p>
<p>Psaki described criticism of Kerry as “not an attack on him; that’s an attack on the process. And of course that kind of rhetoric we find unacceptable.” John Forbes Kerry had become the living embodiment of peace. The peace process, whether in Iran or Israel, had become reducible to peace. Opposing it meant opposing peace and supporting war. And Kerry had become reducible to the process and therefore to peace. Louis XIV had only claimed to embody the State. Kerry claims to embody peace.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Kerry makes poorly coded threats about international boycotts and intifadas to Israel while promising Jerusalem to the PLO.</p>
<p>The lack of options is the theme of both peace plans. Sanctions on Iran mean war, claims Obama. A failure to reach a deal that will let Iran keep its nuclear program also means war. And so, in true Chamberlainian fashion, the only alternative to war is to accept any offer that the enemy makes.</p>
<p>The willingness to accept any deal is the traditional negotiating posture of the losers of a war, but when any alternative to a peace deal is considered unacceptable, the peace negotiators come to the table as the losers of a war that was never even fought because they had already surrendered in all but name.</p>
<p>When the Senate attempted a little bit of bipartisan pressure on Iran, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes began denouncing the vast Jewish war conspiracy and the left-wing of an already left-wing media shrieked that we were about to be plunged into a war by the Zionist warmongerers. The same outlets that give a hearing to proposals to boycott Israel, chant in angry unison that any boycott of Iran is an act of war.</p>
<p>Every good progressive in Obama Inc. and in its media corps knows that Iran, which took American hostages and murdered hundreds of Americans, is a victim of American foreign policy, while Israel, which is being cut up into a completely indefensible, broken territory for a peace that will never come, is its beneficiary. The terrorist peace processes are unworkable, but they were never supposed to work.</p>
<p>The peace process with the Palestinian Authority has always failed because it was always meant to fail. Peace was the brass ring that Israel was supposed to reach for, but never actually get close enough to reach, carving itself to pieces under the bloody knives of the negotiators in the hopes of proving its moral worth to the world. Dying so that it might be allowed to live. The Iranian deal is more of the same.</p>
<p>Perhaps there is enough tie dye in Obama’s blood for him to genuinely want a world without nukes, but if the US is to retain its nuclear capability, then like Oppenheimer and the other scientists who helped the USSR get the bomb in the name of world peace, he wants Iran to have the bomb for world peace.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Netanyahu thought that he might be able to trade one peace process for another, but he hasn’t even been able to trade concessions to terrorists for sanctions on Iran. Instead he has made the worst possible bargain, trading a self-inflicted punch in the face for an enemy’s kick in the teeth. Israel has once again ended up with the worst of both worlds in the name of peace.</p>
<p>Obama’s dual peace processes have the same agenda. They are both meant to destroy Israel. If the PLO can’t get the job done with intermittent terrorism and negotiations, maybe a nuclear Iran will. The goal is to create enough threats to Israel that it either ceases to be a viable state or simply ceases to exist.</p>
<p>The destruction of Israel flows naturally from the destruction of American power. Israel has to be undone, just as Mubarak was undone, just as the United States military was undone, to heal the humiliations of the Muslim world. The United States had to lose in Afghanistan and Iraq, it had to destroy its allies in the Middle East, to make Muslims feel good about finally defeating the United 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>
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		<title>Kerry&#8217;s Israeli Supporters</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/kerrys-israeli-supporters/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=kerrys-israeli-supporters</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/kerrys-israeli-supporters/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 05 Feb 2014 05:40:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anti-semitic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[boycott]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[threat]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=218011</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Just who is enabling the secretary of state's aggression toward Israel? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ShowImage.ashx_.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-218014" alt="ShowImage.ashx" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ShowImage.ashx_.jpg" width="185" height="140" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Our-world-Kerrys-Israeli-supporters-340258">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p>Once again, on Saturday, US Secretary of State John Kerry tried to extort Israeli concessions to the PLO by threatening us with a Western economic boycott.</p>
<p>Kerry is obsessed with Israel’s economic success. Last May he told us that we’re too rich to surrender our land.</p>
<p>Now he’s saying we’ll be poor if we don’t do so.</p>
<p>The anti-Semitic undertones of Kerry’s constant chatter about Jews having too much money are obvious. But beyond their inherent bigotry, Kerry’s statements serve to legitimize the radical Left’s economic war against the Jewish state. Administration supporters and fundraisers from Code Pink and other pressure groups, as well as the EU understand that if they escalate their economic and political persecution of the Jewish state, their actions will be met with quiet understanding, and even support from the Obama administration.</p>
<p>This is so even if the State Department issues indignant press releases expressing fury that Israeli elected officials have the chutzpah to object to Kerry’s behavior.</p>
<p>Israel has been subjected to plenty of abuse from American secretaries of state. But Kerry’s incessant talk of “illusory” Jewish money is unprecedented.</p>
<p>Why does Kerry believe he can get away with this? The overwhelming majority of US lawmakers oppose economic warfare against Israel.</p>
<p>The vast majority of Americans support Israel and believe that a Palestinian state will support terrorism and be hostile to Israel.</p>
<p>So if the American public opposes Kerry’s obsessive aggressiveness toward Israel, who is supporting him? Who is giving him cover for his anti-Jewish smears and his irrational focus on Jewish communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines? The answer is as infuriating as it is apparent. It is the Israeli Left and through it, much of the American Jewish community that enables Kerry’s diplomatic aggression against the Jewish state.</p>
<p>Operating under their cover, Kerry feels free to engage in anti-Jewish bigotry directed against Israeli society. He believes he is immune from allegations of ill-will toward Israel even as he places the full weight of the US government behind a plan that will endanger Israel, bring no peace, destabilize the Middle East and fail to win the US any friends or allies in the Islamic world.</p>
<p>On the face of it, it is hard to understand why leftist Israeli Jews cheer Kerry’s aggressive attacks and threats.</p>
<p>After all, they live here.</p>
<p>They know as well as the rest of the country that if Israel bows to his will and surrenders Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to the PLO the move will bring no peace.</p>
<p>Rather it will unleash a Palestinian terrorist assault the likes of which we haven’t seen before.</p>
<p>They know that the international delegitimization of Israel only expands with every Israeli concession to the PLO, and that giving up the store will bring us no respite from the Western world’s assault on our right to exist.</p>
<p>So what do they gain by giving cover to Kerry? Why do people like Labor MK Shelly Yacimovich applaud Kerry for placing unrelenting pressure on the government to take steps that the majority of Israelis oppose and urge him to keep it up? Ron Pundak, one of the original architects of Israel’s embrace of the PLO and the so-called two-state solution at Oslo in 1993 supplied the answer in a recently published paper.</p>
<p>Last November the George Soros-supported International Crisis Group published a paper by Pundak entitled “Leap of Faith: Israel’s National Religious and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”</p>
<p>The purpose of his paper was to provide strategies for contending with the religious Zionist opposition to the two-state model. According to Pundak, non-secular Israelis oppose the two-state policy because it “is seen as&#8230; aimed at de-Zionizing the state.”</p>
<p>Rather than develop talking points to convince Israeli Zionists that they are wrong to view the two-state model as an anti-Zionist project, Pundak admitted they are right. Indeed, destroying the Zionist underpinning of the Jewish state is not a byproduct of the two-state model. It is the purpose of the two-state model.</p>
<p>In Pundak’s words, “Peace is not an objective by itself. It is a way to transition Israel from one era to another: to an era of what I consider is a normal state. Israelisation of society rather than its judaisation&#8230;”</p>
<p>Pundak’s explanation is not new. Before the Sharon government surrendered Gaza to Palestinian terrorists and forcibly expelled its 8,000 Jewish residents from their homes,<em>Haaretz</em> published an unsigned editorial along the same lines.</p>
<p>“The disengagement of Israeli policy from its religious fuel is the real disengagement currently on the agenda. On the day after the disengagement, religious Zionism’s status will be different.”</p>
<p>The editorial concluded that all the talk about enhanced security or peace was pure nonsense. The purpose of destroying the communities in Gaza was to destroy the political and social power of religious Zionism in Israel.</p>
<p>“The real question is not how many mortar shells will fall, or who will guard the Philadelphi route [between Gaza and Egypt], or whether the Palestinians will dance on the roofs of [the destroyed communities]. The real question is who sets the national agenda.”</p>
<p>Other leftist commentators and policy makers including Doron Rosenblum, Avirama Golan, Avrum Burg, Efraim Sneh, Dan Margalit and Ami Ayalon made similar arguments.</p>
<p>For Pundak and his colleagues in the post-Zionist camp, Kerry is a key ally. And to the extent Kerry weakens the government and its supporters, he is a strategic asset.</p>
<p>True, Kerry’s “framework” will bring no peace. But if what Pundak and his camp were after was peace, they wouldn’t have embraced the PLO to begin with. They would have cultivated pro-Israel Arabs who would lead their people into Israeli society.</p>
<p>That is, they would have done precisely what center- right governing coalitions – that included religious Zionists – sought to achieve, with significant success, in the decade and a half that preceded the phony peace-process.</p>
<p>Israel is a democracy. And it is perfectly legitimate for Pundak and his colleagues to try to advance their policy goal of replacing Zionism with a de-Judaized state or anything else they wish.</p>
<p>What is illegitimate is the means they have employed to advance their goal.</p>
<p>In a democracy, the strategic goals and policies of the government are supposed to be based on the will of the public as expressed at the ballot box. In Israel, there is a political party that shares the goals of the post-Zionist camp. It is called Meretz and it receives between two and five seats in the Knesset every election.</p>
<p>Pundak and his colleagues know that they cannot convince the majority of Israelis to abandon Zionism in favor of their anti-Jewish vision of the future. So rather than tell us the truth about what they are doing, they engage in subversion and subterfuge. They call themselves “the peace camp,” and use outside pressure and coercion to bend an unwilling public to their will.</p>
<p>For them, Kerry is best when he’s worst for their country.</p>
<p>And Kerry knows this. And so he piles on the threats, and the anti-Semitism, and with their support, he knows he can get away with it.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Clinton &#8220;Regrets&#8221; Benghazi</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/hillary-spins-benghazi/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hillary-spins-benghazi</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 28 Jan 2014 05:34:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benghazi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[interview]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[regret]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[threat]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=217446</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The shaping of the narrative for the 2016 presidential campaign begins.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/465461291.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-217447" alt="Hillary Clinton Addresses National Automobile Dealers Association Convention" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/465461291-450x342.jpg" width="270" height="205" /></a>At a keynote appearance before the National Automobile Dealers Association on Monday, Hillary Clinton began <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/middle-east-north-africa/196494-hillary-benghazi-my-biggest-regret">laying</a> the groundwork for how she will respond to the Benghazi scandal during her likely 2016 presidential run. &#8220;My biggest, you know, regret is what happened in Benghazi,” she answered in response to a question asking her to identify “do-overs” during her stint as Secretary of State. She then proceeded to double down. “I mean, you know, you make these choices based on imperfect information,” she contended. “And you make them to, as we say, the best of your ability. But that doesn&#8217;t mean that there&#8217;s not going to be unforeseen consequences, unpredictable twists and turns.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One is left to wonder what “imperfect information” Clinton was vaguely referring to in her response. The alleged &#8220;imperfect information&#8221; that led Clinton and company to lie for weeks about the nature of the attack? The &#8220;fog of war,&#8221; as Clinton previously described it? Of course, &#8220;imperfect information&#8221; had nothing to do with the Obama administration&#8217;s deceitful portrayal of the terrorist attack to the public. Declassified documents made public two weeks ago reveal that AFRICOM commander Gen. Carter Ham told members of the House Armed Services subcommittee that he learned about the &#8220;terrorist attack&#8221; on the consulate compound only 15 minutes after it commenced. &#8220;My first call was to [Joint Chiefs of Staff General chairman] General Dempsey, General Dempsey&#8217;s office, to say, &#8216;Hey, I am headed down the hall. I need to see him right away,&#8217;&#8221; Ham testified on June 26, 2013. &#8220;I told him what I knew. We immediately walked upstairs to meet with Secretary [of Defense] Panetta.&#8221; Ham further testified that Dempsey and Panetta “had the basic information as they headed across for the meeting at the White House.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The meeting to which Ham referred was a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/panetta-and-joint-chiefs-chair-obama-talked-them-only-once-night-benghazi-attack">pre-scheduled</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> session with President Obama at 5 p.m. EST. A Defense Department timeline reveals that this meeting occurred one hour and 18 minutes after the attack began. The meeting lasted half an hour. That means that Obama knew it was a terrorist attack on September 11, 2012, before the battle that lasted approximately </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/why-obama-sent-no-rescue-benghazi-lasted-8-hours-was-over-30-minutes">eight hours</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> was less than two hours old.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">According to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Obama </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/wh-obama-called-hillary-night-benghazi-attack-more-six-hours-after-it-started">phoned</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Clinton at 10 p.m. that same night, more than six hours after that attack began, but more than an hour before Navy SEALS Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty were killed. “Like every president before him, he has a national security adviser and deputy national security adviser,” Carney told </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://cnsnews.com/">CNSNews.com</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> on Tuesday. Feb. 19, 2013. “He was in regular communication with his national security team directly, through them, and spoke with the Secretary of State at approximately 10 p.m. He called her to get an update on the situation.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Carney&#8217;s statement </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/14/white-house-no-phone-calls-benghazi/">contradicts</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> a letter released to Congress by the White House five days earlier. It claimed Obama made no phone calls at all the night of the attack. Carney was forced to &#8220;amend&#8221; the record because Clinton had testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a month earlier that she learned of the attack on Benghazi at 4 p.m. In the ensuing hours, Clinton </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348677/10-pm-phone-call-andrew-c-mccarthy">testified,</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> “we were in continuous meetings and conversations, both within the department, with our team in Tripoli, with the interagency and internationally.” One of those conversations was with the president. “I spoke with President Obama later in the evening to, you know, bring him up to date, to hear his perspective,” she revealed.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Thus, unless one is willing to believe that no one, including Obama, told Clinton it was a terrorist attack, the words &#8220;imperfect information&#8221; are nothing more than an attempt to again revive the &#8220;fog of war&#8221; canard that the former Secretary of State relied on to initially explain away the administration&#8217;s false account of the attack and changing story.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As for &#8220;unforeseen consequences&#8221; and &#8220;unpredictable twists,&#8221; a scathing </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/benghazi2014/benghazi.pdf">report</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> released Jan. 15 by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the attack in Benghazi was preventable. Clinton&#8217;s State Department was singled out for its failure to bolster security in response to an increasing threat level. The report states that the intelligence community &#8220;produced hundreds of analytic reports&#8221; in the months preceding the attack that &#8220;militias and terrorists &#8230; had the capability and intent to strike U.S. and Western facilities and personnel in Libya.&#8221; There were &#8220;at least 20 security incidents involving the Temporary Mission Facility,&#8221; including one in which an &#8220;IED exploded near the main gate of the Mission facility in Benghazi, creating a 9&#215;12 hole in the exterior wall.&#8221; Responsibility for this attack was claimed by followers of the &#8220;Blind Sheikh,&#8221; united under the banner of the &#8220;Imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman Brigade.&#8221; </span></p>
<p>Ambassador Stevens himself was seriously concerned with the rapidly deteriorating security situation and made requests for support, which were not heeded. Stevens sent numerous cables regarding the vulnerability of the mission. In late June, Stevens wrote, &#8220;that the attacks were the work of extremists who are opposed to western influence in Libya. A number of local contacts agreed, noting that Islamic extremism appears to be on the rise in eastern Libya and that the Al-Qaeda flag has been spotted several times flying over government buildings and training facilities in Derna.&#8221;</p>
<p>However, according to <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304302704579332732276330284">Gregory Hicks</a>, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, who was privy to intimate details of the security decision process, Stevens&#8217; &#8220;requests for additional security were denied or ignored. Officials at the State and Defense Departments in Washington made the decisions that resulted in reduced security.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;When I arrived in Tripoli on July 31, we had over 30 security personnel, from the State Department and the U.S. military, assigned to protect the diplomatic mission to Libya. All were under the ambassador&#8217;s authority. On Sept. 11, we had only nine diplomatic security agents under Chris&#8217;s authority to protect our diplomatic personnel in Tripoli and Benghazi,&#8221; Hicks wrote.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">By all accounts, what happened in Benghazi was the result of extreme negligence on the part of Clinton and her cohorts. It was not &#8220;unforeseen&#8221; or &#8220;unpredictable&#8221; &#8212; precisely the opposite. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was willing to take Clinton to task for her latest remarks, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/369568/cruz-clintons-benghazi-talk-cheap-if-she-doesnt-demand-action-andrew-johnson">contending</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> she needs to back up her &#8220;regrets&#8221; regarding an attack for which no one has been fired, and none of the attackers has been captured. “If she was really sorry&#8211;talk is cheap, she needs to stand up and demand action,” he told Fox News. Cruz&#8217;s idea of action is a call for her to join him and other lawmakers in convening a select committee to fully investigate what happened.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">With all due respect to Cruz, Clinton knows what happened. She&#8217;s known it for a long time. And it is more than likely the only regret she truly harbors at this point in time is the reality that, despite her best efforts, along with those of her fellow Democrats, and a mainstream media fully invested in her 2016 election, Benghazi is not going to be the irrelevant issue they are trying to make it. When four Americans have been killed in a preventable tragedy, &#8220;shaping the narrative&#8221; isn&#8217;t going to cut it.</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>
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		<title>Mullahs Threaten Global Oil Crisis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/majid-rafizadeh/ayatollah-threatens-global-oil-crisis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ayatollah-threatens-global-oil-crisis</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/majid-rafizadeh/ayatollah-threatens-global-oil-crisis/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 12 Dec 2013 05:25:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OIL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[threat]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=213023</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Iranian takeover of OPEC begins. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ayatollah-ali-khamenei.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-213046" alt="ayatollah-ali-khamenei" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ayatollah-ali-khamenei-450x330.jpg" width="315" height="231" /></a>A few days after the Obama administration signed the nuclear deal with the Islamist state of Iran, after the easing of sanctions on the ruling cleric and Iranian authorities began to take off, the Mullahs initiated their first hegemonic ambition to reclaim and regain its No.2 position in OPEC, threatening to trigger an oil price war if the other 12 countries oppose Iran’s plan. In addition, Iran has put forward a candidate for the position of OPEC secretary general, considered to be the voice of the OPEC organization between meetings.</p>
<p>If the next time you stopped to fill up your car at a gas station, or to buy any other product, and you notice a sudden increase in prices, this can be attributed to the tireless efforts of the Obama administration to start lifting sanctions on Iran, easing pressure on the nation and integrating the Islamists of Iran into the international community, legitimizing them, giving them credibility, calling them rational actors, and pushing for the recent nuclear deal with the ruling cleric in the Iranian regime.</p>
<p>Last week, ahead of the upcoming OPEC meeting, Iran threatened to trigger a price war in the global oil markets. Iranian authorities warned OPEC’s 12 members that Tehran will ratchet up its oil output, no matter what the consequences would be, in an attempt to gain its former influential position. Bijan Zangeneh, Iran’s Oil Minister, <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/101245791">said</a> before going into the closed meetings that “we will not give up our rights on this issue.” The sanctions, accumulated through many years in the international community, reduced Iran’s leverage to disrupt and control the world economy through managing oil prices. However, the recent agreement with President Obama gave the Iranian Ayatollah and leaders a freedom to more aggressively reclaim and reassert their Islamist ambitions in the region and on the international scale.</p>
<p>There is a special quota assigned for each main oil exporter at OPEC<b>. </b>Iranian leaders<b> </b>stated that they will not comply with that quota. This will result in a disruption in supply and demand, which will ultimately create uncertainty in the market and lead to the rising of oil prices. For industrial countries, this will affect the prices of many other goods, because oil is used as a primary source for fuel. If Iran does not respect individual targets of oil sales in the global market and the quotas of OPEC members, Tehran’s attempts can definitely result in oil glut. In addition, this will lead to an increase in geopolitical tensions in the region and particularly among OPEC members.</p>
<p>An adviser to Iran’s oil minister, Mehdi Hosseini, was previously quoted in the Financial Times as saying that the Iranian government is developing a form of contract that could change the current system of buyback contracts, which currently do not permit foreign companies to book reserves or take equity stakes in Iranian oil, gas, or other projects. This can be viewed as a considerable increase in Iran’s growing power and leverage, which has previously been exposed to little investment in its oil and gas fields due to the international sanctions and pressure.</p>
<p>The primary reason that brought Iranian leaders to the negotiating table was the very sanctions that have accumulated over the past years by the international community and other US administrations. By the conciliatory and submissive stance that the Obama administration is taking towards Iranian and Islamist authorities, and by the easing of sanctions, the Ayatollahs have viewed America’s recent fragile position and the recent nuclear deal as a freehand to threaten the global economy, regain its no.2  position in OPEC, and increase its hegemonic ambitions in the region, particularly towards Israel. Empowered by the temporary nuclear agreement that was reached two weeks ago, Iranian leaders are aiming to increase their oil sale from nearly 2.5 million barrels a day to 4 million barrels.</p>
<p>Obama promised and pushed for a deal— beside the secret deals and talks with the Ayatollahs— arguing that Iranian leaders are rational actors, and if the international community eases the sanctions and trusts the Islamic Republic of Iran, this would be the most efficient deal to get Tehran to reciprocate, since there is a “moderate” cleric in power.  But anyone who has studied the political structure of Iran closely would be cognizant of the fact that there is no fundamental differences between Iran’s political spectrum (reformists like Khatami, moderates like Rouhani, and hardliners like Ahmadinejad) when it comes to pursuing the regime’s Islamist revolutionary ideals; including obtaining nuclear weapons, supporting terrorists organizations, wiping Israel off of the world map, denying the Holocaust, and spreading their Islamist ideology across the world by force.</p>
<p>In addition, the final say rests in the hand of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has clearly declared his denial of the Holocaust, his antagonism towards the United States and Israel, and his ambitions for the world to finally be an Islamist state under the rule of Allah. In fact, recently, Khamenei called Israel a “rabid dog,” adding, &#8220;Israeli officials cannot be called humans. They are like animals.&#8221; He furthermore called the United States a state criminal. All politicians and Ayatollahs in Iran support the current hegemonic and Islamist ambitions of the regime, with the Supreme Leader in charge of foreign policy.</p>
<p>The recent activities after lessening sanctions indicate that efforts by the Islamists in Iran to regain their influence economically— by controlling the oil market— and geopolitically— by further supporting and funding terrorist groups. Thanks to President Obama’s lessening sanctions on Iran, and his blocking of the bipartisan sanctions on the nation, Iran’s increasing control of OPEC’s main decisions and increasing influence in the global oil market is essentially handing over power and leverage to the Ayatollahs. If the current status continues, the United States will soon find itself on the other side of the spectrum, the weak position, in which it would have to struggle to bring the Iranian regime to the negotiating table, bargaining and probably accepting Iran’s demands, along with its hegemonic and nuclear ambitions in order to avoid Tehran’s threats and plans to significantly disrupt the oil market.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>How Israel Makes the World a Safer Place</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ari-lieberman/how-israel-makes-the-world-a-safer-place/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-israel-makes-the-world-a-safer-place</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Nov 2013 04:14:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ari Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=209740</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What even Defense Secretary Hagel was forced to admit. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Israeli-Fighter-Jet.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209741" alt="Israeli-Fighter-Jet" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Israeli-Fighter-Jet.png" width="230" height="170" /></a>On June 7, 1981 Israel provided the world with a lesson on how to deal with international pariahs. Its fighter jets, F-15s and F-16s, swooped over Iraqi airspace and with extreme precision using conventional iron bombs, destroyed a heavily defended Iraqi nuclear facility near Baghdad. At the time, many commentators, media outlets and politicians condemned Israel for its “aggression.” Over time however, many of those very same commentators came to recognize precocity of Israel’s Osirak operation and it is now well accepted that Israel’s preventive use of force then, thwarted a greater conflagration.</p>
<p>In 2007, Israeli intelligence officials approached the United States with incontrovertible proof that Bashar Assad, with the assistance of North Korea and Iran, was in the final stages of completing an atom bomb facility modeled after a North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear reactor. The United States, already embroiled in two unpopular Middle-Eastern wars vacillated, unsure on how to proceed.</p>
<p>Israel, a nation that sits within the belly of the beast, did not possess the luxury of waiting, contemplating or “assessing” and acted resolutely. On September 6, 2007, Israeli warplanes attacked and destroyed Syria’s Al Kibar nuclear complex turning the WMD plant into an expensive heap of scrap metal.</p>
<p>Twice, Israel was faced with the prospect of pariah nations acquiring nuclear weapons and twice Israel acted decisively. Had Israel acted with restraint, an overused phrase that has grown threadbare over the years, the Gulf wars would have undoubtedly taken different trajectories and half of Syria would have been rendered uninhabitable for one-thousand years.</p>
<p>The world is now faced with its toughest challenge, confronting a brutal, non-rational theocracy with an apocalyptic vision and a taste for nuclear weapons.  One nation above all others has remained a steadfast, stubborn obstacle to Iran’s genocidal quest. Israel has been engaged in a full scale covert war against Iran in an attempt to slow down its ambitions. Mysterious explosions at sensitive facilities, cyber weapons in the form of sophisticated computer viruses and assassination of key Iranian nuclear experts have had their intended cumulative effect.</p>
<p>But beyond the cloak and dagger operations is a far more effective weapon in making the Iranians cry uncle; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s credible threat of military force. For all their bravado and bluster, the mullahs of the Islamic Republic are quite cognizant of Israel’s military capabilities and are paying heed. In rare praise for Netanyahu, the Washington Post ran an <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/as-nuclear-talks-stall-iran-still-limits-its-uranium-stockpile/2013/04/08/a7c3aa18-a06b-11e2-82bc-511538ae90a4_story.html" target="_blank">editorial</a> in April that gave Israel’s intrepid prime minister due credit for his role in preventing the mullahs from passing the breakout point.</p>
<p>The Washington Post’s editorial was recently validated by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who, in a <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-04/israel-pushed-iran-to-the-table-says-hagel.html" target="_blank">revealing interview</a> with Jeffrey Goldberg, noted that Israel’s threats to launch a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, among other factors, played a major role in bringing the Iranians to the negotiating table.</p>
<p>It has recently become fashionable among various elitist and radical leftist quarters to criticize the Jewish State on everything ranging from its counter-insurgency operations to its development of barren land in Judea &amp; Samaria. But those radicals should take heed that the world would be a much more volatile place without Israel acting as the point man against Islamic fundamentalism and WMD proliferation. Rather than unwarranted and relentless criticism, a simple “thank you” would suffice.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Threat We Face</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/david-horowitz/the-threat-we-face-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-threat-we-face-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Oct 2013 04:52:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[What is the nature of the adversary we are up against?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/obama33.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-206868" alt="obama33" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/obama33.jpg" width="360" height="273" /></a><em>Below is a speech given by David Horowitz at the Kohler conference of the Bradley Foundation. It has been revised and edited for publication as an article.</em></p>
<p>I was born at the beginning of the Second World War into a family of high school teachers who were members of the Communist Party, and therefore were actually part of a vast conspiracy dedicated to the destruction of this country, although they would never have looked at it that way, and so-called liberals would be the first to deny it.</p>
<p>In those days, the schools were old fashioned enough that my parents did not use their classrooms to indoctrinate students as tens of thousands of university professors and even more K-12 teachers regularly do today. It is also an unhappy but hugely important fact that the conspiracy to which my parents belonged has steadily migrated into the heart of the Democratic Party until it now occupies the Oval Office in the person of our president, Barack Obama, and his closest advisors.</p>
<p>The president, his chief operative Valerie Jarrett and his chief political strategist David Axelrod all came out of the same Communist left and the same radical new left as I did, and all have remained heart and soul a part of it. As someone who turned his back on that destructive movement, I can say with confidence that they have not. If a person belongs to an organization or is the supporter of an idea that they come to see as destructive or evil, the first thing they will want to do when they leave is to warn others against it, to warn them of the dangers it represents. If a person does not do this – that tells me that he or she hasn’t left the destructive movement or abandoned the pernicious idea but has just put another face on them. Instead of calling themselves communists or socialists they call themselves liberals and progressives. This camouflage is very old. I never once heard my parents and their party friends refer to themselves as Communists. They were <i>progressives</i> – and registered Democrats.</p>
<p>This is why – to take one disturbing example, I know that Hillary Clinton’s right hand, Huma Abedin, the former deputy secretary of state, and chief foreign policy adviser on Muslim Affairs is a Muslim Brotherhood operative. Huma Abedin’s late father was a Muslim Brotherhood leader, and her mother and brother still are. For 12 years until the moment she was hired by Hillary, Huma Abedin worked for Abdullah Omar Naseef, one of the top three funders of Osama Bin Laden who is still wanted by our government for his role in the 9/11 attacks.</p>
<p>Huma Abedin has never to my knowledge uttered a word of disapproval about the Muslim Brotherhood’s desire to rid the world of Christians and Jews or to bring all infidels under the heel of totalitarian Islamic law. Her spiritual adviser Yusef al-Qaradawi is the spiritual leader of the Brotherhood. Qaradawi has publicly said that the Holocaust of the Jews was God’s punishment for their corruption, and that it would come again, and when it did, “Allah willing it will be at the hands of the believers.” Huma Abedin has not broken her relations with this evil man or dissociated herself from his genocidal remarks. Nor has she opposed the policies enacted by Obama and Hillary, which have supported the Muslim Brotherhood at home and in the Middle East.</p>
<p>On the contrary. when the Obama administration supported the Brotherhood’s rise to power in Egypt, Huma Abedin was our government’s key adviser on Muslim affairs. She was at Hillary’s side when security was not provided to our diplomatic complex in Benghazi and when al-Qaeda fanatics murdered our Ambassador. The murder of Ambassador Stevens led to the most shameful presidential act in our history when the President turned his back on the cries for help of three American heroes who served him and who were in a desperate fight for their lives. It is a time honored American code never to abandon our warriors on the field of battle. But America’s commander-in-chief turned his back on these brave fighting men and left them to die; and then lied to the American people to cover up his crime.</p>
<p>Ever since Barack Obama was elected and began his radical course, American conservatives have been in a state of shock, as though they couldn’t quite believe what was happening. Until then there had been a general collusion in the practiced deceptions of the left as commentators on all sides would refer to unrepentant radicals, and dedicated socialists as “liberals,” and turn half blind eyes to their anti-American agendas. What is “liberal” about the mean-spirited intolerant people of the left, except their attitude to hard drugs, sex, and criminal behavior? Oh yes, and spending other people’s money?</p>
<p>Today the Obama juggernaut is systematically bankrupting our country, and undoing our constitutional arrangements. Its contempt for consultative and representative government is relentlessly on display. This week Senate Majority leader Harry Reid defended his refusal to negotiate with Republicans over Obamacare and the debt in these words: “We are here to support the federal government. That’s our job.” End quote. Forget about representing the people whom our Founders made sovereign. Forget what America is about.</p>
<p>The fact that I had a radical past allowed me to see much of this coming. But even I never thought we would be looking so soon at the prospect of a one-party state. Those words may sound hyperbolic, but take a moment to think about it. If you have transformed the taxing agency of the state into a political weapon – and Obama has; if you are setting up a massive government program to gather the financial and health information of every citizen, and control their access to care; and if you have a spy agency that can read the mail and listen to the communications of every individual in the country, you don’t really need a secret police to destroy your political opponents. Once you have silenced them, you can proceed with your plans to remake the world in your image.</p>
<p>The good news is that the bad five years we have just been through have aroused a sleeping giant among Americans who didn’t see it coming and couldn’t imagine that it would. For the first time since the Cold War, people with a public voice are calling socialists by their right name; conservatives are finally organizing at the grassroots to defend their freedom; and at last we have leaders who are willing to stand up to the thuggery of the left and who have the spine not to back down.</p>
<p>As a sometime Jonah freed from the whale let me offer some intelligence about the political forces arrayed against us. Do not make the mistake of thinking that progressives and conservatives are people who merely differ about practical agendas. There are four defining features of the left, which distinguish it as a movement of individuals who approach politics quite differently from pragmatically-minded conservatives.</p>
<p>The first of these features is their alienation from country: If you ask progressives about their patriotic feeling, they will tell you that they don’t think of themselves first as Americans but as “citizens of the world.” That even has a Harvard <i>imprimatur</i>. They are, in fact, so profoundly alienated from their country as to be in some sense foreigners to it. They are hostile to its history and to its core values, which they see as reflections of a society that has been guilty of racism and oppression on an epic scale. And they are fundamentally opposed to its constitutional arrangements which the framers specifically designed to thwart what they deemed “wicked projects” to redistribute income and share individual wealth.</p>
<p>This is perhaps the hardest feature of their progressive adversaries for conservatives to comprehend. It is difficult to imagine that people as privileged by America’s generosity as Barack Obama and his entourage of despoilers should be so alienated from their country as to feel themselves <i>in</i> it but not <i>of</i> it. And there is no more shocking example of this than Benghazi. No matter what your politics, or what solutions you propose to the problems that confront this nation, ask yourself this: Could you have done what Barack Obama did that night? Could you as commander-in-chief abandon three Americans fighting for their lives under your command? These men had served their country for more than a decade. For seven hours they cried out for help from their government, but you refused to give it.</p>
<p>How, as a fellow American, could Obama have just left these men to die? No one with an ounce of patriotic feeling could. But he did. Even Alexei Kosygin, the Soviet premier of a Communist dictatorship, maintained contact with his astronaut as he burned up in space. But not our president. When the attack on our embassy in Benghazi began, he hung up the phone and went to bed, and then on to a fundraiser with Beyonce and Jay-Z in Las Vegas in the morning. This, with four Americans including our ambassador dead.</p>
<p>As a nation we are now confronted by mortal enemies in Iran and Syria, in Hizbollah and Hamas – enemies who have openly declared that we are the devil’s party and should be erased from the face of the earth. How could an American president deliberately set out to appease such enemies? How in the face of such threats could he reduce our country to an international laughing stock, no longer respected by our friends, no longer feared by our foes? How could he be so cavalier about having failed so miserably to have defended his country’s security and uphold its honor? How could an American commander-in-chief then put himself in a position to be snubbed by the Iranian Hitlerites, which is what they are, and which is what Obama did? How could he snub our Israeli allies and at the same time grovel before our Islamic enemies? But he did. How could he create a vacuum in the Middle East allowing Russia to become the new regional power? How could he make himself an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, which slaughters Christians, and promises the extermination of the Jews and spawns terrorist armies like al-Qaeda and Hamas?</p>
<p>The answer to all these questions is that Obama doesn’t identify with our country. He sees himself as a “citizen of the world,” and a redresser of grievances for the suffering he imagines America has inflicted on our adversaries, including Hitlerite Iran.</p>
<p>The second feature of the progressive left that is key to understanding it is its instinctive, practiced, and indispensable dishonesty. As I previously noted, the Communists in the circles I frequented in my youth never identified themselves as Communists but always as “progressives” and “Jeffersonian democrats” (which is the last thing they were). When I was a young man and Stalin was alive, the goal of the Communist Party U.S.A. was a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” and a “Soviet America.” But under Stalin’s inspiration the official slogan of the Communist Party was “Peace, Jobs, and Democracy.”</p>
<p>The lesson? People on the left may be delusional but they are not stupid. They know what they can say and get away with, and what they can’t. Barack Obama is a born and bred member of the left and not coincidentally is the most brazen and compulsive liar ever to occupy the American White House. What other politician could have successfully explained away the fact that two of his closest political confidantes over a twenty-year period were an anti-American racist, Jeremiah Wright and an anti-American terrorist William Ayers?</p>
<p>There is a marked difference between the radicals of the Sixties and the radical movement Obama is part of. In the Sixties, as radicals we said what we thought and blurted out what we wanted. We wanted a revolution, and we wanted it <i>now</i>. It was actually very decent of us to warn others as to what we intended. But because we blurted out our goal, we didn’t get very far. Americans were onto us. Those who remained on the left when the Sixties were over, learned from their experience. They learned to lie. The strategy of the lie is progressives’ new gospel. It is what the progressive bible &#8212; Saul Alinsky’s <i>Rules for Radicals</i> &#8212; is all about. Alinsky is the acknowledged political mentor to Obama and Hillary, to the service and teacher unions, and to the progressive rank and file. Alinsky understood the mistake Sixties’ radicals had made. His message to this generation is easily summed up: Don’t telegraph your goals; infiltrate their institutions and subvert them; moral principles are disposable fictions; the end justifies the means; and never forget that your political goal is always <i>power</i>.</p>
<p>An SDS radical wrote in the Sixties: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” The Alinsky version is this: The issue is never the issue; the issue is always power: How to wring power out of the democratic process, how turn the process into an instrument of progressive control. How to use it to fundamentally transform the United States of America &#8212; which is exactly what Barack Obama warned he would do on the eve of his election.</p>
<p>The chosen legislative instrument to begin this transformation was Obamacare. It was presented as an act of charity, a plan to cover the uninsured. That was the “issue” as they presented it. But the actual goal of Obamacare’s socialist sponsors was a “single payer system” – government healthcare &#8212; which would put the state in control of the lives of every American, man, woman and child. That is the reason that none of the promises made about Obamacare was true, beginning with his campaign lie that Obamacare government health care was not a program he would support. Obamacare will not cover 30 million uninsured Americans, as Obama and the Democrats said it would; Obamacare will not lower costs, as they promised it would; Obamacare will deprive many Americans of their doctors and healthcare plans, as they assured everyone it would not; Obamacare is a new tax, as they swore it wouldn’t be. All these promises Obama and the Democrats made were false because they were only a camouflage for their real goal actual goal, which was universal control.</p>
<p>A third feature of progressives that defines their politics is that they regard the past, which is real, with contempt, and are focused exclusively on a future, which is imaginary.</p>
<p>To understand why this is important, think of progressives as a species of religious fundamentalists planning a redemption. Like fundamentalists they look at the world as fallen – a place corrupted by racism, sexism and class division. But the truly religious understand that we are the source of corruption and that redemption is only possible through the work of a Divinity. In contrast, progressives see <i>themselves</i> as the redeemers, which is why they are so dangerous. Because they regard those who oppose them as the eternally damned. Progressives are on a mission to create the kingdom of heaven on earth by redistributing income and using the state to enforce politically correct attitudes and practices in everyone’s life. They want to control what you do, and who you are, and even what you eat. For your own good, of course.</p>
<p>The fact that they see themselves as saving the world – or “saving the planet” as they would prefer &#8212; results in a fourth key characteristic of their politics, which is that they regard politics as a religious war. This explains why they are so rude and nasty when you disagree with them or resist their panaceas (and of course if they had the power, the punishments would be more severe); that is why the politics of personal destruction is their favorite variety, why they are verbal assassins and go directly for the jugular, and why they think nothing of destroying the reputations of their opponents and burying them permanently. And that is why they can perform their character assassinations without regrets – or did I miss Obama’s  apology to Romney for accusing him of killing a woman with cancer during the campaign? Why apologize when you did it for the good of a world transforming cause?</p>
<p>To sum this up: Progressives see themselves as an army of the saints, and their opponents as the party of Satan; and that will justify almost anything you can get away with.</p>
<p>An appalling episode of their Machiavellian politics has shaped the international conflict in which we find ourselves currently impotent in the Middle East. The root of that impotence lies in the way Democrats turned the issue of the Iraq war against the Republican president George Bush. The Democrats&#8217; case against Bush was that he acted unilaterally, deceptively and in haste.</p>
<p>Nothing could be further from the truth. The policy to remove Iraq’s government by force was put in place by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, when he signed the Iraqi Liberation Act and fired 450 cruise missiles into that sovereign country. He did it, by the way, not only unilaterally but without consulting anyone.</p>
<p>That was in 1998, which is five years before Bush sent American troops into Iraq. Ten months before Bush did that he warned Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, to obey the Gulf War truce he had signed in 1991 and then repeatedly violated over the next ten years. Seven months before sending our troops into Iraq Bush went personally to the UN and got a unanimous Security Council ultimatum to Saddam. UN Resolution 1447 said: Obey the terms of the Gulf War truce by December 7, 2002 – or else.</p>
<p>Two months before that deadline Bush went to Congress and requested an authorization to use force in the event that Saddam did not voluntarily observe the terms of the UN Resolution, and the Gulf War truce he had signed and then violated.  Both houses of Congress including a majority of the Democrats in the Senate voted to authorize Bush to use force in Iraq. He also got an authorization from NATO and he also formed a coalition of 40 nations, including America’s oldest allies, the Brits, to enforce the UN Security Council ultimatum.</p>
<p>Not only was the decision not made in haste, and not made without consultation, as the Democrats claimed. The truth was just the opposite. The process of making the decision to go to war took 10 months and every significant authority was consulted. But once U.S. troops entered Iraq on March 19, 2003, it took only three months for the Democrats to betray them and their president, to turn their backs on the war they had authorized and supported, and claim it was – to use the words of former Vice President Al Gore, “unnecessary, immoral and illegal.” Or in the words of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, “the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.”</p>
<p>Why did the Democrats betray the war they had supported? It was not because of any fact on the ground in Iraq, or any principles Bush had allegedly violated. They betrayed our troops and turned on their commander-in-chief for one reason and one reason alone: to gain political power at home.</p>
<p>At the very moment of their treachery a Democratic primary was in progress. An anti-war Democrat – a Sixties leftist named Howard Dean &#8212; was on the verge of winning their presidential nomination, burying other candidates like John Kerry and John Edwards in the polls. Until then, Kerry and Edwards were full-throated supporters of the war. Kerry made a speech on the floor of the Senate in support of the bill authorizing the use of force. He explained why the forcible removal of Saddam was necessary to defend the country and secure the peace.</p>
<p>But that was before the anti-war candidate Howard Dean had surged ahead in the polls. When that happened, and Kerry saw that he was going to lose the party nomination, he decided to switch sides. He turned his back on everything he had said in defense of the war, and the necessity of using force, and he turned his back on our troops in the field, and attacked their commander-in-chief. He did it for one reason, and one reason only. He did it because he saw it as the only way to win the Democratic nomination and have a chance of winning the presidency in 2004.</p>
<p>Kerry and the Democrats betrayed the war they had authorized; they betrayed the young Americans they sent into harms way; they betrayed the country they had sworn to serve. They did it to win the political power they were going to use to change the world. No conservative in his right mind would behave like this. No conservative would regard a political administration in Washington as a stepping stone on the way to a brave new world, and therefore something to justify opposing a war they had authorized and supported.</p>
<p>What were the <i>issues</i> the Democrats used to make their case against the president and the war in Iraq? It didn’t really matter, because the issues were never the issue. The Democrats opposed Bush and the war because both stood in the way of their quest for power.</p>
<p>The Democrats attacked Bush for acting in haste and acting unilaterally. Both charges were false. Worse, the Democrats claimed that the war was about weapons of mass destruction, ignoring the fact that Saddam had violated the Gulf War truce and had failed to comply with sixteen Security Council resolutions attempting to bring him into line, including the ultimatum of December 7. To make their case they claimed that Bush falsified the intelligence reports about weapons of mass destruction and lied in order to fool them into supporting the war. This was the biggest lie of the entire war. CIA chief George Tenet was a Clinton appointee. John Kerry sat on the intelligence committees with other Democrats like Feinstein and Rockefeller. The Democrats had access to <i>all</i> the intelligence information that Bush did. Bush could not have persuaded them to support the war by lying about the data, even if he had wanted to.</p>
<p>Why did they accuse him of lying? Because they could not admit the actual reason they had betrayed the war and the young men and women they sent to battle. They did it for partisan political gain. Unfortunately neither the White House nor any Republican had the political courage to hold them to account, and we are all paying the price for that.</p>
<p>For five years the Democrats conducted a scorched earth campaign against their country and its commander in the midst of a war. The harm they did is irreparable. Their sabotage of the war crippled our efforts to prosecute it – for example to follow Saddam’s weapons and generals into Syria, where they had fled; to take the war to Iran which supplied the IEDs which killed most of our troops; to close the border with Syria across which <i>jihadists</i> entered Iraq to fight our troops. The Democrats’ sabotage of the war created the power vacuum in the Middle East, which the terrorists and the Russians have now filled. And it most certainly inflicted casualties on our troops, though no one has had the political courage to say so.</p>
<p>The Democrats sabotaged the war in Iraq for the worst of reasons. They claimed it was for principle, but it was really – and only &#8212; to save their political skins.</p>
<p>Once the Democrats recaptured the presidency, it took no time at all for events to expose this destructive farce. Unlike the majority of his Democratic colleagues, Senator Barack Obama had always opposed the war in Iraq. He was against American interventions in sovereign countries, and he was against presidents who acted unilaterally, and in haste. Or so he said.</p>
<p>But when Obama became president and had the power to do so, he invaded Libya: unilaterally, and without authorization, and with no national security interest at stake. And he lied about the cause. There was no prospect of massacres as he claimed, and it was not a human rights intervention. If it were, Libya would not now be in chaos with al-Qaeda resurgent, and in a worse state than before.</p>
<p>Obama’s invasion of Libya was not merely unilateral. It was egomaniacal. Obama consulted no one outside his White House inner circle, not his own party, not the Congress, not the United Nations. Unlike Bush, he acted without constitutional authority and he acted alone. Yet there was not one Democratic leader who stood up for the principles they had all invoked to cripple America’s war against the <i>jihadists</i> in Iraq. Not one Democratic leader opposed the Democratic president, or criticized his aggression. They abandoned the principles of multilaterialism, consultation with Congress, and support from the U.N. because it would have been bad for their leader if they didn’t; it would have jeopardized their <i>power</i>.</p>
<p>The political consequences of the differences between conservatives and progressives is not only not small, it affects the way both sides conduct their political battles. Progressives focus on an impossible future, a utopia of promises, and this justifies for them their unscrupulous means. Issues for them are merely instruments for accumulating political power.  Conservatives look to the past as a guide to what is possible and humanly practical, and what is not. Issues for them are problems that need to be fixed, and they take seriously the policies they devise to address them. This puts conservatives at a huge political disadvantage. It causes them to argue policy as though they were debating a party with whom they shared goals and only differed on the means to get there. But that is far from the case.</p>
<p>Take the present debate about a government shutdown. A statement from Boehner’s office explains, “The entire government is shut down right now because Washington Democrats refuse to even talk about fairness for all Americans under ObamaCare.” This is a proposal for compromise and is designed to portray Republicans as reasonable. We’re all part of the same social contract, and we need to give on both sides to resolve the impasse. We’re all interested in fairness, when all is said and done. If individuals were to be given a year’s extension under Obamacare, as corporations already have been, that would be fair. But since when is Obamacare about fairness? That’s a Democratic façade and talking point, courtesy of the Republican Speaker. By way of contrast, this is how the Democrats make their argument: “Republicans are trying to shut down the government so they can prevent us from providing all Americans with affordable healthcare.” In other words, Democrats are standing up for fairness and ordinary Americans, against the selfish Republicans who want deny them affordable care and shut down their government. This is three lies in one sentence. But who do you think wins that vote?</p>
<p>If you want to fight the left you have to fight fire with fire. That means first and foremost you have to hold them to account for hurting the people they are pretending to help. Whose opportunities are going to be wrecked by Obamacare? Health care taxes will go up for those who pay taxes – the middle class &#8212; while their incomes will go down. Already Obamacare is cutting the workweek to 30 hours. Whose pocket books do you think that is hitting?</p>
<p>They claim conservatives are conducting a war against minorities; we need to throw the truth back in their faces. We need to tell the people that progressives are the principal oppressors and exploiters of minorities and the poor in this country. Progressives control the inner cities, which are teeming with the nation’s minorities and poor; and they run the broken public school systems that have become dumping grounds for those who cannot afford a private education.</p>
<p>The city of Milwaukee has been run by liberals and progressives without interruption for more than 100 years. What is the consequence of this progressive rule? Milwaukee’s median household income is forty percent below the rest of the country. The black unemployment rate is 27%, three times the national average for everyone. Milwaukee’s population is majority black and Hispanic, and 30% of it lives below the poverty line. A third of Milwaukee’s public school children drop out before they graduate; those who do are barely literate. <i>That’s </i>what progressive policies achieve. Don’t let them forget it.</p>
<p>Conservatives need to put the human disasters of progressive policies in front of people every chance they get. We need to confront progressives with the misery they have created in America’s bankrupt cities, Detroit and Chicago, Philadelphia and Cincinnati, St. Louis, and the nation’s capital, and every city they have controlled for 25, 50 and 100 years, without interruption.</p>
<p>Conservatives need to talk less to the voters’ heads and more to their hearts. Government debt is not just an accountant’s nightmare. Debt is a form of economic slavery. If you add up all the taxes Americans pay &#8212; federal, state, local, income, sales &#8212; Americans already work half the year for government rather than for themselves. Like Obamacare and the political use of the I.R.S., debt is a threat to individual freedom.<i> </i></p>
<p><i>Freedom</i> is what our cause is about not just fiscal responsibility. Fiscal responsibility has no emotional appeal except to people who already understand what it means. Fiscal responsibility is a means to an end. The end is freedom, and that is what inspires commitment and sacrifice and the passion necessary to win. Because it speaks to the heart.</p>
<p>Conservatives need to speak up as champions of the little guys, the underdogs, whose lives are being steadily constricted – made less free &#8212; by the ongoing destruction of a system that once afforded more opportunity for more people than any other in the history of the world. Conservatives need to speak up for the young whose future horizons are being rapidly diminished as the trillion dollar Obama deficits pile higher and higher. Conservatives need to speak for all Americans whose security under Obama has been degraded to the most dangerous levels since the end of the Cold War.</p>
<p>This is the threat we face, and the sooner we grapple with it the greater our chances to survive it. The most important battle in the world today is not being waged in the Middle East but here at home in the United States. If we lose this battle, everything is lost. But if we will take the measure of the enemies of freedom and prepare ourselves to fight them, we have a better than even chance to win.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>Iran Threatens Rape of One of Obama’s Daughters Over Syria</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/jamie-glazov/iran-threatens-rape-of-one-of-obamas-daughters-if-u-s-hits-syria/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iran-threatens-rape-of-one-of-obamas-daughters-if-u-s-hits-syria</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/jamie-glazov/iran-threatens-rape-of-one-of-obamas-daughters-if-u-s-hits-syria/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Sep 2013 04:29:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[official]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rape of daughter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[threat]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=203374</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Plain Islamic doctrine at play -- will U.S. media's willful blindness continue?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/iran.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-203376" alt="iran" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/iran.jpg" width="276" height="182" /></a><em>A former Iranian official has <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/05/iran-threatens-brutal-attacks-on-americans-obama-family-if-us-hits-syria/#ixzz2e98McW6L">threatened the rape</a> and murder of one of Obama’s daughters if the U.S. attacks Syria. This Islamic threat is simply following traditional Islamic rules of Jihad against the infidel. It is safe to assume, however, that MSNBC, CNN and the NY Times will not any time soon explore why this former Iranian official has made such a pronouncement &#8212; and shed light on the aspects of Islamic theology that inspire and sanction <em>owning slaves and raping “kafir” females. </em>Frontpage has therefore decided to rerun Jamie Glazov&#8217;s interview with Bill Warner, &#8220;Islam, Slavery and Rape,&#8221; from our Nov. 23, 2007 edition, which deals directly with this issue. </em></p>
<p>*</p>
<p><strong>Islam, Slavery and Rape</strong> <b></b></p>
<div>
<p>Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Bill Warner, the director of the <a href="http://www.cspipublishing.com/">Center for the Study of Political Islam</a> (CSPI) and spokesman for <a href="http://www.politicalislam.com/">politicalislam.com</a>. CSPI’s goal is to teach the doctrine of political Islam through its books and it has produced an eleven book series on political Islam. Mr. Warner did not write the CSPI series, but he acts as the agent for a group of scholars who are the authors. The Center’s latest book is <i><a href="http://www.politicalislam.com/Submission_of_Women_and_Slaves.htm">The Submission of Women and Slaves, Islamic Duality.</a></i></p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Bill Warner, welcome back to Frontpage Magazine. This is the second part in our two-part series with you on the Center’s most recent book. In <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=2ACCD764-5177-4D05-9186-4B9EFE442849">the first part</a> we discussed Islam and its doctrine on the submission of women. In this second and final part we will discuss the matter of slavery. Welcome to Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p><b>Warner:</b> It is a pleasure to work with Frontpage.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> So tell us in general where Islam stands on slavery.</p>
<p><b>Warner:</b> Islam’s stand on slavery is based on its political principles of submission and duality. The principle of submission could not be clearer. By definition a slave is the most submissive of all people. You become a slave only when you have no more choices. A slave has completely submitted to a master.</p>
<p>The principle of duality is shown by the fact that Islam does not enslave Muslims, only kafirs (non-Muslims). Since only kafirs are enslaved, it assures that more of the world submits to Islam.</p>
<p>Islamic slavery is based on the Trilogy of the Koran, the Sira (Mohammed’s life) and the Hadith (the Traditions of Mohammed). All three texts say that slavery is permitted, ethical, desirable and a virtue. There is not one single negative word about slavery.</p>
<p>Slavery is seen as a process that brings kafirs to Islam. It is a virtue to free slaves, but Mohammed only freed slaves who submitted to Islam. If the kafir slave does not submit, then their children will. So given enough time, slaves convert to Islam. That is one of the reasons that Islam sees slavery as a positive.</p>
<p>Of course, there is another reason that Islam sees slavery as being so &#8220;good&#8221; and that is the money. Mohammed and the other jihadists made a fortune out of enslaving kafirs. Mohammed used the money for more jihad. So slavery financed the spread of Islam and jihad from the beginning.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> What were the ingredients of Mohammed’s own life in terms of slavery?</p>
<p><b>Warner:</b> Mohammed is the perfect pattern for all humanity and his life was saturated in slavery. When his mother died, it was a freed slave who nursed him. His first wife owned slaves. One of his first converts was a slave. His closest friend, Abu Bakr, traded one of his black kafir slaves for a Muslim who was enslaved by a kafir.</p>
<p>But all of this was small change compared to his envolvement with slavery once he turned to jihad. In his first major battle at Badr, he stood by and prayed as his henchmen beat and tortured captured slaves to get information about the enemy kafirs.</p>
<p>Slaves made Mohammed&#8217;s pulpit. Slaves mended his cloths, cooked his food, and did every thing that a slave does for the master. He gave away slaves as gifts and received them as gifts. He went to war to kill the males so that the remaining people would surrender to be sold as slaves. Mohammed sold slaves on both the retail and wholesale markets.</p>
<p>He offered captured slaves their freedom if they would first agree that he was the prophet of Allah. A kafir slave then became a slave of Allah, because all Muslims are slaves of Allah. For a slave, the religion of Mohammed started and ended with slavery.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Can you talk a bit about Islam and sexual slavery?</p>
<p><b>Warner:</b> All morality in Islam is patterned after the example of Mohammed. Everything that he did and said defines what is permitted or “good”. Mohammed repeatedly sanctioned forced sex (rape) with kafir females after they were captured. The Hadith clearly reports that he got first choice of the women. In one case, he repeatedly demanded one particular woman for himself and swapped two other kafir slave women for his choice. So if Mohammed was involved in the rape of kafirs, then rape is a virtue, not a sin or error.</p>
<p>When Mohammed destroyed the B. Qurayza tribe, all of the adult male Jews were beheaded, so that no husbands were left. Mohammed then took the children and gave them to Muslims to raise as Muslims and he sold off the Jewish women as slaves.</p>
<p>We know from another story that the women were divided into sex slaves and domestic slaves. In one scene, a jihadist is trying to obtain a high ransom for a woman and he is told that her breasts are flat and her mouth is cold, so her value was less. In short, she was only good for work around the house, not in the bedroom.</p>
<p>The Hadith tells of another story where the Muslims used <i>coitus interruptus</i> to avoid impregnating the kafir sex slaves. The reason was purely for business. If the kafir sex slave was pregnant, then she was worth less money.</p>
<p>Islamic doctrine says that kafir women should not be used for prostitutes, only for the pleasure of the master.</p>
<p>When Mohammed attacked the Jews at Khaybar, many moral precedents were set. Sexual slavery received an entire set of rules. Muslims were not to rape pregnant or menstruating women until they had delivered the child or finished their periods. At Khaybar, Mohammed’s god Allah, announced that even married women were fair game for rape.</p>
<p>Mohammed only killed some of the Jews at Khaybar. The male and female survivors were needed to work the land as dhimmis. (The original dhimmis were semi-slaves with no civil rights. Today, dhimmis are ignorant kafirs who apologize for Islam.) Since Islam needed the men to work, husbands were left alive. That was the reason that the Koran said that in this case, even with the husbands looking on, it was good to rape the women.</p>
<p>Sexual slavery was not only fun and profitable for the Muslim men, but rape was a powerful tactic of war, then and today. The women are forced into submission to Muslim men and the husbands are humiliated. Humiliated men are weakened men, so more kafirs were less able to resist Islam.</p>
<p>For some time Mohammed&#8217;s favorite sex partner was a Christian slave from Egypt named Mary. One of Mohammed&#8217;s wives caught him in some state of intimacy with Mary in the wife&#8217;s bedroom and raised hell. Mohammed promised to not do it again and moved Mary to her own apartment in Medina.</p>
<p>Mohammed had received Mary and her sister as gifts. He gave her sister away to a Muslim poet. He was used to giving away sex slaves. He gave several of his top lieutenants kafir sex slaves. Umar, who later became caliph, gave his sex slave to his son. [As an aside, when he was caliph, his son got drunk and Umar beat him to death.]</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> This institution of Islamic sexual slavery isn’t just a reality of the past is it?</p>
<p><b>Warner:</b> Everything that has been said up to now is not only history; it is Sunna (the example of the perfect pattern of action and morality found in Mohammed). So today we don&#8217;t have a beautiful blonde Christian girl on the block in Mecca, but we have continuous and ongoing rapes by Muslims in kafir cities. This goes on everywhere that Islam goes because it is Sunna.</p>
<p>This is a continuous 1400-year history of jihad. In every detailed history that comes from the original documents from history, rape is a constant. You have to look in the original documents, since our historians refuse to report it in so-called history books.</p>
<p>Rape is Sunna. Rape is not a sin. Rape is permitted and encouraged by Mohammed and the Koran. Islam is the only political system in the world that includes rules for rape and war. Rape is jihad. How good can it get? A Muslim gets to rape a kafir girl and get heaven credits. All jihad is a ticket to Paradise.</p>
<p>The most disgusting aspect of the Islamic rape of kafirs is not the rapes, but the kafir response. Kafirs become dhimmis by ignoring the rapes. I challenge you to find one, even one, mention of Islamic rape in the history books.</p>
<p>Islamic rape is more taboo than the N-word in the media. At least the N-word is acknowledged to exist. Even unicorns exist in media fantasy. But Islamic rape is forbidden to even exist as a fantasy.</p>
<p>And to reach a fevered rant: our so-called &#8220;feminist&#8221; scholars are absolutely intellectually and morally bankrupt hypocrites. They are traitors to our culture and a shame and a disgrace. They remain silent in the face of heinous crimes against women. They are arch-dhimmis when they refuse to speak of the Sunna, history and current rapes of our daughters, mothers, and sisters.</p>
<p>And our tax dollars support their evil in our public universities.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Mohammed was a white man and had black slaves, correct? Isn’t there a racism here? Where is all the leftist indignation against Islam on this issue?</p>
<p><b>Warner:</b> The relationship between blacks and slavery is ironic. A standard approach of Islam to blacks is that Christianity is the religion of the white man and Islam is the natural religion of the black man. They add that Mohammed&#8217;s second convert was a black slave, Bilal, who was Mohammed&#8217;s companion and the first muezzin (the man who calls to prayer).</p>
<p>The Hadith, however, goes out of its way, many times, to tell the world that Mohammed was a white man. The Hadith also tells us the race of the kafirs that Mohammed enslaved. And Mohammed had many black slaves in his household. One of his slaves was a black man called, Anjasha.</p>
<p>Mohammed owned black slaves. It is that simple. His favorite wife, the child Aisha, had a black slave. But to be fair to Mohammed, he was not a racist about slavery. He enslaved Arabs, Africans, and Greeks. Islam enslaves all kafirs, independent of race.</p>
<p>Mohammed was politically incorrect about blacks and called them &#8220;raisin heads&#8221; in the Hadith. Thus it would be a compliment to call a black Muslim a &#8220;raisin head.&#8221; It would be Sunna and not offensive. Mohammed also said that Muslims are to obey the Islamic leader, &#8220;even if they were black.&#8221; A left-handed compliment, at best.</p>
<p>Mohammed used his robe to shield Aisha, so she could watch black slaves perform a martial arts routine in the mosque. The Hadith tells of a prophecy about a black man bringing evil to Islam. Black men were prophesized to destroy the Kabah.</p>
<p>But when Muslims preach to blacks they only say that Islam&#8217;s first muezzin was a black man. They don&#8217;t tell the rest of the story.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Can you give us a brief synopsis of the history of Islamic slavery?</p>
<p><b>Warner:</b> It all started with Mohammed and then went worldwide.</p>
<p>When Islam burst out of Arabia into the kafir world, they took the wealth and slaves. Slavery was an unapologetic part of jihad.</p>
<p>The Arabic language is a good place to see how important slavery was. In <i><a href="http://www.politicalislam.com/Submission_of_Women_and_Slaves.htm">The Submission of Women and Slaves</a></i>, we collected over 30 Arabic words that deal with slavery. We think that Arabic has more words for slaves than any other language.</p>
<p>Both a black African and a black slave have the same name, <i>abd</i>. The historical reason for this is that African slavery was so important to Islamic economics. Language reflects history. Islamic legal history is filled with the complaints by African Muslim jurists about how Arabic Muslim slave traders captured African Muslims and sold them on the auction block.</p>
<p>History records around 11,000,000 Africans being sent to the Americas and about 13,000,000 being sent to Islamic countries for a total of 24,000,000 African slaves. To get one slave, many others have to be killed for the tribe to surrender to enslavement. The old, sick and children are left behind to starve. These collateral deaths are conservatively estimated to about 5 to 1. So that implies that over 1400 years, 120,000,000 million Africans have been killed to furnish Islam with its profits.</p>
<p>The accepted history of race in the U.S. is that white men captured Africans, brought them to the U.S. and sold them as slaves. This is wrong. When the white slavers showed up on the west coast of Africa, they didn’t capture Africans. They looked them over in the pens, gave the Muslim slave traders their money, took their bills of sale, and loaded their purchases into their boats.</p>
<p>The Muslims had been plying the trade of war, capture, enslavement, and sale for a thousand years. Mohammed was a slave trader. Long after the white slave traders quit, the Muslims continued their African slave trade. It still exists today.</p>
<p>And to put a fine point on it, many African slaves were castrated by removing both testicles and penis. Castrated slaves brought more on the slave block. Castrated blacks were the traditional keepers of Mohammed&#8217;s mosque in Medina.</p>
<p>African slaves were called <i>abd</i>; white slaves were called <i>mamluk.</i> Most black slaves were used in mining and heavy fieldwork. White slaves were used more for skilled trades. White slaves were even promoted to leadership positions, if they converted. Only one black slave was promoted to leadership. He ruled Egypt and was a eunuch.</p>
<p>Over a million white slaves were taken from Europe. Our word, slave, comes from Slav. A white woman was the highest price slave for 1400 years on the Meccan auction block. The Muslim who could not afford a white sex slave choose an Ethiopian woman at a third of the price.</p>
<p>The most revolting enslavement of whites was how Turkish Muslims took as a tax, one out of five Christian children in Islamic ruled Eastern Europe. These male children were taken back to Turkey where they became the <i>janissaries</i>, elite soldiers for the sultan. The Turkish sultans did not trust tribal Muslims to be the elite palace guards, since they all harbored ancient tribal rivalries. We see the same distrust of Muslim tribal politics in Afghanistan, where kafirs are used as presidential guards.</p>
<p>The Hindus were enslaved, but we don&#8217;t have the number. We do know that jihad took half of ancient Hindustan and killed 80,000,000 Hindus. We have accountings of Hindus being enslaved by the hundreds of thousands at a time.</p>
<p>Muslims enslave everyone, but no one enslaves Muslims. This knowledge is part of Islam&#8217;s arrogance and superiority. They know the history; it is the dhimmis (kafir apologists) who are ignorant of the doctrine and history of Islamic slavery.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> The violent capture and <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=D8100901-E13E-4FF9-B1D2-5D4E03C5E7F9">enslavement of black Africans by Muslim Arabs continues</a> to this today. The root of this modern-day slavery is, of course, Islamic doctrine.</p>
<p><b>Warner:</b> The enslavement of Africans is happening today. The only reason that Islam stopped enslaving whites and Hindus is that Islam is too weak to resist the social pressure. The Sunna of slavery has not changed, just the ability to use their law.</p>
<p>In the African countryside Muslims are still using jihad to enrich themselves. I have spoken with a Sudanese slave who escaped. The Muslims killed his parents and took him and his sister. Each night the jihadists gang raped his sister. Remember, rape is Sunna.</p>
<p>When he met his new masters, they put him in the middle of a circle of the family and each beat him with a stick. He was told that his new name was Abd, black slave. He slept in the barn with the animals.</p>
<p>Our media and intellectuals are quick to punish the slightest insult by a white against a black man, but they have not the slightest recognition of murder, rape and enslavement of blacks by Islam. Our media and intellectuals are dhimmis.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Final thoughts and comments?</p>
<p><b>Warner:</b> Slavery is the fruit of Islamic duality. Mohammed, the master of dualism and submission, used slavery as a tool of jihad because it worked. Mohammed’s life was infused with slavery. Slaves were the lifeblood of Islam. Mohammed, the white man, owned both male and female black slaves. His attitude was pure dualism.</p>
<p>The most disgusting thing about Islamic slavery is not that Muslims enslave others, but that we ignore it. The Muslims have been fed the Koran and the Sunna in their mother&#8217;s milk. They are doing what is ethical according to Islam. In a strange way, Muslims are to be pitied. A Muslim is the first victim of Islam.</p>
<p>The criticism of whites because of their being involved in slavery is standard fair in the media and the universities. Try to find a university that even teaches about the killing of 120,000,000 Africans for Muslims to profit from the 24,000,000 slaves.</p>
<p>Blacks define themselves on the basis of slavery. They will not go beyond the white, Christian version of slavery. There is only one theory of history in the black community—the West African Limited Edition version of history. Blacks will not admit the broad scope of slave history. Hindu slavery? It never happened. White and European slavery? It never happened. Slavery on the East coast of Africa? It never happened. A massive slave trade through the Sahara into North Africa? It never happened. Black, eunuchs at the Medina mosque? It never happened. This incomplete history of slavery is what the taxpayers fund in the state universities.</p>
<p>How can black leaders ignore Islam&#8217;s sacred violence in Africa? Why aren’t the black columnists, writers, professors, or ministers speaking out? They are ignorant and in total denial. They are the molested children of Islam.</p>
<p>Blacks are dhimmis and serve Islam with their silence. There is a deep fear of Islam that makes them overlook and placate Islam. Arabs are the masters of blacks.</p>
<p>One thing whites and blacks have in common is that their ancestors were enslaved by Islam, and both are too ignorant to know it. Blacks and whites have a secret shame buried under the denial of being slaves inside Islam.</p>
<p>But the rest of the media and intellectuals line up as dhimmis, too. One of the marks of a dhimmi under the fourth caliph, Umar, was that a dhimmi was forbidden to study the Koran. The chief mark of dhimmitude today is ignorance of the Koran, the Sira and the Hadith. The ignorance of kafir intellectuals about Islam is profound.</p>
<p>They don&#8217;t know about how jihad killed the 120,000,000 Africans, the 60,000,000 Christians, the 80,000,000 Hindus or the 10,000,000 Buddhists. Our intellectuals do not know about the Tears of Jihad (detailed in all of our books). That is a lot of death and ignorance—270,000,000 dead. Our intellectuals don&#8217;t know, don&#8217;t care and don&#8217;t bother. They deny.</p>
<p>University Islamic studies never mention the Islamic political doctrine. The media discusses Islam in terms of political correctness, and multiculturalism. History courses don’t teach about the civilizational annihilation due to jihad. Religious leaders placate imams in public gatherings and have no knowledge what the imam actually thinks of them. Political thinkers do not even know Islam as a political force</p>
<p>The problem with this ignorance is that our intellectuals are unable to help us. They do not understand that Islam is a civilization based upon the ideal of dualism. Islamic ethics and politics have one set of rules for Muslims and another for kafirs. Our civilization is based upon the ideal of unitary ethics, the Golden Rule. We do not have two sets of laws and ethics, like Islam. Our intellectuals cannot explain what dualism has meant in the past or what it will mean for our future—civilizational annihilation.</p>
<p>Our intellectuals and the media have only one view of Islam—a glorious civilization. They have created the &#8220;terrorist&#8221;, a bogus term based upon ignorance. And the &#8220;terrorist&#8221; is not even a &#8220;real&#8221; Muslim, but an extremist fundamentalist. All of these terms are based upon a profound ignorance of Islamic political doctrine.</p>
<p>Intellectuals cannot connect the dots of persecution of other intellectuals and artists today, such as Salman Rushdie, Theo van Gogh, the Mohammed cartoon riots, and Daniel Pearl. Their persecution is part of a 1400 year Islamic tradition of keeping all intellectuals and artists in line with the doctrine of political Islam. But for our intellectuals, there is no history, no connection, no pattern, no doctrine of Islam. Their only doctrine is the doctrine of denial. These intellectuals write our textbooks. Then our tax dollars buy the books to feed the ignorance.</p>
<p>What explains the intellectuals’ silence and ignorance? The enormous violence of jihad has produced the psychology of the “molested child” syndrome. Intellectuals fear, apologize for, and placate the Islamic abusers, ignoring the violence of the past. Then they turn around and advise our politicians. The result is an ignorant populace who look to our intellectuals for guidance and find treachery and lies.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Bill Warner, thank you for joining us.</p>
<p><b>Warner:</b> Thank you for standing against political Islam.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>To learn more about why the Left refuses to acknowledge Islam&#8217;s teachings about raping the kafir, and Islam&#8217;s teachings on Jihad overall, see the 2-part video interview with Jamie Glazov below on Jihad Denial:</em></p>
<p><strong>Part 1:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/SNJg6w6CB0o" height="300" width="400" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Part 2:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6sBPH589Feo" height="300" width="400" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
</div>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Bread and Circuses</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/caroline-glick/obamas-bread-and-circuses/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-bread-and-circuses</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Aug 2013 04:44:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[How the president's incompetence on Syria has signaled to our enemies that the U.S. is an empty suit. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><i><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Obama-and-ship-of-fools-thumb-470x254-3130.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-202667" alt="Obama and ship of fools-thumb-470x254-3130" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Obama-and-ship-of-fools-thumb-470x254-3130.jpg" width="216" height="176" /></a>Originally published in T<a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Column-One-Obamas-bread-and-circuses-324714">he Jerusalem Post</a>. </i></p>
<p>Over the past week, President Barack Obama and his senior advisers have told us that the US is poised to go to war against Syria. In the next few days, the US intends to use its air power and guided missiles to attack Syria in response to the regime&#8217;s use of chemical weapons in the outskirts of Damascus last week.</p>
<p>The questions that ought to have been answered before any statements were made by the likes of Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel have barely been raised in the public arena. The most important of those questions are: What US interests are at stake in Syria? How should the US go about advancing them? What does Syria&#8217;s use of chemical weapons means for the US&#8217;s position in the region? How would the planned US military action in Syria impact US deterrent strength, national interests and credibility regionally and worldwide? Syria is not an easy case. Thirty months into the war there, it is clear that the good guys, such as they are, are not in a position to win.</p>
<p>Syria is controlled by Iran and its war is being directed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and by Hezbollah. And arrayed against them are rebel forces dominated by al-Qaida.</p>
<p>As US Sen. Ted Cruz explained this week, &#8220;Of nine rebel groups [fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad], seven of them may well have some significant ties to al-Qaida.&#8221;</p>
<p>With no good horse to bet on, the US and its allies have three core interests relating to the war. First, they have an interest in preventing Syria&#8217;s chemical, biological and ballistic missile arsenals from being used against them either directly by the regime, through its terror proxies or by a successor regime.</p>
<p>Second, the US and its allies have an interest in containing the war as much as possible to Syria itself.</p>
<p>Finally, the US and its allies share an interest in preventing Iran, Moscow or al-Qaida from winning the war or making any strategic gains from their involvement in the war.</p>
<p>For the past two-and-a-half years, Israel has been doing an exemplary job of securing the first interest. According to media reports, the IDF has conducted numerous strikes inside Syria to prevent the transfer of advanced weaponry, including missiles from Syria to Hezbollah.</p>
<p>Rather than assist Israel in its efforts that are also vital to US strategic interests, the US has been endangering these Israeli operations. US officials have repeatedly leaked details of Israel&#8217;s operations to the media. These leaks have provoked several senior Israeli officials to express acute concern that in providing the media with information regarding these Israeli strikes, the Obama administration is behaving as if it is interested in provoking a war between Israel and Syria. The concerns are rooted in a profound distrust of US intentions, unprecedented in the 50-year history of US-Israeli strategic relations.</p>
<p>The second US interest threatened by the war in Syria is the prospect that the war will not be contained in Syria. Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan specifically are threatened by the carnage. To date, this threat has been checked in Jordan and Lebanon. In Jordan, US forces along the border have doubtlessly had a deterrent impact in preventing the infiltration of the kingdom by Syrian forces.</p>
<p>In Lebanon, given the huge potential for spillover, the consequences of the war in Syria have been much smaller than could have been reasonably expected. Hezbollah has taken a significant political hit for its involvement in the war in Syria. On the ground, the spillover violence has mainly involved Shi&#8217;ite and Shi&#8217;ite jihadists targeting one another.</p>
<p>Iraq is the main regional victim of the war in Syria. The war there reignited the war between Sunnis and Shi&#8217;ites in Iraq. Violence has reached levels unseen since the US force surge in 2007. The renewed internecine warfare in Iraq redounds directly to President Barack Obama&#8217;s decision not to leave a residual US force in the country. In the absence US forces, there is no actor on the ground capable of strengthening the Iraqi government&#8217;s ability to withstand Iranian penetration or the resurgence of al-Qaida.</p>
<p>The third interest of the US and its allies that is threatened by the war in Syria is to prevent Iran, Russia or al-Qaida from securing a victory or a tangible benefit from their involvement in the war.</p>
<p>It is important to note that despite the moral depravity of the regime&#8217;s use of chemical weapons, none of America&#8217;s vital interests is impacted by their use within Syria. Obama&#8217;s pledge last year to view the use of chemical weapons as a tripwire that would automatically cause the US to intervene militarily in the war in Syria was made without relation to any specific US interest.</p>
<p>But once Obama made his pledge, other US interests became inextricably linked to US retaliation for such a strike. The interests now on the line are America&#8217;s deterrent power and strategic credibility. If Obama responds in a credible way to Syria&#8217;s use of chemical weapons, those interests will be advanced. If he does not, US deterrent power will become a laughing stock and US credibility will be destroyed.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the US doesn&#8217;t have many options for responding to Assad&#8217;s use of chemical weapons. If it targets the regime in a serious way, Assad could fall, and al-Qaida would then win the war. Conversely, if the US strike is sufficient to cause strategic harm to the regime&#8217;s survivability, Iran could order the Syrians or Hezbollah or Hamas, or all of them, to attack Israel. Such an attack would raise the prospect of regional war significantly.</p>
<p>A reasonable response would be for the US to target Syria&#8217;s ballistic missile sites. And that could happen. Although the US doesn&#8217;t have to get involved in order to produce such an outcome. Israel could destroy Syria&#8217;s ballistic missiles without any US involvement while minimizing the risk of a regional conflagration.</p>
<p>There are regime centers and military command and control bases and other strategic sites that it might make sense for the US to target.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the number of regime and military targets the US has available for targeting has been significantly reduced in recent days. Administration leaks of the US target bank gave the Syrians ample time to move their personnel and equipment.</p>
<p>This brings us to the purpose the Obama administration has assigned to a potential retaliatory strike against the Syrian regime following its use of chemical weapons.</p>
<p>Obama told PBS on Wednesday that US strikes on Syria would be &#8220;a shot across the bow.&#8221;</p>
<p>But as Charles Krauthammer noted, such a warning is worthless. In the same interview Obama also promised that the attack would be a nonrecurring event. When there are no consequences to ignoring a warning, then the warning will be ignored.</p>
<p>This is a very big problem. Obama&#8217;s obvious reluctance to follow through on his pledge to retaliate if Syria used chemical weapons may stem from a belated recognition that he has tethered the US&#8217;s strategic credibility to the quality of its response to an action that in itself has little significance to US interests in Syria.</p>
<p>And this brings us to the third vital US interest threatened by the war in Syria &#8211; preventing Iran, al-Qaida or Russia from scoring a victory.</p>
<p>Whereas the war going on in Syria pits jihadists against jihadists, the war that concerns the US and its allies is the war the jihadists wage against everyone else. And Iran is the epicenter of that war.</p>
<p>Like US deterrent power and strategic credibility, the US&#8217;s interest in preventing Iran from scoring a victory in Damascus is harmed by the obvious unseriousness of the &#8220;signal&#8221; Obama said he wishes to send Assad through US air strikes.</p>
<p>Speaking on Sunday of the chemical strike in Syria, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned, &#8220;Syria has become Iran&#8217;s testing ground&#8230;. Iran is watching and it wants to see what would be the reaction on the use of chemical weapons.&#8221;</p>
<p>The tepid, symbolic response that the US is poised to adopt in response to Syria&#8217;s use of chemical weapons represents a clear signal to Iran. Both the planned strikes and the growing possibility that the US will scrap even a symbolic military strike in Syria tell Iran it has nothing to fear from Obama.</p>
<p>Iran achieved a strategic achievement by exposing the US as a paper tiger in Syria. With this accomplishment in hand, the Iranians will feel free to call Obama&#8217;s bluff on their nuclear weapons project. Obama&#8217;s &#8220;shot across the bow&#8221; response to Syria&#8217;s use of chemical weapons in a mass casualty attack signaled the Iranians that the US will not stop them from developing and deploying a nuclear arsenal.</p>
<p>Policy-makers and commentators who have insisted that we can trust Obama to keep his pledge to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons have based their view on an argument that now lies in tatters. They insisted that by pledging to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, Obama staked his reputation on acting competently to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. To avoid losing face, they said, Obama will keep his pledge.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s behavior on Syria has rendered this position indefensible. Obama is perfectly content with shooting a couple of pot shots at empty government installations. As far as he is concerned, the conduct of air strikes in Syria is not about Syria, or Iran. They are not the target audience of the strikes. The target audience for US air strikes in Syria is the disengaged, uninformed American public.</p>
<p>Obama believes he can prove his moral and strategic bonafides to the public by declaring his outrage at Syrian barbarism and then launching a few cruise missiles from an aircraft carrier. The computer graphics on the television news will complete the task for him.</p>
<p>The New York Times claimed on Thursday that the administration&#8217;s case for striking Syria would not be the &#8220;political theater&#8221; that characterized the Bush administration&#8217;s case for waging war in Iraq. But at least the Bush administration&#8217;s political theater ended with the invasion. In Obama&#8217;s case, the case for war and the war itself are all political theater.</p>
<p>While for a few days the bread and circuses of the planned strategically useless raid will increase newspaper circulation and raise viewer ratings of network news, it will cause grievous harm to US national interests. As far as US enemies are concerned, the US is an empty suit.</p>
<p>And as far as America&#8217;s allies are concerned, the only way to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power is to operate without the knowledge of the United States.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Muslim Brotherhood Supporters Threaten Christians against Protesting</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/muslim-brotherhood-supporters-threaten-christians-against-protesting/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=muslim-brotherhood-supporters-threaten-christians-against-protesting</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Jul 2013 04:34:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Copt]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Morsi]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Copts under attack in post-Morsi Egypt. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/egyptian-christians-after-protest.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-195554" alt="egyptian-christians-after-protest" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/egyptian-christians-after-protest.jpg" width="239" height="187" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3803/egypt-christians-protests">Gatestone Institute</a>.</span></em></p>
<p>Hours before the June 30 protests against Egyptian president Muhammad Morsi and his party, the Muslim Brotherhood, began, the nation’s Christians were, once again, singled out for behaving like citizens who have the right to participate in the protests.</p>
<p>In Minya, Upper Egypt, where millions of Christians live, <a href="http://almogaz.com/news/politics/2013/06/29/982481">letters addressed to the Copts threatened them </a>not to join the protests, otherwise their “businesses, cars, homes, schools, and churches” might “catch fire.” The message concluded by saying “If you are not worried about any of these, then worry about your children and your homes.  This message is being delivered with tact.  But when the moment of truth comes, there will be no tact.”  It’s signed by “People zealous for the nation.”</p>
<p>Such threats are hardly limited to anonymous letters.  During a recent TV interview, Sheikh Essam Abdulamek, a member of parliament’s Shura Council, warned Egypt’s Christians against participating in the June 30 protests, threatening them by saying “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=4fRFiXYB9Y0">Do not sacrifice your children</a>” since “general Muslim opinion will not be silent about the ousting of the president [Morsi].”</p>
<p>Notable in all these threats is that Christian children are specifically mentioned as targets—since they are the easiest and most effective way at punishing “uppity” Copts who think they have the right to protest the Brotherhood and Morsi.   Nor are these threats empty; since the rise of Morsi and the Brotherhood, the targeting of Coptic children has been on the rise.  Some, especially young girls, are regularly abducted, raped, and shamed into converting to Islam and “marrying” their rapists. Coptic boys have increasingly been abducted from the doorsteps of their churches and held for ransom. Most recently, a 6-year-old Christian boy was murdered by his kidnapper—after the boy’s family paid the ransom.  (Read more about the <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/jihad-on-egypts-christian-children/">jihad on Egypt’s Christian children</a>.)</p>
<p>The number of notable Islamic personages on record threatening Egypt’s Christians whenever they dare protest Morsi is significant: back in December 2012, Safwat Hegazy, a prominent Brotherhood figure and preacher, threatened every Christian who dared vote against Morsi’s Sharia-heavy constitution. In <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh5QpEMjHmA">a video </a>speaking before a throng of Muslims, he said:</p>
<blockquote><p>A message to the church of Egypt, from an Egyptian Muslim: I tell the church—by Allah, and again, by Allah—if you conspire and unite with the remnants [opposition] to bring Morsi down, that will be another matter [screams of "Allah Akbar!" followed by chants of "With our soul, with our blood, we give to you, O Islam!"]… [T]here are red lines—and our red line is the legitimacy of Dr. Muhammad Morsi. Whoever splashes water on it, we will splash blood on him” [followed by more wild shouts of "Allah Akbar!"]</p></blockquote>
<p>Around the same time, Dr. Wagdi Ghoneim—who earlier praised Allah for the death of the late Coptic Pope Shenouda, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11699/islamic-hate-for-a-dead-pope">cursing him to hell and damnation </a>on video—made another video, entitled, “A Notice and Warning to the Crusaders in Egypt,” a reference to the nation’s Copts, which he began by saying, “You are playing with fire in Egypt, I swear, the first people to be burned by the fire are you [Copts].” The heart of <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/egyptian-cleric-threatens-christian-copts-with-genocide/">Ghoneim’s message was genocidal</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>The day Egyptians—and I don’t even mean the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafis, regular Egyptians—feel that you are against them, you will be wiped off the face of the earth. I’m warning you now: do not play with fire!… What do you think — that America will protect you? Let’s be very clear, America will not protect you. If so, it would have protected the Christians of Iraq when they were being butchered!</p></blockquote>
<p>And a couple of months ago, while discussing the ongoing protests against Morsi, Sheikh Abdullah Badr, an Al Azhar trained scholar and professor of Islamic exegesis, made the <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/radical-cleric-swears-to-pop-americas-eye-if-moderate-morsi-threatened/">following assertion on live TV</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>I swear to Allah, the day those who went out [to protest], and at their head, the [Coptic] Christians—I say this at the top of my voice—the day they think to come near Dr. Morsi, I—we—will pop their eyes out, and the eyes of all those who support them, even America; and America will burn, and all its inhabitants. Be assured, the day Dr. Morsi is touched by any hand whichever, and connected to whomever, by Allah it will be the last day for us. We will neither leave them, nor show them any mercy.</p></blockquote>
<p>Thus of all of Egypt’s citizens, its most indigenous and original inhabitants—the Christian Copts—are also the most denied equal right; a stark reminder of how Islam entered Egypt, with the sword and violence, and why most Christians, over the centuries, converted: to remain Christian was to remain a third-class, barely tolerated “citizen,” who paid extra taxes, jizya, and was denied any equality with Muslims.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, not only do some Islamic leaders insist that Egypt’s Christians have no right to protest, but apparently so does the Obama administration.  Days before the June 30 protests, Ambassador Anne Patterson <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/obama-to-egyptian-christians-dont-protest-the-brotherhood/">asked the Coptic pope to urge the Copts not to join the protests</a>—thus validating Sharia law’s position concerning subjugated Christians: they must never complain against their Islamic overlords, in this case, Morsi and the Brotherhood.</p>
<p><b>UPDATE</b>:</p>
<p>True to their vows, pro-Morsi Muslims are attacking Egypt’s Christians for participating in the anti-Morsi protests.  The St. George Coptic Christian Church in a village in al-Minya, Egypt, has just been <a href="http://www.light-dark.net/vb/showthread.php?p=1040364981">set on fire</a> by “pro-Morsi” forces.  Copts are reported to be in a state of “fear and panic.”  Thus this church attack is part of the price Egypt’s Christians had to pay to protest Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.  Only time will tell what other attacks Egypt’s harried Copts will pay down the line for participating in the ousting of an Islamist president.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>America&#8217;s Foes Call Obama&#8217;s Bluff</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/americas-enemies-are-calling-obamas-bluff/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=americas-enemies-are-calling-obamas-bluff</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Apr 2013 04:58:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The worst actors on the world stage decipher they are free to do as they please. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/americas-enemies-are-calling-obamas-bluff/art-sa-northkorea-20130326221804330947-620x349/" rel="attachment wp-att-184797"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-184797" title="art-sa-northkorea-20130326221804330947-620x349" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/art-sa-northkorea-20130326221804330947-620x349-450x297.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="178" /></a>Obama, Kerry and Hagel thought that they had a plan for putting North Korea back in the box. North Korea had conducted a nuclear test in February, violating once again the various understandings that had been worked out. But agreements and understandings, written or oral, had never meant much to the repressive regime which had suspended the Armistice Agreement that ended the Korean War numerous times—including last month.</p>
<p>So Obama decided to wave a stick. The playbook for North Korea would feature flights by B-2 and B-52 bombers and F-22 fighter jets to remind the North Korean military that it was no match for Uncle Sam.</p>
<p>A month after Obama’s victory, Park Geun Hye of the Grand National Party had won South Korea’s presidential election. The Grand National Party is conservative and Hye’s mother was murdered by a North Korean assassin. Hye ran on a platform of conciliation, but her rhetoric of peace was wrapped in a concise message that warned North Korea that if it attacked then it would be made to “suffer the costs of provocation.”</p>
<p>Two weeks before her inauguration, North Korea carried out its underground nuclear test sending the region into a panic. The timing was almost certainly deliberate. For her inauguration, the first female president of South Korea wore an olive green jacket with gold buttons that had a distinctly military look to it and her message to North Korea warned that its nuclear ambitions would turn it into its own biggest victim. The quote had the perfect sort of ambiguity that could be read as empathy in the West and a threat in the East.</p>
<p>Hye’s victory neatly matched up with Abe’s victory in Japan. Both South Korea and Japan were under the leadership of conservative governments. Hye was the daughter of her country’s former military dictator. Abe had spoken of rebuilding Japan’s military into a force to be reckoned with. On the other side of the board, China had turned toward its own hard line leadership.</p>
<p>Obama’s pivot to Asia was a belated recognition that a power vacuum had formed and was being filled by growing militarization on all sides.</p>
<p>Japan and South Korea had little confidence that the United States could continue to maintain stability. China was shoving the United States out of the way and blatantly threatening traditional American allies like the Republic of the Philippines. And North Korea was pushing every red line that could be imagined.</p>
<p>Toward the end of January, North Korea declared that its nuclear program was aimed at America. The era of ambiguity was over. North Korea was defining itself as a nuclear power in a new MAD stalemate.</p>
<p>And so the playbook began to unroll. The joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States were supposed to demonstrate that the two countries together could easily defeat the north. But the exercises were a bluff. A demonstration that no one could take seriously. North Korea certainly did not. Instead it called Obama’s bluff by playing a game of nuclear chicken, raising the stakes and the rhetoric.</p>
<p>Obama blinked. The United States put the playbook on hold, cancelled a missile test and began clumsily urging everyone to tone down the rhetoric to avoid a war. The game of chicken had ended with Obama, Kerry and Hagel squawking in a corner.</p>
<p>The trouble with a bluff is that it only works if the other side believes that you aren’t bluffing. And no one believes that Obama would be willing to commit to the use of force in North Korea in any scenario short of a surprise attack. North Korea knows it. So do China, Japan and South Korea. The grand pivot to Asia was an empty gesture with no substance.</p>
<p>After the Taliban had cleaned Obama’s clock, his empty posturing was not likely to impress the ruling elite of a totalitarian state with nuclear capabilities and a willingness to murder uncounted numbers of its own people in horrifying ways.</p>
<p>Obama’s first and biggest bluff took place in Afghanistan. His Surge was supposed to compel the Taliban to come to the negotiating table and make a peaceful withdrawal feasible. Instead large numbers of American lives were thrown away in a limited surge with a timeline. A bluff that failed to work. And that failure set the stage for all the failed bluffs to come.</p>
<p>Obama had gambled on his ability to win over Afghans by reducing air strikes and narrowly constraining the ability of American soldiers to defend themselves, as well as the willingness of the Taliban to come to any agreement with an enemy that they were being paid by Iran and wealthy Gulf oil tycoons to fight.</p>
<p>It wasn’t the last time that Obama would gamble on a bluff and lose. In Syria, Obama is still betting that a few warnings and officially unofficial support for the opposition will force Assad to step down. It hasn’t worked yet and it won’t work. Obama made the same bet in Libya and Gaddafi called his bluff forcing him to engage in an extended bombing campaign to destroy Libyan forces. And when that was done, the victory prize was a burning diplomatic mission and a dead ambassador.</p>
<p>In Iran, Obama has likewise been bluffing with no ace up his sleeve. Libya made it clear that the only way that the White House will commit to a military operation is if the risk is minimal. Obama’s smaller-and-smarter strategy took armed force off the table against any state with a strong enough military and made his bluffs preemptively worthless.</p>
<p>And that left Syria, North Korea and Iran free to do as they pleased.</p>
<p>Obama is stuck with no options between sanctions and military intervention. And once sanctions have been employed, there is nothing left except to sit and wait for a surrender that will never come. It’s not a problem unique to Obama; Bill Clinton and George W. Bush found themselves facing it with Saddam Hussein. But the difference is that they could credibly bluff. Obama can’t.</p>
<p>Last week, Secretary of State John Kerry mumbled something about refusing to accept North Korea as a nuclear state.</p>
<p>“The United States will do what is necessary to defend ourselves and defend our allies, Korea and Japan, “ Kerry said at a joint press conference with the South Korean foreign minister. “We are fully prepared and capable of doing so, and I think the DPRK understands that.”</p>
<p>But that’s exactly the trouble. North Korea doesn’t understand it. Not when its threats were followed by feverish attempts at retreat from Obama Inc.</p>
<p>President Theodore Roosevelt advised speaking softly and carrying a big stick. Instead Obama speaks loudly and carries a toothpick. Obama and Kerry bluster and then punk out when their bluff is called. Obama’s foreign policy of empty threats and incompetent policies has ushered in a Post-American world order.</p>
<p>Asia has lost faith in American stability. Eastern Europe is learning the same lesson. And the Middle East learned it years ago. Whatever happens with North Korea is no longer up to Obama. Just as the UK and France made all the important decisions in Libya and Syria, the North Korean crisis is in Japan and South Korea’s hands.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>U.N. Finally Hits Back at North Korea</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/u-n-finally-hits-back-at-north-korea/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=u-n-finally-hits-back-at-north-korea</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Mar 2013 04:25:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North Korea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sanctions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[threat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[United Nations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=180576</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[But little hope that the Communist prison state will change course. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/u-n-finally-hits-back-at-north-korea/kim07313e/" rel="attachment wp-att-180578"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-180578" title="kim07313e" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/kim07313e-432x350.jpg" alt="" width="259" height="210" /></a>The United Nations Security Council displayed a rare sign of effectiveness on March 7th by passing unanimously its most toughly worded resolution to date (Resolution 2094) against North Korea. It condemns the rogue state&#8217;s nuclear test last month and imposes significant new penalties under the Council&#8217;s enforcement powers pursuant to Chapter VII of the UN Charter.  More than three weeks had elapsed following North Korea&#8217;s test before the United States and China found enough common ground to agree on the text of a resolution, but they were finally able to do so.</p>
<p>After the passage of Resolution 2094, both U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice and China&#8217;s UN Ambassador Li Baodong expressed satisfaction with their accomplishment. Ambassador Rice, who smiled noticeably as she emerged from the Security Council chamber to speak with reporters, chose to emphasize the scope and strength of the new sanctions, saying that they &#8220;will bite and bite hard.&#8221; She added that &#8220;the entire world stands united in our commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and in our demand that North Korea comply with its international obligations. If it does not, then the Security Council committed today, in this resolution, to take further significant measures if there is another nuclear test or missile launch. We regret that North Korea has again chosen the path of provocation instead of the path of peace.&#8221;</p>
<p>Ambassador Li Baodong was more circumspect, but pointed out that the resolution is a reflection of the determination of the international community to stand against nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula. He said that China voted for the resolution because it regarded the resolution as &#8220;balanced&#8221; and&#8221; proportionate,&#8221; with appropriate focus on the nuclear issue. He characterized the resolution as one step in &#8220;a long journey&#8221; and called for resumption of the six party talks as soon as possible to help achieve &#8220;peace and stability&#8221; in the region.</p>
<p>Resolution 2094,  the fifth since 2006, strengthens and expands the scope of the strong sanctions regime already in place. For example, it requires member states to freeze or block any financial transaction or financial service that could contribute to North Korea&#8217;s illicit nuclear arms and ballistic missile programs or the violation of Security Council resolutions. It requires that states not provide public financial support for trade with North Korea such as export credits or insurance if there is a link to North Korea&#8217;s illicit programs or the violation of Security Council resolutions. It calls on states to prohibit the opening of North Korean bank branches on their territories and to prohibit their own financial institutions from opening offices in North Korea if there is such a link. It also extends the sanctions to bulk cash transfers, including through cash couriers (a common way that North Korea has moved illicit funds).</p>
<p>In addition to major strengthening of the financial sanctions, Resolution 2094 requires member states to inspect cargo on their territories, if the state has reasonable grounds to believe the cargo contains prohibited items (e.g., conventional arms, nuclear, or ballistic missile-related items, etc.) and to deny port access to any North Korean vessel that refuses to be inspected or any other vessel that has refused an inspection authorized by that vessel&#8217;s flag state. The resolution does contain, however, a potential loophole for air shipments, containing only a voluntary call that states deny permission to any aircraft to take off, land in or overfly their territory if the aircraft is suspected of transporting prohibited items. Whether China in particular goes along with this call remains to be seen.</p>
<p>The resolution expands the scope of the existing asset freeze to cover the subsidiaries and front companies of entities that have already been designated for targeted sanctions. It also requires states to prohibit the travel of any individual determined to be working for a designated individual or entity or who is violating existing sanctions. If the individual is North Korean, then the states are required to expel that person back to North Korea.</p>
<p>Finally, in a move that is certain to upset the youthful dictator of North Korea Kim Jong-un, who likes his yachts, fancy cars and other privileges of the rich and famous, Resolution 2094 prohibits the transfer of luxury goods to North Korea, including certain kinds of jewelry and precious stones, yachts, luxury automobiles and racing cars.</p>
<p>The resolution also warns North Korea of more to come if it persists with further nuclear or ballistic missile tests.</p>
<p>Even before Resolution 2094 was passed, North Korea&#8217;s leaders threatened a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States. Ambassador Rice did not appear to be fazed by such threats. When asked to comment, she said:</p>
<blockquote><p>North Korea will achieve nothing by continued threats and provocations. These will only further isolate the country and its people and undermine international efforts to promote peace and stability in Northeast Asia. We have urged the North Korean leadership repeatedly—and continue to do so—to heed President Obama’s call to choose a path of peace and to come into compliance with its international obligations. That is what North Korea ought to do.</p></blockquote>
<p>When asked whether even this tough resolution will make any difference in breaking &#8220;the repeated pattern of sanction, provocation, sanction, provocation,&#8221; Ambassador Rice responded that the answer &#8220;lies of course with the decisions that the North Korean leadership make.&#8221; So far, there is little reason to hope for a break-through, unless of course former basketball star and Kim Jong-un&#8217;s new best friend Dennis Rodman can pull off his own version of a diplomatic &#8220;fast break.&#8221;</p>
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