Displaying posts published in

October 2017

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Thanks to Obama, America is two steps behind Iran in Middle East by John R. Bolton

By on October 24th, 2017

The fall of Raqqa, capital of the Islamic State’s “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq, is unarguably an important politico-military milestone, albeit long overdue. Nonetheless, ISIS, a metastasized version of Al Qaeda, remains a global terrorist threat, and prospects for Middle Eastern stability and security for America’s interests and allies are still remote.

Even as ISIS was losing Raqqa, Iraqi regular armed forces and Shia militia were attacking Kirkuk and its environs, held by Iraqi Kurds since June 2014, when ISIS burst out of Syria and seized large swathes of territory from Baghdad’s collapsing army.

The battles for Raqqa and Kirkuk reveal much about the mistakes in U.S. strategy for defeating ISIS, and the consequences of not supporting Iraqi Kurdish efforts to establish an independent state. The two battles are closely related, proving again the historical reality that the Middle East is replete with multi-party, multi-dimensional conflicts, and contains more troublemakers than peacemakers.

Most importantly for Washington, Raqqa and Kirkuk demonstrate that Tehran’s malign regime is on the march, while American policy stands in disarray, even while President Trump rightly condemned Iran’s continued regional belligerency and support for global terrorism. How this came to be is a lesson in bureaucracy. Existing policies, on auto-pilot as always when new presidents take office, especially when Republicans replace Democrats, persisted after January 20, without being subjected to searching review and modification.

Had the incoming Trump administration immediately reversed Barack Obama’s support for the Baghdad government, effectively a satellite of Tehran’s mullahs, we would not be, as we are now, objectively supporting Iran’s hegemonic regional ambitions. President Trump did order a faster operations tempo against ISIS, and made significant changes in the rules of engagement for U.S. military activities.

Unfortunately, however, he was apparently not given the option to dump Obama’s strategy of relying on regular Iraqi government troops and Shia militia, both dominated by Iran. Of course, Iraqi and Syrian Kurds could not have defeated ISIS alone, despite receiving U.S. advice and equipment and carrying a major part of the hostilities. The new administration should have pressed other Arab states, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in addition to Syrian opposition forces, to take more substantial military roles.

The result is that, today, as the ISIS caliphate disintegrates, Iran has established an arc of control from Iran through Iraq to Assad’s regime in Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. If this disposition of forces persists, Iran will have an invaluable geo-strategic position for possible future use against Israel, Jordan or the Arabian Peninsula’s oil-producing monarchies. Thanks to Obama and the bureaucracy, the United States seemingly has no post-Raqqa politico-military policy, allowing Iran greater regional dominance by default.

Iran’s grand strategy became even more evident in the swift pivot of significant military resources from the anti-ISIS campaign to the anti-Kurd campaign, resulting in Kirkuk’s capture. Iraq’s government and its sycophants have said the Kirkuk assault was necessitated by Iraqi Kurdistan’s overwhelming vote for independence on September 25. In fact, the referendum merely provided a pretext, not the reason, for the Iran-directed military action.

The real reason was that ISIS’s impending demise freed up regular and militia forces for what could be just the first stage in an Iranian effort to re-subjugate Iraqi Kurds to Baghdad. (To be sure, the Kurds themselves may have been partially responsible for their Kirkuk defeat. Conflicting media reports indicate that one Kurdish faction may have tried to cut a deal with the Baghdad — and implicitly Tehran — authorities, leading to Kurdish resistance around Kirkuk melting away.)

U.S. strategy, designed under Obama but continued by default under Trump, thus focused on one war while Iran was preparing for or waging three wars. Unfortunately, the cliché fits all too well: Washington is playing checkers while Tehran is playing not merely chess, but three-dimensional chess.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Canada’s Anti-Islamophobia Motion by A. Z. Mohamed

By on October 24th, 2017

Even though at this stage, M-103 is non-binding, as one of its supporters — Samer Majzoub, president of the Canadian Muslim Forum and affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood — wrote, “Now that Islamophobia has been condemned, this is not the end, but rather the beginning.”

It sounds as if the next step is to try to make a non-binding resolution binding; and as if the eventual aim is to reinforce and legitimize the term Islamophobia, to limit freedom of speech, and to prevent Canadians from criticizing radical Islam, Islamic sharia, and practices such as wife- beating, honor killing and female genital mutilation (FGM).

Fear or anger toward radical Islam and Muslims are unlikely to be caused by an “irrational hatred and fear of Islam,” or “Islamophobia”. They are, however, likely to be triggered by global radical Islamic terrorist attacks and as more people become aware of the aggressive and intolerant nature of many Quranic verses, of the Muslims Prophet’s hadiths, of what Canadian Muslim clerics (imams) are preaching and of radical Islam.

The Canadian Liberal Party’s anti-Islamophobia motion, M-103, is not a law; it is a non-binding formal proposal, an opinion by Parliament. The motion’s text calls on the government to “condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination.”

However, the House of Commons Heritage Committee heard on September 27 that it is more likely to lead to “thought control, oppression, disharmony and criminalization of non-Muslims, ” according to the National Post.

The hearing also revealed that there are many doubts about the motion’s vague language. Committee members spent much of the time, the National Post added, trying to explain exactly what M-103 means.

The controversial motion passed 201 votes to 91 in March, after months of bitter debate, and protests and counter-protests, across Canada, and in the aftermath of the January 29 mosque shooting in Quebec City, where six Muslim men were murdered.

(Image source: Parliament of Canada)

Careful, objective reading of the latest hate crime statistics in Canada, for 2015 (released in June 2017), exposes that the motion is biased in both its wording and priorities. It is also an act of favoritism in that it singles out Islam and only Islam for special treatment.

The motion sets forth the term “Islamophobia,” mentions it twice by name, places the government’s condemnation of “Islamophobia” first, and “all forms of systemic racism” and “religious discrimination” only after it.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Judicial Watch says State Department sits on a ‘motherlode’ of Clinton documents

By on October 24th, 2017

In a bombshell announcement, Judicial Watch announced that the State Department has not even searched the majority of Hillary Clinton emails that it obtained from the FBI during the criminal investigation into Clinton’s conduct as Secretary of State. In a statement on Monday, the transparency advocacy group declared that the State Department told a federal court that it has yet to process 40,000 of 72,000 pages of Clinton records that the FBI recovered last year. The revelation came during a federal court hearing in Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking the former top diplomat’s emails that were sent or received during her tenure from February 2009 to January 31, 2013 (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00687)).

The hearing before Judge James E. Boasberg, focused on the State Department’s processing of the tens of thousands of emails Clinton failed to disclose when she served as Secretary of State under Barack Obama. Some were sent by her top aide, Huma Abedin, and found by investigators on the laptop of her estranged husband Anthony Weiner. Thus far, the State Department has processed 32,000 pages of emails and released a small number. However, another 40,000 pages remain to be processed.

According to Judicial Watch, Judge Boasberg ordered the State Department on October 19 to “explain how its anticipated increase in resources will affect processing of records in this case and when the processing of each disk is likely to be completed.” The State Department under Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the Justice Department under Attorney General Jeff Sessions have previously argued before the court that there was diminished public interest in the Clinton emails.

In November 2016, the State Department was ordered to produce no less than 500 pages of records a month to Judicial Watch, emails of which the FBI found in its investigation into Clinton’s non-government email system. The State Department has produced 23 batches of documents so far. At the current pace, said a statement from Judicial Watch, the Clinton emails and other records won’t be fully available for possible release until at least 2020. Clinton attempted to delete 33,000 emails from her non-government server. The FBI investigation recovered or found a number of these missing emails, many of which were government documents.

The lawsuit was originally filed in May 2015.

Continue reading →