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October 2015

How Obama Lost Afghanistan by Vijeta Uniyal

The Taliban seems to have correctly assessed the lack of resolve of the current U.S. leadership and have evidently decided to go for all of Afghanistan.

What is visible to everyone except Obama is that this “weak” Putin continues to outflank the U.S. in Ukraine, Crimea and now Syria. The U.S. Commander-in-Chief has failed to show the fortitude required from the leader of the free world.

President Obama reportedly offered to strong-arm India into making concessions on Kashmir. According to Pakistan’s former Ambassador to the U.S., Obama secretly wrote to Pakistan’s President in 2009, sympathizing with Pakistan’s stand on Kashmir, and apparently offering to tell India that “the old ways of doing business are no longer acceptable.”

The results of a Taliban reconquest of Afghanistan would be even more disastrous than its previous reign of terror. The Taliban would not only resume sending trained jihadists across Pakistan’s border to wage war on “infidels” in India, they would also carry out their declared objective of global jihad against the West.

With Europe’s borders now wide open, the West is more vulnerable than ever.

Nick Cater :Refugees, Rights and Citizenship

The deracinated romantics who set the terms of much of the debate are enthralled with diversity, deeming it a virtue to declare oneself a citizen of the world. The influx of the supposed dispossessed is the cleansing of the colonial soul, the revenge of the oppressed.

The tide of humanity rolling north across Europe evokes pity and dread in equal measures. On television the pity prevailed. Images of anxious faces, children being passed over the heads of adults on railway platforms, and of course that body, invited only one response: for mercy’s sake, let them in.

Discordant evidence was left on the cutting room floor. As downtrodden masses go, this one was relatively well heeled. It was also somewhat picky about the safe havens for which it would settle. Daniel Hannan articulated the paradox: “A refugee is someone who wants to get out of a particular country, not get into a particular country.”

The exiles were prone to be discourteous to their benefactors. The angry young men chanting on train platforms could have been Millwall fans on their way to Crystal Palace. In one sequence screened on YouTube, bottled water and food distributed by officials was churlishly hurled on the rail tracks. These were people who seemed to be starting a war, not fleeing from one.
If there were savages among them, however, they were noble savages, according to the BBC narrative at any rate, the authorised version from which few journalists are prepared to deviate. In this episode of the global battle between the oppressor and the oppressed, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was cast as a latter-day Emma Lazarus:

Michael Warren Davis When It’s Party vs. Principle….See Note….

From Austrlia but so applicable to US elections….rsk
What is a conservative to do when his favoured party’s leadership falls into the hands of a politician of no known conservative conviction? Loyalty is important, make no mistake about that. But so are values, and they are always worth fighting for.
Christopher Rath, a Young Liberal branch president, makes the following, quite remarkable confession in his Menzies House essay, “In Defense of the Establishment”:

My critics in the Young Liberals may call me an “establicon” or establishment conservative as a pejorative, but I wear it as a badge of honour. Being an “establicon” means being “dry”, it means supporting the Premier and Prime Minister, campaigning, raising money, supporting branches to grow, pre-selecting talented men and women, and fostering our best future leaders. It means loving the Liberal Party and our greatest living Australian, John Howard.

What Mr. Rath makes abundantly clear, if unintentionally so, is that he entirely misunderstands the accusation of “establiconservatism”. An establicon isn’t one who campaigns for one’s party despite personal disagreements with the ruling philosophy of its leader. Basically, and not to mince words, being an establicon means excusing oneself from the struggle for authentic conservative government on the grounds that blind support for the party is the greater good.

For instance, a true conservative could support the Turnbull-led Liberal Party while still advocating a return to conservative leadership, if not by ousting Turnbull then by pressuring him to abide by the principles of the party’s centre-right rank-and-file. On the other hand, we would expect an establicon to say that, since Turnbull and his cabinet have so far governed in accordance with broadly free-market principles, matters of cultural and social importance can be set aside and overlooked.

Let’s be clear: the true conservative is a conservative first, and a party loyalist second. He or she never sacrifices the core convictions of Anglo-Australian conservatism—civil institutions such as marriage, the Constitution, the monarchy; the sanctity of life; the preservation of Australia’s cultural identity, and so on—as a matter of convenience. He never shies from criticising those who would use the Liberal Party, ostensibly the principle vehicle for conservatism in Australia, to advance fundamentally un-conservative ends. He needn’t openly revolt against the Party’s leadership, but he ought not be cowed by the leadership either.

DONALD TRUMP- AMERICA’S JEREMY CORBIN? LINCOLN ALLISON

Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn are, in obvious ways, opposites: in the over-used terminology we learned from France’s revolutionary National Assembly in the 1790s, one is at the extreme “left” of orthodox politics in the Anglophone world, and the other at a version of the extreme “right”. But they also have similarities. They have both sprung surprises, one by becoming the leader of a major party and the other by threatening to. In each case they are hostile to something seen as an establishment and stand in sharp contrast to the centrist, professional politicians whom they oppose. But I think the similarities go considerably deeper than that and are best understood in terms of the sort of typology developed by Maurice Duverger, in his Les Partis Politiques, first published in 1951, although the version expounded here will be my own, rather than that of Duverger, who died last year. (Is lasting 63 years after the publication of your best known work some kind of record?)

All parties contain or relate to a number of distinguishable categories of person: these include leaders, aspiring leaders, follower-members, devotee-members, loyal voters and marginal voters. A Tory MP, for example, might be either an aspiring leader or just a follower member or both or fall into several other categories. But the relationship between these elements differs markedly between different parties and determines the nature of the party. What the Labour Party and the Republican Party have in common is that devotees are far more important than they are in other parties, though I am going to call them fundamentalists as I think that word suggests some of their more important characteristics. Therefore the central dilemma of democratic politics — compromise and win, or maintain your principles and lose — is far more central than it is in other parties. They are, of course, more or less opposite principles: egalitarian, collectivist and neo-pacifist as against individualist, nationalistic and puritanical.

A Clash Over Teaching Islam to 7th Graders in Tennessee By Rod Kackley

State lawmakers, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and parents of Tennessee schoolkids are worried about the way children are learning about “the world of Islam” in a social studies course being taught in the state’s middle schools.

But dozens of Tennessee public school districts are using a form letter supplied by an attorney to resist efforts to tell parents and lawmakers everything they want to know about the course.

Among other things that bother parents, the kids are required to memorize the five pillars of Islam and are instructed to write “Allah is the only God,” according to WSMV-TV in Franklin, Tenn. One parent said more than 20 pages of her child’s social studies textbook is devoted to studying Islam.

That amounts to three weeks of classroom instruction, more time than is spent teaching the seventh-graders about Christianity.

The sanitized language of Islamic conquest By Carol Brown

As Muslims invade Europe on a massive scale, President Obama’s making sure we get our “fair share” of suicidal madness. Heaven forbid we fall behind Europe on the path toward cultural ruin.

And while this voluntary abandonment of Western values and culture unfolds before our eyes – as nations slide ever closer toward the caliphate – sanitized language is used to mask the reality of what is occurring. Here are a few examples of innocuous words that obscure the truth.

Asylum seekers: This is a popular term used to describe a large swath of people we know little to nothing about (though we know enough to know we must not accept them). The phrase suggests innocent people fleeing imminent danger whom we should welcome with open arms. And more than welcome. We must give them food, clothing, shelter, education, medical care, job training, transportation, and interpreter services, among other benefits.

Refugees: This is a generic term that is also used frequently. It applies to hordes of people from who knows where invading country after country. Like asylum seekers, it suggests that people in dire need of protection and care whom we are obligated to embrace lest we appear to be hateful bigots. And if we must sacrifice our fundamental values along the way, not to mention, perhaps, our lives, oh well.

What Goes Around, Goes Around By Shoshana Bryen

Americans like their history linear and their enemies well-defined. But it isn’t, and they aren’t.
In his prescient book Balkan Ghosts, Robert Kaplan explains the vicious Balkan wars of the early 20th Century as an attempt by various groups to claim what territory rightfully belonged to them. But Hungarians, Bulgarians, Serbs, and others each defined their patrimony as the area it controlled at the peak of its power. It is easy to see the potential for endless warfare absent a Great Power or occupation authority to enforce the quiet that sometimes passes for peace. History is an overlapping series of claims and grievances; victory is never permanent, loss is never permanent, and chaos is common.

Consider the crumbling — collapsing — area running south from Ukraine through Turkey; down and east across the Middle East from Syria through Iraq, Iran, and Yemen; Africa from Libya to Nigeria, Mali, Sudan, and South Sudan; and farther east to Afghanistan. The fallout from fighting in those places wreaks havoc on them and undermines countries including Pakistan, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Jordan. And it produces enormous waves of refugees.

Behind the tremors and shock waves are the United States, Iran, Turkey, Qatar, al Qaeda, and ISIS in various permutations, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Russia. All of which are or have provided arms, funds, territory, fighting forces, and ideological/political support for vicious cadres bent on pursuing wars grounded in regional/religious grievance. Holding the fort against the earthquake are the United States, Israel, the Kurds, Egypt, and a variety of brave and lonely individuals and small groups.

How can the U.S. be in both camps?

Mass Shootings and a Mental-Health Disgrace By Rep.Tim Murphy (R- PA District 18)…see note please

Rep. Murphy is a a psychologist in the Navy Reserve Medical Service Corps. And just for the record, he rates a minus 3 from the Arab American Institute for his strong support for Israel….rsk
The federal bureaucracy is anti-patient, anti-family and anti-medical care. Reform is essential.

These past few months have brimmed with tragedy. Americans are struggling to make sense of horrific acts of mass violence like the August shooting on live television in Roanoke, Va., and last week’s college campus shooting in Roseburg, Ore.

We all know how this plays out in Congress: a moment of silence on the House floor and a fraternal feeling of melancholy when the flag over the Capitol is lowered to half-staff. But that moment of silence will not heal the hearts of those who lost a loved one, and it will not stop the next tragedy. Here and now we need action; we need real change.

That’s why I’ve authored the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act. The bill focuses resources and reform where they are most needed: to foster evidence-based care, fix the shortage of psychiatric hospital beds, empower patients and caregivers under HIPAA privacy laws, and help patients get treatment well before their illness spirals into crisis.

The Real Benghazi Investigation: The Clinton-McCarthy spat is a shame. Trey Gowdy has led a model search for the truth. Kimberley Strassel

Kevin McCarthy unexpectedly withdrew from the House speaker’s race on Thursday, a casualty of a fractured Republican conference. The Californian didn’t do much to inspire confidence last week when he suggested that the House Benghazi committee had been designed to attack Hillary Clinton.

One pity of the McCarthy comments is that they tainted the committee’s work with politics. The bigger pity is that they are dead wrong. South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy is 18 months into the committee that the House purpose-built to investigate the 2012 terrorist assault in Libya that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. His Benghazi investigation has been a model of seriousness, professionalism and discreetness.

The statistics alone bear this out. The committee has so far reviewed 50,000 new pages of documents. Less than 5% have anything to do with Mrs. Clinton’s work as secretary of state. It has interviewed 51 witnesses. Forty-one of those were brand-new—no committee had bothered to speak with them before, though seven were eyewitnesses to the attack.

As Terror Sweeps Israel, the White House Is Silent: Jonathan Tobin

“Obama’s legacy is a terrible indictment of American passivity in the face of hate.”

With each passing day, it becomes a clear that Israel is experiencing a wave of terror unseen since the dark days of the second intifada over a decade ago. There have been stabbing incidents on the streets of Jerusalem and even now in other parts of the country. Snipers, gasoline bombs, and gangs armed with lethal rocks are assaulting Jews driving on the roads in the West Bank. But as the toll of casualties rises, the reaction from the U.S. government and the international media is cool, detached indifference. The best the State Department can do in reaction to the attacks is to issue a lukewarm denial that it will abandon Israel at the United Nations. Meanwhile, the New York Times publishes a feature on the possibility of a third intifada treating the number of casualties on both sides as equal even though one total is of the victims of terror and the other includes slain terrorists.