Capture this. ........Can I have my 'No Fly zone' ? pic.twitter.com/wdfMmXEF4I
— MFS - The Other News (@MFS001) November 15, 2015
Disgraceful. Simply disgraceful. Where is Ronald Reagan when we need him? Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, bowing, degrading US military capabilities, Recep Tayyip Erdogan
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:06 PM
4 comments
If you think the United States just struck a poor nuclear deal with Iran, you’re right; but if that’s your key takeaway, you’re missing the point. Iran’s nuclear program was last on the list of the Obama administration’s priorities in talking to Tehran. The administration readily caved on Iran’s nukes because it viewed the matter only as a timely pretense for achieving other cherished aims. These were: (1) preventing an Israeli attack on Iran; (2) transforming the United States into a more forgiving, less imposing power; (3) establishing diplomacy as a great American good in itself; (4) making Iran into a great regional power; and (5), ensuring the legacies of the president and secretary of state as men of vision and peace.
The administration has always viewed Israel as an intractable troublemaker and the main catalyst for the region’s woes. An Israeli strike on Iran, especially if supported by the United States, would have been yet another display of destabilizing Israeli aggression that put Middle East peace further out of reach. Barack Obama, therefore, repeatedly warned Israel against attacking Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu complied, and for his compliance White House officials taunted him in 2014 as a “chickenshit” whose window of opportunity had closed. That window is now barred. The Iran deal states that the U.S. will train Iranians to counter any sabotage attempts on its nuclear facilities and systems. This is aimed at frustrating Israeli action.
...
From the administration’s standpoint, the deal was a grand slam. If it left Iran as an official nuclear power on the perpetual verge of a breakout, well, that was always the bargaining chip to get everything else. And with the United States having shown extraordinary cooperation and forgiveness, the thinking goes, even a nuclear Iran will become a less bellicose and more collegial member of the community of nations. What good the deal has already done, the administration believes, will continue to pay dividends. As is his wont, Obama is now declaring as much. But by the time his vision is upended by facts, he’ll be out of office, and we won’t have the luxury of fighting reality with abstractions.Greenwald understates the extent to which Obama's anti-Israel obsession drove this deal. As John Podhoretz wrote in his review of Michael Oren's Ally (which I am currently reading), for ideological reasons, Obama doesn't like that Israel exists. Period. That anti-Israel obsession led to the Iran nuclear deal more than anything else.
Labels: American diplomacy, American exceptionalism, Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities, Iran, Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli attack on Iran, John Kerry, Obama's legacy
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:41 PM
1 comments
"Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they’re defeated by better ideas" —@POTUS on countering violent extremism http://t.co/2q0Xm3sqaN
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 6, 2015
Of course, for all of his faults, FDR really wanted to see the Nazis defeated. Does Obama want to see ISIS and Iran defeated? The answer to that question is either 'no' or 'he hasn't made up his mind yet.'Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Iranian nuclear threat, ISIS, Islamic State, Islamist, Nazis
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:39 AM
1 comments
Via the Washington Times:
Army ROTC cadets are complaining on message boards that they were pressured to walk in high heels on Monday for an Arizona State University campus event designed to raise awareness of sexual violence against women.
The Army openly encouraged participating in April’s “Walk A Mile in Her Shoes” events in 2014, but now it appears as though ROTC candidates at ASU were faced with a volunteer event that became mandatory.
“Attendance is mandatory and if we miss it we get a negative counseling and a ‘does not support the battalion sharp/EO mission’ on our CDT OER for getting the branch we want. So I just spent $16 on a pair of high heels that I have to spray paint red later on only to throw them in the trash after about 300 of us embarrass the U.S. Army tomorrow,” one anonymous cadet wrote on the social media sharing website Imgr, IJReview reported Monday.Disgraceful.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:03 AM
0 comments
Reality is complicated, and the use of historical analogies is always somewhat limited. But even this superficial comparison shows that what the United States saw fit to demand back then from the most powerful and dangerous competitor it had ever known is now considered beyond the pale in its dealings with Iran.
Why the dramatic shift? One could suggest a simple answer: Today there is something the United States wants badly from Iran, leaving Washington and its allies with little bargaining power to demand additional concessions. Yet in fact Iran has at least as many reasons to hope for a deal. For Tehran, the lifting of sanctions could spell the difference between bankruptcy and becoming a regional economic superpower, and in slowing down its arms race it could avoid a military attack.
I am afraid that the real reason for the U.S. stance is not its assessment, however incorrect, of the two sides’ respective interests but rather a tragic loss of moral self-confidence. While negotiating with the Soviet Union, U.S. administrations of all stripes felt certain of the moral superiority of their political system over the Soviet one. They felt they were speaking in the name of their people and the free world as a whole, while the leaders of the Soviet regime could speak for no one but themselves and the declining number of true believers still loyal to their ideology.
But in today’s postmodern world, when asserting the superiority of liberal democracy over other regimes seems like the quaint relic of a colonialist past, even the United States appears to have lost the courage of its convictions.
We have yet to see the full consequences of this moral diffidence, but one thing is clear: The loss of America’s self-assured global leadership threatens not only the United States and Israel but also the people of Iran and a growing number of others living under Tehran’s increasingly emboldened rule. Although the hour is growing late, there is still time to change course — before the effects grow more catastrophic still.Read the whole thing.
Labels: American exceptionalism, Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities, Iranian nuclear threat, moral conscience, Natan Sharansky, Soviet Union, US presidential campaign 2016
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:45 AM
2 comments
Former Vice President Dick Cheney says President Barack Obama is the worst commander in chief the United States has ever had, in view of the recent Iranian nuclear agreement.
Asked about the deal by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday, the former vice president said the Iranian regime is “one of the most radical” in history and that “Obama’s about to give them nuclear weapons.”
“I vacillate between the various theories I’ve heard, but you know, if you had somebody as president who wanted to take America down, who wanted to fundamentally weaken our position in the world and reduce our capacity to influence events, turn our back on our allies and encourage our adversaries, it would look exactly like what Barack Obama’s doing,” Cheney said when asked whether he thought the president is naïve or something else.
“I think his actions are constituted in my mind those of the worst president we’ve ever had,” he said.
Cheney also said “it’s a mark of the weakness” of Obama that he would criticize Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker for saying he would get rid of the deal with Iran on his first day in the White House.What amazes me about this is how oh so predictable this all was in 2007-08, and how so many people apparently missed it then.
Labels: American exceptionalism, Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities, Iranian nuclear threat, US foreign policy
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:14 PM
0 comments
Labels: American exceptionalism, Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:32 PM
0 comments
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities, Iran, Iranian navy, US Navy
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:10 PM
0 comments
Egypt on Tuesday urged U.S. authorities to exercise restraint in dealing with racially charged demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri - echoing language Washington used to caution Egypt as it cracked down on Islamist protesters last year.
It is unusual for Egypt to criticize such a major donor, and it was not immediately clear why the government would have taken such a step.
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The Egyptian Foreign Ministry's statement on the unrest in Ferguson read similarly to one issued by U.S. President Barack Obama's administration in July 2013, when the White House "urged security forces to exercise maximum restraint and caution" in dealing with demonstrations by Mursi supporters.
The ministry added it was "closely following the escalation of protests" in Ferguson, unleashed by the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white policeman on Aug. 9.
Labels: Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, al-Qaeda, Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities, ISIS, United Nations Human Rights Council, United States, universal periodic review
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:09 PM
0 comments
Our prayers and thoughts go out to Steven Sotloff, who was revealed today as a captive of the Islamic State (IS, ISIS, ISIL) terrorist group.This is the result of the world perceiving a weak America. Thank you Hussein Obama.
After murdering journalist James Foley and posting a video of his beheading to Twitter, the same masked ISIS killer was seen standing next to an identically-dressed Sotloff, addressing President Barack Obama directly and threatening to kill Sotloff if the US continues to challenge the "Islamic Caliphate."
The Sotloff family, who lives in Miami, has been keeping Steven's kidnapping a secret on advice from trusted officials. With his name now public, it is unclear what his fate will be and whether the US will seek to rescue him or strike a deal with the Islamic State.
We have made the editorial decision not to share the gruesome video of Foley's killing but felt it was important to spread awareness of Sotloff's plight.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities, ISIS, Islamic terrorism
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:42 AM
0 comments
After six years of resetting, leading from behind, ending wars, nation building at home, and pivoting to Asia, the U.S. has reduced itself to a husk of its former influence. When Kerry showed up in Cairo to meet with the president of Egypt, he was wanded by the guards, as if he had just wandered in from the airport security line.
Kerry underlined his dubious relevance by his inability to secure a ceasefire, and his dubious wisdom by making it his overarching goal. At this point, after Israel has committed itself on the ground, the U.S. should be seeking to give it the time it needs to do as much damage as possible to Hamas’s military infrastructure, instead of effectively bailing out the terror group.
Kerry held an ill-advised confab in Paris with Qatar and Turkey, the patrons of Hamas. Even the Palestinian Authority blasted this as the “friends of Hamas” meeting. With the Egyptians, the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Jordanians, and the Palestinian Authority all functionally on Israel’s side in the Gaza War, it should be in a superior diplomatic position, but its superpower patron evidently didn’t get the memo.
By the time Kerry returned home, he had been showered with so much criticism by the Israelis that the U.S. government was saying it could endanger our relationship. The question raised by Obama-administration foreign policy again and again is, How can self-styled “smart power” be so dumb and toothless?
For all of Kerry’s failings, he is a relative giant among a foreign-policy team composed largely of political hacks and post-American declinists. At least Kerry retains some of the old Democratic-party belief in America’s importance in the world. His condemnation of Syria’s use of chemical weapons last year was a stirring moral indictment of the Assad regime – although President Obama immediately undercut him when he abandoned his own “red lines.”
So far, Kerry’s tenure as secretary of state is making Hillary Clinton’s undistinguished stint look impressive by comparison. But that’s mostly a matter of timing. It is his misfortune to be present at the unraveling, as crisis after crisis unfolds, with the administration lacking the interest or the tough-mindedness to effectively respond.
It is impossible to find anywhere in the world where our position or alliances are stronger than they were six years ago. Incredibly enough, President Obama once called Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Islamist prime minister of Turkey, more than any foreign leader other than British prime minister David Cameron. Now, Obama hasn’t even talked to Erdogan in five months, and his erstwhile buddy condemns Israel as a “terror state.”Read the whole thing.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities, fierce moral urgency, John Kerry, leading from behind, smart diplomacy, smart power
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:47 PM
0 comments
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities, Malaysia
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:16 AM
1 comments
On November 1, 2013, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited the White House, and made a rather stunning request. Maliki, who celebrated when the last U.S. troops left his country in 2011, asked Obama to quietly send the military back into Iraq and help his beleagured Air Force develop targets for air strikes; that’s how serious the threat from Sunni insurgents led by the extremist group ISIS had become.
Twelve days later, Brett McGurk, a deputy assistant secretary of state and the Obama administration’s senior U.S. official in Baghdad since the crisis began last month, presented to Congress a similarly dark warning. ISIS was launching upwards of 40 suicide bombers a month, he said, encouraged in part by the weakness of Maliki’s military and the aggressively anti-Sunni policies of the Shi’ite prime minister. It was the kind of ominous report that American intelligence agencies had been delivering privately for months. McGurk added that ISIS had “benefited from a permissive operating environment due to inherent weaknesses of Iraqi security forces, poor operational tactics, and popular grievances, which remain unaddressed, among the population in Anbar and Nineweh provinces.”
Maliki's requests were rebuffed; McGurk’s warnings went largely unheeded. The problem for Obama was that he had no good policy option in Iraq. On the one hand, if Obama had authorized the air strikes Maliki began requesting in January, he would strengthen the hand of an Iraqi prime minister who increasingly resembled the brutal autocrat U.S. troops helped unseat in 2003. Maliki’s heavy handed policies—such as authorizing counter-terrorism raids against Sunni political leaders with no real links to terrorism—sowed the seeds of the current insurrection in Iraq.
But while Obama committed to sell Maliki’s military nearly $11 billion worth of advanced U.S. weaponry, he was unwilling to use that leverage in a meaningful way to get him to reverse his earlier reforms where he purged some of his military’s most capable leaders and replaced them with yes men. As a result of this paradox, the Iraq policy process ground to a halt at the very moment that ISIS was on the rise.
Two months later, ISIS captured the strategically important city of Fallujah in Anbar province.
Five month after that, Iraq’s second-largest city—Mosul, in Nineweh province—fell to ISIS and an army of Sunni insurgents. At the time, senior Obama administration officials went out of their way to proclaim just how impossible-to-predict the collapse of Mosul was. But interviews with a dozen U.S. and Iraqi intelligence officials, diplomats, and policy makers reveal a very different story. A catastrophe like the fall of Mosul wasn’t just predictable, these officials say. They repeatedly warned the Obama administration that something like this was going to happen. With seemingly no good choices to make in Iraq, the White House wasn’t able to listen.
“It’s simply not true that nobody saw a disaster like the fall of Mosul coming,” Ali Khedery, who served as a senior adviser at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, told The Daily Beast. “I can’t speak for anyone else, but I literally predicted this in verbal warnings and in writing in 2010 that Iraq would fall apart.”
“I and a zillion other people said in 2014 that we needed to do more than the very slow and inadequate reaction,” added James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq. “If [ISIS] could move in and seize Fallujah and they were on the offensive, and they were active in Mosul and Nineweh [province] too, the army was lethargic and not doing very well, at that point there was a possibility for us to provide air strikes and advisers.”
Instead, the Obama policy meandered through a series of half-measures. As the Wall Street Journal reported last month, unmanned surveillance flights over Iraq that would provide crucial overhead intelligence on areas where ISIS operated were limited to about one mission per month until about mid-June.He's Carter reincarnate. He doesn't get that sometimes when you're a superpower, you have and must pursue shared interests with dictators. Oh wait.... Obama has fixed it so the US isn't a superpower anymore.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities, Iraq, Jimmy Carter, Nouri al-Maliki
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:00 PM
0 comments
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities, Vladimir Putin
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:17 AM
1 comments
The U.S. is now using unmanned drones in the search for hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by the Islamist group Boko Haram, the White House said Wednesday.
The deployment of drones comes in addition to manned surveillance flights and satellite imagery being offered to the Nigerian government in the search for the girls. The U.S. has also sent an interdisciplinary crisis team with officials from the Pentagon, State Department and FBI to consult with Nigerian authorities.And when and if they find the girls, what will they do? Send in the Marines to get them? Most definitely not.
White House press secretary Jay Carney, though, said the drones being used in the search were not armed, and stressed that American military resources and personnel were in Nigeria in an advisory capacity.
“At this point," he said, the administration was "not actively considering the deployment of U.S. forces,” despite calls from some Republicans to use special forces to rescue the missing girls.
Labels: American exceptionalism, Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities, Michelle Obama, United States marines
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:34 PM
0 comments
The growing worldwide contempt for US power and authority would be bad enough in and of itself. The newfound confidence of aggressors imperils international security and threatens the lives of hundreds of millions of people.This reminds me of two dates in American history: September 11, 2001 and December 7, 1941. But this time the slumber seems deep. In 1941, Roosevelt (for whom I have much criticism for his failure to save Jewish lives) was trying to overcome the isolationism by getting the United States into World War II via the back door.
What makes the situation worse is the US response to what is happening. The Obama administration is responding to the ever-multiplying crises by pretending that there is nothing to worry about and insisting that failures are successes.
And the problem is not limited to Obama and his advisers or even to the political Left. Their delusional view that the US will suffer no consequences for its consistent record of failure and defeat is shared by a growing chorus of conservatives.
Some, like the anti-Semitic conservative pundit Patrick Buchanan, laud Putin as a cultural hero. Others, like Sen. Rand Paul, who is increasingly presenting himself as the man to beat in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, indicate that the US has no business interfering with Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
Iran as well is a country the US should be less concerned about, in Paul’s opinion.
Leaders like Sen. Ted Cruz who call for a US foreign policy based on standing by allies and opposing foes in order to ensure US leadership and US national security are being drowned out in a chorus of “Who cares?”
Six years into Obama’s presidency, the US public as a whole is largely opposed to taking any action on behalf of Ukraine or the Baltic states, regardless of what inaction, or worse, feckless action means for the US’s ability to protect its interests and national security.
And the generation coming of age today is similarly uninterested in US global leadership.
During the Cold War and in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the predominant view among American university students studying international affairs was that US world leadership is essential to ensure global stability and US national interests and values.
Today this is no longer the case.
Much of the Obama administration’s shuttle diplomacy in recent years has involved sending senior officials, including Obama, on overseas trips with the goal of reassuring jittery allies that they can continue to trust US security guarantees.
These protestations convince fewer and fewer people today.
It is because of this that US allies like Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia, that lack nuclear weapons, are considering their options on the nuclear front.
It is because of this that Israeli officials are openly stating for the first time that the US cannot be depended on to either secure Israel’s eastern frontier in the event that an accord is reached with the Palestinians, or to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
It is because of this that the world is more likely than it has been since 1939 to experience a world war of catastrophic proportions.
Labels: 9/11, Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities, World War II
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:17 PM
2 comments
"In the year 2014, after all of the miles traveled and all of the journey of history, this is not just intolerable, it's grotesque. It is beyond unacceptable," Kerry told AFP in Geneva, where he was taking part in crisis talks on Ukraine.That's true. But at this point, as illustrated by the cartoon above, Obama and Kerry have zero credibility to stop it.
Labels: anti-Semitism, Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:47 PM
0 comments
The poll, conducted among 900 Americans by Luntz Global, found a huge majority of both Republican and Democratic respondents want stiffer sanctions imposed on Iran. The finding comes just as US President Barack Obama's administration reportedly has "killed" new sanctions against Iran from being passed in the Senate.
Obama's move is in contradiction to the public will expressed in the poll, which revealed 77% of Americans support the ongoing 6 month negotiations "while imposing sanctions and increas[ing] financial pressure and sanctions." In fact, only 14% said they would vote for a senator that would reduce pressure on Iran during negotiations.
Furthermore, the poll discovered that there is deep-seated distrust over the intentions of the Iranian regime. Only 7% trust the Iranian claim that their nuclear program is peaceful.
Moreover, 86% of voters think Iran will break its promises during the negotiations, and 84% think Iran is manipulating negotiations to stall "as they continue to develop their ability to make nuclear weapons."If the American people knew the truth, they might really be up in arms against Obama. The truth is that Obama wants Iran to go nuclear and to have nuclear weapons because he wants to weaken America.
Labels: American exceptionalism, Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, John Kerry, United States Senate
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:32 PM
1 comments
FORBES launched its latest issue on Wednesday, including the list of the most powerful people. Russian President Vladimir Putin ranked first and generated a hefty debate among readers. Read the story naming Putin the World’s Most Powerful Person here and check out the full list here.
Steve Forbes also contributed to the debate. “The criticism of Forbes dropping Barack Obama to the number two spot behind Vladimir Putin as the most powerful man in the world misses two big points.” Read Is Putin Really More Powerful Than Obama?Heh.
Labels: American exceptionalism, Barack Hussein Obama, degrading US military capabilities, Vladimir Putin
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:42 PM
0 comments
With the Syria deal, Obama has enabled Putin to sweep away US influence over the Middle East and make Putin himself the broker over Iran. ‘Credible US threat of force?’ Iran now has credible evidence – if any more were needed – that any such threats Obama may ever make towards it will be no more than the rustle of a paper tiger. The fate of the free world no longer rests with the US. It now rests with Putin. He and the mullahs in Iran, presented with the spectacle of the preening narcissist in the White House gazing in rapt adoration at his own reflection, are surely laughing fit to bust.
And why shouldn’t the First Narcissist preen? For he has achieved precisely what he wanted, his true goal that I described in this blog when Obama first ran for President: to extend the reach of the state over peoples’ lives at home, to emasculate the power of America abroad, and to make the free white world the slave of those he falsely characterised as the victims of that white world’s oppression.
He has achieved it, to the letter. Iran’s putative victims of its imminent nuclear arsenal of holy war against the non-Islamic world are now, terrifyingly, on their own.Indeed he has. We have to do a lot of praying over the next 40 months that a new and markedly different leader is chosen for the United States. That's not a simple proposition. If Obama gets his way and legalizes hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to the United States, the chances of any Republican defeating Hillary Clinton or whoever else might be the Democratic nominee will markedly diminish.
Labels: American exceptionalism, Barack Hussein Obama, chemical weapons, degrading US military capabilities, Iranian nuclear threat, Syria, Vladimir Putin
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:59 PM
2 comments
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
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