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February 2018

Trump’s State of the Union bolsters allies’ confidence Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

President Trump’s first State of the Union aimed at bolstering the US posture of deterrence, reassuring allies and putting enemies and adversaries on notice.

The more reinforced the US posture of deterrence, the more restrained is the offensive conduct of Iran’s Ayatollahs and Islamic terror organizations – as well as the global activism of Russia and China – and the more secure are US allies, such as Israel, the Arab Gulf States, Jordan and Egypt.

The post-Reagan years have yielded a systematic erosion of the US posture of deterrence, adrenalizing the megalomaniacal veins of the rogue Ayatollahs and Muslim Brotherhood terrorists, whose machetes are at the throat of every US ally in the Middle East.

President Trump’s critical and urgent challenge is to reconnect the US national and homeland security policy with the 1,400-year-old unpredictable, violent, treacherous and threatening Middle East reality, and disconnect from former President Obama’s worldview, which window-dressed the volcanic, anti-Western Middle East reality to accord the principles of peaceful-coexistence and the struggle for human rights and economic prosperity.

The confidence of US allies in the Middle East – facing lethal threats internally and externally – was undermined by President Obama’s worldview, which subordinated the US independence of unilateral military action to multilateralism; accorded the UN and Europe central roles in shaping the international arena; considered any war as immoral, and aspired to advance peace at, almost, any price; assessed Islam as a religion of peace, not a threat; viewed Islamic terrorism as “workplace violence and the horrific outburst of violence” (as erupted in Ft. Hood, Texas in November 2009); determined that the triggers of terrorism were poverty, despair, erroneous US policy and US troops on Muslim lands; assumed that the means of combatting terrorism were law-enforcement, diplomacy, economic support, reasoning with rogue regimes and a very limited military commitment; embraced the worldview of the State Department, which opposed the establishment of Israel in 1948, and perceives the Jewish State a strategic liability in 2018.

Islam in Global Politics: A Civilizational Crisis? By Clive Kessler

“Islam in Global Politics.” How one addresses this issue depends not just on the meaning of those four words —— “Islam,” “Global” “politics,” and also “in” —— both individually and together. It also depends on how you see and approach the question that they together pose. On the attitude or approach that you adopt. Is it one of:

Islam and Muslims asserting themselves in, imposing themselves and their agenda upon, global politics? or of
Islam and Muslims within, and finding their world-historical place within, and engaging with —— respectfully engaging with —— diverse, plural and (in significant measure non-Muslim) global humankind: in and as part of a sincere effort by all to find, negotiate, establish a way, or ways, of “sharing the world”? Decently and constructively sharing the world?

These are two radically, different and contrasting attitudes and approaches.

One is egotistic, immature, narcissistic (akin to an infantile “Me! Me! Me!” tantrum); it rests upon a childish notion that sees only oneself as real, and others as merely the sociocultural backdrop, the historical context, of one’s own needs, agenda and “narrative”;

The other, alone, is mature, humane, constructive, exceeds the bounds and framework of infantile wish-fulfillment drives.

To be specific. “Islam in Global Politics”: there is today no more high-profile and urgent instance than “The Jerusalem Question.”

There are two parts to this problem —— and they are not the same. They are related, but not one and the same thing. Both must be understood, and they must both be resolved.

House Memo Details Use of Steele Dossier to Spy on Trump Campaign Adviser The memo appears to confirm suspicions that a FISA court warrant targeted Carter Page based on information in the dossier funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. By Andrew C. McCarthy

What we have long suspected (see, e.g., here and here) has now been confirmed: The Obama Justice Department and the FBI used the unverified Steele dossier to convince a federal court to issue a warrant authorizing surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser. Confirmation came in the much-anticipated memorandum released today by the Republican-controlled House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The memo states that the Obama administration concealed from the court that the dossier was commissioned and paid for by the political campaign of Donald Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Nor was the court informed that the dossier’s author, former British spy Christopher Steele, told a senior Justice Department official that he was “desperate” to prevent Trump from being elected president.

Moreover, despite presenting dossier information as probable cause on four separate occasions — for the initial FISA warrant in October 2016, and three times in the ensuing months — the FBI failed to verify the dossier’s explosive allegations and failed to inform the court that its efforts to corroborate the allegations had been unavailing. Indeed, the memo relates that the government once presented a news story to the court as corroboration for Steele’s claims, apparently unaware that Steele himself was the source for the news story.

The dossier was a compilation of Steele’s reports, based on anonymous Russian sources. His informants provided information based on accounts that were multiple levels of hearsay removed from the events they purported to describe.

The FISA court warrant targeted Carter Page, who had volunteered to serve as a Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser. The memo relates that the warrant was originally issued on October 21, 2016, and re-authorized three times thereafter. Under FISA, warrants targeting American citizens lapse after 90 days. If you’re keeping score, that means a warrant based on claims that Trump was corruptly aligned with the Kremlin was renewed twice after Donald Trump became president.

Trump Triumphs with Release of House Intel Memo BY DAVID P. GOLDMAN

The House Intelligence Committee memo on abuse of power by the Federal Bureau of Investigation appeared just after 12:00 p.m. Eastern time, and American political life never will be the same. The House Republicans make a persuasive if not prima facie case that senior FBI officials used a fake dossier paid for by the Democrats to get a court order for electronic surveillance of the Trump campaign. If the charge sticks, America will have a real-life instance of the sort of scenario found in pulp thrillers—a rogue intelligence agency operating in the darkness and abusing its power to manipulate elections.

Senior FBI and CIA officials (as well as a number of prominent Democrats) accused Trump of endangering national security by releasing the memo. This recalls the old Soviet-era joke about the Radio Yerevan listener who calls in to ask whether it’s a crime to call Brezhnev an idiot. The answer: “Yes, because it’s a state secret.”

This is political plutonium.

Here are the basic facts:

Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the U.S. counterintelligence service cannot surveil American citizens without a court order. The FBI obtained such a warrant in October 2016 to eavesdrop on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.