Foreign Policy Wins of 2017

Foreign Policy Wins of 2017
Paul Mirengoff, Powerline

2017 was a very good year for the U.S. economy and for domestic policy in general. But what about foreign policy?

CNN’s Peter Bergen points to three foreign policy wins by President Trump. First on Bergen’s list is the enforcement of the “red line” against the use of chemical weapons in Syria:

On April 4, 2016 [note: this happened in 2017], the Syrian regime used sarin, a nerve gas, against civilian targets in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, killing more than 80 people. . .Two days after the sarin attack, American warships launched 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield, the first direct military action that the United States has taken against Assad’s regime. 

Assad hasn’t used chemical weapons against his own people since Trump ordered those cruise missile strikes in April. The enforcement of the important international prohibition against the use of nerve gas is certainly an achievement for the Trump administration.

It stands in marked contrast to President Obama’s humiliating failure to enforce his own “red line” against Assad.

Second on Bergen’s list (it should be first if we’re ranking by importance) is the defeat of ISIS. Bergen correctly gives some of the credit to Obama, who (after a long delay) initiated policies that eventually would have led to victory over ISIS. However, says Bergen, the Trump national security team helped to hasten the defeat of ISIS in two ways.

First, Trump decided to equip the anti-ISIS Syrian Democratic Forces — a largely Kurdish militia — with mortars, anti-tank weapons, armored cars and machine guns. Those forces captured ISIS’s de facto Syrian capital, Raqqa, in October. 

Second, Trump allowed American ground commanders greater latitude to carry out operations in war zones such as Iraq and Syria without consulting higher up the chain of command. Pentagon brass had long chafed at what they considered to be the micromanagement of military operations by the Obama White House.

Bergen says the demise of ISIS brings a measure of stability to Iraq and reduces the scope of the terrorist threat that the group poses. He is right.

Trump has also improved our policy in Afghanistan. This is the third item on Bergen’s list:

In late August Trump announced a plan to bring some modicum of stability to Afghanistan, where the Taliban have asserted more control in the past year or so. In addition to sending a mini-surge of several thousand more troops to the country, Trump made it clear that the US commitment to Afghanistan is long term and “conditions-based.” Trump did not impose any timetable for withdrawing US forces from the country, which was the counterproductive approach that the Obama administration had taken. 

The Afghan government has welcomed this long-term American commitment to Afghanistan.

I see this as a “win” only if Trump’s plan actually improves the situation. However, I agree with Bergen that, at a minimum, Trump’s plan “reduces the possibility that the country could slip back into an anarchic state conducive to groups such as ISIS securing a large presence in the country.” That seemed to be where things were headed under President Obama.

Bergen sees two foreign policy losses for Trump: the rejection of the TPP and the decision to move our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. But whether these are really losses depends on what happens (or doesn’t happen) as a result of the decisions and what one thinks of such consequences.

By contrast, the military defeat of ISIS and Syria’s cessation of the use of chemical weapons are undisputed facts and indisputably good developments. Moreover, the defeat of ISIS is obviously a big deal, while the response to Assad’s chemical attacks will help restore our credibility.

However, Year One of Trump’s foreign policy was dominated not by wins but by “incompletes” e.g., on North Korea, Russia, and post-ISIS Levant. That’s normal for a first year. By this time next year, we’ll know a lot more.

MCCABE REMEMBERS TO FORGET

McCabe REMEMBERS TO FORGET: MCCARTHY’S TAKE

Scott Johnson, Powerline

I’ve been saying for a while that the Trump/Steele Dossier is the Rosetta Stone to the “collusion” hysteria and related “fake news” with which we have been inundated since the 2016 election, all leading to the special counsel investigation engineered by former FBI Director James Comey to remove Trump from office. As I implied in “McCabe remembers to forget,” the dossier is rather obviously the key to the surveillance of the Trump campaign conducted by the Obama administration. Contrary to the New Critical stylings of the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake, the dossier represents the “insurance policy” to which G-Man Peter Strzok referred in his text message to FBI lawyer Lisa Page.

In his weekly NRO column Andrew McCarthy turns directly to the question of the use to which the FBI put the dossier. Near the top of his column he cuts to the chase, as he puts it: “Because of their confidence in Steele, because they were predisposed to believe his scandalous claims about Donald Trump, they made grossly inadequate efforts to verify his claims. Contrary to what I hoped would be the case, I’ve come to believe Steele’s claims were used to obtain FISA surveillance authority for an investigation of Trump.”

Of the many commenters on the issues raised by the dossier, Andrew McCarthy is the one who knows what he is talking about. Attend to his review of the case so far in “Was the Steele dossier the FBI’s ‘insurance policy’?” His column more than repays its length with understanding of the momentous questions at issue here.

Quotable quote: “[W]hile there is a dearth of evidence to date that the Trump campaign colluded in Russia’s cyberespionage attack on the 2016 election, there is abundant evidence that the Obama administration colluded with the Clinton campaign to use the Steele dossier as a vehicle for court-authorized monitoring of the Trump campaign — and to fuel a pre-election media narrative that U.S. intelligence agencies believed Trump was scheming with Russia to lift sanctions if he were elected president.”

Christmas Lessons from California

Christmas Lessons from California

Victor Davis Hanson, National Review

Nature this year is predictably not cooperating with California.  

Rarely has such a naturally rich and scenic region become so mismanaged by so many creative and well-intentioned people. 

In California, Yuletide rush hours are apparently the perfect time for state workers to shut down major freeways to make long-overdue repairs to the ancient pavement. Last week, I saw thousands of cars stuck in a road-construction zone that was juxtaposed with a huge concrete (but only quarter-built) high-speed-rail overpass nearby. 

The multibillion-dollar high-speed-rail project, stalled and way over budget, eventually may be completed in a decade or two. But for now, California needs good old-fashioned roads that don’t disrupt holiday shopping — before it starts futuristic projects it cannot fully fund. 

California’s steep new gasoline tax — one of the highest in the nation — has not even fully kicked in, and yet the cash-strapped state is already complaining that the anticipated additional revenue will be too little.

Now, some officials also want to consider taxing motorists for each mile they drive on the state’s antediluvian roads. 

Nature this year is predictably not cooperating with California. 

In most areas of the Sierra Nevada, the state’s chief source of stored water, there is not a drop of snow on the ground. The High Sierra so far this year looks more like Death Valley than Alpine Switzerland. 

The last two months of California weather were among the driest autumn months on record. Unless 2018 is a miraculously wet year, California will find itself on the cusp of another existential drought. 

Yet California politicians are currently obsessed with the usual race/class/gender agendas, as Sacramento broadcasts that California is a sanctuary state exempt from federal immigration laws. 

Periodically, Governor Jerry Brown, in prophetic Old Testament style, offers rebukes of President Donald Trump, as Brown tours the globe as commander in chief of California.

But meanwhile, in the real (dry) world, did Brown’s state prepare for such a disaster during either its recent four-year dry spell or its near-record wet year in 2016?

Hardly. 

Over some 50 consecutive months of drought, California did not start work on a single major reservoir — though many had long ago been planned and designed. 

Instead, given the lack of water-storage capacity, and due to environmental diversions, tens of millions of acre-feet of precious runoff water last year were simply let out to the ocean. 

This year, the state may want all of that water back. 

Silicon Valley is the state’s signature cash cow, emblematic of progressive-cool culture and tech savvy. 

Yet many streets around high-tech corporate campuses are lined with parked Winnebagos that serve as worker housing compounds. In nearby Redwood City, World War II–era cottages have become virtual hostels. Trailers, tiny garages, and converted patios serve as quasi-apartments. 

California may offer the world a smartphone app for every need, but it cannot ensure affordable shelter for those who help to create the world’s social-media outlets and smartphones. How can so smart be so stupid?

Flights over California’s coastal corridor this autumn offered a scene out of Dante’s Inferno. Fires seemed to engulf entire populated hillsides from Los Angeles and Santa Barbara to Santa Rosa. 

The fires were testament to the fact that a vast majority of blue-state California lives on a thin strip of ecologically sensitive land near the Pacific Ocean. 

The coastal corridor cannot sustain the 30 million or so residents who cluster there without massive water transfers, excellent freeways, and daily rail and truck importation of food, fuel, and construction materials. 

Hidden behind tony homes are tent cities and the open fires of homeless people who camp out in ravines. 

The hillsides are overgrown with drought-stricken scrub and half-dead trees, in part due to restrictions on grazing, brush removal, and logging. They prove to be veritable kindling that fuels raging fires. Coastal California is hilly, difficult to build on, and prone to devastating earthquakes. It is semi-arid, without much of an aquifer. The life-giving watershed of the Sierra Nevada is more than 200 miles away. 

In other words, some of the people most eager to offer green sermons to others live in one of the most artificial and ecologically fragile environments on the planet.

What are the lessons for the nation from these random glimpses of 21st-century California? 

Fix premodern problems before dreaming about postmodern solutions. Loudly virtue-signaling about addressing misdemeanors does not excuse quietly ignoring felonies. 

Learn how an entire culture is fed, housed, and fueled before faulting those who address such needs. Adopt a little humility in admitting that most of the state is an artificial construct of affluent millions living in a delicate ecosystem where nature never intended them to cluster — impossible without constant multibillion-dollar investments in water, agriculture, housing, and transportation. 

Remember that voting progressively in the abstract does not automatically translate into living progressively in the concrete.

How Obama Appeased Iran by Turning a Blind Eye to Hezbollah’s Crimes

Ah, Chicago, gotta love it!

How Obama Appeased Iran by Turning a Blind Eye to Hezbollah’s Crimes

David French, National Review

A new report shows that in its efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Tehran, the administration went so far as to stop the DEA from cracking down on Hezbollah drug-running. 

Over the weekend Politico’s Josh Meyer published a blockbuster report that can’t be allowed to disappear into the void of the holiday season. In painstaking detail, it documents claims that the Obama administration crippled Drug Enforcement Administration operations against Hezbollah as part of its effort to reach a nuclear deal with the Iranian regime. 

Why would the DEA, of all agencies, target an international terrorist organization? It turns out that Hezbollah had become a major player in international cocaine trafficking and was using proceeds from its drug-running and arms-dealing to finance — among other things — the purchase of explosively formed penetrators (EFP’s), the deadliest IEDs used against American soldiers in Iraq. 

Hezbollah had transformed itself into an “international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year.” The DEA’s “Project Cassandra” was designed to disrupt this syndicate. And just as the operation began reaching into the highest echelons of one of the world’s worst terrorist organizations, the Obama administration started to shut it down: 

The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested. 

Twitter has Begun the Process of 'Purging' Accounts 00:00 01:02 Powered by Some former Obama administration officials justified these actions on the basis that the DEA may have interfered with more important anti-terror operations conducted by other intelligence organizations. As one former official put it, the administration couldn’t let the CIA, the DEA, or any other agency “rule the roost.” But other sources confirmed that the administration in fact hindered the DEA for the sake of the Iran deal. For example, former Obama Treasury Department official Katherine Bauer testified to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that “under the Obama administration . . . these [Hezbollah-related] investigations were tamped down for fear of rocking the boat with Iran and jeopardizing the nuclear deal.” 

The consequences were deadly. In the most personally painful part of the Politico piece, Meyer details Hezbollah’s role in funding EFPs that “were ripping M1 Abrams tanks in half.” I remember the power of these weapons quite well. A smaller version of an EFP was used to kill men that I knew in Iraq. The mere threat of EFPs at one point shut down all ground supply routes into our base near the Iranian border. It’s a strange feeling indeed to ride down Iraqi roads knowing that there’s a weapon out there that would render all the armor surrounding you virtually irrelevant. EFPs killed hundreds of American soldiers, and they were supplied by the Iranian government and its Hezbollah allies. 

But never mind. The Iran deal had to get done. The deal, at least in the Obama administration’s fantasyland, wasn’t just a nuclear deal. It was a step toward hopefully normalizing relations with Iran, bringing the Islamic Republic back into the community of nations. It was a legacy play, and it depended on a complete misunderstanding of the nature of our enemy. 

When Obama pulled back, our enemies surged. When he gave them an inch, they took a mile. You see, the Obama administration was in many ways captive to the “legitimate grievances” theory of jihad. This theory, outlined most famously in Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech, holds that jihad’s appeal is rooted at least in part in identifiable American and western abuses of the Islamic world. It was the root of the Obama administration’s deluded efforts to initiate a “new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world.” The administration would act to address credible Islamic grievances, and that action would and should trigger a good-faith response that would bring us closer to peace. 

It all seems so quaint now. When Obama pulled back, our enemies surged. When he gave them an inch, they took a mile. There was no good-faith response, only the gleeful exploitation of newfound strategic advantage. When Obama finally re-engaged, American force was able to stop our enemies’ advance. But by then, the damage was done, and we’re still learning the extent of it today. We already knew that Obama gave Iran piles of cash, prisoners, an immense economic stimulus, and access to international arms markets in exchange for signing the nuclear deal. We now know — thanks to Politico — that the administration’s mercies extended even to Iran’s vicious terrorist allies. 

And for what? Obama’s defenders cling to the hope that Iran’s nuclear program has been delayed (a hope that relies a great deal on trusting Iran, which has never proven wise in the past), but in the meantime we’ve merely strengthened our enemy. We’ve addressed those “legitimate grievances,” and Iran has taken our gifts and our goodwill and thrown them right back in our face. Iran and Hezbollah — with Russia’s help — have nearly completed their genocidal reconquest of Syria’s most populated regions. In Iraq, an Iranian general played a key role in the seizure of Kirkuk from our Kurdish allies. Iran hasn’t retreated one inch from its anti-Americanism or its commitment to international jihad. It’s even sending aid (including senior commandos) to the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

Three years ago, I wrote an extended piece arguing that Obama was idealistic about our enemies. He didn’t understand the depth of their hate. He fell for ridiculous academic theories about American culpability in the rise of jihadist violence. Little did we know how far the ideological rot went. Obama administration mistakes empowered the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East, relieving the pressure on the violent, extremist forces it pays for. These mistakes must be known. They must be remembered. And they must never, ever be repeated. America’s jihadist enemies cannot be appeased. 

GOP Senators Unanimous in Support for TAX Bill

GOP Senators Unanimous in Support for TAX Bill

Paul Mirengoff, Powerline

So reports Jibran Khan at NRO’s Corner. Senators Rubio and Scott have fallen into line, having secured an increase in the child tax credit refund. No surprise there.

But here’s a surprise, at least to me. Senator Corker says he will vote for the bill, notwithstanding his concern that it will increase the deficit. He opposed the version initially passed by the Senate due to that concern. 

Corker called the new version “imperfect,” but explained that it presents a “once in a lifetime opportunity to make U.S. businesses domestically more productive and internationally more competitive.” He added that he believes the bill, in conjunction with regulatory changes that are underway and, hopefully, pro-growth trade and immigration policies, will help offset problems on the deficit side and “drive additional foreign direct investment in Tennessee.” Thus, he concludes that, on balance, the nation is better off with the bill than without it.

The reference to pro-growth trade and immigration policies is a shot at the president, but Trump shouldn’t mind. Assuming that no one changes his or her mind, the GOP has the votes to pass the bill even if both Sen. McCain and Sen. Cochran are unable to vote due to medical issues.

Al's Joke Book...

Al's Joke Book...

You can't make this stuff up... this is a real book by one of the true idiots.

 Even among his Capital buds, he's seen as a useful idiot and from those that have to work under him as an intolerable, rude and caustic bore.

I can't help but feel that the book cover was a billboard for Saturday Night Live... some Stuart Smiley take-off. Can you imagine the gales of laughter from friends and foe at seeing this book?

Two things I will always remember about Stuart... 

(well, not counting his groping)

First, when he was heading up John Kerry's kickoff Central Park campaign for President he started a rousing five minute chant of, "F__k George Bush, F__k George Bush, F__k George Bush..."  Great way to start.

Second, in Al's first US Senate election in Minnesota he was losing by a couple hundred votes... at the extreme last minute, a car was found in a snow-covered parking lot with 400 votes all for Al in the trunk... amazing, huh?

Now, can we bury the memory of this horrible human being?

FBI STONEWALLS CORRUPTION PROBE
John Hinderaker, Powerline

The Obama administration corrupted everything it touched, including the FBI. A scandal is brewing, and the FBI, predictably, is responding with the Obama playbook: it is stonewalling. Byron York has the story:

House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes has issued an angry demand to the FBI and Department of Justice to explain why they kept the committee in the dark over the reason Special Counsel Robert Mueller kicked a key supervising FBI agent off the Trump-Russia investigation.

Stories in both the Washington Post and New York Times on Saturday reported that Peter Strzok, who played a key role in the original FBI investigation into the Trump-Russia matter, and then a key role in Mueller’s investigation, and who earlier had played an equally critical role in the FBI’s Hillary Clinton email investigation, was reassigned out of the Mueller office because of anti-Trump texts he exchanged with a top FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, with whom Strzok was having an extramarital affair.

I think everyone understands that Mueller’s investigation is a politically-motivated farce, but confirmation of the fact would no doubt embarrass the Democrats. Hence the FBI’s effort to hush up the Strzok scandal.

The Post reported that Strzok and Page exchanged text messages that “expressed anti-Trump sentiments and other comments that appeared to favor Clinton.”

Word of the messages and the affair were news to Nunes, even though the committee had issued a subpoena that covered information about Strzok’s demotion more than three months ago.

Anyone who expects the FBI to respond honestly to Congressional subpoenas hasn’t been paying attention.

“By hiding from Congress, and from the American people, documented political bias by a key FBI head investigator for both the Russia collusion probe and the Clinton email investigation, the FBI and DOJ engaged in a willful attempt to thwart Congress’ constitutional oversight responsibility,” Nunes said in a statement Saturday afternoon. “This is part of a months-long pattern by the DOJ and FBI of stonewalling and obstructing this committee’s oversight work, particularly oversight of their use of the Steele dossier. At this point, these agencies should be investigating themselves.”

The FBI, thoroughly politicized under the leadership of Robert Mueller and James Comey, has lost the confidence of the American people. I have recommended that President Trump appoint a special prosecutor to look into the conduct of Mueller and Comey, among others, in the Uranium One matter. The Strzok scandal suggests that the inquiry should be framed more broadly.

One thing I don’t understand, however. Why doesn’t President Trump simply appoint a strong conservative with an undoubted commitment to the rule of law–like, say, Jeff Sessions–Attorney General? If we had someone like Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, he could simply order the FBI to respond completely and promptly to Congressional subpoenas, and fire anyone who fails to follow that directive.