Obama’s Foreign Policy: Enemy Action

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine 

It’s often hard to determine whether a series of bad policies results from stupidity or malicious intent. Occam’s razor suggests that the former is the more likely explanation,

US Dept. of Labor via Flickr
US Dept. of Labor via Flickr

as conspiracies assume a high degree of intelligence, complex organization, and secrecy among a large number of people, qualities that usually are much less frequent than the simple stupidity, disorganization, and inability to keep a secret more typical of our species. Yet surveying the nearly 6 years of Obama’s disastrous foreign policy blunders, I’m starting to lean towards Goldfinger’s Chicago mob-wisdom: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it’s enemy action.”

Obama’s ineptitude started with his general foreign policy philosophy. George Bush, so the narrative went, was a trigger-happy, unilateralist, blundering, “dead or alive” cowboy who rushed into an unnecessary war in Iraq after alienating our allies and insulting the Muslim world. Obama pledged to be different. As a Los Angeles Continue reading “Obama’s Foreign Policy: Enemy Action”

The Pentagon’s Bow to Islamic Extremism

by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com 

“Caving to pressure from Muslim groups, the Pentagon has relaxed uniform rules to allow Islamic beards, turbans and hijabs. It’s a major win for political correctness and

RaymondIbrahim.com
RaymondIbrahim.com

a big loss for military unit cohesion,” said a recent report.

This new relaxation of rules for Muslims comes at a time when the FBI is tracking more than 100 suspected jihadi-infiltrators of the U.S. military.  Just last month, Craig Benedict Baxam, a former Army soldier and convert to Islam, was sentenced to seven years in prison due to his al-Qaeda/jihadi activities.   Also last month, Mozaffar Khazaee, an Iranian-American working for the Defense Department, was arrested for sending secret documents to America’s enemy, Iran. Continue reading “The Pentagon’s Bow to Islamic Extremism”

Ignoring History: The Folly of Our Iran Pact

Dictatorships abandon treaties when they become inconvenient.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online 

According to our recently proposed treaty with the Iranian government, Iran keeps much of its nuclear program while agreeing to slow its path to weapons-grade enrichment. The Iranians also get crippling economic sanctions lifted.  Continue reading “Ignoring History: The Folly of Our Iran Pact”

Obama’s Munich

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine 

The interim agreement negotiated by the Security Council and Germany with Iran is a serious advance toward what Winston Churchill called the Munich agreement: “a total and unmitigated defeat” and a “disaster of the first magnitude.” Nothing in the agreement guarantees that Iran will fulfill its promises, or that inspectors will be allowed access to all of Iran’s enrichment facilities, let alone its secret sites, or that serious consequences will follow violations of the terms of the agreement. Continue reading “Obama’s Munich”

Peace for Our Time

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online 

The Iranian agreement comes not in isolation, unfortunately. The Syrian debacle instructed the Iranians that the Obama administration was more interested in announcing a peaceful breakthrough than actually achieving it. Continue reading “Peace for Our Time”

The Double-Dealing Middle East Is Double-Dealt

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media 

Boo-hoo, Middle East

About every day or so, a throat-clearing Middle East pundit weighs in to warn us of the Obama’s administration’s dereliction of traditional American engagement. They rightly lament “lead from behind” in Libya. After Benghazi, Libya has turned into something like Somalia. Far more are dying there from sectarian chaos than during the latter years of the hated Moammar Gaddafi’s Photo Credit: John Wardell via Flickrdictatorship.

The Sunni reactionary establishment of the Gulf is right to deplore Obama’s incoherent flip-flop-flips in Egypt and Syria. The oil lords logically conclude that a directionless president will do nothing to stop Iran’s race to get a bomb — and all the subsequent Middle East WMD catch-ups to match it.

Even Obama’s pet Turkey seems confused that its favorite administration is now nowhere to be seen. The Iraqis were given a fresh start after the surge and hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. aid — and still claimed that they wanted the U.S. out. Obama gladly called their hand. Now, left to themselves, they are reverting to the pre-surge violence, whining about security and sectarianism — and back asking us for even more money. Rule One: never bluff an isolationist to yank all his forces from your country. Continue reading “The Double-Dealing Middle East Is Double-Dealt”

Netanyahu’s Necessary Crankiness

We can afford to be overly optimistic about Iran, but Israel can’t.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online 

So far, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani’s peace ruse is still bearing some fruit. Photo Credit:  Downing Street via FlickrPresident Obama was eager to talk with him at the United Nations — only to be reportedly rebuffed, until Obama managed to phone him for the first conversation between heads of state of the two countries since the Iranian storming of the U.S. embassy in 1979.

Rouhani has certainly wowed Western elites with his mellifluous voice, quiet demeanor, and denials of wanting a bomb. The media, who ignore the circumstances of Rouhani’s three-decade trajectory to power, gush that he is suddenly a “moderate” and “Western-educated.” Continue reading “Netanyahu’s Necessary Crankiness”

What Iran Is Asking Us to Believe

by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner 

To believe in the current Iranian, post-Syrian peace initiative, we would have to believe that the Iranian theocracy concedes, in a stunning Qaddafi-like turn-around, that its decade-long effort to obtain nuclear weapons was a terrible strategic mistake that earned it only ostracism and crippling sanctions that have no chance of being ended by a resolute West. Continue reading “What Iran Is Asking Us to Believe”

President Rouhani and Peace Studies

by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner 

There is a long history of foreign authoritarians channeling left-wing talking points when they appeal to an American audience, apparently on the theory that they score points against the American establishment. Continue reading “President Rouhani and Peace Studies”

Mideast Nuclear Holocaust

by Raymond Ibrahim // FrontPage Magazine 

A Review of The Last Israelis by Noah Beck

lliAfter constant exposure to critically important news, it begins to lose all meaning and sense of urgency.  Hearing the same warnings over and over again—especially when the status quo seems static—can cause a certain desensitization, a resigned apathy that ignores the warnings in the wishful hope that they won’t materialize.  This hope becomes more optimistic (and passive) with each passing day that the warnings do not materialize.

One of the most evident examples of this phenomenon is the threat of a nuclear Iran.  For years, the international community has been hearing about Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons; for years, the world has been hearing Iran make bold, genocidal threats—most notoriously, that it will wipe the state of Israel off the map. But so far, Iran reportedly still has no nukes, and no large attack has been launched on Israel.  Thus, many have become desensitized to the situation—including those charged with ensuring that a nuclear Iran never becomes a reality. Continue reading “Mideast Nuclear Holocaust”