Scalise Should Go; So Should Sharpton.
12.30.2014 - 5:15 PM
The revelation that Rep. Steve Scalise, the number three person in the House Republican leadership, gave a speech to a white supremacist group in 2002 has prompted calls for his resignation. Despite House Speaker John Boehner’s statement of “full confidence” for one of his deputies, Scalise should quickly exit his post as Majority Whip so as to remove the taint of racism from the new Congress that will be sworn in next month and to allow his party to pursue a conservative agenda without being burdened by his baggage. But those liberals who are screaming for Scalise’s scalp should be careful about holding the GOP leadership to a higher standard than those who advise the president or Democrats. If Scalise should resign, and he should, how is it that it was not an issue that the president of the United States attended a church run by hatemonger like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the White House should stop treating Al Sharpton, a man with far more baggage than Scalise’s sin, as their “go-to-man on race.”
The revelation that Rep. Steve Scalise, the number three person in the House Republican leadership, gave a speech to a white supremacist group in 2002 has prompted calls for his resignation. Despite House Speaker John Boehner’s statement of “full confidence” for one of his deputies, Scalise should quickly exit his post as Majority Whip so as to remove the taint of racism from the new Congress that will be sworn in next month and to allow his party to pursue a conservative agenda without being burdened by his baggage. But those liberals who are screaming for Scalise’s scalp should be careful about holding the GOP leadership to a higher standard than those who advise the president or Democrats. If Scalise should resign, and he should, how is it that it was not an issue that the president of the United States attended a church run by hatemonger like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the White House should stop treating Al Sharpton, a man with far more baggage than Scalise’s sin, as their “go-to-man on race.”
Some Republicans are lamenting the growing pressure on Scalise as sign of a double standard. They rightly point out that Robert Byrd was a Democratic leader and saluted as a Senate institution despite his past membership in the Ku Klux Klan. They point to President Obama’s decision to retain his membership in a church where hate was preached and, up until his successful campaign for the presidency, his embrace of Wright as a mentor.
But none of that excuses Scalise’s lapse. Republicans may be held to a higher standard than Democrats when it comes to race but that doesn’t mean that the GOP should give its leaders a pass. Scalise’s speech may have preceded his entry to Congress and happened a long time ago but any claim that he didn’t know what sort of group he was addressing lacks credibility. KKK leader David Duke founded the so-called European-American Unity and Rights Organization. Scalise’s willingness to attend one of their functions in 2002 as a keynote speaker in the obvious hope of currying favor with the far right was egregious and should not be excused. It is, if anything far worse than the lapse of judgment that same year when Senator Trent Lott had to resign his leadership of Senate Republicans for saying that it was a shame that Sen. Strom Thurmond lost the 1948 presidential election when he ran as a Dixiecrat advocate of segregation.
Scalise may not agree with David Duke about anything but being a member of the House leadership is a privilege not a right. The last thing Republicans need heading into the new Congress is for them to have to answer questions about the House Whip’s past. Scalise should ignore Boehner’s statement and do the right thing for his party and the Congress by withdrawing now and take a weapon out of the hands of the Democrats.
But while we’re making Scalise walk the plant, it’s fair to raise the issue of double standards.
The ship has sailed on the question of Obama’s association with Wright and his church. The liberal mainstream media may have downplayed or ignored the issue but it was no secret. The lure of electing our first African-American president was enough to cause many Americans who would not tolerate such an association on the part of another politician especially a Republican. But while the re-elected president is right to say that the people have had their say about him twice, that doesn’t excuse his choice of a man who has personally made anti-Semitic statements, helped egg on crowds to commit violence in the name of hate as well as a proven liar and tax cheat as an honored guest advisor to this administration. Were anyone of this ilk to be given similar honors by a Republican president, it would be a far bigger story than that of Scalise and rightly so.
The challenge here is not so much to political partisans but to the news media that has accepted Sharpton as a respectable leader and even given him a cable news platform. It is they who must not hound the administration on this issue and not let go in the same manner that they would if it were someone with racist associations. Their failure to do so does not get Scalise off the hook. But it ought to shake the consciences of those liberals in the press corps whose pretense of objectivity is a fraud.
2014’s Big Winners: Putin and ISIS
It tells you something about the increasing irrelevance of news magazines that I entirely missed the fact that Time had designated “Ebola fighters” as their “Person of the Year”. A feel good choice, but not the one I would have made after a year filled with one calamity after another. For my “Man of the Year” (to use the original form invented by Time founder Henry Luce) I would split the honor between two rogues: Vladimir Putin, self-proclaimed president of Russia, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State. Both have had a very good year–which for the rest of us means a very bad year.
It tells you something about the increasing irrelevance of news magazines that I entirely missed the fact that Time had designated “Ebola fighters” as their “Person of the Year”. A feel good choice, but not the one I would have made after a year filled with one calamity after another. For my “Man of the Year” (to use the original form invented by Time founder Henry Luce) I would split the honor between two rogues: Vladimir Putin, self-proclaimed president of Russia, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State. Both have had a very good year–which for the rest of us means a very bad year.
Putin began 2014 facing growing protests after he had had engineered his return to the presidency in 2012 after a four year interregnum as prime minister. Things went from bad to worse from his perspective when his ally in Kiev, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown by popular protests after his decision to seek a close relationship with Russia rather than with the European Union. Yanukovych’s downfall could well have presaged Putin’s own. But rather than waiting for a “color” revolution to topple him, the crafty Russian dictator seized the initiative.
Using plainclothes Russian soldiers, spies, and stooges (a.k.a. “little green men”), he fomented an insurgency where none had previously existed in Crimea. By March Crimeans had voted in a rigged election to be annexed by Moscow, and Putin had a major nationalist achievement to distract attention back home. Putin followed up this initial triumph by fomenting another insurgency in eastern Ukraine that succeeded in detaching substantial portions of the east from Kiev’s control.
To be sure Putin has paid a price for his blatant violation of international law; the ruble has gone into freefall and the Russian economy is imploding, in part because of international sanctions and in part because of falling oil prices. But Putin appears to be stronger than ever–and as clever as ever in defeating his foes.
The latest evidence of his amoral brilliance is the manner in which he dealt with Russia’s leading pro-democracy leader, Aleksei Navalny, who had been indicted on trumped-up charges of fraud. Rather than sending Navalny to prison where he could become a martyr, Putin’s handpicked judge gave him a suspended sentence while sending his entirely innocent brother Oleg to prison as a hostage for Aleksei’s good behavior.
Even more sinister and almost as clever has been Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who in the past year has managed to dramatically revive the fortunes of the group once known as Al Qaeda in Iraq. This organization suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of US forces and Sunni tribesmen in 2007-2008. Taking over after the death of his predecessor in 2010, Baghdadi (a nom de guerre for Ibrahim al-Badri) revived its fortunes by taking advantage of the Syrian civil war. Then, having created a base in the Syrian town of Raqqa, Baghdadi moved back into his native Iraq, taking control of Fallujah in January 2014 and of Mosul in June. He then proclaimed an Islamic State stretching across the borders of Iraq and Syria and defended by an army estimated to be 20,000 to 30,000 strong and armed with heavy weapons seized from the poorly led and motivated Iraqi Security Forces.
Baghdadi may have miscalculated the impact of televised beheadings of Western journalists and aid workers–these atrocities helped draw a visibly reluctant President Obama into the fray in a small and limited way–but he has succeeded brilliantly at galvanizing support from extremists around the Muslim world. ISIS, in fact, is starting to eclipse “Al Qaeda” as the leading brand among jihadist terrorist groups.
So congratulations, Vlad and Abu Bakr, on having been won the honor of being designated my Men of the Year for your success at promoting oppression. Your selection, of course, reflects deep discredit on the statesmen of the West–principally President Obama–who allowed you to go from triumph to triumph.
We can only hope that you have over-reached in your aggression and that 2015 will see a more concerted response to the evil that you represent than has been the case so far. Because I’m not sure the international system as we know it can survive another year of your triumphs.
Note to Obama: Iran Doesn’t Want to Get Right With the World
12.30.2014 - 2:00 PM
Most of the headlines generated by President Obama’s interview with NPR this week focused on his threat to veto bills passed by the new Republican Congress. But the president’s comments about Iran in the same piece deserve just as much scrutiny. When asked if he was considering opening an embassy in Tehran as he is planning to do in Havana, the president spoke of his commitment to engagement and diplomacy with Iran and of giving it an opportunity to “get right with the world” and become “a very successful regional power.” Anyone seeking to understand why Iran has been able to force the West to back down from its original positions in the talks making it likely that any deal will allow it to become a threshold nuclear power need only listen to Obama’s hopes. In speaking in this manner, once again the president demonstrated why he is Tehran’s best diplomatic asset.
Most of the headlines generated by President Obama’s interview with NPR this week focused on his threat to veto bills passed by the new Republican Congress. But the president’s comments about Iran in the same piece deserve just as much scrutiny. When asked if he was considering opening an embassy in Tehran as he is planning to do in Havana, the president spoke of his commitment to engagement and diplomacy with Iran and of giving it an opportunity to “get right with the world” and become “a very successful regional power.” Anyone seeking to understand why Iran has been able to force the West to back down from its original positions in the talks making it likely that any deal will allow it to become a threshold nuclear power need only listen to Obama’s hopes. In speaking in this manner, once again the president demonstrated why he is Tehran’s best diplomatic asset.
To be fair, President Obama did not pretend as if his diplomatic dancing partners are boy scouts. He acknowledged Iran’s record of support for terrorism, its threats to the region and its work toward a nuclear weapon He insisted that the goal of diplomacy with that rogue nation was to ensure that it does not get a nuclear weapon or have a breakout capacity to get one. The problem with American policy toward Iran has never been Obama’s rhetoric. Rather, it has been the huge gap between his stated goals and the points that Iran has won throughout the negotiations.
Even President Obama’s current assurances do not measure up to his original positions. In his foreign policy debate with Mitt Romney in 2012, he promised that any deal would result in eliminating Iran’s nuclear program. Now he speaks of accommodating its desire for a modest nuclear program for its energy needs and even of respecting its “legitimate defense concerns.” But as a major oil producer, Iran has no need for small nuclear power. As an aggressive and dangerous power in the region that has sought to dominate Iraq, Syria and the Palestinian territories with its terrorist auxiliaries and intimidate other moderate Arab countries, any talk of its “defense concerns” is equally absurd.
Iran’s leaders have made it clear that what they want is American acknowledgement of its hegemony in the region, not a chance to get right with the world. That Obama still refuses to see this has enabled Iran to expand its influence throughout the region with little fear of the consequences of what even the president acknowledged was its “adventurism.”
By insisting on forcing the U.S. to acknowledge its “right” to enrich uranium and to allow it to keep its nuclear infrastructure and its stockpile of fuel that could be re-activated to make a bomb, Iran has retained the ability to build a weapon. By keeping United Nations inspectors out of facilities where military research has gone on, it has also ensured that a breakout would be possible and not likely to be detected in time even assuming the West had the will to respond.
So long as Iran thinks Obama’s goal in these talks is détente rather than eliminating the nuclear threat it will continue, as it has throughout the process, to stand its ground and defend its ability to eventually build a bomb while Western sanctions are removed. It is Obama’s zeal for a deal that won Tehran limited sanctions relief last year and may cause the entire collapse of economic restrictions on doing business with the Islamist regime in 2015.
The president’s blind belief in diplomacy and engagement with a bad actor may be predicated on a belief that Iran wants to change. But no serious person can look at the nature of that regime or its policies and goals and believe that what Iran wants is to be a responsible player in a peaceful Middle East. The U.S. had an opportunity to ensure that the Iranian threat could be eliminated by economic sanctions. But Obama threw that leverage away last year in the interim nuclear deal and there appears little hope that it can be resurrected. The more Obama talks about a rosy future of U.S.-Iran relations, the less likely it will be that the Islamists will ever take America’s vows about stopping their nuclear ambitions seriously.
Public Trust in Media at an All-Time Low
According to the most recent Gallup survey:
Americans’ confidence in the media’s ability to report “the news fully, accurately, and fairly” has returned to its previous all-time low of 40%. Americans’ trust in mass media has generally been edging downward from higher levels in the late 1990s and the early 2000s.
According to the most recent Gallup survey:
Americans’ confidence in the media’s ability to report “the news fully, accurately, and fairly” has returned to its previous all-time low of 40%. Americans’ trust in mass media has generally been edging downward from higher levels in the late 1990s and the early 2000s.
A few data points worth noting:
- In the last 15 years, the percentage of Americans expressing a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the media was 55 percent. The drop in trust in the media has been trending downward since then — and is now 15 points below what it was in 1999.
- Trust among Democrats, who have traditionally expressed much higher levels of confidence in the media than Republicans have, dropped to a 14-year low of 54 percent in 2014.
- Republicans’ trust in the media is at 27 percent, one percentage point above their all-time low, while independents held steady at 38 percent — up one point from 37 percent in 2013.
- Democrats — with a majority of 52 percent — are most likely to think the media are just about right, while a mere 18 percent of Republicans feel this way about the news. More than seven in 10 Republicans say the media are too liberal.
- Americans are most likely to feel the news media are “too liberal” (44 percent) rather than “too conservative,” though this perceived liberal bias is now on the lower side of the trend. One in three (34 percent) say the media are “just about right” in terms of their coverage — down slightly from 37 percent last year.
- Nearly one in five Americans (19 percent) say the media are too conservative, which is still relatively low, but the highest such percentage since 2006. This is up six points from 2013 — the sharpest increase in the percentage of Americans who feel the news skews too far right since Gallup began asking the question in 2001.
Gallup’s bottom line:
Though a sizable percentage of Americans continue to have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media, Americans’ overall trust in the Fourth Estate continues to be significantly lower now than it was 10 to 15 years ago.
As the media expand into new domains of news reporting via social media networks and new mobile technology, Americans may be growing disenchanted with what they consider “mainstream” news as they seek out their own personal veins of getting information… the overarching pattern of the past decade has shown few signs of slowing the decline of faith in mass media as a whole.
The declining trust in mass media is part of a broader trend in which confidence is down among many institutions, but most especially among our political institutions — media, Congress, the Democratic and Republican parties, and the presidency.
Much of the loss of trust is well earned, and so the task of leaders in these institutions is to take steps that restores credibility in them. There’s no quick or easy way to do this; if it happens it will be the product of responsible conduct and moments of real excellence, done consistently and over an extended period of time. Here’s to hoping that 2015 will mark the beginning of this vital project. Because I’m one of those conservatives who believes that the corrosive skepticism and cynicism we’re witnessing is harmful to us, to our trust in one another and to our confidence in America and the future.
The Real Key to ISIS’s Appeal: Stopping Iran
Apparently the U.S. Special Operations Command is wrestling with the question of what makes the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria “so magnetic, so inspirational.” This is an interesting question to ponder, but it’s not as puzzling as the military makes it out to be.
Apparently the U.S. Special Operations Command is wrestling with the question of what makes the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria “so magnetic, so inspirational.” This is an interesting question to ponder, but it’s not as puzzling as the military makes it out to be.
At one level, obviously, ISIS has some ideological appeal by claiming to represent the forces of “true” Islam. By creating a modern-day caliphate where their fundamentalist version of sharia law will be enforced with brutal force, ISIS has tapped into a deep vein of longing in the Muslim world for the return of a golden age when Islamic states were the richest in the world–a far cry from the perceived humiliations that Islam has suffered ever since Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798.
But this appeal exists mainly among those not actually living under ISIS control–among a small minority of far-away Muslims who have the luxury of romanticizing what these thugs and killers are up to. There have been numerous reports, by contrast, that Iraqis and Syrians actually living under ISIS control are unhappy about the group’s brutality and its inability to deliver even minimal governmental services. So why don’t ISIS’s subjects revolt?
In the first place because ISIS has the guns and they don’t. The group has shown how high-profile atrocities can cow a larger subject population. But there is another, practical aspect to why ISIS manages to retain control of a vast territory the size of Great Britain: it has managed to make itself into the leading defender of Sunni interests against Shiite oppression.
This is the true key to the group’s ideological appeal and it will not be dispelled by fuzzy American propaganda campaigns excoriating ISIS for its atrocities or putting forward moderate Muslims to proclaim that ISIS does not speak for the religion of Mohammad. The only way to dispel ISIS’s core appeal is to show that Sunnis can be protected against Shiite depredations without flocking to ISIS for protection. And that in turn will require the U.S. to show that it is willing to fight against Iranian-backed Shiite extremism as much as it is against Sunni-backed ISIS extremism.
Instead the Obama administration has given every indication that it is trying to accommodate an Iranian power grab in both Syria and Iran. The president has further reinforced that impression with an interview in which he said that Iran can be a “very successful regional power” if it gives up its nuclear program.
But whether Iran has nukes or not, it is seen by Sunnis as an existential threat because of its attempts to dominate the region. Indeed Iran-backed forces in both Iran and Syria have carried out terrible atrocities against Sunni civilians, yet the Obama administration is cooperating with the Iranian-backed regimes in Damascus and Baghdad and doing precious little to aid the Sunnis who could in theory launch another Awakening movement to overthrow ISIS.
To truly sap ISIS’ ideological appeal, the U.S. needs to stop flirting with Tehran and start acting to mobilize a Sunni rebellion against ISIS with guarantees that Sunni communities will have their rights respected after ISIS is overthrown. This could, for example, involve engineering a deal in Iraq to give Sunnis a regional status akin to that of the Kurds. Until that happens it will be nearly impossible for the U.S. military, no matter how tactically skillful its efforts may be, to defeat this terrible threat..
What Will it Mean if Sub-Saharan Africa Surpasses the Arab World?
12.29.2014 - 10:30 AM
At the root of many Islamist and so-called Islamist modernist movements was a recognition that the ‘world of Islam’ had fallen behind the West in terms of power, access to technology, and economy. This was hard to rectify with the theological belief that Muslims had received the perfect and last revelation, one meant to supplant what Jews and Christians let alone peoples from other faiths embraced.
At the root of many Islamist and so-called Islamist modernist movements was a recognition that the ‘world of Islam’ had fallen behind the West in terms of power, access to technology, and economy. This was hard to rectify with the theological belief that Muslims had received the perfect and last revelation, one meant to supplant what Jews and Christians let alone peoples from other faiths embraced.
As late as the middle of the twentieth century if not well into the 1960s, many Arab countries were poor and relatively underdeveloped, but they weren’t much worse off than some countries in East Asia, the Pacific, or Central and South America. In 1960, for example, Egypt had a higher GDP than either Columbia or South Korea, and Morocco had a higher GDP than Ireland, let alone Hong Kong. African countries populated the bottom of such charts. By 2012, Egypt trailed behind Columbia and South Korea, and Morocco was well behind Ireland. Many Sub-Saharan countries were still in the basement, but economies in African powerhouses like South Africa, Nigeria, Angola, and Ghana had taken off. Of course, GDP isn’t the only or even best measure of success. The Middle East and North Africa were dead last in terms of per capita GDP growth over the last few decades. Figure 1 in this paper shows how Asian countries and Latin America and the Caribbean have overtaken the Middle East in real GDP per capita. And the Arab Human Development Report presents a number of indicators in which sub-Saharan Africa beats or is closing the gap on Arab states.
Whereas once Africa was synonymous in the public mind with wars, AIDS, corruption and starvation, failed states like Somalia have begun to turn around and, instability in the Sahel and Nigeria notwithstanding, recent economic growth seems more the rule than the exception. Indeed, as Bloomberg observed this past summer:
A two-decade surge in growth in Africa suggests the poorest continent is starting to come to grips with its challenges and has raised the prospect of the “African lions” emulating the “Asian tiger” economies in the 21st century. Africa’s advantages include vast untapped resources, a youthful population and an expanding middle-class.
Success is not certain. As Bloomberg continued, “Offsetting these are rampant poverty and inequality, a rise in Islamist militant violence and appalling infrastructure.” Nevertheless, Africa is booming. Meanwhile, the core challenges facing the Middle East and North Africa remain. The decline in the price of oil may hurt some countries in Africa, but it will be devastating to the Middle East.
Despite declarations to the contrary by those that say Islam creates a color-blind brotherhood, the Middle East can be quite racist—far more than anything most Americans experience. To be overtaken or beat by sub-Saharan Africa will be a hard blow to many in the region who might still harbor supremacist attitudes. For those who look toward the golden age of Islam, it will be a hard blow not only to be behind the West but, indeed, the entire globe. The question for those in the region will be whether in response, many who have blindly embraced a more orthodox interpretation of religion will double down, or whether some may recognize that Islamism does not present any panacea. Will they realize that the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafism, Al Qaeda, and Erdoğan-style Islamist authoritarianism is less an answer than the problem. I won’t hold my breath—it is always easier to blame outsiders for the ills of the Middle East than look internally at local culture—but it does seem that falling into the basement of the world while still years off might do as much to shake-up the region as other watersheds: Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt and subsequent colonialism. With Al Qaeda spreading and the rise of the Islamic State, it might seem that radical Islamism is out-of-control. It is. And while such challenges cannot be ignored, perhaps the Middle East’s descent relative to other geographical groupings will have a silver lining.
Why Was North Korea Removed from the Terrorism List?
12.29.2014 - 7:30 AM
I’ve been offline for about two weeks because of work-related travel, and so I wasn’t able to chime in on the debate with regard to North Korea and its alleged hacking of Sony. But, while according to news reports, there are still questions about the degree of Pyongyang’s culpability, the incident—and revelations about the extent to which North Korea has developed it cyber-terrorism capabilities—should be cause for reflection about just why North Korea was removed from the state sponsor of terrorism list in the first place. It’s an episode I cover in my book about the history of American diplomacy with rogue regimes, and it doesn’t reflect well on the George W. Bush administration in general, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in particular. But, against the backdrop of the rush to normalize relations with Cuba, lift sanctions, and remove that communist dictatorship from the state sponsor of terrorism list, it’s useful to reflect on how putting diplomatic ambition and legacy above reality really can hurt American national security.
I’ve been offline for about two weeks because of work-related travel, and so I wasn’t able to chime in on the debate with regard to North Korea and its alleged hacking of Sony. But, while according to news reports, there are still questions about the degree of Pyongyang’s culpability, the incident—and revelations about the extent to which North Korea has developed it cyber-terrorism capabilities—should be cause for reflection about just why North Korea was removed from the state sponsor of terrorism list in the first place. It’s an episode I cover in my book about the history of American diplomacy with rogue regimes, and it doesn’t reflect well on the George W. Bush administration in general, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in particular. But, against the backdrop of the rush to normalize relations with Cuba, lift sanctions, and remove that communist dictatorship from the state sponsor of terrorism list, it’s useful to reflect on how putting diplomatic ambition and legacy above reality really can hurt American national security.
At any rate, the story of North Korea’s removal from the terrorism list dates back to 2006. American forces were mired in Iraq, Bush’s popularity was plummeting, and so Rice decided to seize upon North Korea to try to secure a positive legacy for Bush. In November 2006, Rice and Christopher Hill, her point man for the Korean peninsula, offered to remove North Korea from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list and the Trading with the Enemy Act, scrapping the Clinton team’s demand that North Korea provide a written guarantee that it had ceased terrorism, would acquiesce to international agreements for combating terrorism, and would address its past terrorism.
It’s useful to remember just why North Korea was on the list in the first place. First of all, there were multiple bombings in the 1980s—of a South Korean passenger plane and of a mausoleum in Burma in which multiple South Korean officials were holding a ceremony. But shouldn’t there be an expiration date on past terrorism? For the sake of argument, let’s say Rice should let bygones be bygones, and that states should fall off the terror sponsorship list after remaining clean for a period of time. Alas, North Korea never passed this test either. For purely political reasons, Rice’s State Department attested that Pyongyang had not sponsored terrorism since 1987. Information available to the U.S. government and chronicled by the Congressional Research Service, however, suggested the opposite. Sources in France, Japan, South Korea, and Israel alleged robust North Korean involvement with both Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Ali Reza Nourizadeh, a London-based Iranian reporter close to Iran’s reformist camp, described North Korean assistance in the design of underground Hezbollah facilities, assertions backed by a diverse array of reporting. These tunnels allowed Hezbollah to shield rockets from Israeli surveillance prior to the 2006 war and to evade Israeli strikes during it. Chung-in Moon, a professor at South Korea’s Yonsei University, has reported allegations that Hezbollah missiles included North Korean components.
North Korean efforts to aid the Tamil Tigers were more blatant. While that group was subsequently eliminated from the face of the earth by the Sri Lankan military, the Far Eastern Economic Review reported in 2000 that North Korea had supplied the Tamil Tigers with weaponry, and the State Department’s Patterns of Global Terrorism made similar claims over the next three years. How sad it was that the State Department’s clean bill of health for North Korea was so readily contradicted by information the State Department had gathered, vetted, and compiled. Meanwhile, three times between October 2006 and March 2007, the Sri Lankan navy intercepted cargo ships flying no flag or identifying marker and found them to be carrying North Korean arms. For Rice and, by extension George W. Bush, however, diplomacy outweighed intelligence reality.
Rice’s drive to remove North Korea from the terrorism list for purely diplomatic reasons also had repercussions on allies. North Korea’s refusal to come clean about its kidnappings of Japanese citizens had long been an irritant and was also a major factor in its initial listing. It is certainly true that Pyongyang had started to come around: In 2004, the regime returned five surviving abductees of the ten it eventually admitted seizing, but the Japanese government believes that Pyongyang’s agents had actually kidnapped eighty Japanese citizens. For North Korea, why take a full step, when a half step—or even an eighth of a step—would suffice? And Pyongyang guessed right. Rice pressured Tokyo to tone down its objections and told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that the White House was under no obligation to classify the kidnappings as terrorism. As so often happens in the State Department, appeasing an enemy had trumped honoring allies.
Well, with sleight of hand, Rice had removed obstacles to further normalization with North Korea. It was full speed ahead on efforts to bring a comprehensive settlement to the North Korea problem. In January 2007, Hill met with top North Korean diplomat Kim Kye Gwan. Their discussions and agreements culminated the next month in a two-phase six-party agreement, which the White House celebrated as a “very important first step.” In the first sixty-day phase, North Korea would freeze its nuclear program. A second phase—for which no time frame was set—would have North Korea disable its nuclear facilities and disclose all nuclear activities.
Hill’s triumph was, in reality, a major step down: the agreement allowed North Korea to keep its nuclear weapons. For Kim Jong-il, it was a complete victory, capped off by the repatriation of laundered money frozen in a Macau bank. John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, was blunt in his condemnation of the deal, saying, “It sends exactly the wrong signal to would-be proliferators around the world: ‘If we hold out long enough, wear down the State Department negotiators, eventually you get rewarded.’” True to form, however, the New York Times, praised the agreement without equivocation, famously suggesting that the State Department’s rule of thumb on any initiative should be to ask, “What would Chris Hill do?” If American policymakers took their cues from the New York Times editorial page, however, Ronald Reagan never would have pushed the Soviet Union over the precipice to economic collapse, hundreds of million more people would be living under dictatorships, and Cuba would be more the norm than the exception in the hemisphere.
Rice may have wanted a ‘Hail Mary pass’ to change Bush’s legacy, but the only thing she achieved was to soil it. As recent actions and revelations suggest, North Korea never reformed. It pocketed its concessions, and doubled down on both its terror capabilities and nuclear program. Back to Cuba: Simply pumping money into the Cuban economy and encouraging tourism does not bring change: after all, Raul Castro and the Cuban military largely control the hotels and other tourist infrastructure: the hard currency gained disproportionately will benefit Cuba’s infrastructure of terror and repression.
The lesson to be learned as Obama tried to repeat history with regard to Cuba? White-washing rogue regimes is never an American interest, and magic wands do not change the nature of rogue regimes: only regime change does. Europeans might always subordinate principle and freedom to a quick buck, but America should mean more. The United States should have the wherewithal to outlast a country like Cuba. Cuba needs America far more than America needs Cuba, and politicians in both Washington and Havana should never forget that.
Why Do Palestinians Want Both Statehood and ‘Occupation?’
12.28.2014 - 8:30 PM
Today, the Hamas terrorists who rule the Palestinian state in all but name in Gaza once again demonstrated their lack of concern for the subjects by denying a group of war orphans a chance to spend a week in Israel. Their reason: doing so would involve the teens visiting “occupied cities” and “settlements” and would undermine their effort to perpetuate a century-old war against Zionism. That Hamas would continue to rail against “occupation” while enjoying virtual sovereignty over part of the country is no contradiction. It actually dovetails nicely with the stand of their Fatah rivals who are seeking recognition of Palestinian statehood in the United Nations this week while also clinging to an “occupation” that allows them to avoid making peace.
Today, the Hamas terrorists who rule the Palestinian state in all but name in Gaza once again demonstrated their lack of concern for the subjects by denying a group of war orphans a chance to spend a week in Israel. Their reason: doing so would involve the teens visiting “occupied cities” and “settlements” and would undermine their effort to perpetuate a century-old war against Zionism. That Hamas would continue to rail against “occupation” while enjoying virtual sovereignty over part of the country is no contradiction. It actually dovetails nicely with the stand of their Fatah rivals who are seeking recognition of Palestinian statehood in the United Nations this week while also clinging to an “occupation” that allows them to avoid making peace.
Some will harp on the casual cruelty of denying a break to schoolchildren who have been harmed by war and who could use a chance to get out of the claustrophobic strip. But that would be a mistake. The key issue here is not the Islamist group’s insensitivity or even its reflexive hostility to Israel. Rather, it is the language used in explaining its decision to turn the bus with the 37 orphans back from the border:
“Security forces prevented 37 children of martyrs from entering the land occupied in 1948 for a suspicious visit to a number of settlements and occupied cities,” wrote Hamas Interior Ministry spokesman Iyad Al-Bozom on Facebook Sunday. “This move came in order to safeguard our children’s education and protect them from the policy of normalization.”
Hamas’s harping on the occupied places that the orphans who were invited by Israel’s Kibbutz movement and two Israeli Arab towns is telling in that the places the kids were going to visit were not part of what the world is told is “occupied territory.” Indeed, every place on their itinerary was Israeli territory prior to the Six Day War in June 1967. For Hamas, “occupation” refers to any land on which the Jewish state may exist regardless of where its borders might be drawn. In this way, they make it clear that their “resistance” against “occupation” is not a protest about the West Bank or Jerusalem but a sign of their determination to wage war on Israel until it is destroyed. This renders moot if not absurd the conviction held by some on the Jewish left as well as the Obama administration that peace could still be obtained by an Israeli decision to trade land for peace.
Yet while this speaks volumes about the foolishness of those who believe Hamas is prepared to make peace, it should not be viewed as fundamentally different from the position of the Palestinian Authority as it tries to get the UN Security Council to vote to recognize their independence in all of the lands that Israel took during the Six Day War.
As the Times of Israel noted in a feature published on Friday, the PA is in the interesting position of demanding formally recognition of their sovereign rights while also insisting that all of that land — even areas that Israel does not control such as Gaza or those parts of the West Bank that are under PA rule — are “occupied.” This contradicts legal norms about statehood that can be accorded only to those that actually control the territory in question. PA leader Mahmoud Abbas and his followers say they merely wish to reverse the usual order so as to facilitate Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and even parts of Jerusalem where hundreds of thousands of Jews live in Jewish neighborhoods that have existed for decades. But this stand actually has much in common with the less presentable positions articulated by Hamas than is generally understood.
Had Abbas and the PA wanted a state they could have had one 14 years ago or the two other times when one was offered them by Israel under terms that are no different than those supported currently by the Obama administration and the Europeans. They are going to the UN not because they wish to actually have a state but because their desire is to avoid negotiations that might give them one if they were ever willing to actually sign a peace agreement with the Israelis.
Just like Hamas, which rails against “occupation” while governing what is functionally a Palestinian state, Abbas clings to policies that keep the status quo in place while still railing against it. The reason is that although its leader is wrongly proclaimed by Washington as a champion of peace, he and his movement are as committed to Israel’s destruction as Hamas. Accepting a state in the West Bank (with or without Hamas-ruled Gaza which would constitute a second Palestinian state) means not so much ending the “occupation” of that area as it does accepting that the parts of the country that are left to Israel must be considered part of a Jewish state and that the conflict is therefore ended for all time.
Until Fatah is willing to do that, its talk of statehood at the UN must be considered to be no different than Hamas’ blatant rejection of peace on any terms. And the sooner Western nations catch on to this fact and stop enabling the PA’s evasions, the better it will be for Palestinians and their children who need peace more than an unending and bloody war against Zionism.
De Blasio Can’t Turn His Back on Sharpton
12.28.2014 - 6:30 PM
Today, both New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani termed the reaction of cops to the appearance of Mayor Bill de Blasio at the funeral of one of two assassinated policemen as “inappropriate.” The decision of police officers to turn their backs to the mayor en masse was a dramatic illustration of their lack of confidence in his leadership and a sign of the crisis for law enforcement that has been exposed by recent events. Nevertheless the rift between the mayor and the police could be healed by, as Giuliani also noted today, by a clear apology that shows he understands that he was wrong to join the gang tackle of the cops after Ferguson and the Eric Garner incident. But anyone expecting that to happen understands nothing about de Blasio or contemporary liberalism, which is waiting impatiently for the second murdered officer to be buried before trying to turn the national conversation back to a false narrative of racism from one of the left’s ideological war on the police.
Today, both New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani termed the reaction of cops to the appearance of Mayor Bill de Blasio at the funeral of one of two assassinated policemen as “inappropriate.” The decision of police officers to turn their backs to the mayor en masse was a dramatic illustration of their lack of confidence in his leadership and a sign of the crisis for law enforcement that has been exposed by recent events. Nevertheless the rift between the mayor and the police could be healed by, as Giuliani also noted today, by a clear apology that shows he understands that he was wrong to join the gang tackle of the cops after Ferguson and the Eric Garner incident. But anyone expecting that to happen understands nothing about de Blasio or contemporary liberalism, which is waiting impatiently for the second murdered officer to be buried before trying to turn the national conversation back to a false narrative of racism from one of the left’s ideological war on the police.
Giuliani, who had many run-ins with the police during his eight years at City Hall over contractual issues, rightly understands how dangerous the breech between the police and the political leadership of the city can be for public safety. Thus, his plea for De Blasio to swallow his pride was good advice: “Mayor de Blasio, please say you’re sorry to them for having created a false impression of them.”
Giuliani was also right when he said what de Blasio most needed to do right now was to disassociate himself from Al Sharpton, the nation’s current racial huckster in chief. Sharpton has earned the obloquy of the nation with a lifetime of incitement and lies. But he was a crucial supporter of de Blasio’s mayoral campaign last year and has become an unexpected power broker in the Obama administration that has come to view the former sidewalk rabble-rouser and current MSNBC host as their go-to person on race issues.
But while the lame duck Obama may think there is no cost to his associating with Sharpton, de Blasio has a great deal to lose by doing so even if he doesn’t appear to understand this fact.
After only a year in office, de Blasio finds himself in a crisis largely of his won making. Having won by a landslide last year as the overwhelmingly liberal city elected its first Democrat in 24 years, the mayor clearly thought he had carte blanche to govern from the left. On many issues, he might well have gotten away with that decision. But having antagonized the police by campaigning against stop and frisk policies, he went a bridge too far when he joined in the chorus of those treating law enforcement as the enemy after Ferguson and then the non-indictment of the officer accused of choking Garner. That rhetoric created the impression that de Blasio agreed with those who have come to view police officers as guilty until proven innocent when it comes to accusations of racism or violence against minorities.
The police are not perfect and can, like politicians, make terrible mistakes. But the problem with the post-Ferguson/Garner critique that was relentlessly plugged by racial inciters, the liberal media and prominent political leaders such as Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder is that it cherry picked two extraordinary and very different incidents and wove it seamlessly into a highly misleading narrative about racism that might have been applicable in Selma, Alabama in 1965 but doesn’t reflect the reality of America in 2014. That this argument has roiled the nation and harmed racial understanding in a country that elected and then re-elected an African-American to the White House goes without saying. But the assassination of the two cops revealed that the cost of this egregious piece of incitement could be deadly.
That’s why it is past time for de Blasio to break ranks with Sharpton and his crowd and begin a process of healing that will save his city and his administration much grief in the next three years.
But the problem here is not just that de Blasio owes Sharpton and rightly fears what would if he chose to make an enemy of him. It’s that de Blasio, an aging radical who doesn’t particularly like to listen to advice from those who don’t already agree with him (a personal flaw that he shares with President Obama) is an ideologue that actually believes in the skewed racial worldview that an unscrupulous racial profiteer like Sharpton promotes. This inability to meet the police and the citizens they protect may well doom the city to years of racial strife and a rightly discontented police force. This could all be averted if de Blasio were wise enough to drop Sharpton and begin speaking as if he was mayor of all the people rather than just his considerable left-wing base. But even if it could allow him to better govern the city, de Blasio is no more capable of moving to the center than the president.
Who’s to Blame for Middle East Peace Stall?
12.28.2014 - 7:30 AM
It was once conventional wisdom among a certain segment of Western policymakers that the Arab-Israeli dispute was the root of instability in the Middle East. Diplomats, both in Washington and Europe, resisted fiercely President George W. Bush’s belief that the road to peace and stability in the Middle East didn’t necessarily go through Jerusalem. It may not have gone through Baghdad either, but the subsequent Arab Spring should have demonstrated unequivocally that the Middle East faces myriad problems, few of which have to do with Israel.
It was once conventional wisdom among a certain segment of Western policymakers that the Arab-Israeli dispute was the root of instability in the Middle East. Diplomats, both in Washington and Europe, resisted fiercely President George W. Bush’s belief that the road to peace and stability in the Middle East didn’t necessarily go through Jerusalem. It may not have gone through Baghdad either, but the subsequent Arab Spring should have demonstrated unequivocally that the Middle East faces myriad problems, few of which have to do with Israel.
That said, for Secretary of State John Kerry and his European counterparts, the Arab-Israeli conflict holds huge importance and drains disproportionate resources. Despite European murmurings abut sanctions against Israel; diplomacy—the so-called peace process—remains the chief policy pillar.
While it’s a parlor game in the State Department and European Foreign Ministries to debate whose fault it is that the Middle East peace process is moribund, the answer often lies in the mirror. Kerry and his counterparts are doing generational damage to any hope to reach a diplomatic solution to the decades-old dispute between Israel and the Palestinians.
The reason is this: the basis for diplomatic agreements is trust they will be respected and upheld. But, increasingly, Washington and even more so European capitals are signaling that diplomatic agreements are empty promises and that outside guarantees are meaningless.
This was shown most recently by acknowledgment that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have moved into southern Lebanon alongside Hezbollah, growing so bold as to take photos and tweet about their presence. The Iranian presence violates the terms of the truce that ended hostilities in 2006 between Lebanon and Israel, as well as United Nation’s guarantees. That said, such violations are nothing new: In order to achieve the ceasefire, the international community supposedly made the United Nations mandate in southern Lebanon more robust and guaranteed Israel that Hezbollah would not rearm and militarize the south to the point where the terrorist group could once again launch cross-border attacks such as that which sparked the 2006 war in the first place. Today, despite such guarantees, Hezbollah has rearmed to the tune of possessing well over 100,000 artillery pieces and missiles, according to conservative estimates.
These two violations, of course, show just how empty Western promises and guarantees have become when it comes to its quest for peace in the Middle East. But, recent U.S. and European approaches toward diplomacy undermine the very concept of diplomacy. The 1993 Oslo Accords were a diplomatic triumph, widely seen at the time as being on par with the 1978 Camp David Accords. The agreements, brokered in secret in Norway, paved the way for Israeli recognition of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), set the stage for PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to return to Gaza the following year, and inaugurated two decades of direct talks between Israel and the newly created Palestinian Authority.
At the heart of the Oslo Accords was a Palestinian commitment to foreswear terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and commit to resolve outstanding conflicts through negotiation rather than unilateral actions.
And yet, in order to keep the diplomatic process alive, the Obama administration (and, to be fair, the second-term Bush administration and Clinton administration as well) soon showed a willingness to shift the goal posts. A comparison of declassified intelligence with congressional testimony shows that a senior Clinton administration official lied to Congress in order to keep diplomacy alive, even though the United States had clear proof that Arafat was directly complicit in terrorism. More recently, the Obama administration has reached out to Hamas, and even agreed to work with a Palestinian Authority incorporating Hamas, even though such action undercut the Palestinians’ commitment to foreswear terror and recognize Israel’s right-to-exist. Sure, Palestinians might be frustrated that Israeli negotiators don’t acquiesce to Palestinian demands. And Palestinian officials might even accuse Israel of violating agreements. After all, all diplomacy to date has been accompanied by he-said, she-said accusations, some of which might have merit, and some of which are more the result of differences in interpretations of the letter of the law. But, for any portion of the Palestinian Authority to turn its back on the commitment to foreswear terrorism and recognize Israel should void the Oslo Accords. In theory, Israel would be within its rights simply to return to the status quo ante, and end the Palestinian Authority completely. That’s not going to happen, but for anyone in Washington or Europe to acquiesce to such fundamental changes in Palestinian commitments regarding terrorism and Israel’s security sends the signal to both Israel and the Palestinians that Western guarantees are worthless, and no diplomatic commitment will last more than two decades. That makes reaching a final agreement almost impossible, if the object of an agreement is peace rather than a ceasefire to enable a new Palestinian entity to arm before a final Arab and Iranian push to annihilate Israel.
The Europeans, of course, are even more prone to show agreements to be worthless as shown by their willingness to recognize an independent Palestinian state, as blatant a violation of unilateral action as exists.
Throwing blame back and forth for the failure of diplomacy will not end any time soon, and both European and American officials will preach, preen, and seek to occupy a moral high ground. Alas, by transforming diplomacy into a job creation program for themselves, and ignoring that diplomacy isn’t simply talking, but involves immutable commitments and guarantees, they are—alongside the terrorists—largely to blame for the peace process nadir in which they have guided the parties.
Open Season on Jews for Palestinians
12.26.2014 - 4:00 PM
Last month, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas was blasted by Israel for making statements that both incited terrorist attacks and for his praise of those who committed such actions. But the PA head, who is vowing to get a vote for his effort to have the United Nations Security Council recognize a Palestinian state without making peace first with Israel, noted that Western nations did not join in the criticism. Palestinians were similarly undaunted and the toll of terrorist attacks on Israelis in both Jerusalem and the West Bank has continued to rise. Just this week, Palestinians firebombed the car of a Jewish family resulting in life-threatening burns to an 11-year-old child. Days later, two policemen were stabbed in Jerusalem by a Palestinian who had just attended prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. But rather than these and other attacks generating international outrage, the world shrugs. Palestinians trying to kill Jews is so ordinary that few people, including many American Jews, think it worth the effort to complain about it.
Last month, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas was blasted by Israel for making statements that both incited terrorist attacks and for his praise of those who committed such actions. But the PA head, who is vowing to get a vote for his effort to have the United Nations Security Council recognize a Palestinian state without making peace first with Israel, noted that Western nations did not join in the criticism. Palestinians were similarly undaunted and the toll of terrorist attacks on Israelis in both Jerusalem and the West Bank has continued to rise. Just this week, Palestinians firebombed the car of a Jewish family resulting in life-threatening burns to an 11-year-old child. Days later, two policemen were stabbed in Jerusalem by a Palestinian who had just attended prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. But rather than these and other attacks generating international outrage, the world shrugs. Palestinians trying to kill Jews is so ordinary that few people, including many American Jews, think it worth the effort to complain about it.
In a sense those that think this way aren’t entirely wrong. Attacks on Jews on the roads in the West Bank have always been so commonplace as to not even raise many eyebrows in Israel. Indeed, the most interesting detail in the story about the firebombing that nearly killed an 11-year-old girl is that her mother said she barely escaped a similar fate recently when another firebomb just missed her.
The same is true of attacks in Jerusalem recently. The horrific stabbings of four rabbis at prayer in a Har Nof synagogue last month generated a momentary surge of interest in the surge in Arab terrorism that quickly dissipated. While that crime was considered more noteworthy, the numerous attempts by Palestinians to run down Jewish pedestrians or to stab or incinerate them in the weeks since that attack demonstrates that it was unique only in terms of the number of casualties and the barbaric methods used by the murderers.
Why does the world yawn when it hears of Palestinians attacking Jews?
One reason is that it reflects the same attitude that was reflected in a memorable exchange between Denmark’s ambassador to Israel and columnist Caroline Glick. The ambassador said that Israel should be happy about being judged by a double standard because no one expected the Palestinians to behave like Europeans while everyone thought the Israelis should. Such a stance is condescending to Palestinians who are assumed to be uncivilized and unlikely to act in a manner that is consistent with international norms.
But this attitude also reflects, as the ambassador noted in passing in his utterly unconvincing defense of his position, a sense that the Jews are the more powerful party in the conflict. In essence, the world thinks the Jews have it coming. This is what many in the world think is the fate a Jewish people that has survived two millennia of anti-Semitism and persecution and several Arab wars aimed at the destruction of their state deserves. No other people in the world have their right to sovereignty over their ancient homeland dismissed along with their right to self-defense in this manner. Such “special” treatment is an act of bias and the term for such prejudice when applied to Jews is anti-Semitism.
Palestinians leaders have declared open season on killing Jews and the world isn’t particularly interested. It is little surprise that Palestinians listen to their leaders and imams and throw gasoline bombs and attempt to run down or stab Jews whenever they can. Under these circumstances, this week’s casualties just like all those that have become before them, should expect little sympathy or notice from the international press.
Obama’s Executive Memoranda Highlights Constitutional Crisis
12.26.2014 - 3:15 PM
When conservatives protested President Obama’s attempt to go around the Constitution and rule by executive orders rather than with the consent of Congress, his defenders had a ready answer. While they insisted that Obama’s fiat granting amnesty to five million illegal immigrants did not exceed his authority, they also countered by saying that the president had actually issued far fewer such executive orders than that of President Bush. But, as USA Today noted last week, focusing only on executive orders while ignoring the far more numerous executive memoranda issued by this administration that have the same effect as law, the press and the public have vastly underestimated the extent of how far he has stretched the boundaries of executive power. If anything, this president’s effort to create a one-man government may have gone farther than we thought.
When conservatives protested President Obama’s attempt to go around the Constitution and rule by executive orders rather than with the consent of Congress, his defenders had a ready answer. While they insisted that Obama’s fiat granting amnesty to five million illegal immigrants did not exceed his authority, they also countered by saying that the president had actually issued far fewer such executive orders than that of President Bush. But, as USA Today noted last week, focusing only on executive orders while ignoring the far more numerous executive memoranda issued by this administration that have the same effect as law, the press and the public have vastly underestimated the extent of how far he has stretched the boundaries of executive power. If anything, this president’s effort to create a one-man government may have gone farther than we thought.
As of last week, Obama had issued 198 executive memoranda alongside 195 executive orders. That’s 33 percent more than Bush issued in his full eight years in office and 45 percent more than Bill Clinton. That blows a huge hole in the defense of Obama’s use of executive orders. Seen in this light, rather, as he and his media cheering section have contended, Obama has far exceeded the resort to unilateral measures of not only his immediate predecessor, but every one before that as well.
As USA Today explains, like the orders, memorandums have the force of law and don’t require the consent of Congress. Obama’s memoranda have run the gamut from the creation of new kinds of retirement savings plans, having the Labor Department require federal contractors to supply specific information to the government, forcing borrowers to cap student loan payments, three post-Sandy Hook shooting gun control measures as well as two memos that complimented his immigration amnesty orders.
That last point is crucial because the implementation of amnesty is largely being carried out by executive memorandums rather than orders. They also have the advantage of not being numbered in the Federal Register, as are executive orders. That makes it harder for Congress, the press and the public to keep track of them.
But lest you think it is a mistake to treat the memorandums as being as potent as the far more publicized orders, don’t rely on the authority of USA Today or Commentary. Ask one of President Obama’s appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1999, Justice Elena Kagan, who served as Associate White House Counsel in the Clinton White House, wrote in the Harvard Law Review that legal scholars made a mistake in focusing too much on executive orders while ignoring the memoranda.
Kagan said Clinton considered memoranda “a central part of his governing strategy,” using them to spur agencies to write regulations restricting tobacco advertising to children, allowing unemployment insurance for paid family leave and requiring agencies to collect racial profiling data.
“The memoranda became, ever increasingly over the course of eight years, Clinton’s primary means, self-consciously undertaken, both of setting an administrative agenda that reflected and advanced his policy and political preferences and of ensuring the execution of this program,” Kagan wrote.
When you consider how many more memoranda Obama has issued than Clinton, it makes Justice Kagan’s insight into how they can be used as a governing strategy even more important.
In practice, the memos are clearly executive orders by another name with no real difference. Even before Barack Obama had become president, they constituted a legal loophole that helped make an already increasingly imperial presidency even more powerful. But under Obama that problem has grown far worse.
The immigration overreach rightly scandalized many Americans not only because of the scope of the orders that were issued but because they represented an end run around the checks and balances that were put into the Constitution by the founders specially to avoid one man rule. One didn’t need to disagree with the president’s actions to understand that the process he was using represented a dangerous departure from the rule of law. But what few seem to understand is that the orders are only the tip of the imperial iceberg when it comes to President Obama’s effort to govern without having to wait for Congress to adopt the laws he wants them to pass. The outrage over the immigration orders is no tempest in a teapot. The president’s increased use of executive memoranda as well as orders ought to highlight a problem that might properly be termed a constitutional crisis rather than a mere partisan spat.
A Christian Defense Of Israel
I want to build on the thoughtful and timely post by Jonathan Tobin, in which he called attention to the catastrophe that is happening to Christians in the Middle East; why the outcome of the struggle over the region cannot be ignored; and why, in his words, “Christians should never think they could better the lives of their co-religionists by aiding efforts to destroy the other religious minority in the region: the Jews.” Jonathan made a compelling case speaking as a person of the Jewish faith; I’d like to speak as a person of the Christian faith.
I want to build on the thoughtful and timely post by Jonathan Tobin, in which he called attention to the catastrophe that is happening to Christians in the Middle East; why the outcome of the struggle over the region cannot be ignored; and why, in his words, “Christians should never think they could better the lives of their co-religionists by aiding efforts to destroy the other religious minority in the region: the Jews.” Jonathan made a compelling case speaking as a person of the Jewish faith; I’d like to speak as a person of the Christian faith.
For Christians to become identified with the struggle against Zionism – and I’ve encountered individuals who have, to that point that it was the key factor in leaving a church I and my family were members of — is a profound moral error.
Set aside the fact that despite some obvious theological differences, Christians and Jews share a common history and affinity, from the Hebrew Bible to heroes of the faith like Abraham, Joseph, Joshua and Moses. And many Christians believe, for theological reasons (God’s covenantal relationship with Israel), that they cannot be indifferent to the fate of Israel. But as I mentioned, bracket all that. In judging Israel and its enemies, let’s use the standard of justice, which is the one liberal Christians who are highly critical of the Jewish state often invoke.
For one thing, even a cursory understanding of the history of the past 65-plus years makes it clear that the impediments to peace lie not with Israel but with its adversaries. And when it comes to the prolonged conflict with the Palestinians, it is they, not the Israelis, who are responsible for it.
(For those who blame the so-called “Israeli occupation” for Palestinian hostilities, I will point out, as I have before, that the PLO, which was committed to the destruction of Israel, was founded in 1964, three years before Israel controlled the West Bank or Gaza. In addition, the 1948 and 1967 wars against Israel happened before the “occupied territories” and settlements ever became an issue. And in Gaza in 2005, Israel did what no other nation, including no Arab nation, has ever done before: provide the Palestinians with the opportunity for self-rule. In response, Israel was shelled by thousands of rockets and mortar attacks and eventually drawn into a war with Hamas.)
The Palestinian people are suffering – but the reasons they suffer are fundamentally a creation not of Israel but of failed Palestinian leadership, which from beginning to end has been characterized by staggering corruption, brutality, oppression and anti-Semitism. Since the creation of Israel in the first half of the last century, not a single Palestinian leader has been willing or able to alter a culture that stokes hatred of Jews and advocates the eradication of Israel. Until that changes, there is no possibility for peace or justice. Palestinians must do what they have, until now, refused to do: make their own inner peace with the existence of a Jewish state. That they have not done so, despite the terrible human costs to them, tells you quite a lot.
Beyond that, it is a delusion for Christians to believe that life in the Middle East would be better if the enemies of Israel were to prevail. The movement that is targeting Christians for death isn’t Zionism; it’s Islamism. The historian Philip Jenkins wrote in Christianity Today last month “For Christians in the Middle East, 2014 has been a catastrophe.” That catastrophe hasn’t been caused by Israel, where Israel’s Christian citizens enjoy the full blessings of freedom and democracy.
Ask yourself a simple question: If you were a Christian, would you rather live in Jerusalem – or Tehran, Mosul, Damascus, or Riyadh? Would you rather live under the government of Benjamin Netanyahu or the rule of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? Would you rather be photographed with a typical Jewish storeowner in Israel – or with a typical British national who has joined ISIS? The idea that Christians would prosper in the Middle East if Israel was weak and the mortal threats to Israel were strong is quite absurd.
But beyond even that, Israel is worthy of the support, admiration and even the affection of Christians because of the type of nation Israel is: democratic, pluralistic, self-critical, respectful of human rights, minority rights and other faiths, a bulwark against militant Islam, bone weary of war and willing to make extraordinary sacrifices for peace, unmatched by any other nation on earth. Blessed are the peacemakers, said a famous Jew many years ago, for they shall be called the children of God.
Israel is imperfect, like all nations in this fallen world; but it ranks among the most impressive and venerable nations that this fallen world has ever produced. Christians who care about their co-religionists in the Middle East, who care about justice and who hate injustice, must keep faith with the Jewish state. To break with it would be to break with their history and some of the key moral commitments of Christianity. And that is very much worth recalling as Christians the world over have, during the last several days, once again focused their attention on the Holy Land.
Don’t Fall For Palestinian Christmas Lies
12.24.2014 - 7:30 PM
Just as they did last year and every previous one, opponents of Israel are seeking to exploit the Christmas holiday by claiming Jesus was a Palestinian. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has made this absurd claim a holiday staple in keeping with the effort to portray the Jews as foreign colonists in their historic homeland. But while they should dismiss this canard out of hand, American Christians should still be thinking about the Middle East this season. With unknown numbers of Middle East Christians having been routed out of their homes or subject to murder, rape and dispossession by ISIS terrorists and other Islamist forces, this December 25th people of faith need to remember that the outcome of the struggle over the region cannot be ignored. It should also remind them that Christians should never think they could better the lives of their co-religionists by aiding efforts to destroy the other religious minority in the region: the Jews.
Just as they did last year and every previous one, opponents of Israel are seeking to exploit the Christmas holiday by claiming Jesus was a Palestinian. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has made this absurd claim a holiday staple in keeping with the effort to portray the Jews as foreign colonists in their historic homeland. But while they should dismiss this canard out of hand, American Christians should still be thinking about the Middle East this season. With unknown numbers of Middle East Christians having been routed out of their homes or subject to murder, rape and dispossession by ISIS terrorists and other Islamist forces, this December 25th people of faith need to remember that the outcome of the struggle over the region cannot be ignored. It should also remind them that Christians should never think they could better the lives of their co-religionists by aiding efforts to destroy the other religious minority in the region: the Jews.
For the last century, Middle East Christians have been largely portrayed as being caught in the middle of a bitter war between Jews and Arabs over the Holy Land. But this is a profound misunderstanding of the reality of the conflict. Though many Christians have been prominent Arab nationalists, their effort to identify with the struggle against Zionism has not led to greater acceptance for Christians within Palestinian society or the Arab and Muslim world in general. To the contrary, over the decades, the Palestinian national movement has taken an increasingly Islamist tone as even allegedly secular figures like Yasir Arafat and his successor Abbas have adopted the language of Islamist triumphalism. This is due in part to their need to compete with Islamist rivals like Hamas but also because it reflects the cultural and religious roots of the struggle to destroy Israel. Palestinians and their Arab and Muslim supporters have never sought to create a state alongside Israel but to ensure that no part of the region should be under majority Jewish sovereignty.
Looking beyond the Palestinians, the fighting in Iraq and Syria as ISIS has swept to control of vast territories in both those countries has reflected a similarly level of intolerance toward non-Muslim minorities. Simply put, an Islamist tide that has swept through the region has made Christians an endangered minority. Though there is nothing new about this dilemma, the atrocities visited upon ISIS’s Christian victims make the stakes in this struggle all too clear.
Turning back to the Palestinians, the same dynamic has led to a massive exodus of Christians from the territories. Though anti-Israel polemicists falsely attribute this dispersion to Israeli actions, it is the increasingly militant efforts of Hamas as well as their supposedly secular rivals in Fatah that has made life in many traditionally Christian towns like Bethlehem increasingly untenable for non-Muslims. By contrast, Israel remains the one nation in the region that is not only a functional democracy but also where Christian rights and those of all religions are respected. By contrast, the Palestinians make no bones about their future state being a place where no Jew would be welcome. Do American Christians really think their co-religionists will fare any better in such a state, whose main purpose will be to pursue efforts to try and destroy what will be left of the Jewish state?
American Christians should not fall for the Palestinians Christmas lies or their attempts to falsely portray Israel as the obstacle to peace. This Christmas there will be plenty of lip service paid to the cause of peace. But until Palestinians stop trying to deny Jewish history and therefore the rights of Jews to live in peace and security in their ancient homeland, lip service is all the cause of coexistence will get.
Can Christie Find His Foreign Policy Voice?
12.24.2014 - 6:00 PM
He may be openly considering a run for the presidency but New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has a gaping hole in his resume. Though he has been a leading public figure and a likely presidential candidate, Christie has yet to find his voice on the set of issues for which presidents have the most responsibility: foreign policy. But after years of keeping his voluble mouth shut, even when invited to speak in criticism of President Obama, the governor may be ready to start talking. Speaking in the aftermath of the president’s opening to Cuba, Christie had plenty to say about the president’s mistakes. This may be a case of him not being able to resist commenting when a local issue presented itself. But whatever his motivation, if he really wants to be president, he’s going to have to start speaking on foreign affairs with the same abandon and gusto that he employs on domestic issues.
He may be openly considering a run for the presidency but New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has a gaping hole in his resume. Though he has been a leading public figure and a likely presidential candidate, Christie has yet to find his voice on the set of issues for which presidents have the most responsibility: foreign policy. But after years of keeping his voluble mouth shut, even when invited to speak in criticism of President Obama, the governor may be ready to start talking. Speaking in the aftermath of the president’s opening to Cuba, Christie had plenty to say about the president’s mistakes. This may be a case of him not being able to resist commenting when a local issue presented itself. But whatever his motivation, if he really wants to be president, he’s going to have to start speaking on foreign affairs with the same abandon and gusto that he employs on domestic issues.
The local angle on the resumption of diplomatic relations with Cuba was the failure of the administration to obtain the return of a fugitive from justice in New Jersey. Joanne Chesimard, a former member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army, was involved in a campaign of robberies and attacks on law enforcement officials culminating in a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that left a state trooper dead, the crime for which she was sentenced to life in prison. But her criminal colleagues helped her escape prison in 1979 after which she found her way to Cuba where she lives to this day under the name of Assata Shakur. Though some African-American politicians have opposed efforts to extradite her on the grounds that they believe she was the victim of racially motivated persecution, there’s little doubt about her guilt. In the past, there were reports that the Clinton administration had offered to lift the embargo on Cuba in exchange for the return of Chesimard and 90 other U.S. criminals given safe haven there. Thus, it was disappointing that the Obama administration made no apparent effort to tie her return to the major economic and political concessions the U.S. gave the Castro regime as part of a prisoner exchange. That is especially unfortunate since it was only last year that the FBI formally added her name to its list of “Most Wanted Terrorists.”
Thus, it was both appropriate and timely for the governor to speak up on the issue in a letter sent to the White House in which he rightly said Chesimard’s continued freedom is “an affront” to the citizens of New Jersey and that she must be returned to serve her sentence before any further consideration is given to resuming relations with Havana. But, to his credit, Christie did not stop with that justified yet parochial concern. He went on to say the following:
I do not share your view that restoring diplomatic relations without a clear commitment from the Cuban government of the steps they will take to reverse decades of human rights violations will result in a better and more just Cuba for its people.
In doing so, Christie clearly aligned himself with Senator Marco Rubio and other conservatives who have spoken up against the Cuban deal on the grounds that it will make it less rather than more likely that conditions in the communist island prison will improve as a result of Obama’s decision. It also places Christie in opposition to Senator Rand Paul, who has defended Obama’s opening.
It’s not the first time Christie has been on the other side of an issue from Paul. In the summer of 2013, the governor spoke up and criticized Paul’s effort to force an American retreat from the battle against Islamist terrorists. But that initiative was short lived and, given Christie’s unwillingness to follow up with more details that would demonstrate his command of the issues, seemed to indicate that he wasn’t ready for prime time on foreign policy. That impression was confirmed in the time since then as the governor has often refrained from commenting on foreign policy.
But if he wants to be president, Christie must be able to demonstrate a clear view about America’s place in the world. In the White House, his main antagonists won’t be union bosses or even members of the other party in Congress but rogue nations like Russia, Iran and North Korean. If he is preparing a run for the presidency, the governor must continue to speak out and do so in a consistent and forceful manner. That’s especially true if he aspires, as he seemed to for a while last year, to be the mainstream alternative to Paul’s isolationism. If not, despite his ability to raise money and gain some establishment support, it won’t be possible to take him all that seriously as a candidate or a prospective president.
2014: Bashar al-Assad’s Comeback Year
12.24.2014 - 4:40 PM
The idea that there are no winners in war has long been a rallying cry for peace. But right now in the Middle East, what should concern American policymakers most is that the reverse is never true: whether or not there are winners, there’s always a loser. And in Syria at the moment, every side seems to be winning except ours.
The idea that there are no winners in war has long been a rallying cry for peace. But right now in the Middle East, what should concern American policymakers most is that the reverse is never true: whether or not there are winners, there’s always a loser. And in Syria at the moment, every side seems to be winning except ours.
NPR tempers the holiday spirit today with an important reminder of just how much has changed, for the worse, in the Syrian civil war and the cross-border ISIS insurgency in Syria and Iraq. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, NPR notes, is ending the year in a far better place than he started it. Although that seems obvious, it’s disturbing to think back what a difference a year makes:
At the beginning of 2014, Syrian President Bashar Assad had agreed to send his ministers to take part in negotiations in Switzerland, and his future as Syria’s ruler was not looking very bright.
He was accused of killing tens of thousands of his own people in a civil war that was nearly three years old. The opposition was demanding Assad’s ouster. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was in Switzerland and called loudly for a political transition in Syria. He was clear about who would not be involved.
“Bashar Assad will not be part of that transition government. There is no way — no way possible in the imagination — that the man who has led the brutal response to his own people could regain the legitimacy to govern,” he said.
Fast-forward to the present. Those talks were abandoned. Assad is still in the presidential palace in Damascus. And although the United States is bombing Syria, it’s not targeting Assad’s army but the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS.
The key quote comes next from Joshua Landis. “I think Assad is in a stronger position today in many respects, certainly on the battlefield, and he has the United States as a strategic ally,” he told NPR.
Think about that. It was less than a year ago that the American secretary of state was asserting unequivocally that Assad was done and that certainly his days of being treated as a legitimate head of state were over. Now “he has the United States as a strategic ally.”
This isn’t some random simple twist of fate. Assad’s survival depended on his playing his cards just right. In the preceding years of the civil war that still rages in his country, Assad was facing a collection of rebels, a disorganized circus of armed opposition. Assad knew how to prioritize his defense.
In August, the New York Times’s Room for Debate feature asked the following question: “Should the U.S. Work With Assad to Fight ISIS?” One of the panel contributors, The National columnist Hassan Hassan, pointed out the absurdity of relying on Assad as a partner against ISIS:
The idea that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad can be a partner in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, ignores a basic fact: Assad has been key to its rise in Syria and beyond. When Islamic radicals took over Raqqa, the first province to fall under rebels’ control in its entirety, it was remarkable that the regime did not follow the same policy it had consistently employed elsewhere, which is to shower liberated territories with bombs, day and night.
Raqqa was saved the fate of Deir Ezzor, Aleppo, Homs and Deraa. ISIS soon controlled the province, painted government buildings in black and turned them into bases. The group’s bases were easy to spot, for about a year and a half. Elsewhere, too, Assad allowed ISIS to grow and fester. The regime has been buying oil from it and other extremist groups after it lost control of most of the country’s oilfields and gas plants.
Assad has gone from dead man walking to the once and future king in the space of a year because he made many enemies but then outmaneuvered them all. Earlier in the conflict, Assad was losing. He’s not anymore.
And neither is ISIS. After Assad allowed the terrorist group to fester and hold territory, it has been controlling areas of Syria and Iraq while using the resources of those territories to fund its terror state. Since the Obama administration’s plan has been to delay sending troops and then sending too few to defeat ISIS, disrupting the group’s revenue streams would be the next obvious step.
Unfortunately, the two can’t be so easily separated. As Foreign Policy reports, the anti-ISIS alliance has had some success in stemming oil revenue. But they haven’t stopped it. And disrupting other streams of terrorists’ revenue requires–you guessed it–boots on the ground: “But cutting off the group’s proceeds from other illegal activities like kidnapping and extortion is harder to do without first reconquering the territory where the militants operate what are effectively mafia-style criminal enterprises.”
So for now, ISIS isn’t losing either. We had two enemies in Syria, and they’re both doing OK for themselves at the moment. But someone has to be losing, and by process of elimination you can pretty much guess who it is. The “moderate” rebels–our previous strategic ally, before Assad supplanted them–have found themselves in a vicious cycle. They struggle because we aren’t helping them enough to succeed, which we then use as an excuse to help them less, which in turn leads to them struggling even more:
Reflecting that dissatisfaction, the Obama administration has taken a series of steps in recent weeks to distance the U.S. from the moderate rebels in the north, by cutting off their weapons flow and refusing to allow them to meet with U.S. military officials, right at the time they are struggling to survive in and around Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.
And there’s one more loser in all this: America’s strategic interests. ISIS is undermining our attempts to leave behind a stable Iraq and splitting territory next door in Syria with Assad, Iran’s proxy. It’s true that Assad had a pretty good year considering where he was heading into 2014. But that’s another way of saying America’s enemies had a pretty good year.
Take Rudoren’s ‘Miracle’ with a Cup of Salt
12.24.2014 - 2:50 PM
When inexperienced foreign correspondents arrive in Israel, one of the rites of passage tends to be their being suckered into writing a heartwarming Palestinian story intended to give Israel a black eye. However, the best indication of their mettle as a journalist is not so much whether Palestinians sources/fixers inveigle them into producing one of these atrocities as whether they learn from the experience and try not to get hooked into another obvious piece of pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel puffery. Judged by this standard, New York Times Jerusalem Bureau chief Jodi Rudoren must be considered a dismal failure. Though she has been in the country for two and a half years, Rudoren has just produced a stereotypical holiday piece about the conflict published today in the paper that should embarrass even the most raw rookie scribe.
When inexperienced foreign correspondents arrive in Israel, one of the rites of passage tends to be their being suckered into writing a heartwarming Palestinian story intended to give Israel a black eye. However, the best indication of their mettle as a journalist is not so much whether Palestinians sources/fixers inveigle them into producing one of these atrocities as whether they learn from the experience and try not to get hooked into another obvious piece of pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel puffery. Judged by this standard, New York Times Jerusalem Bureau chief Jodi Rudoren must be considered a dismal failure. Though she has been in the country for two and a half years, Rudoren has just produced a stereotypical holiday piece about the conflict published today in the paper that should embarrass even the most raw rookie scribe.
The article, tabbed as “Letter From the Middle East,” is titled “An Open Door Beckons in the West Bank.” It concerns the experiences of Khadra Zreineh, a Palestinian woman who hosts foreigners and those living temporarily in Israel as part of what Rudoren describes as “off-the-beaten-track tourist experiences often focused on food.” Apparently Zreineh served up some nice stories along with her home made freekeh soup about life in the town of Beit Jala during the second intifada where she lives in what she dubs “the house of the open door,” where both Jews and Arabs have always been welcome.
One in particular entranced Rudoren who made it the centerpiece of her article. It concerned Zreineh’s experience during Easter of 2002 when the area was under curfew as Israeli troops sought to capture Palestinian terrorists who had taken refuge in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. The terrorists held out in the shrine for 39 days secure in the knowledge that Israeli troops would respect the site’s sanctity. In the end, they were allowed to leave unharmed for exile in Gaza or Europe. During the siege, which took place during a time of intense fighting in the West Bank as armed Palestinian cadres waged war against Israel, local residents were given brief periods to leave their homes to get supplies. But after 34 days, Zreineh and some friends decided to defy the curfew and go to church. Instead of stopping them, an Israeli tank crew let them do as they liked and then waited for them to escort them safely home after the service. Zreineh considered this action an “Easter miracle” but then found out that one of the soldiers knew her son from earlier more peaceful times and had been in her home before.
That’s very nice and would, at least on its face, seem to confirm the idea that the only thing that is needed to end the conflict between Jews and Arabs is more contact and understanding with some good food thrown in. But there are some problems with the narrative and the way that Rudoren retold it that tell us more about Rudoren’s poor skills as a journalist than about what’s wrong with the Middle East.
Let’s start with how Rudoren describes what happened to make it less likely that Jews and Arabs would gather in Zreineh’s kitchen:
“We had many Jewish customers,” she said of the days before Israel built a concrete barrier around most of the Bethlehem area and barred its citizens from entering.
That’s true but Rudoren doesn’t note that the separation fence was built after the events that Zreineh describes, not before them. Nor does she mention, even in passing, that the motivation for its construction was not to stop people from having soup in Beit Jala but to stop the wave of suicide bombers that took the lives of over a thousand Israelis during the second intifada.
Just as interestingly, Rudoren tells us nothing about what happened in Beit Jala during the intifada.
Throughout the year before and even after the “miracle” that Zreineh discusses, the town was taken over not by touring foodies like Rudoren but by Palestinian gunmen who forced some of the Christian residents out of their homes and then used them as platforms for shooting at the neighboring Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo. During that period, Gilo was under siege as terrorists in Beit Jala fired indiscriminately into homes and apartments as well as passing Israeli cars or pedestrians. The real miracle was that more Jews weren’t slaughtered, though many were killed and wounded and an entire section of the capital (as well as the Christians of Beit Jala who were occupied by Muslim gunmen affiliated with the Fatah group) was terrorized until Israeli troops cleaned out the nests of shooters. In recounting Zreineh’s experiences, it says a lot about Rudoren’s poor command of the facts of the conflict and credulous nature that she included nothing about this in her story. Beit Jala’s role in the conflict is forgotten along with that detail about suicide bombings and the fence.
As for Zreineh’s “miracle,” the assumption underlying the story is that if any other Israeli soldiers had been stationed there and not a couple who knew the soup maker, the Palestinian women breaking curfew to attend mass would have been shot or at least roughed up or harassed. But can Rudoren produce credible stories of peaceful Palestinian women being harmed under similar circumstances? Though the international press has usually swallowed Palestinian propaganda about Israeli beastliness with few efforts to get at the facts (as Rudoren and her Times collaborators demonstrated this past summer during the war with Hamas in Gaza), the truth is that the Jewish state’s military always, as the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey put it, “goes to extraordinary lengths” to spare civilians when fighting Palestinian terrorists. The IDF isn’t perfect and there are instances when it fails to live up to its high standards, but the decision of a tank crew not to fire on six women heading to church is what we’d expect from any Israeli unit, not a “miracle.”
While I’m sure the soup was good, the story that went with it should have struck any journalist worth his or her salt as a crock or at least in need of some heavy seasoning with the facts about Palestinian actions during the intifada if it was going to be written up. But not Jodi Rudoren. She’s as green as the day she arrived in Israel in May 2012 to take up her post. That would be an embarrassment for any foreign correspondent, let alone a Times bureau chief. Readers should keep this in mind whenever they look at her non-food or holiday-related coverage in the paper.
My Appearance on C-SPAN
This morning I was on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, talking about the mood of America and its causes, economic trends, the Obama presidency and the Affordable Care Act, the 2016 presidential race, and the anti-police bias of Mayor de Blasio, Attorney General Holder, and President Obama. All in roughly 45 minutes. For those interested, the link can be found here.
This morning I was on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, talking about the mood of America and its causes, economic trends, the Obama presidency and the Affordable Care Act, the 2016 presidential race, and the anti-police bias of Mayor de Blasio, Attorney General Holder, and President Obama. All in roughly 45 minutes. For those interested, the link can be found here.
The Party of the American Dream
12.24.2014 - 1:40 PM
The American left intellectually froze solid about the time of the end of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency in January 1969, almost 46 years ago. There has not been a single new policy idea since then although the world politically, economically, and technologically has changed profoundly.
The American left intellectually froze solid about the time of the end of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency in January 1969, almost 46 years ago. There has not been a single new policy idea since then although the world politically, economically, and technologically has changed profoundly.
Most policy nostrums of the left date to the 1930s, when FDR noted—correctly—in his great Second Inaugural, that “I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.” But the nation that FDR saw and which Walker Evans so hauntingly depicted in his photographs is as dead and gone as FDR and Walker Evans. We still have poor people, of course, but that’s because poverty is a relative term. The United States has the richest poor people in the world, poor people with smart phones, flat-screen TVs, air conditioning, and indoor plumbing (and a myriad of assistance programs). If today’s poor are ill-nourished, the problem is more one of caloric surplus than deficit.
And the left’s view of the political landscape is equally out-of-date. The Democrats’ self-image is as the party of the working stiff while the Republicans are the party of the country club. About the same time as Walker Evans was taking his photographs, Peter Arno published one of his most famous cartoons. It showed a group of people in evening dresses and dinner jackets saying to a friend, “Come on. We’re going down to the Trans Lux to hiss Roosevelt.” But that upper class is dead and gone too.
While Harry Reid spent endless time this year claiming (but only from the floor of the Senate, where he is immune to slander suits) that the Koch brothers are using their billions to buy the country, in fact the super rich are overwhelmingly Democratic. The Washington Examiner is reporting that the top ten individual donors to political organizations in 2014 gave a total of $128 million. Of that, $91 million (71 percent) went to Democratic organizations. Of those who gave more than $1 million, 60 percent went to Democrats. Of super PAC spending this year, $195.7 million was spent either for Democrats or against Republicans. Republican-leaning super PAC buys amounted to $137.9 million.
The fact of the matter is that the Democrats have become the party of the government-dependent, such as those receiving assistance, government workers, the academy, the media, and the very rich. Republicans are now the party of the hard-working, aspiring middle. The Democrats used to be the party of the American dream. Today it is the Republicans who are.
It’s a profound change, and both parties would do themselves (and the country) a favor by noticing the fact. The Republicans have done a fair job of doing so. The Democrats, living in a perpetual 1969, have not.
Jeb’s Strategy: Make Everything Old News
12.24.2014 - 1:20 PM
With the year drawing to a close, Jeb Bush found himself accused of being insufficiently conservative and having to defend himself against a fired-up conservative activist base leveling the charge. It’s a familiar story, but this particular case took place fifteen years ago, in December 1999. The email exchange with a pro-life activist was a reaction to Bush’s appointment of a judge while governor of Florida, and it’s part of a massive public-records release of electronic communication by the former governor, reported on in some detail today by the Washington Post. It also sheds some more light on Bush’s 2016 strategy.
With the year drawing to a close, Jeb Bush found himself accused of being insufficiently conservative and having to defend himself against a fired-up conservative activist base leveling the charge. It’s a familiar story, but this particular case took place fifteen years ago, in December 1999. The email exchange with a pro-life activist was a reaction to Bush’s appointment of a judge while governor of Florida, and it’s part of a massive public-records release of electronic communication by the former governor, reported on in some detail today by the Washington Post. It also sheds some more light on Bush’s 2016 strategy.
For starters, the email exchange with the pro-life activist offers a glimpse into why Bush has been less than intimidated by grassroots opposition to his candidacy: he’s been dealing with this his whole career. Times have arguably changed in the Republican Party since then, and the presidential nomination fight is a different stage altogether. But for Bush, it’s easy to understand why he’s not willing to be deterred by something that’s never been able to stop him before. Here, for the record, is that 1999 exchange, as relayed by the Post:
He regularly sought to calm conservative activists who wanted him to take the government further to the right. In December 1999, Bush tangled over e-mail with an antiabortion activist who blasted him for appointing a lawyer to a judgeship, because the lawyer had represented the owner of an abortion clinic.
Bush responded that he had not been told about the attorney’s history and, in any case, the lawyer had “received recommendations from many people who I respect.”
Nevertheless, Bush followed up and asked an aide to send the activist a list of all nominees currently before him. “We have no litmus test for judges — we are open to hearing from all Floridians,” he wrote. But he added that the woman “appears concerned about the perceived lack of opportunity to provide input.”
Bush welcomes the debate. That might further antagonize the right, or it might breed a new respect for him for not running from his decisions. But if the latter, it would almost surely be a grudging respect.
Bush has dealt with conservative dissent from his policies since well before there was a Tea Party, and he may think that precedent works in his favor. And maybe it does. But the reverse is just as likely. Conservative grassroots dissent was a different animal before the Tea Party and before new media’s influence on campaigns. Bush faced the low-calorie version of the modern conservative insurgency.
He’ll also face a roster of challengers that offers conservatives the flexibility to take their business elsewhere. But as far as Bush is concerned, conservative anger at him has not slowed him down much, and he seems determined to try to keep the streak alive.
The other aspect to the email archive is how Bush plans to use this transparency to his benefit in the 2016 race. There are two ways this could help him. The first is obvious: these are public records, so if there’s a story in there that portrays him in a negative light, it’s going to come out. He might as well get ahead of the story, spin it to suggest he has nothing to hide to minimize the story as much as possible, and get it out in public early in the race (or even before he’s technically in the race) so it’s old news by the time he’s in the middle of the nomination battle or even the general election.
Bush does not seem to be trying to hide this information in plain sight. To that end, the Post reports, “Bush’s team plans to post the e-mails on a searchable Web site early next year.”
The other way this could help Bush is by building a reputation for transparency. To be sure, what he’s doing is far from revolutionary in terms of what he’s releasing. But by getting it out there and making it easily accessible, he can at least play it as an alternative to the paranoiac secrecy of both the Clintons and President Obama. The Clintons not only famously enforce tribal loyalty but members of their inner circle aren’t above stealing and destroying documents from the National Archives to cover for the Clintons.
The Obama administration promised to be the most transparent administration ever, a phrase that has turned into a punchline. The president, in keeping with the unfortunate pattern of presidential discretion in an age of proliferating media, is more secretive than his predecessors, who were each, while in office, arguably more secretive than their own predecessors, and so forth.
It’s not a surprise, in other words, that the presidential comparison Obama evokes is Nixon. It’s just that the other presidents didn’t make such a big show of lying about their intentions to be transparent. That’s why Obama’s divisiveness is also so noticeable: he promised healing, and spent six years and counting turning Americans on each other. (Related: the Democratic Party wants you to harangue your family members with pro-Obama talking points over the holidays. Merry Christmas and happy Chanukah from the creepy statists running your government.)
The result of Obama’s Music Man routine will undoubtedly be increased cynicism toward politicians. So anyone making similar promises as Obama made during his campaign should beware the poisoned well. But if anyone can realistically promise a true transparency, it might be Bush, who could try to claim that you don’t have to wait for him to take office to test his commitment since he displayed transparency during the campaign.
Transparency is not now, and not ever going to be, an issue that catapults someone to the presidency. (You could argue “trust” is, but that’s not the same thing.) So the benefit to Bush of releasing these emails is almost surely about trying to waste news cycles on any revelation to inoculate his campaign from them later. As for his fifteen-year battle with conservatives, that too may be old news, but it’s precisely the kind of old news that feeds grudges and gains steam over time. Bush would be foolish to believe he can run like it’s 1999.
December 2014
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Articles
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The Good Country
Tim Kane -
Judeophobia and Marxism
Robert S. Wistrich -
Why The Death of Klinghoffer Matters
Jonathan S. TobinAn opera that humanizes anti-Semitic terror finds its moment and its audience.
Fiction
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Y2K
Karl Taro Greenfeld
Politics & Ideas
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The Big General
John Steele Gordon -
Middling Expectations
Tevi Troy -
The COINdinista
Max Boot
Culture & Civilization
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Mel Tormé’s Torment
Terry Teachout -
A Wonderful Novel
Fernanda Moore -
Unskew the Press
Matthew Continetti
John Podhoretz
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The Repudiation of Barack Obama
John Podhoretz
Letters
Threat Assessment
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When the Vulgarism Hit the Fan
Jonathan S. Tobin
Enter Laughing
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