Bachmann May be Right about Muslim Infiltration

by Andrew C. McCarthy

Huma Abedin of President Obama's State
Department has family ties to the Muslim
Brotherhood. Photo Credit:AP

Der Spiegel pointed out the obvious: “A certain role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the transition process [to ‘democracy’] in Egypt seems acceptable to the Obama White House.” It was early February 2011, the moment when the uprising that would oust Hosni Mubarak was bubbling over in Tahrir Square. ...

[John McCain] took to the Senate floor this week to lambaste five conservative members of the House who, unlike McCain, are actually serious about addressing threats the Brotherhood poses to American interests. McCain’s bipartisan “Islamic democracy” promoters seem content to keep burning through taxpayer trillions until the Brotherhood is finally running every government in the Middle East. To the contrary, the House conservatives — Michele Bachmann (Minn.), Louie Gohmert (Texas), Trent Franks (Ariz.), Tom Rooney (Fla.), and Lynn Westmorland (Ga.) — have concluded that the Brotherhood needs to be regarded as the serious anti-American business that it is.

Toward that end, the quintet is justifiably concerned that the Brotherhood’s sharia agenda — the one to which McCain used to be “unalterably opposed” — is being abetted not just by some Nobel-toting Egyptian progressive, but by officials in highly sensitive positions inside the United States government.

Andrew C. McCarthy

Source: http://times247.com/articles/mccain-questions-obama-s-brotherhood-tolerance

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Jerusalem Begins Campaign to out Iran, Hezbollah as Terrorists

by Herb Keinon

Netanyahu takes case to US airwaves, conducting interviews in which he says it is clear beyond all doubt that Hezbollah, Iran behind Bulgaria terror attack; Liberman to lobby EU to put Hezbollah on terror blacklist.

Photo: REUTERS

Israel launched a campaign Sunday to turn attention to Iran and Hezbollah's involvement in international terrorism, with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu taking his case to the US public and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman announcing a trip to Brussels to convince the EU to put Hezbollah on its terror blacklist.

Netanyahu, appearing on two Sunday morning news programs – CBS's Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday – said it was clear beyond a doubt that Hezbollah was behind Wednesday's attack in Burgas that killed five Israelis and a Bulgarian bus driver.

"I know, based on absolutely rock solid intelligence, this is Hezbollah, and this is something Iran knows about very, very well," he said. Netanyahu added that Israel knows, without "a shred of doubt," that the operation was carried out "with the encouragement, at the behest and coordination of Iran."

The prime minister said the intelligence information was given to "friendly" intelligence agencies in the world.

Netanyahu said it was also easy to "surmise" Hezbollah's responsibility because a week before the attack, a man who admitted to being a Hezbollah operative was arrested in Cyprus preparing exactly the same kind of attack as the one carried out in Bulgaria.

"Exactly the same thing: going to an airport to collect information for an impending attack on Israel tourists who get off the plane and are about to board a bus," Netanyahu said. "So, exactly the same modus operandi was exposed in Cyprus. Fortunately there, the terrorist was caught, he admitted that he worked on behalf of Hezbollah, Iran’s long terror-arm."

Netanyahu said that Iran and Hezbollah have tried to carry out attacks over the last two years in 24 countries.

The prime minister termed this a "worldwide terror campaign directed at us but often including others. For example, there was an Iranian planned attack on the Saudi ambassador to the United States. They might have well taken away several senators with them, they don’t particularly care. Very brazen. How could Iran be doing this and getting away with murder, literally. It’s because nobody names and shames them."

Netanyahu said there are now five Iranians and two Hezbollah operatives in custody around the globe for alleged involvement in terrorist plots, and the time has come to "expose those who stand behind terror."

In addition to exposing Iran's involvement, Netanyahu said the world had to make sure that Iran pays for its involvement.

Netanyahu also drew a link, as he did last Thursday in Jerusalem, between the Bulgaria attack and Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

He said the attacks on a busload of tourists, including killing a pregnant mother, "tells you what kind of people we’re dealing with. Now, imagine these people who are capable of doing anything, imagine them possessing nuclear weapons. People who gun down innocent people, who send suicide bombers, who could block the Straits of Iran, who threaten to annihilate Israel, who murder diplomats, who’ve taken over your embassy – you want these people to have atomic bombs? I think this is a reminder, this wave of terror attacks, that the world’s most dangerous regime must not be allowed to have the world’s most dangerous weapons."

Meanwhile, Liberman announced Sunday that he will travel to Brussels Monday for the annual EU-Israel Association meeting.

In the wake of the attack in Bulgaria and the attempted attack in Cyprus, both EU countries, Liberman is expected to ask his European colleagues to include Hezbollah on the EU's terrorist blacklist. Although the group is on the US terrorist list, the EU has so far refrained from including it on their list.

Liberman is expected to say that Hezbollah's responsibility for violence and lack of stability in the Middle East and the world obligates the EU to take action.

The foreign minister is scheduled to meet EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, as well as the foreign ministers from France, Britain, Bulgaria, Estonia, the Czech republic, the Netherlands, Croatia, Sweden Belgium, Slovakia and Cyprus.

The annual Israel-EU Association meeting deals with a wide range of bilateral EU-Israel issues.

Herb Keinon

Source: http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=278496

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Palestinian Perfidy

by Yonatan Silverman

In his famous speech at Bar Ilan University in June 2009, Prime Minister Netanyahu agreed for the first time in his political career to the establishment of a Palestinian state. He made two conditions: that the Palestinian state be demilitarized and the Palestinian state formally recognize that Israel is the state of the Jewish People.

But no sooner had he made this generous historic offer than the Palestinians pulled their Helen Keller routine, rendering themselves deaf, dumb, and blind to the whole idea.

Netanyahu's speech closed the door to permanent status negotiations," senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said. "We ask the world not to be fooled by his use of the term Palestinian state because he qualified it. He declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, said refugees would not be negotiated and that settlements would remain.

The Palestinians then went the extra mile and terminated negotiations altogether.

Toward the end of 2009, the Palestinian Authority announced:

A plan to seek unilateral statehood through a UN Security Council vote. Palestinian leaders say the US and Israel leave them with no other option.

The government of Israel rejected this Palestinian gambit -- to wit, "Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a new Palestinian plan to seek unilateral statehood through a UN Security Council vote."

But the Palestinians were not deterred. While keeping a stiff forearm poised against any new negotiations with Israel, for the next two years, the Palestinians made a determined diplomatic effort to plow the globe and elicit official support from the world's governments for their U.N. statehood declaration in September 2011.

This enterprise also met with the wholehearted support and enthusiasm of the Quartet and the European Union.

On July 12, 2009, Javier Solana, the European Union's top diplomat, reportedly called on the U.N. Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state even without a final-status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. He said the U.N. "would accept the Palestinian state as a full member of the U.N., and set a calendar for implementation."

In August 2009, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad announced a unilateral plan to establish a de facto Palestinian state in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem following a twenty-four-month state-building process. Fayyad's 54-page plan to build Palestinian infrastructure and establish Western-style public institutions is the first of its kind since the signing of the 1993 Oslo accords.

So Fayyad oversaw an overhaul of the Palestinian internal economy. But the clincher here for the last two years is that the Palestinians have embarked on an aggressive international lobbying campaign to convince the world's governments to support recognition of the Palestinian state in September 2011 in the U.N.

In fact, as a result of Palestinian lobbying, around 130 U.N. ,member-states expressed support for Palestinian statehood in the U.N. But in the final analysis, this was a frivolous achievement. In order to become a U.N. member-state, it is necessary to obtain the approval of the U.N. Security Council, and the UNSC rejected the Palestinian initiative. In particular, the U.S. stated that it would impose its veto on the move. So for all their public relations blitzing around the world, the Palestinians had absolutely nothing to show in the end. It is more than likely that they knew all along that their effort to win U.N. membership would fail. But they pursued the initiative because it resulted in further diplomatic difficulties for Israel. However, even this hostile effort was fruitless, because the diplomatic maneuver aimed against Israel in this case just rolled off the country's back.

The Palestinians refuse to stop maneuvering for recognition they do not deserve, and in some cases corrupt international organizations -- like UNESCO -- answer their desires. In particular, UNESCO admitted Palestine as a full member-state in October 2011. But the organization got what was coming to it. The step cost UNESCO one quarter of its yearly budget -- the 22 percent contributed by the United States (about $70 million) plus another 3 percent contributed by Israel. Victoria Nuland, a State Department spokeswoman, said that American contributions to UNESCO, including $60 million scheduled immediately, would not be paid.

Acting under a legal requirement to cut U.S. funds to any U.N. agency that recognizes a Palestinian state, the State Department announced that the United States has stopped funding the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization because of the vote.

The most recent Palestinian trick, and betrayal, was the people's successful bid to have Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity recognized by UNESCO as located in Palestine.

Speaking from the podium in front of Manger Square in Bethlehem, Palestinian prime minister Fayyad bombastically stated that UNESCO's decision is important, as it evidences an international acknowledgment of Palestinian sovereignty over their land in the pre-1967 lines.

In terms of reality as people everywhere understand it, UNESCO's identifying the Nativity Church as a heritage site located in Palestine is completely meaningless. It was also meaningless when UNESCO voted to include Palestine as a full member-state in the organization. The Palestinian Authority's feverish exertions in the U.N. to obtain member status there are also meaningless. Through doing these things, the Palestinians are not dealing with reality as people everywhere understand it -- but rather with a malicious virtual reality whose meaningless elements are aimed to ambush Israel diplomatically. Claiming that the Christian faith's holy shrine in Bethlehem is located in Palestine is no different from claiming that it is located in Los Angeles. Both claims are false, of course. But there is a burning desire in the Palestinian community and the Palestinian leadership to take any measures virtually imaginable to harm Israel diplomatically.

The Palestinian hubris for state recognition also undermined the beginning of the recent U.N. Global Arms Treaty talks. Egypt, among other Arab states, lobbied for the inclusion of a Palestinian representative at this important conference. But this created a heated controversy, and Israel, for its part, threatened to leave the conference if Palestinians were admitted.

In April, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas renewed his threat to unilaterally seek U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state if Israel did not accept his conditions for resuming the peace process.

He added that there would be no resumption of the peace talks unless Israel halted settlement activities in the West Bank and east Jerusalem; accepted the June 4, 1967 lines as the future borders of a Palestinian state; and released Palestinian prisoners.

Of course, the Palestinian conditions are nothing but an outrageous ultimatum, a gun they are holding to Israel's head, which no self-respecting country would consider in a million years. In particular, Israel will never retreat to the 1967 borders under any settlement because these are what the late Abba Eban called "Auschwitz Borders." And he knew what he was talking about.

In a stalemate in a chess game, there are no valid moves, and the players shake hands and the game ends. But the process is different in a political stalemate. In a political stalemate, when neither side is prepared to compromise on the other side's positions and proposals, the game does not end. The gist of the conflict remains on the table, the conflict remains active, and the two sides have no choice but to live with the situation.

Since 1993, when the Oslo Accords were signed, there were fruitful efforts between Israel and the Palestinians to resolve the conflict and end occupation. Oslo represented an historic breakthrough in the long stalemate between the sides. The Oslo 2 Agreement signed in 1995, for example, turned control over to the Palestinian Authority in the following West Bank cities: Bethlehem, Hebron, Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilya, Ramallah, Tulkarm, and some 450 villages.

But that was 1995, and today is 2012. Israel never handed control of other West Bank territory to the Palestinian Authority. Although Gaza was handed over early in the process, Hamas violently took control of Gaza, and there can be no negotiating with Hamas about this territory. In theory, the Oslo process is still alive. But in practice, and on every plane, the Palestinians have betrayed Oslo, are seeking backdoor and unilateral paths to achieve statehood aims, and so on. But their behavior is nothing but an empty house of cards. Only bilateral negotiations will achieve a permanent settlement. There is no viable alternative.

Yonatan Silverman

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/07/palestinian_perfidy.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Lamps Are Going Out All Over the Islamic World

by Bill Schanefelt

As we watch, a large chunk of humanity is slipping backward, toward something very ominous for them, and for us, too. Paul Simon's lyrics set the stage:

Slip slidin' away, slip slidin' away, You know the nearer your destination, the more you're slip slidin' away....Believe we're gliding down the highway, when in fact we're slip slidin' away.

That is, on that stage, as we watch, the Islamic world, despite faltering steps towards democracy and modernization, is slip-slidin' ever faster into a chaos out of which, unless unchecked, will emerge a desolateness beyond imagination -- with deference to Sir Edward Grey, it is not unreasonable to say that "[t]he lamps are going out all over the Islamic World, and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." But will we see the lights in the entire Islamic world lit again in our lifetime, or ever?

Brigitte Gabriel spoke of that turmoil recently in an interview with Accuracy in Media:

There are 44 conflicts around the world between Muslims and non-Muslims, regardless of what nationality these non-Muslims are, or what language they speak, what passport they hold, or what region of the world they live in. 44 conflicts. Look what's happening in Djibouti. Look what's happening in Chad, what's happening in Mauritania. Americans don't even look at these countries. It's not even on our radar screen. So a war has been declared on the West by radical Islamists who want to bring back the Islamic Caliphate. They are empowered. The revolution started with Iran in 1979, with the coming of [Ruhollah] Khomeini, who birthed, basically, life into the Islamic radical movement worldwide. The sooner we wake up and identify the enemy we are fighting-how they think, what their goal is, what's their strategy, who are the key players in this war, who are the financiers of this war-that's when we're going to be able to make progress and come up with a plan where we can actually defeat our enemy.

She doesn't count the number of conflicts around the world between Muslims and other Muslims. This cartoon in the NY Post by Sean Delonas pictures the misogynistic brutality of it, and the inimitable Michael Ramirez of IBD captures the horror felt by one of the pharaohs over the latest abomination in Egypt regarding the Pyramids.

One can move the cursor over the links in this sentence, for each refers to one or another Muslim vs. non-Muslim or Muslim vs. other Muslim conflict.

However, Amir Taheri has a surprisingly upbeat take on the current situation.

With results from Libya's first free elections, we now have a snapshot of political opinion in almost all Arab Spring countries. (Only Yemen is yet to hold post-despot elections.) So what are the main features of that snapshot? The first is the remarkable diversity of opinion in countries where many saw a simple Islamists-vs.-military-despots division ... these elections puncture the myth of Arab societies as monolithic entities. These are potentially open societies that could develop a rich spectrum of ideas. The second feature is the uneven presence of Islamist parties ... nowhere was the Islamist bloc able to win the support of a majority of the electorate ... the overtly radical Islamist parties did worse than the relatively moderate ones[.] ... The Arab Spring elections also show that the Western strategy of supporting despotic regimes in the hope of achieving stability is no longer valid.

Yet, for some reason, Mr. Tahiri neglects to mention the increasing Muslim vs. non-Muslim or Muslim vs. other Muslim violence in those Arab Spring countries. He concentrates on election results rather than the actual political realities, as expressed here by Aaron David Miller:

The last 18 months witnessed not so much a revolution in Egypt as a regime reconstitution married to a historic opening up of the political system. The good news is that Egypt has competitive politics; the bad news is that the two forces that are competing - the military and the Muslim Brotherhood - are inherently undemocratic, perhaps even anti-democratic, both in structure and philosophy.

And Aaron Hirschi on these pages brilliantly and comprehensively demolished naïve notions "that these post revolutionary Arab societies [will] adopt democratic institutions that will moderate and liberalize these Arab countries." For those few who might have missed it, well, it may be the must-read of the week!

Yet here we have our secretary of state playing (to use another famous saying) "useful idiot" to the Ikhwan:

After her meeting with President Mohamed Morsy -- the first such visit by a U.S. Cabinet official -- Clinton stressed that it was up to Egypt's people to shape the country's political future. But she also noted that the United States would work "to support the military's return to a purely national security role." "The United States supports the full transition to civilian rule, with all that it entails," she said.

Presumably, we can expect her to soon proclaim, like Bashir Assad, President Morsi is a "reformer." (CNN can't make up its mind if it's "Morsy" or "Morsi").

He who would succeed Mrs. Clinton recently played that same role:

The inability of the Muslim Brotherhood to change its rhetoric, leads to questions about how Egyptian President-elect Mohamed Morsi will serve to moderate the Islamist group's beliefs and behavior. Much has been written about how the election of the Muslim Brotherhood candidate isn't a threat to U.S. and Israeli interests in the region, or even to Egyptian society. To take just one example, Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate foreign Relations Committee, warned against "prejudging" the Muslim Brotherhood [emphasis the author's] as it prepared to take power in Egypt. "In our discussions," declared Kerry on Sunday, "Mr. Morsi committed to protecting fundamental freedoms, including women's rights, minority rights, the right to free expression and assembly, and he said he understood the importance of Egypt's post-revolutionary relationships with America and Israel."

President Obama, Mrs. Clinton, Senator Kerry, those around them, and the fawning lame-stream media forget or do not understand that Mr. Morsi's vision is not that it is "... up to Egypt's people to shape the country's political future ...," nor can he be "... committed to protecting fundamental freedoms, including women's rights, minority rights, the right to free expression and assembly, and ... the importance of Egypt's post-revolutionary relationships with America and Israel."

Mr. Morsi's vision is that of the Muslim Brotherhood:

Founded in Egypt in 1928 as a Pan-Islamic, religious, political, and social movement ... [and] [i]ts most famous slogan, used worldwide, is "Islam is the solution." [And its] credo was and is, "Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations ... [and its] goal, as stated by Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna was to reclaim Islam's manifest destiny, an empire, stretching from Spain to Indonesia.

Here's how Morsi's vision is stated:

Egypt's constitution should be based on the Quran and the Islamic Sharia law, presidential candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood Mohamed Morsi said. "The Quran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal," Morsi said in an election speech to Cairo University students. Today Egypt was close as never before to the triumph of Islam at all state levels, he said. "Today, we can establish Sharia law because our nation will acquire well-being only with Islam and Sharia. The Muslim Brothers and the Freedom and Justice Party will be the conductors of these goals," he said.

Democracy, freedom, and peace are, in the Islamic world, ephemeral fantasies -- particularly so with respect to Israel.

As Paul Mirengoff at Powerline, discussing a piece in the Washington Post, said, "... the president's hugely unsuccessful effort to bring about a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians ..." failed, and Obama's failure "... is a given. As the Post puts it: 'After a year and a half of politically costly pressure on Israel, Obama had nothing to show for it, except far less capital to work with at home and a damaged reputation among the Middle East veterans directly involved.'" And, in a later post, Mr. Mirengoff said: "Given Obama's willfully ignorant understanding of the Middle East, he was destined to make a fool of himself the minute he injected himself into this area of the world."

To be sure, the harsh dictatorships of Saddam, Assad, Mubarak, Gaddafi, Ben Ali, et al. were reprehensible, but they did hold down or prevent most Muslim vs. non-Muslim or Muslim vs. other Muslim conflict. And, while the despots essentially maintained or rendered their countries Judenrein, Christians were, by and large, not being persecuted. In fact, Tariq Aziz, a member of the Chaldean Catholic Church, was the deputy prime minister of Iraq under Saddam. That there will ever be another Christian in such a position is unimaginable there or in Turkey or Tunisia or Algeria.

In Egypt, Christian Copts were influential until the time of Nasser, but now there are few Christians in government, and their prospects for the future are as dismal:

Boutros Boutros-Ghali is a Copt who served as Egypt's acting foreign minister....(But) as an only acting foreign minister depicted Egypt's systematic elimination of Copts from all governmental influential positions. Today, only two Copts are on Egypt's governmental cabinet: Finance Minister Youssef Boutros Ghali and Environment Minister Magued George. There is also currently one Coptic governor out of 25[.]

Should Mr. Morsi prevail, the future of the Copts will be bleak, and the relentless Brotherhood elsewhere will not be deterred, irrespective of the results of all of the recent elections.

But will there finally come a time when there will be "One Man, One Vote, One Time"? Bernard Lewis thinks not in this interview:

"I think that the tyrannies are doomed," Mr. Lewis says as we sit by the windows in his library, teeming with thousands of books in the dozen or so languages he's mastered. "The real question is what will come instead." ... "We have a much better chance of establishing-I hesitate to use the word democracy-but some sort of open, tolerant society, if it's done within their systems, according to their traditions. Why should we expect them to adopt a Western system? And why should we expect it to work?" he asks.

Of Grey's comment, it was asserted that "... the mistakes that have been committed in foreign policy are not, as a rule, apparent to the public until a generation afterwards."

The current turmoil is not the result of the war's mistakes or its aftermath. That may also be said of the current involvement of NATO in the Middle East. And it cannot now be known if the Arab Spring should have been encouraged and abetted.

Are we "slip-slidin' away" and destined not to stop in our time? Will a better Middle East emerge from the current turmoil? What will be the denouement of this current turmoil? Or is the turmoil itself the denouement of fourteen centuries of conflict between Islam and the rest of the world?

Hark! The echo rings!

Bill Schanefelt

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/07/the_lamps_are_going_out_all_over_the_islamic_world.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

US now Looks to Bring Down Assad Regime

by Rick Moran

The bombing that killed 4 of President Assad's top aides appear to have convinced the Obama administration to abandon its efforts at a diplomatic resolution to the Syrian crisis, and go for regime change.

Sydney Morning Herald:

THE Obama administration has for now abandoned efforts for a diplomatic settlement to the conflict in Syria, and instead it is increasing aid to the rebels and redoubling efforts to rally a coalition of like-minded countries to forcibly bring down the government of President Bashar al-Assad, US officials say.

Talks have been held by the administration with officials in Turkey and Israel over how to manage a Syrian government collapse. US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta is headed to Israel in the coming days to talk with his counterparts about how Israel might move to destroy Syrian weapons facilities. The administration is not advocating such an attack, US officials said, because of the risk that it would give the Syrian regime an opportunity to rally support against Israeli interference.

The White House is now holding daily high-level meetings to discuss contingency plans - including safeguarding Syria's vast chemical weapons arsenal and sending explicit warnings to both warring sides to avert mass atrocities - in a sign of the escalating seriousness following a week of intensified fighting in Damascus, the capital, and the killing of Dr Assad's key security aides in a bombing attack.

Administration officials insist they will not provide arms to the rebel forces. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are already financing those efforts. But US officials said that Washington was likely to supply some intelligence support and provide more communications training and equipment to help improve the combat effectiveness of disparate opposition forces.

Not supplying the rebels with weapons is prudent because we still don't know who many of them are. There are certainly terrorists mixed in with the Free Syrian Army, as well as units loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood. And the number one priority has to be securing Syria's WMD as quickly as possible.

But this switch in US policy reflects a belief that no political solution is on the horizon and the best thing to do is help the rebels overthrow Assad and then pick up the pieces afterward.

Rick Moran

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/07/us_now_looks_to_bring_down_assad_regime.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

What Obama Really Thinks

by Daniel Flynn

“Did we not bring you into existence?” Socrates imagined the state saying to him should he have attempted to evade its death sentence. “Your father married your mother by our aid and begat you,” officials might have continued. Athens provided for the “education of children, in which you were also trained.” The message? You owe even your life to your government.

Philosophers still debate whether Plato wished readers of the Crito to embrace or reject this total conception of state power. No such ambiguity surrounds Barack Obama’s remarks crediting the success of individuals to the state.

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help,” the president told an audience in Roanoke, Virginia last Friday. “There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

For the businessmen who made all those “roads and bridges” happen through generous tax payments, Obama’s assertion was especially insulting. Isn’t it enough that tax-funded construction projects bear the stamp of the Obama administration rather than the taxpayer funders that the president vilifies? The head of state also credits the state for the spontaneous accomplishments of private citizens.

As the website of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) website notes, “On March 3, 2009 President Obama made the commitment that all projects funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) will bear a recovery emblem to make it easier for Americans to see which projects are funded by the ARRA. To meet this commitment, FHWA strongly encourages agencies to use the economic recovery signs on all projects funded by the ARRA.” Governments have spent tens of millions of dollars on signs giving the administration credit. But businessmen now must not even take credit for their own businesses.

Albert Jay Nock, observing another alarming rise in state power during the 1930s, advanced a conception of the state in polar opposition to this president’s. “It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own,” the former New Republic scribe reasoned in Our Enemy, the State. “All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.”

The words that slipped off the president’s tongue didn’t arrive there via his teleprompter. Seeking to let Barack be Barack, the president’s handlers have unleashed him with note cards in hopes that a more extemporaneous speaking style will inject life into an increasingly pedantic politician. The strategy obviously carries risk.

Unscripted Obama told Joe the Plumber in 2008 that “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” He candidly held during that year’s primaries that working-class whites “get bitter” and “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Off-teleprompter Obama always seems to reveal a smug ideologue at odds with the made-for-TV centrist. Campaign by teleprompter strips the president of the energy that catapulted him into the Oval Office four years ago. But it also protects the president from his own instincts, which, when voiced, often deeply offend voters.

The president’s rambling rhetoric in Roanoke said little about American businessmen. It said much about their tormentor.

“Well, then, since you were brought into the world and nurtured and educated by us, can you deny in the first place that you are our child and slave, as your fathers were before you?” Socrates imagined his state captors lecturing him. The philosopher balked at fleeing the state that he had served as a soldier. A creature of Athens became a casualty of it.

The Athenian way isn’t the American way.

Daniel Flynn

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-flynn/what-obama-really-thinks/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Obama’s Fourth War

by Daniel Greenfield

Fresh off three wars, Obama is looking to dive headlong into a fourth war in Syria. Even as Islamists are wreaking havoc across Mali, enforcing Sharia law and committing atrocities using weapons looted from the fall of Libya, the administration responsible for that disaster is looking to do it all over again.

Obama inherited two wars, botched them both, began a third war with disastrous consequences, and now appears equally determined to launch a fourth war. As discussed in my Freedom Center pamphlet, “The Great Betrayal,” Iraq is now in the hands of Iranian-backed Shiite Islamists while Afghanistan is swiftly falling into the hands of the Taliban.

Obama’s program of regional change, whether implemented by military means as in Libya or by political pressure as in Egypt, has led to local and regional chaos, instability and the empowerment of Islamist groups ranging from Al-Qaeda to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The coverage of the latest UN Security Council Resolution on Syria exposes the partisan hypocrisy of the print journalists and talking heads who attacked the Bush administration’s proposals on Iraq with ruthless hostility, but respond to the far less credible rush to war in Syria by his successor with the shameless enthusiasm of war propagandists.

In 2002, the United States had successfully liberated Afghanistan and when it turned its attention to Iraq it had a solid track record and was confronting a regime that had engaged in actual genocide. But when Obama went after Libya, he had already cut and run from Iraq, leaving it in the hands of an Iranian agent, and had blown his own surge in Afghanistan.

In 2011, when Obama intervened in the Libyan civil war, American soldiers in Afghanistan were living through their bloodiest March in ten years. That bloody March gave way to the bloodiest April on record with casualties almost four times as high as they had been under the Bush administration. As reporters were celebrating the fall of Tripoli, the bloodiest August in Afghanistan on record had claimed the lives of 82 soldiers in a war that the media wasn’t interested in reporting on any longer.

Serious journalists would have examined Obama’s proposal to go into Libya based on his track record in Afghanistan. Instead the media ignored the previous war in their rush to endorse the next war. That is why the debate over Syria has to begin with an examination of Libya.

Advocates for intervention are claiming that the lives of millions of Syrians are at stake. They claimed the same thing in Libya and that proved to be a lie.

“The Great Betrayal” examines and exposes the lie that Libya ever faced genocide at Gaddafi’s hands. Benghazi, the city that Obama claimed was in imminent danger of a massacre that would stain the conscience of the world, not only never saw anything of the kind, but is actually still caught in a civil war between the rebels and the new government that Obama helped put into place.

Ambassador Susan Rice, in her speech at the UN, derided the idea that the proposed resolution would lead to military intervention in Syria as “paranoid.” But military intervention in Libya followed a similar path from protecting civilians to sanctions to military intervention.

As “The Great Betrayal” lays out, Obama lied his way into Libya, deceiving the American people and the United Nations, while using legal arguments that even his own legal advisors did not believe had any credibility. Obama violated the War Powers Act and the terms of the no-fly zone to go to war, betrayed the trust of the American people and destroyed the credibility of American humanitarian interventions. His failure to achieve Security Council approval for sanctions on Syria stems from his lies on Libya.

Susan Rice mentioned the sexual assaults carried out by pro-Assad militias, but remained silent on the rapes being carried out by the Mali Islamists that her administration empowered with its Libyan intervention.

If human rights justify intervening in Syria, then the Obama administration needs to intervene in Libya all over again. The UN Human Rights Council has found that the Libyan rebels have engaged in widespread torture and ethnic cleansing.

While the people of Benghazi were never in danger of a massacre “that would stain the conscience of the world,” the same is not true of Tawerghas, a town of black Libyans.

A statement from the Society for Threatened Peoples reads, “The once bustling town of 30,000 people near Misurata was mostly inhabited by Black Libyans… Tawergha has been deserted after the breakdown of the Gaddafi regime. Its buildings were looted, vandalized, many torched, and its citizens… forced out by their neighbors… Tawerghas were detained, taken from their homes… Many Tawerghas are now cowering in makeshift camps around Tripoli.”

If the Obama Administration has learned anything from such tragedies, it has not shared it with the rest of us. Instead the election victory of the rebel factions who carried out this ethnic cleansing was celebrated by the Obama administration and its media allies as a victory for the “liberals.”

Will a victory by the Sunnis over the Alawites in Syria lead to anything but more bloodshed? Susan Rice and the rest of the Obama administration have been unwilling and unable to answer that question. Instead the Obama administration is backing the Muslim Brotherhood which considers the Alawites to be heretics and will treat them accordingly.

While Obama is chomping at the bit to go into Syria, Mali is burning, the Taliban is carrying out public executions in Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda terrorists have already killed 40 Shiites in Iraq. With a track record of burning countries in his rearview mirror, Obama’s stance on Syria has no credibility at all.

Obama spent his entire career running away from his past. Each failure is quickly ignored in a rush of enthusiasm for the next project. The media expects us to forget about Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and focus on Syria. The only way to change that is by exposing Obama’s record.

“The Great Betrayal” is the opening to any discussion of Obama’s fourth war by grounding it in his previous three wars. It offers a serious examination of his track record in three wars on three fronts and lays out how each of those wars betrayed their mission and ended in disaster and disgrace.

As Obama prepares for a fourth war, leaving the last three behind, it is more important than ever to hold him to his track record.

At the UN Susan Rice said that an “unarmed observer mission” would not change anything and warned that “the United States has not and will not pin its policy on an unarmed observer mission” but would instead “intensify our work with a diverse range of partners outside the Security Council.”

The statement should be read as a declaration that the Obama administration is moving toward a unilateral mission outside the United Nations. This act of unmitigated hypocrisy by the declared opponents of unilateralism also poses fundamental dangers to the United States and the region.

The fall of Libya empowered Al-Qaeda, the failure of the mission in Afghanistan empowered the Taliban and the abandonment of the mission in Iraq empowered Iran.

We can only imagine what the fall of Syria will do.

Daniel Greenfield

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-greenfield/obama%E2%80%99s-fourth-war/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Why is WH Meeting With Iran Apologists?

by Alana Goodman

White House officials held a day-long meeting yesterday with the National Iranian American Council, a group that advocates for policies supported by the Iranian regime, including opposition to sanctions and acceptance of Iran’s uranium enrichment program. Officials in attendance included Valerie Jarrett and Treasury Department Secretary for Financial Institutions Cyrus Amir-Mokri, according to a posting on NIAC’s website:

In a demonstration of the Obama administration’s eagerness to build and sustain relations with the Iranian-American community, top officials yesterday hosted the first ever Iranian-American Community Leader’s Roundtable at the White House.

The day-long roundtable was attended by National Iranian American Council staff, as well as individual community leaders and representatives of national organizations, including Iranian Alliances Across Borders and Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans. …

The officials on hand were eager to listen to the interests and concerns of the Iranian-American community and to determine ways to better serve and inform the Iranian-American community about important policies and programs. All of the officials made clear that there would be a sustained effort to engage with Iranian Americans going forward. “This is not good-bye,” many of the officials repeated, “this is hello.”

The fact that this meeting took place the day after five Israeli tourists were killed in what is believed to be an Iranian suicide attack in Bulgaria is a slap in the face to the pro-Israel community.

On Wednesday, NIAC’s leader Trita Parsi suggested that Israel intentionally provoked the suicide bombing so it would have justification to attack Iran’s nuclear program:

U.S. officials have privately expressed concern that one of the purposes of Israeli attacks in Iran has been to generate an Iranian response that could serve as a casus belli for Israel. That way, Israel could target Iran’s nuclear facilities without paying the heavy political cost of starting a preventive war.

It was partly for this reason that the U.S. immediately and forcefully condemned the latest assassination of an Iranian scientist and denied any U.S. involvement. Simultaneously, other major powers pressed Iran not to retaliate, arguing that Israel would use any retaliation to expand the war.

The next day, Parsi’s organization went to the White House and met with high-ranking officials who were reportedly “eager to listen” to their “interests and concerns.” NIAC’s interests and concerns include advocating for pro-regime policies, opposing serious efforts to halt Iran’s enrichment program, and — apparently — blaming Israel for inciting Iranian terrorist attacks. The administration appeared to have distanced itself from NIAC in 2009, after the Washington Times reported that the group was setting up meetings between Iran’s UN ambassador and members of Congress — a potential violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act. If the White House is now back to courting NIAC that raises serious concerns.

Alana Goodman

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/07/20/why-is-white-house-meeting-with-iranian-regime-apologists-nia/

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Killing in the Name of Islam

by Eyal Zisser

An unknown organization by the name of Qaidat al-Jihad claimed responsibility for the terror attack that took the lives of five Israelis and a Muslim Bulgarian bus driver in Burgas last week, restoring jihad — holy war — to the headlines. This holy war, in which the Muslims are commanded to fight their enemies, has served as the impetus and the excuse for many of the attacks against Israeli and Western targets over the years.

Jihad is one of the basic elements of Islam. It unites all Muslims against their enemies in efforts to eradicate infidels from the earth, spread Islam and expand Muslim rule.

But the term "holy war" has evolved since the days of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. The term has taken on one form, then another, and its meaning has completely changed. Besides, every Islamic sect and every Muslim adjudicator has a different interpretation of jihad and its practical manifestation.

After all, leaders of Arab or Muslim states have always had to exercise pragmatism and ignore religious edicts that didn't conform to reality. Indeed, Arab leaders have used the concept of jihad in their battle against Israel, but when it came down to it they abandoned their commitment to jihad and turned to peace instead.

Over the last few decades, radical Arab and Muslim groups have begun using jihad to advance their political agendas. Thus extremist organizations in the Arab world declared jihad on their own governments, arguing that the government was an infidel regime. But these radicals have traditionally waged their battles locally, focusing only on their own countries.

Al-Qaida, however, has tried to restore jihad to its historic glory. It has declared a holy war on any Muslim not living in the Muslim world – especially those living in the West and in the U.S. – alongside Israel and the Jews.

The question of whether it was al-Qaida or one of its subsidiaries that perpetrated the Burgas attack, or possibly Iran and Hezbollah as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maintains, should be left to intelligence experts. But we would be wise to remember that Hezbollah's fight with Israel, and all its enemies, is also based on the principles of jihad. The Hezbollah security cabinet is even called the Jihad Council.

There is one thing that all Islamic extremists around the world have in common: the willingness to kill Israelis and Jews in the name of Islam.

Eyal Zisser

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=2275

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US Urges Israel not to Strike Syrian Chemical Weapons

by News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

U.S. does not support such a pre-emptive attack as it would risk giving Assad an opportunity to rally support against Israel • Syria crisis will be a major part of U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's visit to Israel this week • Defense official Amos Gilad says Israel believes Syria is still in control of its chemical weapons, while Barak stresses Israel will not tolerate Hezbollah transferring the arsenals into Lebanon.

The White House is now holding daily high-level meetings to discuss a broad range of contingency plans — including safeguarding Syria’s vast chemical weapons arsenal and sending explicit warnings to both warring sides to avert mass atrocities, according to the New York Times.

There was heavy fighting in Damascus and the surrounding areas on Sunday morning, with Syrian army helicopter gunships bombing three districts of the capital. Reuters reported that rebel forces had pulled back from the district of Mezze after coming under heavy aerial and ground bombardment by presidential forces. Some 300 people were reportedly killed in Damascus on the weekend, and a total of 400 across Syria.

U.S. administration officials have been in talks with officials in Turkey and Israel over how to manage a Syrian government collapse, according to the Times report, and the issue will be at the top of the agenda for Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta's visit to Israel this week.

Officials told the New York Times that the administration has had regular talks with the Israelis about how Israel might move to destroy Syrian weapons facilities, though the U.S. does not support such a pre-emptive attack as it would risk giving Assad an opportunity to rally support against Israel.

Israel believes that Syria is currently still in control of its chemical weapons arsenals.

Defense official Amos Gilad told Army Radio on Sunday that while Israel is afraid Syria's large chemical stocks could be seized by Lebanese terrorists, Al-Qaida-affiliated radicals or other unspecified "irresponsible elements" operating in Syria, "right now, they [the Syrians] are protecting these arsenals as best as they can."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the top of Sunday's Cabinet meeting that Israel is closely monitoring the situation in Syria and are ready for any possible scenario.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak reiterated on Sunday morning that Israel is closely watching whether Hezbollah will move advanced weapons system out of Syria and into Lebanon and that "Israel would not tolerate this." Barak said in television interviews on Friday evening that he has "ordered the Israeli military to prepare for a situation where we would have to weigh the possibility of carrying out an attack" against Syrian weapons arsenals.

Barak also said that he believes the fall of Assad is closer than ever because the attack on the Syrian defense establishment headquarters last week "dealt a massive blow to the Assad family. This blow will accelerate his exit." On what may replace Assad, Barak said "no one can predict what will happen the day after Assad [goes]. The direction isn't a positive one. There won't suddenly rise up a western European democracy."

Life on Israel's border with Syria continued undisturbed over the weekend, and the Israel Defense Forces say that they are not conducting any operations beyond their normal operational movements in the Golan Heights.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was sending his peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous and top military adviser General Babacar Gaye to Syria to assess the situation.

News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=5144

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