That shameful Austin-Blinken letter to Israel

 I saw this coming a year ago. 

As soon as Israel commenced its response to the horrors of October 7, 2023, I could see the trajectory. In the initial phase, the Biden administration was forthrightly supportive. But I knew that as soon as Israel had to zap some schools and hospitals in Gaza - because the staffs, students and patients in those building were being used as human shields by Hamas, and that's where the weapons caches and operations centers were - the tone from Washington would change. And it followed the same pattern as the US response to previous Israeli responses to Hamas attacks. "Hey, guys, you've sent a proportional message. That's about enough." "Take the win" and such.

The letter that the US Secretaries of State and defense sent to the Israeli government takes this clueless hubris a step further:

On the one hand, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that the U.S. would be sending an advanced anti-missile system to Israel, along with troops to operate it, to bolster the defense against Iran. On the other hand, Biden has been pressuring Israel into a more limited response to Iran’s second ballistic-missile attack in five months, including publicly opposing an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In the midst of this, Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken sent a joint letter to Israeli officials — promptly released publicly — chastising Israel for not ensuring enough humanitarian aid in Gaza and warning that if Israel does not meet the administration’s demands within 30 days, the U.S. could suspend aid to Israel. Conveniently, this would place the potential aid-suspension date a week after the November 5 election.

In other words, Harris can spend the closing weeks of the presidential election arguing to the pro-Hamas caucus that the administration has put Israel on notice while still claiming to supporters of Israel that no decision has been made to suspend aid.

The substance of the letter places the blame for insufficient aid getting into the hands of Gazans on Israel, claiming that Israelis are creating too many barriers to aid entering the strip. Yet Israel must vet aid going in because Hamas has historically used aid deliveries to smuggle in weapons. Also, Hamas inhibits the flow of aid within Gaza, looting delivery trucks and hoarding food and supplies for their own fighters.

The Austin-Blinken letter also criticizes various steps Israel has taken against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, even though evidence points to employees of UNRWA having participated in the October 7 attacks.

I strive to prevent cynicism from affecting my objectivity, but I think we're on safe ground assuming a connection between the neck-and-neck state of the presidential race in Michigan and the equivocation eroding its support for Israel. 

I spent two nights in Dearborn recently. My wife and I took a road trip to visit the Motown Museum in Detroit. Staff in our hotel, in restaurants, in convenience stores, were nearly to a person of Arab ethnicity. In a hookah lounge where we had an excellent dinner, our server was a young Iraqi woman and the young man tending our hookah was Egyptian. They were personable and on top of their jobs. Indeed, most Dearborn Middle Easterners we dealt with were pretty worldly. Young men and young women interacted on an equal footing and were completely comfortable around each other. 

But if any of them vote next month, I think we can be reasonably sure regarding the party they will push the button for.

And maybe even more than the hip young Arabs of Dearborn, the Democrats are concerned about the votes of the snot-nosed white post-American students at campuses such as UCLA and Columbia. 

It's all so sick. To reiterate some basics, Israel is the only Western nation in the Middle East. It provides the Jerusalem component of the Jerusalem-Athens formulation of the West's development. It is a tech hub. Arabs serve in the Knesset. It has dealt with frequent wars with neighbors since the day of the founding of its iteration as a modern nation-state in 1948. 

The Biden administration's moral preening regarding Gaza aid led to an empty gesture that cost you and me tax dollars when that stupid pier didn't pan out. And stories abound about Hamas highjacking of food-aid trucks.

Let us hope Netanyahu, Gallant et al keep their eyes on victory - in Gaza, up north in Lebanon, and in the overarching menace from Iran - and keep the Biden administration at a healthy distance. 

 

The breathtaking uselessness of Antony Blinken

 Your tax dollars went for a whole lotta jet fuel in the service of an ill-conceived mission:

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken returned to the Mideast this week pressing for agreements to extend the Gaza cease-fire, step up the release of hostages held by Hamas and limit Palestinian civilian casualties if fighting with Israel resumed. He left Friday with his goals largely unfulfilled. 

Blinken wrapped up his third Middle East tour since the Israel-Hamas war started in October with decidedly mixed results. He watched as the seven-day cease-fire agreement collapsed under new Hamas attacks and Israeli airstrikes. 

And, it remained uncertain if Israel would follow through on commitments to protect Palestinian civilians from military operations in the southern Gaza Strip, as he warned they should, or whether Hamas would engage in future hostage negotiations. 

Blinken arrived in Israel on Thursday with hopes to see a further extension of the cease-fire agreement under which Israel had halted most military operations in exchange for the release of hostages held by Hamas.

Blinken said Friday that Hamas bore the blame for the failure while the U.S. would continue to push for extensions to release hostages and boost the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Yet, he also warned Israel that it must adhere to international laws of war as it prosecutes its campaign to eradicate Hamas.

And he's still, after Palestinians have given the thumbs-down to the 1937 Peel Commission proposal and the 1947 UN partition plan, and after the 2000 failure of the Ehud Barak-Yasir Arafat-Bill Clinton summit,  to name the three most noteworthy offers, prattling about an end goal of a Palestinian state:

“It is important for us to be talking about and thinking about every aspect of this challenge – not only today but also what happens the day after the conflict in Gaza is over,” Blinken said. “How are we thinking about what happens in Gaza itself? How is it governed? Where does the security come from? How do we begin to rebuild? And critically, how we get on a path to invest in lasting peace. And for us, of course, that has to result in a state for the Palestinians.”

Broaching that subject weeks after the Hamas assault of October 7 demonstrates that Blinken is considerably over his skis.

Don't we need to focus on more immediate concerns such as this? 

Four people were killed and five were wounded Thursday, one of them seriously, in a terror shooting attack claimed by Hamas at the entrance to Jerusalem, police and medics said.

One of those killed was a civilian who fired at the terrorists and was mistaken by other responders for one of the shooters.

The victims were named later as Livia Dikman, 24, Ashdod rabbinical judge Elimelech Wasserman, 73, and Hannah Ifergan, who was in her 60s. The civilian hit by friendly fire was named as Yuval Doron Castleman, 38.

According to police, at around 7:40 a.m., two Palestinian gunmen got out of a vehicle on Weizmann Boulevard at the main entrance to the capital and opened fire at people at a bus stop.

We can take some heart that voices of moral clarity can be found in some corners. To wit, this response to the Blinken-ist approach from Representative Mike Gallagher R-WI:

“In his press conference in Israel today, Secretary Blinken repeatedly emphasized that Hamas cannot retain governance of Gaza. He is wrong. Hamas cannot remain at all. This is an irrefutable point that was avoided throughout his entire speech. 

“It has been nearly two months since Hamas launched a barbaric attack against Israel, but rather than hold Hamas accountable for killing innocent Palestinians and Israelis, the Biden administration seems to spend more time publicly shaming the Israeli government for civilian casualties than punishing a murderous organization. This weakness will not only benefit Hamas but also do something I never believed was possible after the President’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan: worsen our reputation in the Middle East. 

“If this administration wants to 'create conditions for durable and lasting peace' for both Palestinians and Israelis, they must fully support the destruction of Hamas. Hamas's existence is incompatible with the 'two-state solution' they seek because Hamas believes any Jew's existence is incompatible with life. Rather than lay the groundwork for what appears to be the strategic withdrawal of or heavy conditioning of American support for Israeli military efforts, the Biden administration should be doing everything possible to ensure the swift and complete elimination of a terrorist organization that is happily murdering children and putting their citizens in harm's way to achieve more mass murder.”

Exactly so. 

Wobbliness in support of the obvious goal further erodes the US role as guarantor of a rules-based international order, which has been in worsening shape for some time.

 

 

The horrifying consequences of an unserious nation still acting under the illusion that it's qualified to lead on the world stage

 The two blasts at Hamid Karzai International Airport - one at the Abbey Gate and one at the Baron Hotel - have killed at least 13 people, including 4 US Marines. The US military is now in the final stages of its "retrograde" - that's bureaucrat-speak for turning tail and getting the hell out - from the airport.

Approximately 1,500 Americans are still in Afghanistan, with rapidly dwindling chances of getting out. That's at least as true for the thousands of Afghans (at least 250,000 at a minimum who are eligible for US visas) who helped the US in various capacities and now face dismal prospects.  T.hose who are scrambling for the Pakistan border are encountering Taliban thuggery.

US Charge d'Affaires for Afghanistan Ross Wilson told CBS News's Norah O'Donnell this morning that his office had sent warnings starting in April, each one worded with more urgency, that they needed to get out, and that some seem to have chosen not to leave and that "that's their business."

Ambassador Wilson, how does that square with what Secretary of State Antony Blinken had to say on June 21, that "the embassy's staying, our partners are staying," and that he didn't think "significant deterioration in the security situation is something [that would] happen from a Friday to a Monday"?

Or with Joe Biden's assessment on July 8 that there would be "no circumstance where you see people lifted off the roof of an embassy"?

Speaking of Biden, what's up with the address the other day in which he didn't even mention Afghanistan, but rather exhorted the nation to get COVID vaccine booster shots, or the more recent presser in which he touted domestic-policy wins for his progressive agenda for seven-plus minutes before getting around to discussing Afghanistan?

Not that the previous administration was any better. As LITD mentioned the other day, Trump came damn close to hosting a Taliban delegation at Camp David in September 2019, until the plan was squelched by a Taliban-staged car bombing in Kabul. Still, he pressed ahead with his idiotic patty-cake agenda, having Mike Pompeo work out a "peace" deal that called for all US troops to be gone  by May 2020.

Western civilization has no reliable guardian now. The institutional and cultural rot that has been underway for decades is now matched by a foreign-policy rudderlessness to which both parties have signed on. 

Still, one side wants to talk about white-privilege indoctrination and forcing the populace to switch from cheap, dense and readily available forms of energy to play-like forms that would ultimately wind up depending on the continued existence of the normal-people forms, and the other side wants to indulge in rigged-election fantasies, flirtation with industrial policy, and paranoid notions that vaccines are some threat to personal liberty.

As I've said many times over the years, I keep hoping that someday the name of this blog could be rendered obsolete by a fundamental turn toward a rule bright future. Alas, the wait for that goes on.

UPDATE: The dead-Marines figure is now 12.

Afghanistan

 Because this is 2021 in post-America, hard and fast takes on this are, like school-district mask mandates, whether global climate conditions necessitate urgent collective action, and whether there is anything systemic about whatever degree of racism still exists in our society, likely to outnumber more multifaceted conclusions. 

I don't say this as an excuse to equivocate. Anybody who doesn't assert that this is a foreign policy debacle of historic proportions has a woefully underbaked understanding of what is happening, in my book.

The US State Department begging the Taliban to spare our embassy in Kabul, the beheading of Afghan government troops who have surrendered, the drawing up of lists of girls and women between the ages of 15 and 45 in the conquered provinces for the purpose of forcing them to marry Taliban fighters, the influx of jihadis from the UK, Libya, Syria and Pakistan, China's indication that it is prepared to recognize a Taliban government, and the loss of intelligence capabilities add up to an absolute disaster. 

Using this to score points against the Biden administration is an exercise in sleaze, given Trump's plans to host a Taliban delegation, back when "peace" talks were underway, at Camp David on September 11 of last year, and his endless-war talk since entering the political arena in 2015. 

This is not to say that Americans haven't grown tired of US presence in Afghanistan. 20 years is a long time. But is there a widespread understanding that we've only had a relatively small military footprint there for many years?

A development like this doesn't happen in a vacuum. Following as this does on the heels of two other colossal Biden-administration foreign-policy blunders - allowing completion of the Nord Stream pipeline in Europe, and inviting a team from the UN Human Rights Council to come to the US to assess our societal health regarding race relations - it's apt to leave allies as bewildered as Trump's erratic approach did. 

This feels like the catalyst of ramifications to come. The way we were holding those ramifications at bay was far from perfect, but telling the Taliban "have at it" is going to prove grimly consequential. 

Let's review some basics

1.) It's impossible by definition for there to be a right to health care.

2.) It's impossible by definition for there to be a right to a job.

3.) Until the last 20 years, no culture anywhere in the world defined marriage in such a way as to include the union of two people of the same sex.

4.) Gender is not fluid.

5.) The global climate is not in a state of crisis.

6.) A good or service is worth what buyer and seller agree that it is worth. Allowing any other party to be part of that agreement distorts the value that buyer and seller have agreed upon.

7.) Appeasement of rogue states and rogue regimes invites continued hostile behavior directed at the nation-state doing the appeasing.

Bolton's departure

Surprising in some ways, not in others. It actually looked like a doomed arrangement from the start. Bolton has a set of core principles that drive his policy positions, and his boss - well, we know that he's driven by his craving for self-glorification.

But the fronts on which the rift widened had been increasing for a while:

Back in May, with tensions rising between the U.S. and Iran, Trump’s Fox buddy Tucker Carlson began taking hard shots at him on the air for his hawkishness. It got worse in June when Trump canceled a bombing strike on Iran at the last minute against the advice of Bolton, among others; Carlson took to telling Fox viewers that Bolton was a “bureaucratic tapeworm” and Trump reportedly lamented to a confidant about his own natsec advisors, “These people want to push us into a war, and it’s so disgusting.” A few weeks later, Bolton was conspicuously absent from Trump’s big photo op with Kim Jong Un at the DMZ, having been tasked with a visit to Mongolia at the time instead. (Ironically, Carlson did accompany Trump, albeit as part of Fox’s team.)

Things seemed to deteriorate from there. The most hardcore Republican Bolton critic in Congress, Rand Paul, was deputized by Trump in July to try to broker negotiations with Iran. (Paul is already celebrating Bolton’s termination on Twitter today.) More recently reports being bubbling up that Bolton had been sidelined from the peace process in Afghanistan and was being excluded from meetings. Rumors began circulating that his relationship with Mike Pompeo, a Trump favorite, had collapsed, with natsec deputies unsure who was actually steering the diplomatic ship between the more negotiation-minded Pompeo and the more hardline Bolton.

The final straw may have been Bolton reportedly (and correctly) urging Trump to resist his instincts to invite the Taliban to Camp David for peace talks. If anything finished him off in Trump’s eyes, it may have been the public perception over the last 48 hours that his NSA was right about that and showed “toughness” and judgment that Trump lacked. In fact, Trump may have suspected Bolton or his team of leaking the fact that Bolton opposed Trump’s idea and chose to axe him for that reason. The president hates when his aides get the glory that he thinks he deserves, as Steve Bannon might tell you.

Regarding the above-mentioned set of core principles, adherence to such a thing comes as such a shock to most people in our relativistic, situational age that it's axiomatic that references to Bolton in news stories are going to preface his name with the adjective "hawkish." What that means, as applied to Mr. Bolton, is that he understands this: You never legitimize rogue states or groups. It's folly of the highest order. North Korea, Iran and the Taliban are deadly serious about destroying the United States and imposing an order on the world that would be the antithesis of Western liberalism.

Trumpists employ the term "endless wars" with predictable frequency. But as Andrew McCarthy points out in a piece at National Review today, the fact that the US has been in Afghanistan 18 years does not by itself mean anything:

Afghanistan is not the war. The war is against the jihadist forces of sharia supremacism. We have to fight them wherever they work to stage attacks against the United States, our allies, and our interests.

Per the first excerpt above, Pompeo seems more inclined to see possibility in negotiation, but that may be due to the nature of his current job. I don't think there's a gaping amount of daylight between Bolton and Pompeo in terms of basic worldview. I certainly don't have a fly on the wall reporting back to me from either the White House or the State Department, but it wouldn't surprise me at all to see Pompeo leave under some kind of circumstances sooner rather than later.

Thank goodness the acting upon of a colossally bad idea was narrowly avoided

I'm speaking of course of the idea of hosting the Taliban at Camp David, a mountain retreat reserved since the Eisenhower era for dignitaries, heads of state and legitimate governments' military leaders.

Compounding the insanity of hosting them at all was going to be the timing: the week of September 11.

The word "fortunately" certainly cannot be employed to depict the immediate cause of the cancellation of these talks: yet another Taliban car bombing in Kabul that killed and wounded dozens, but it's good indeed that the invitation was rescinded.

It's telling that the "conservatives" who were fine with the idea were Trumpists, like Kurt Schlichter and his RedState fanboy streiff. The argument put forth by such types was along the lines of including the Taliban in some kind of arrangement that gets the US entirely out of Afghanistan was the only palatable option, that the US, meaning the government and the American public, has no stomach for bringing to bear the resources for a quick, resolute victory, and that the status quo is unsustainable.
And another Trumpist, Jack Prosobiec of the One American News Network, thought it would be clever to tweet a photo of Reagan talking to mujahideen representatives in the White House in 1984. Big difference. Even if there were some jihadists among that group, they had not yet formally organized as the Taliban. And the goal then was getting the Soviets out.

Then there is the fact that, as I said in a post quoting the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Rubin the other day, the preliminary agreement US envoy Khalilzad has crafted left the official government out of the loop and really didn't require anything of the Taliban.

Then there is the level of pattern: This stunt would have been of a piece with the rank appeasement of North Korea that the Very Stable Genius has engaged in - to no avail, as well as his all-over-the-place positions on China, Russia and Iran.

So we dodged a bullet, so to speak. But going forward, it remains uncertain, as it always does, whether sober voices will have Trump's ear and whether that will not be negated by his signature last-minute impulse to change his mind.

Friday roundup

Ilhan Omar was married to one guy but filed joint tax returns with another guy.

Andrew Napolitano's take on the I--think-I'd-take-it remark is pretty unequivocal:

Asked for his reaction to Trump's comments, Napolitano said on Fox News's "Shepard Smith Reporting" that Trump's remarks showed the president is "prepared to commit a felony to get reelected."

Some Fortune 160 CEOs speak plainly about the impact of tariffs:

US president Donald Trump’s trade wars are hurting American companies and threaten the stability of the global economy, a group of Fortune 500 CEOs told reporters in Washington, DC today.

Some companies are suffering more than others.

All of the gains that Indiana engine-maker Cummins received from Trump’s 2017 corporate tax cut will be lost this year to the extra tariffs the company now must pay, said Cummins CEO Tom Linebarger.

“The taxes from tariffs have now outgrown the benefits from the tax reform act,” Linebarger said at a meeting arranged by the Business Roundtable, an executive group that aims to influence policy. “Our net taxes are higher now.”

Linebarger spoke alongside JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty. Dimon called the gathering an attempt to “educate” politicians and voters about the impact of the trade tariffs, as well as other White House policy.

The CEOs openly criticized the president’s reliance on tariffs as a diplomatic tool, and said the White House wasn’t taking corporate America’s advice on the situation. Linebarger said he was particularly alarmed that the White House mingled security policy and trade policy. 

In the capital of soul music, a riot broke out last night because Memphis police, in their attempt to arrest a 20-year-old guy with several felony warrants, had to deal with and the dude ramming their patrol cars and then getting out of his own car and brandishing a weapon, shot him.

Let's not be coy here. The rioters were rioting because of the guy's skin color.

Which was the same card played in the Oberlin College - Gibson's Bakery case, but there the jury wasn't buying it:

Oberlin College in Ohio will have to pay a nearby bakery more than $11 million in damages because it libeled the store, tagging it as racist, and interfered with its business, a jury said on Friday.

Gibson's Bakery came under fire after Allyn Gibson, the owners' son, got into a physical altercation with a black student who reportedly tried shoplifting and using a fake ID at the store, The Chronicle-Telegram said. Two other black students got involved, appearing to prompt accusations of racial profiling.

The three students eventually pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges and read statements defending Allyn Gibson's right to detain them. They also read statements claiming that his actions weren't racially motivated, but within days of the incident, students were turning out for protests fueled by accusations of racist intent.

The jury found the school and Oberlin's vice president and dean of students, Meredith Raimondo, guilty of libel after Raimondo allegedly helped pass out flyers claiming that the bakery was "racist" and had a history of "racial profiling and discrimination."

And while we're on that subject, check out this in-depth look at Meredith Raimondo, Oberlin's dean of students, assistant to the president for equity, diversity and inclusion, and "comparative American studies" professor. She's a real humdinger. She checks off such social-justice jackboot boxes as antisemitism, defining triggers so as to include "a smell, song, scene, phrase," and "academic" exploration of "intersecting structures of race, gender, class, sexuality, ability and citizenship." From the accompanying photos, you can see that she's quite a fetching lass, too!

How far did the pathetic appeasement of Iran go in the run-up to the JPCOA? The UK Daily Telegraph says British officials hid a Hezbollah bomb plot from the public. 

Here's an example of what I was talking about yesterday. We must not permit ourselves to become inured to this kind of thing: The Cartoon Network is using the Powerpuff Girls to promote Pride Month. 

Rex Tillerson's recent remarks about Hezbollah are deeply disturbing

This is close to just plain nuts. It runs counter to any attempt to present a unified face of anti-Iran policy on the part of the current administration:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in remarks during a trip through the Middle East this week, said the United States recognizes Hezbollah is part of the political process in Lebanon as global leaders gather to discuss the Middle Eastern country's future.

Despite the terrorist group's unhelpful influence, Tillerson said "we also have to acknowledge the reality that they also are part of the political process in Lebanon."

Tillerson's remarks raised eyebrows in Washington, D.C., where some foreign policy officials questioned how the United States would hold diplomatic discussions with Hezbollah as the Trump administration also works to dismantle the group and crush its financial networks.

I realize that any kind of broad view of how Lebanon fits into the fabric of the overall world stage must take into consideration the reverberations from its convulsive and multilayered 1975 - 1990 civil war. It is not the nation it was prior to that, with broad boulevards, fashionable social scene, bustling banking and tourism industries in its major cities, and an overall generally acceptable coexistence between its Druze, Maronite Christian, Roman Catholic, Shiite and Sunni Muslim population segments.

But to resign the US to the forcible insinuation of Hezbollah into anything that was left of that constellation of stability just doesn't fit with an overarching stance of regarding Iran as a mortal enemy. Hezbollah is Iran's proxy, and its influence in Lebanon is a key component of its Shiite crescent aims.

And it's reassuring that others at the cabinet level in the current US administration don't see it quite this way:

"Hezbollah is a terrorist organization responsible for the death of hundreds of Americans, "Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said in a statement earlier this month announcing tough new sanctions on Hezbollah.

"It is also Iran's primary proxy used to undermine legitimate Arab governments across the Middle East. The administration is determined to expose and disrupt Hezbollah's networks, including those across the Middle East and West Africa, used to fund their illicit operations," Mnuchin said. "The Treasury Department will continue to sever Hezbollah from the international financial system, and we will be relentless in identifying, exposing, and dismantling Hezbollah's financial support networks globally."

Thank you, Secretary Mnuchin.

A Mideast policy wonk says it's high time for the administration to come to a coherent, consistent stance:

 Asked about the State Department's clarification, an Iran policy expert who has worked closely with the Trump administration on the issue said it shows signs that the administration is divided about how to approach the problem.

"The sad truth is the Trump administration doesn't have a coherent policy on Lebanon. The president knows what he wants, which is to aggressively roll Iran back. There are parts of the administration where people seem committed to carrying out his policy, like Treasury's sanctions division, which has been trying to sanction Hezbollah into the stone age," according to the expert.

"But then you've got the State Department, which seems committed to maintaining a role for Hezbollah, and therefore Iran, in Lebanon. It's from top to bottom. Even our ambassador in Beirut is an Obama holdover who sends along manufactured cables and papers about how Hezbollah is part of Lebanon's political process. They're barely even trying to hide it."

This needs to be straightened out fast.

The London attacks

Less than two weeks after the bombing of the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, jihadists deliberately plow a car into a crowd of pedestrians on the London Bridge, and then get out and start stabbing people - with twelve-inch knives -  in nearby bars and restaurants.

The back-and-forth in the aftermath has been s predictable that the danger of becoming inured is great. I know I've been tempted to say, "All the same parties making all the same cases . . . lefties calling for tolerance . . . righties calling for an end to multiculturalism . . . libertarians pointing out that it's still more likely that one will get killed by a lightning strike, blah blah blah . . . "

The one result we can count on if that attitude comes to prevail is yet more of an increase in the momentum of this kind of horror.

Beyond creating conditions that will get more of us killed, there are some other real dangers inherent in the "tolerance" argument.

A Disciples of Christ congregation in my city has a sign on its lawn that reads "We stand with local Muslims."

I'm sorry, but what does that have to do with anything? If there is an incident or two that has spurred such a gesture, I submit that the fact that anyone knows about it is because our local school administrations are so eager to find instances of focused-upon demographics being harassed that taunts that ought to be of fleeting significants to individuals with properly resilient senses of self-worth rise to the status of major controversies.

There's more than a little guilt implicit in the message as well: "As members of the ethnically and religiously most prevalent group in our society, we understand that you Muslims might have a reflexive skittishness about maneuvering among us, and so we're compelled to reassure you that you're welcome to be here."

Conversely, this mindset is in denial of a very real pattern. The London attackers shouted "This is for Allah." They always - proudly - make known their Muslim identity. It is the Western-security manifestation of a general leftist denial of reality. On the sexuality front, it manifests itself as the denial of the finality of DNA is determining gender. On the global-climate front, it manifests itself in fudged data at East Anglia and NASA, and television spots featuring polar bears dropping out of the sky.

One of the biggest dangers is that the call for multiculturalism, diversity and tolerance comes at the precise moment when there is an active campaign within Western civilization to get its inhabitants to lose sight of what it means to be a Westerner. You can get an English degree at several major universities without ever taking a class in Shakespeare. Per a 2015 American Council of Trustees and Alumni survey, a mere 18 percent of the nation's colleges and universities require graduates to take even a survey course in American history or government.

You aren't compelled to defend that which you don't give a diddly about.

And this gets us back to a point I discussed in the previous post. If our major institutions - corporations, universities, NGOs, media outlets - are mish-mashes of gender fluidity and various world views, some of which are inimical to the foundations of Western society, peopled by "individuals" who basically live to stare into their phones and take best-practices and service-learning meetings, who will be roused to defend that which is clearly under assault?

Some reports about the London attacks point out with a gasp that those under attack were defending themselves with chairs. Isn't the obvious rejoinder to that, "Where were their guns?"

The British government's "Run. Hide. Tell" campaign pretty much says it all.

And finally, this perennially limp response to the unending stream of jihadist attacks softens us up for the more general danger. Along with jihad, we face a mortal threat in North Korea's nuclear-weapon-missile-and-satellite program, a soon-to-be-mortal threat from the Iranian program of a similar nature, and the deliberate thwarting of Western efforts to bring more stability to the world from an adversarially poised Russia and China.

It's a rough world, and enemies of righteousness abound. When they see a lack of will on the part of those who, it would seem to any reasonable observer, ought to be defending that righteousness, the damage they do to lives and our way of life cannot but increase.

Secretary Global-Test makes it more likely that we'll all get murdered in our beds

Scott Johnson at Power Line draws our attention to just how untethered to anything resembling reality Global-Test's view of how human nature plays itself out in world affairs is:

In the annals of mewling idiocy emanating from Foggy Bottom, Secretary of State John Kerry must be given pride of place. Speaking to his friends at the Aspen Ideas Festival earlier this week, he contributed in a major way to man-made global warming. It was in his remarks at the festival that Kerry declared ISIS’s Istanbul massacre a sign of our success: 

Now, yes, you can bomb an airport. You can blow yourself up. That’s the tragedy. Daesh and others like it know that we have to get it right 24/7/365. They have to get it right for 10 minutes or one hour. So it’s a very different scale. And if you’re desperate and if you know you’re losing and you know you want to give up your life, then obviously you can do some harm.

Kerry also declared our deal with Iran a great success: “Because of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran’s path to actually building a bomb has been closed off…” It’s painful. Does he believe his own bluster?

Johnson goes on to report on what G-T told the crowd at the Aspen Ideas Festival (doesn't that sequence of words have a particularly exquisite odor to it?) the three greatest challenges of our time are: combatting "violent extremism," addressing "climate change," and getting "leaders everywhere to cooperate."

The damage that will someday need to be undone is inflicted by the hour.

Europe coddles its conquerors

Germany was once the most serious nation on earth. That was true throughout the 19th century, as it pioneered such academic fields as sociology, and as it led in contributions to music and literature. It has been a leader in scientific inquiry and engineering achievement. Even when it went rogue, it was a fearsome enemy to be reckoned with.

Now, it's just plain ridiculous:

You might recall that appalling "educational" video recently released by the Finnish government which teaches women how to ward off migrant-rapists (for fun, we included it above). Well, there's now a suitable companion video subsidized by German taxpayers. 

The latest educational video features scenes from a new workshop offered to asylum seekers on how to flirt with German women...without raping them. BareNakedIslam provides background: 

On April 27, 2016 (BR)-Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavaria Broadcasting) broadcasted the sequel of such a course in their article: Workshop für Flüchtlinge – So ticken westliche Frauen“. (Workshop for Refugees – How Western women think and act).

In the workshop offered at Jugendzentrum Eichstätt (Youth Center Eichstätt), young German women act as “prey” while aliens from different cultures practice their pick-up lines on them.

These courses are arranged by an organization called Pro Familia, well known for issuing advisory notes to abortion.

Among other valuable lessons on how best to integrate with German society, refugees are taught that "no means no" and that "ficki, ficki," or mass sexual assault, is probably not the best approach to romancing Western women. 

File under: Reason #20,232 why Europe is doomed. 

And Squirrel-Hair thinks this is a continent in any position to do more to defend the West?

One of the most basic lessons re: human nature: weakness invites contempt and aggression

Hillionaire has joined the other two Dem prez candidates , O'Malley and Sanders, as the target of a dressing-down from the ultimate identity-politics outfit: Black Lives Matter:

Hillary Clinton met with Black Lives Matter activists early last week, and just-released video shows the meeting got testy with an activist accusing the former secretary of State of “victim-blaming.”

Clinton spoke with the handful of activists for about 15 minutes on the sidelines of a forum about substance abuse in Keene, N.H.

One of the activists, Julius Jones, related their conversation to the topic of the forum, telling Clinton that “free black labor” was “America’s first drug.”
He adds that someone needs to “take on anti-blackness” by telling white people in the country that the mass incarceration system is like the plantation system — “a founding problem.”
Jones then accused the Clintons of being “partially responsible” for this through tough-on-crime legislation. “Now that you understand the consequences, what in your heart has changed that’s going to change the direction of this country?”
Clinton listened with her hands folded, nodding at some of the things he was saying but giving him a stern look.
“There has to be a reckoning — I agree with that — but I also believe that there has to be some positive vision and plan that you move people toward. Once you say ‘this country has still not recovered from its original sin,’ which is true, once you say that then the next question by people who are on the sidelines, which is the vast majority of Americans, the next question is ‘well, what do you want me to do about it’?” Clinton said. “That’s what I’m trying to put together in a way that I can explain and I can sell it.”
“Your analysis is totally fair,” she later told the activist. “It’s historically fair. It’s psychologically fair. It’s economically fair. But you’re going to have to come together as a movement and say ‘here’s what we want done about it.’ Because you can get lip service from as many white people as you can pack into Yankee Stadium and a million more like it…. Even for us sinners, find some common ground on agendas that can make a difference right here and now in people’s lives.”

But as the meeting progressed, as Clinton’s advisers were trying to urge her to move on to the next meeting, the interaction got more tense. 

“If you don’t tell black people what we need to do, then we won’t tell you all what we need to do,” Jones said. “This is, and has always been, a white problem of violence. There’s not much that we can do to stop the violence against us.
“If that is your position, then I will talk only to white people about how we’re going to deal with a very real problem,” Clinton fired back.
“What you just said was a form of victim-blaming,” the activist continued.
“Look, I don’t believe you change hearts,” Clinton said. “I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate. You’re not going to change every heart. You’re not. But at the end of the day, we could do a whole lot to change some hearts and change some systems and create more opportunities for people who deserve to have them, to live up to their own God-given potential.”

The matter was not resolved. The militants subsequently tweeted about Hillionaire's role in "systemic oppression."

Have you thought about why the Freedom-Hater candidates have come in for this, and not the Pubs (at least so far)?

Victor Davis Hanson has been thinking about it, and, characteristically, has taken the long view. He cites examples from ancient Greece, from late-1930s Europe, as well as the contemporary scene to demonstrate that when the outstretched hand is offered to entities with aggression on their minds, the latter is the party that gets results.

Consider immigration. After we had allowed well over 12 million illegal aliens into the country, permitted hundreds of sanctuary cities to be established, and de facto suspended federal immigration laws and stopped deportations, did either the Mexican government or the illegal aliens and their La Raza supporters interpret this as magnanimity to be reciprocated? Did we hear paeans to American willingness to take in 10 percent of the Mexican population and show it more deference and respect than did its mother country? Is that the message on Univision, in Chicano Studies departments, and at immigration rallies — the singular kindness of the United States in absorbing a tenth of the population of its neighbor by waiving all considerations of legality?

Here's another arena in which his thesis is proved:

Then we come to Iran. Does Supreme Leader Khamenei tone down his anti-American rhetoric — unwise though such rhetoric may seem in the midst of heated debates over the wisdom of President Obama’s negotiations — when the United States offers concessions on continued enrichment and centrifuges, or backs off from snap-back sanctions and anywhere/anytime inspections? If the U.S. Congress should defeat the treaty, reinstate even tougher sanctions, organize another global boycott, and warn the Iranians that they will be held accountable for their terrorist operatives, would Iranian theocrats keep chanting “Death to America” in their legislative chambers and press ahead with enrichment as they wink and nod to their allies about nuclear proliferation?

Here's an example from our own hemisphere:

The Castro brothers just upped their rhetoric, as Fidel demanded millions of dollars in embargo reparations as part of President Obama’s “normalization” of relations with Cuba — apparently to remind the world that the Cubans have no intention of paying back the billions of dollars they confiscated 55 years ago in American capital and property, much less of easing up on human-rights activists. Why would the Castros do that at this point, when no American president in a half-century has been more deferential to their Stalinist government? Is their defiance cheap public grandstanding for the benefit of Cuban hardliners, or a more natural reaction known to benefactors and beneficiaries alike as something like the following: “If he gave a wretch like me something for nothing, then he either did not deserve what he had or he should have given me even more”? 

A few more examples from the era of the Most Equal Comrade and Secretaries Hillionaire and Global-Test:

Why did Putin react to Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s obsequious reset with invasions of his smaller neighbors? Is the U.S. popular in Libya for removing the hated Qaddafi? Do the Palestinians appreciate stepped-up foreign aid to them and American pressure on Israel? Why did ISIS swallow Iraq immediately following our departure, when we had been told ad nauseam in the 2008 campaign that our foreign presence there was an irritant and a radicalizing force among the peoples of the Middle East? The answer is something more than just the obvious: that naïve appeasement is more dangerous than wise deterrence, or that the sober advice to keep quiet and carry a large stick trumps sounding off while wielding a toothpick.

The dynamic is applicable on any scale, anywhere. So it should be no surprise when FHers puke all over themselves to attempt to placate identity-politics militants, it merely whets the latter's appetite.

Your utterly mad overlords - today's edition

When you think about Bergdahl's father speaking in Arabic at the Rose Garden announcement, when you think about Susan Rice's "served with honor and distinction" remark, when you think about the trade for five of the most vicious Taliban commanders for which we traded him, when you think about Hillary's "It-doesn't-matter-how-they-ended-up-in-a-prisoner-of-war-situation," how do you keep the vomit from hitting back of your teeth now that the military feels it has the evidence to proceed with this?

Bowe Bergdahl, a U.S. soldier who has long been suspected of abandoning his Afghanistan outpost in 2009, has been charged with desertion, Bergdahl’s attorney has told the media.

Eugene Fidell, Bergdahl’s lawyer, told the Washington Post that his client was handed the desertion charge sheet on Tuesday. The Army has announced that they will update the public on Bergdahl’s case at 3:30 p.m. eastern time.

Last year, in an unprecedented act, the Obama administration agreed to release five top Taliban commanders in exchange for the charged Army deserter. The government of Qatar–which has frequently been accused of aiding and abetting terrorist groups–served as an intermediary for the negotiations between the Taliban and the U.S. government.

The Taliban commanders are now reportedly living large in Doha. They will soon be allowed to leave the country, because the negotiated settlement only required that they stay in Qatar for one year. Soon, they will be free to re-engage in their jihad against the United States.

When Bergdahl reached the U.S., White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice said that he served with “honor and distinction,” a claim that she still defends.

Your post-American overlords don't give a flying f--- if you get murdered in your bed.

When even Vox can see what is going on . . .

Talk about having gotten out of hand.  Nobody's buying the Most Equal Comrade's attempt to craft and impose a narrative:

On the one hand, the US is at war with ISIS, an Islamist extremist group, which has murdered American citizens; it has been fighting al-Qaeda ever since it murdered thousands on September 11. Americans are understandably concerned and want to hear that their commander in chief understands the threat of Islamist extremism and takes it seriously.

On the other, Obama is clearly wary of worsening the wave of Islamophobia that ISIS has inspired in the US. Unduly emphasizing the role of religion could inspire more backlash against Muslims, of whom there are 2.6 million in the US. It could also indulge ISIS's view (also endorsedby some Americans, unfortunately) that the US is at war with Islam. Obama also surely wants to push against dangerous arguments, made by both ISIS and some prominent American voices, that ISIS represents true Islam.

Balancing these goals would be extraordinarily difficult for any president. George W. Bush struggled with it throughout his administration. But Obama is faltering. He has veered so far into downplaying Islamist extremism that he appears at times to refuse to acknowledge its existence at all, or has referred to it as violent extremism. While he has correctly identified economic and political factors that give rise to extremism, he has appeared to downplay or outright deny an awkward but important fact: religion plays an important role as well.

This is backfiring. Obama's conspicuous and often awkward attempts to sidestep the role of religion in Islamist extremism end up only drawing more attention to it. By refusing difficult questions about the role of religion in violent extremism, Obama is ceding those conversations to people like Bill O'Reilly, who has called Islam a "destructive force" and on Tuesday announced the US was in "a holy war."

Or how about the assessment of Andrea Mitchell at NBC News?

“Here he has the summit, no heads of government coming, the participation has not been at a particularly high level. We’ll have foreign ministers, we’ll be speaking to the Egyptian foreign minister shortly, who will be participating,” Mitchell said. “But there hasn’t been a whole lot of support from Europe or the Middle East at a very high level for what the president is setting out here.”

“It seems to be more of a dog and pony show,” Mitchell added.

And if you think Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, the Ayatollah Khameini, the leaders of ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and the Taliban aren't taking note, you need to give it more thought.

Not only is the summit ineffectual, it's a nest of anti-West radicalism

This "violent extremism" pow-wow of the Most Equal Comrade's is turning out to have quite the guest list.

Consider this guy:

One Boston Muslim leader taking part in the summit, Nicole Mossalam, has been dishonest about her controversial mosque blocking congregants from giving police information during their investigation of the Boston Marathon bombing. Another Muslim leader from Boston invited to the White House summit designed a lawsuit to stop the Boston media from reporting what it knows about the radical nature of the largest Islamic center in New England. In addition, this man, Nabeel Khudairi, persecuted moderate Muslim members of his own mosque after they tried to warn New Englanders about Islamic extremists in their midst.

As we expected and warned, the Islamic Society of Boston’s (ISB) Cambridge mosque – the radical Muslim Brotherhood front group attended by the Boston Marathon bombers – was invited to join the summit and is represented there by its executive director, Nichole Mossalam. A few days ago, in Breitbart News and the Washington Times, we reported how over the past decade, 12 of the ISB’s worshippers have either been killed, imprisoned, or declared fugitives due to their involvement in terrorist activity. In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, Ms. Mossalam told media outlets that the ISB urged members to contact law enforcement “immediately after the bombings in case they knew of anyone who might have been involved.”

In reality, the ISB sent out the first email about the bombings to its members a full seven days after the Marathon was blown up, urging them not to talk to the FBI without first contacting the ACLU and the ISB. The ISB wrote: “We have been informed that the FBI may be starting to question some of the community members about the two suspects. Insha’Allah we want to help as much as we can, but of course not put ourselves at risk either. Seeking representation does not imply any guilt on your part but is simply a way of protecting your own rights.”

Or this guy:

Nabeel Khudairi is the other deeply problematic individual taking part in the White House CVE Summit. Khudairi is a Boston ophthalmologist and leader of two other extremist groups – the Islamic Council of New England and the Islamic Center of New England. In 2007, our organization, Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), successfully subpoenaed a variety of documents from Nabeel Khudairi during the Islamic Society of Boston’s failed defamation suit against Boston’s Fox 25, the Boston Herald, and us. In its complaint, the ISB alleged that it had been defamed by our reporting on its extensive ties to Islamic extremism. The ISB was ultimately forced to drop the lawsuit after subpoenas like the one pursued against Khudairi not only supported our original claims, but also began exposing even more of the mosque’s extremist links.

The documents we obtained from Khudairi showed that he himself an extremist. It turned out that it was Khudairi who had largely engineered the lawsuit as a means of silencing media and non-profit organizations working to expose and counter Islamic extremism in Boston. Writing to the ISB’s then-executive director, Khudairi urged the ISB to file a lawsuit, suggesting that “If FOX is being sued for this story, it stands to reason that they will be prevented from reporting on the story further while the case is in court.” In a follow-up email, Khudairi wrote that, “If the ISB launches a lawsuit against the FOX-25 organization, they will be forbidden from continuing their propaganda while it is being reviewed in court.” 

I don't like this pattern, not at all.

When the "president" is the enemy

The list of Gitmo detainee releases without any quid pro quo is lengthy and shameful.  Among others, there are the savages we sent to Uruguay, where they're free to do what they damn well please, including head back to the middle east.  There were the five released to Oman and Estonia earlier this month.

And, of course, there was Bowe Berghdal, he of the parents who stood with the Most Equal Comrade in the Rose Garden and who was exchanged for five vicious jihadists. He's been charged by the Army with desertion.  Not exactly an even exchange.  Actually, the charge happened a while back.  Why are we just finding out about it now?

 . . . the White House is stonewalling the Army’s charges on Bergdahl of desertion. Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, has been a liaison between the Pentagon and the White House and has led the effort to keep this news from getting out.

Senior ranking military officials said two weeks ago that they would release the ruling soon. Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer referred to the White House’s efforts as a “titanic struggle behind the scenes.”

“As a corporate entity, the Army has decided that they want to pursue Bergdahl for this violation,” Shaffer said. 

The delay in releasing the charges against Bergdahl could stem from when the five Taliban members released were never briefed by Army officials. The White House just wants to make the situation to go away.

 Then there's the dog vomit the MEC spewed at the SOTU address about halting Iran's nuke-program progress and making post-America and Israel more secure.

"Dog vomit" a little over-the-top, you may be thinking?  Consider these five ways Iran is cheating on what it supposedly has agreed to so far:

1. Trying to buy equipment for plutonium reactor at Arak, breaking commitment to suspend work. The Obama administration actually complained about the purchases to the UN Security Council, even as it told the world that Iran had “lived up to its end of the bargain.” Iran’s defense–adopted to some extent by the State Department, which is desperate to save the talks–is that the agreement did not apply to work offsite, or to onsite work unrelated to the reactor.

2. Feeding uranium hexafluoride gas into a plant where it had agreed to suspend nuclear enrichment. The Institute for Science and International Security noted that Iran had begun enrichment at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz. It notified the Obama administration, which complained to the Iranians, which then claimed to have stopped the enrichment activity. Whether that is true or not, this is another case of the Obama administration knowing Iran cheated.

3. Withholding camera footage of nuclear facilities, defying the International Atomic Energy Agency.  A leading International Atomic Energy Agency official recently said the agency was “not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran” (original emphasis). The interim deal was to provide surveillance footage of Iranian nuclear facilities–but Iran has only provided what it wants to reveal.

4. Testing new IR-8 centrifuges, advancing its enrichment program and making cheating much easier. A violation of the spirit, if not also the letter, of the agreement, the development of a new centrifuge that can work sixteen times fasterthan its first-generation centrifuges would make cheating far easier and verification far more difficult. The new device essentially nullifies the verification process agreed to in the interim deal (and which Obama promises to expand).

5. Exporting more energy than allowed under the interim agreement, blunting residual sanctions. The deal capped Iran’s exports of crude oil to 1 million barrels per day. But early on, Iran was already breaking that agreement, according to the International Energy Agency–nearly doubling the allowed amount. That means the effect of remaining sanctions has been seriously undermined, meaning Iran has broken the interim deal and reduced its need for another.

The MEC is so consumed with his self-image as history's greatest embodiment of the power to achieve global unity that he will permit post-American cities to get incinerated.  It's not a matter of a mere lack of patriotism.  He holds the country he rules in utter disdain.

If the MEC really gave a flying diddly about national security, we wouldn't be facing this:

The former vice chief of staff of the Army warned the Senate Armed Services Committee today that al-Qaeda has “grown fourfold in the last five years.”

“AQ and its affiliates exceeds Iran in beginning to dominate multiple countries,” retired four-star Gen. Jack Keane testified.

And three days of ISIS-supporter Twitter threats on US domestic flights.