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January 2020

MY SAY: A TALE OF TWO PRESIDENTS

I still admire and respect the legacy and achievements of President  Ronald Reagan, widely hailed as the best Republican President in recent history. What was the response of President Ronald Reagan to the terrorist bombing of the United States Marine barracks in 1983?

On October 23, 1983  a suicide bomber detonated a truck bomb at a building serving as barracks for the 1st Battalion 8th Marines (Battalion Landing Team – BLT 1/8) of the 2nd Marine Division, killing 220 Marines, 18 sailors and 3 soldiers, making this incident the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States in peacetime. It was no secret that the attack had been carried out by Hezbollah.

Furthermore the evacuation of the wounded was poorly organized and executed. Trauma centers in Israel, arguably the best in the world and in Cyprus  were minutes away by helicopter, but instead transports took them to Europe base hospitals several hours away. A Pentagon commission many years later was critical of those decisions.

Three-and-a-half months after the bombing and after repeatedly pledging not to do so —President Reagan ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Lebanon. Reagan never retaliated against Hezbollah or their Iranian and Syrian sponsors responsible for the bombings, a position widely endorsed by senior military officials. That’s called cut and run.

President Donald Trump did not do that…..rsk

Germany’s Middle Eastern Criminal Clans by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15300/germany-middle-eastern-criminal-clans

“For decades, police turned a blind eye to extended criminal families, in part to avoid being accused of racial discrimination. This has made the present-day challenge all the more difficult as clan structures have solidified, parallel societies have formed, and the enemy has grown.” — Deutsche Welle, February 3, 2019.

“There are now half a million people across Germany who belong to a clan…. Clans behave in their German surroundings as if they were tribes in the desert. Everything outside the clan is enemy territory and available for plunder”. — Ralph Ghadban, a Lebanese-German political scientist and a leading expert on clans in Germany; The German Times, October 2019.

“It is known that the Osmanen Germania gang has received financial assistance from Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AKP) party. The gang has essentially functioned as [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan’s armed wing in Germany.” — Sebastian Fiedler, head of the Association of German Criminal Investigators.

The clans see the state as, “an object of ridicule, a target for exploitation” — Falko Liecke, Neukölln’s deputy district mayor and district councilor for youth and health. The German Times, October 2019.

In a recently aired documentary by German broadcaster ARD, about Germany’s Middle Eastern criminal family gangs — or clans, as they are called in Germany — the head of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Agency (BKA) Holger Münch, said “In about one-third of proceedings, suspects also included immigrants — and that means that we need to keep a very close eye on this phenomenon”.

Münch seems to have been referring to the fact that migrants who arrived in Germany from Syria, Iraq and other countries during the migrant crisis in 2015-16 are now starting to compete with Germany’s long-established criminal family gangs whose original founders arrived in Germany from Lebanon in the late 1970s during Lebanon’s civil war.

Actress apologizes to Iran for Trump’s airstrike on Soleimani By Eric Utter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/actress_apologizes_to_iran_for_trumps_airstrike_on_soleimani_.html

Actress Rose McGowan channeled her inner John Kerry and apologized to Iran for President Trump’s drone-strike that killed Iranian General and terrorist mastermind Qassem Soleimani. The Hollywood luminary took to that bastion of erudition, Twitter, to prostrate herself before the Iranian Mullahs—and tell the world of her hatred for the president and the country in which she resides. She tweeted: “Dear #Iran, The USA has disrespected your country, your flag, your people. 52% of us humbly apologize. We want peace with your nation. We are being held hostage by a terrorist regime. We do not know how to escape. Please do not kill us. #Soleimani.”

It is nearly impossible to picture a more inane, hypocritical, sickening utterance or a potentially more harmful attitude. Addressing the terrorist regime as “Dear Iran” is gag-inducing on its own, but pales in comparison to the rest of the tweet. She’s concerned we’ve “disrespected” the Iranian flag? Something tells me she’s probably okay with athletes failing to stand for our own flag and national anthem. Arbitrarily asserting that 52% of us not only don’t fully approve of the action but wish to “humbly apologize” to the Mullahs for it should make 100% of Americans want to vomit.

Obama Sent Them Cash—Trump Turned Them Into Ash Sebastian Gorka

https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/03/obama-sent-them-cash-trump-turned-them-into-ash/

Instead of commending the commander-in-chief, the Left and its lackeys in the media are criticizing President Trump and sympathizing with the mullahs and the “revered Iranian military figure,” Qassem Suleimani.

The following is a simple reminder.

President Obama started his term in office traveling the world apologizing for America. He blamed a YouTuber when our ambassador and three other Americans were murdered by al-Qaeda in Benghazi, Libya. He sent Hillary Clinton to her Russian counterpart to give him a “reset” button. He also sent Putin a personal message to be patient because he would have “more flexibility” after his election.

Obama sent blankets and MREs to Ukraine after Putin invaded and took Crimea. He told us ISIS was just a JV team. Then after they established a caliphate, he told Americans ISIS was a “generational threat” we just had to get used to.

Yale, Al Sharpton and the Attacks on New York’s Jews Disdain for the ultra-Orthodox leads the elites to tolerate hatred, which turns into violence. By Abigail Shrier

https://www.wsj.com/articles/yale-al-sharpton-and-the-attacks-on-new-yorks-jews-11578093532?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

My entering class at Yale Law School in 2002 had one Jew who might be called “ultra-Orthodox.” He traveled some two hours to campus each Monday from Brooklyn, N.Y., and before the weekend, as far as I knew, he headed back. On Fridays when Sabbath came in early and he needed to get home, he could be seen racing white-faced for the exit, one hand pinning a velvet yarmulke to his head, the wheels of his tagalong briefcase crying out.

Yale Law School was about as secular a place as I had ever been—an institution where God seemed not only absent but strangely irrelevant. I sympathized with his need to chase spiritual renewal somewhere else. But the open snickers of our classmates surprised me. They imitated how he raised his hand in class (palm a little too rigid and tilted slightly forward). They joked that it looked like a Nazi salute. They rolled their eyes whenever someone mentioned his name.

In an institution pledged to champion the downtrodden, contempt coalesced happily on his head. Most surprising to me was how readily and wordlessly our classmates seemed to have agreed on their target. How did they know whom to kick around? Their defense of minorities stopped at his feet. So many unspoken rules of communication arranged themselves in a target on his back.

I thought of him this week, and the week before, and for many weeks before that, as the frequency of assaults in the New York area targeting ultra-Orthodox Jews rises from alarming to commonplace. The beatings in Brooklyn; threats hurled at ultra-Orthodox Jews on all manner of public transport; the brick bludgeoning in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood; the machete attack in Monsey, N.Y., north of the city; the shooting in a Jersey City, N.J., supermarket meant for the yeshiva upstairs filled with children.

Justice Arrives for Soleimani Trump acted against a terrorist who killed hundreds of Americans.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-arrives-for-soleimani-11578085286?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

“The least credible criticism is coming from American Democrats, especially those who worked for the Obama Administration. Their policy was to appease Tehran with a nuclear deal that would supposedly induce its leaders to join the civilized world. Instead the deal’s cash windfall empowered Soleimani to export revolution.”

For a generation, Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani bestrode the Middle East spreading terror and death. President Trump’s decision to order the general’s death via drone attack in Baghdad Thursday night is a great boon for the region. It is also belated justice for the hundreds of Americans whom Soleimani had a hand in killing.

One reason the U.S. could track and kill Soleimani near Baghdad International Airport was the impunity he had cultivated. The general often appeared in public, especially in Syria and Iraq, as he sought to build Shiite militias and spread Iranian influence. He was killed with Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, an Iraqi-Iranian militia leader who had met Soleimani at the airport and was outside the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad this week during an assault that Soleimani had approved.

Soleimani arrived in Baghdad with “plans to attack American diplomats and service members,” the Pentagon said in a statement. Mr. Trump’s critics are demanding to see the evidence of such plans. But why does it matter? Soleimani has killed enough Americans over the years to justify the strike as a defensive act to deter other attacks and send a message that killing Americans won’t be tolerated.

After Soleimani: Confronting Iran’s Dangerous Regime . By Charles Lipson

https://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2020/01/03/after_soleimani_confronting_irans_dangerous_regime_211888.html

News reports say Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the powerful commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, was killed Thursday in a rocket attack near Baghdad Airport. U.S. officials have been tight-lipped about the operation, but the speed and precision of the strike clearly point to American forces.

It is hard to overstate the importance of the news, mainly because Soleimani was so important to Iran’s regional power. He reported directly to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. As head of the Quds Force, Soleimani led proxy militias in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, and he worked hand-in-glove with Hezbollah in Lebanon and with Islamist forces in Gaza. Soleimani was far more than a field general. He was a major architect of Tehran’s arc of influence, which stretches from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. He met directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the actions of their countries’ forces in Syria. He was behind a foiled plot to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador in a restaurant in Washington, D.C. When Iran-backed militias attacked the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, their graffiti proclaimed Soleimani as their leader.

Iran will not let his death go unanswered. His loss is simply too important. But their retaliation, if it is large and provocative enough, could force yet another strike from Washington, raising the grim possibility of tit-for-tat escalation with unpredictable consequences and no sure end.

Neither Tehran nor Washington wants a full-scale war, but both sides have been ratcheting up the pressure since U.S. President Donald Trump led America out of the multilateral agreement on Iran’s nuclear program and began to impose harsh economic sanctions. Those sanctions have done more than cripple the Iranian economy. They have endangered the regime itself, sparking widespread demonstrations even in areas that were once loyal to the Mullahs.

Trump’s Strike On Soleimani Is About America First, Not Reckless Interventionism Ben Weingarten

https://thefederalist.com/2020/01/03/trumps-strike-on-soleimani-is-about-america-firs

Now Iran knows America is unconstrained by politically correct rules of engagement, and no longer acting out of delusions about bribing a jihadist regime into peace.

On New Year’s Eve, Iran-backed militias attempted to storm the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, engaging in an unsuccessful act of war as American forces secured the compound. In the aftermath, President Trump warned Iran that it would “be held fully responsible for lives lost, or damage incurred, at any of our facilities,” and “pay a very BIG PRICE. This is not a Warning, it is a Threat. Happy New Year!”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei shot back, “You can’t do anything.” A day later, President Trump did something.

His decision to strike Qassem Soleimani was a game-changing act with immense substantive and symbolic implications.  It finally brought a modicum of justice for the hundreds of Americans murdered and thousands injured at the hands of the head of the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, his henchmen, and their proxies.

It took off the battlefield a genocidal military mastermind responsible for spreading Iran’s Islamic Revolution globally, constructing its Shiite Crescent in the Middle East, and threatening America and our allies at home and abroad.

It represented a decisive response to Iran’s act of war in Baghdad, as well as its repeated assaults on Iraqi coalition bases including last month’s rocket attack that killed one American and injured several others, and additional imminent strikes for which Soleimani would have been responsible. It was about putting America first.

Citizens across Middle East celebrate US take down of Qassem Soleimani by Dominick Mastrangelo

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/citizens-across-middle-east-celebrate-us-take-down-of-qassem-soleimani

As politicians and pundits in the United States debated the merits of President Trump’s order to take out Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force leader, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, citizens of countries across the Middle East celebrated the swift killing of Iran’s top military mind.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo shared a video of Iraqi citizens celebrating in the street after hearing the news of Soleimani’s death.

IRAN, IRAQ…..

America “Cannot Do a Damn Thing,” Eh?

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/american-cannot-do-a-damn-thing-eh/90961/

So much for the taunt from Iran’s “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Khamanei, that America “cannot do a damn thing” about Iran’s attack on our embassy in Baghdad. It took President Trump but a day after that jibe to wheel on the Iranians. He launched a drone attack that found and killed the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, General Qassim Soleimani. It is likely to mark a turning point in the not-so-quasi war that Iran has been levying against us — and, among others, Israel.

The Game Has Changed with Iran Frank Gaffney, Jr.

www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2020/01/03/the-game-has-changed-with-iran/

President Trump’s liquidation of Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian terrorist with immense amounts of American blood on his hands, has not only exacted a measure of revenge for Iran’s murderous jihadism. He has struck a direct blow at the regime in Tehran that brutally oppresses its own people and increasingly threatens ours. 

Soleimani’s assassination must now be followed up with an intensified campaign aimed at empowering Iranians to bring about, at last, the removal from power of the rest of the thugs who have, for forty years, called for “Death to America.”