Mid-Wednesday roundup

Incredibly powerful essay by Lee Smith in Tablet on the Syrian debacle, and Samantha Powers's role in it. He reprints several of her Tweets about recent developments such as chlorine gas attacks, the Assad regime messing with food and aid access to Aleppo, and barrel bombs, and how terrible they are. Smith points out that it rings a bit hollow, given that these developments are the directly result of the Most Equal Comrade's nomenklatura's beyond-lame foreign policy. Smith then goes on to note that in 2002, Powers published a 600-page book called A Problem From Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, in which she examined how the US had weaseled out of any substantive response to such atrocities as the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, Pol Pot's reign of terror, and Saddam Hussein's gassing of Kurds, until the damage had been done.

As Power notes in the book’s conclusion, “What is most shocking about America’s reaction … is not that the United States refused to deploy U.S. ground forces to combat the atrocities. For much of the century, even the most ardent interventionists did not lobby for U.S. ground invasions. What is most shocking is that U.S. policymakers did almost nothing to deter the crime.”

Smith asserts that the MEC's Syria policy sounds like it was designed using Powers's book as a blueprint.

The piece starts out with a noteworthy observation: all the policy folks who had been general fans of the MEC who are now writing op-eds and the like accusing the MEC's nomenklatura of war crimes for its neglect of the situation.

Disturbing-as-hell piece by Allahpundit at Hot Air  on Rush Limbaugh, Squirrel-Hair and the prospects for conservatism. I've written here and spoken on my podcast about the excruciating lengths Rush has gone to in order to refrain from saying what he ought to say: that S-H is not a nice person, but rather a vulgar narcissist with a reckless mouth and should not be the GOP nominee. He has maintained the "this-thing-is-so-big-no-one-can-fully-comprehend-it" stance to the bitter end. Even when coming out and stating another truth we all know - that Ted Cruz is the closest thing the GOP has seen to Ronald Reagan since Ronald Reagan, he had to qualify it by saying that "if conservatism is your bag," Ted's your candidate. Anyway, Rush got two callers yesterday taking him to task for this, and he sort of blew his stack.

There is one phrase in Allapundit's commentary on this that has seared my mind since I first read it this morning. I've put it in boldface in the context of the whole paragraph:

For years the explanation on the right for presidential failures has been that conservatism never had a fair chance. The reason we ended up with Romneys and McCains is because either “true conservatives” weren’t running for president or the ones who were running, like Fred Thompson, didn’t have Reagan’s gifts as a communicator. Conservatism can never fail in a center-right country but conservative candidates can, through their own shortcomings. The problem with that theory this year is that Ted Cruz is the model of a talk-radio-approved “true conservative” candidate. He’s brilliant, he’s preternaturally fluid as a communicator, he has all the right enemies. Rubio fans, Rush among them, would say the same of him, I think. And here they are, so far behind a guy who’s not conservative — in South Carolina, of all places — that in some polls their combined numbers don’t match Trump’s. What you’re seeing in this excerpt, I think, is Rush tossing out the window the theory that conservatism’s problem is always a personnel problem. We’ve got the personnel this year, finally — and we’re circling the drain. The new theory is that conservatism is simply no match for angry can-do populism, wherever it may land on the left-right spectrum, at least in the current political climate. The irresistible force finally met the immovable object. And no less than Rush Limbaugh is admitting it. Amazing.

I asked John F. Di Leo, a decidedly pro-Cruz, anti-Trump columnist, this morning, "Is the situation really that dire?"  He responded, "No question."

This is not good:

Iraq is searching for "highly dangerous" radioactive material stolen last year, according to an environment ministry document and seven security, environmental and provincial officials who fear it could be used as a weapon if acquired by Islamic State.

The material, stored in a protective case the size of a laptop computer, went missing in November from a storage facility near the southern city of Basra belonging to U.S. oilfield services company Weatherford (WFT.N), the document obtained by Reuters showed and officials confirmed.

A spokesman for Iraq's environment ministry said he could not discuss the issue, citing national security concerns. A Weatherford spokesman in Iraq declined to comment, and the company's Houston headquarters did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The material, which uses gamma rays to test flaws in materials used for oil and gas pipelines in a process called industrial gamma radiography, is owned by Istanbul-based SGS Turkey, according to the document and officials.
An SGS official in Iraq declined to comment and referred Reuters to its Turkish headquarters, which did not respond to phone calls.

You have to see the cover of the latest issue of wSeici, a major Polish magazine. The theme of the issue is the rape of Europe, literally but also demographically and culturally, by the flood of Muslim refugees.

China has put advanced missiles on a disputed South China Sea island. How advanced? This advanced:

The HQ 9 is a serious piece of hardware. It’s a two-stage active-radar surface-to-air missile with a 200 km range and a 180kg warhead, and comes with eight launchers of four missiles each. It also comes with a highly sophisticated search and targeting radar, the HT-233, that can point up to six different missiles at six different targets — a technology that, ironically, was almost certainly stolen from our own Patriot missile system. The HQ 9 started life as an anti-ballistic missile, but it can be equally useful for targeting aircraft like the U.S. reconnaissance aircraft that, back in May, passed near Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratlys, where the Chinese are busy completing a runway suitable for military aircraft. Now they are saying, try something like that in the Paracels, and it may be the last flight you ever make.

At least 18 killed in an Ankara bombing of military shuttles, mere meters away from the parliament building and military headquarters.

Hillionaire provides us with reason number gazillion why she must never occupy the Oval Office:

One of the classified email chains discovered on Hillary Clinton’s personal unsecured server discussed an Afghan national’s ties to the CIA and a report that he was on the agency’s payroll, a U.S. government official with knowledge of the document told Fox News.

The discussion of a foreign national working with the U.S. government raises security implications – an executive order signed by President Obama said unauthorized disclosures are “presumed to cause damage to the national security."

The U.S. government official said the Clinton email exchange, which referred to a New York Times report, was among 29 classified emails recently provided to congressional committees with specific clearances to review them. In that batch were 22 “top secret” exchanges deemed too damaging to national security to release.

Confirmation that one of these exchanges concerned a reported CIA asset means the emails went beyond issues like the drone strike campaign. Democrats repeatedly have said some messages referred to this, reinforcing Clinton's position that the documents are over-classified.

Based on the timing and other details, the email chain likely refers to either an October 2009 Times story that identified Afghan national Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of then-Afghan president Hamid Karzai, as a person who received “regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency” -- or an August 2010 Times story that identified Karzai aide Mohammed Zia Salehi as being on the CIA payroll. Ahmed Wali Karzai was murdered during a 2011 shoot-out, a killing later claimed by the Taliban.

Fox News was told the email chain included then-Secretary of State Clinton and then-special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke and possibly others. The basic details of this email exchange were backed up to Fox News by a separate U.S. government source who was not authorized to speak on the record.

And that's the way it rolls on our post-modern planet.