Purim 2012: Obama, Israel, and Iran

By Alan Caruba

On the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Adar (a lunar calendar), Jews around the world will celebrate Purim. This year it begins at sunset on Wednesday, March 7 and concludes the following day. If I was an Iranian ayatollah, I would be worried.

Like Passover that celebrates the liberation of Jews, their exodus from Egypt in the days of the pharaoh, Purim celebrates a victory over the evil prime minister of the Persian empire ruled by King Ahasuerus. Haman was the archetype anti-Semite and, as the story of Esther relates, he was angered by the refusal of Mordechai, the leader of the Jews, to bow to him. Haman convinced the king to issue a decree for the extermination of all the Jews on 13 Adar.

At various points in Jewish history, leaders, prophets, and fate—some would call it God’s intervention—have occurred to protect Jews from those who hate them and seek their destruction. In the case of Purim, it happened that the king had ordered the death of his wife, Vashti, who had failed to follow his orders. He held a beauty contest to find a new bride and Esther was chosen. She soon found favor with him, but she had prudently not revealed that she was Jewish.

When the Jews faced extermination, however, she invited the king and Haman to join her for a feast where she revealed she was Jewish to save her people. Haman was hanged and Mordechai was appointed the prime minister in his stead. A new decree was issued, granting the Jews the right to defend themselves and, on the 13th of Adar, they dispatched many of their enemies. On the 14th, they rested and celebrated.

Among Jews is a joke, a lighthearted parody of grace before dining that goes “They tried to kill us. They didn’t. We won. Let’s eat.”

Given the events of this week as the President spoke to the convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), followed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the fate of Israel again hangs in the balance due to the repeated threats of annihilation by the Iranian regime and the prospect of their acquiring nuclear weapons. Both leaders stressed their opposition to this. Both stressed it was not just a threat to Israel, but to the entire world.

The ayatollahs would be wise to read the “Megillah”, the scroll of Esther, an integral part of the celebration of Purim. Reportedly, Netanyahu give Obama a copy when they met to discuss the Iranian threat.

Netanyahu’s speech stressed the right of the sovereign nation of Israel to defend itself and the President’s speech affirmed that Israel has the right to defend itself “by itself” while promising that “I have your back.”

In a Wall Street Journal commentary, “The ‘Jewish’ President”, columnist Bret Stephens cast great doubt over Barack Hussein Obama’s trustworthiness. “Here is a president who fought tooth-and-nail against the very sanctions on Iran for which he now seeks to reap political credit. He inherited from the Bush administration the security assistance to Israel he now advertises as proof of his ‘unprecedented’ commitment to the Jewish state.”

“His defense secretary has repeatedly cast doubt on the efficacy of a U.S. military option against Iran even as the president insists it remains ‘on the table.’ His top national security advisers keep warning Israel not to attack Iran even as he claims not to presume to tell (Israeli leaders) what is best for them.”

Stephens cites a book by Peter Beinart, due out next month, called “The Crisis of Zionism.” Chapter five is titled “The Jewish President.” Beinart points out that Obama’s views about Israel have been shaped by his friends Rashid Khalidi and former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Beinart warns that Obama’s views were shaped as well by “a coterie of far-left Chicago Jews who ‘bred in Obama a specific, and subversive, vision of American Jewish identity and of the Jewish state.’”

“…But the important question here isn’t about American-Jewish attitudes toward Israel,” concludes Stephens, “It’s about the president’s honesty…On the evidence of Mr. Beinart’s sympathetic book, Mr. Obama’s speech at AIPAC was one long exercise of political cynicism.”

If a March 5 Debka File report is accurate, then the President has “decided to let Israel have weapons systems suitable for long-range military operations and strikes against fortified underground targets. They include four KC-35 aerial refueling aircraft, doubling the number already in the Israeli Air Force’s inventory, and GBU-31 Direct Attack Munition-JDAM bombs of the type which serve U.S. bombers, especially those based on aircraft carriers.”

So we are left to sort through the text of AIPAC speeches and other scraps of information to determine the future. The Debka File report appears to signal a change of attitude toward Iran after three years of fruitless and humiliating efforts to open negotiations with that nation.

After three years, Obama has had a challenging learning curve to disabuse him of his beliefs regarding Islam and the Middle East. He entered the White House with some serious reservations about Israel that have been reflected in his prior behavior toward the Jewish state.

His administration has committed as many, if not more, grave errors of political correctness regarding the Islamic war on the West than Carter’s or Clinton’s. The Obama administration made it known that there would no longer be any reference to the global war on terror, substituting “overseas contingency operations” in its stead. The brutal Fort Hood attack was not labeled an Islamic massacre but rather “workplace violence.”

Obama has learned that pretending that Islamo-fascists either don’t exist or don’t mean what they say does not solve the problem. To his credit, he authorized the killing of bin Laden and the drone attack on al Qaeda’s Anwar Awlaki, the mentor to the Fort Hood killer.

The leading supporter of terrorism, however, remains Iran, formerly known as Persia.

For Jewish and Christian Americans the greatest delusion about the Islamic war for world domination is the self-delusion that it is not really happening. As they celebrate Purim 2012, the Israelis harbor no such thoughts.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Heating Up a War of Words

By Alan Caruba

On Sunday, March 4, President Obama addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in Washington, D.C. As February concluded on a Leap Year day, I opined that Israel and Iran were largely engaged in a war of words, noting briefly the military difficulties involved should Israel launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and other targets.

One American general quoted in my commentary estimated it would take a thousand sorties by air to have a decisive impact. That leaves the question of whether, in fact, Israel would have to attack on its own or whether, in fact, Obama’s AIPAC speech was intended to send a message to Tehran that such an attack would include an American component.

Obama emphasized his belief that “sanctions and diplomacy” will achieve an Iranian retreat from its long-stated goal of acquiring nuclear parity for itself, but it is fundamentally Iran’s goal of “wiping Israel off the map” that will determine the outcome of the current war of words.

That war of words heated up considerably on Sunday.

I was reminded of what George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003. “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.”

What we know is that Iran is hell-bent on putting a nuclear warhead on the tip of a long-range missile and firing it at Israel.

What we know is that Israel must prevent this if it is to survive.

What we don’t know with certainty, despite the President’s speech to AIPAC, is whether America would engage Iran militarily in collaboration with Israel.

In addition to winding down U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he has not had any luck getting the nations of the Middle East to accept his many apologies or diplomatic efforts to reduce any of the conflicts and tensions in the region. Indeed, on his watch, he has witnessed a failed 2009 Iranian people’s protest against its leaders. There have also been insurrections that overthrew Tunisia’s, Libya’s and Egypt’s long-term dictators that took everyone by surprise.

The so-called “Arab spring” is still shrouded in Rumsfeld’s many “unknowns.” Few seem particularly hopeful.

What struck me most forcefully were the words of Israel’s president Simon Peres, a man who has devoted 65 years of his life to establishing, defending, and building Israel. He began by thanking the President “for being such a good friend” to Israel.

The former Israeli foreign minister did not use the language of diplomacy. “Iran is an evil, cruel regime. Iran is a danger to the entire world. It must be stopped and it will be stopped.”

“President Obama,” said Peres, “made it clear that Iran will never become nuclear. There is no space between us.” He concluded saying, “Mr. President, I know your commitment to Israel is deep and profound. We have a friend in the White House.”

If the president of Israel feels this way, it is hard to believe that it is not so.

The problem for myself and many Americans is that we have witnessed how mercurial Obama has been; how inclined to deception he is to get his way even in the face of significant opposition to his legislative agenda and other policies.

This is why my antenna lighted up when I heard Obama cite Israel’s “ability to defend itself, by itself.” By itself? By itself, military analysts are in general agreement that Israel’s chances of effectively knocking out Iran’s nuclear and military assets are relatively slim.

“There should not be a shred of doubt,” said Obama, “When the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.”

Coming from any other President that would seem to be a conclusive statement of support, including military support.

But President Obama is not like any other President this nation has ever known.

He has brought America to the brink of financial collapse. He has demonstrated considerable sympathy and affinity with Muslim nations. It is doubtful that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has much faith in his promises.

The “unknowns”, of course, are the secret discussions between the Israeli government and our own at this point.

Unknown, too, is the hubris of the Iranian leadership who believe they are directed by Allah to destroy Israel and to establish and lead a new Islamic caliphate to rule the world. Those are dangerous beliefs, but there is no doubt that Iran’s leaders have been guided by them since 1979.

For these reasons, there remains only the hope that President Obama’s promises are not writ on water.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Israel v. Iran: A War of Words

By Alan Caruba

The debate over when or if Israel will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities has been raging of late and I am beginning to suspect that much of what passes for news represents a charade being orchestrated between Israel and the United States to ratchet up pressure on Iran’s leaders.

President Obama will address the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Sunday and no doubt his speech will be closely parsed for any indication of an official U.S. position regarding Iran’s aggressive pursuit of nuclear weapons. The address by Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will likewise be analyzed. Suffice to say, both oppose a nuclear Iran.

One fact stands out. U.S. efforts, in concert with other Western nations and aided by some Middle Eastern nations, have put tremendous pressure on Iran’s ability to sell its oil and to collect the revenues. It is having some success.

Another fact that is often overlooked is that Iran has avoided war since its conflict with Iraq from September 1980 to August 1988. It was costly in lives and treasure for Iran and ended in a stalemate. Later Saddam Hussein would attack Kuwait an act that played a role in the decision to put together a coalition to drive the Iraqis out and to later invade Iraq and depose Saddam.

Iran has preferred to use proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza to pursue its attacks on Israel. It supports terrorist activity. Its alliance with Syria is going to be affected by the outcome of the internal attacks on the Assad dictatorship. The bulk of the Middle Eastern nations are united in their condemnation of the Syrian leader. Except for pro-forma support from Russia and China in the United Nations, Iran is increasingly isolated.

As Prof. Barry Rubin recently wrote in The Jerusalem Post, credible observers and analysts of the Middle East believe that Iran wants nuclear weapons because “Iran’s main goal, like that of Pakistan, is to make itself immune to any reprisals for terrorism and subversion by having nuclear weapons.” Prof. Rubin asserted that “In part, the rationale for the nuclear program is outdated, though that certainly won’t stop Tehran from pursuing it.” Prof. Rubin is an Israeli scholar, a research director, and a member of the editorial board of the Middle East Quarterly.

Prof. Rubin noted that, “After 32 years in power the Islamist regime in Tehran has yet to do something really adventurous abroad.”

Then there is the belief by military experts that Israel may, in fact, lack the capability to effectively neutralize Iran’s nuclear program. Richard Russell, a professor at the U.S. National Defense University’s Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C., has said that “The Israelis actually have limited means of attacking Iran’s nuclear program. This is a very, very difficult problem for the Israelis, and it’s getting more and more acute.”

While acknowledging that Israel’s air force is “capable of launching an attack on Iran and causing damage”, Yifah Shaper, director of the Military Balance Program at Tel Aviv’s University for National Security Studies, has said that “It is far from capable of disabling the Iran nuclear program. That would take at least a month of sustained bombing, That’s not something Israel can carry out alone.”

Retired U.S. Air Force General, Charles ‘Chuck’ Wald, calculates that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would require in excess of one thousand sorties. None of this is lost on the Israelis.

While Israel has previously destroyed nuclear reactors in Iraq in 1981 and again in Syria in 2007, the logistics of disabling Iran’s extensive nuclear facilities would be daunting. Israel would simultaneously have to invade southern Lebanon to deter Hezbollah’s use of thousands of missiles there.

While I have previously expressed the view that Israel would, if it lacked any other option, attack Iran, a closer examination of the many factors involved in such an operation suggests that it would only occur if there was credible evidence that Iran was preparing to launch nuclear-armed missiles. Current intelligence analysis suggests that Iran is still far from manufacturing the nuclear warheads for its missiles.

The question remains whether the ayatollahs running Iran would risk any attack by Israel and while, in general, that option exists, the economic weakening of Iran by current sanctions, they would likely exacerbate Iran’s leadership facing problem a restive, unhappy population that wants them out of power. An attack might serve to unite Iranians..

Finally, Iran’s military is far from capable of dealing with an Israeli air attack that might conceivably trigger support by the U.S. and allied nations. None of the Gulf nations has any love for Iran. There are lots of U.S. military assets in the region.

As the rhetoric heats up, Iran has been making a show of its military strength holding military exercises and by sending elements of its limited naval capability through the Suez canal and meaningless trips in the Mediterranean. It continues to threaten to close the Strait of Harmuz. Its Air Force is nothing to write home about either. It is composed of aged U.S.aircraft and Russian aircraft.

While a war of words will continue between Israel, the United States, and Iran, a cold calculation argues against an Israeli attack and against U.S. involvement after more than a decade of U.S. conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Neither nation wants a shooting war with Iran.

The odds, in this observer’s view, are against an Israeli attack despite my earlier concerns that it could or would occur in the near term.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The Iranian Countdown

By Alan Caruba

How many times does Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have to publicly and loudly say that they intend to “wipe Israel off the map” and otherwise annihilate its Jewish population before the world takes seriously the murderous intent of Iran?

How many negotiations between United Nations Atomic Agency personnel and how much deliberate obfuscation and refusal to cooperate will it take before the world admits it is dealing with raving lunatics when it comes to the leaders of Iran?

In late February Ayatollah Khamenei, at meeting with Iran’s nuclear scientists, said “Pressures, sanctions, and assassinations will bear no fruit. No obstacles can stop Iran’s nuclear work.”

The widow of one assassinated nuclear scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi Rochan Behdast, was quoted in the Iranian Fars News Agency article saying, “Mostafa’s ultimate goal was the annihilation of Israel.”

In the lead-up to World War Two, numerous meetings with the Nazi leadership (plus a secret agreement with the Soviets to divide Poland) did nothing to stop its annexation of Austria and its invasion of Poland, the trigger for the conflagration.

Let us understand something. All the sanctions in the world will not deter the Iranian ayatollahs from a mission that began in 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini led the Islamic revolution that ousted the Shah and turned Iran into a prison nation. Among their earliest acts was to take U.S. diplomats hostage and hold them for 444 days.

International law and international sanctions mean nothing to the ayatollahs.


To the Iranian leadership—but not to its citizens who went into the streets of Tehran in 2009 to protest Ahmadinjad’s re-election—the whole world revolves around them. Their purpose is to bring back the Twelfth Imam, a mythical Shiite deity, to impose their brand of Islam on the world. Unknown to most is the fact that this can only be accomplished with a worldwide cataclysm of wars and massive death.

To the ever-lasting shame of the great powers, America, England, France, Russia, and China, they are all waiting for tiny Israel to preemptively attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and thus remove or at least delay the inevitable. It is a repeat of the 1930s run-up to World War II. They are running scared. They fear a war, but are failing to take the military action to avoid it a twenty-first century apocalypse..

An Israeli news agency DebkaFile report on February 22 was titled “Iran cuts down to six weeks timeline for weapons-grade uranium.” It reported that “Western and Israeli intelligence experts have concluded that the transfer of 20 percent uranium enrichment to the underground Fordo site near Qom has shortened Iran’s race for the 90 percent (weapons) grade product to six weeks.”

“The International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano said Tuesday night, Feb 21, ‘It is disappointing that Iran did not accept our request to visit Parchin.’ This is the site where Iran conducts experiments in nuclear explosives and triggers.”

Disappointing?! Despite saying it was ready to resume talks with the great powers this is just one more example out of hundreds over the years in which Iran has purposefully stalled its way to still more time to achieve nuclear weapons.

When they get them, they will use them. The first target is going to be Israel and the next will be the United States of America, the Little Satan and the Great Satan, and time is running out.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, on February 17, released a report on a forthcoming March 3-4 Harvard Kennedy School of Government conference devoted to the dismantling of the state of Israel. A “One State Conference: Israel/Palestine and the One State Solution.” The last “solution” Jews faced was the Nazi’s “final solution” that became the Holocaust.

President Obama, busy apologizing to and withdrawing from Afghanistan has been famously hostile to Israel, a signal to the ayatollahs who have rejected every effort he has made to open a dialogue. Harvard’s conference sends the same signal.

The Israelis have twice destroyed nuclear reactors under construction, first in Iraq, and later in Syria.

The Jews will save the world because they have to defend themselves. And they will receive only condemnation for it.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Not If, But When

By Alan Caruba

The Jewish sage, Hillel, said, “In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.” This has been interpreted to mean that it is an obligation to stand against evil, even if other’s courage dissert them.

One doesn’t have to be a historian, a military strategist, a biblical scholar or any other credentialed expert to know that the question of the destruction of Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities is not one of if, but when?

On previous occasions, the Israelis, sensing a direct threat, attacked nuclear facilities, first in Iraq on June 7, 1981 when it destroyed the Osiris reactor under construction and again on September 6, 2007 when it destroyed an undeclared nuclear facility in the Deir ez-Zor region in Syria. It’s worth noting that neither action sparked a war.

Earlier, in 1967, the Israelis, acting on intelligence that Egypt was about to attack, launched its air force and ground troops in what came to be known as the Six Day War. In time, Egypt came to the peace table, signing a historic agreement with Israel.

The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq now essentially clears the air lanes directly into Iran for an attack, shortening the route that otherwise might have been over the air space of Saudi Arabia. Indeed, Israel with Saudi permission could use both routes because the Saudis are just as much opposed to a nuclear Iran. As it is, the U.S. Air Force has recently re-assigned key units formerly based in Iraq to Kuwait. The Middle East chess board is being reset.

The Israelis have already undertaken long range practice runs flyiing their bombers as far as Gibraltar and back.

The chatteratti are all saying that Israel faces an “existential” threat. They’re wrong. Israel faces an actual threat of destruction and Iran’s Supreme Leader has never made a secret of his intentions.

A February 1st Wall Street Journal editorial noted that James Clapper, President Obama’s top intelligence advisor, recently told a Senate committee that Iran’s leadership, including Ali Khamenei “have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States as a response to real or perceived actions that threat the regime.”

A story last year that made brief headlines involved a disrupted plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. in a Washington, D.C. restaurant. The editorial noted that the press “went out of its way to cast doubt on the story. The Iranians can’t be that crazy?” Well, yes they are. What else should one expect from a regime that shouts death to America and Israel every day?

The editorial concluded, asking “If the regime is prepared to stage terrorist strikes in America when they don’t have a bomb, what will they be capable of when they do have one?”

Another suggestion that a mission is likely to occur was the unusual statement by the Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, that he thought Israel would attack Iran. As the former Director of the CIA, he would be in a good position to know about such things, but it unusual for a DOD Secretary to make such predictions.

The political calculus for President Obama in an election year depends on whether the U.S. supports Israel (a popular option) or lays back and does little (as in Libya), thus losing any chance of securing the powerful evangelical Christian vote; not to mention Jewish support.

Israel will do what the United States, the Saudis, and everyone else in the region will not. It will save itself and the world from the crazed Iranian ayatollahs. The “collateral damage” will be people in Iran who will die as a result and the sad irony will be that the majority of Iranians want an end to the regime as much as the rest of the world.

Thus far, in addition to sanctions against Iran, several of its top nuclear scientists having been assassinated, and an explosion at an Iranian missile launch site killed some of its top military personnel. It also and temporarily eliminated its potential for launching a missile with a six thousand mile range, capable of hitting—you guessed it—the United States.

Presumably, members of Israel’s Mossad and the United States’ CIA should take a bow for these actions, but they can’t for obvious reasons.

After re-inviting members of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency to visit recently, the Iranians refused to permit them to visit their nuclear facilities, many of which are buried in bunkers for protection. Meanwhile, the U.S. has let it be known it is working on even bigger “bunker buster” bombs.

Israel is doing its best to signal the Iranian regime that they need to change three decades of an incessant drive to acquire nuclear arms. On February 2nd, its Vice Premier and Strategic Affairs Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, called a nuclear Iran “a nightmare to the free world”, noting that “the West has the ability to strike, but as long as Iran isn’t convinced that there’s a determination to follow through with it, they’ll continue with their manipulations.”

Throughout modern history, even in the face of an imminent threat, the West as vacillated, cut deals with Hitler’s Nazi regime, tried to alter North Korea’s nuclear program with bribes, and dismissed other threats.

Reading the U.S.’s true intent must be a fulltime job in some office of the Israeli government. For three years, the message has been less than encouraging and even hostile. A U.S. President who declared Israel should return to its 1967 borders is out of touch with reality. One can only hope this is all an elaborate hoax to put Iran off its guard. If so, it hasn’t worked.

As Ya’alon has said, “The Iranian threat is not a case of Iran versus Israel. Israel has never declared war on Iran, but the Khomeinistic regime has declared total war on the State of Israel’s very existence.”

The Israelis will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. It has no choice. It should be joined by the forces of the United States, Saudi Arabia, and others who would benefit, but as in 1967, 1981, and 2007, Israel will be left to do what others lack the courage to do.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Syria: Dictatorship 101

By Alan Caruba

A bit of Syrian history will prove useful as the world looks on while Syrians are slaughtered in the thousands to ensure that Bashar al-Assad, the son of the late Hafez al-Assad remains that nation’s dictator.

Hafez came to power in a bloodless military coup in 1970. A year later he assumed the presidency, beginning three decades of classic repression in which all enemies, real or imagined, were jailed or killed. His power came from the way he packed the government with family members and those from his minority Alawite sect, a Shiite group in a majority Sunni nation.

The last time Syrians tried to rise up in opposition to Hafez was in 1982 and he slaughtered thousands in the city of Homa. Hafez ran a secular government and ran into problems when he joined his fellow Arabs in the wars against Israel. In 1967, the Israelis took control of Syria’s Golan Heights during the Six-Day War. Strategically important to protect a swath of northern Israel, the Heights were never returned.

The war was a turning point in the Middle East insofar as Israel also took control of the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt as well as the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. Israel later signed a peace treaty with Egypt, returned the Sinai, gave the Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, and occupied the West Bank, but chose not to formally annex it despite its historic connection as Israel’s provinces of Judea and Samaria. Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994.

While all this was going on Hafez al-Assad had turned his attention to Lebanon that had a decade’s-long civil war. In 1976, in the name of peace-keeping, he put his troops there and they remained until the assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri on October 20, 2004. The Lebanese rose in opposition, forcing Syria to withdraw its troops in 2005.

If all this seems convoluted, it is! That only thing to keep in mind is that Syria has been in the grip of the Assad family now with Bashar al-Assad having been immediately put in power following his father’s passing.

Dictatorship is the family business and, while the present opposition is generating a fair amount of hope, fear, and consternation throughout the Middle East, the best efforts of Arab League diplomacy and the typically useless fulminations of the United Nations have achieved a big fat zero since the insurgency began ten months and five thousand dead Syrians ago.

The latest word is that the uprising has reached the outskirts of Damascus and some analysts are suggesting the Syrian military, those loyal to Assad, is overstretched, but he has three big aces in his hand and two of them are Russia and China, both of whom have promised to veto any United Nations resolutions condemning Syria.

He also has Iran to supply him with guns and bullets. Iran has been a longtime ally of Syria and has been a major supporter of Hezbollah, the Palestinian organization headquartered in Syria and in political control of Lebanon as Syria’s and Iran’s proxies.

So, as uprisings go, young Assad seems to have learned well how to put them down by killing as many of his countrymen as necessary.

His neighbor, Turkey, is flailing around for any kind of a policy and the rest of the Middle East is well aware that the United States of America, led by Barack Obama, has provided the same level of indifference to Syria’s people as he did when the Iranians filled the streets to protest their ayatollahs.

In just three years the U.S. has become a very weak player in the Middle East despite having a carrier task force parked near the Strait of Harmuz. We are out of Iraq and will be out of Afghanistan by next year. Our only real ally, Israel, has been treated with complete disdain. If you want to see what a failed foreign policy looks like, look at Obama’s.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Defending Jesus and Judaism

By Alan Caruba

As a book reviewer I receive countless requests to read books and, when I received one regarding “Kosher Jesus” by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, I was intrigued by the title. In addition to fathering nine children, the rabbi has written 27 books, is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and the profile on his website is filled with achievements and encomiums

I was, quite frankly, floored by his book. As a longtime informal student of world religions, I found his comparisons between the biblical and historical Jesus impressive. As word of this book gets out, I suspect he will be contested by Christians because he meticulously reclaims the historical Jesus as quintessentially Jewish without a hint of the Christology that was applied to his life following his death at the hands of the Romans.

With some irony, it is another rabbi, Immanuel Schochet, who recently issued a letter banning anyone from reading “Kosher Jesus”, calling it heretical. Rabbi Boteach replied saying that “America is not Iran and rabbis in the American Jewish community are not the Revolutionary Guard.” Well said!

Debuting officially on February 1st, I suspect Rabbi Boteach is going to come in for a world of disputation from elements of both the Jewish and Christian communities. Their problem will be that Rabbi Boteach is a serious student of the Torah, the Talmud (rabbinical analysis and commentary on the Torah), and the New Testament.

His book is testament (no pun intended) to his central assertion that Jesus was a charismatic rabbi, a Jew preaching exclusively to Jews at a time when Israel was seeking to throw off the occupation of the greatest pagan power of his era, the Roman Empire. Indeed, their rebellion would culminate in the destruction of the Second Temple and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Jews in 70 CE.

Rabbi Boteach dissects the gospels, all written well after the death of Jesus, and the writings of Saul of Tarsus, saying in effect, that Christianity wrongly asserts that the Covenant and laws of Judaism had been replaced by a religion based entirely on faith in the belief that Jesus died for the sins of the world and accepting him as a personal savior removes one’s personal responsibility to live a holy life, a righteous life, and one that accepts the Torah as God’s word and law.

Among Jewish and Christian martyrs who died for their faith, Rabbi Boteach places Jesus as the best known Jew in the world. He condemns the New Testament for seeking accommodation with the Roman Empire, composed of idol-worshipping pagans, by turning the historical Jesus into an enemy of Judaism and thereby letting loose two thousand years of anti-Semitism.

The rabbi is not seeking to convert Christians to Judaism and notes several times that Judaism does not proselytize. “Theologically, Christians and Jews think differently about the nature of the world.” Instead, he seeks to restore Jesus “to his authentic Jewish roots” to “allow a new era of Jewish-Christian reapproachement to begin.” Indeed, in the wake of the Holocaust and the reestablishment of the nation of Israel, it is clear this change has been occurring.

In a time of resurgent Islamism, Rabbi Boteach rightly says that “Jews and Christians have so much in common, we must unite behind our democratic values, defend the embattled State of Israel, and participate in a unified front against those who have vowed to defeat us.”

Amen to that!

“Kosher Jesus” will not be an easy book for Christians to read because it rebuts much of what the New Testament has to say about Jesus. It eviscerates the claims of the gospel writers and of Paul, an apostle who never knew the Jesus he promoted as part-god, part-human, a distinctly pagan belief. The Romans routinely believed their emperors were gods. The Greek pantheon of gods had distinctly human characteristics and failings.

“Restoring his Jewish identity makes (Jesus) available to us as a flesh-and-blood hero who fought for what is right, in place of a celestial icon utterly detached from human experience”, says Rabbi Boteach.

The perfection attributed to Jesus, the rabbi notes, is comparable to that attributed to the Buddha and, in the Hindu faith, to Krishna. Humanity longs for such perfection, but Judaism believes that we achieve righteousness in our struggle to do the right thing, by our acts, not by faith alone. Jews know it is human to fail and that is why God offers redemption. Indeed, the word “Israel” means “he who wrestles with God.”

I recommend “Kosher Jesus” to anyone who wrestles with God, who wrestles with their human imperfections, and who strives to live a righteous life.

Editor’s note: One can read Caruba’s monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction at http://www.bookviews.com./

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Auschwitz: Ignoring History, Predicting the Future

The gates of Auscwitz - a Nazi death camp

By Alan Caruba

The late Israeli scholar and diplomat, Abba Eban, (1915-2002) said, “History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.”

Similarly, Winston Churchill said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they have tried everything else.” In Churchill’s case, he was referring to the U.S. reluctance to become involved in another war in Europe, but the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 changed that overnight. By 1945, along with our allies, the wars in Europe and Asia were over.

Sixty-seven years ago, on January 27, 1945, elements of the Soviet army came upon the Auschwitz concentration camps to discover a Nazi killing machine, one of several such camps created to exploit forced labor and to systematically kill Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, clerics, prisoners of war, and anyone else deemed an enemy of the Nazi state, right down to children and infants.

The Nazis killed people on such a scale that it is almost incomprehensible. It happened within my lifetime and that of many others, some of whom are among the fortunate survivors. And yet, today, the denial of the Holocaust and the millions of other Nazi victims is an article of faith among Arabs in the Middle East and countless others around the world.

A January 25th Agence France-Presse article reported that “One in five young Germans has no idea that Auschwitz was a Nazi death camp, a poll released Wednesday showed, two days ahead of Holocaust memorial day. Although 90 percent of those asked did know it was a concentration camp”, the Stern magazine poll revealed “that Auschwitz meant nothing to 21 percent of 18-29 year olds.”

It is essential that people in their respective nations know their own and other’s histories. A hallmark of the former Soviet regime in Russia was the way it rewrote history and, in George Orwell’s classic “1984”, a work of fiction about communism, there was a Ministry of Truth in which history was rewritten.

In the United States, since around the 1960s, strenuous efforts have been made to alter the teaching of the nation’s history. The Founding Fathers are often portrayed as slaveholders to downplay their devotion to liberty.

Even they knew that slavery was an abomination, but their task was to create a new nation, one dedicated to liberty. The U.S. Constitution was approved by twelve state delegations in 1787, but in 1861, barely 74 years later it would take a Civil War to put an end to slavery and another hundred years to end the exclusion of African Americans from access to their full rights under the Constitution.

Several generations of Americans have passed through our school systems—literally controlled by the federal government after the creation of the Department of Education in 1979 after being transferred from the former Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, a legacy of Jimmy Carter’s single term. All curriculum taught in the schools comes from the DOE thanks to its control over a national, one-size-fits-all testing system introduced with the “No Child Left Behind” program championed by George W. Bush.

To not know about Auschwitz, whether one is German, American, or any other nationality is a failure on a grand scale because it means that it can be repeated. To not know America’s epic struggle to fulfill its promise of liberty leaves new generations at a disadvantage, as in the case of a fifth of young Germans today, ignorant of their nation’s past.

In today’s world, many worry about the fate of Israel, surrounded by hostile nations and openly threatened by an Iran seeking nuclear weapons. Its independence was declared in 1948, barely three years after the end of World War II. Its first task was to absorb, not only the survivors of the Nazi regime throughout Europe, but those who were forced to flee Arab nations in the wake of the war. Its independence was greeted with the first of several wars against it. The general hostility to Jews that preceded the Holocaust by centuries is a stain on humanity.

So there is cause for concern when one in five young Germans have no idea what went on in Auschwitz and the other Nazi death camps.

It is a concern when the Syrian dictatorship has already killed 5,000 of its own people to maintain itself.

It is a concern for Iraq, already falling back into an internal conflict after decades of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and the end of the U.S. occupation.

It is a concern for an Iranian dictatorship on the cusp of creating its own nuclear weapons.

It is a concern for Venezuela, held in the grip of Hugo Chavez’s dictatorship, an acolyte of Communist Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

It is a concern for Europeans whose political experiment, the European Union, threatens the financial stability of its member nations with the sole exception of Germany.

It is a concern for Americans who witnessed the unilateral limited nuclear disarmament of the nation and the huge reduction of its military power by the Obama administration, less than the lifetime after the end of World War II.

The world remains a dangerous place. That is the lesson of history.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

2012's State of the World

By Alan Caruba

"Only the Dead have seen the End of War" – Plato

For myself and a lot of other Americans, the killing of Osama bin Laden was the highpoint of 2011. A decade has passed since nearly 3,000 Americans were killed on September 11, 2001. He was found in an army town in Pakistan.

Meanwhile the war in Afghanistan grinds on for no explicable reason, but the war in Iraq was declared ended for U.S. troops on December 15. Within twenty-four hours of the last troops departure bombings occurred in Baghdad and the nation began to come apart. The single unifying force in Iraq had been—you guessed it—the U.S. military.

Evil men met their end in 2011, but surely not enough of them. Gone now are Libya’s Colonel Gadhafi, North Korea’s Kim Jung Il. Classic dictators, it is likely that Syria’s Bashar Assad will be overthrown in 2012. The year began when Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the nation he had controlled for four decades. In February Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign.

The “Arab Spring” was declared. It was and is an illusion. In terms of its lack of democracy, the Middle East, the seat of Islam, remains a rebuke to the modern world.

In 1979, the Iranians overthrew the dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah, and replaced him with the even worse dictatorship of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini. His passing put Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in charge and bogus elections have made Mamoud Ahmadinejad president. The balance of power in the Middle East will shift dramatically if Iran achieves nuclear weapons.

As regions go, Africa just barely managed to retain a few democratic nations while others remain in the grip of dictators of varying degrees of evil. The northern tier, known as the Maghreb, had been the spark of revolutions from Tunisia to Libya to Egypt. One sign of hope was the succession of South Sudan in July. In Africa, too, the emnity of Muslims toward its growing Christian population continues to spark unrest. In Nigeria, Muslim terrorists bombed churches on Christmas Day. How great an outrage is that?

Not all killer events in 2011 were wars and revolutions. In March, a 9.1 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck eastern Japan killing nearly 16,000 and leaving nearly 4,000 missing. Four nuclear power plants were shut down after technical failures created widespread zones of radiation.

The European Union which was created in the wake of two wars on that continent remains in turmoil after several member nations posed a threat of financial default due to the socialist mismanagement of their economies. Its fate remains unknown, but it well could deconstruct itself in favor of a return to individual sovereignties.

In October, Israel---reviled by most of the world for having the temerity to exist--- returned 1,077 Palestinian terrorists to Hamas in exchange—are you ready for this—for a single Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who had been kidnapped and held prisoner since 2006. Though not a sovereign nation, Palestine was admitted as a member by UNESCO, an agency of the United Nations, on October 31. Ever since 1948 when the Israelis defeated an attack by five Arab nations the UN has maintained an agency, UNRWA, whose sole purpose is to service Palestinians.

A former Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Mier, said it best. “We shall have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” She could have been speaking of America as well because we are high on the list of Arab hatreds.

As 2011 came to an end, Americans were pleased to see their troops come home from combat in Iraq and would feel the same about Afghanistan. The two wars fought in Iraq have been sobering experiences, reminders of the role of the U.S. as the world’s policeman. 

We fight now with a volunteer military and one whose equipment from aircraft to ships to combat vehicles is growing old or being retired at a rate that raises serious questions about our ability to defend the homeland or wage war abroad.

The enduring truth of any year of recorded history has been that tribes, religions, and nations go to war with one another. It is naïve to believe that another war is not just around the corner, most likely in the Middle East and mostly likely with Iran. Israel has been in a state of war, hot or cold, with all its “neighbors” in the Middle East since its founding in 1948. It is being inexorably forced to the decision to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Leadership is a critical factor when war threatens. The nation is in great need of it, but there are few signs it exists in the White House and among the political class in Congress these days.

I began with a quote from Plato. I will end with one from Marcus Tullious Cicero:

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.”

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Desperate Middle East Regimes

By Alan Caruba

The world hasn’t seen this much turmoil since the years leading up to World War II. By contrast even the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991 did not cause this much uncertainty.

The Middle East currently holds the greatest prospect for a hot war as Iran and its close ally, Syria, struggle to maintain control over their populations. Iran’s proxies in Syria and Lebanon, Hezbollah, and, in the Gaza, Hamas, are being told to get ready for a war on Israel. Meanwhile, the Arab League has turned on Syria and is hostile to Iran. Turkey is stationing troops on its border with Syria.

The Syrian dictator, the second generation Bashar Assad, is fighting for his life in much the same way as Libya’s former dictator, Moammar Gadhafi did. In Egypt, the people are occupying Cairo’s Tahir Square demanding that the military step aside for a government composed of elected representatives. An election is being held with the likely outcome that the Muslim Brotherhood will acquire political power there. This pattern will be repeated elsewhere.

The dictatorial regimes of Iran and Syria are using Israel in an attempt to divert the attention of their people from their efforts to remain in power. Anti-Semitism in the Middle East is as rabid as anywhere on Earth; but it is not working its old magic. An all-out war on Israel could, in fact, bring the regimes down, but these are desperate men in charge.

The real news is the covert efforts being used to undermine the military power of Iran and Syria. Iran just claimed it had captured twelve CIA spies. Additionally, Israel’s famed covert service, the Mossad, it also being blamed for recent events that must surely terrify the mullahs and the Assad regime.

DEBKA File, an Israeli news agency, in a November 25 analysis noted an “explosion which wiped out Iran’s entire missile command, including Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam, at the secret Revolutionary Guards base in Aghadir near Tehran on October 12.” Apparently it was not so secret!

On November 27 there was a tremendous explosion that rocked Isfahan, home to one of Iran’s main facilities for refining uranium for its nuclear program and Iran’s largest facility for research and development of ballistic missiles. Some reports say neither was affected, but speculation persists that one of them was.

On November 23, an illegal Hezbollah arsenal in Siddiqin housing Iranian-made missiles was blown up. These missiles were intended to be used in a war against Israel, but the explosion was credited to the anti-regime Free Syrian Army. “Graffiti left at the scene of the blast said it was revenge for Hezbollah’s aid to the Assad regime’s crackdown in Syrian cities and promised more.”

The DEBKA analysis concludes that “Both Iran and Hezbollah are gearing up for war” noting that Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Basji military units “began organizing in battle array in the various theaters assigned to them in the country.” The old order in the Middle East has been overthrown in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and is under attack in Syria. There is unrest in Bahrain and Yemen as well.

Both the U.S. and Russia have positioned aircraft carriers off the coast of Syria. A U.S. carrier fleet stands at the ready near the Persian Gulf. It is doubtful Russia wants to be drawn into a conflict. The drubbing it took in Afghanistan led to the downfall of the former Soviet Union. The U.S., bleeding money in all directions, withdrawing from Iraq, and isolated in Afghanistan, is unlikely to engage militarily in a land war, though air power remains an option.

As the DEBKA File analysis makes clear, the U.S. and Israel are having considerable success with covert attacks in Iran and Syria, either directly or by proxies receiving intelligence and other assistance.

When Syria falls—as it surely will—it will leave Iran further isolated. Any admission that it has nuclear-equipped missiles would seal its fate. Its desperation is seen in a recent threat to unleash hundreds of missiles against Israel and, indeed, a northern Israeli city sustained a brief rocket attack from southern Lebanon on Monday, perhaps in an effort to lure it into a response.

The news of the day is an Iranian attack on the British Embassy in Tehran which mirrors the 1979 attack on the U.S. embassy that put the ayatollahs in command and led to the present crisis sparked by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Iran is running out of friends and its Islamic tantrums only speed the process. This is a rogue nation that does not play by the rules. It seems to be inviting an attack and that fits its apocalyptic view that includes the sacrifice of large portions of its population, chaos, to secure the return of the mythical Twelfth Imam.

No matter how this plays out, it will have a serious affect on the price of oil, a global commodity. It may remind Americans of the failure and refusal to permit access to our own vast reserves of oil and natural gas in Alaska, North Dakota’s Bakken area, and of course the offshore reserves along our Eastern and Western coasts. The delay of the Canadian Keystone XL pipeline will be felt. And then there is the Obama administration attack on coal producers and users.

The fact that a new U.S. oil refinery has not been built since the 1970s is testimony to a massive national failure to anticipate and prepare what is occurring in the Middle East. We are a decade or more behind the curve.

It is a common error to believe that the leaders of Iran and Syria think like their western counterparts. Baghdad is beginning to have more bombings. Pakistan is in a state of panic. In Turkey, a group of NATO and Arab officers have quietly established a command post for possible intervention in the Syrian crisis.

No one in the West, nor Russia or China, wants to participate, but the rabid dogs of war are loose and history has a nasty way of repeating itself.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Iran's Nuclear Armageddon

By Alan Caruba

During the long years of the Cold War from 1945 to 1991, the U.S. and the former Soviet Union faced off against each other, both having an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Only once, during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, did the prospect of a real threat to the homeland arise. After a U.S. naval blockade was imposed, the Russians took their missiles home.

The key factor was that the Russian leaders were not suicidal. They were not crazy. They fully understood what it would mean to actually use nuclear weapons or be on the receiving end of them.

The Iranian ayatollahs are a different case entirely. Over the years, they have voiced a rather nonchalant attitude toward being on the receiving end of nuclear weapons because they are a Shiite martyrdom cult. During its eight-year war with Iraq, initiated by Saddam Hussein, an estimated 500,000 Iranians died, including 100,000 children sent to clear mine fields by setting them off.

The failure to grasp the depth and insanity of the current leaders of Iran is pushing the world toward the first nuclear confrontation since A-bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima to end World War II in 1945.

Yoram Ettinger, a former Israel consul general in Houston, Texas, warns that “Iran’s geostrategic goals are energized by its current Islamic zeal, viewing jihad (holy war) as the permanent state of relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, while peace and cease-fire accords are tenuous.”

So, when the Israelis shared intelligence with President Obama in mid-November that the Iranians “will already have five nuclear bombs or warheads” by late March 2012, it raised the stakes for President Obama and the nation.

We already know Obama wants a reduction in nuclear arms. He signed a treaty with the Russians to achieve this. He refused to permit missiles to be based in Poland, presumably for the same reason. The surface to air missiles, however, could have deterred any missiles headed toward Europe.

I have absolutely no confidence in Obama when it comes to the preemptive action that must be taken against Iran’s nuclear and military facilities in order to end a threat that even the President acknowledged in a recemt Hawaii press conference would be directed not just at Israel, but at the United States as well.

The stakes just don’t get any higher and this President has not demonstrated any backbone except to okay the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the man behind the attack on 9/11. That was a no-brainer.

I don’t know what military assets and options we have in the Persian Gulf, but if an attack to deter an Iranian nuclear threat is undertaken either by Israel or together, we will likely need a lot of them.

Military observers have concluded that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz that provides access to and from the Persian Gulf, thus putting enormous strain on the provision of Middle East oil that flows through the Straits on a daily basis, not just from Iran, but from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq. An estimated 40% of all seaborne oil passes through the Strait, the equivalent of 20% of the total amount of oil traded worldwide. If closed, it would drive the cost of oil to stratospheric heights.

The failure of the U.S. to develop its own extensive oil reserves will prove to be a massive strategic error. The delay of a proposed Canadian oil pipeline to deliver oil to the U.S. is just one small element of this failure.

In an August 6, 2009 Jerusalem Post article, Anne Bayefsky of EyeontheUN.org wrote, “The Iranians have already called Obama’s bluff. An Iranian newspaper referred to the American agenda on July 20 this way: ‘The Obama administration is prepared to accept the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran…they have no long-term plan for dealing with Iran. Their strategy consists of begging us to talk to them.”

Ultimately it will be Israel’s call if U.S. leaders fail to step up to the task and, in the judgment of the Iranians, the U.S. will not. The Israelis have no choice.

In February 2010 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, addressing a crowd celebrating the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Tehran,said  “Iran is now a nuclear state.”

The world is rapidly running out of time to prevent an Iranian Armageddon.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Media Amnesia

By Alan Caruba

We are now in a countdown to November 6, 2012, Election Day, and the mainstream press will shift more intensely into coverage of the campaigns; first for the Republican nomination of the candidate to oppose Barack Obama, and then through the interminable ups and downs of the campaign for the presidency.

We got a taste of it with Politico.com, an arm of The Washington Post that permits its liberal bias to be reported with a more barehanded approach. It was Politico.com that broke the Herman Cain story of sexual harassment allegations in the 1990s and issued some seventy “stories” about it in the space of three or four days. The women who filed the complaints and who financially benefited from the National Restaurant Association’s settlements have wisely recused themselves from going public.

About the only thing we have actually learned is that Herman Cain, who had a ten-day heads-up on the story, handled it poorly. As someone who has earned his bread in public relations, watching him stumble around with several different versions of what he remembered and what he knew was painful. That said, the story is likely to go away because such allegations by unnamed women are (a) commonplace in the business world and (b) most decent people don’t like that kind of “gotcha” journalism.

As U.S. troops are finally withdrawn from Iraq, news coverage of that nation is going to disappear from the front pages unless the bombings occurring with increasingly regularity there continue. Don’t expect the media to connect the dots to ask or even identify who’s setting off those bombs or why.

Both the existential and actual threats to Israel are also likely to get short shrift despite the fact that mere days after Israel released more than a thousand Palestinian terrorists to gain the return of a single soldier, Ashkelon, Ashdod and Sderot in southern Israel were under missile attacks from Gaza. No longer being attributed to Hamas, a group calling itself Islamic Jihad is getting the credit for the forty rockets and mortars fired over a two-day period in late October.

As Dore Gold, an Israeli statesman noted, “The real explanations for the decision of Islamic Jihad to attack at this time, however, are not to be found in the Gaza Strip, but rather in Tehran.” Islamic Jihad, Gold pointed out, “is a very different organization than Hamas.” Yet another effort by the Israelis, the 2005 forced evacuation of the Gaza Strip’s Jewish population to placate the Palestinians, has not accomplished anything more than a launch site for endless rocketing.

The media will continue to monitor the events in Europe as its Eurozone monetary system continues to collapse, likely taking the European Union with it. It is one of those ideas by the continent’s elitists and intelligentsia that ignored hundreds of years of history behind the sovereign states there or the economic disparities between them. It is doubtful such coverage will provide anything more than the daily he-said, she-said accounts as the individual nations go their own way. The site of many U.S. exports and investments, it will further harm our tenuous economy as well.

The campaign here at home will be page one news, but may serve to mask the incipient scandals of the Obama administration such as Solyandra and other failing green energy companies that received huge loan guarantees. Nor will the administration’s efforts to keep the southern border open to the flow of illegal aliens get much attention as it continues to sue states like Alabama and Arizona for trying to deal with the consequences.

The Great Depression 2.0

The one story the media cannot suppress is unemployment. Last week the media trumpeted the announcement that the “official” rate of 9.1% decreased to 9%. These government-generated statistics are a farce. It is likely closer to 22% because those who have given up looking for work and other factors are conveniently ignored. Unemployment is as bad as it was during the Great Depression, but don’t expect the media to report that.

In the spirit of never letting a crisis go to waste, it is likely that the Obama administration will exploit the distraction offered by the election campaign to continue its destruction of the nation’s energy sector; the one sector responsible for actually adding new jobs since 2003. The Environmental Protection Agency is desperate to impose new regulations to further its agenda of killing jobs and exercising total control over every aspect of our lives. Don’t expect much coverage.

There are some early indications that the media have grown disenchanted with Obama. They put him in office with their crazed propagandistic coverage in 2008, but he has proven to be a very big disappointment. This portends that their coverage of his reelection campaign will be treated like kryptonite, the substance that weakened Superman.

It is not putting it too strongly to say that, with notable exceptions, the mainstream media has failed and even deceived Americans for too long now, from the bogus global warming hoax to the installation of Barack Obama in the Oval Office. They think they know what is best for us, but they often have only the slimmest grasp of what is actually occurring at home and around the world.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Muammar, Dead at Last

By Alan Caruba

There were at last count at least 643 ways to spell Muammar Gaddafi and I for one am very happy he is dead for that reason alone. The fact that he was the dictator of Libya for over forty years, funded the Lockerbie bombing of a Pan Am airliner and other terrorist acts also contributes to the good news.

These are proving to be bad times for dictators and it is easy to suggest that Basher Assad, a second generation dictator of Syria, will likely come to an equally bad end. So far this year the former dictator of Tunisia had to flee. Egypt’s Mubarack had to step aside, and both Syria's and Yemen’s presidents are under seige. Nobody knows who’s in charge of Somalia.

As I watched President Obama take a victory lap when he announced Gaddafi’s death, my thoughts turned to what Ted Belman, a widely-read blogger called the Israpundit, had to say. “Gaddafi wasn’t any worse than the barbarians that killed him and will replace him. There are no freedom-loving democrats in the entire Muslim world which consists of seventh century-minded brutes.”

The Israelis have had the misfortune of having had to fight off Muslims not only for the past sixty-plus years of statehood, but in the decades leading up to it. Unlike those of us in the West, they understand them in terms of the insane, fanatical hatred they have for Jews, Christians, and all other “infidels”, unbelievers.

“The way the jihadist-enabling mainstream media is reporting the death of Gaddafi,” observed Belman, “you would think that Libya will become some sort of western-style democracy rather than a sharia-ruled hell-hole that will become the latest haven for al Qaeda. So why are the same people who condemned Bush’s overthrow of Saddam Hussein celebrating this?”

Good question.

Simply put, Muslims—particularly those in the Middle East—see the world in a way that is totally the reverse of how Westerners do. Ours is a pluralistic society. Theirs is a tribal society. We practice tolerance for other religions. They not only seek to drive out unbelievers, they regard apostasy as a death sentence for anyone who wants to leave Islam. Many have.

As Raymond Ibrahim, an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum, noted in a recent book review, “Last week Saudi Arabia’s religious police arrested an Indonesian housemaid for casting a magic spell on a local family and turning its life upside down. The maid ‘confessed’ to using sorcery and commission experts took the magic items to their office and managed to dismantle and stop the spell.” In the West we celebrate Halloween once a year. In the Middle East, it’s every day.

The book by Robert Reilly, “The Closing of the Muslim Mind”, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, makes clear that such beliefs are common; magic spells, jins and genies. Reilly wrote of the different schools of Islam, showing how, by the 10th century, three hundred years after the death of Muhammad, the fatalistic schools had triumphed. The giants of Muslim philosphy, Ghazali and Ashari, “concluded that knowledge was unknowable, that moral truths can only be ascertained through revelation.”

This explains why so much of what occurs in the Middle East seems to defy logic to the Western mind. As Reilly noted about Islam, “All acts are in themselves morally neutral” and “Allah does not command certain behavior because it is good; it is good behavior because he commands it. Likewise, he does not forbid murder because it is bad; it is bad because he forbids it.”

The Ten Commandments forbid murder, adultery, and other acts because the acts themselves are bad, not simply because God instructed Moses that they were. The logic of good and evil is embedded in Judaism and its offshoot, Christianity. In Islam, any act can be justified if one can find a surah in the Koran and there is always one that will. Indeed, the Koran commands Muslims to kill for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is to extend Islam and to punish “insults” to it..

Any negative reference to Muhammad is enough to cause riotiing in the streets and acts of retribution. It is very intimidating and the West is easily intimidated, unless, of course, you fly jet airliners into our skyscrapers and the Pentagon. Then, however, within a few years they begin to debate the probity of building a mosque within a block or two of where the Twin Towers once stood.

While the Western world is defined by the spirit of inquiry, Islam is indifferent to it. Reilly notes that, for Muslims, “the only thing worth knowing is whether a specific action is, according to Sharia: obligatory, recommended, permitted, discouraged, or forbidden. The rest is irrelevant.”

This suggests that the last ten years since 9/11 (and all that preceeded it) have had a brief saluatory effect on Middle Eastern and North African Muslims only because they know with some certainty that we shall kill them if we must.

When Arabs took hostages and demanded ransom during the administration of Thomas Jefferson he called on Congress to authorize a Marine Corps and warships. The first Barbary War (1801-5) was also known as the Tripolitan War, as in Tripoli, Libya; the same Libya that just rid itself of the most recent dictator after a long succession of comparable dictators stretching back forever.

At some point an American President is going to have to authorize a major, preemptive attack on Iran, a Shiite nation whose lunatic ayatollahs see themselves as preparing the way for the return of the Twelfth Imam, a mythical figure who lives at the bottom of a well. They will use nuclear weapons, i.e., weapons of mass destruction, to achieve this unless we stop them first.

As the Israelis keep telling us, these people are nuts.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Value of a Single Israeli Soldier

By Alan Caruba

The Talmud, a record of rabbinic discussions on Jewish law, says “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed the entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved the entire world.” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5)

Every Israeli soldier knows that, if captured, his nation will move mountains to secure his return. It’s not just a slogan. It’s a reality.

Since 1982 Israel has engaged in eight such swaps, the latest being the release of Gilad Shalit, kidnapped five years ago and denied the most basic rights as defined by international law. Hamas even refused to permit visits by representatives of the Red Cross.

Since 1982, more than 10,000 Palestinians serving prison sentences for terrorist and other hostile actions have been released. In 1983, more than 4,500 Palestinians prisoners were swapped for six Israeli soldiers being held in southern Lebanon. In 1985, 1,150 prisoners were exchanged for three Israelis.

The value that Israeli places on its soldiers includes even casualties of war. In 2008, it released Samir Kuntar, convicted of murdering four Israelis in 1979, plus four Hezbollah fighters in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers seized during a cross-border raid.

The swap for Shalit, also the victim of a cross-border raid, demonstrates a fundamental difference between the Israelis and their enemies. They believe that each of their soldiers is more valuable than those who war against them.

Naturally, the most recent swap evoked a wide range of views. Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum welcomed Shalit’s reunion with his family as did thousands of Israelis, but said that “joy is tempered by the bitter realities of statecraft” calling the Israeli policy “the sentimentalization of strategy.” He thought the swap “poison(ed) the future” for Israel.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu disagreed. “As a leader who sends IDF soldiers every day to defend Israeli citizens, I believe that mutual responsibility is not just a slogan, but one of the foundations of our existence here.”

Netanyahu knows that Arabs have been kidnapping and ransoming people for the whole of Islam’s 1400 years and that it was standard practice among the desert tribes where the religion first took root. Islam is based on the promise of paradise for its adherents when they die; particularly its jihadist warriors.

Hamas and Fatah indoctrinate Palestinian children to want to be suicide bombers, but Judaism is based on the premise that life is God’s greatest gift and is to be valued above all else. Former Prime Minister, Golda Meir, said, “We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

Bill Levinson, writing about the swap, had perhaps the best interpretation of what occurred. He referred to the famous Chinese tract, Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”, suggesting that “Hamas might have played squarely into the hands of the Mossad and/or Shin Bet”, Israel’s highly effective and feared intelligence agencies.

“Israel might have just planted 50, 100, or even more double agents among the Palestinians who will cooperate, for example, in setting up Hamas terrorists to be killed or locating Palestinian rocket batteries for destruction whenever Israel considers this necessary.”

Sun Tzu wrote, “The enemy’s spies who have come to spy upon us must be sought out, tempted with bribes, led away and comfortably housed. Thus they will become converted spies and available for our service.”

Had the Israelis merely released one or a few prisoners their return would evoke suspicion, but with more than a thousand such prisoners it will prove impossible for Hamas to know which among them are double agents.

No people survive more than three thousand years against the greatest of odds and a multitude of enemies without learning a few lessons along the way. Hamas will pay the price in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Yom Kippur 2011 for Jews and the World

By Alan Caruba

Ever since the Yom Kippur War in 1973 in which Egypt and Syria chose the holiest day in the Jewish calendar to attack Israel, I have always felt a frisson of concern as the day approached. For Jews it begins the evening of Friday, October 7, and continues through Saturday for a full day of prayer that ends with the ancient, inspiring expression of hope, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

Even in Jerusalem, they say “Next year in Jerusalem” because it confirms the faith’s enduring bond with the land of Israel that survived not one, but two destructions of their Temples there, exiles, and, in the last century, the Holocaust followed by a return to and rebirth of Israel as a Jewish state.

The Yom Kippur war was the fourth Arab-Israeli war, fought from October 6 to 25, and ending with decisive defeats of Egypt and Syria. What has always struck me most forcefully was the decision by the Arabs—Muslims—to choose Yom Kippur as the day of the sneak attack. It demonstrated Islam’s utter and complete contempt for Judaism, but it demonstrates its contempt for Christianity as well, for both Judaism and Christianity are theologically bonded together.

Among the early Jews to immigrate to Israel, other than the founders who came initially from Europe in response to its anti-Semitism, were an estimated 600,000 Jews who fled Middle Eastern nations under the threat of death when Israel came into being in 1948. Many had lived in those nations from biblical times. Now it is the turn of Christian Arabs to flee, if not to Israel, to anywhere else in a world, but it is the world itself that is threatened by the rise of fundamental and fanatical Islam.

Writing for Jihad Watch.com in late September, Raymond Ibrahim noted a recent report “that unprecedented numbers of Copts, Egypt’s indigenous Christian population, are emigrating from their homeland in response to the so-called ‘Arab Spring’.” The attacks on Copts and their churches have been mounting. It is anticipated that within a decade a third of Egypt’s Copt population will leave.

The threats against the Copts are mirrored throughout the Middle East as Christians immigrate from Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon in search of refuge. Examples include the October 31, 2010 massacre of the Iraqi congregation of Our Lady of Deliverance Church and other attacks; the ratio of Christians to Muslims in Iraq has gone from 8% to 2% in the past decade.

We wait for word on the fate of an Iranian pastor, Youcef Nadarkhani, who has refused to renounce Christianity. On September 27, an Iranian court upheld a death penalty for the Islamic crime of “apostasy.” Leaving Islam has always been punishable by death. If the sentence is carried out, he will be the first Christian known to have been executed for his faith in 21 years in Iran. He will not be the last so long as the fanatical ayatollahs hold Iran in its grip.

The irony is that the Persian king, Cyrus the Great, (580-529 BC) freed the Jews from slavery, telling them to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple. Until the Islamic Revolution in 1979, a large Jewish community resided in Iran.

Meanwhile, on September 25th, a suicide bomber killed himself and wounded at least 22 other people in an attack on an Indonesian church. Indonesia is Southeast Asia’s largest Muslim-majority nation. The Wall Street Journal reported that, “To its credit, authorities there have cracked down on hard-line Islamic groups linked to bombings on Western hotels and tourist spots—such as the attacks on Bali nightclubs in 2002 that killed 202 people, many of them foreign visitors.”

On Yom Kippur, Jews devote themselves to their Day of Atonement and pray for a year of life, health, and happiness. They do not pray for wealth. They do not pray for power. Tradition requires that they pay all debts and seek forgiveness if they believe they may have wronged someone.

Now, worldwide, Christians must, like the Jews, give renewed consideration to the threat of Islam. Drawn from desert tribal values of war and pillage, Islam has spread widely since the seventh century. It has carried its seventh century mentality forward and once again challenges the West, using terror as its chosen weapon.

Support for the Muslim Brotherhood, often misrepresented in the media as “moderate”, is suicidal. Support for Hamas is support for terrorism. And, so far, support for the Palestinians has been futile.

It is a war without quarter, whether it is an Iranian pastor, the ancient community of Egyptian Christians, or the entire nation of Israel. Islam has no tolerance for other faiths.

All must understand that we are in a war. The Israelis do. Americans must.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

President Cliche

By Alan Caruba

“Peace is more than just the absence of war.”

“So let there be no doubt…”

“We stand at a crossroads of history.”

“There is no excuse for inaction.”

Fewer people at home and around the world are paying any attention when Barack Obama speaks. He has become President Cliché. We were all told what a great speech-maker he was and now nobody wants to listen anymore.

Ironically, in his speech to the United Nations on Wednesday, September 21, he actually said some interesting things. Too bad none of the other leaders of nations care what he has to say. At home, his popularity and approval ratings in the polls continue to plummet to new depths and to set new records for the lack thereof.

In truth, this is not good for the world or the nation. The job of President is all about leadership coupled to effective policies that address problems. In fairness, Obama arrived in the Oval Office with some of the worst problems any president has faced in the modern era. Like his predecessor, on whom he blamed everything, he continued to throw money at the financial crisis, managing to run up the nation’s debt to a historic level. Obama's economic advisors dusted off the failed policies of the New Deal and tried again. They have not worked.

The problems not only did not go away, they got worse.

The Middle East has seen the “Arab spring” in which a number of dictators were overthrown and that seems hopeful except for the fact that radical Islam is the solution that many of those same nations are likely to embrace. It doesn’t help that the U.S. President has famously demonstrated a “tilt” toward Islam as it continues to foment conflict.

The United Nations speech was a long wish list, pasted together with a lot of platitudes about how the UN has played a role in warding off World War Three. That was largely avoided because the U.S. has a couple of warehouses full of nuclear weapons and had maintained the greatest military the world had ever seen. We’re still here. The Soviet Union isn’t. Most U.S. presidents since the end of World War Two wanted to see the world abandon nuclear weapons. It didn’t. The club just kept getting bigger with China, North Korea, Pakistan, and India. Now Iran wants them as well.

The Soviet leaders weren't crazy. The Iranian ayatollahs and mullahs are.

Obama cited the UN founding Charter that called on nations to “unite our strength to maintain international peace and security.” In reality, it has always been the United States who did the heavy lifting. We fought the North Koreans and Chinese to protect South Korea. We sent arms to Israel when it was repeatedly attacked. We detoured into Vietnam and took a shellacking. After 9/11 we drove the Taliban and al Qaeda out of Afghanistan and we organized allies to remove Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein. Most recently, we got NATO to put an end to Gaddaffi’s reign of terror.

The problem Obama has discovered is that the United Nations is composed of many of the worst dictatorships and oppressive regimes on Earth. It is an utterly corrupt institution. It will not prevent World War Three if the U.S. leaves and a large number of Americans want us to leave.

“Peace is hard. Peace is hard. Progress can be reversed. Prosperity comes slowly. Societies can split apart.” Aside from the yawning banality of this pronouncement, the President’s learning curve about the reality of life on planet Earth has been a tough one. Still, he did condemn Syria’s dictator who has been killing that nation’s people, but could not resist showing off his Islamic credentials by saying many of the victims occurred "during the holy time of Ramadan.”

Obama has discovered what presidents since the days of Harry Truman have discovered. That Palestine is not a nation and the Palestinians are a horrid group of people who refuse to live in peace with Israel. “The Palestinian people deserve a state of their own,” said the President. Guess what? The Israelis agree, but cannot get their Mamoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority to actually agree that Israel has a right to exist. Or Hamas to stop lobbing rockets into southern Israel.

In case anyone was actually listening, Obama repeated what every prior President has said, “America’s commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable. Our friendship with Israel is deep and enduring”. After spending the last two and a half years demonstrating his contempt for Israel, this comes as a real surprise and further proof that Obama will say anything to get reelected.

And then he ruined it all by saying, “To preserve our planet, we must not put off action that climate change demands. We have to tap the power of science to save those resources that are scarce. And together we must continue our work to build on the progress made in Copenhagen and Cancun.”

The major fuels of the modern world are not scarce. We live above an ocean of oil. There is enough coal in America alone to keep the lights on here for centuries. Tapping the sun and wind has proved to be a huge waste of money for two of the least productive ways to provide energy. Copenhagen and Cancun, the site of two UN climate change conferences were total failures.

President Cliché closed out saying—again—“Peace is hard, but we know it is possible. So, together, let us be resolved to see that it is defined by our hopes and not our fears.”

Our fears are what sustain peace. It is why every nation is armed to the teeth.

Obama is a national embarrassment. And he wants four more years in office.

© Alan Caruba, 2011