Obama Re-Writes History on Bush and Jerusalem

Now this is just getting silly. The Obama White House is gearing up for a Supreme Court case in which it will defend its refusal to list “Jerusalem, Israel” on the passports of Americans born in the Israeli capital. As part of its preparations the administration recently scrubbed all the captions on a White House photo gallery of Vice President Biden in the city, changing “Jerusalem, Israel” to “Jerusalem.” The optics of methodically erasing the word “Israel” from the White House webpage caused a predictable uproar.

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Obama Re-Writes History on Bush and Jerusalem

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Is Trump Right About Experts?

It doesn’t happen every day, but Donald Trump was right about something yesterday. Reacting to the avalanche of criticism he has received about his appalling ignorance of foreign policy, Trump asserted that the focus on the part of many pundits about the paucity of “experts” advising him was off base. Noting the less-than-sterling record of the geniuses that have been running U.S. foreign policy, he made the following crack while campaigning in Wisconsin:

Look at the mess we’re in with all these experts that we have. Look at the mess. Look at the Middle East. If our presidents and our politicians went on vacation for 365 days a year and went to the beach, we’d be in much better shape right now in the Middle East.

He’s not entirely wrong about that. But even if we concede that so-called experts have been responsible for most if not all of the foreign disasters that the United States has suffered, that doesn’t constitute an argument for the complete ignorance of history and policy options that Trump exhibits.

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Today’s Solution, Tomorrow’s Problem

I agree with Noah that Woodrow Wilson was both a horrible president and a horrible person. I also agree that Princeton should not expunge his name from the campus he once led. Wilson is a very important part of both Princeton and United States history and that history should be allowed to live. Only tyrants would want to emulate what ISIS did to Palmyra.

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Iranian Arms and the Spirit of the Deal

Speaking at the end of a nuclear security summit on Friday, President Obama argued that while Iran was living up to the “letter” of the nuclear deal it made with the West, it was still violating the “spirit” of the pact. But, as I noted yesterday, he framed the problem as one in which it was the Islamist regime and its potential Western business partners that would lose out. Actions such as violations of missile test bans or shipping weapons to Hezbollah might scare away foreign investment. But he didn’t seem to think the consequences of Iran’s provocative behavior went farther than that. The president’s confidence in the wisdom of his policy of engagement is such that he views those Americans who continue to point out the foolishness of his policy as being the moral equivalent of Iran’s Islamist hardliners. Though he doesn’t wish to be accused of ignoring Iranian behavior, he nevertheless treats it as insignificant. But yesterday, we got a reminder of why other nations in the Middle East, both Israel and its Arab neighbors, regard the question of the spirit of the deal very differently.

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The Radicals Have Taken Over

The Western world is fortunate that a series of historical accidents produced the Anglosphere. That sentiment has been branded downright heretical, particularly as a maximalist post-colonial academic philosophy has seeped into popular culture. It is, however, the English tradition that popularized the idea of a limited and lawful executive. That idea has existed ever since almost intangibly in the hearts of those current and former members of the Commonwealth – an idea that never took root on the continent. In the past, however, that noble affinity for the rule of law has been tested by resurgent cabals with less regard for legality and constraints on power. It would seem that another period of testing is upon us.

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Is the Indefensible Worth Saving?

Princeton University has determined that Woodrow Wilson’s legacy is a complex one and is, thus, worthy of preservation. Perhaps only those whom the 28th President would have regarded as his political enemies will be happy with that outcome.

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