Pompeo's announcement that the US will recognize West Bank settlements as legal: an excellent move

A piece by David Harsanyi at National Review today  makes the important point that while Trump's foreign policy has been nearly uniformly dangerously reckless (well, Harsanyi's term is a little more understated; he calls it "mercurial"), the one exception is forthright support for Israel. We have seen this administration make good on the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem that every president has promised since 1995, as well as recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory.

And now comes this excellent move:

. . . yesterday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that United States would no longer take the position that Israeli civilian “settlements” in the West Bank are “inconsistent with international law.” (Or, as our German ambassador Richard Grenell aptly put it, the United States would “no longer meddle in local Israeli zoning and building-permits issues.”) Many of those “settlements” — cities, really, some of them in existence for decades — are part of a de facto border, and they are never going to be bulldozed. That’s also reality.

It has always been a mistake for the United States to treat disputed territories in the West Bank as occupied. For one thing, it was impossible for Israel to “occupy” Palestinian territories because no such nation has ever existed. Israel spilled much blood taking the West Bank in self-defense from Jordan after that nation joined Egypt and Syria in the attempted destruction of Israel in 1967. Even then, Jordan had no legal claim to the territory. Israel offered 98 percent of the West Bank back right after the 1967 war, and on numerous occasions afterward. It was always refused. 

At the very least, U.S. policy treating Jews who returned to their ancient homeland as occupiers should have been voided the day Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994. Because the much-talked-about United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 does nothing to undermine the Jewish claim, no matter how often it’s misrepresented by Israel’s antagonists. In it, the U.N. established Israel’s legal right to negotiate a peace with defensible borders with existing states. Resolution 242 doesn’t mention the word “Palestinian” anywhere. Nowhere does the resolution call on Israel to withdraw to the pre–Six-Day War lines. Nowhere does it stipulate that Judea and Samaria should be Judenfrei.

As always, though, any decision that helps Israel is framed by many in the media as an effort to weaken “Palestinian efforts to achieve statehood.” This is myth. Fatah might have deluded its own people and the world for decades, but there’s no conceivable peace deal that includes a truly divided Jerusalem or a Right of Return or any indefensible border with a Palestinian state. No sane nation would consent to the creation of an antagonistic neighbor under those terms, much less allow the remnants of the Palestine Liberation Organization and their on-and-off political partners Hamas and their Iranian benefactors to set up shop. None of Trump’s moves undermine peace. They simply clarify the contours of a realistic deal. 

Something else to consider is that this puts the EU position on the matter in sharp relief. Its top court recently ruled that products imported from the West Bank must be labeled as such, rather than as being made in Israel.  

Sunday roundup

I've always maintained that freedom is elegantly simple compared to any alternative. That's demonstrated once again in this piece at Market Watch entitled, ""The US Can Slash Health Care Costs With 2 Fundamental Changes - and Without Medicare For All."

Protests flare across Iran in the wake of a three-fold increase in gasoline prices. 

Denver radio talk show host Craig Silverman was doing his show Saturday, discussing the late attorney Roy Cohn's mentorship of Donald Trump in the 1970s, when suddenly the station went to network news, and program director Kelly Michaels came into the studio and said, "You're done." KNUS is owned by Salem Communications. You'll recall that the website Red State was purged of non-Trumpists after it was acquired by Salem.

Insightful piece at the Washington Examiner by Joel Gehrke on how Mike Pompeo was 'powerless' to prevent Marie Yovanovitch's ouster as ambassador to Ukraine.

If anything I'm mentioning here is a must-read, it's Kevin Williamson' National Review piece on what a crock Marco Rubio's "common good capitalism" is. 

Um, how's that again?

A Texas school district’s decision to allow a drag queen to conduct a class on makeup application has many parents up in arms after the fact. A Willis ISD English teacher added fuel to the fire when he posted on social media that ‘parents should not have the final say’ and ‘don’t know what is best” for their children.

Colin Kaepernick's latest spoiled-brat stunt gets the cold shoulder from the NFL. 

The US will have to be involved in a response to the Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia

Noah Rothman has a very sobering piece at Commentary entitled "No, We Shouldn't Let Saudi Arabia 'Fight Its Own Wars.'" You can tell by the way he's written it that being responsible was foremost among the attitudes he wanted to bring to its crafting. This is very serious stuff he's discussing.

As the president considers how the United States should respond to a series of aggressive acts by Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, one fact should be clear: There are no good options.

Inaction is unacceptable. A passive posture would invite more aggression, and the pattern of escalating Iranian provocations suggests the Islamic Republic could miscalibrate its attacks in a way that would require a broad and conclusive response from the West. But even a measured military response to Iranian attacks entails risk. While neither the Western world nor Iran and its roguish allies want to see a full-scale military confrontation, the mechanisms for de-escalating such a conflict once the shooting starts are untested and unreliable. Iran would retaliate, potentially against American military and diplomatic targets, compelling the United States to respond in kind. That’s how cycles of violence spiral out of control. The choice before President Trump is an unenviable one, but this is the job he wanted.

If Saudi Arabia were to be served notice that it would be going it alone, it would merely delay a broader scope of engagement. The tit-for-tat taking out of the means by which the attack was launched would not halt Iran's pattern of aggression. And even if Saudi Arabia went after the Iranian presence in Yemen, Lebanon and/or Syria, it would exacerbate the Sunni-Shiite tension that fuels much of what has been going on.

As a commenter here at LITD noted recently, this latest attack did not happen in a vacuum. Rothman reminds of of the recent timeline:

Iran’s aggressive behavior follows a clear pattern of escalation. It has executed sophisticated covert operations targeting the global oil supply by disabling and hijacking ships in the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz. It has destroyed a $120 million American aerial surveillance drone operating above international waters. And now, it has executed an elaborate assault on a Saudi refinery. Iran is behaving rationally by testing the limits of provocation as a tool of statecraft. Its strategic objective is to stoke anxieties among America’s Middle Eastern and European allies and, ultimately, erode global will to maintain the present suffocating sanctions regime. Eventually, Iran is likely to miscalculate, executing a bloody attack that demands a disproportionate response from the United States. This is an outcome that American policymakers are right to avoid, but not at any cost.

Senator Lindsey Graham's view is that the shooting down of the drone is the point at which this escalation should have been resolutely addressed:

As President Donald Trump ponders retaliation on Iran, he and a close Republican ally had a spat over the supposed "weakness" of the last U.S. confrontation with Tehran.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on Twitter that Trump's decision to call off a military strike on Iran for taking out a U.S. drone in June may have emboldened the Iranians to attack an oil facility in Saudi Arabia on Saturday.

"The measured response by President @realDonaldTrump regarding the shooting down of an American drone was clearly seen by the Iranian regime as a sign of weakness," Graham said in a series of tweets.

Secretary of State Pompeo is using the term "act of war" to describe the attack:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday called the airstrikes on Saudi oil facilities “an act of war” and said it was an “Iranian attack” on the world’s energy supply.

“This is an attack of a scale we’ve just not seen before,” Pompeo told reporters in the Saudi city of Jeddah, where he is expected to meet with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

“The Saudis were the nation that were attacked. It was on their soil. It was an act of war against them directly.”

The US’ top diplomat said that the flight patterns of the drones and cruise missiles used in the Saturday attack suggest they didn’t come from the south, where Iranian-backed Houthi insurgents are fighting Saudi coalition forces in Yemen.

The group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Pompeo said US intelligence has “high confidence” that the weapons used in the strikes on an oil field and refinery were not part of the Houthis’ arsenal and have not been previously deployed by the rebel group. 

Newly selected national security advisor Robert O'Brien immediately has a doozy of a plateful.

As Rothman points out, there are no good options. Letting the situation escalate further is the worst of them.

Iran thoughts

First, LITD has no hot takes on the recent tanker attacks. Too many uncertainties. The disparate assertions regarding whether a projectile hit the Norwegian tanker from the air or whether it was hit by something in the water, like a mine or torpedo. And the business about Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe being in Tehran when the Japanese tanker was hit.

But we can say for sure that the attacker didn't happen in a vacuum. Consider the aggressiveness of Iranian proxies in the region: Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, and Hezbollah's ever-increasing reach. Further back, there are the continued characterizations of the US as the enemy - after the JCPOA was signed - by Supreme Leader Khameini as well as leaders of the Revolutionary Guard and the Quds Force. The taking of the crews of two US Navy boats as hostage on the day that Obama gave a State of the Union Address - and photographs of the crew members, distributed worldwide, on their knees with their hands behind their heads. And, of course, continued expansion of Iran's missile program.

What to do?

There are two pieces today, one by Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute, and one by Vali R. Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, that differ mostly in nuance, but which both ask the same basic question: what does Donald Trump envision as the endgame of all this?

Many observers have pointed out the contrast between Trump's indications of where he wants to go and the indications given by national security advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Trump of late has started sounding, with regard to Iran, like he's been sounding toward North Korea since the era of summit diplomacy got going: dangling the prospect of vibrant economies for these countries that will in turn result in the populations of each admiring the leaders, and the international community conferring a new respect on them. The Bolton-Pompeo camp is often suspected of itching to find a way to overthrow the regime, something that those two figures at present deny. Are they being completely forthright, or tailoring their message to coordinate as much as possible with their boss's?

I'm uneasy with the extent to which Trump treats policy for rogue states as a matter of getting great deals. As we know, not only from the way he's dealt with other kinds of world leaders, particularly those of states in the adversary category, such as Russia and China, but from his pre-politics way of dealing with those from whom he wanted things in order to advance his brand, he has no qualms about switching from insults and threats to talk of beautiful letters at the drop of a hat. He assumes the other party in negotiations is going to do the same.

I'm not at all sure he's taken into full consideration the stakes, though, when dealing with radical regimes that have threatened out-and-out annihilation of the United States and the West generally. This is a unique level of interaction.

I'de be relieved to have my assessment proven to be overly dire. But the history of Iran - and North Korea - hating the United States goes back decades. It's baked into their entire orientation to the world in which they're situated.

Their determination to possess nuclear arsenals, and use them to render themselves immune to attempts to stop their support for terror and weakening of the West, must be kept front and center as the US proceeds.

Friday roundup

Stacey Abrams, the poster girl for delusion chic:

Speaking at the Center for American Progress’s Ideas Conference, Abrams said: "The notion of identity politics has been peddled for the past 10 years and it’s been used as a dog whistle to say we shouldn’t pay too much attention to the voices coming into progress. I would argue that identity politics is exactly who we are and exactly how we won."

Why is this guy still drawing a breath instead of suffering Hell's eternal torment? 

John Walker Lindh, the man convicted of helping the Taliban following the September 11 attacks, was just released from federal prison in Terre Haute.

Lindh’s case began in November of 2001 when he was fighting alongside the Taliban. The California native had converted to Islam as a teenager and eventually traveled overseas to fight alongside radical Islamists.

Not two months after 9/11, Lindh was captured in Afghanistan, detained and interviewed by a CIA officer, a former Marine named Mike Spann. Just hours later, Spann was killed in a prisoner uprising at the same facility. In the aftermath of that uprising, Lindh was brought back to the U.S. and charged with conspiring to kill Americans and engaging in terrorism.

A conviction could have meant life in prison. Instead, attorneys accepted a plea deal approved by President George W. Bush. Those charges were dropped and Lindh only pleaded guilty to serving in the Taliban army and carrying weapons while doing so. That resulted in a 20-year sentence. With good behavior, Lindh will be released on May 23 after serving 17 years.

AOC finds the ideological significance of cauliflower:

 In a stream-of-consciousness discussion of composting, the Green New Deal, and community gardens, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lamented cauliflower as symbol of colonialism.

“Looks like they’ve got composting going on, which is so awesome, too, because composting is really hard to do in a neighborhood like this. We just don’t have the pick ups and the ease of it that a lot of other communities have. So that’s really how you do it, right, that is such a core component of the Green New Deal, is having all of these projects make sense in a cultural context. And it’s an area that I — we get the most pushback on, because people say, like, why do you need to do that? That’s too hard. But when you really think about it, when someone says that it’s too hard to do a green space that grows yucca instead of, I don’t know, cauliflower or something, what you’re doing is that you’re taking a colonial approach to environmentalism, and that is why a lot of communities of color get resistant to certain environmentalist movements, because they come with the colonial lens on them. And it should be no surprise that sometimes a lot of these projects don’t work out occasionally because our communities are naturally attuned to live in an environmentally conscious way.”

Or, you know, the decision to grow cauliflower might be a reflection of what plants will grow best in a garden with that temperature range, soil types, and rainfall level. Some yucca varieties can handle a range of temperature and rainfall, some can’t. All of this information is a Google search away, and one can fairly wonder why a U.S. congresswoman is weighing in on what vegetables should be grown in citizens’ gardens.

I always wonder about these situations in which a nation nearly immediately sours on a leader it has just elected. Such is apparently the case in Brazil:

Earlier this month a procession of Brazil’s military cabinet ministers came to President Jair Bolsonaro with the same clear message: muzzle your far-right keyboard warriors or your government will implode.

Propelled to the presidency by a vociferous army of online ideologues, including his sons, Bolsonaro’s government comprises an uneasy mix of radicals, pragmatists and economic liberals. In his five months in office, Bolsonaro has done little to rein in the extremist fringe, even when they target Congress, the Supreme Court and members of his own administration. The former members of the armed forces, who make up a third of his cabinet and constitute the moderate faction, have endured particularly vicious abuse.

Since the retired generals’ intervention, the public mud-slinging has ebbed a little, but the sense of division and improvisation in government has not. Bolsonaro’s approval ratings are sliding fast, while prominent erstwhile supporters who hoped for clean, decisive government have recanted, and legislators are beginning to jump ship. Even in financial markets, which helped carry the retired paratrooper to office, hope is fizzling. The real earlier this week reached an 8-month low. The presidency did not respond to a request for comment.

"I’m amazed by how weak Bolsonaro is politically. The government has everything going for it but sabotages itself with controversy and insults," said Renato Nobile, a Bolsonaro voter and the CEO of Genial Advisory, which manages over 30 billion reais ($7.4 billion) in assets. “Many people want the military, Mourao is more skilled than Bolsonaro,” he said in reference to Vice-President Hamilton Mourao, a four-star general.

The saving grace of the Trump administration is the grownups on board. Sohrab Ahmar interviews one of them in the New York Post:

“White House Reviews Military Plans Against Iran, in Echoes of Iraq War” screamed a New York Times headline.

“When you see that headline, it’s flashy, but it doesn’t begin to reflect the depth of the work that’s been done,” Pompeo says as we sit down for an interview at the plush Palace Hotel in Midtown.

Yes, the Pentagon updated a military contingency plan in case the Tehran regime escalated its attacks against US assets and interests in the Persian Gulf. But the plan was one of several options presented to the commander in chief. To go by that Times headline, and others like it, you would think Team Trump is driving America to war, willy-nilly; that Washington is the aggressor and Tehran the victim without agency.

Fact is, Iran has a “revolutionary, theocratic regime that is intent upon the destruction of the United States and Israel,” Pompeo tells me. “That’s the backdrop to all this.”

President Trump hasn’t boosted the risk of a confrontation by ratcheting up sanctions. “The risk is the same” as ever, and it comes from Iranian leaders who “have made the decision that they’re willing to contemplate attacks — kinetic, military attacks — against the United States.”

What’s new is that the United States under Trump will no longer entertain the fiction that Iran’s various militias and terror proxies are somehow independent of the regime.

Pompeo warns the Iranians: “Whether you subcontract, or you partner, or you train, or you equip, or you operate it, or you lead it, if you allow it to engage in attacks against Western interests — we’re not going to allow you to create public deniability. Because we’ll know full well what’s happening. That’s not going to stop us from attacking those who made the decisions to put Americans at risk.”

Theresa May resigns as UK Prime Minister. I realize that a move like Brexit is fraught with arcane considerations, but it seems to me that that just argues for the cleanest, most decisive break that can be accomplished, and she just spent a little too long in the realm of if-this-then-we-have-to-consider-that.  Stock up on popcorn for the Boris Johnson-Jeremy Corbin scramble to succeed her.

Great Sarah Hoyt essay at PJ Media on why the Left has to gin up alarm about "white supremacy."

Saturday roundup

While here at LITD we are wont to keep the Three Pillars at the ready when discussing the nature of conservatism, it's important to remember that as a worldview it is the distillation of various strands of thought. And we must admit that some of our forebears had some funny ways about them. Richard M. Weaver's notions that medieval Europe and the antebellum South were as close to model societies as humankind has seen, that jazz was barbaric and devoid of musical principles, and that war could be conducted according to a chivalric code are thorny. Midge Decter had to call out Russell Kirk for remarks that smacked of an anti-Israel stance. Bill Buckley had to pry the fingers of the Objectivists and Birchers from National Review.

All this came to mind earlier today as I digested two nature-of-conservatism pieces I ran across: Matthew Continetti's Washington Free Beacon essay entitled "There's No Escaping Trump" and Andrew Sullivan's New York Magazine piece "America Desperately Needs a Healthy Conservatism."   Continetti is of the face-it-Trump's-impact-on-the-Republican-variety-is-also-leaving-a-permanent-mark-on-conservatism-as-an-ideology variety. Sullivan was inspired to write his piece by having just read Conservatism: An Introduction to the Great Tradition by Roger Scruton. I'm not so sure I buy his assertion that conservatism is, by nature of being a product of a particular place and time (the West over the last two-plus centuries) exclusive to certain peoples. Seems to me the Three Pillars will rock any society in which it's tried. He also veers off into a "conservative" argument for an environmentalism predicated on the global climate being in some kind of trouble. Talk about kinky! But they are both worth a rub of the chin. I may explore the train of thought they've engendered when time permits.

Here's what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore to a photo shoot with a construction crew:

Ocasio-Cortez was pictured wearing a $3,500 outfit as she posed with construction workers.​ She was decked out in a Gabriela Hearst blazer ($1,990), Gabriela Hearst pants ($890), and some Monolo Blahnik shoes ($625).

Secretary of State Pompeo on Global-Test's end-run regarding Iran:

"What Secretary Kerry has done is unseemly and unprecedented. This is a former secretary of state engaged with the world's largest state sponsor of terror and, according to him... he was talking to them, he was telling them to wait out this administration."

[snip]

"You can't find precedent for this in U.S. history and Secretary Kerry ought not to engage in that kind of behavior," he said. "It's inconsistent with what the foreign policy of the United States is as directed by this president, and it is beyond inappropriate."
Pompeo  pointed out that he saw Kerry at the Munich Security Conference in February with former Obama Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Obama Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, calling them "the troika."

"I'm confident that they met with their troika counterparts," Pompeo continued. "I wasn't in the meeting, but I am reasonably confident that he was not there in support of U.S. policy with respect to the Islamic Republic of Iran -- who this week, fired Katyusha rockets toward the United States embassy in Baghdad and took action against our consulate in Basra." 

He added: "Actively undermining U.S. policy as a former secretary of state is literally unheard of."

Great Heidi Munson piece at The Resurgent entitled, "Do You Ever Feel Abandoned By God? Emotions Aren't Always Our Best Guide."  Any given moment in our lives, however dire, is a mere snapshot, and we never have all the facts and context. Plus, God is in charge and loves us infinitely.

Great Daren Jonescu essay entitled "Turning Sadness Into Sentimentality":

I almost called this little essay “Turning Tragedy Into Tripe.” For I am thinking of the inevitable September 11th anniversary “memorials.” There are ways to remember life- or world-changing moments without turning them into emotional pablum. The modern world, however, has lost those ways, just as it has lost its way in general with regard to the meaning of history, the lessons of experience, and the adult imperative of rising above that manipulative sentimentality and cloying “social feeling” which, in the name of “never forgetting,” serve only to infantilize and diminish the souls of men.

If you were personally involved in the 9/11 attacks, or lost close friends or beloved family members that day, you will naturally experience some echo of the old pain as the calendar reminds you of your suffering. But for everyone else, the pretense of deep feeling — whether of the patriotic “USA, USA” sort or the self-centered “Oh, dear me” sort — is something that must be dredged up, much like the popular outpouring of feeling that one witnesses after the death of a celebrity, from Princess Diana to Robin Williams to John McCain. Everyone wishes to be a part of the “event,” and to act out a level of intimate engagement that is not grounded in any personal reality, but rather in a desire to belong, i.e., to share in a great communal feeling through the sort of self-annihilation that late progressive man mistakes for self-expression.

We all know what has to be faced in order for this looming grimness to be reversed:

The federal government collected a record $1,521,589,000,000 in individual income taxes through the first eleven months of fiscal 2018 (October 2017 through August 2018), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today.

However, the federal government also ran a deficit of $898,112,000,000 for those eleven months, according to the statement.

Check out the video of the Weather Channel guy waxing dramatic in the Florence wind, leaning into it, while in the background a couple of people stroll by in normal fashion. But, hey, if you're going to perpetuate the meme that weather is getting worse due to human advancement, a little theatricality is useful tool.

The NYT op-ed writer may have gone about it wrong, but his essential point was valid

Namely, that the administration's foreign-policy team has to keep sending the grown-up message to regions like east Asia to counter the Very Stable Genius's blurtings.

Zach Cooper of the American Enterprise Institute puts it thusly:

The United States has “abandoned its traditional presence in the Asia Pacific,” declares Korean expert Oh Ei Sun. “Donald Trump is checking out of Asia,” warns Peter Hartcher, international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. From Tokyo to Singapore, critics are questioning U.S. staying power in Asia. But Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just announced several major new Indo-Pacific initiatives, so why are U.S. friends in Asia so concerned?

The answer, of course, comes back to President Donald Trump. His decision not to attend this year’s critical Asia summits is just the latest signal that the United States is simultaneously pursuing two separate policies: Trump’s and his administration’s. The president’s “America First” agenda is fundamentally at odds with his administration’s efforts to, in Pompeo’s words, “deepen engagement” in Asia. These two cannot be reconciled. The unfortunate result is a muddled set of policies and a diminution of U.S. influence in Asia.

Here's what the grownups are pursuing:

The 2017 U.S. National Security Strategy and 2018 National Defense Strategy both articulated a regional strategy of deep engagement. The administration labeled this approach the promotion of a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” But critics asked for specifics. In July and August, the administration provided its first concrete details when Pompeo gave two major speeches on Asia policy.

In Washington, Pompeo announced that $113 million would be funneled into three new efforts: a digital connectivity and cyber security partnership, an initiative to enhance development growth through energy, and an infrastructure transaction and assistance network. Several days later in Singapore, Pompeo committed to shift nearly $300 million in funding into accounts for foreign military financing and countering transnational crime in Asia. Meanwhile, administration officials continued to push for a doubling of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation’s (a U.S. government agency that helps American businesses invest in developing markets) access to U.S. Treasury credit, to over $60 billion.

These are worthwhile initiatives. The dollar amounts may not be huge — Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi quickly belittled the new initiatives by saying, “it should be 10 times higher, for a superpower with $16 trillion of GDP” — but that is the wrong way to think about these commitments. China’s state-driven development model lends itself to large dollar figures, but the U.S. approach is privately driven, so American government efforts are more of a force multiplier.

The U.S. government isn’t betting that $113 million will make a difference on its own, just that it will incentivize far more private investment. Washington’s hope is that this private investment will be more attractive over the long term than Beijing’s massive but underdelivering Belt and Road Initiative, which seeks to connect land and sea trade routes running from China through Eurasia to Western Europe and Africa.

Although China was seldom mentioned in Pompeo’s remarks, the contrast with Beijing’s approach could not have been clearer. He noted,

Our good faith as a partner is evident in our support for economic development that honors local development and national sovereignty. The United States does not invest for political influence but instead practices partnership economics.

He also defined the goals of a free and open Indo-Pacific as protection from coercion, good governance, respect for fundamental rights and liberties, access to seas and airways, peaceful resolution of disputes, fair and reciprocal trade, open investment, transparency, and connectivity. It was hard not to read these as direct refutations of China’s regional approach.

Pompeo and other members of the administration are to be commended for putting forward a positive regional agenda with real specifics. Unfortunately, there are reasons to believe that last month’s speeches may signify the high-water mark of the administration’s Asia policy.

But here's what they're up against:

Administration officials have done their best to argue that they represent the president, but Trump continues to undermine them. Last week, just days after Mattis promised that there were “no plans at this time to suspend any more exercises,” Trump tweeted “there is no reason at this time to be spending large amounts of money on joint U.S.-South Korea war games.” This is not only bad policy — the exercises are crucial to the allied deterrence capability yet the last one would have cost only $14 million— but it also undercut the secretary of defense, which will make his role as “secretary of reassurance” even more difficult.

Meanwhile, Trump is pushing trade policies that contradict the administration’s own “free and open” principles. He has used national security as an excuse to put in place damaging measures, like auto tariffs targeting close military allies and trade partners. This will directly harm America’s most important relationships in Asia and elsewhere. How long can administration officials push a “free and open Indo-Pacific” while the president continues to favor disengagement and protectionism?

The situation's instability must be resolved:

 . . . this situation simply cannot continue. The president’s disagreements with his own officials cannot be papered over. He is, after all, the elected leader of the United States and his (almost always) decisions bind U.S. policymakers. From his “trust” in Kim Jong Un to his “friendship” with Xi Jinping to his conviction that “trade wars are good, and easy to win,” the president’s beliefs are driving U.S. policy. And Trump appears increasingly determined to shed administration officials who do not share his views.

The implications for U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific are finally becoming clear. Pompeo’s vision of an America that “is deeply engaged in the region’s economic, political, cultural, and security affairs” is a good one. It is a shame that the president doesn’t appear to share it.

 

So while the palace-intrigue aspect of this may cause the casual observer's eyes to laze over, it has serious implications. 

 

The VSG to Pompeo: nix your NorKor trip

But his tweets about it indicate how, as with everything, he views this situationally as opposed to crafting a solid policy based on a consistent set of principles. That's evident from the way he tries to blame the lack of NorKor movement on what was "agreed upon" in Singapore on China being ticked off about trade issues, and also the business about "warmest regards." Excuse me while I hurl.

I have asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not to go to North Korea, at this time, because I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

...Additionally, because of our much tougher Trading stance with China, I do not believe they are helping with the process of denuclearization as they once were (despite the UN Sanctions which are in place)...

...Secretary Pompeo looks forward to going to North Korea in the near future, most likely after our Trading relationship with China is resolved. In the meantime I would like to send my warmest regards and respect to Chairman Kim. I look forward to seeing him soon!

As I say, he views everything situationally. He thinks the Chinese trade issues will be easily resolved and then all will be peaches and cream, never mind that China has long-range ambitions that include knocking the US down from its lone-superpower status. How much help was China prior to this trade war? 

And then there's that "warmest regards and respect" dog vomit. The VSG needs to have his cell phone stomped on before he sends out another tweet.

And then there's this

In the course of the take-questions-from-the-press portion of his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe today, the Very Stable Genius said rather forthrightly that he's basically winging it regarding the upcoming Kim summit:

On Thursday, the president showed little concern himself. Speaking to reporters before a White House meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Ave he said: “I don't think I have to prepare very much. It's about attitude. It's about willingness to get things done.”

Allahpundit at Hot Air has done some thought-provoking analysis on the internal dynamics of the Trump national-security team's planning, or lack thereof, for the summit. His pieces are here,  here, and here.  The gist of what he's analyzing is all the talk that Pompeo and Bolton don't get along, that the latter froze the former out of the White House meeting with that North Korean intelligence thug, and that Bolton dropped the "Libyan model" idea into his remarks in order to scuttle or at least dampen the possibilities of a summit. Allahpundit poses a good question for those inclined to embrace that view: Why did Mike Pence reiterate it?

Allahpundit floats the possibility that Bolton concurs with the VSG that not a whole lot of preparation is needed a this point, with all the off-and-back-on status changes (not to mention Giuliani's weird remark about Kim begging on his hands and knees for a reinstatement).

And it gets weirder still. There's talk of a round of golf at Mar-a-Lago. And one frothing-at-the-mouth VSG devotee thinks it's a stroke of 5-D chess:

There’s another possibility. The goals of the summit may be so diminished by now that Bolton has concluded there’s little to prepare for. He wants the NorKs to commit firmly to denuclearlization, to the point where they show up in Singapore with a list of ports the U.S. Navy can use to carry away Kim’s nukes and enrichment infrastructure. Trump has scaled those ambitions way, way back, though, telling reporters last week after the meeting with Kim Yong Chol that the summit would be a “get to know you” session. I think POTUS is now viewing this as essentially a gladhanding opportunity, a chance for him to mount a charm offensive, build a rapport, then let the eggheads take over to hammer out a compromise. He’s spent his entire adult in Manhattan real estate and politics schmoozing shady characters. How hard can it be to schmooze a monster? In fact:

[A]ccording to two administration officials, Trump has also raised the possibility of a leisurely activity and, perhaps, getting in 18 holes with Kim if the two end up getting along.

“He has also discussed [possibly] golfing with Kim,” a senior Trump administration official said…

“I think that would be phenomenal—I think it would be a huge foreign policy win if President Trump got Kim Jong Un on a golf course, especially if he did it at Mar-a-Lago,” Eric Bolling, a close Trump friend and former Fox News star, told The Daily Beast.

I have my doubts that it amounts to grand strategy. That's not something the VSG has ever demonstrated a capacity for, at least to my satisfaction. His modus operandi in foreign-policy matters tends to hew more closely to the kind of clumsiness demonstrated in his most recent phone conversation with Pierre Trudeau. 

Trump's imparting a sort of Bolton-esque tone to some of his statements about the summit, saying denuclearization is a must for any kind of deal.  But LITD is far from convinced that this hard-ass stance being put forth basically in the same breath with Mar-a-Lago talk leaves me skittish rather than giddy.

I understand I could be proven wrong. I just have yet to see signs of genius in the foreign-policy arena from the guy.

This is how you deal with mortal enemies

Good on ya, Secretary Pompeo:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that Washington would impose the “strongest sanctions in history” on Iran if the regime does not comply with a list of U.S. demands intended to bolster nuclear non-proliferation verification measures and reign in the rogue state’s support for terror groups and involvement in foreign proxy wars.

Pompeo, speaking at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, laid out a “diplomatic road map” for future relations with Iran that includes the reimplementation of the sanctions lifted under the 2015 agreement, which the U.S. withdrew from earlier this month, as well as the imposition of additional sanctions intended to bring the regime back to the negotiating table.

The former CIA director laid out a comprehensive list of requirements that Iran must comply with to avoid the painful sanctions, including the declaration of all nuclear material to the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA), the allowance of unqualified IAEA access to all nuclear sites, the conclusion of missile development, and the release of all American hostages. He suggested that the Trump administration was prepared to lift the sanctions, reestablish a commercial relationship and allow Iran access to advanced technology in exchange for good behavior.

Squeeze 'em hard and insist on al the above conditions.

Wednesday roundup

Mark Theissen on Gina Haspel's spy chops:

It was one of the Clinton administration’s biggest counterterrorism successes. Just weeks after al-Qaeda terrorists trained by Iran blew up U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, Gina Haspel’s phone rang in the middle of the night. She was in her final weeks as station chief in what the CIA describes as an “exotic and tumultuous capital” in central Eurasia, and intelligence had just emerged that two senior al-Qaeda associates linked to the embassy bombings were on their way to the country where she was stationed.

Haspel swung into action, devising an operation to capture the terrorists. She worked around the clock, sleeping on the floor of her office, as agents tracked the terrorists to a local hotel, where the men were apprehended after a firefight. According to the CIA, “The successful operation not only led to the terrorists’ arrest and subsequent imprisonment, but to the seizure of computers that contained details of a terrorist plot.” For her efforts during the operation, which ultimately disrupted a terrorist cell, Haspel in 1999 received the George H.W. Bush Award for Excellence in Counterterrorism.

This is as much as the CIA has revealed, but according to press accounts, several senior al-Qaeda associates were captured in Baku, Azerbaijan, just weeks after the embassy bombings. They included Ihab Saqr , a top lieutenant of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Essam Marzouk, who also worked for Zawahiri and had trained two of the embassy bombers. Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, had reportedly intercepted signals indicating that Saqr was headed to Baku to meet an Iranian intelligence operative. 

And she gets big-time bipartisan kudos, Kamala Harris's moral preening notwithstanding:

“She has served in some really tough places, high-risk hardship posts, and has performed some extraordinary operations,” said former CIA official Henry “Hank” Crumpton, who was Haspel’s boss in the agency’s National Resources Division. According to a source familiar with her career, Haspel was once deployed in a conflict zone, when military officials from a hostile nation arrived without warning at an event she was attending. As she left, they fired at her vehicle, blowing out a tire. She still keeps the bullet as a reminder of the risks CIA officers take each day to protect the country. She knows their sacrifices firsthand. For her, some of the stars on the CIA’s Memorial Wall represent the names and faces of friends she has lost in the line of duty.

“She’s truly a spymaster,” said one retired senior intelligence official who knows Haspel well. “She’s managed intelligence operations against the hardest targets, Russia in particular. She has earned great respect from intelligence leaders around the world; even people like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin would have to respect her operational savvy.” Yet despite her many accomplishments, colleagues say, she is a paragon of humility with zero political ambition. “She’s never lobbied for a job,” one of her former CIA bosses told me . “The jobs searched for her.”

Little wonder that so many senior Obama-era intelligence officials — including Leon Panetta, John Brennan, Michael Morell, James R. Clapper Jr. and Jeremy Bash — have urged the Senate to confirm her. To vote down someone so obviously qualified as political retribution for the CIA’s now-defunct interrogation program would be a travesty. President Barack Obama’s Justice Department concluded that no crimes had been committed. Moreover, as CIA veterans point out, Brennan was himself deeply involved in the interrogation program, and was confirmed 63-34 as Obama’s CIA director, with only two Democrats and one independent voting against him. Why the double standard for the first woman nominated to lead the agency?

Excellent David Harsanyi piece at The Federalist entitled "The Barack Obama Legacy Deserves to Be Destroyed." 

More funny business from Salem Media:

It might not be unusual that a conservative-minded media organization would aim to support the Republican nominee. But the former host, Elisha Krauss, said she feels it's disingenuous to ostensibly hire hosts to be open about their views, only to pressure them behind the scenes to change. 

For months, Krauss said, Salem executives explicitly pressured her to change how she treated Trump. Though Krauss said she praised Trump when she felt he deserved it, it ultimately wasn't enough. In January 2017, Krauss said, she was shell-shocked when a casual meeting with a company executive turned into her dismissal. 

Krauss declined to discuss the details of her severance, but said the rest of her contract had been settled. 

The emails obtained by CNNMoney were sent in the summer of 2016 to Krauss and Ben Shapiro, both former co-hosts of KRLA's "The Morning Answer," and both conservative Trump critics. Krauss and Shapiro co-hosted the show along with Brian Whitman, an anti-Trump liberal, and later Jennifer Horn, a pro-Trump conservative. 

"What I have been hearing on TMA... has not been in the spirit of 'supporting the GOP nominee,'" one Salem executive, Terry Fahy, general manager at Salem, wrote in an email to Shapiro and Krauss on July 19, 2016. "In fact, it seems that the show gets into negative minutiae of the Trump campaign and the GOP convention (e.g. criticizing Trump for having his kids speak at the convention.) Do we really need a side by side audio comparison of Trump's wife's speech with Michelle Obama's? How is that ultimately relevant to the big picture and advance the cause?"

Eventually the axe fell:

 On a Sunday in January 2017, at a meeting she was told to bring her husband and child to, Krauss said a Salem executive told her she had just hosted her final show. She was not to communicate with anyone at the station or her listeners. She was done. Her listeners, she said, were told she was the one who decided to leave.

By the way, Conrad Black has a new book out that gushes all over his idol the Very Stable Genius, if you're into that sort of thing. Maybe Salem ought to talk to him about a show.


The NYT tries just a little too hard to spin Pompeo's absence for the big announcement:

On Tuesday, the Times breathlessly reported that Secretary of State Pompeo was absent from Washington when Trump announced he was pulling the U.S. out of the nuclear deal with Iran. “At a Key Moment, Trump’s Top Diplomat Is Again Thousands of Miles Away,” the headline harumphed. 

The Times reported that “senior State Department officials were momentarily speechless on Tuesday when asked why Mr. Pompeo did not delay his trip by a day to be in Washington during Mr. Trump’s Iran deal announcement.” According to the Times, European diplomats complained privately that they were “having trouble getting answers from Washington.” 

But the Times knew that Pompeo was heading to North Korea make sure that three Americans who had been jailed by the dictatorship would be coming home. It reported as much in this same story. And ultimately, Pompeo not only returned with the three prisoners, but also worked on arranging a date and location for Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong Un.

The guy had work to do.

In an ABC interview, Vice President Pence said that one of the detainees freed from North Korea asked to get out of the plane while it refueled in Anchorage to see the sunlight, which he hadn't seen in "a long time." 

Noam Chomsky is one warped dude:

During the question and answer session after his talk, Chomsky aimed his misguided philosophizing at Christianity, saying that the faith that isn't Islam has set out to threaten the globe. Campus Reform noted:

“People in high places now claim to be devout Christians, and on the basis of Christian ideals they’re saying let’s proceed to destroy the world,” Chomsky asserted, adding, “I don’t know anybody in the Islamic world that’s doing that.”

Where has he been? From everything I've seen, the regimes oppressing women, children, and gays aren't Christian. The nations that threaten modern democracy do not worship Jesus as Lord. The vast majority of acts of terrorism aren't committed by Baptists or Episcopalians either. There's a common thread through most of the violence in the world: radical Islam. 

Great Ben Shapiro piece at The Weekly Standard entitled "How Conservatives Can Win Back Young Americans."

 

 

Dem grandstanding on Pompeo is pure gotcha politics

The comment thread underneath the post immediately below this one basically consists of a commenter expressing his loathing for Trump due to Trump's very obvious character shortcomings, a view pretty close to my own, and my response that that is all the more reason to see to it that he is surrounded by the most sober-minded, principled and consistent advisors that can be found.

We have that in Mike Pompeo, who has an engineering degree, a law degree, a record of distinguished Army service, and who founded and ran an aerospace machining company. He's been CIA chief for about a year, and now he's the nominee for Secretary of State.

There is no good reason to oppose his nomination, and Dem attempts to offer one ring very hollow:

n the coming months, President Trump will have to deal with the fallout from his strike on Syria, the growing conflict between Israel and Iran, the future of the Iran nuclear agreement, Chinese belligerence toward Taiwan, the planned summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and whatever unexpected international crises that erupt. Even if you accept the critique of Trump as someone who has no fixed worldview, little in the way of principle, and is dangerously enamored of the "madman" theory of strategic ambiguity, you would therefore want him, it seems to me, to be surrounded by personnel who are experienced, knowledgeable, capable, and steadfast—individuals who can serve as ballast, who can tether the president to geopolitical reality.

The slightest glance at Pompeo's official biography is enough to confirm that he is such a man. How many senators, Republican or Democrat, graduated at the top of their class at West Point, served as a cavalry officer, graduated from Harvard Law School and edited the Harvard Law Review, then went on to become a successful businessman? These are precisely the qualities that led the Senate in January 2017 to confirm Pompeo as CIA director in a bipartisan 66-32 vote.

A position in which, by the high standards of administration critics, Pompeo has excelled. "When it came to representing the judgments of the CIA, he was scrupulous," former CIA director Michael Hayden, no friend of Trump's, said recently. "I've seen no indication whatsoever that he's done anything but fairly describe what it is his analysts believe to be true and that includes the hypercharged, politically sensitive third-rail issue of what the Russians did in 2016."

So Pompeo is credentialed, succeeded in a tough position, and represented intelligence straightforwardly to President Trump. And yet none of this is enough for the Democrats, including those who supported Pompeo's nomination for CIA director, for the specious reason that the president shouldn't have a secretary of state who agrees with him. The Senate Democrats are operating under the assumption that it is disqualifying for a nominee to hold views shared by the duly elected president and majorities in both houses of Congress. They say Pompeo is too hawkish, despite his personal meeting with Kim Jong Un. Or they say Pompeo is dishonest for not revealing to them his classified visit to North Korea. Or they attack Pompeo for holding the same position on same-sex marriage as Barack Obama circa 2012. Or they worry that Pompeo is too worried about Islamism, and not worried enough about climate change. Next they'll complain that he's never donated to Planned Parenthood.

Yes, it's true: Mike Pompeo is not a liberal Democrat. Knock me over with a feather.

Of course, the real reason Democrats are circling the wagons against this nomination has nothing to do with Pompeo's politics. It's because the Democrats recognize the political weakness of the Trump administration ahead of the midterm elections and want to cripple it further. But have they paused for a moment to consider what might happen if their wish is granted and Pompeo is not confirmed? Who do they think Trump will nominate then? Lena Dunham?

More likely, Trump, as he has done in other areas of the bureaucracy for the last 16 months, won't nominate anyone at all. He will leave the office of secretary of state unfilled while he and Pompeo manage diplomacy from the Oval Office and Langley, respectively. What this scenario achieves for the Democrats or the country, I do not know.

Now, back to the fact that Trump is objectionable as president, which he is. That's not the issue here. The issue is the power-mad nature of the contemporary Democrat party. They'd be doing this to cabinet nominees if we had any other Republican in the Oval Office.