"Destroy all the Churches"

By Alan Caruba

News Report, March 19, 2012: “Four people, including three children, have been killed after a man opened fire outside a Jewish school in the French city of Toulouse Monday. Police say the bullets came from the same gun that was used last week in the murder of three soldiers.”

Recently, according to several Arabic news sources, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the Grand Mufi of Saudi Arabia, declared that is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.” By “region” one assumes he was referring to the Middle East, but he might as well have been referring to the entire world.

There are no churches in Saudi Arabia and no bibles either. No evidence of or access to any other religion is permitted and one has to pause to ask whether Islam is a “religion” in any other than its outward appearance. It has mosques for “religious” worship. It has clerics in the form of imams and ayatollahs. It has a holy book, the Quran. And it has more than a billion people who identify themselves as Muslims.

As Raymond Ibrahim noted in a recent article, “Likewise, consider the significance of the Grant Mufti’s rationale for destroying churches; it is simply based on a Hadith. But when non-Muslims evoke hadiths—this one or the countless others that incite violence and intolerance against the ‘infidel’—they are accused of being ‘Islamophobes’, of intentionally slandering and misrepresenting Islam, of being obstacles on the road to ‘dialogue’, and so forth.”

Islam translates as “submission” and it is a common human trait to let someone or some institution do all one’s thinking as opposed to personally having to grapple with ethical, social, moral, and academic issues. Authoritarian regimes exist to stamp out all independent thought or action.

Reviewing a book by Robert R. Reilly, “The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern islamist Crisis”, Imbrahim, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowtiz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum, notes that, in Islam, “Reilly chronicles how the giants of Muslim philosophy, such as Ghazali and Ashari, concluded that knowledge was unknowable, that moral truths can only be ascertained through revelation. Accordingly, all knowledge—the very bounds of reality—came to be limited to the words of the Quran and its pronouncer, Islam's prophet Muhammad.”

This explains why the burning of some Qurans in Afghanistan brought scores of Afghanis into the streets in protest and resulted in the killing of American soldiers, but the massacre of Afghanis by an American soldier has not produced the same response. They are regarded merely as “martyrs.” Indeed, what the West has witnessed countless times, the killing of infidels does not result in any calls for an end to the murders.

Mosques are hotbeds of violence planned and perpetrated against “infidels”, unbelievers.

There is, from a Western, Judeo-Christian point of view a total incomprehension of Islam’s utter contempt for any other system of faith or governance.

This is why Christians and those of other faiths are fleeing the whole of the Middle East if they can because they have no protection from either Islam or from their respective governments against the violence that has been preached and practiced against them since the rise of Islam. Christianity literally has no future in the Middle East and anywhere else where Islam is the dominant force.

This is why, if Iran acquires the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons, it will use them against Israel first, America second, and the rest of the West unless it is stopped.

In Dr. Peter Hammond's book: “Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat”, he describes Islam, saying that it “is not a religion, nor is it a cult. In its fullest form, it is a complete, total, 100% system of life. Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, social, and military components. The religious component is a ‘beard’ for all of the other components.”

“Islamization begins when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their religious privileges. When politically correct, tolerant, and culturally diverse societies agree to Muslim demands for their religious privileges, some of the other components tend to creep in as well.”

What current generations in the West and around the non-Islamic world are witnessing is the absolute evil that lies at the heart of Islam, repeated on a daily basis. It is most evident in the Middle East from where the threat emanates, but it is a part of the daily life of Europe where an increasing Muslim population will reverse many of the advances of civilization and democracy the West takes for granted.

This accounts for Islam’s intense hatred of Judaism for its ethical philosophy, its spirit of intellectual inquiry and the way this was eventually adopted with the rise of Christianity in the West after it was largely driven from its Middle Eastern origins.

It is the greatest folly to dismiss a call to “destroy all the churches” as just the uttering of some Muslim madman. The call lies at the very heart of Islam’s total contempt for any other faith—Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Bahai—and its determination to rule the whole of the world’s population through terror and intimidation.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Obama's National Security Advisor "Went Native" Years Ago

John Brennan, Obama National Security advisor, addressing an unidentified group

By Alan Caruba

There’s a YouTube video of John Brennan, the President’s national security advisor, praising Islam and the Arab culture to an unidentified group of Arabs that is so revealing it should be probable cause for his removal from office. At one point, he addresses them in fluent Arabic, a language acquired in his studies and CIA posts over the years.

When the British Empire spanned much of the globe there was a term for men who embraced the culture and nations to which they were assigned. They were deemed to have “gone native”, often wearing Arab garb and becoming apologists or advocates. Among the most famous was Lawrence of Arabia, but there were many others such as Lieutenant-General, Sir John Bagot Glub, called "Glub Pasha" and best known for leading and training Jordan’s Arab Legion from 1939 to 1956; the same Legion that took part in attacks on Israel after it declared independence in 1948.

In the video, Brennan waxes poetic about Arab culture. In 1977 Brennan had received a degree in political science from Fordham University. During his studies he had spent his junior year learning Arabic and taking Middle Eastern Studies courses at the American University in Cairo. He received a Master of Arts degree in government with a concentration in Middle East studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 1980.

His career in the Central Intelligence Agency was one in which he reached the highest rungs as an analyst, serving at one point as a daily intelligence briefer for President Bill Clinton. In 1996, he was the CIA station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia when the Khobar Towers, a housing complex, was blown up by a truck bomb, killing nineteen U.S. servicemen billeted there. He would serve under CIA Director George Tenet as the director of its newly created Terrorist Threat Integration Center from 2003 to 2004. He would serve as director of the CIA’s National Counterterrorism Center from 2004 to 2005.

One might assume from such an impressive resume that Brennan was the ideal man to be appointed President Barack Hussein Obama’s chief counterintelligence advisor with the title of Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.

One might assume that, but Brennan, from his earliest days in that post made a number of statements and authored a USA Today opinion editorial that revealed deeply felt sympathies for the very people who were and are attacking Americans at home and overseas. In his USA Today opinion, Brennan criticized “Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering that only serve the goals of al Qaeda.”

Commenting on Brennan’s USA Today opinion, Jed Babbin, in an article for Human Events on February 11, 2010, wrote of Brennan and the Obama administration’s incomprehensible national security actions, “Consider their consistent record of bad decisions only one year into Obama’s presidency: to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; to move Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other al Qaeda varsity out of the military commissions system and try them in civilian criminal court; to war against the intelligence community; to put the White House in charge of interrogations of captured terrorists; and, most recently, the hasty decision to put the Christmas Day underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, in civilian custody thus preventing professional intelligence interrogators from having access to him.”

Babbin characterized Brennan’s USA Today article as “a string of fibs and misleading statements so easily disproved (that) it leaves observers wondering about Brennan’s sanity.”

Writing in the Washington Observer on May 26, 2010, Spencer Ackerman reported that “Brennan signaled as well that the administration is concerned that blowback from civilians killed by drones could turn tactical success into strategic failure.” Brennan said the U.S. had an obligation to destroy al Qaeda proactively, “but also has a responsibility not to overreact in the event of a successful attack.”

One wonders if he thought that President George W. Bush overreacted to the al Qaeda attack on 9/11. One can only assume he agreed with President Obama’s decision to send a SEAL team to assassinate Osama bin Ladin. In his defense of the decision to have Adulmatalleb read his Miranda rights, Brennan said, “Cries to try terrorists only in military courts lacks foundation.” This ignores the long history of trying people who commit acts of war against the United States the use of military courts.

The fact that Brennan is one of the chief advisors to President Obama explains a lot about the decisions Obama has made since taking office with regard to protecting the nation against al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. It explains Obama’s now famous “apology tour” of the Middle East that he took in 2009 and his conciliatory speech delivered at the University of Cairo.

Egypt has now moved outside the nation’s zone of influence and Iran openly mocks the Obama policies of using diplomacy and sanctions to stop their quest for nuclear weapons. Israel, despite Obama’s latest reassurances, was earlier told to stop building housing in its capitol city and to retreat to indefensible 1967 borders.

Inside the White House, Obama continues to be advised by a man whose sympathies, despite his long service in the CIA, appear to be with the Islamic enemies of the nation. It is no surprise that Brennan has maintained a very low profile since 2009-2010.

There have been many calls for Brennan’s resignation or firing, but he remains in Obama’s good graces. That, too, is no surprise.

Editor's note: This YouTube video's URL is
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VQbAhqHoAo&fb_source=message

© 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

Abominable Apologies

By Alan Caruba

I will leave it to the historians to pinpoint when President Obama began to lose the 2012 election, but I think it occurred on June 4, 2009 when he gave a speech at Cairo University as part of his now-famed “apology tour” of the Middle East.

At the time he said, “We meet at a time of great tension between the United States and Muslims around the world—tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate…More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a cold war in which Muslim-majority countries were often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations.”

Apparently, to Obama, those tensions had nothing to do with a dastardly attack on September 11, 2001 that killed nearly three thousand non-combatant civilians and those working at their desks in the Pentagon. It had nothing to do with the earlier attack on the Twin Towers, the attack on U.S. embassies in Africa, the attack on the USS Cole, or, going back to 1983, the suicide bomb attack on Marine barracks in Beirut. And that’s just the short list.

To Obama the “tensions” were the result of “colonialism” despite the fact that most Arab nations in World War II sided with the Nazi regime or that they have always been ruled by a succession of despots, several of whom were deposed in 2011. According to Obama, “the Cold War” with the then-Soviet Union that began shortly after World War II and subsequently aided its downfall was another reason why Muslims hate America.

In Cairo that day, Obama thrice referred to the “holy Koran” while referring to “civilization’s debt to Islam”, saying “I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”

Those “stereotypes” were reinforced in Afghanistan after riots broke out after the perfectly reasonable destruction of Korans that that been damaged, a practice common to Islam. This was followed by rioting in the streets of Kabul, the shooting of an American colonel and major inside the Afghan Ministry of Interior and, as the Feb 27 edition of The Wall Street Journal noted, “Ten of the 58 U.S.-led coalition soldiers who died this year have been killed by their Afghan comrades in arms.”

In June 2009, Obama said, “In Ankara (Turkey), I made clear that America is not—and never will be—at war with Islam.” This clueless president who claimed to be “a student of history” is deliberately ignorant of the fact that Islam, since its inception, has been at war with all other nations and religions. When it swept through the Middle East in its earliest years, it all but destroyed Christianity there and, when it conquered Jerusalem, it built a mosque over one of the most sacred places of Judaism, the Temple Mount.

He promised to “invest $1.5 billion each year over the next five years to partner with Pakistan to build schools and hospitals, roads and businesses…that’s why we are providing more than $2.8 billion to help Afghans develop their economy and deliver services that people depend on.”

In that Cairo speech he said, “I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.” His administration wanted to afford the man who planned 9/11 a civil trial in the heart of Manhattan, replete with all the protection afforded by the U.S. Constitution. He did not close Gitmo and the trial was not held after its prospect evoked widespread protest.

Obama said, “No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation by any other” and, in 2011 the citizens of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Yemen rose up to overthrown their own governments—dictatorships—while the citizens of Syria are doing that today. When Iranians filled the streets of Tehran in 2009 to protest their own dictatorship, he said that the United States “should not meddle” in their affairs, depriving them of even a word of encouragement.

Three years ago, Obama was convinced that America’s reputation had been harmed by its vigorous response to 9/11 in Afghanistan and the decision to depose Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein.

His apology to the government of Afghanistan is an abomination.

The fact is that Islam, particularly in the Middle East, is the enemy of democracy in the West and everywhere else it exists. It is tyranny personified. It is the reason why the Middle East has lagged so far behind the rest of the world. It is the reason why military forces are massed around an Iran that threatens to set off a cataclysm when it acquires nuclear weapons.

The U.S. and NATO forces will leave Afghanistan and it will return to its barbaric, seventh century roots. The U.S. and coalition forces have left Iraq and it will return to its ancient schism and conflict between Sunni and Shiite populations everywhere. We tried to drag these nations into the twenty-first century and we failed, but at least we tried.

We are standing aside while Syria’s dictator slaughters his own people. We will likely see the Jordanian king overthrown and we have witnessed 64 years of unrelenting assaults by the so-called Palestinians on Israel, our only true ally in the Middle East.

This President, however, knows nothing of history and has signaled in many ways his partiality to the “religion of peace” that has attacked America and is filling the streets of Muslim-majority nations with the blood of innocent victims.

He will be rejected by Americans in November 2012 just as he has been rejected by the leaders of most of the free world, the leaders of the Soviet Union and China, virtually all of the members of the United Nations, and all the nations of the Muslim world.

America does not need his apologies. America needs to regain the leadership it has earned by opposing despotism throughout its history.

© 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

Taking Hostages: Tehran in 1979 - Cairo in 2012

American diplomats, 1979, in Tehran, Iran

By Alan Caruba

As someone who vividly recalls the Iranian “students” who took our diplomats hostage in 1979 and the 444 days it took to get them back, the repeat of this by the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, putting 19 pro-democracy, non-government organization (NGO) Americans on trial on trumped up charges has an ugly repetitive feel to it.

The contempt the Iranian revolutionaries, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, had for America and, I might add, international law and practice that goes back centuries, is everything you need to know about dealing with militant Islamists, whether they are in Iran, Egypt, or anywhere else on the face of the Earth.

Just as then-President Jimmy Carter dawdled while looking for a diplomatic response, this same scenario is now being played out by Barack Obama and it won’t work now just as it did not work then. Carter authorized a failed military operation that, by most accounts, was poorly organized and executed.

What is needed now is a Navy SEAL unit or larger force to go in, rescue our American hostages, and extract them from Cairo. We need direct military action, just as we need direct military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, missile operations, and the barracks of the Revolutionary Guards.

Just as Jimmy Carter was seen as weak, so too is Barack Obama and, for America and the world, that is very bad news. I don’t care if the Iranian leadership and other militant Islamists don’t like America. I want them to fear us.

Apparently they didn’t get the message when the U.S. killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the home city to its military college. While bin Laden was right up the street and around the corner, we are supposed to believe that no one in Pakistan’s military or intelligence structure had the slightest idea. He was living in a large walled compound. Short of buying his own groceries, you’d think someone might have noticed. And, of course, now they are angry at us for killing the man behind the murder of some 3,000 of our citizens, including an attack on the Pentagon!

When the Iranians went into the streets in June 2009 protesting the bogus election of Mamoud Ahmadinejad, Obama’s response was that the U.S. “shouldn’t meddle” in Iran’s affairs. A plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to America in a Washington, D.C. restaurant was discovered and some people might call that “meddling” in our affairs.

This hostage-taking needs boots-on-the-ground action now. The only upside to this event is that the longer it goes on, the same disenchantment that resulted in the defeat of Jimmy Carter will be Obama’s fate in the November election.

The fact that Obama has imposed the largest debt/credit crisis that the nation has ever incurred, unemployment levels that rival the Great Depression, a housing market that is still in the tank, and is busy hollowing out the nation’s military capabilities at the worst possible time seems to gone unnoticed by the forty percent or more of Americans that think he’s doing a swell job.

Our present problem is that Obama does not like America any better than our enemies do. He does not like our Constitution, recently blaming the Founding Fathers for the limitations they wisely imposed to avoid a government grown too large and a president with powers beyond those granted.

This nation is in peril from the same gross stupidity that gripped it prior to World War Two until Pearl Harbor occurred in 1941. The war in Europe had been going on since 1939 and the Japanese had invaded China in 1937.

We are in a new, dangerous era with the chaotic situations in the Maghreb of northern Africa where U.S. assistance, via NATO, was provided to overthrow Gaddafi and Obama's swift rejection of Egypt’s Mubarack led to his downfall. There are uprisings in Syria and Yemen. It is the result of massive resentment against dictatorial regimes, but the real problem will be how these revolutions turn out.

That is something we cannot control, but we must do what we can to protect American citizens abroad to protect our national interest and to project real national power.

The Middle East is tribal. With the exception of Israel the “nations” we must deal with are merely armies with a national flag, not modern democratic governments responsive to their citizens. That is why Iraq threatens to break apart. It is why the majority Syrians want to end the minority Alawite tribe’s control. It is why Palestinians are not welcome anywhere.

The President’s top intelligence advisor recently told a Senate committee that sanctions are not working against Iran, but the President wants to pretend they are. The U.S. and the rest of the world are waiting for the Israelis to do to Iran what we and our allies should be doing to end its nuclear threat.

Likewise, if we wait around while the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo makes us look like a bunch of punks it will just get worse for us in Egypt and the Middle East just as it did in 1979.

In Egypt we need to get in, break some furniture, shoot some bad guys, get our people out, and then shut off the billion-plus dollar aid spigot.

No more American tourists, no more American aid, and no more Mr. Nice Guy.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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

Whatever Happened to...?

By Alan Caruba

In the run-up to the South Carolina primary election on Saturday, it strikes me that the overwhelming coverage of the campaign process has shoved some important stories to the sidelines.

There is noticeably little coverage of the nation’s obscene unemployment problem; one that is comparable to the Great Depression.

With ample good reason, we no longer hear anything about (a) global warming or (b) climate change. We don’t hear “renewable energy” stories in the wake of the Solyndra scandal or the demise of comparable “Green” companies, but Obama’s decision to refuse to permit the XL Keystone pipeline was a reminder that all his talk about job creation is just that—talk.

The rising price of a gallon of gasoline is never mentioned in the news, up from $1.86 when Obama took office to $3.40 now. That sort of thing used to get incumbent presidents defeated in the past.

Events beyond our shores continue whether we are in a primary season or not.

The future of the European Union is still somewhat precarious. Whether the Euro continues as the currency of the EU is an important issue affecting America’s trading partners. The U.S. Sovereign debt rating has already been reduced but now nine EU nations have been put on notice as well.

The Obama/Clinton foreign policy in the Middle East continues to erode. Egypt, a major player, is moving into Islamist—anti-American, anti-Israeli—control. For decades, the Muslim Brotherhood was suppressed as a political force in Egypt and today they have emerged as the biggest player. Egypt is moving out of our orbit of influence.

Iran continues inexorably toward acquiring the capacity to make its own nuclear weapons. Its growing desperation regarding the sanctions is generating a lot of bellicose threats. The entire Middle East is silently praying that Israel attacks and disables its nuclear capabilities. Anything else is morally indefensible.

Following the withdrawal of U.S. troops, Iraq is in shambles once again with bombs going off in its cities and little likelihood it will be able to function as a nation despite its vast oil riches. Libya has lots of oil, too, but it is still struggling to create a functioning government in the wake of Gaddafi’s overthrow. Syria has everyone in the Middle East on edge watching to see if Assad can avoid what appears to be his inevitable overthrow. His late father, though, did just that by slaughtering thousands.

The seemingly endless political debates continue minus Jon Huntsman who is backing Mitt Romney and Rick Perry who has endorsed Newt Gingrich. Pretty soon we shall be calling Romney “Teflon Mitt” because the voters appear to be bored with all the sniping from his opponents regarding his success in the private sector. Newt Gingrich seems to have no idea what capitalism is or does.

Even the calumnies heaped on the Tea Party movement don’t get much attention these days. We have learned, however, that the current Congress has been the least productive, accomplishing less in 2011 than any other year in recent history. Records have been kept since 1947. In light of the disaster called Obamacare, that is probably a good thing.

One trend is noticeable. With the exception of the Keystone decision, any news that might harm the reelection of President Obama is hard to find in the mainstream media.

© 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

The 2012 Check List for America's Survival

By Alan Caruba

Many people make resolutions to start the year, but I think a list of things that must be done to protect and preserve the Republic should be tallied.

1. President Obama must be defeated in 2012 and the obstructionist Democratic Party must lose power in the Senate to ensure both houses of Congress will be Republican and in a position to initiate real change.

2. The Environmental Protection Agency must be reined in with increased Congressional oversight and legislative limits on its rule-making capacity. Having fulfilled its 1970 mandate to clean the nation’s air and water, it should be scaled back to the maintenance of these functions.

3. Americans, despite the administration’s efforts to redefine and distract us, must keep clearly in mind the threat of Islam to the nation and the world. A Middle East in turmoil lays ahead for 2012.

4. To jump-start the economy, taxes and spending must be reduced across the board. A tax on consumption, rather than income would be a good start. Only 49% of Americans currently pay income taxes, the lowest in decades.

5. Obamacare must be repealed should the Supreme Court fail to rule that the Commerce Clause takes precedence over its requirement that Americans must purchase health insurance or be fined for not doing so.

6. A serious restructuring of Social Security and Medicare must be undertaken. Older Americans who have paid into the system—it is involuntary—must be ensured their benefits will be paid, but younger citizens should have the freedom and responsibility to structure their own retirement and health plans.

7. Access to the nation’s vast reserves of coal, natural gas, and oil should be increased and encouraged. Oil companies should be encouraged to build more refineries via tax credits and removal of “environmental” obstacles.

8. Congress needs to identify and fund the repair to the nation’s aging infrastructure.

9. Utilities should be encouraged via tax credits and other incentives to expand the national “grid” for the distribution of electricity.

10. Term limits for Senators and Representatives should be added to the U.S. Constitution in the same fashion the presidency is limited. Salaries, pensions, and perks should be capped. A permanent political class is a danger to citizens.

11. The Federal government should be downsized with the elimination of the Departments of Education, Labor, and Energy, along with the Environmental Protection Agency. These powers should be returned to the individual States. (10th Amendment)

12. The nation’s military which has been significantly reduced in size and structure should be expanded with attention to the upgrade and increase of its naval fleet and aircraft.

13. Congress should reject and rescind all legislation based on “global warming” or “climate change” as the former has been demonstrated to be a hoax and the latter is meaningless insofar as the climate is beyond the control of humans.

14. The United States should significantly reduce its contribution to the United Nations and refuse to ratify any of its treaties.

15. Tort reform should be instituted to reduce the costs of health care.

16. The corporate tax rate should be significantly reduced from its present rate, one of the highest in the world, to increase expansion, new jobs, and competitiveness.

17. Public service unions should be illegal. The federal government does not permit such unionization and neither should states.

18. National Public Radio should no longer be funded. The “government entities” of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be eliminated.

19. The federal government should be restricted or significantly limited from the acquisition of more of the nation’s landmass.

20. Strenuous efforts must be undertaken to reduce the national debt and deficit. A devalued dollar impoverishes everyone.

These are just a few changes which, if implemented, would go a long way to reducing the ills associated with a federal government grown too large, subject to crony capitalism, and corruption.

As John Adams said, "Let us disappoint the men who are raising themselves upon the ruin of this Country."

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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 Middle East Goes South

By Alan Caruba

They’re rioting in Yemen and have been for eight months, trying to get rid of their president who, it appears, cannot take a hint. It shares a border with Saudi Arabia.

They’re rioting in Syria. Its president says he is going to have a new constitution drafted, presumably to meet the demands of the crowds in the street, but in the meantime his forces will just shoot as many of them as possible.

The troubles in Syria have caused Turkey to park a large number of its troops on its border and Jordan has done the same. Turkey already has lots of Syrian refugees who wisely fled when they could. Turkey, once one of the more rational nations in the region and an ally of the U.S., has been tilting toward Islamism in recent years and that has got to be bad news for everything, but especially Israel.

They’re rioting again in Egypt. Having gotten president Mubarack removed, the problem now seems to be the military that—surprise—have no intention of giving up power. They have also made it clear that any peace treaties with Israel are kaput; the first thing to go, a demilitarized Sinai between them and Israel.

In Tunisia they are preparing for an election after having rid themselves of a long time dictator. And that may be the only good news from the region.

There are attacks on government buildings in Kabul, Afghanistan, but that’s a headline going back decades. The Taliban are the problem, but particularly since they come in over the border from Pakistan.

Pakistan was, is, and will always be a tinderbox and basket-case. Formerly home to the late Osama bin Laden, only the military represent any hope of stability and, if that means shooting a bunch of Taliban every so often, they will do so.

The occasional bombs go off in Baghdad, Iraq, but since President Obama is pulling out all by a relative handful of troops, what could possibly go wrong there, eh? Hint: It shares a long border with Iran.

Oh, did I mention that there is still fierce fighting in Libya and no one knows where Col. Gadhafi is, but a provisional government is going to see if it can keep the northern and southern parts of the nation, highly tribal, together.

There is a reason that the people of these nations have a difficult time getting their arms around democracy and that’s because Islam has a stranglehold on their brains. That’s why the formal name of these nations is usually “the Islamic Republic of” wherever.

The worst of these alleged republics is, of course, Iran. It had a spate of riots in 2009, but Iran is the poster child for a complete dictatorship and, after killing and jailing anyone who even looked like they were protesting something, quiet has returned to the street of Tehran. This has permitted their military to plan operations like assassinating the Saudi ambassador to America in America.

The Supreme Leader of Iran and the lunatics who surround him hate the Great Satan (us) and the Little Satan (Israel) with such passion that, at some point, they will have to be killed to avoid World War Three. Most Iranians love the U.S. and will be greatly relieved if we free them from their bondage.

In Israel, in order to secure the return of a single Israeli soldier, kidnapped five years ago by Hamas, the government has decided to swap a couple of hundred murderers of Israeli citizens that have been in their jails. It’s symbolic, but it is also very, very dangerous. The Israelis value the life of every one of their soldiers. Hamas values no one’s life including Palestinians. They hide behind women and children whenever the Israelis show up to dispense some justice. Then they go back to firing rockets into Israel.

Now, as the rest of us go about our lives, trying to get our heads around why a bunch of spoiled brats and leftover Sixties potheads are protesting against Wall Street in New York and elsewhere, a sizeable portion of the planet, the Middle East, is in a life-and-death turmoil that is, I suggest, going to get a lot worse.

None of this, coming as it does in disparate reports from places many find hard to find on a map, bodes well for the second decade of the 21st century or possibly also the next one.

The so-called “Arab Spring” is rapidly turning into yet another Arab nightmare (and, yes, the Iranians are Persians, but they are doing what they can to influence events to their advantage.)

Complicating the immediate future is the question of whether the European Union will come apart over monetary issues. As for the U.S., we have to get to the 2012 elections and put right the worst mistake this nation has ever made by ridding ourselves of Barack Hussein Obama.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Israel's Terrible Choices

By Alan Caruba

I was eleven years old when Israel declared its independence and sovereignty in 1948 with the blessing of the United Nations. World War Two and the Holocaust were over barely three years and many of Europe’s Jews needed a state of their own to rebuild their lives. Jews from throughout the Middle East were forced to flee nations in which they had lived for centuries. Over time Israel would absorb Russian Jews and others from around the world.

Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon attacked Israel days after its formal establishment. They were defeated. They would attack again in 1967 and 1973. In the course of these wars, the Arabs that had been living in Palestine, as Israel was known due to the post World War One British mandate, fled or were displaced.

They would become the world’s oldest refugee group and the only one to which a UN agency would be solely devoted, absorbing U.S. and other funding to maintain their status as opposed to helping them assimilate into neighboring Arab nations.

The Zionists, mostly secular and mostly socialist Jews from Europe and Russia who had come to Palestine earlier to prepare the path to statehood were rather surprised to find so many Arabs living there. At the time, Palestinians regarded themselves mostly as people living in southern Syria. Others were Bedouin. They were not “Palestinians”, nor had there ever been a Palestinian state.

Debating what the Israelis should do regarding the Palestinians has become a constant topic of U.S. foreign policy as well as that of most nations. It is, however, a debate that can only be decided by the Israelis and Palestinians and it is a cliché to say that one cannot achieve peace with someone who repeatedly says they want to kill you.

I have written about Israel over the years and maintained that it had a historic right to the land. After more than sixty years of ceaseless jihad—happening still—I have come to regard Palestinians as (1) intractably intent on driving out the Jews and (2) and incapable of establishing a state of their own.

Granting the Palestinians statehood when they have been denied the right to vote by their own leaders since 2005 says it all. Israel has been a true democracy since its founding. Neither the Palestinian Authority, nor Hamas, has any intention of permitting true democracy for their own people.

After reading Hirsh Goodman’s new book, “The Anatomy of Israel’s Survival”, it has made me realize the terrible choices Israel faces. The problem that confronted the original settlers of Israel still challenges its existence. Resolving the issue of the Palestinians says Goodman must be recognized IF it is at all possible.

As much as I hated and rejected the term “occupier” as applied to Israel the truth is that it has been an occupier of the West Bank as the result of wars waged against its right to exist, but an occupier nonetheless. That said, the Palestinians have always refused to accept any peace terms offered, as often as not greeting them with terror campaigns directed against Israel.

Hirsh is a senior research associate at the Institute for National Security at Tel Aviv University. Between 1986 and 1989 he was the strategic fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Born in South Africa in 1946, his family immigrated to Israel in 1965 where he has lived in Jerusalem. He’s been a journalist and, as such, has had a front row seat on the politics, the wars, the intifadas, and all other aspects of life in Israel.

The Israel he describes is one with a parliamentary government that is divided by far too many political parties, each representing competing views and agendas, and largely dysfunctional except in the unifying threat of an attack. It is a very small nation; its population largely concentrated in its major cities.

In Jerusalem, Jews went from being 74% of the population in 1967 to 64% by the end of 2010. “Today there is virtual parity between 5.7 million Jews and 5.4 million Arabs in Israel and the territories.”

In a decade the Arabs will outnumber the Jews of Israel. Hirsh's data, however, is subject to challenges. (See end note)

It is demography, the study of population increases and declines that poses a greater challenge to the future of Israel than even hostile neighbor states. It is increasingly essential to establish peace with the Palestinian Authority to provide Israel’s Arabs with a nation of their own, though many who are already Israeli citizens will likely choose to remain citizens in the only Middle Eastern nation to offer them freedoms found in no other.

Hamas in Gaza, hostile even to the PA, is a problem that will have to be dealt with later.

Hirsh puts it bluntly. “Can Israel survive? Of course it can. The question is what kind of Israel it will be and what kind of neighbors it might enjoy. How Israel tackles the internal issues of the Hareidim (ultra orthodox) and the Israeli Arabs is important, even critical.”

“But even more important, the nature of Israeli survival depends on whether it remains an occupier or a tyrannical overlord. In continued occupation lies the deepening of internal dissent between the settlers and the rest of Israel, between the Right and the left, those who claim to speak in the name of God and the rest of us. Occupation will lead to the erosion of Israel’s moral fiber.”

And Hirsh knows that “Israel is not totally the master of its own destiny. It cannot make peace by itself. It cannot alone influence, let alone control, what happens in the region.”

What is happening is the widespread movement of Arabs to rid themselves of the dictators that have run nations from the Maghreb nations where Africa meets the Mediterranean, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, and others such as Syria’s Assad and even some Gulf nations like Bahrain.

How the Middle East looks after the dust settles is anyone’s guess. If history is any guide, these nations will simply replace old despots with new ones.

So long as the Palestine issue exists it conveniently provides Israel’s neighbors and others the excuse to condemn it. Until the election of President Barack Hussein Obama, the United States had always been a steadfast ally, but he has undermined that long relationship.

Thus Israel, a pariah among nations with far worse records in war, peace and human rights faces some terrible choices. One choice, its right to self defense and to exist as Jewish state is non-negotiable.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

http://www.theettingerreport.com/Demographic-Scare.aspx
Mr. Hirsh's data regarding Israel's demographic makeup is challenged by others with alternative data. -- AC

The Syrian Horror Show

By Alan Caruba

Name me a country where funeral processions get fired upon and more people die on the way to burying the latest martyrs for peace and freedom? It’s just about any country in the Middle East and on July 19 it was Syria where ten people died in Homs, a place where some fifty have died in the past week protesting the second generation of the Assad dictatorship.

A week earlier an alleged "pro-Assad mob" attacked the U.S. embassy in Damascus after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said of Basher Assad that he as “not indispensable” and that the U.S. has “absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power.” So far this has been the position of the U.S. on Egypt’s Hosni Mubarack, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, and just about everyone else in the Middle East short of Abdullah, the King of Saudi Arabia.

It was not the first time the Damascus embassy had been attacked. In December 2006, al Qaeda was credited with blowing up a car bomb outside as a gang of armed men tried to break in. The attack, though, has all the earmarks of an Iranian operation.

Let’s see, when was the last time a U.S. embassy was attacked? It was 1979 in Tehran when the Iranians took its staff hostage and held them for 444 days. The Iranians were behind the 1983 suicide attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241. These days they all but own Syria as they patiently work their way toward possessing nuclear-tipped missiles with which to threaten the Middle East and everywhere else.

After World War I, Syria was carved out of the former Ottoman Empire and ceded to French colonial control. In 1946, the French granted it independence. It then passed through a series of military coups until Basher’s father, Hafez Assad, took control of Syria.

Upon his death, it passed to his son, Bashar in 2000. In May 2007, Bashar was “elected” to his second term.This is not exactly a definition of a democracy, but neither is any nation in the Middle East and never was.

In the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Hafez joined with Egypt and, in the process, lost the Golan Heights, a strategic victory for the Israelis who have shown no intention of returning it or the ancient Israeli provinces of Samaria and Judea, won from Jordan, and now commonly but mistakenly called the West Bank. The Israelis do not “occupy” it. They lived there three thousand years ago.

The Egyptians lost the Gaza at that time, but the Israelis have since ceded it to the Palestinians in the hope they might establish a state, but they have never shown the slightest inclination of establishing one except as a base from which to attack the Israelis.

From 1976 until April 2005, the Syrians had occupied Lebanon which is now a base for Hezbollah, a Palestinian terrorist group that has successfully taken control. They take their orders from Iran.

Syria has been a classic police state. Reportedly, Iran has deployed 10,000 troops to Syria to protect the Assad regime and are in effective control of the nation. Iranian troops have been in Syria since 2008 and, not surprisingly, their northern headquarters have been in Homs, the site of the latest killings.

In February 2009, it was reported that President Obama had decided to send a new U.S. ambassador to Syria and lift sanctions against a nation believed to have aided al Qaeda in Iraq and of secretly building a nuclear reactor. The Israelis, as they had done earlier with a reactor Saddam Hussein was building, bombed it to rubble in 2009.

So far, President Obama’s philosophy of talking nicely to our enemies in the Middle East has not worked and anyone with the slightest knowledge of the history of the region could have told him that.

President Bush’s decision to eliminate Saddam Hussein was based on the fact that Saddam was a constant destabilizing factor, having waged war against Iran for eight years in the 1980s, used poison gas to kill thousands of Kurds, and in 1990 attacked Kuwait to seize its oil fields.

The current U.S. policy is to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Expecting the Middle East to act in any civilized fashion or thinking it can be taken over and reformed by sheer military force is clearly a fool’s dream.

Afghanistan has resisted control since the days of Alexander the Great. The Ottoman Empire, run by the Turks from the 1300s until the early 1920s did a fairly good job of maintaining the peace until it collapsed of its own dead weight

As nations such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan did little other than accept various dictators, the prospect of expecting anything but turmoil is utterly futile. What the West wants is access to and through the Suez Canal, along with the oil of the Middle East. The template of Western influence disappeared with both World War One and Two.

Just because those in the Middle East have the outward appearance of modernity, it is an illusion. This is a region of the world dominated by a warrior cult called Islam. As such it will remain an enemy of the West and of each other. It is a huge horror show.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

An Inaugural Fail

By Alan Caruba

We are all now so accustomed to Barack Obama’s delivery of a speech and have heard so many Tele-Prompter recitations that his habit of raising his chin, of gazing off into some future only he perceives, and his now-annoying way of breaking a sentence into small chunks that render it a monotony is taken for granted.

After all the campaign speeches he delivered in 2008, the carefully-staged events, by January 20, 2009 the nation was ready to hear what the then-new President, the 44th, had to say. With the exception of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech and one or both of Lincoln’s, few such speeches are long remembered.

President Obama’s was no exception and, as he begins his campaign to be reelected, it seemed to me a good time to revisit it.

Believe it or not, he began by saying “I stand here today humbled by the task before us…” and I daresay there are few who would apply the word ‘humble’ to Barack Hussein Obama, then or now.

Here was a man who had already written two memoirs about a life without any of the touchstones of achievement we normally look for. He had never run a business or met a payroll. As a legislator, he was either absent or voted for liberal programs without fail.

He had leaped swiftly from being an obscure Illinois state legislator to being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. By February 10, 2007 he announced he was a candidate for President.

By November 2008 he was elected. It is a cliché to note that virtually the whole of the nation’s mainstream media did everything in its power to secure that outcome.

As he continued with his inaugural speech, Obama acknowledged that “Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred”, but we would learn in the months that followed that Obama would never put a name to it, never identify it as an Islamic terrorism network and, following the Fort Hood shooting, it would take weeks before the words “Islamic extremism” were even applied to it.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the inaugural speech was its rather mundane enumeration of the huge economic problems that faced the nation at the time. “We will act, not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.”

Based on his words, that speech was a huge fail. Based on the actions taken or not taken by his administration, jobs by the millions disappeared. The housing market is one of foreclosures from coast to coast. Consumer spending and consumer confidence remains stagnant.

We were, said Obama, to ask “not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works…where the answer is no, programs will end.” Instead, his administration embarked on huge spending programs dubbed “stimulus” that vastly increased the national debt and, by common agreement, achieved little or nothing to get the economy moving.

As this is written, the Obama administration adamantly refuses to agree to any spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. The waste continues as various elements of the government pour millions into obscenely stupid programs and grants. The government continues to grow larger.

Rather than concentrate on the economic problems of the nation by cutting taxes and eliminating regulations, the Obama administration literally forced a 2,000-page piece of legislation dubbed Obamacare on Americans who largely opposed it. It is currently wending its way through the courts as 26 states have joined in rejecting it.

Obama’s inaugural outreach now seems infantile and naïve. “To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.” Both were and are scarce, but Obama has ensured that the U.S. remains dependent on imported Middle East oil by thwarting every effort to explore and extract our domestic reserves.

His Libyan military adventure just adds to his list of failures, save one. Based on his predecessor’s groundwork, Osama bin Laden was delivered to justice.

Guantanamo remains open for business and 9/11’s terrorists will not be granted the protection of constitutional rights that belong solely to Americans.

In sum, present and future historians will conclude that Obama’s inaugural speech on January 20, 2009 was just so much blather and significantly devoid of any substance. That’s a pretty good description of the 44th President of the United States.

It is also a very good reason to ensure that Barack Hussein Obama does not get to deliver another inaugural speech in 2013.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

No Short Term Middle East Solutions

By Alan Caruba

A problem with which American administrations have grappled since the days of Thomas Jefferson’s presidency has been Arabs and the Middle East. The Marine anthem mentions “the shores of Tripoli” because, in 1801, Jefferson sent them to there to put down the Barbary pirates.

One of the best books on this subject is “Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present” by Michael B. Oren who, with exquisite irony, is currently serving as the Israeli ambassador to the United States, the nation of his birth.

Regarding the Middle East, if you have had the feeling that the Obama administration has been spectacularly inept as it takes its turn at bat, you’re right. Barely six months into his first year, on June 4, 2009, the newly-minted President gave a speech in Cairo.

“I’ve come to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles—principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

Obama’s impressions, aspirations, or re-write of history, past and present, clashes with the reality of current and past events. He has, in fact, adopted virtually all of his much maligned predecessor’s policies in the Middle East and took a bow for authorizing the long awaited assassination of Osama bin Laden.

As this is being written, the White House is debating the levels of military withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases the public is alternatively told that the leaders of those two nations either want the U.S. to leave or to stay. Where the truth falls no one seems to know.

It is very instructive to read what is being published in the newspapers that serve readers in the Middle East. Suffice to say that neither the President, nor his policies, is well regarded. One can read daily translations of articles from their press, as well as Asia and Europe at an interesting site, .http://watchingamerica.com/News.

I would argue that no amount of “hands on” involvement with the events unfolding from the Maghreb nations of northern Africa to those that form the heart of the Middle East will significantly alter the outcome of events occurring there.

In addition to the uprisings to throw off the shackles of despotism from Tunisia to Libya to Egypt to Syria, Bahrain to Yemen, the common denominator for these and other Arab nations is their well-deserved sense of having been the victims of various regimes. They are all likely to be united in their fear of the rise of Iran, a Persian nation, and one that will soon achieve nuclear parity with Pakistan, India and, yes, Israel.

The world has lived with “the bomb” since the end of World War Two in August 1945. Nuclear weapons have not been used since, but Iran is the wild card. It will not yield to international sanctions. Its cabal of ayatollahs will not be overthrown from within. It must either suffer a massive attack on its nuclear and military facilities or it will fill the skies over Israel and other nations with mushroom clouds.

The leaders of Western nations seem unaware that, immediately upon the death of Mohammed in 632 A.D., Islam split into two factions, Sunnis and Shiites, who have been in conflict with one another ever since.

The history of Islam consists of waging war on everyone else as well either for the purpose of conversion, looting, or the collection of taxes laid on non-Muslims. This history has been broken by rare, short periods of tolerance, but Muslims, convinced that their Koran is the absolute word of Allah, have been indifferent to the values of the West and the advances of modernization that have usually been imposed on them through colonialism.

Islam has been around nearly 1,400 years and gives no evidence of reforming itself away from the Arab culture in which it took seed and away from the brutal punishments that pass for justice. It was and is a savage “religion” bent on global domination.

Even when Muslims find hospitality in non-Muslim nations like those of Europe they immediately set upon an effort to impose Sharia law, usually through intimidation, on the indigenous population. In the Middle East, hands and heads are still cut off, rape victims are stoned, and a charge of blasphemy or apostasy can get you killed.

As this is being written, Christians and the few Jews still residing in the Middle East and the Maghreb are fleeing for their lives as their churches are being burnt to the ground and their lives are at risk.

One would think that, after U.S. involvement—invasions—of Afghanistan and Iraq, we would have figured out that Islamic nations are impervious to any concept of Western style democracy. Islam’s claims to be a religion are framed within a political system run by theocrats.

Elections have managed to put Hamas in charge in Gaza and Hezbollah in charge of Lebanon. The ayatollahs grabbed power in Iran and turned that nation into a prison. The mobs in the streets of Syria are trying to overthrow the Assad dynasty, warring against an Alawaite minority tribe ruling as Baathists. Yemen is a basketcase and Somalia is even worse.

The ignorance of these facts has cost Americans billions, if not trillions, with our adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. It has led President Obama to intercede in Libya for no good reason. It is a desert under which oil exists. Beyond that, it hardly matters which dictator is in charge. Gadhafi’s dabbling in terrorism cost him more than it was worth.

So long as Obama is President, the U.S. will pursue unrealistic and often stunningly stupid policies and actions as regards Islam and Muslim nations.

By way of one small example, in April Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, appointed Arif Alikhan, a devout Muslim, as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development. Alikhan was born in Damascus, Syria. I am sure you feel safer now knowing that.

Are there nice Muslims? Sure. Are there “moderate” Muslims? Possibly, but they are outnumbered by the millions who are not. Oil money and various illegal enterprises support terrorism. Even Americans contribute because the Obama administration will not permit exploration or drilling for an estimated 150 billion barrels of our own domestic oil.

And you still wonder why President Obama actually bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia? Or that George W. Bush ignored the fact that all but one of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists were Saudis? No President wants a repeat of the 1973 Saudi oil boycott.

Nothing good can come out of the current turmoil affecting most Arab Muslim nations. The U.S. would be wise to maintain its military power, but the fact is our Navy is being reduced, our Air Force is flying aging aircraft, and the combat divisions of our Army and Marines are worn out from repeated tours in the Middle East.

Obama is as clueless as Woodrow Wilson who thought he could bring “peace in our time” and only managed to help set in motion the run-up to World War Two. He has put America at risk in so many ways I am losing count.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Obama's Global Incompetence

By Alan Caruba

All Presidents have had to deal with events around the world that seemed to call for a military response, but it was President Eisenhower who laid down the doctrine to avoid what he called “brushfire wars”, outbreaks such as we have seen in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and, in particular, Libya.

Eisenhower had directed the defeat of Germany in World War Two as the Supreme Allied Commander before being urged to run for president. He would serve two terms and was doubtless the right man at the right time in the nascent years of the Cold War.

President Obama seems to lack any kind of a doctrine or plan to deal with a Middle East where many are fed up with its dictators, combined with the realization of how far behind the rest of the world the region is.

It is an irony of history that, after Eisenhower squelched the British, French and Israeli plans to retake the Suez Canal following Nasser’s nationalization in 1956, in rather rapid succession, Nasser died, was replaced by Sadat who was assassinated, and a 28-year-old Mubarack then ruled Egypt until the Maghreb and Middle East exploded with turmoil this year.

Why did Obama feel compelled to say anything? Earlier he was reluctant to support the Iranians protesting the ayatollahs in Tehran, but he rushed to the Tele-Prompter to tell, not ask, Egyptian President Mubarak to step aside.

Curently, the Egyptian decision to open its borders with Gaza and Hamas bodes ill for Israel, but just about everything in the Middle East right now fits that description. And, of course, Obama took the opportunity to launch a verbal attack on our only real ally in the region with an overt mention of “1967 borders”.

The payback was a joint session of Congress in which Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu delivered a speech to which both Democrats and Republicans repeatedly gave standing ovations. It made Obama look lame, but just about everything does these days.

Will there be a surge of democracy in Egypt? No. The military will find a way to retain power, most likely coalescing behind a new president/dictator. After that, large numbers of the Muslim Brotherhood will be jailed and killed until they crawl back into their holes.

In Libya, Obama could have simply let the resistance succeed or fail. There was no compelling reason to demand Gadhafi step aside and the embrace of “humanitarian concerns” rings hollow given events in Syria. So far the only thing that Libya has demonstrated is that NATO is ill prepared to wage a war.

Reports have it that Obama and the Russians have decided Gadhafi must go, but Assad of Syria can stay despite the fact that he is currently killing that nation’s people by the score.

Obama has returned from a European tour in which he exhorted them to give the emerging Arab states billions in aid to facilitate democracy, but Obama does not seem to grasp the fact that the only state in the Middle East that is a real democracy is Israel. The rest are controlled by dominant tribal groups in one fashion or another. They always have been and they always will be.

It has apparently escaped Obama’s notice that neither the U.S., nor any of the European nations have any money to throw at a bunch of unhappy Arabs. The Saudis have lots of money, but they are too concerned about the threat that Iran poses and too smart to get involved in the shifting sands of Middle Eastern power struggles.

The U.S. has a little problem called “a debt ceiling” to resolve so it can continue to borrow money just to pay interest on the money it already has borrowed.

Unlike Eisenhower, Obama is the wrong man at the wrong time. He is poorly advised by a pack of anti-Semites and lacks any experience, military or otherwise, to make decisions about the Middle East. His knowledge of that region’s history appears to come from brief quotes off the back of a cereal box.

In over two years in office, Obama has become a massive embarrassment to America whenever he goes abroad, whether it is to prattle about global warming in Copenhagen or to insult the Queen of England.

The result is a serious deterioration of confidence that America can be relied upon to support allies. In Eastern Europe, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary are creating a regional framework for their mutual defense, fearing that neither NATO, nor the European Union, will be of much use to them if Russia gets frisky.

And you might recall that Obama denied Poland (and Europe) a missile shield, thus sending a signal to Russia that he actually trusted them. Nobody, but nobody, trusts the Russians. And it should be noted that Iran has missles that can hit Europe.

All of this invites trouble in a dangerous world because, more and more, nobody trusts America so long as Obama is in the Oval Office.

© Alan Caruba, 2011