The now-concluded Iran nuclear negotiations predictably reflect ancient truths of appeasement.
While members of the Obama administration are high-fiving each other over a deal with the Iranian theocracy, they should remember unchanging laws that will surely haunt the United States later on.
Continue reading “Appeasing Iran Ignores the Lessons of History”
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine
Critics of President Obama’s recent deal with Iran have rejected the president’s assertion that the only alternative to his deal is war. They think that more aggressive sanctions could have changed Iran’s behavior, given the economic costs the current sanction regime has inflicted. A corollary to this argument assumes that the majority of Iranians are pro-American and sick of the puritanical and corrupt mullahcracy and its willful isolation of the country from the global order. Increase the pressure of sanctions, and this mass of discontent could ripen into regime change or at least a moderation of its behavior.
Continue reading “More Sanctions Wouldn’t Have Stopped Iran”
President Obama is said to feel liberated, in the sense that he can finally say what, and do as, he pleases — without much worry any more over political ramifications, including presidential and congressional elections. Obama’s lame-duck presidency has now devolved into the progressive bully pulpit that his base always longed for. Of course, his editorializing and executive orders may worry Hillary Clinton — much as Donald Trump’s pronouncements do his more circumspect Republican rivals.
Trump is a celebrity who tweets and phones his praise of and insults to comedians, athletes, and media kingpins. But so does Obama love the celebrity world. He is comfortable with Jay Z and Beyoncé, picks the Sweet Sixteen on live television, and has reminded us that he’s the LeBron of the Teleprompter, who won’t choke under the spotlights. Both see pop culture and the presidency as a fitting together perfectly.
Would the Chicago community-organizing cadre be that much different from the Trump Manhattan clique? Isn’t big-city know-how key to “fundamentally transforming” the country? Is there that much difference between Trump’s golden name tags and Obama’ faux Greek columns, vero possumus, “We are the ones we have been waiting for,” and cooling the planet and lowering the seas?
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media
The horrific — but likely preventable — death of Kate Steinle at the hands of five-time deported illegal alien and seven-time released felon Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez should remind us all of the dangerous wages of ignoring the law.
In the upcoming months, the trial of her killer (on parole from Texas authorities and a user of aliases) may well prove a circus of sorts. We will likely hear all sorts of contextualization to explain why either Lopez-Sanchez was not culpable for the shooting, or hardly can be seen as the inevitable result of a quite unhinged policy. Or we will hear that he was just aiming at sea lions and simply missed with one of his three shots. Indeed, already the ubiquitous and often shameless Rep. Gutierrez has scoffed (on Telemundo no less) that the death of Kate Steinle was “a little thing”[1] (una cosa pequeña).
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine
Everybody knows the deal with Iran is a disaster. Why is equally obvious: Iran will get $150 billion to spend on weapons and its terrorist proxies, will keep its enrichment facilities, will continue to develop missiles, will easily avoid the laughably pusillanimous inspections regime, and will end up a nuclear power with malign consequences for the stability of the Middle East.
Human nature is unchanging, predictable — and can be dangerous if ignored.
Five-time deportee and seven-time felon Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, an unauthorized immigrant, recently was arrested in San Francisco for the murder of an innocent passerby, Kate Steinle.
The alleged killer told a local TV station that he came to San Francisco because it was a sanctuary city. San Francisco has long boasted that it would not turn over unauthorized immigrants to federal immigration authorities.
Continue reading “Progressive Elites Ignore Human Nature at Everyone Else’s Expense”
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media
Last March, California Governor Jerry Brown declared that those who wished existing federal immigration law to be enforced — in the manner that would have saved the late Kate Steinle from a five-times deported, seven-times released felon illegal alien – were:
[A]t best … troglodyte, and at worst … un-Christian.
The U.S. and its allies are faced with four major threats, and they are as diverse and yet as akin as the proverbial apocalyptic horsemen.
Vladimir Putin has a tsarist idea that he can reclaim insidiously the periphery of the old Soviet Union — Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine, the Baltic states — on the principle of protecting Russian-speaking minorities in these breakaway republics. More practically, he feels that any security guarantees extended by the West to these entities are about as valid as an Obama red line or a Greek assurance of financial reform.
Continue reading “The Four Horsemen of a Looming Apocalypse”
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine
President Obama recently gave a speech at the Pentagon about our efforts against ISIS that confirmed he has little awareness of the real world our enemies inhabit. The talk reprised the usual received wisdom and unchallenged orthodoxy that comprise most of the foreign policy establishment’s ideas about Islamic jihadism and how we should fight it. Consider the following particularly egregious examples:
Continue reading “THE PRESIDENT’S LOOKING-GLASS ISLAMIC WORLD”
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Barbarians at the gate usually don’t bring down once-successful civilizations. Nor does climate change. Even mass epidemics like the plague that decimated sixth-century Byzantium do not necessarily destroy a culture.
Continue reading “Disregard for the law is America’s greatest threat”