Our Truest Lies

Our Truest Lies
If the truth doesn’t serve social justice — well, tell a noble lie.

Victor Davis Hanson, NRO

At  end of John Ford’s classic Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the editor of the local paper decides not to print the truth about who really killed the murderous Valance. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

Legends now become facts in America at almost lightning speed. Often when lies are asserted as truth, they become frozen in time. Even the most damning later exposure of their falsity never quite erases their currency. As Jonathan Swift sighed, “Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.”

After the recent shooting tragedy at the Washington Navy Yard, cable news shows, newspaper reports, and talking heads immediately blasted lax gun laws. The killer, Aaron Alexis, had mowed down 20 innocent people — twelve of them fatally — with yet again the satanic AR-15 semi-automatic “assault” rifle. The mass murdering was supposedly more proof of the lethal pathologies of the National Rifle Association and the evil shooter crowd that prevents good people from enacting proper gun-control laws. Once more an iconic tragedy had the chance — in a way that even the near-simultaneous shooting of 13 in Chicago did not — to energize the nation to do the right thing and ensure that no other such mayhem would follow.

Then the assault weapon vanished into fantasy. Instead, over the course of the week, it was slowly learned that the unhinged Alexis had somehow passed at least two background checks, legally bought a shotgun, modified it, and for 30 minutes shot and reloaded it to slaughter the innocent. Are we to outlaw the owning of shotguns despite background checks and lawful purchases? Vice President Joe Biden, remember, had recently urged Americans to obtain old-fashioned, all-American shotguns for protection rather than dangerous semi-automatic assault rifles. If a shotgun could be used to commit mass murder in the middle of a military installation, how could any gun-control law, short of the confiscation of all guns, ensure that such heinous crimes could not be repeated?

Few seem interested in other, less politically correct, less melodramatic solutions. It was reported that Alexis had been treated for severe bouts of mental illness, yet apparently without endangering his security clearances. Like the deranged Sandy Hook mass murderer, Adam Lanza, Alexis was also pathologically addicted to playing violent video games for hours on end. Further controversy arose over the fact that most military personnel are not allowed to carry weapons at facilities like the Navy Yard.

Unfortunately, few of our elites dared to question the mental-health industry’s approach to treating the unstable, especially its resistance to properly monitoring whether those being treated as outpatients are taking their medications. Few faulted the entertainment industry for the savage genre of the modern video game. Should we also blame the incompetence of the agencies that conducted the background checks? Was the Pentagon to blame for not allowing military personnel and contractors to carry weapons while on their own federal military facilities?

After all, none of those considerations served the larger progressive purpose of restricting gun use and ownership. More likely, these other disturbing truths threatened liberal assumptions about First Amendment rights and freedom of expression. If the white extremist Timothy McVeigh, the iconic anti-government terrorist, long ago showed us how generic right-wing extremism could lead to atrocities such as the Oklahoma bombing, then the African-American, pro-Obama, Buddhist, Thai-speaking Aaron Alexis, who murdered without an AR-15, was hardly useful as an indictment of much of anything deemed Neanderthal.

All this is old hat. We still do not know exactly what happened that night of the tragic fatal confrontation between Travyon Martin and George Zimmerman. But we at least do know that most of the fables initially peddled by the media were demonstrably false — but even now not remembered as demonstrably false. George Zimmerman was not a bigoted “white Hispanic” who used racist language in his 911 call as he deliberately hunted down a black suspect. And he really did suffer visibly bleeding head wounds from a hard blow of some sort from Trayvon Martin. The latter was not a diminutive model student or the vulnerable pre-teen pictured in most media photos. Even photoshopping and doctoring tapes could not create a teachable moment out of such chaos.

No matter; such a moment was created anyway. Without any statistical support, our moral censors still wished to traffic in narratives of white racist vigilantes hunting down innocent African-American male teens. That narrative served as a reminder of why we have a civil-rights movement of the sort championed by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who fiddle while thousands of minority youths are gunned down each year in our inner cities. In other words, as far as the Zimmerman trial went, the human story of tragedy, misjudgment, accident, reaction, and overreaction simply did not serve the larger liberal effort to address perceived issues of social justice. Tragedy was better served by melodrama, and both Zimmerman and Martin became cutout caricatures rather than tragic individuals.

The same may be unfortunately true of the infamous Matthew Shepard case. The savagely murdered gay youth was probably not, as we were told for years, the victim of the rage of Wyoming redneck homophobes, energized in their hatred by the sexual prejudices of an intolerant culture. The truth was more complicated, though Shepard’s fate just as tragic.

A 13-year-long investigation by a gay writer, who reexamined the Shepard case with the intention of writing a screenplay, instead suggests that it might be more likely that Shepard was cruelly tortured and beaten into a coma by methamphetamine-crazed psychotics, who may on prior occasions have shared their drug use with Shepard and intended to rob him. For all their crude macho talk, the two evil perpetrators may have been bisexual themselves. Shepard’s own homosexuality, in other words, seems to have been incidental to, not the cause of, his lamentable death. If Shepard’s sad fate must be an icon of anything, it more likely serves as a warning that the vicious meth cartels in rural America are out of control, and the addicted can ensnare and murder anyone, including naïve college students. Again, no matter — what was false has served noble purposes in a way that what was true will not.

In Praise of Tyranny?

In Praise of Tyranny?

Mike Walker, Col. USMC (retired)

All,

The joyful glee coming from some commentators regarding today’s phone call with Iran’s leader, Hassan Rowhani, is a little less than stunning.

I have always supported the President’s policy of opening a line of communication with the Islamic Republic of Iran, but only if done in a manner that strengthens the United States of America and its allies in the region.

It is far too early to see this as a good thing.

A generation ago, when the United States reached out to the People’s Republic of China, the talks properly began at a low level and it took a hundred meetings over many months to build the rapport and trust essential to bringing the heads of state together.

We had clear policy objectives in place and a political-military strategy that was refined and improved throughout the process.

One well thought out goal was to clearly identify those areas of common interest that could be built upon while mutually addressing the areas of often-profound differences that, if ignored by one side or the other, could undo the progress that had been made. That degree of clarity and creation of redundant avenues of communications ensured a successful future.

Only then did we have direct communications at the highest level, between heads of state.

Little of that groundwork has been completed with Iran and shame on us.

Iran believes that the United States has a Middle East policy that bewilders friend and foe alike. Take it from someone who has lived there, accurate or not, it is seen as weakness in the region and Iran is acting to take advantage of that weakness. Do not be fooled by smooth words from a smooth operator like Rowhani.

Ignoring that reality is not good for anyone but Iran and its allies, certainly not the United States and its friends in the region.

We need to slow things down, not speed them up. If we are to succeed, we need to go back and lay a lasting foundation – we should not and cannot build on clever phrases and empty gestures.

To understand why, we need to review the nature of the current regime in Tehran and you may not enjoy reading this.

The regime is an Islamic Republic ruled by an unelected supreme council of Ayatollahs. After the non-violent Green Revolution was crushed in 2009, the Ayatollahs decided to personally select every candidate for national office to include presidential candidates. The current president, Rowhani, passed this screening while every progressive candidate was banned. That is not good news.

In case you are wondering how the regime crushed the 2009 Green Revolution, the Islamic Republic runs a very effective police state. The former-Shah’s dreaded SAVAK was incorporated virtually whole into the new regime becoming MOIS/VEVAK (only the bosses loyal to the Shah were executed). Additionally, the regime uses the Revolutionary Guard Quds force and organized gangs of thugs known as the Sazmane Basij-e Mostaz’afin, or simply Basij, to squash any dissent.

Internationally, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a theocracy that espouses a violently revolutionary brand of Shi’a Islam that actively seeks to destabilize other states.

The examples are many so lets stick to the last decade of reports.

In regards to Syria, the Islamic Republic is all in. The Quds force has provided snipers, demolition experts, intelligence officers, interrogators, and military advisors of all sorts. All manner of weapons and munitions are also made available in quantity. Their role is growing while ours is in limbo. Their proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, has recently entered the battlefield in force and Iran has expanded its training program for Syria-bound global Shi’a jihadists as much as tenfold in the last year.

To get a feel for Iran’s commitment to the war in Syria, here is a quote from the 16 September 2013 in the Wall Street Journal:

“The fighters ‘are told that the war in Syria is akin to [an] epic battle for Shiite Islam, and if they die they will be martyrs of the highest rank,’ says an Iranian military officer briefed on the training camp, which is 15 miles outside Tehran and called Amir Al-Momenin, or Commander of the Faithful.”

Syria is only the tip of the iceberg.

In 2009, Yemen arrested several spies that were passing government secrets to MOIS/VEVAK who were also arming Shi’a jihadists in the southeast. Iranian attempts to radicalize the Shi’a population in Morocco through fake NGOs and cultural organizations run by MOIS/VEVAK led that government to break off diplomatic relations in 2009.

Stealing a page from Saddam Hussein who declared Kuwait as Iraq’s 19^th province, the Islamic Republic avowed that Bahrain is the 14^th province of Iran and in February 2013, Egypt’s ranking Sunni cleric, Sheik Ahmed el-Tayeb, publically chastised Iran over its meddling in Bahrain and other Gulf States.

On 25 May 2013, Argentine federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman released a study detailing the Iranian regional terrorism network in Latin America built on his previous 2006 investigation that indicted seven Iranians and one member of Hezbollah for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community Center in Buenos Aires that killed eighty-five people.

No one who served in Iraq has forgotten that the Islamic Republic’s Quds Guards and MOIS aided and abetted our enemies there and were directly responsible for the deaths of American soldiers (especially memorable are the Iranian designed and built enhanced penetrating “copper-disc” IEDs).

Closer to home, most never paid attention to the foiled 2007 JFK Airport bomb plot that resulted in a life sentence for Abdul Kadir, the former-head of MOIS operations in Guyana or the May 2013 conviction and 25-year sentence for Manssor Arbafsiar handed down in a Federal Court for his role in the foiled Iranian plan to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States and detonate bombs at the Saudi Arabian and Israeli embassies in Washington, D.C.

That should give you a (dis-) taste for the current activities of the Islamic Republic of Iran and I hope you noticed there was no mention of WMD.

As I first said, opening a line of communication with Tehran is prudent and the President should be supported for this initiative, but only if we go in slowly, thoroughly prepared, and with our eyes wide open to reality.

To the cheering pundits and media elites: Wake up! This ain’t China in 1972.

Mike

Dr. Carson

Obama’s Box Canyon

Obama’s Box Canyon 

Our Hamlet-in-chief wanted simultaneously to act and not act.

By Victor Davis Hanson, National Review

The Syrian fiasco arose from two mutually contradictory desires. Barack Obama sincerely wanted Bashar Assad to stop killing his own people. Barack Obama also really was not willing to use force to ensure that Assad would stop killing his own people. At Harvard, those desires would not be antithetical. Elsewhere they are.

The desire to avoid the use of force was understandable. Obama ran for president as an anti-war candidate. He damned Bush’s “bad war” in Iraq, while critiquing the conduct of the “good war” in Afghanistan. He had no success with his own bombing in Libya. And he was embarrassed by even a rhetorical entry into the Egyptian quagmire. The president sensed rightly that the country was “tired” after Afghanistan and Iraq.

He knew that the American people, Congress, and our allies did not want to wade into the Syrian swamp. Privately, he accepted that the U.N. would be of no use (cf. “hocus pocus”); the veto-minded Russians remembered too well the administration’s prior subversion over Libya (obtaining resolutions for no fly-zones and humanitarian aid while bombing in support of ground troops).

So Obama for months on end did nothing about Syria. The piles of corpses mounted. The anguish of his critics grew. Yet that “nothing” was, at least privately, understood as the least objectionable of many objectionable alternatives.

Nonetheless, the inaction upset Obama and his humanitarian interventionist advisers no end. They felt that arming the insurgency, to the extent that we were actually doing that, was simply not enough to defeat and remove Assad. Certainly, indecision had placated neither their conservative critics, who wished to damage the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis, nor their progressive humanitarian supporters.

In attempting to square that circle of wanting to do something and not wishing to use force, Obama grew increasingly frustrated. Following Hillary Clinton’s lead, he blurted out that using WMD would be to cross a red line and “change my calculus.” To the extent that Obama was cognizant of the ramifications of such a red-line threat, he must have thought that it was a cheap way of pacifying his critics who were clamoring for action. He apparently assumed that Assad in no way would ever dare to use WMD, which heretofore had been largely irrelevant in the terrible lethal arithmetic of Syria.

Those suppositions were not necessarily idiotic. Even criminal dictators mostly do not wish to provoke a military response from the United States. Moreover, for the past 30 years a mellifluous Obama had found that his own rhetoric was as useful as concrete action. Few ever questioned whether what he had so elegantly asserted was ever really followed up. Ask the mesmerized Nobel Peace Prize committee.

So Obama would bluster about as is his wont. Assad would not dare test the credibility of a U.S. president. The interventionists in both camps would be somewhat placated. And the president could continue to deplore, but not have to intervene in, the Syrian civil war. Most of us Americans conceded that inaction was the wiser course.

Who knows who upset that calculus and why?

Maybe Assad wished to restore his eroding deterrence by a lethal display of WMD. Perhaps he deliberately set out to embarrass the U.S. and was given assurances by Vladimir Putin that it would be a good idea. He must have sensed U.S. confusion and may have sincerely thought that there was no real danger in using those weapons to restore momentum on the battlefield, only to be shocked when Obama finally took his own red line seriously. Or maybe it wasn’t Assad’s decision — maybe a rogue general was freelancing. Or maybe Islamists had a hand in the WMD attack, hoping to prompt our intervention. We still don’t know all the agendas involved, but the bottom line is that an American president was forced to show his cards.

The last two weeks have proved catastrophic to U.S. interests and security. Even the stylish Obama admits that his effort was non-linear diplomacy without style. The confusion again resulted from these irreconcilable facts that he wanted Assad to stop and did not want to force him to stop. So what followed was what only could follow.

Congress was and was not to be consulted; was to be on and off the hook; its vote no doubt supportive, no doubt obstructionist; its final say both binding and maybe not so binding. Killing tens of thousands with conventional weapons was awful, or rather not as awful as killing hundreds with WMD. Assad was to leave, or maybe not. WMD use was to be punished, or maybe WMD themselves destroyed. Insurgents were to be helped, or maybe just Assad was to be hurt. Russia was a partner or a conjurer of trouble, or now “owned” the Syrian mess. A pontificating Kerry, a comatose Hagel, a chagrined Dempsey, an embarrassed Power, a discomfited Rice, and a campaigning Hillary were force multipliers of the mess. There was no Ryan Crocker or Richard Holbrooke around to offer some adult advice.

Into that tar pit Putin himself stepped to extricate Obama in the short term in order to weaken him in the long term.

The Left’s Central Delusion

The Left’s Central Delusion 
Its devotion to central planning has endured from the French Revolution to Obamacare. 

By Thomas Sowell, National Review Online

The fundamental problem of the political Left seems to be that the real world does not fit their preconceptions. Therefore they see the real world as what is wrong, and what needs to be changed, since apparently their preconceptions cannot be wrong.

A never-ending source of grievances for the Left is the fact that some groups are “over-represented” in desirable occupations, institutions, and income brackets, while other groups are “under-represented.”

From all the indignation and outrage about this expressed on the left, you might think that it was impossible that different groups are simply better at different things.

Yet runners from Kenya continue to win a disproportionate share of marathons in the United States, and children whose parents or grandparents came from India have won most of the American spelling bees in the past 15 years. And has anyone failed to notice that the leading professional basketball players have for years been black, in a country where most of the population is white?

Most of the leading photographic lenses in the world have — for generations — been designed by people who were either Japanese or German. Most of the leading diamond-cutters in the world have been either India’s Jains or Jews from Israel or elsewhere.

Not only people but things have been grossly unequal. More than two-thirds of all the tornadoes in the entire world occur in the middle of the United States. Asia has more than 70 mountain peaks that are higher than 20,000 feet and Africa has none. Is it news that a disproportionate share of all the oil in the world is in the Middle East?

Whole books could be filled with the unequal behavior or performances of people, or the unequal geographic settings in which whole races, nations, and civilizations have developed. Yet the preconceptions of the political Left march on undaunted, loudly proclaiming sinister reasons why outcomes are not equal within nations or between nations.

All this moral melodrama has served as a background for the political agenda of the Left, which has claimed to be able to lift the poor out of poverty, and in general make the world a better place. This claim has been made for centuries and in countries around the world. And it has failed for centuries in countries around the world.

Some of the most sweeping and spectacular rhetoric of the Left occurred in 18th-century France, where the very concept of the Left originated in the fact that people with certain views sat on the left side of the National Assembly.

The French Revolution was their chance to show what they could do when they got the power they sought. In contrast to what they promised — “liberty, equality, fraternity” — what they actually produced were food shortages, mob violence, and dictatorial powers that included arbitrary executions, extending even to their own leaders, such as Robespierre, who died under the guillotine.

In the 20th century, the most sweeping vision of the Left — Communism — spread over vast regions of the world and encompassed well over a billion human beings. Of these, millions died of starvation in the Soviet Union under Stalin and tens of millions in China under Mao.

Milder versions of socialism, with central planning of national economies, took root in India and in various European democracies.

If the preconceptions of the Left were correct, central planning by educated elites who had vast amounts of statistical data at their fingertips and expertise readily available, and were backed by the power of government, should have been more successful than market economies where millions of individuals pursued their own individual interests willy-nilly.

But, by the end of the 20th century, even socialist and communist governments began abandoning central planning and allowing more market competition. Yet this quiet capitulation to inescapable realities did not end the noisy claims of the Left.

In the United States, those claims and policies have reached new heights, epitomized by government takeovers of whole sectors of the economy and unprecedented intrusions into the lives of Americans, of which Obamacare has been only the most obvious example.

— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2013 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

New Republican Strategy for Resolving the Debt Limit Impasse

A little levity... and deflection, with Mike Walker, Col. USMC (retired)

All,

Who said the Republicans can't learn new tricks?

Speaker John Boehner announced today that the House Republicans had started a large-scale WMD Program.

Secretary of State Kerry immediately flew to Ohio to open negotiations and President Obama was quoted in the New York Times as saying, "We believe we can work together to resolve this issue to the satisfaction of both parties."

UN Secretary General Ban and the Nobel Peace Prize Commission announced their unanimous support for a negotiated settlement.

Iran's President Rouhani, Bashar Assad and Kim Il-un could not be reached for comment.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin stated it was an internal American issue and, per his long standing policy, declined once again to coherently address the American people.

Mike

WebRep

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Rural Coloradans

Secession, what a lovely sound! The vast rural state of California is run by the squeaky wheeled PCoids and entitlement subsidites of the coastal fringe... further, I love to hear talk of six southern counties joining Arizona... sometimes change is necessary even if difficult... the Colorado voters sure sent a message to their government about gun control... BH

Rural Coloradans petitioning for an audience with their governor
Greg Campbell, Daily Caller

How hard is it for rural Coloradans to have their voices heard by Denver politicians? Hard enough that some in Moffat County, in the northwest corner of the state, have started a petition asking simply for Gov. John Hickenlooper to visit and listen to their concerns.

Moffat County is one of several whose residents will vote on whether to secede and form their own state in November. Although many see the effort as an overly-dramatic way of sending a message to the Democratic-dominated state government that rural residents are feeling ignored, it’s not the only message that has been sent.

Moffat County resident Frank Moe, who runs the local Best Western Inn, said he’s tried to get Hickenlooper’s attention with everything from a snail-mailed invitation and an online request to Facebook messages and tweets, all to no avail.

“I’d try sky-writing it, but I don’t think I could afford it,” Moe told the Craig Daily Press.

Now he’s hoping a Change.org petition will do the trick.

“As you are now aware, Moffat County voters will have on our November ballot the question of secession from the state of Colorado,” the petition to Hickenlooper reads. “I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to come visit us here in rural Northwest Colorado, to spend some quality time getting to know us and giving us the opportunity to get to know you better as well.”

“These are trying times for all of Colorado, but especially the rural communities,” it continues. “Your latest offer to ‘lean in and listen’ is a start for us to have true dialogue concerning the specific issues for all Moffat County citizens.”

So far, only 43 people have signed the online petition, but an email is sent to Hickenlooper’s office every time a new name is added.

Moffat County Commissioners voted 2-1 last month to add the secession question to the ballot, joining several others that have talked about the possibility of forming the country’s 51st state. Although their complaints with the state government in Denver are varied, they all stem from the impression that urban politicians have gotten badly out of touch with Colorado’s rural values.

“If Moffat County voters are informed, engaged and are convinced that their voices are not only heard, but taken to heart with positive results, I feel the bonds of what make this great state can be re-established,” the petition concludes.

Moe told the local newspaper that trying to be heard in Denver can be frustrating.
“If people have personally not dealt with the governor, legislature or bills that affect our area,” he said, “it’s easy to say, ‘Keep communicating.’”

A Hickenlooper spokesman told the Craig Daily Press that the governor’s scheduling staff is checking his availability.

Syria and Bouncing Back

Kerry said what?

Syria and Bouncing Back

Mike Walker, Col. USMC (retired)

All,

To state the obvious, probably no one can or wants to put together a history of the Administration’s Syria policy over the last four plus years (if there really was one).

And following our policy over the last few weeks has been like riding a rollercoaster in the proverbial s--- storm.

Nonetheless, the clock keeps ticking, the problems are not going away and, as the old saying goes, its time to pick ourselves up and get back in the game.

The first step is getting back to a coherent policy of “saying what we mean and meaning what we say.”

In addition to ending on-the-fly “stream of consciousness” strategy development, it means convincing Assad and his minions that we will use force if necessary. That was a credible position for the United States as recently as late August but is no long true.

We need to make it clear to friend and foe alike that we are back from summer vacation, we are serious, and we intend to start acting instead of reacting.

The next step is to kill the big lie being boosted by Putin and Assad that they are seeking a non-military NEGOTIATED settlement.

The truth is that the Syrian civil war is going on without abatement because Assad and Putin feel a military victory is within their grasp.

Their definition of “negotiations” is talking to us as a diversion while killing as many as possible in Syria.

That is unacceptable and leads to the next step.

If all parties are truly seeking a non-military negotiated settlement then an IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE must be a precondition for further negotiations.

 As for the WMD, Assad needs to immediately:

(1) Cease and desist from dispersing the WMD.

(2) Begin to concentrate the WMD at specified locations and prepare them for transport out of Syria under the supervision of the international community.

Finally, the idea that the West should stop supporting the resistance is feasible but ONLY as part of a global settlement: Both Assad and the resistance immediately end obtaining any and all forms of military assistance from any outside source.

In case Bashar is still tone deaf, that means no military support from Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, or anyone else. Why not throw in a condition that all Iranian and Hezbollah fighters are to be given 96 hours to leave the country.

Let us see how Vlad "The Peaceful" Putin and Jolly Old Bashar likes them apples.

I feel better already.

Mike

Putin is the one who really deserves that Nobel Peace Prize

You can't dispute Putin's tendency to be a leader, you don't have to like his programs, but he LEADS... well, like a Marshall Dillon from the steppes with a Kalisnakov. BH

Putin is the one who really deserves that Nobel Peace Prize

KT McFarland, Foxnews

In one of the most deft diplomatic maneuvers of all time, Russia’s President Putin has saved the world from near-certain disaster. He did so without the egoistical but incompetent American president, or his earnest but clueless Secretary of State, even realizing they had been offered a way out of the mess they’d created.

The eventful day started out Monday morning with the Obama administration making a full court press  for an American attack on Syria: lobbying members of Congress, scheduling an historic series of presidential interviews with top news anchors, and sending Secretary Kerry to London to persuade our reluctant allies to scramble their jets, too.  

Then Secretary Kerry made an off-hand comment that the only way an American attack would be called off is if the Syrians turn over all their chemical weapons to an international body.  Then he added, “but that isn’t going to happen.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth when Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov essentially said, "we can live with that," and the Syrian Foreign Minister chimed in with "we can, too."  

Meanwhile, the State Department  dismissed it, saying Kerry didn’t really mean what he said, it was just a "rhetorical" answer to a hypothetical question.  

It was as if Team Obama couldn’t take "yes" for an answer.

So, in stepped former Secretary Clinton, looking like the only adult in the room, to say that the Kerry Proposal made sense.  

Well,  that got Team Obama’s attention!  

The president, never one to let a crisis go to waste, told journalists that the proposal was something he and Putin had discussed at the G-20 Summit last week. 

By Tuesday night’s speech President Obama will surely be taking full credit, saying the Syrians and Russians caved only because Obama drew the "red line" a year ago, and threatened military action against Syria.  

So in 24 hours an off-hand phrase  was picked up by Putin, became a Kerry Proposal and ultimately  the Obama Peace plan, proving once again the Washington dictum that "success has many fathers."

The fact is Obama seemed headed for an attack on Syria that no one wanted and few thought would succeed.  Most thought it would only end in disaster, either with the U.S. drawn into an attack/retaliation cycle of escalation that could go on for years and spread into a regional war, or result in the overthrow of President Assad by an Al Qaeda affiliated rebels.  

While the Russians may have toyed with the idea of letting American get bogged down in yet another losing Middle East war, they didn’t want to risk a war that might pull them in, or lose control of the Assad government to radical Sunni jihadists.

So Putin stepped in and threw Obama a lifeline. 

For a few hours it seemed Obama might not grab at it.  But he  has, and will no doubt claim full credit for it being his idea all along.  

The Washington press corps will no doubt believe him, as usual, and lavish their usual praise.  

But the world knows that Vladimir Putin is the one who really deserves that Nobel Peace Prize.  

It turns out that leading from behind left a big opening up front. Putin stepped right in.  And Obama still hasn't figured it out.

Kathleen Troia "K.T." McFarland is a Fox News National Security Analyst and host of FoxNews.com's "DefCon 3." She served in national security posts in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations. She was an aide to Dr. Henry Kissinger at the White House, and in 1984 Ms. McFarland wrote Secretary of Defense Weinberger's groundbreaking  "Principles of War " speech.  She received the Defense Department's highest civilian award for her work in the Reagan administration.  

A (DIS)HONEST Syria Debate Scam

A (DIS)HONEST Syria Debate Scam

Mike Walker, COl. USMC (retired)

All,

 

There are many honest and thoughtful Americans who oppose any action in Syria and I respect that and have been more than impressed by their reasoning.

 

What I do not respect is using lies to make false arguments and I am sick of listening to these so-call "informed talking heads” arguing against intervention in Syria because Iraq is a worse mess than it ever was or some similarly mindless rant.

 

Let us dismiss the malarkey and focus on the facts.

 

Before the Syrian Civil War erupted in mid-2011, Iraq was the 6th fastest growing economy in the world, more kids were in school than ever in history, it was undergoing the biggest building boom ever recorded in Iraq, the standard of living was increasing rapidly and al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was a dangerous and murderous yet marginalized and contained threat.

 

Iraqis enjoyed a free press unlike any seen before and civil liberties had never been better protected. Life in Iraq, by 2011, was better than it was in 2003 (before the war) for every segment of the society, by region, by ethnicity, by religion and by every meaningful economic metric. Only Saddam and his minions were clear losers.

 

Now, two years on, AQI has a new lease on life in Syria (in fact the new name is al Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant (AQIL) - meaning Lebanon is included) and bloodshed in Iraq is back at the 2008 levels, albeit that is only 1/10 the level of violence in 2004-2006.

If you want to bring Iraq into the debate then tell the TRUTH: By allowing the Syrian cancer to spread across the region, we have hurt all its neighbors: Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon and Turkey.

Sins of omission can be as damaging as sins of commission.

Mike

The Tragedy of Syria Will Linger

The Tragedy of Syria Will Linger

Mike Walker, Col USMC (retired)

All,

It is clear and understandable that there is no will to reverse an Assad victory in Syria.

What is also abundantly clear is that the destruction of the non-violent movement to change Syria for the better that began in March 2011 led to a savage war resulting in over one hundred thousand deaths and counting.

Assad will win and lead a radicalized regime ruling over an embittered people. Internally, the regime has been and will continue to be a brutal police state. That, as the international community has long acknowledged, will be “too bad, so sad” for the Syrians but acceptable to the rest of us.

If that is the worse thing to happen then most will be pleased. Alas, that is improbable as this uprising was never a neatly discrete internal Syrian matter and cannot be contained through inaction.

More importantly, there is no going back to the status quo of 2011.

Assad’s continued survival will rely on Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia as all are far more committed to victory than anyone in the West or elsewhere in the Middle East.

For the Islamic Republic of Iran and Hezbollah, an Assad victory is a critical objective designed to destabilize the region.

Both are revolutionary entities that have no interest in maintaining the status quo. To the contrary, their goal is to radically reshape the region to their liking.

A revolutionary Shi’a crescent stretching from Afghanistan to Egypt is the vision of many expansionist extremists in Iran and, fortunately, a minority position amongst the ruling Ayatollahs. But all of them accept some form of a revolutionary crescent and a vision shared by a large majority of Iran’s ruling clerics is a bloc containing Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.

This is the scenario Iran is following.

A progressive Syria interested in integrating into the larger world was an anathema.

If the March 2011 protests had led to a peaceful transition of power away from Assad then it would have given a tremendous boost to similar progressive movements in Lebanon and Iraq, steering the Middle East into a brighter future while shattering Iran’s revolutionary dream of a Shi’a crescent.

Conversely, if Assad becomes a dependency of Iran, an outcome that is almost certain now, then the combined pressure of Iran and Syria will drive Iraq into the bloc. Concurrently, or in sequence, Lebanon – under unrestrained pressure from Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran – will have no choice but to accept Shi’a rule directed from Tehran.

Once that is accomplished, Iran will finally have (1) a long border with Israel, some 150 km in length running along the Lebanese and Syrian frontiers, and (2) a direct overland route to deploy Iranian forces in combination with the Assad and Hezbollah armies.

We have to start looking at a much larger future war in the Middle East. Faced with that reality, the need to take WMD off the table is critical.

That is why we need to act now, in the full knowledge that such action will be painful, imperfect, and costly.

If the Shi’a bloc is comfortable in using WMD during a war of annihilation to destroy Israel then there will be millions of fatalities in the region.

If that war can be contained to a conventional conflict then the feasibility of victory by Iran and its allies is greatly diminished and the likely cost may deter the war entirely.

If employing WMD remains an acceptable option, then an unspeakably horrific war will become virtually inevitable within a decade or so – and if victorious, these people will not stop with Israel.

Inaction today will guarantee a dark tomorrow.

So if you must, go ahead and politically skewer an apparently confused President Obama for making a bad situation all the worse but in the end, support action.

Mike

Bolton: Obama weakest president since Buchanan, Kerry should resign as ‘matter of principle'

Jeff Poor, Daily Caller

On Saturday on the Fox News Channel, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton harshly criticized President Barack Obama handling of the United States’ involvement in Syria, calling him the weakest president since James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln’s predecessor.

“This is absolutely stunning,” Bolton said. “I’ve been trying to fill in the blank of the following sentence: ‘Barack Obama is the weakest president since…’ And I have to say, the best I can come up with is James Buchanan who watched the country dissolve into the Civil War. We’re watching the collapse of American influence in the Middle East and really more broadly. And I say that as somebody who has been opposed to use of force in Syria. I have to ask if your secretary of state, John Kerry, given the two very strong statements that he has made on this subject since the first indication of the chemical weapons used 10 days ago took place: Are you now thinking of resigning as a matter of principle, having laid out the case, whether you agree or disagree with Kerry, that the United States has to use force here, to see the president take this step.”

He added that this could send the wrong message to Iran should Congress reject Obama’s call for authorization.

“I’ll leave it to others to say whether Congress can approve it, but you know he needs 60 votes in the Senate to authorize force, and it’s very hard to see that he’s going to get it,” Bolton continued. “And having said, ‘I’ve made up my mind to use force, but now I’ll ask Congress’ — a failure to get it here tells the Ayatollahs in Teheran it is smooth sailing toward nuclear weapons unless Israel strikes.”

Although Bolton said he opposes United States action with Syria, he said that by making these gestures, Obama has made a once-foolish thing with his 2012 red line statement even worse.

“I favor a strong president and a strong foreign policy and strong America in the world,” Bolton said. “It was a very foolish thing to make the statement about the red line last August. He did it in the heat of a presidential campaign but the fact is as the economist say in the sunk cost fallacy, just because you do one very foolish thing, as you look ahead on your policy, you don’t make things better by doing a second foolish thing. We’re going to take a hit for his statement last August but we don’t need to compound it. He’s now compounded it twice over. He’s saying again today that the military strike will be very limited but he’s going further by saying he’s not sure he’s going to do it unless he gets authority. I think this is a mistake twice compounded now.”

Barry 3 o'clock snooze is even recorded by the NYTimes...

Mullany and Barnard, New York Times, cough, cough

BEIRUT, Lebanon — President Obama’s decision to seek Congressional approval for a military strike in response to reports of a chemical weapons attack in Syria drew a range of reactions from Syrians on Sunday, with rebel leaders expressing disappointment and goverment leaders questioning Mr. Obama’s leadership.

Syria’s government on Sunday mocked Mr. Obama’s decision, saying it was a sign of weakness. A state-run newspaper, Al Thawra, called it “the start of the historic American retreat,” and said Mr. Obama had hesitated because of a “sense of implicit defeat and the disappearance of his allies,” along with fears that an intervention could become “an open war.”

Syria’s deputy foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, told reporters in Damascus that “it is clear there was a sense of hesitation and disappointment in what was said by President Barack Obama yesterday. And it is also clear there was a sense of confusion, as well.”

Many Syrian opposition leaders expressed disappointment about the move, and called on Congress to approve a military strike. The leaders said any intervention should be accompanied by more arms for the rebels.

“Dictatorships like Iran and North Korea are watching closely to see how the free world responds to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people,” the opposition coalition said in a statement issued in Istanbul.

Still, some rebel leaders were angry. A member of Syria’s opposition National Coalition, Samir Nachar, called Mr. Obama a “weak president who cannot make the right decision when it comes to such an urgent crisis.”

“We were expecting things to be quicker,” Mr. Nachar told reporters, “that a strike would be imminent.”

In the wider Arab world, still deeply divided over President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and the uprising against him, the concern over his government’s indiscriminate use of force coincided with antipathy about American intervention.

The Al-Azhar University in Cairo, considered Sunni Islam’s highest authority, said on Sunday that it opposed an American strike on Syria, calling such intervention “an aggression against the Arab and Islamic nation” that would endanger peace and security in the region.

But the institution said it supported “the right of the Syrian people to decide their destiny and their government for themselves in all freedom and transparency,” and condemned “recourse to chemical weapons, whoever it was that used them.”

The Arab League was scheduled to meet and Washington was hoping to win stronger statements against Mr. Assad. The group expelled Syria earlier in the uprising but has stopped short of backing American action or blaming Mr. Assad for any chemical weapons use.

For others, Mr. Obama’s decision raised questions about whether the United States had diminished its leadership role in foreign affairs, with commentators in Israel fearing a weakening of American resolve in confronting hostile powers.

The Israel newspaper Haaretz carried an analysis on Sunday by Amos Harel, a military analyst, saying that Mr. Obama’s postponement of a military strike against Syria suggested that he would be less likely to confront Iran on its nuclear program going forward, and that in the Arab world, he would now be “seen as weak, hesitant and vacillating.”

“The Obama administration’s conduct gives us insight into the strategic challenge posed by Iran’s nuclear program,” the analysis said. “From an Israeli point of view, the conclusion is far from encouraging. The theory that the U.S. will come to Israel’s aid at the last minute, and attack Iran to lift the nuclear threat, seems less and less likely.

“It’s no wonder that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is becoming increasingly persuaded that no one will come to his aid if Iran suddenly announces that it is beginning to enrich uranium to 90 percent,” it said.

In the conservative Telegraph newspaper in Britain, the columnist Tim Stanley said that Mr. Obama gave a “remarkable performance” in his Saturday speech detailing his new approach on Syria. But he said that Britain deserved credit for serving as a model for Mr. Obama’s approach, citing how Parliament’s vote against military action led Prime Minister David Cameron to rule out military participation in any strike on Syria.

“So we basically taught Obama to respect his own constitution,” Mr. Stanley, a historian, wrote. “No need to thank us, America.”

Mr. Obama’s announcement that he would seek Congressional approval came after thousands of protesters held demonstrations in several cities abroad against an American military strike, with an estimated 1,000 people rallying in Trafalgar Square in London and 700 people turning out to protest in Frankfurt. Protests were also held in the United States, including in Washington.

In France, the interior minister, Manuel Valls, told Europe 1 radio that the nation, which had supported a strike, would not act alone but would wait for a decision by Washington. “France cannot go it alone,” Mr. Valls said, according to Reuters. “We need a coalition.”

Reaction from other leaders was scarce on Sunday. On Tuesday, Mr. Obama heads to St. Petersburg, Russia, for a gathering of world leaders at the G-20 summit meeting. There, he is expected to try to lobby his counterparts for military action against Syria.

But he will probably not lobby President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the host of the event, who has been a strong opponent of any outside military action. Mr. Putin said it would have been “utter nonsense” for Syria to use chemical weapons, and he challenged the United States to provide evidence of such behavior by Russia’s longtime ally.

Mr. Obama’s original plans to meet with Mr. Putin at the summit meeting were shelved last month because of American anger over Russia’s decision to grant temporary asylum to Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who disclosed secret American surveillance programs.

Without support from Russia for a military strike, the United States was unable to secure backing in the United Nations Security Council for a British-proposed resolution to authorize the use of military force against Syria. On Saturday, United Nations inspectors left Syria after a four-day visit to investigate the reports of a chemical attack, and the team is analyzing what it found.

China, another Security Council member, was similarly wary of any military strike on Syria, with the state news media warning Thursday that any armed intervention “would have dire consequences for regional security and violate the norms governing international relations.” Beijing supported the deployment of chemical weapons inspectors and has said that the United States should await the results of their work before acting.

A Chinese expert on the Middle East, Yin Gang, said on Sunday that Mr. Obama’s decision to go through Congress made the president appear weak.

“He doesn’t want to fight; he doesn’t know the outcome,” said Mr. Yin, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “He’s afraid, very afraid.”

All along, China has counseled a political solution, and Mr. Yin said the meeting of the G-20 in St. Petersburg could lead to momentum for talks about how to handle Syrian behavior.

“All the leaders will talk on this topic at the summit, and maybe it can lead to a new direction, to a political solution,” he said.

A Chinese specialist on Syria, Guo Xian’gang, said Mr. Obama would face opposition from Russia, China and other non-Western countries at the G-20 summit meeting for any military action.

“They will suggest to President Obama that if he wants to take action, there should be clear evidence that Syria used chemical weapons,” said Mr. Guo, of the Chinese Institute of International Relations. “They will also say that Obama must get the permission of the United Nations.”

Anne Barnard reported from Beirut, Lebanon, and Gerry Mullany from Hong Kong. Jane Perlez contributed reporting from Beijing.