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March 2021

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Bad Judgment and Biden’s Pentagon Colin Kahl is the wrong choice to be chief Defense strategist.

By on March 9th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bad-judgment-and-bidens-pentagon-11615246787?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Another Biden nominee with a record of intemperate tweets is at risk of sinking in the Senate, and the press is comparing him to Neera Tanden, the President’s withdrawn first pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Yet whoever replaces Ms. Tanden is unlikely to change the trajectory of the Biden Administration’s progressive policies.

The Pentagon nomination of Colin Kahl, a dogmatic proponent of the Iran nuclear deal, is another story. A no vote in the Senate Armed Services Committee could push the Administration toward a Mideast approach that better serves America’s national interest.

President Biden has tapped Mr. Kahl for undersecretary of defense for policy, one of the most important non-cabinet jobs in the federal government. While the Secretary of Defense handles high-level defense politics, and the deputy secretary manages the department day-to-day, the undersecretary plays the leading role setting strategy—including representing the department at National Security Council deputies meetings.

Mr. Kahl’s strategic Mideast misjudgments have been pronounced. In 2015 as Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Mr. Kahl argued for sanctions relief on Iran, declaring they “are not going to spend the vast majority of the money on guns, most of it will go to butter.” In the event, Tehran took advantage of the windfall to increase its financing for proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

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How Do You Solve a Problem Like Korea? Pyongyang shrugs off sticks and turns up its nose at carrots. Biden has few options. By Walter Russell Mead

By on March 9th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-korea-11615245637?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

The Journal reports that Kim Jong Un’s authorized biography is out and a Korean-language edition has been uploaded to the web. The authors are, unsurprisingly, bullish on Mr. Kim. The closing section (“Spinning the World Under the Axis of Sovereignty and Justice”) hails Mr. Kim’s summits with leaders including Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in. Summing it up, the authors gush that “there has never been a time when all the world has been this focused on our people’s greatness and dignity in our 5,000-year history.”

They are not wrong. North Korea, with a gross domestic product estimated at less than $26 billion and a population of 26 million, punches well above its weight. Kim Jong Un doesn’t see himself as the crackpot leader of a failed state. He sees himself as a winner, the uncontested leader of a tiny state that by ruthless dedication has forced the greatest powers in the world to deal with it as an equal.

As another American administration struggles with the difficult and thankless task of developing a North Korea strategy, the Biden team needs to understand that even severe sanctions are unlikely to work. For years sanctions proponents have argued that if the U.S. could only get full Chinese cooperation, North Korea would have no choice but to accept some kind of denuclearization process.

This is unlikely. China, annoyed as it often is by North Korea’s unpredictable and disruptive approach to politics, would never agree to sanctions stringent enough to risk destabilizing a neighboring country. More important, the Kims are not easily swayed by economic pressure. In an effort to contain Covid, Pyongyang has voluntarily imposed an isolation on itself far more devastating than sanctions ever could be. Trade with China is down 80%. GDP is down an estimated 10%. Grain production is slated to fall one million tons below the 5.5 million tons required to feed its populace. Major factories have closed due to shortages of spare parts, and blackouts are widespread.

Despite all this, the government is signaling its determination to stand fast until the pandemic ends. Not for the first time, Pyongyang is demonstrating that it will impose massive suffering on its population to pursue its goals. Perhaps this determination would crack in the face of even direr conditions, but a mass famine did not force the regime to abandon its nuclear program in the 1990s. Sanctions alone, however severe, will not bring this country to heel.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

One Shot Is Better Than None Giving more people a single dose of mRNA Covid vaccines saves more lives than giving fewer people two doses. By Roger Marshall

By on March 9th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/one-shot-is-better-than-none-11615250588?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

Dr. Marshall, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Kansas. He is a physician.

In my four years in Congress, the phrase I’ve heard most regularly abused is “Follow the science.” Politicians, bureaucrats and reporters in Washington—many of whom, based on their comments, seem to have last attended science class in eighth grade—have a penchant for developing policies and then lecturing the opposition on the “science” that follows their agenda. Like my granddad used to say, “figures lie and liars figure.” Covid-19 policy is no exception.

In medical school, my classmates and I were taught to apply the science practically to the messy world around us, not merely follow theories as if we practiced medicine in a vacuum. Once we got out of the classroom, many of us quickly found that not every patient’s clinical course was exactly what the textbooks said. The medical school graduates who quickly became the best physicians were those who listened to their patients, called on their experience, and, yes, applied the science only as made sense in particular circumstances.

Nothing is harder for a physician to manage than a virus. Human papillomavirus, for example, often causes cervical precancer and cancer. Our obstetrics and gynecology residency program studied HPV as far back as my internship in 1987. From 1997 to 2003, by combining pap smears with HPV strain identification, doctors could employ technology that identified which patients were truly at risk for cancer, versus those who should merely be observed. But finding the correct application took roughly a decade, and as doctors struggled to use the data to distinguish who was at high and low risk, I observed the condition was often overtreated.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The contemptible Oprah /Sussex circus It told us nothing about the Royal Family and much more about Meghan, Harry and America Melanie Phillips

By on March 9th, 2021

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-contemptible-oprah-sussex-circus?token

It will take time before the smoke of battle clears from the Oprah Winfrey interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and we can more properly assess its impact. It is unlikely, however, to dent support for the monarchy in Britain. 

Indeed, the whole Oprah/Sussex circus tells us nothing about the Royal Family that withstands proper scrutiny. It tells us a great deal more about Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and America itself. And none of it is good. 

From the reported reaction, it seems America is overwhelmingly on the side of Meghan and unquestioningly believes the preposterous story she has told of her own alleged persecution and suffering at the hands of the royals (other than the Queen herself, who by Meghan’s own account treated her with nothing but kindness and has now had her whole family smeared and trashed for her pains). 

In America, there seems precious little desire or ability to subject the Sussexes’ denunciation to anything like the scepticism it requires. For the whole thing was not only an attempt to besmirch the Royal Family by spraying a poisonous miasma of unspecific smears and unsubstantiated assertions. It was also riddled with astonishing ignorance and contradictions.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Britain: The Battle Royal

By on March 9th, 2021

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/britain-the-battle-royal/91440/

Prince Harry and Meghan Markel no doubt stopped short, in their interview with Oprah Winfrey, of the offense of lèse-majesté. It’s no longer illegal in Britain to deface the dignity of the crown, anyhow, at least not in any practical sense. Then again, too, their unburdening themselves of their grievances seems calculated to wound a monarchy that, at least in our view, Britons are likely to need more rather than less in the generation ahead.

That might sound like an odd sentiment from these quarters. The New York Sun is, after all, a tribune of republican principles. Yet we make no secret of our admiration for Britain and, most recently, its scramble for independence from the European Union. It has just placed a strategic bet on its own Commonwealth, and it’s going to need the monarchy that does so much to hold it together.

Even without these larger issues, the drama of the Sussexes is simply unseemly. In Ms. Markle’s own telling, it began with a quarrel over wedding dresses, when her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Cambridge, made her cry. To plunge from there to a charge of racism is horrifying, all the more so in the way it was done; Meghan, almost in passing, mentions “concerns and conversations” about “how dark” Archie’s “skin might be when he’s born . . .”

That left Ms. Winfrey staring, open-mouthed, for several long seconds until she exclaimed “What?!” At one point she asked: “Who is having that conversation with you?” It elicited no clarifying answer. So it’s a classic small group libel. By refusing to name the alleged racist, British journalist Daniel Johnson writes, Harry and Meghan must know that they are casting aspersions on the entire royal family.

To make matters worse, Prince Harry, according to Ms. Winfrey, later asked her to make clear that the culprit wasn’t his grandmother or grandfather, meaning the Queen or Prince Philip. That has the effect of focusing the aspersions on an even smaller group. All wrapped in the rhetorical device of preterition, the damning of someone or something — in this case the monarchy — while suggesting one is not doing so.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Saudi Shocker: Temple Mount is Jewish, Muslims Should Pray Toward Mecca By Yakir Benzion

By on March 9th, 2021

https://unitedwithisrael.org/saudi-campaign-hints-that-temple-mount-is-jewish-muslims-should-pray-toward-mecca/

Saudi Twitter users are playing down the importance of Jerusalem for Muslims, insinuating that the Jews should control the Temple Mount.

Saudi Twitter users have recently been pushing a new line of thought that plays up the importance of Muslims praying towards the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, while downplaying the importance of the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, Israel National News(INN) reported Sunday.

The controversial campaign appears to be designed to push the message emphasizing the importance of the Saudi cities of Mecca and Medina as the holy places of Islam, and to eliminate the importance of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount for Muslims, thereby decreasing any Islamic authority the Palestinians have over the site.

One of the messages reportedly comes from well-known Saudi cartoonist Fahd al-Jabiri, who tweeted that “the direction of the prayers of the Jews is not important to us, what is important to us is only our homeland.”

Another English-language tweet is by a Moroccan user named Ibtissam Zegiga whose profile says he studies Hebrew and wants peace, and calls on “dear brothers and sisters” to join in the movement.

“This recent Saudi twitter movement believes that there is no importance of the temple mount to Muslims, and the waiting for the [Jewish] third temple. A new era, one of peace.”

According to the report, the Saudi campaign is in response to the Palestinian insults online and chants against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia heard at at demonstrations at the Temple Mount after prayers on Fridays. The Saudis have quietly supported the recent Abraham Accords the established peace between four Arab countries and Israel, and that has infuriated the Palestinians.

The reaction of the Saudis is to emphasize that the Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem is simply a mosque like all mosques, but the direction of prayer for all Muslims no matter where they are on the planet is only towards to the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

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