Caroline Glick: Rousing the Americans from their slumber (on Obama's Foreign Policy)

[h=2]Rousing the Americans from their slumber[/h] Friday, February 21st, 2014


In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times Wednesday, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton warned his countrymen of the disaster that awaits them if President Barack Obama does not change the course of US Middle East policy.

Bolton warned that Obama’s three-pronged policy, based on three negotiation tracks with Iran, Syria, and the Palestinians and Israel, will almost certainly fail in its entirety.

In his words, “Iran will emerge more powerful, verging on deliverable nuclear weapons, while still financing and arming terrorists worldwide. [Syrian President Bashar] Assad seems likely to survive, which is bad enough by itself, but it will be compounded by the affirmation it affords Iranian and Russian strength. Israel will trust Wash – ington even less than now, and ironically, Palestinians will be even more anti-American, because Obama will not be able to deliver to them the Israeli concessions he predicted.”

Bolton concluded mournfully, “[T]he increasing danger is that only another 9/11, another disaster, will produce the necessary awakening. There is tragedy ahead for our country if we continue on this course.”

Writing for Strafor the same day, strategic analyst George Friedman explained why Bolton’s warning will be ignored by the public.

Friedman noted that in previous years, recent events in Venezuela, Ukraine, Russia and beyond would have been the subject to intense public concern. But, he wrote, “This week, Americans seemed to be indifferent to all of them.”

Friedman argued that this popular indifference to foreign policy is not driven by ideological attachment to isolationism, as was the case in the 1930s. “It is an instrumental position,” not a systematic one, he explained. Because he sees no deep-seated attachment to isolationism among the American public, Friedman argued that their current indifference will likely end when circumstances change.


Friedman’s analysis of the American mood is probably right. And Bolton is certainly right about the dangers inherent to that mood.

Every day the US is subject to greater humiliations and challenges to its power and prestige.

Declarations from Iranian leaders rejecting the dismantling of their nuclear installations, coupled with threats to attack US installations and Israel, bespeak contempt for American power and convey a catastrophic erosion of US deterrent capabilities against Tehran.

As subjects of intense US appeasement efforts, the Palestinians are second only to Iran. And as is the case with Iran, those efforts come at the direct expense of Israel, the US’s most important ally in the Middle East.

Yet like the Iranians, the Palestinians greet US efforts with scorn. Every day Palestinian leaders pile on their incitement against Israel and Jews and their derisive condemnations of the Obama administration’s efforts to force Israel to cater to their every whim.

Since 1979, Egypt served as the anchor of the US alliance structure in the Arab world. It shared the US’s opposition to Islamic terrorism, and waged a continuous campaign to defeat the forc – es of jihad in Egypt, while remaining outside the circle of war against Israel.

When protests began in Egypt three years ago, rather than stand with its ally, Obama dumped Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and sided with the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood.

After winning a popular election, the Brotherhood immediately set about transforming Egypt into an Islamic, pro-jihadist state. And yet, the administration opposed the military’s decision to oust the Brotherhood from power last summer even though the move prevented the most strategically vital Arab state from becoming the cen – ter of the global jihad. It then cut US military aid to Egypt.

So now the military regime is renewing its ties with Russia, after ditching Moscow for Washing – ton in 1974.

AND SO it goes, throughout the world.

Japan is the linchpin of US power in the Far East. And today, the Japanese are openly attack – ing Washington as their frustration mounts over the administration’s weak response to Chinese adventurism.

Etsuro Honda, a key adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, told The Wall Street Journal this week that Japan needs to develop the military capacity to defend itself by itself. The impli – cation – that Japan no longer trusts the US to defend it – is obvious.

While Friedman is right that Americans don’t want to think about foreign policy, and Bolton is right that their indifference to Obama’s massive failures is dangerous, the truth is that another attack on the US of a magnitude comparable to September 11 is not the only thing that can end their flight from reality.

ALL THAT is needed to wake Americans from their slumber is an alternative to Obama’s foreign policy and a political leadership capable of convincing the public that its alternative is better.

Tragically, today the Republican Party vacillates between two foreign policies that have both failed, were seen to fail by the American public, and that on key issues have been aligned with central components of Obama’s failed foreign policy.

On the one hand, there is isolationism. Sen. Rand Paul is the most outspoken advocate of an isolationist foreign policy.

In furtherance of his position, Paul was one of only two Republican senators who opposed passing further sanctions on Iran in the event the current nuclear talks fail to produce an agreement that will neutralize the threat of a nuclear Iran.

As he recently put it, “I think the bottom line is we should give negotiations a chance. My hope is that sanctions will avoid war. We’ve been involved in two long wars in the Middle East. And I think it would be best if we can do anything possible to try to avoid another war now.”

The September 11 attacks discredited isolationism as a foreign affairs strategy. The attacks showed the American people that threats grow when they aren’t dealt with. Ignoring America’s enemies is not an option. Certainly enabling them to acquire nuclear weapons through use – less negotiations is not a policy that most Americans support.

As most Americans are not isolationists, Paul’s isolationism is not a viable alternative to Obama’s policies of appeasement. Moreover, since with regards to Iran, his isolationism is aligned with Obama’s appeasement, Paul is in no position to mount a serious challenge to Obama’s foreign policy or rally the public to abandon Obama’s foreign policy and replace it with his own.

Opposing Paul and the isolationists is Sen. John McCain and the Wilsonian democrats. Their idea is that the US must intervene abroad to promote democracy.

While McCain opposes Obama’s policy of appeasing Iran and so enabling the mullacracy to acquire nuclear weapons, his neo-conservative ideological assumptions caused McCain to back Obama’s decision to end US support for Mubarak in Egypt. McCain also advocated for US participation in the NATO effort to oust neutered Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi from power.

Today McCain supports Obama’s decision to cut US military assistance to Egypt’s anti-jihadist military regime because the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood government the military ousted was popularly elected.

The war in Iraq discredited McCain’s Wilsonian neo-conservatism in the eyes of most Americans. And Obama’s McCain-supported abandonment of the Mubarak regime in Egypt destroyed US credibility in the Middle East and paved the way for Russia’s reemergence as a regional power broker for the first time in 40 years.

Due to the unpopularity among the American public of McCain’s ideological commitment to use US power to cultivate popularly elected governments in the Islamic world, and due as well to his periodic support for some of Obama’s most disastrous policies, like Paul, McCain cannot mount a credible, popularly supported alternative to Obama’s foreign policy.

THERE IS a third option, however, that is currently orphaned in the US foreign policy discourse.

That third option begins with understanding the ideological underpinnings of Obama’s foreign policy, and proceeds with offering an alternative policy, based on the opposite foundation.

From Russia to Iran, from Israel to the Far East, Obama’s foreign policy calls for the US to appease its adversaries at the expense of its allies. At its core, it is informed by the belief that the reason the US has adversaries is because it has allies.

By this line of thinking, if the US didn’t support Israel, then it wouldn’t have a problem with the Muslim world. If the US didn’t support Colombia and Honduras, it wouldn’t have a problem with Venezuela and Nicaragua. If the US didn’t sup – port Japan and South Korea, it wouldn’t have a problem with China and North Korea. And if the US didn’t support Egypt and Saudi Arabia, it wouldn’t have a problem with the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist offshoots, or with Iran and its terror armies.

The proper response to this worldview and its corresponding policy is a policy based on sup – porting US allies and opposing US enemies. It is predicated on the recognition that strong allies deter and weaken enemies.


In several key cases, supporting US allies will require fewer, rather than more, US oversees deployments.

For instance, as Israel’s leaders have stated since the founding of the state, Israel has no interest in having anyone else fight its wars for it. All it requires is the strength – military, economic, territorial and political – to defend itself by itself.

Rather than seek to weaken Israel by coercing it to recede to indefensible borders in order to make room for a Palestinian terrorist state in its historic heartland, the US should abandon its support for Palestinian terrorists and ensure that Israel has the power to defend itself in a region marked by unprecedented instability and danger.

A strong Israel will be a force for regional stability and so advance US security while forming the firm foundation of a renewed US alliance structure in the region.

So, too, the US should embrace Japan’s readiness to defend itself, by itself. With no appetite to go to war for its allies, but with rising concerns about China’s military adventurism, the US should support Tokyo’s desire to stand on its own.

The same goes for South Korea. Rather than spurn Seoul’s desire to build uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing facilities, Washing – ton should support South Korea’s goal of being a counterweight to Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal and its hyperactive nuclear proliferation.

IT IS A schoolyard rule, but it is as true for nations as it is for 10-year-old boys: Be good to your friends and bad to your enemies. Then people will want to be your friends. And they won’t want to be their enemies.

Inspiring in its simplicity and tried and true through the ages, it can move the American people to recognize the dangers inherent to Obama’s foreign policy and embrace an alternative policy, and an alternative leadership, before disaster strikes.

Caroline Glick’s new book, The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East , is due out on March 4

[h=2]The disappearance of America’s will[/h] Friday, April 18th, 2014


The most terrifying aspect of the collapse of US power worldwide is the US’s indifferent response to it.

In Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East and beyond, America’s most dangerous foes are engaging in aggression and brinkmanship unseen in decades.

As Gordon Chang noted at a symposium in Los Angeles last month hosted by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, since President Barack Obama entered office in 2009, the Chinese have responded to his overtures of goodwill and appeasement with intensified aggression against the US’s Asian allies and against US warships.

In 2012, China seized the Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines. Washington shrugged its shoulders despite its mutual defense treaty with the Philippines. And so Beijing is striking again, threatening the Second Thomas Shoal, another Philippine possession.

In a similar fashion, Beijing is challenging Japan’s control over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea and even making territorial claims on Okinawa.

As Chang explained, China’s recent application of its Air-Defense Identification Zone to include Japanese and South Korean airspace is a hostile act not only against those countries but also against the principle of freedom of maritime navigation, which, Chang noted, “Americans have been defending for more than two centuries.”

The US has responded to Chinese aggression with ever-escalating attempts to placate Beijing.

And China has responded to these US overtures by demonstrating contempt for US power.

Last week, the Chinese humiliated Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel during his visit to China’s National Defense University. He was harangued by a student questioner for the US’s support for the Philippines and Japan, and for opposition to Chinese unilateral seizure of island chains and assertions of rights over other states’ airspace and international waterways.

As he stood next to Hagel in a joint press conference, China’s Defense Chief Chang Wanquan demanded that the US restrain Japan and the Philippines.

In addition to its flaccid responses to Chinese aggression against its allies and its own naval craft, in 2012 the US averred from publicly criticizing China for its sale to North Korea of mobile missile launchers capable of serving Pyongyang’s KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missiles. With these easily concealed launchers, North Korea significantly upgraded its ability to attack the US with nuclear weapons.

As for Europe, the Obama administration’s responses to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and to its acts of aggression against Ukraine bespeak a lack of seriousness and dangerous indifference to the fate of the US alliance structure in Eastern Europe.

Rather than send NATO forces to the NATO member Baltic states, and arm Ukrainian forces with defensive weapons, as Russian forces began penetrating Ukraine, the US sent food to Ukraine and an unarmed warship to the Black Sea.

Clearly not impressed by the US moves, the Russians overflew and shadowed the US naval ship. As Charles Krauthammer noted on Fox News on Monday, the Russian action was not a provocation. It was “a show of contempt.”

As Krauthammer explained, it could have only been viewed as a provocation if Russia had believed the US was likely to respond to its shadowing of the warship. Since Moscow correctly assessed that the US would not respond to its aggression, by buzzing and following the warship, the Russians demonstrated to Ukraine and other US allies that they cannot trust the US to protect them from Russia.

In the Middle East, it is not only the US’s obsessive approach to the Palestinian conflict with Israel that lies in shambles. The entire US alliance system and the Obama administration’s other signature initiatives have also collapsed.

After entering office, Obama implemented an aggressive policy in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere of killing al-Qaida operatives with unmanned drones. The strategy was based on the notion that such a campaign, that involves no US boots on the ground, can bring about a rout of the terrorist force at minimal human cost to the US and at minimal political cost to President Barack Obama.

The strategy has brought about the demise of a significant number of al-Qaida terrorists over the years. And due to the support Obama enjoys from the US media, the Obama administration paid very little in terms of political capital for implementing it.

But despite the program’s relative success, according to The Washington Post, the administration suspended drone attacks in December 2013 after it endured modest criticism when one in Yemen inadvertently hit a wedding party.

No doubt al-Qaida noticed the program’s suspension. And now the terror group is flaunting its immunity from US attack.

This week, jihadist websites featured an al-Qaida video showing hundreds of al-Qaida terrorists in Yemen meeting openly with the group’s second in command, Nasir al-Wuhayshi.

In the video, Wuhayshi threatened the US directly saying, “We must eliminate the cross,” and explaining that “the bearer of the cross is America.”

Then there is Iran.

The administration has staked its reputation on its radical policy of engaging Iran on its nuclear weapons program. The administration claims that by permitting Iran to undertake some nuclear activities it can convince the mullahs to shelve their plan to develop nuclear weapons.

This week brought further evidence of the policy’s complete failure. It also brought further proof that the administration is unperturbed by evidence of failure.

In a televised interview Sunday, Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akhbar Salehi insisted that Iran has the right to enrich uranium to 90 percent. In other words, he said that Iran is building nuclear bombs.

And thanks to the US and its interim nuclear deal with Iran, the Iranian economy is on the mend.

The interim nuclear deal the Obama administration signed with Iran last November was supposed to limit its oil exports to a million barrels a day. But according to the International Energy Agency, in February, Iran’s daily oil exports rose to 1.65 million barrels a day, the highest level since June 2012.

Rather than accept that its efforts have failed, the Obama administration is redefining what success means.

As Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz noted, in recent months US officials claimed the goal of the nuclear talks was to ensure that Iran would remain years away from acquiring nuclear weapons. In recent remarks, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the US would suffice with a situation in which Iran is but six months away from acquiring nuclear weapons.

In other words, the US has now defined failure as success.

Then there is Syria.

Last September, the US claimed it made history when, together with Russia it convinced dictator Bashar Assad to surrender his chemical weapons arsenal. Six months later, not only is Syria well behind schedule for abiding by the agreement, it is reportedly continuing to use chemical weapons against opposition forces and civilians. The most recent attack reportedly occurred on April 12 when residents of Kafr Zita were attacked with chlorine gas.

The growing worldwide contempt for US power and authority would be bad enough in and of itself. The newfound confidence of aggressors imperils international security and threatens the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

What makes the situation worse is the US response to what is happening. The Obama administration is responding to the ever-multiplying crises by pretending that there is nothing to worry about and insisting that failures are successes.

And the problem is not limited to Obama and his advisers or even to the political Left. Their delusional view that the US will suffer no consequences for its consistent record of failure and defeat is shared by a growing chorus of conservatives.

Some, like the anti-Semitic conservative pundit Patrick Buchanan, laud Putin as a cultural hero. Others, like Sen. Rand Paul, who is increasingly presenting himself as the man to beat in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, indicate that the US has no business interfering with Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

Iran as well is a country the US should be less concerned about, in Paul’s opinion.

Leaders like Sen. Ted Cruz who call for a US foreign policy based on standing by allies and opposing foes in order to ensure US leadership and US national security are being drowned out in a chorus of “Who cares?”


Six years into Obama’s presidency, the US public as a whole is largely opposed to taking any action on behalf of Ukraine or the Baltic states, regardless of what inaction, or worse, feckless action means for the US’s ability to protect its interests and national security.

And the generation coming of age today is similarly uninterested in US global leadership.

During the Cold War and in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the predominant view among American university students studying international affairs was that US world leadership is essential to ensure global stability and US national interests and values.

Today this is no longer the case.

Much of the Obama administration’s shuttle diplomacy in recent years has involved sending senior officials, including Obama, on overseas trips with the goal of reassuring jittery allies that they can continue to trust US security guarantees.

These protestations convince fewer and fewer people today.

It is because of this that US allies like Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia, that lack nuclear weapons, are considering their options on the nuclear front.

It is because of this that Israeli officials are openly stating for the first time that the US cannot be depended on to either secure Israel’s eastern frontier in the event that an accord is reached with the Palestinians, or to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

It is because of this that the world is more likely than it has been since 1939 to experience a world war of catastrophic proportions.

There is a direct correlation between the US elite’s preoccupation with social issues running the narrow and solipsistic gamut from gay marriage to transgender bathrooms to a phony war against women, and America’s inability to recognize the growing threats to the global order or understand why Americans should care about the world at all.

And there is a similarly direct correlation between the growing aggression of US foes and Obama’s decision to slash defense spending while allowing the US nuclear arsenal to become all but obsolete.

America’s spurned allies will take the actions they need to take to protect themselves. Some will persevere, others will likely be overrun.

But with Americans across the ideological spectrum pretending that failure is success and defeat is victory, while turning their backs on the growing storm, how will America protect itself?

"IT IS A schoolyard rule, but it is as true for nations as it is for 10-year-old boys: Be good to your friends and bad to your enemies. Then people will want to be your friends. And they won’t want to be their enemies.

Inspiring in its simplicity and tried and true through the ages, it can move the American people to recognize the dangers inherent to Obama’s foreign policy and embrace an alternative policy, and an alternative leadership, before disaster strikes."


Amen.



Last week, the Chinese humiliated Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel during his visit to China’s National Defense University. He was harangued by a student questioner for the US’s support for the Philippines and Japan, and for opposition to Chinese unilateral seizure of island chains and assertions of rights over other states’ airspace and international waterways.

As he stood next to Hagel in a joint press conference, China’s Defense Chief Chang Wanquan demanded that the US restrain Japan and the Philippines.



nice


As for China? Sadly, it's too late. She's become an economic behemoth. Did they ever say thank you? WHAT DID America think was going to happen outsourcing manufacturing, allowing China for yrs to peg its currency, stealing technology? This is a country of 1.4 billion to USA's 350 million. Growth rates for USA approx 2-3%, for China approx 7%. No shit Japan is afraid. USA foreign policy, more than ever, has to shift. ..........isolationism? that's a death sentence

So what do you guys recommend? More wars??? Ever increasing military spending??

Or maybe we gotta realize that China and Russia are gaining strength and wanna show off their muscles just like the US has been doing since WWII

They are only enemies if you make yourself believe that they are

OH and BTW the US is still the biggest bully around by a factor of 10

You done vomiting empty rhetoric yet smalldaddy?

The US is a benevolent power that makes the entire world safer. So far....

A benevolent power???? How so? Did you forget all the wars/battles US has been in since WWII?

SmallDaddy said:

So what do you guys recommend? More wars??? Ever increasing military spending??

Or maybe we gotta realize that China and Russia are gaining strength and wanna show off their muscles just like the US has been doing since WWII

They are only enemies if you make yourself believe that they are

OH and BTW the US is still the biggest bully around by a factor of 10

Click to expand...

and you speak of 'beliefs'? . Sounds like you have yours as well, all good.


and yes, USA is a 'bully', do you really want it any other way? You may get your chance to see what happens as she sadly weakens, with the emergence of China. They are on pace to surpass you boyz as our planets leading economic power. They may the win the race to LFTR tech, its early though. With rising strength comes a thirst for power--- u boyz won't be the bully anymore, then what? A safer globe?





'China is now the world's largest trading nation and also the world's largest oil importer, surpassing the United States. It is operating yuan swaps with dozens of trading partners to promote the yuan as a currency of trade and other transactions. It also aims to create the "petroyuan", so that China would not need to convert its currency into dollars before purchasing oil. Once the yuan is internationalised, Beijing would be in a position to buy oil with its own currency.



One of the most significant moves that has come out the Ukraine crisis is Russia's threat to sell its energy in rubles or other currencies (even gold) rather than in US dollars. If the annual $1-trillion trade in Russia's energy is not transacted in US dollars, we will see the end of the petrodollar. Moreover, in May Russia and China will sign a major gas deal that will shake the world, as the transaction will also spurn the US dollar.'


You reap what you sow.


Foreign policy? stop appeasement. You're losing respect around the globe, your 'allies' have a look of bewilderment. You're going to NEED them. Damage has been done. Going to need a leader that has the skill set to repair.


going to be damn interesting in 20 yrs....





China?


'In a similar fashion, Beijing is challenging Japan’s control over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea and even making territorial claims on Okinawa.

As Chang explained, China’s recent application of its Air-Defense Identification Zone to include Japanese and South Korean airspace is a hostile act not only against those countries but also against the principle of freedom of maritime navigation, which, Chang noted, “Americans have been defending for more than two centuries.”'






Sounds like China wants to nibble? ....surely they're a benevolent nation?

I dont see how anyone can fault China or Russia for wanting to trade oil and resources in their own currencies

So the political pundits are wondering how to "change course" on this disastrous FP?

How do the Cubs win the World Series this year?

Stupid questions only yield even more stupid answers.

If you want to move pieces on the global chess board, you need a strong economy, strong military and strong respected leadership.

Not to step on Captain Obvious' toes, but we have none of those.

SmallDaddy said:

I dont see how anyone can fault China or Russia for wanting to trade oil and resources in their own currencies

Click to expand...

neither do I....sorry USA,....sorry globe

Caroline B. Glick: Lives and lies for Peace: High time for Israel to demand consequences of West

It's hard not to admire Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's brazenness. Two weeks ago, Abbas signed on to fifteen international agreements that among other things require the PA to respect human rights and punish war criminals.

And this week, he signed a unity deal with two genocidal terror groups all of whose leaders are war criminals. Every leader of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two parties who signed the deal with the PLO are war criminals. Under the Geneva Conventions, which Abbas signed onto just a couple of weeks ago, he is required to put them on trial, for their war crimes.

Here it is worth noting that under the Geneva Conventions, every single rocket launch from Gaza into Israeli territory is a separate war crime.

Abbas was only able to sign the Geneva Conventions on the one hand, and the unity deal with terrorist war criminals on the other because he is utterly convinced that neither the US nor the European Union will hold him accountable for his actions. He is completely certain that neither the Americans nor the Europeans are serious about their professed commitments to upholding international law.

Abbas is sure that that for both the Obama administration and the EU, maintaining support for the PLO far outweighs any concern they have for abiding by the law of nations. He believes this because he has watched them make excuses for the PLO and its leaders for the past two decades.

When it comes to the Palestinians, the Western powers are always perfectly willing to throw out their allegiance to law — international law and their domestic statutes — to continue supporting the PLO in the name of a peace process, which by now, everyone understands is entirely fictional. Why do they do this?

They do it because the peace process gives them a way to ignore and wish away the pathologies of the Islamic and Arab world. The peace process is predicated on the notion that all those pathologies are Israel's fault. If Israel would just surrender Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians, then the Arabs writ large, and the Muslim world as a whole will cast aside their support for jihad and terrorism and everything will be fine.

At least that is how Abbas analyzes the situation.

And so far, the US has not disappointed him. The Obama administration's immediate response to Abbas's unity with terrorist war criminals deal involved pretending it didn't understand what had just happened.

In a press briefing on Wednesday, shortly after Hamas war criminal Ismail Haniyeh signed the deal with Fatah and Islamic Jihad, State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki acknowledged that the deal is bad for the peace process. But she wasn't willing to reach the inevitable conclusion. Rather, she averred, idiotically, "I think the ball, at this point, is in the Palestinians' court to answer questions to whether this reconciliation" meets the US's long-standing principles."

Two days before the unity deal, a reporter from Al-Monitor asked Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar if Hamas has given up terrorism.
Zahar responded, "Anyone who claims so must be drunk. How has Hamas abandoned the resistance [that is, terrorist] effort? What are the manifestations of it doing so? Where have we prevented the launching of rockets?"

No ambiguity whatsoever there.

And Abbas just signed a deal Hamas, and with Islamic Jihad, the official representative of the Iranian mullahs in the Palestinian war criminal line-up.
No ambiguity there, either.

If the US is wilfully blind to who the Palestinians are, what they are doing, and what they stand for, the Europeans are so committed to the Palestinians that they actually invented an imaginary world where international law protects war criminals and castigates their Jewish victims as international outlaws.

In the EU's view, Hamas is an attractive organization. During a meeting with Abbas last October, Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief urged Abbas to sign a unity deal with Hamas. A statement from her office read that she views reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas "as an important element for the unity of a future Palestinian state and for reaching a two-state solution.

And while unity between terrorist factions is something that Ashton considers conducive to peace, in her view, Jewish presence in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is tantamount to a war crime.

In a statement released by her office last week, after Baruch Mizrahi was murdered by Palestinian terrorists while driving in his family car, with his wife and young children to a Passover Seder, Ashton gave no more than a perfunctory condemnation of the war crime.
Four fifths of her statement involved condemning Israel for respecting Jewish property rights and the rules of due process and international law in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

In the EU's imaginary world, being in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem while Jewish is a war crime. Murdering Jews is merely impolite.

The deal signed on Wednesday is the fourth unity deal Fatah has signed with Hamas. After the first one was signed in 2007, the so-called Middle East Quartet, which includes the US, the EU, the UN and Russia, issued three conditions for accepting the unity government: Hamas has to recognize Israel's right to exist, abjure terrorism, and accept the legitimacy of the previous agreements signed by the PLO with Israel.
As Zahar and every other Hamas leader has made clear repeatedly, these conditions will never be met.

But regardless of how Hamas views them, in and of themselves the Quartet's conditions are deeply problematic. They themselves constitute a breach of international law.


The Quartet's conditions assert that if Hamas and Islamic Jihad agree to them, they will be accorded the same legitimacy as the PLO. In other words, the Quartet members have committed themselves to granting immunity from prosecution for war crimes to all Palestinian terrorists. Providing such immunity is arguably a breach of international law. And it exposes a profound and irrational dependence on the mythical peace process on the part of Western policymakers.

Reacting to this week's unity deal, Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said, "The agreement between Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad brings the Middle East to a new diplomatic era. The Palestinian Authority turned into the largest terrorist organization in the world, twenty minutes from Tel Aviv."

And under international law, including the agreements that Abbas acceded to just two weeks ago, Bennett is absolutely right.
Apologists for Abbas note that this week's deal is as unlikely as all its predecessors to be implemented. But even if they are right this doesn't mean that Abbas's repeated practice of signing unity deals with war criminals should be cast aside as insignificant.

They expose the lie at the heart of the peace process. The time has come to call things by their names. Abbas is a terrorist and the PA is a terrorist organization.

In light of this incontrovertible fact, the time has come to treat the PA in accordance with international law.

Perhaps shocked by Abbas's behavior, perhaps overwhelmed by the serial failure of every one of its foreign policies, the administration acknowledged that Israel can't be expected to negotiate with a government that doesn't accept its right to exist.

Administration officials even said that the US would have to revisit its relationship with the PA in light of the agreement with Hamas.

No doubt, the administration is convinced that it can revert to form and ignore reality once again the moment the smoke as cleared. But whatever its intentions, the administration's acknowledgement of Abbas's bad faith opens the door to action by both Israel and the US Congress.

The Israeli government and the US Congress should take the steps necessary to bring their national policies towards the Palestinians into accordance with the law of nations.

Not only must the government end all negotiations with the PA immediately. It must stop all financial transfers to the PA.
Israel must stop cooperating with PA security forces in Judea and Samaria.

It must end its support for US training of those forces and call for the US to end its mission to assist PA security forces.
Israel must end all VIP privileges for PA officials beginning with Abbas and extending to the last of his corrupt cronies.

Israel must begin arresting and prosecuting Palestinian officials who incite for the murder of Jews, and charge them with solicitation of murder.
The government should assist Israeli citizens in submitting war crimes complaints against Palestinian officials and the PA generally at international tribunals for their involvement in war crimes, including their incitement of genocide.

As for the US Congress, last week, with the passage into law of Senator Ted Cruz's bill banning terrorists from serving as UN ambassadors, the Congress showed that it is capable of acting to force the administration to uphold US anti-terror laws.

To this end, in accordance with those laws, Congress must act to immediately end US military support for Palestinian security services. The office of the US Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian territories which trains Palestinian military forces should be closed straightaway. Its personnel should be redeployed out of the area forthwith.

So too, given that the Palestinian Authority now inarguably meets the US definition of a foreign terrorist organization, the US must end all financial assistance to its operating budget. Also, in accordance with US law, the US banking system must be closed to PA entities. Foreign banks that do business with these entities should be barred from doing business with US banks.

Abbas is not interested in peace. The two-state model isn't about achieving peace. It is about blaming the victim of the absence of peace for the absence of peace.

Abbas knows his apologists, both in Israel, and most importantly in the US and Europe. He knows they will go to any length to defend him.
The Israeli Left does so because without the phony peace process, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, the Labor Party and Meretz become political irrelevancies.

The administration and the EU defend Abbas and the phony peace process because they don't want to acknowledge the plain fact that Israel is the only stable ally they have in the Middle East and the stronger Israel is the more protected they are. Doing so contradicts their ideology.

So now Abbas is telling them that the deal is actually good for peace since it brings Hamas-controlled Gaza into the PLO and so reunifies the PA, which has been operating as two separate entities for seven years. And they may go along with it. They've been perfectly willing to embrace utter nonsense countless times over the years.

Only the Israeli government and Congress can stop them. And they must stop them.

These phony peaceniks' preference for Jew killers over international law comes with a prohibitive price tag. Jews are murdered, war criminals are embraced, and the rule of law is rent asunder.

May 2, 2014

Life under the Obama Doctrine

By Caroline Glick, JPOST


For most commentators, President Barack Obama’s biggest achievement in his four-nation tour of Asia was the enhanced defense treaty he signed with Philippine President Benigno Aquino. The pact permits US forces to operate on Philippine military bases and sets the conditions for joint training of US and Philippine forces, among other things.
There are two problems with the treaty, however.
And they reflect the basic problem with US foreign policy generally, five-and-a-half years into the Obama presidency.
First, there is the reason that the treaty became necessary.

The Philippines has been under attack by China since 2012 when China seized the Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines. Despite its mutual defense treaty with Manila, Washington did nothing.
This non-response emboldened China still further.

And today China is threatening the Second Thomas Shoal, another Philippine possession.

So, too, late last year China extended its Air Defense Identification Zone to include Japanese and South Korean airspace. The US responded to the aggressive move by recommending that its allies comply with China’s dictates.

The administration’s top priority in all these cases, as well as in the case of Beijing’s challenge to Japan’s control over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, has been to avoid conflicts with China.
But American timidity and refusal to abide by US treaty obligations to the Philippines and Japan have had the opposite effect.

By not responding to Chinese aggression, far from moderating China’s behavior, the Obama administration emboldened it. And in so doing, it destroyed the US’s deterrent posture in Asia. As China’s increasingly belligerent behavior has made clear, Obama’s attempt to appease China was perceived in Beijing as a green light for further aggression, because the Chinese correctly determined that Obama would never make them pay a price for seizing territory and otherwise harming America’s Asian allies.

Under these circumstances, Obama had no choice but to sign an enhanced defense treaty with the Philippines.
Far from calming the situation, though, the treaty increases the chance of war between China and its neighbors. No one, least of all China’s leadership, is fooled by Obama’s whiny insistence that the defense pact isn’t directed against China. And now China, already itching for more confrontations, will feel compelled to respond strongly.

This brings us to the second problem with the Obama administration’s new assertiveness in Asia. It simply isn’t credible.
On Wednesday, The Hill reported that due to Obama’s cuts in defense spending, for four months in 2015, the US will have no aircraft carriers in Asia. In other words, even as Obama’s rhetoric signals a renewed US military commitment to its allies, Obama’s defense cuts empty his pledges of substance.

We already know Obama lacks the will to confront China. And his decision to downsize the US military ensures the US will lack good options for confronting it in the coming years.
During his joint press conference in Manila on Monday with Aquino, Ed Henry from Fox News asked Obama to explain his foreign policy doctrine.

“What do you think the Obama Doctrine is in terms of what your guiding principle is on all of these crises and how you answer those critics who say they think the doctrine is weakness.”

Obama responded with his signature peevishness.

Before launching into a 900-word assault on a series of straw men to whom he attributed positions that at best distorted and at worst willfully misrepresented the positions of his critics, Obama muttered, “Well, Ed, I doubt that I’m going to have time to lay out my entire foreign policy doctrine.”

One thing that Obama did have the time do was signal to the Philippines that the US is no longer a reliable ally. After touting the new defense pact in one sentence, Obama proceeded to explain in the next that his administration cannot be expected to honor any commitment to defend the Philippines militarily.

Obama’s bloviations demonstrated why Henry’s question was so important.

For five-and-a-half years, Obama has not given a straightforward presentation of his foreign policy. Instead, he has tailored his foreign policy statements to what he thinks the public wishes to hear.

So for instance, in responding to Henry, Obama sounded an isolationist note, attacking imaginary critics for their automatic rush to arms in all circumstances.

Beyond being a gross mischaracterization of his critics, Obama’s remarks ignored the inconvenient fact that he sent US forces on a NATO mission to overthrow the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya without congressional authorization.
No Republicans forced his hand. Since 2004, Gaddafi had posed no threat to US interests.

And in the aftermath of Obama’s unauthorized war in Libya, the US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed in Benghazi. Al-Qaida and other jihadist groups that benefited from NATO’s operation have taken over large swathes of the country and sunk it into ungovernable chaos. And the chaos and jihad in Libya has spread out to much of northern Africa, bringing death, forcible conversion, torture, arms proliferation and terror in its wake.

Although Obama’s 900-word rant obscured rather than explained his foreign policy doctrine, the Obama Doctrine is easily understood from his actual policies – including his military adventure in Libya.

If Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy doctrine was “Peace through strength,” Obama’s doctrine can be summed up in two sentences: “Speak loudly and carry no stick.” And “Be good to your enemies and bad to your allies.”

The defense treaty with the Philippines, like Obama’s bluster in Ukraine and Syria, is a sterling example of the first part of his doctrine.

And Obama’s obsequious policies toward China, Russia and Iran on the one hand, and his coldness toward Japan, South Korea, Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Israel on the other hand demonstrate the validity of the second part of his doctrine.

The reason that Obama has not shared his own doctrine with the American people is not because he can’t explain it in the course of one speech. It is because he knows that they won’t accept it.

For their part, the American people seem to have him figured out. According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll published on Wednesday, Obama’s approval rating for his handling of foreign policy is at an all-time low. Only 38 percent of Americans approve of his handling of foreign policy and 53% disapprove.

The same poll gave respondents two foreign policy doctrines and asked them to choose the one they preferred.
The first was, “We need a president who will present an image of America that has a more open approach and is willing to negotiate with friend and foe alike.”

The second was, “We need a president who will present an image of strength that shows America’s willingness to confront our enemies and stand up for our principles.”

Thirty-nine percent preferred the first policy course and 55% the second one. These numbers are nearly identical to the approval numbers for Obama’s foreign policy.

The problem for dissatisfied Americans as well as for endangered US allies is that it is highly unlikely that Obama will respond to rising disapproval of his actions abroad by changing course.

For America’s allies this reality requires them to carve out their own courses the best they can.

In Israel’s case, this involves first and foremost taking a less idealistic and more mercenary view of the world. This means not shrinking away from opportunities with the likes of Russia and China when they arise. And certainly it means not automatically siding with the Obama administration against them.

The Obama administration is reportedly angry with Israel for refusing to join America in scolding Russia for its aggression in Ukraine. But it is far from clear that the Obama White House offers Jerusalem a better option.

To date, Obama has repaid Israel for its willingness to toe his line by undermining its core interests, publicly attacking it and seeking to subvert the elected government.

Israel has no interest in getting on Russia’s bad side in order to placate the Obama administration. Nor is there any reason for Israel to obey the Obama administration’s demands for belligerent rhetoric when the next step of the Obama White House would doubtless be to turn around and castigate the “Israel lobby” for allegedly pushing the US toward war.

The same goes for China. There is no reason for Israel to jump into conflict with the growing Asian power. While Secretary of State John Kerry is egging on the Europeans to expand their trade war against Israel, China is assiduously expanding its trade with Israel. According to the Economy Ministry, next year Asia will surpass the US as Israel’s largest trading partner.

Then, of course, there is Iran. Out of loyalty and basic trust in the US’s strategic sanity, for the past decade, Israel has been willing to play second fiddle to the US in contending with Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program. This was never a wise policy, but at least under the Bush administration it was an understandable mistake.

Since his first days in office, Obama has signaled clearly through his deeds that he had absolutely no interest in blocking Iran’s nuclear progress. On the contrary, Obama’s policies in the Middle East have consistently involved strengthening and legitimizing the Iranian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood at the expense of Israel and the less radical Sunni Arab states.

Out of habit, and in the hopes that something would change, Israel pretended away this reality and continued to follow Washington’s lead, limiting its goals to covert operations against Iran – that Obama leaked to the media – and lobbying Congress for sanctions that never had any chance of blocking Iran’s race to the nuclear finishing line.

Certainly since last November, when Obama signed his nuclear surrender to Iran, Israel has had no excuse for following the US’s lead on Iran. The deal’s sole effect is to enable Iran to become a nuclear power and a regional hegemony.

And so Israel must ignore it. Every day that Israel does not set back Iran’s nuclear progress brings Israel closer to being the subject of nuclear blackmail, Iranian-backed terrorism, and even nuclear Armageddon.

Obama may hide his doctrine behind petulance, populist canards and straw men, but it is clear enough. And that means that as far as Israel is concerned, its goal of securing its survival and prosperity for at least the next two-and-a-half years requires Jerusalem to act on its own and in the face of White House opposition.

It isn’t pleasant to defy the American president. It isn’t easy.

But in light of the Obama Doctrine, defying the White House is required to preserve the freedom of the Jewish people.

"Smart Power": Speak loudly and carry a small stick

[h=2]Rand Paul’s support for Israel[/h] Tuesday, May 6th, 2014

Republican Senator Rand Paul is an isolationist. This ought to make him a natural ally for appeasers like Steve Walt and John Mearshimer and the whole blame Israel first crowd.

And indeed, he has taken positions, like opposing additional sanctions on Iran that placed him in their camp.

But Paul is a mixed bag.

Last week, following the PLO’s unity deal with terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Paul introduced the Stand With Israel Act. If it had passed into law, Paul’s act would have required the US to cut off all funding to the Palestinian Authority, including its security forces. The only way the administration could have wiggled out of the aid cutoff would have been by certifying that the PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad had effectively stopped being the PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Paul’s conditions for maintaining aid would have required the President to certify to Congress that the PA – run jointly by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the PLO –formally and publicly recognized Israel as a Jewish state; renounced terrorism; purged all individuals with terrorist ties from its security services; terminated all anti-American and anti-Israel incitement, publicly pledged not to engage in war with Israel; and honored previous agreements signed between the PLO and Israel.

Paul’s bill was good for America. Maintaining financial support for the Palestinian Authority in the aftermath of the PLO’s unity-with-terrorists deal constitutes a breach of US anti-terror law.

Financing the PA also harms US national security. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are financed by Iran. So by funding the PLO’s PA, which just united its forces with theirs, the US is subsidizing Iran’s terror network.

Ending US financing of the PA would certainly be good for Israel. Indeed, just by sponsoring the bill Paul has helped Israel in two critical ways. He offered Israel friendship, and he began a process of changing the mendacious narrative about the nature of the Palestinian conflict with Israel to one based on the truth.

By extending his hand to Israel, Paul gave Israel an opening to build relationships with political forces with which it has not traditionally had close ties. Because most of Israel’s supporters in Washington support an interventionist US foreign policy, isolationists like Paul have generally either stood on the sidelines of the debate, or in light of their desire to beat a quick retreat from the region, they have been willing, even happy to support the Arabs against Israel and blame Israel’s supporters for getting the US involved in the Middle East.

The hard truth is that while American isolationism is bad for the US, it isn’t necessarily bad for Israel. To date, under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, there has been a direct correlation between the level of US involvement in Israel’s affairs and US hostility towards Israel.

Paul’s pro-Israel detractors note that he also supports cutting off US military aid to Israel.


But that doesn’t necessarily make him anti-Israel.

Despite the protestations of AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups, it is far from clear that Israel would be worse off if it stopped receiving US aid. Indeed, it is likely that Israel’s economy and military strength would both be enhanced by the strategic independence that an aid cut-off would bring about.

Yes, Paul is a complicated character. But that doesn’t make him Israel’s enemy. His bill was an act of friendship. And Israel can use more friends in Washington who actually do things that help it rather than suffice with declaring their support for Israel while standing by as its reputation is trashed.

And that’s the thing of it. The Obama administration can’t stop trash talking Israel. And more than ever before, Israel needs allies who are willing to take real action to defend it.

Israel received yet another reminder of this basic fact last Friday when Yedioth Aharonoth’s senior writer Nahum Barnea published an interview with unnamed “senior American officials” involved in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Those “officials,” it quickly became apparent, turned out to be the one and only Martin Indyk, Secretary of State John Kerry’s senior mediator.

In that interview, Indyk showed that among members of the Obama administration, Israel is friendless. Indyk’s interview, like serial anti-Israel statements made by Kerry, (most recently his anti-Semitic “Israel apartheid” remarks to the Trilateral Commission), and by President Barack Obama himself, was notable for its utter hostility to Israel and its Jewish leaders.

Not only did Indyk blame Israel for the failure of Kerry’s “peace process.” Like Obama and Kerry, Indyk insisted that Israel’s failure to bow to every PLO demand has opened it to the prospect of a renewed Palestinian terror war against it, to international isolation and to European trade embargoes.

Like Kerry, Indyk casually employed anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jewish cleverness and greed.

From the perspective of continued US aid to the PA, by far the most important part of Indyk’s remarks, like those that Kerry made to the Trilateral Commission, was his claim that the Palestinians will likely respond to the failure of Kerry’s peacemaking by initiating another terror war against Israel.

Indyk’s assertion – or was it a threat? – was notable because the US government is training and financing the Palestinian forces that would be directing the terror war.

Since 2007, the US has spent billions of dollars financing and training Palestinian security services and transforming them into a professional military. Trained using US doctrine, they are the strongest military force the Palestinians have ever fielded against Israel.

These forces – commanded by Abbas – share his supportive view of the terrorist mass murder of Jews. They share his position that Israel has no right to exist, that Jews have no history and are not a nation.

Since 1996, every Palestinian terror campaign has been directed by these security services. And as US Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, who served as the first commander of the US training mission has stated publicly, these US trained forces can be expected to turn their guns at Israel.

While the PLO was competing with Hamas for leadership, Abbas deployed these US trained forces against Hamas. Now that the PLO and Hamas are unified, these operations will necessarily end.

Moreover, these US trained forces are already involved in terrorism. Over the past six months, IDF commanders have repeatedly pointed fingers at PA security forces claiming that the steep rise in terrorist attacks against Israelis in Judea and Samaria is being organized and directed by them.

This is brings us to the second reason why Paul’s initiative is so critical. While it is important for Israel to find new friends in Washington, it is vital for it to change the narrative about the Palestinians and their conflict with Israel.

The false narrative, which claims that the PLO is moderate and that Mahmoud Abbas is a statesman and a man of peace, has made Israel’s old friends in Washington unable to understand reality. So unlike Paul, these friends are incapable of taking actions that actually advance Israel’s interests and strengthen its alliance with the US.

The false narrative of PLO moderation has monopolized the discourse on the Palestinians to the point where adherence to the two-state policy has more in common with a religious faith than a policy preference.

Indyk’s hysterical assault on Israel is textbook behavior of a believer lashing out at a person who exposes the utter falsity of his faith.

The believer cannot disown his phony messiah. So his only option is to present the party that unmasked the lie as the devil.

Hence, Indyk’s vulgar assault on Israelis.

But while Indyk’s faith is fanatical, many others share it in more moderate, but still devastating forms. And they too lash out at anyone who exposes their irrationality.

Case in point is the pro-Israel community’s opposition to Paul’s bill.

The day after Paul introduced his bill, AIPAC came out against it. AIPAC opposed the bill, according to the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, (who herself violently opposed it), because its leadership believes that the PA security forces play a key role in fighting Hamas.

So a week after the Israeli government formally ended negotiations because the PA supports terror, AIPAC opposed ending US aid to the PA because, AIPAC claimed, it fights terror.

For her part, Rubin railed against Paul’s initiative claiming that it was “a phony pro-Israel bill.”

Paul submitted his bill for unanimous consent in order to fast track it to a vote and into law. AIPAC convinced some senators to vote against Paul’s bill, and so killed it.

In an interview with Newsmax’s Steve Maltzberg after the vote, Paul attacked AIPAC saying, “I think the American people, if they knew that [AIPAC opposed his bill], would be very, very upset and think, you know what, those people are no longer lobbying in favor of America and Israel if they’re not willing to put restrictions on aid to Palestine.”

In other words, Paul was saying, it is time to move on, and those who insist on acting as though nothing has changed since 1994 are not behaving as one would expect Israel’s friends to behave.

And he is right.

Paul may be a cynical opportunist. But that’s better than a messianic that prefers to believe that Israel is the devil than accept that the Peace Fairy doesn’t exist.

And yes, his refreshing embrace of the truth as the basis for US policymaking makes him a better friend to Israel today than AIPAC that refuses to accept the truth (and like him, failed to support additional sanctions against Iran).

Rand Paul told Fox News after his bill failed to pass that he will not abandon the fight against US aid to the PA.

We must hope that he is true to his word.

My young Arab Facebook friend Mohammed from Israel. Fuckin' Love it!
"Part of my Celebration of our Independence day.....
I went up North, Metula...Lebanese border, held our flag and waved it proudly near the fence that separates Us from our Lebanese neighbors!
BTW....The fence is just by a road, and I was shocked of the fact that some Lebanese drivers stopped their cars and waved their hands saying:
"Shalom"!
After few minutes, some IDF soldiers came and recommended me to leave for some security reasons..!"

Another one of my Arab friends who stands up for what is right!

Dangerous Unity: The Perils of the New Fatah-Hamas Government - Elliott Abrams (Weekly Standard)

• 
  [*]The greatest immediate risk from the Fatah-Hamas deal is that the security forces in the West Bank, which have been vigilant and active against Hamas and other terrorist groups, might now dial down their activity in order to avoid confrontations. That would allow Hamas to gain ground in the West Bank and is the most serious danger from the unity deal. American officials should be warning the PA against this now and threatening aid cutoffs if such a trend appears.
  [*]Much of the aid the U.S. gives to the PA is cash - and that money should not be delivered until the situation is much better understood than it is today. What will Hamas' influence be? Until we know more, handing over large amounts of cash - $200 million this year - would be foolish.
  [*]The whole purpose of the new, temporary government is to organize new elections. The Oslo peace accords clearly and intentionally barred terrorist groups like Hamas from participating in elections until they disarmed.
  [*]Yossi Beilin, the Israeli politician who had been one of the participants in Oslo, said at the time: "There can be no doubt that participation by Hamas in elections held in the Palestinian Authority in January 2006 is a gross violation of the Israeli-Palestinian interim agreement....That this military organization, appearing as a political party, is allowed to abuse democracy is a prize for terror and violence....Hamas's entrance into PA institutions is liable to cast a veto on future peace moves, without eliminating the option of violence."
  [*]Hamas should not be permitted to participate in the elections until it renounces terrorism and begins to give up its weapons - not "ultimately" but now. The participation of Hamas in the Palestinian political system cannot be a move toward peace, because Hamas does not believe in peace or seek it.
  [*]The notion that pulling Hamas into the political system will somehow moderate it is given the lie by experience in Gaza, where Hamas has ruled since 2007. The need to pick up the garbage and worry about employment has in these seven years had zero impact on the group's extremism. Similarly, participation in the Lebanese parliament for years has not moderated Hizbullah's views or reduced its terrorist operations.
• For the U.S., the participation of Hamas in the elections risks destroying any hope of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and any hope of movement toward peace. It risks legitimizing the vicious anti-Semitism and the terrorism that lie at the core of Hamas as an organization. And it risks teaching the broader lesson that terrorist groups can fight for power with both guns and ballots - and with American approval. The mistake the U.S. made in 2006 should not be repeated.
  

Trump is talking tough on Iran. But in reality (at least up to this point in time) he has abandoned the Kurds, and allowed a pathway for Iranian control over Iraq. - SL


Reality Check
Iran's very good week

By Caroline B. Glick

Published Oct. 20, 2017

The Islamic Republic doesn't play around

You have to hand it to the Iranians. They don’t play around. Just hours after President Donald Trump gave his speech outlining the contours of a new US policy toward Iran, senior Iranian officials were on the ground in Iraq and Syria not only humiliating the US, but altering the strategic balance in Iran’s favor.

Last Friday Trump said that from now on, the nuclear deal his predecessor Barack Obama concluded with the Iranian regime would be viewed in the overall context of Iran’s many forms of aggression. Iran’s support and direction of terrorism, its subversion of neighboring regimes, regional aggression, weapons proliferation, development of ballistic missiles and harassment of maritime traffic will no longer be dealt with in isolation from Iran’s nuclear program.

Trump pledged that it will henceforth be US policy to ensure that Iran is made to pay a price for all its aggressive actions, including its breaches of the nuclear deal.

Among other things, Trump singled out Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps for its role in sponsoring and engaging terrorism. He came within a hair’s breadth of defining the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization. But words to one side and actions to the other.

On Saturday morning, Maj.-Gen. Qasem Soleimani, who commands the Qods Force, responsible for the IRGC’s international terrorist operations, landed in Iraq’s Kurdish city of Kirkuk.

The Kurds have been autonomous in Iraq since 1992 and have exercised de facto sovereignty over Iraqi Kurdistan since 2003. One of their chief disputes with the central government in Baghdad was control over the oil rich city of Kirkuk, adjacent to autonomous Kurdistan. Kurds make up a large majority of the population of the city.

That dispute seemed largely settled three years ago when in the summer of 2014, Kurdish Peshmerga forces took over the oil town and other areas south of their official territory. The Kurds moved in after government forces fled Kirkuk and other areas, in the face of Islamic State’s offensive.

The Kurds played a key role in the anti-ISIS campaign.

Both in Iraq and Syria, the Kurds have been the US’s only reliable ally. Iraqi regime forces, like the Shi’ite militia that fight alongside them, are controlled by Iran.

Masoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq and the head of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), thought that ISIS’s defeat in Iraq and Syria was the right time to call in the US debt to the Kurds for the central role they have played in the fight to defeat ISIS.

And so on September 25, he held a referendum on Kurdish independence. Nearly 93% of Iraqi’s Kurds voted in favor.

Support for independence is so overwhelming that even the Talabani family supported the referendum.

For generations, the Barzanis and Talabanis have vied for control of Iraqi Kurdistan. And whereas the Barzanis have enjoyed longstanding warm ties with Israel and the US, for the past generation, the Talabanis have grown close to Iran.

Jalal Talabani, the head of the Talabani clan, served in the ceremonial position of Iraqi president from 2005 until 2014. He was the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan or PUK party.

Talabani, who died two weeks ago, opposed Kurdish independence.

On Saturday, flanked by the Iraqi Shi’ite militia commanders – two of whom are on the FBI wanted terrorists list – Soleimani told the Talabanis to support the restoration of Iraqi government control – that is, Iranian control – over Kirkuk.

Ala Talabani, Jalal’s niece, told an Arabic television station that Soleimani came to pay his respects to her late uncle. According to The Washington Post, Ala Talabani praised Iran’s role in Iraq and said, “Soleimani advised us that Kirkuk should return to the law and the constitution, so let us come to an understanding.”

In other words, he offered them a deal.

In an article in The American Interest, Jonathan Spyer, director of the Rubin Center at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, said the deal was concluded the next day between one of the Shi’ite militia leaders and Bafel Talabani, Jalal’s eldest son. Based on Kurdish media accounts, Spyer wrote that the deal involves establishing “a new authority in the Halabja-Sulaymaniyah-Kirkuk area to be jointly administered by the Iraqi government and the ‘Kurds’ (or rather the PUK) for an undefined period.”

Spyer summarized, “The federal government would manage the oil wells of Kirkuk and other strategic locations in the city, while also overseeing the public-sector payroll.”

So two days after Trump’s speech, the Iranians and the Talabani family agreed to split Iraq’s Kurds in two and set up an Iranian puppet in the new governing authority, killing any thought of an independent Kurdistan.

So far, the deal has gone off without a hitch. The Peshmerga forces in Kirkuk, which are loyal to the Talabani family, abandoned their posts on Monday when the Soleimani-controlled combined force of US-armed and -trained Iraqi government forces and Shi’ite militias took over Kirkuk and other areas.

Despite Trump’s stated position in favor of weakening Iranian power and influence, and despite the fact that the occupation of Kirkuk was directed by the IRGC, which Trump just sanctioned, the Americans to date seem fine with this outcome.

According to Kurdish and US commentators, Iran or no Iran, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi wouldn’t have dared to order the strike on Kirkuk without US agreement.

It’s true that the US has never gone out on a limb for its Kurdish allies. Despite the fact that 1,700 Peshmerga fighters were killed fighting – and defeating ISIS – over the past three years, and despite the fact that an independent Kurdistan would constitute a severe blow to Iran’s hegemonic ambitions in the region, the US vocally opposed last month’s referendum. Following the vote, US officials told reporters that since Barzani ignored their position, they feel they owe him no loyalty.

And indeed, the US couldn’t be more disloyal than it is today – siding with Iran against America’s only dependable ally in Iraq.

The implications of Iran’s successful strategic offensive against the Kurds are disastrous for the US. Iran’s establishment of a Kurdish satrapy in Iraq harms the US in three ways.

First, America’s only stable Iraqi ally is now destabilized. For the past several years, the Barzanis and Talabanis had managed to more or less bury the hatchet, each content with their own sphere of influence. Now, they are once again at each other’s throats. Even if the Americans never asked them to do it, Iraq’s Kurds protected America’s interests in Iraq. And their prosperity and stability were viewed as an American achievement.

Now that is a thing of the past.

Second, Iran’s successful neutralization of the Kurds clears away the only major obstacle to Iranian hegemony over Iraq. This development has major implications for the region. If there is no safe base for operations against Iran in Iraq, any plan to block Iran’s regional rise has become far more complicated.

And finally, the US’s reputation and its strategic credibility in the region and beyond have just taken a massive hit. Until Soleimani’s forces marched into Kirkuk, it was possible to believe that the US’s recent preference for Iran over its own allies was a function of Obama’s radical worldview.

Now that Trump is in office, the policy was effectively over.

In the face of the US’s betrayal of the Kurds to the benefit of Iran, that position is no longer credible. Trump can claim till he’s blue in the face that he has abandoned Obama’s Iran policy, but so long as Iraqi government forces control Kirkuk – for Iran – his claims only discredit him.

The consequences of the US’s acceptance of Iran’s Kurdish gambit are already being felt on the ground. On Thursday, the Washington Post reported that Syrian Kurds, who just this week led the forces that defeated ISIS forces in Raqqa, are now concerned that the US will abandon them as well. Syrian Kurds now exercise autonomy. But with ISIS now defeated, Syrian Kurds fear the US will withdraw its forces from Syria and allow them to be overrun by Assad regime forces controlled by Iran and Hezbollah.

Luckily, not everything is black. Israel isn’t the US. But it is more powerful than the Kurds. And Israel is doing what it can to both help them and curb Iran’s expanding power. This, even as Trump seems incapable of translating his positions into policies on the ground.

The same day Iranian-backed forces were taking control of Kirkuk, Israel both destroyed a Russian- made anti-aircraft battery in Syria in retaliation for Syria’s targeting of IAF jets, and welcomed Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to Israel for his first visit in office.

Israel’s willingness to attack the Syrian battery the day Shoigu arrived made clear that Russian support for its Syrian client is not unconditional.

This was brought home yet again and more powerfully the next day. On Tuesday, Maj.-Gen.

Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of the Iranian military, made an official visit to Damascus.

While he was there Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Russian President Vladimir Putin to talk to him about Iran’s nuclear weapons program and its increased presence in Syria. Netanyahu also beseeched Putin to support Kurdish independence in Iraq.

Interestingly, it was Putin’s office, not Israel, which revealed the call had taken place.

Russia’s willingness to accept Israeli air strikes in Syria and to openly work with Israel indicates that Iran may have overstepped the boundaries. It is possible that Russia is not interested in having an empowered Iranian ally. Given past Russian practice, it is likely that Russia would like to see Iran weakened and therefore more dependent on Moscow.

Then there are the Germans and British. Whereas German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May came out strongly for maintaining the nuclear deal with Iran, both leaders indicated this week that they are willing to take a stronger stand against Iranian support for terrorism, missile development and regional expansion. Netanyahu reportedly has spoken at length to both leaders, and to a host of others, in recent days lobbying them to support the anti-Iranian Kurdish regional government.

By not abandoning the Kurds and by continuing to press for the West – including the Trump administration – to support Barzani and his government, and by pushing back against Iran’s empowerment in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, Netanyahu is trying to exploit and expand Iran’s weaknesses. He does this even as Iran’s strengths become more obvious and Iran’s power rises against an America that remains strategically adrift.

Netanyahu’s actions alone will not stop Iran.

But they do make it clear that Iran’s rise is not unstoppable. There are plenty of actors with plenty of reasons to oppose Iran’s empowerment. And once they see the danger Iran poses to them, working together and separately, they can help to cut it down to size.

At some point, the Americans may come to their senses and finish off the job.