RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/297322/chris-christie-s-islam-problem-daniel-pipes

A Quinnipiac poll in April showed Chris Christie as the most popular potential Republican vice-presidential candidate, thanks to his budget cuts and standing up to government employees’ unions. But the governor of New Jersey has a problem, specifically an Islam problem, that can and should get in the way of his possible ascent to higher office. Time and again he has sided with Islamist forces against those who worry about safeguarding American security and civilization.

Some examples:

2008: When serving as U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Christie embraced and kissed Mohammed Qatanani, imam of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, and praised him as “a man of great goodwill.” He did this after Qatanani had publicly ranted against Jews and in support of funding Hamas, a U.S. government–designated terror organization, and on the eve of his deportation hearing for not hiding an Israeli conviction for membership in Hamas. In addition, Christie designated a top aide, Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles McKenna, to testify as a character witness for Qatanani.

2010: After Derek Fenton burned three pages of a Koran at a 9/11 memorial ceremony, his employer, New Jersey Transit, got Christie’s approval to fire him. Protecting Islam at the expense of the constitutional right to free speech, Christie endorsed Fenton’s termination: “That kind of intolerance is something I think is unacceptable. So I don’t have any problem with him being fired.” The American Civil Liberties Union successfully represented Fenton to get his job back.

2011: Christie appointed an Islamist, Sohail Mohammed, to the New Jersey state superior court. Mohammed’s record includes serving as general counsel to the American Muslim Union (which has stated that a “Zionist Commando Orchestrated The 9-11 Terrorist Attacks”), acting as spokesman for Muslim prisoners who went on a hunger strike after being jailed during Ramadan, defending Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian (his indictment, Mohammed said, was “nothing but a witch-hunt”), and helping Qatanani’s legal defense. Mohammed established himself not just as the Islamists’ lawyer but as one of them.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304050304577375851104232184.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
Did you loathe and detest the Bush administration? If so, you’d probably say its ideas were horrible and their execution worse. Did you not loathe and detest the Bush administration? In that case, you might say its ideas were pretty good—only the execution often left something to be desired.Now the person who did much of the executing tops a list of names to be Mitt Romney’s running mate. A mid-April CNN poll finds that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has unmatched name recognition and a favorable rating of 80% among GOP voters. She’s also the person Republicans would most like to see on the ticket, with 26% to runner-up Rick Santorum’s 21%. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio tie for third place at 14%.The political appeal of Romney-Rice is obvious. Here are two seasoned and reassuring presences who seem to complement each other in all the right ways. He’s the business whiz; she’s the foreign-policy wonk. His government experience is in the statehouse; hers in Washington and foreign capitals. He’s the un-Obama; she’s the un-Palin. He’s the world’s whitest white man; she isn’t. That could even count for something if President Obama decides to dump Joe Biden for Hillary Clinton.There’s only one problem. Ms. Rice was a bad national security adviser and a bad secretary of state. She was on the wrong side of some of the administration’s biggest internal policy fights. She had a tendency to flip-flop when it came to the president’s core priorities and her political misjudgment more than once cost Mr. Bush dearly. She was a muddler of differences at the national security council. Her tenure at State was notable mainly for the degree to which the bureaucracy ran her, not the other way around.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303916904577374552546308474.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Dwight Eisenhower is famous for having penned a statement to be issued in anticipation of the failure of the Normandy invasion that reads in relevant part: “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”A week later, when the success of the invasion was apparent, Eisenhower saluted the Allied Expeditionary Forces: “One week ago this morning there was established through your coordinated efforts our first foothold in northwestern Europe. High as was my preinvasion confidence in your courage, skill and effectiveness . . . your accomplishments . . . have exceeded my brightest hopes.

Eisenhower did mention himself at the end: “I truly congratulate you upon a brilliantly successful beginning. . . . Liberty loving people everywhere would today like to join me in saying to you, ‘I am proud of you.'”

Such examples are worth remembering every time President Obama claims bin Laden bragging rights.”

It’s hard to imagine Lincoln or Eisenhower claiming such credit for the heroic actions of others.

The first anniversary of the SEAL Team 6 operation that killed Osama bin Laden brings the news that President Obama plans during the coming campaign to exploit the bragging rights to the achievement. That plan invites scrutiny that is unlikely to benefit him.

Consider the events surrounding the operation. A recently disclosed memorandum from then-CIA Director Leon Panetta shows that the president’s celebrated derring-do in authorizing the operation included a responsibility-escape clause: “The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven’s hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out.”

Which is to say, if the mission went wrong, the fault would be Adm. McRaven’s, not the president’s. Moreover, the president does not seem to have addressed at all the possibility of seizing material with intelligence value—which may explain his disclosure immediately following the event not only that bin Laden was killed, but also that a valuable trove of intelligence had been seized, including even the location of al Qaeda safe-houses. That disclosure infuriated the intelligence community because it squandered the opportunity to exploit the intelligence that was the subject of the boast.

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mukasey

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/

Tens of millions of young Chinese now study classical music, including an estimated 36 million pianists. Nothing builds attention span and analytic fortitude like classical music, and a nation that combines a vast amateur music culture with academic ambition will overwhelm the world with qualified and ambitious young minds. China may fail; it might even descend into political chaos, to be sure–but then again, it might not. China’s massive and enthusiastic adoption of Western classical culture just might give it a world-dominating edge. There’s a difference between an engineer, and an engineer who plays Bach. Higher mathematics as we know was incubated in music theory to begin with, as I explain in an essay in the April issue of First Things, “The Divine Music of Mathematics” (subscription required).

Asian dominance of classical music is nearly matched by the Asian presence in America’s top art schools. India does not give us classical musicians, but seems to aspire to dominate English fiction. What Americans deprecate as “highbrow culture” has become a mass presence in the lives of aspiring Asians on a scale that would have baffled the European elites who had an audience of thousands rather than millions. Our Philistinism could turn out to be our demise. America thrived in part because other countries failed and sent us their best minds along with their tired and poor. That’s not the sort of thing we should count on to happen in the future.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

Norway is widely considered the most antisemitic country in Europe, and compounding that unenviable reputation are the views of Johan Galtung, an octogenarian sociologist who founded the international Peace Research Institute in Oslo.

This leftist is on record as characterising Islam by “two words: togetherness and sharing” and speculating that Freemasonry might have played a role in Anders Breivik’s decision to commit mass murder:

“Not the Freemasons as an organization, but I’m thinking of the loyalty oaths. He probably has a number of solidarity, loyalty networks that are very obscure and very hidden. Being well versed in history, making his mistakes, but knowing more than many, many people in Norway do, he has links to Judeo-Christian history, to the Crusades.”

He’s also speculated that the Mossad might have been involved,and made other judeophobic assertions,including hints at overweening Jewish power in American academic life: “seventy percent of the professors at the 20 most important American universities are Jewish”.

“The Jews control U.S. media, and divert for the sake of Israel,” he has alleged.

“Six Jewish companies control 96% of the media,” he has written, adding that although Rupert Murdoch is not Jewish,many of Murdoch’s employees are, and that “Many of them are fanatically pro-Israel.”

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/04/30/romneys-reflexes/print “The problem for Romney isn’t reacting to Obama’s attacks, which Romney inevitably will do. It’s about changing the focus of the campaign from the “Bin Laden is dead and GM is alive” mantra launched a few days ago by Joe Biden. It’s about fighting politically in a way that will weaken Obama and force […]

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2012/5/1/main-feature/1/find-fix-finish/e

“The recent outrage over the New York City Police Department’s surveillance program shows that Americans have yet to learn this lesson; and, despite recognition by intelligence and law enforcement officials of the breadth of the threat, high-level U.S. leadership remains publicly fixated on al-Qaeda and bin Laden. The Obama administration is willing to extinguish Islamist terrorists using drones or special forces but will not declare that the threat is a global Islamist insurgency. Attorney General Eric Holder refuses to say the words “radical Islam.”

What is the threat? Al-Qaeda? “Terrorism”? “Violent religious extremism”? Israeli analysts call it “global jihad,” but U.S. leadership has carefully circumscribed it as “al-Qaeda” or, even more narrowly, personified it as Osama bin Laden and his minions, hijackers of planes and Islam. The ideologies motivating individuals from bin Laden to Toulouse gunman Mohammed Merah are rarely examined publicly. This failure to be specific and honest about the definitional question has hampered American understanding of the problem and the proper means to address it.
But Find, Fix, Finish, a new book by U.S. counterterrorism professionals Aki Peritz and Eric Rosenbach, shows that the United States may be catching up to Israel in experience and understanding. “Find, fix, finish” is a military exhortation: Use intelligence to locate enemies, then employ the vast array of U.S. firepower to fix them in place. The problem, of course, is finishing them. The book reflects U.S. policymakers’ customary focus on the “al-Qaeda” brand but shows that the American response to the Islamist wars has been global, often brutal, and surprisingly successful, sometimes in spite of itself. Many Israeli approaches to counterterrorism and low-intensity conflict have been adopted by the United States, but on a global scale.

The story begins with al-Qaeda’s late-20th-century attacks on America—the World Trade Center in 1993, the Khobar Towers in 1996, and the USS Cole in 2000. The Clinton administration responded weakly, in part out of fear of causing increased Islamic extremism. But the weakness merely convinced bin Laden that the United States was frail. Peritz and Rosenbach describe the subsequent risk aversion, bureaucratic turf wars, failure of information sharing, and legal uncertainties that contributed to the catastrophe of September 11, 2001.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/nilegardiner/

“The Obama administration’s gambit will probably backfire. The electorate is highly disillusioned with Washington in general, and is far smarter than the White House thinks it is. The downfall of Osama bin Laden was ultimately the end result of the American people’s determination to stand up to terrorism and see justice meted out to a brutal enemy of the United States. It was bigger than any one president, no matter how much Mr Obama brazenly tries to take the credit.”

The magnificent operation by US Navy Seals to terminate Osama bin Laden in Pakistan a year ago this week united a divided nation, and brought with it a sense of closure for millions of Americans nearly a decade on from the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, DC. Thousands gathered in front of the White House as well as in Times Square to celebrate the news of bin Laden’s demise in the early hours of May 2, 2011. It was one of the most memorable events of the early 21st Century.

As I wrote in a piece just after bin Laden’s death:

The architect of 9/11, the murderer of thousands of innocents, and one of the most barbaric figures on the face of the earth has finally been taken out. This is a great day for the United States and for the free world, and a message to Islamist terrorists that the enemies of freedom will be hunted down. It is also a powerful reminder of the determination of the West to strike back against those who seek to threaten it.

The killing of bin Laden owed everything to the extraordinary bravery, skill and professionalism of Navy Seal Team Six. Their heroism and courage is now legendary. It is these warriors who deserve the credit for eliminating the world’s most wanted terrorist. Their successful raid on the bin Laden compound was also the culmination of years of painstaking intelligence work by CIA analysts and operatives serving under both the Obama and Bush administrations, often at significant risk to their own lives.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100152715/hillary-clinton-has-become-the-secretary-of-hubris/

Has Hillary Clinton’s popularity gone to her head?

Time Magazine is already speculating about a Hillary Clinton presidential run in 2016, and there is chatter about Meryl Streep eventually playing the Secretary of State and former First Lady on the big screen. Mrs. Clinton is consistently outshining Barack Obama in the popularity polls, and has a loyal following on the American Left. But has all this attention gone to Mrs Clinton’s head? Her keynote address to the Time 100 gala in New York on Tuesday night was little more than a laundry list of her “achievements” in office, under the label of “smart power”. Here’s a snippet:

And when President Obama asked me to be Secretary of State, people were asking, “Is America still up to the job of leading in this rapidly changing world?” And we faced two wars, an economy in free-fall, diplomacy had been deemphasized, our traditional alliances were fraying, the international system the United States had helped to build and defend looked increasingly obsolete.

And it’s been more than three years now. By the time I finish next January, I guess I’ll have travelled a million miles, visited more than 100 countries. And I know a couple of things. One, the world remains a dangerous place, but I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished. We have integrated the three pillars of American foreign policy: diplomacy, development, and defense.

And we have worked hard to restore America’s standing, especially by repairing alliances and deepening relationships, and paying a lot of attention to the so-called rising powers. And also putting together coalitions to do things like protect civilians in Libya, or to try to, through pressure and sanctions, influence behavior in Iran. Putting people at the center of our foreign policy, especially those long pushed to the margins like women and young people, religious and ethnic minorities, the LGBT community, civil society. That was important because we want to make clear that America’s values of inclusivity and democracy, of fairness and equality of opportunity really were at the core of who we are and who we will be. So we determined to make innovation and partnerships the foundation of what we did.

Listening to Hillary Clinton, one is given the impression that the United States pre-Hillary and pre-Barack was an impoverished, isolated, reckless, friendless declining superpower, with a monumentally dumb approach to international affairs. But, according to the Clinton gospel, America is now an enlightened nation, supposedly rescued from ignorance and despair, and once again standing tall on the world stage. From a Presidency that has added $5 trillion to the national debt, weakened America’s defences, undermined US national sovereignty, and thrown key allies under the bus, while appeasing America’s enemies and strategic competitors, this was sheer arrogance.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2137636/SEALs-slam-Obama-using-ammunition-bid-credit-bin-Laden-killing-election-campaign.html
SEALs slam Obama for using them as ‘ammunition’ in bid to take credit for bin Laden killing during election campaign
Serving and former US Navy SEALs have slammed President Barack Obama for taking the credit for killing Osama bin Laden and accused him of using Special Forces operators as ‘ammunition’ for his re-election campaign.

The SEALs spoke out to MailOnline after the Obama campaign released an ad entitled ‘One Chance’.

In it President Bill Clinton is featured saying that Mr Obama took ‘the harder and the more honourable path’ in ordering that bin Laden be killed. The words ‘Which path would Mitt Romney have taken?’ are then displayed.

Besides the ad, the White House is marking the first anniversary of the SEAL Team Six raid that killed bin Laden inside his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan with a series of briefings and an NBC interview in the Situation Room designed to highlight the ‘gutsy call’ made by the President.
Mr Obama used a news conference today to trumpet his personal role and imply that his Republican opponent Mr Romney, who in 2008 expressed reservations about the wisdom of sending troops into Pakistan, would have let bin Laden live.

‘I said that I’d go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him, and I did,’ Mr Obama said. ‘If there are others who have said one thing and now suggest they’d do something else, then I’d go ahead and let them explain it.’

Ryan Zinke, a former Commander in the US Navy who spent 23 years as a SEAL and led a SEAL Team 6 assault unit, said: ‘The decision was a no brainer. I applaud him for making it but I would not overly pat myself on the back for making the right call.

‘I think every president would have done the same. He is justified in saying it was his decision but the preparation, the sacrifice – it was a broader team effort.’