RUTHFULLY YOURS

My friend (and Tom Fleming’s), former Canadian ambassador in Belgrade James Bissett, published a noteworthy article in last Tuesday’s Ottawa Citizen (“NATO at the Heart of the New Cold War,” September 9). He starts by reminding us that NATO was born at the mid-point of the 20th century, which by that time had already seen two world wars and the dropping of the atom bomb on civilian cities. Its founders were determined that war and violence should not become the norm in resolving disputes, and it was in this spirit that Article I of the treaty was conceived:

The parties undertake, as set out forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved, by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered… and to refrain from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.

For fifty years NATO was successful in deterring aggression against the West, Bissett says. It contributed to the creation of a mutual understanding that armed conflict between the two opposing powers was not an option. Critically important, in his view, was Article I itself because it was a guarantee to the Soviet Union that it would never be attacked by NATO forces; this acted as a safety blanket for the Soviets. Ironically, Bissett continues, the fall of the Soviet empire did not foretell the beginning of a new age of peace and security in Europe. On the contrary, its demise caused a crisis in NATO:

After the Warsaw Pact armies had returned home what was the justification of maintaining such an expensive and powerful military force in Europe. NATO’s response was business as usual – a continuation of the Cold war. As the respected former United States Ambassador to Moscow, George F Kennan wrote in 1987, “Were the Soviet Union, to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military industrial complex would have to remain substantially unchanged until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”

Unless we extricate our policy-making mechanisms from the destructive influence of these corrosive canards, our goose may be well and truly cooked.

Senior diplomatic official says Israel has detected Hamas smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip just two weeks after the end of Operation Protective Edge
– Herb Keinon, The Jerusalem Post, September 7.

The Iranians are seeking to renew aid to Hamas because it has proven itself against the ‘Zionist enemy’
– Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Herzliya, September 8.

Israel did not succeed in imposing the goals the prime minister set for the Operation [Protective Edge] on the terror organization [Hamas]
– Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, “How to deal with the strengthening of Hamas” (Hebrew), September 10.

With public debate on Operation Protective Edge beginning to subside, and public memory of events beginning to fade, I could have devoted this column to more timely topics.

Last week’s pledge

I could, for example, have dealt with the dramatic offer allegedly made by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to allocate a large area in Sinai for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Or the potentially ground-breaking address on Tuesday by former Head of Mossad Shabtai Shavit at the 14th annual conference of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, in which he urged Israeli authorities to work for the dismantlement of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) and resettlement of the refugee (or rather, “refugee”) population of Gaza elsewhere.

Margaret Madeline Chase Smith (December 14, 1897 – May 29, 1995) was a member of the Republican Party who served as a U.S Representative (1940-1949) and a U.S. Senator (1949-1973) from Maine.

She was the first woman to serve in both houses of the United States Congress, and the first woman to represent Maine in either. She is remembered for her 1950 speech, “Declaration of Conscience,” in which she criticized the tactics of McCarthyism. She was, incidentally quite wrong on the very serious communist infiltration of the corridors of power in the United States.

In 1964 she became the first woman to be placed in nomination for the presidency at the Republican convention.

There is absolutely no evidence that she ever burned her bra…..rsk

I was overseas when Obama gave his momentous Isis address, but figured I could pretty much guess how things would go. Despite being the greatest orator of the last thousand years, he’s a complete bust at selling anything but himself, as comprehensively demonstrated in his first couple of years: see his rhetorical efforts on behalf of ObamaCare, or Massachusetts Senate candidate Martha Coakley, or Chicago’s Olympics bid. When it comes to war, he suffers from an additional burden: before he can persuade anybody else, he first has to persuade himself. And he can’t do it. So he gave the usual listless performance of a surly actor who resents the part he’s been given. It’s not just the accumulation of equivocations and qualifications – the “Islamic State” is not Islamic, our war with them is not a war, there’ll be no boots on the ground except the exotic footwear of a vast unspecified coalition – but something more basic: What he mainly communicates is that he doesn’t mean it.

That’s what the jihadist militias now in control of Tripoli understood about his “leading from behind”. That’s what Putin grasped about Obama’s “red line” in Syria. And that’s what any Isis member who took time out of his beheading schedule to watch the President on CNN International will have taken away from this week’s speech.

As for the “coalition”, they seem to intuit that, with a leader leading from this far behind, you want to stand even further back. From the mellifluously named Jacaranda FM:

Turkey will refuse to allow a US-led coalition to attack jihadists in neighbouring Iraq and Syria from its air bases, nor will it take part in combat operations against militants, a government official told AFP Thursday.

So much for the only Nato member to border Isis. What of the other Atlantic allies?

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told journalists on Friday that Germany will not take part in US-led air strikes against Islamic extremists Isis in Syria.

The United Kingdom’s position is more, ah, nuanced. First, the Foreign Secretary:

Asked about plans for an open-ended bombing campaign, Mr Hammond said: ‘Let me be clear – Britain will not be taking part in any air strikes in Syria. We have already had that discussion in our parliament last year and we won’t be revisiting that position.’

The hottest flap in American academia this semester revolves around
the decision of the chancellor of the University of Illinois to block
the appointment of Steven Salaita to a tenured professorship on the
grounds of his comments on Twitter during this summer’s conflict
between Israel and Hamas. The chancellor drew a distinction between
free speech and “disrespectful words . . .that demean and abuse.”

Salaita’s offending torrent of tweets began with the kidnapping of
three Israeli teenagers in June. “You may be too refined to say it,
but I’m not,” wrote Salaita. “I wish all the f***ing West Bank
settlers would go missing.” Then, during the fighting, he poured forth
an endless stream of accusations that Israel was committing “genocide”
and that America was under the control of Israel. “Israel slaps around
the USA, and all [Republicans] do is ask for more,” said one. “Redneck
. . . slogan . . . Gaza is a disaster but Netanyahu is my master,”
said another. A third read: “Israel’s message to Obama and Kerry:
we’ll kill as many Palestinians as we want, when we want. p.s.: f***
you, pay me.”

OUR HERO

September 11 had disrupted the multicultural consensus by raising serious questions about immigration and Islam. It had also thrown away the consensus that the collapse of the USSR had made American military power obsolete. Obama had come to revive these consensuses and as recently as the last election dismissed Romney as a reactionary warmonger who didn’t understand the new world order.

Obama had declared victory over an undefeated enemy. He had passed off a strategic withdrawal as a victory. His wars, victories and withdrawals were a series of blatant lies that are catching up with him.

His administration tried to blame the takeover of Libya by Islamist militias after his disastrous regime change intervention on a YouTube video. But there isn’t a YouTube video big enough to blame ISIS on.

ISIS: Obama’s ‘Al-Qaeda on the Run’

I WILL HAVE TO CONVINCE MYSELF TO MOCK HILLARY CLINTON

I sure hope that Hillary Clinton can talk Hillary Clinton into running. It would be a shame if all those donors to the Clinton Foundation had wasted their cash. Especially the foreign donors.

Hillary Clinton has a full campaign in motion. She has a media operation. She has a campaign biography. She’s selling merchandise. Whom is she kidding here?

“And I will have to be convinced that I have a very clear vision with an agenda of what I think needs to be done,” Clinton said.

Hillary Clinton: “I Will Have to Convince Myself to Run for President”

RESET BUTTON II

“Would she be quicker than President Obama to order kinetic military action? Yes,” the former official said. “Her tendencies are more bellicose than the president. … She is a decisive person. She doesn’t speak with a whole lot of semicolons and commas.”

Hillary Clinton never uses commas. She speaks entirely in exclamation marks with occasional guillemets and sheffer strokes thrown in.

As a bellicose and decisive leader, since last week, she will decisively bomb countries without using any commas. If you bring her coffee without sugar, she will bellicosely and decisively bomb Columbia.

At least until the polls change and then her bellicosity will be confined to throwing shoes at Secret Service agents.

Clintonites: Hillary Will be “Bellicose Interventionist”

CHECK YOUR HYGIENE PRIVILEGE

Body odour is among 52 criteria that officials at San Diego International Airport use to judge taxi drivers. Cabbies say that smacks of prejudice and discrimination.

It does discriminate between cabbies who smell like an open sewer and those who don’t. It further prejudges what a good smell is.

Check your hygiene privilege. Cabbies who smell badly are probably just oppressed folks who came directly from their terrorist training camp to the airport and didn’t have time to change.

Third World Cabbies Say Expecting Them to Shower is Racist

Barely two years ago, in 2012, Mogherini showed her pro-Palestinian sympathies by posting on her blog a picture of her visit to Yasser Arafat in 2002. The picture has meanwhile been removed form the blog but can still be found on the internet.

During the next five years, the EU’s policies and attitudes toward Israel are not likely to change.

A new European Commission will be installed on November 1 as the European Union’s executive body for the next five years. The previous Commission, headed by the Portuguese politician José Manuel Barroso, will be replaced by one led by Jean-Claude Juncker, former Prime Minister of Luxemburg. Unfortunately, there is no indication that the new Commission will be less biased in its attitudes against Israel than the old one.

Catherine Ashton was the Commissioner responsible for foreign affairs under Barroso This British baroness never concealed her anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish bias. In September 2011, Ashton praised Palestinian leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad in a speech in the European Parliament, saying: “They are people who believe in the values we hold.” In March 2012, she publicly displayed her anti-Semitism by comparing Mohammed Merah’s attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, in which three Jewish children and a rabbi were murdered, with “what is happening in Gaza.” And last January, she issued a short statement on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, in which she managed to avoid the words Jews and anti-Semitism.

Ashton will be replaced by Frederica Mogherini as the EU’s next High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Like Ashton, Mogherini during the Cold War was active in movements that advocated Western disarmament. That seems to have become a prerequisite for acquiring the top EU foreign policy position.

Some things just never change: Otherwise sterling democracies still
hold fast to their archaic prejudices despite the dizzying flux and
scary savagery of our times.

Why are the White House, Whitehall and hubs of diplomacy in all the
capitals of the EU so irascibly indignant over Israel’s decision to
declare 400 hectares in Gush Etzion state lands?

Under whichever conceivable future compromise (if any) this minuscule
area is sure to remain Israeli, as it was even before Israeli
independence.

The Etzion Bloc fell to Arab besiegers in 1948 and its Jewish
defenders were cold-bloodedly massacred after they had already
surrendered. Destroyed and desolate, it languished under Jordanian
occupation for merely 19 years. Nonetheless, the dysfunctional family
of nations decrees that for the sake of world peace the Etzion Bloc
must forever revert to its brief erstwhile judenfrei status.

When you are dealing with an administration whose officials look you in the eye and tell you the Muslim Brotherhood is a “largely secular” organization, it’s tempting to laugh off the idiocy spouted by President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry about how the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam. We should resist the temptation, though, because there is a dangerous purpose behind the laughable assertion.

Obviously, Bing West and Daniel Pipes are correct that the terrorist group is entirely Islamic. As I’ve been arguing here more times and for more years than I care to remember, what we presume to call “radical Islam” (a/k/a Islamic supremacism, Islamic extremism, political Islam, Islamism, and whatever other “Islam [fill in the caveat]” terms we devise to avoid considering whether Islam itself inevitably breeds terrorism) is not very radical among the world’s Muslims. There are pacific constructions of Islam, too, but it is silly not to acknowledge that Islamic supremacism is a mainstream interpretation of Islam. It is firmly rooted in Islamic scripture and endorsed by many of Islam’s most influential scholars. Indeed, when you read what the scriptures say, there is a good argument that the pacific constructions are the ones that are radical revisionism.

This point has been made so many times it should hardly be necessary to point out that Obama and Kerry, like Kerry’s predecessor Hillary Clinton, and like many Bush-administration officials before them (including President Bush), are dead wrong when they deny the nexus between Islamic doctrine –– the literal scriptures –- and terrorism, decapitations, totalitarian government, repression of women, rabid anti-Semitism, the murder of homosexuals, and so on. Still, it would be a serious error merely to observe that they are wrong, snicker at their fecklessness, and move on.

There is a reason they are taking a position diametrically opposed to reality.

The president would like to think the Islamic State isn’t Islamic, and that we aren’t at war with it either.

Dear Reader (Including the millions of poor souls staring at their TV like a big dog whose food bowl has been moved, disappointedly expecting me to be on today’s installment of Outnumbered),

People ask me all the time, “Isn’t it awfully early to be drinking straight gin like that?”

I’m kidding. Only British hookers and Martin Landau in Rounders drink warm gin straight.

But they do ask me, “Hey, when’s your next book?”

I’m often tempted to make my first response, “Did you buy my last book? Because if you didn’t, who the #$%^ are you to nag me to write another one? It’s because of people like you I can’t have nice things.”

But right before I start looking for places I could non-fatally jam a ballpoint pen into their upper torso, I realize this is uncharitable. The problem, you see, is that people who don’t write books don’t know what an unending, unyielding ass-ache they are. I’d compare them to a non-stop flight in a middle seat between John Goodman’s sweaty former body double who’s now jobless because he “let himself go” and a runny-nosed, cotton-candy-loving small child who is hard to distinguish from a deadly pathogen vector.

But I can’t make that comparison — because writing a book is worse than that. You see there’s nothing “non-stop” about writing a book save the constant yearning to either reach the destination or the unending sound of the siren on your shoulder counseling you to give up and beach the ship. Even though you’re often surrounded by people, you’re always alone in that community-of-one called “the author of your unfinished book.”