RUTHFULLY YOURS

Following the Brexit, Europe may witness even more plebiscites against the undemocratic European Union throughout the continent.

The furor of ignored Europeans against their union is not just directed against rich and powerful government elites per se, or against the flood of mostly young male migrants from the war-torn Middle East. The rage also arises from the hypocrisy of a governing elite that never seems to be subject to the ramifications of its own top-down policies. The bureaucratic class that runs Europe from Brussels and Strasbourg too often lectures European voters on climate change, immigration, politically correct attitudes about diversity, and the constant need for more bureaucracy, more regulations, and more redistributive taxes.

But Euro-managers are able to navigate around their own injunctions, enjoying private schools for their children; generous public pay, retirement packages and perks; frequent carbon-spewing jet travel; homes in non-diverse neighborhoods; and profitable revolving-door careers between government and business.

The Western elite classes, both professedly liberal and conservative, square the circle of their privilege with politically correct sermonizing. They romanticize the distant “other” — usually immigrants and minorities — while condescendingly lecturing the middle and working classes, often the losers in globalization, about their lack of sensitivity.

On this side of the Atlantic, President Obama has developed a curious habit of talking down to Americans about their supposedly reactionary opposition to rampant immigration, affirmative action, multiculturalism, and political correctness — most notably in his caricatures of the purported “clingers” of Pennsylvania.

Yet Obama seems uncomfortable when confronted with the prospect of living out what he envisions for others. He prefers golfing with celebrities to bowling. He vacations in tony Martha’s Vineyard rather than returning home to his Chicago mansion. His travel entourage is royal and hardly green. And he insists on private prep schools for his children rather than enrolling them in the public schools of Washington, D.C., whose educators he so often shields from long-needed reform.

In similar fashion, grandees such as Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and Univision anchorman Jorge Ramos do not live what they profess. They often lecture supposedly less sophisticated Americans on their backward opposition to illegal immigration. But both live in communities segregated from those they champion in the abstract.

Perhaps it’s a Persian riddle. Or a game of diplomatic footsy. Or just spyworld now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t headfakes.

Whatever it was, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan gave an elaborate and cryptic response to a question about his current working relationship with Iran.

“I don’t communicate with Iran,” he told journalist Judy Woodruff at an event Wednesday hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Ms. Woodruff seemed skeptical, “There’s zero communication – indirect?”

“I do not personally have any interaction,” he followed.

Ah, personally.

He went on: “I do not have any interaction, any formal liaison relationship or engagement with Iran,” he said, starting to sound like he was regurgitating something he had memorized.

Ms. Woodruff asked if others at the CIA communicated with Iran if Mr. Brennan did not.

“The agency does not,” he quickly answered.

That seemed to settle it, until he added, “no formal intelligence liaison relationship.”

This elicited laughter from the audience.

Ms. Woodruff seemed willing to leave it at, but Mr. Brennan felt compelled to add, “But we know the Iranians very well. Just saying.”

The diplomatic relationship between the U.S. and Iran has been a constant source of tension within both governments for decades. Many U.S. officials believe Iran is helping fuel chaos in the Middle East through their actions in places like Libya and Syria. CONTINUE AT SITE

Dewey defeats Truman – Chicago Tribune

www.chicagotribune.com/…/chi-chicagodays-deweydefeats-story-sto…

Why Polls Have Been Wrong Recently – The New York Times

www.nytimes.com/…/why-polls-have-been-wrong-recently.html

Why the polls get it wrong – LA Times
www.latimes.com/…/la-oe-0327-santos-polling-problems-2016032…

Why Political Polls Are So Often Wrong – WSJ
www.wsj.com/…/why-political-polls-are-so-often-wrong-1447

Polls Got It Seriously Wrong In Michigan’s Democratic Primary

www.huffingtonpost.com/…/why-michigan-polls-were-wrong_us…

Why Iowa polls were wrong – USA Today

www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/…polls…wrong/79692734/

Former CIA officer D. W. Wilber noted in The Hill Monday that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s actions leading up to the Benghazi attack, and the Obama administration’s foreign policy in Libya as a whole were “lunacy on a grand scale”: “Additional security was denied even though intelligence reports clearly indicated the presence in Libya of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups hostile to the United States.” Hillary’s “trust in the various militia factions to set aside their longstanding differences and establish a governing body in the war torn country illustrates another amateur mistake.” But it wasn’t. It was a professional mistake.

In reality, Hillary’s actions in Libya were an implementation of the policy called for by foreign policy professionals for years: to ignore whatever a study of Islamic doctrine and law might reveal about the thought processes and motivations of Islamic jihadis, and to assume that they’re motivated by the same mix of pragmatism and self-interest that motivates secular Western urban cosmopolites, i.e., people just like themselves.

This is the kind of disastrous miscalculation preached by establishment foreign policy wonks including the likes of the puerile and silly Will McCants (and the Qatar-funded Brookings Institution in general), Max Abrahms (and the Council on Foreign Relations in general), and a host of others that the State Department and other foreign policy entities hire by the pound.

The foreign policy establishment is a bipartisan creation, and both parties refuse to challenge its hegemony. The Republicans, as the House Select Committee on Benghazi hearings showed Tuesday, continue instead to let Hillary and Obama off the hook, and don’t even come close to challenging the entrenched foreign policy bureaucracy. Breitbart News noted that the final report from Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC)’s committee refused “to blame President Obama or then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as refus[ed] to say directly if Clinton lied to the American people regarding the Benghazi attacks.”

The Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell said of Gowdy after the Tuesday hearing: “It was up to him to get to the truth, and he punted. Just as with the IRS investigation, the Republicans lacked the fortitude to confront those responsible.”

Bozell detailed the many failures of Gowdy’s inquiry: “The causes, events and circumstances regarding the attacks on the American personnel and facilities at Benghazi are still a mystery to the American people. Who denied the multiple requests for additional security for the compound? No answer. Who is being held responsible for the deaths of these men? No answer. Why did this administration deliberately lie about the video? No answer. Should the Commander-in-Chief be held responsible for the multiple failures of the military? Should the Secretary of State be held responsible for the disastrous consequences of State Department decisions? Not according to this report. They wouldn’t even state that Hillary Clinton lied about the video though her own emails, read by committee members, prove she had! But they did blame a ‘rusty bureaucratic process.’”

The House Select Committee on Benghazi released it long-awaited report on the 2012 terrorist attack Tuesday morning, detailing an array of administration deceptions, miscues and blunders. Among the bombshells to come out in the 800-page document is the conclusion that the Americans were saved by Gaddafi’s “Libyan Military Intelligence” — not a “quasi-governmental militia” as previous reports had found.

“There were only three assets that ever made it to Benghazi; two unarmed drones and the team from Tripoli who deployed themselves. They weren’t ordered to go; they deployed themselves,” Chairman Trey Gowdy said during today’s press conference.

Glen Doherty was on that plane from Tripoli to Benghazi and Glen Doherty not only flew from Tripoli to the Benghazi, but he negotiated at the airport with Libyans that were supposed to be our friends to get to the annex so he could help defend that facility and he got there just in time to join his fellow Navy SEAL, Tyrone Woods, minutes before they both died.

The report also concluded that Hillary Clinton and other administration officials pushed the video explanation for Benghazi despite knowing the truth because eyewitness accounts were immediately available.

Republicans on the committee charge that Clinton and the State Department acted in a “shameful” manner in refusing to hand over requested emails from her private email server and pointed out that President Barack Obama skipped his daily intelligence briefing one day after the attacks.

The report also said that the investigation by the so-called Accountability Review Board was tainted by the influence of Clinton’s former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.

In the final weeks of spring the Islamic State finally seemed to be in serious trouble. Its capital of Raqqa came under simultaneous pressure from forces supported by the Syrian government advancing from Palmyra in the southwest, and from the U.S.-supported (mainly Kurdish) Syrian Democratic Forces to the north. The scene was set for a 1945-style “race to Berlin.”
Then, on June 17, came the “leak” of an internal memo by 51 middle- and low-level State Department officials criticizing the Obama administration’s policy in Syria and advocating U.S. military attacks on the government of Bashar al-Assad, to “undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process.” The memo—filed in the “dissent channel” set up in the Vietnam era as a way for employees to register their protest without fear of reprisal—did not offer a scenario for a post-Bashar Syria. It simply asserted that “the moral rationale” for ending the death and suffering is “evident and unquestionable.” The memo advocated “a credible threat of military action to keep Assad in line” (as his downfall was being arranged) and to bolster the fight against the Islamic State by helping the “moderate Sunni” forces.
Reportedly, many of the “dissidents” are Hillary Clinton’s liberal-interventionist appointees from her tenure at the State Department. In view of her vocal support for “robust” U.S. action is Syria, their memo appears to be a preemptive bid to curry favor in advance of her anticipated victory in November. The document reflects all the flaws, inconsistencies, and outright idiocies of Mrs. Clinton’s Middle East policies, past and present.

Since the drafting of the Cessation of Hostilities agreement—signed by the United States and Russia last February—over 800,000 Syrians have been receiving aid that was previously denied them. Any U.S. attack on Assad’s forces would sever this lifeline, escalate the war, and dramatically increase death and suffering. It would be a boon not only to the Islamic State but to jihadists of all hues and to their abettors in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf. Worse still, it would risk an unpredictably hazardous escalation with the Russians—who have major military assets in Syria—with no commensurate strategic benefit to Americans. It would prompt Tehran to terminate its tentative anti-IS cooperation with the United States in Iraq. It would destroy American credibility with the Kurds, without compensating for the loss of their hitherto effective boots on the ground by the addition of imaginary Sunni Arab “moderates.” Perhaps the authors of the memo imagine they will convert non-ISIS jihadists and Salafi fanatics (such as Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam, who are firmly allied with Al Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra) into “moderates.” But there was no mention of any of them and their routine cease-fire violations in the memo.

After meeting in Orlando, Fla., with law-enforcement officials investigating ISIS terrorist Omar Saddique Mateen’s June 12 massacre, Attorney General Loretta Lynch told journalists, “Our most effective response to terror and hatred is compassion, unity and love.”

After an interval of astonishment, Representative Jeff Duncan (R., S.C.) expressed his dismay at Lynch’s words.

“‘All you need is love’ may be a great Beatles song, but it’s a terrible foreign policy,” Duncan declared. “She further proves that this Administration has no idea what it takes to fight Islamic terrorism. She should resign immediately.”

Representative Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) also denounced Lynch’s olive branch.

“No, the most effective weapon against Islamic Extremism is not ‘love,’” Blackburn said. “It is a clear strategy to destroy ISIS.”

Duncan, Blackburn, and Lynch’s other critics really are being too harsh.

Like other brave leaders before her, Lynch merely was offering love as the most powerful weapon that ever can be wielded in the faces of tyrants and evil-doers. Lynch echoed the loving words of equally courageous and inspiring figures throughout history.

Who could forget the example of American Revolutionary Captain Nathan Hale of the Continental Army? Moments before British soldiers hanged him on Manhattan Island as a spy for General George Washington, Hale said on September 22, 1776, “I only regret that I have but one love to give for my country.”

Well, it worked! The British swam home in 1783, and America got busy becoming a country.

Two centuries later, and across the Atlantic, the existential threat from Adolf Hitler seemed almost insurmountable. Undeterred, Winston Churchill rallied the British people in June 1940 by urging them to lead with their hearts.

It’s Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies
by Mary Eberstadt
Harper, 158 pages, $25.99

Members of traditional religions became moral outlaws in the United States once equal rights for sexual preference and gender choice were enshrined in regulation and law. To believe that homosexual relations are sinful, as does biblical religion, defines the believer as a bigot in the view of liberal opinion, which is backed by the federal regulatory apparatus and the regulators of most American states, as well as by most of the judicial system.

As Mary Eberstadt reports, expressions of religious belief that society considered innocuous and normal until quite recently are now grounds for dismissal from jobs, denial of employment, and boycotts by the media. Devout Christians believe they must choose between their faith and job security, and they commonly conceal their faith in the workplace to avert discrimination. (Muslims are exempt because liberals consider them a threatened minority and make allowances for their misogyny and gay-bashing.)

Actions or speech (quoting a Bible verse or leaving a religious symbol in plain view) elicit persecution. In some cases, evidence of past incorrect opinion is sufficient: The CEO of the software firm Mozilla, Brendan Eich, was hounded from his post in 2014 for a $1,000 contribution to a 2008 California referendum campaign against gay marriage, evidence of a position he shared at the time with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Eberstadt is a wonderful writer. She has written passionately and with insight on faith and demographics, for example in her 2013 volume How the West Really Lost God, which I reviewed with enthusiasm. She has a great ear for anecdotes, and her field reports of Christians persecuted for ideological heresy entertain as much as they alarm. But her book is not only testimony to the gravity of the problem, but evidence as well: It betrays weakness within the Christian camp. She quotes friends who ask sadly, “Where can we [Christians] go?” and ponders the “Benedict Option,” forming small closed communities of Christians shut off from the world.

Eberstadt calls the persecution of traditional religion a “witch-hunt”—a critical error. A witch-hunt is a search for malefactors who pretend to be good people but really are intent on doing evil. There is a witch-hunt going on today, namely the search for secret racists at American universities. The witch-hunters pillory teachers and administrators who claim to hold politically correct views but allegedly betray their secret racism through wicked actions, for instance by correcting bad grammarin minority students’ term papers. Loyal liberals who commit no aggressions are said to be guilty of micro-aggressions.

By contrast, the purge of traditional Christians and Jews is a heretic hunt, an Inquisition, whose objective is to isolate and punish individuals who actually profess opinions contrary to the prevailing orthodoxy. There can be some overlap between an Inquisition and a witch-hunt, to be sure. But today’s liberal Inquisitors are not searching for individuals secretly in communion with God—yet.

This is a critical distinction. Witch-hunters eventually discover that burning a few old hags does not prevent cows’ milk from souring. Inquisitions, by contrast, usually succeed: The Catholic Church succeeded in stamping out broadly held heresies, as in the Albigensian Crusade of 1220-1229, which destroyed between 200,000 and 1,000,000 inhabitants of Cathar-controlled towns in Southern France. In many cases a town’s entire population was killed, just to make sure. For its part, the Spanish Inquisition eliminated all the Jews, Muslims, and Protestants, although it sometimes drove heretical opinions underground, with baleful consequences for the Catholic faith.

Because Eberstadt confuses the present persecution with mere witch-hunting, she hopes that the witch-hunters will realize their error and do the decent thing. She compares the persecution of Christians to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist campaign of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Here is the nub of her argument:

[I]t was the actions of people on McCarthy’s own side that were decisive—those of the political right who disassociated themselves from his bullying tactics, beginning with seven Republican senators.

No time to waste in taking the initiative — including a Trump announced new trade agreement with the UK.

The importance of last week’s “Brexit” vote cannot be diminished, even by those on our side of the Atlantic who insist on seeing only its possible effects on our November presidential election.

In defining the importance of Brexit, the reactions within the EU are a good place to start. Brit PM David Cameron, having staked everything on his campaign to remain in the EU, has said he’ll resign in October. Cameron wants the UK to wait until a new leader is chosen to begin the formal process of getting out of the EU under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU’s primary treaty.

The first members of the EU — France, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands — reacted in panic. They fear, quite rightly, that the Brexit vote presages other nations’ exits from the EU. They insist that the Brits immediately invoke Article 50 to start the clock on its two-year deadline for any nation exiting the EU to negotiate its way out.

The 27 remaining EU nations will want to penalize Britain for its exit. Only Germany’s Angela Merkel has said the split from Britain needn’t be nasty. But she won’t be able to control the others.

The EU’s primary members will, as the negotiations roll out, insist on imposing tariffs and other trade restrictions on the UK. That they want to penalize the second-largest economy will affect them all negatively (as Merkel realizes). But the EU “powers” will make it as costly as they can, in economic and political terms.

They will try to insist on some form of open border agreement and with it some version of the EU’s human rights laws.

That will make it enormously difficult for the UK to succeed in its exit negotiations. Or will it?

Now that the UK Parliament is in control of the matter, it can do several things that will unwind the UK from the EU. It should begin immediately and proceed deliberately.