The Circus of Resistance

From VDH, at American Greatness:

The Circus of Resistance https://t.co/nQzNqcfkou pic.twitter.com/iIVABXq5Uo

— American Greatness (@theamgreatness) September 10, 2018

The resistance to Donald Trump was warring on all fronts last week.

Democratic senators vied with pop-up protestors in the U.S. Senate gallery to disrupt and, if possible, to derail the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) played Spartacus, but could not even get the script right as he claimed to be bravely releasing classified information that was already declassified. I cannot remember another example of a senator who wanted to break the law but could not figure out how to do it.

Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), former Harvard Law Professor who still insists she is of Native American heritage, called for the president to be removed by invoking the 25th Amendment. Apparently fabricating an ethnic identity is sane, and getting out of the Iran deal or the Paris Climate Accord is insanity and grounds for removal.

Barack Obama decided that ex-presidents should attack current presidents, and thereby reminded the country why Trump was elected. The author of the Russian “reset” and the hot-mic collusionary offer criticized Trump for being soft on Putin. The president who never achieved annualized 3 percent GDP growth (and is the first president since 1933 who can claim this “distinction”) also claimed Trump’s roaring economy was due to Obama-era policies (e.g., raising taxes, Obamacare, more regulations, and “you didn’t build that” commentaries). Fresh from trashing his successor in a funeral speech, the ever audacious Obama called for more decorum.

Bruce Ohr, once number four at the Department of Justice, and whose wife was working with Christopher Steele on the Fusion GPS file (a fact he has never disclosed willingly), now more or less has made a mockery of the FBI narrative of when, why, and how it began surveilling American citizens and infiltrating the Trump campaign. Ohr apparently has testified that well before the election, and well before the application of FISA warrants, he was working with the FBI, the already discredited Christopher Steele, and a Russian oligarch either to smear candidate Trump, or to facilitate the entry into the United States of a once barred and questionable Russian grandee, or both.

Nike hired NFL renegade Colin Kaepernick to peddle its sports products. For all its billion-dollar market research, it apparently did not know what Donald Trump’s animal cunning had almost immediately surmised: a majority of Americans do not appreciate the pampered multimillionaire Kaepernick sanctioning violence against the police by wearing “pig” socks, or mocking the National Anthem by taking a knee. Nike could just as well have hired Bowe Bergdahl to push its sneakers.

The Deep State Emerges

Then we come to an insurrectionary “resistance” op-ed in the New York Times, an insider scoop about a collective “undercover” effort to nullify the current presidency...

Keep reading.

How Leftists Aid the Jihadis' Deadly Cause

Great, great piece, from Sultan Knish, at FrontPage Magazine, "The Unholy Alliance's central role in the Halloween Massacre":

As Robert Spencer noted, vehicular jihad has come to Manhattan, after stops in Nice, London, Edmonton and other places. The Muslim Sayfullo Saipov killed eight and wounded a dozen innocents by running them over with a rental truck, the first fatalities in that area since other jihadists crashed hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center, claiming some 3,000 lives.

That prompted cheers from Muslims living in New Jersey, also home to Sayfullo Saipov.  The jubilant jihadist, a 29-year-old Uzbek, acted on behalf of the Islamic State, which in turn is part of something much larger. Call it the Islamschluss, a global surge that should put things in perspective.

The West and the United States are dealing with a supremacist, expansionist religion that seeks to annex the entire world by any means necessary, especially violence. As in Austria, which the Nazis took over in 1938, the Islamschluss finds willing collaborators, like the weasely Herr Zeller in The Sound of Music. In America, the collaborators bring in Muslims by any means necessary, such as the “diversity visa” of Sayfullo Saipov.

The Diversity Visa program, launched by New York Senator Chuck Schumer in 1990, makes 50,000 visas available, on a random basis, to people from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. Sayfullo Saipov is one of the lottery winners, though what he has to do with “diversity” is a mystery. Uzbekistan is part of the Caucuses region, so he’s a genuine Caucasian, like the Tsarnaev brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon.

Saipov had no skill America needs, but the Diversity Visa program is all about bringing in people America doesn’t need. The United States abounds in truck drivers and cab drivers, and has no need for Uzbek jihadists to perform those tasks.

Likewise, the United States abounds in Information Technology specialists, but congressional Democrats such as Debbie Wasserman Schultz chose to bring in Pakistani-born Muslim Imran Awan. He wasn’t very good at his job but Awan did prove adept at ripping off massive amounts of data from Democrats on the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, and stashing it on a server controlled by Xavier Becerra, once on Hillary Clinton’s short list as a running mate.

Nobody seems to know what became of the data. Even so, the Democrats not only kept paying Imran Awan but brought in other members of his family, not exactly models of competence and propriety. So it’s clear that the Islamschluss has already annexed strategic territory in Congress and also made inroads in the military.

Those who join the United States Army pledge to defend the United States against all enemies. Major Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, openly identified himself as a “Soldier of Allah,” but nobody saw that as a reason to boot him out, even though he was communicating with jihadist Anwar al-Awlaki about killing Americans.

The authorities had his communications with the terrorist but did nothing to stop Hasan from killing 13 and wounding more than 30 at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5, 2009. Like Sayfullo Saipov, Hasan yelled “Allahu Akbar,” as he killed. Even so, the 44th President of the United States called the mass murder “workplace violence,” not even gun violence. He declined to meet with wounded victims of Hasan’s attack, such as Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford, who took seven bullets from the “Soldier of Allah.” Hasan was sentenced to death in 2013 but still awaits execution.

The President Formerly Known as Barry Soetoro also traded jihadis Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa, Mullah Mohammad Fazi, Mullah Norullah Noori, Abdul Haq Wasiq, and Mohammed Nabi Omari, all Taliban commanders, for deserter Bowe Bergdahl. It was like trading Private Slovik for the German high command, but no surprise.

In the ongoing Islamschluss, the previous president shapes up as collaborator-in-chief. He went to a “predominantly Muslim” school in Indonesia and told the world the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. So no surprise he can’t say “Islamic” and “terrorism” in the same sentence.

Likewise, the politically correct lack the guts to criticize Islamic savagery of the kind on display in New York. Their intellectual self-beheading renders them unable to distinguish fact from fiction, friends from enemies, and sensible immigration policies from what amounts to an Islamschluss.

Uzbekistan, a huge former Soviet republic, should be only a destination for Muslims, particularly Muslim refugees. As jihadist Sayfullo Saipov’s murder spree confirms, Uzbekistan is not a good source for immigrants to the United States. For the time being, a good ballpark figure for visas would be zero.

President Trump would do well to toughen vetting and extend the travel ban. The president should also end the Diversity Visa program, the collaborators’ highway for troops of the Islamschluss like Sayfullo Saipov. The time has come to take back the territory they have already annexed in government, the military and on the streets of America.

Bowe Bergdahl Asks Obama for Pardon

Just wow.

That takes some gumption, but then, Bergdahl's dad (seen hugging Obama in photos) is an Islamist, so maybe it's not a long shot after all.

At the Washington Examiner, "Bergdahl asks Obama to pardon him before Trump takes office."

Previous Bergdahl blogging here.

U.S. Pays Steep Ranson for Four Innocent Hostages Held Captive by Iran

I get sick thinking about this.

America is being held hostage, by the Kenyan interloper in the White House most of all.

At WSJ, "Iran’s Hostage Triumph":

Now we know that Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian and three other Americans were hostages held by Iran in return for U.S. concessions, in case there was any doubt. And on Saturday we learned the ransom price: $100 billion as part of the completed nuclear deal and a prisoner swap of Iranians who violated U.S. laws. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps should call this Operation Clean Sweep.

The timing of Iran’s Saturday release of the Americans is no accident. This was also implementation day for the nuclear deal, when United Nations sanctions on Tehran were lifted, which means that more than $100 billion in frozen assets will soon flow to Iran and the regime will get a lift from new investment and oil sales. The mullahs were taking no chances and held the hostages until President Obama’s diplomatic checks cleared.

We’re as relieved as anyone to see the four Americans coming home, though there was no legal basis for their arrests. Mr. Rezaian had been held since July 2014 and was convicted last year of espionage without evidence. The other freed Iranian-Americans include former Marine Amir Hekmati, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini and Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, a dual citizen whose detention wasn’t previously reported.

But the Iranians negotiated a steep price for their freedom. The White House agreed to pardon or drop charges against seven Iranian nationals charged with or convicted of crimes in the U.S., mostly for violating sanctions designed to retard Iran’s military or nuclear programs. Iran gets back men who were assisting its military ambitions while we get innocents. This is similar to the lopsided prisoner swaps that Mr. Obama previously made with Cuba for Alan Gross and the Taliban for alleged deserter Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

The U.S. didn’t resolve the case of Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who disappeared in Iran in 2007. Iran claims it doesn’t know where he is. Iran also refused to release its newest hostage, oil-industry executive Siamak Namazi, who was detained in October and accused of espionage though no charges have been brought. Perhaps he’ll be held for some future ransom.

The Obama Administration also agreed to drop the names of 14 Iranian nationals from an Interpol watch list. Most notable is the CEO of Mahan Air, an Iranian carrier sanctioned for transporting members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards that is suspected of transferring arms to Bashar Assad’s regime.

The prisoner swap helps to solve the mystery of the Obama Administration’s December flip-flop on new sanctions against Tehran’s ballistic-missile program...

Still more.

Fox News Couldn't Kill Donald Trump's Momentum and May Have Only Made It Stronger (VIDEO)

I don't know. I think Charles Krauthammer's hot take was right on, but Trump appears to be winning the post-debate buzz.

From Joshua Green, at Bloomberg (via Memeorandum):

Judging by Thursday’s electric debate, he may have sensed his true opponent before anyone else had a clue: the network.

A few hours before Thursday’s Fox News debate, a friend of Donald Trump’s confided to me that Trump was nervous. Not about the competition—he could handle them. No, Trump worried about Fox News, and in particular, debate moderator Megyn Kelly. She’d been hammering him all week on her show, and he was certain she was out to get him. He’d canceled a Fox News appearance on Monday night, the friend said, in order to avoid her. (Trump’s spokeswoman wouldn’t confirm or deny this.)

It turns out Trump was right. His toughest opponents Thursday night weren’t the candidates up on stage, but the Fox News moderators, who went right after him—none with more gusto than Kelly.

Kelly, the whip-smart queen of Fox News’ blonde stunners, went straight for the jugular. “You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals,” she admonished Trump. “Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?”

But Trump saw her coming a mile away and cut her off. “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” he barked, drawing cheers from the crowd. When Kelly tried to point out that he had insulted more women than O’Donnell, Trump, as he would all night, steamrolled right past her. “The big problem this country has is being politically correct,” Trump practically shouted, invoking conservatives’ favorite term of disdain. “I’ve been challenged by so many people and I don't frankly have time for total political correctness and to be honest with you this country doesn't have time either.” The crowd went wild.

Maybe they were cheering because the question was apropos of something Rachel Maddow would ask, and they were, after all, Republicans. But I think they were cheering because it was clear, at that moment, that Trump was going to be Trump, and wasn’t going to heed the pundits and phonies to tone down his act. According to a report in New York magazine, even his own daughter, Ivanka, was making that case.

When it became clear last week that Trump was the Republican front-runner, everyone assumed that the big battle shaping up in Republican politics was going to be between Trump and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. But judging by Thursday’s raucous, electric debate, Trump may have sensed his true opponent before anyone else had a clue: It’s Fox News. Throughout the evening, Trump and his inquisitors battled back and forth like gladiators. Both parties emerged as huge winners. Though nearly devoid of substance, it was the most entertaining debate I’ve ever seen.

Trump led the way. His ethos—the blustering bravado and aggression—became the ethos of the whole affair. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie went bananas on Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. The crowd was roaring throughout. There was none of the stilted, awkward talk of the junior debate earlier in the evening. Political Twitter was throbbing with joy and satisfaction.

Hurling insults, Trump went after O’Donnell, political reporters, Bowe Bergdahl, China, Mexico, Japan, money lenders, and practically everyone in Washington. “Our leaders are stupid,” he said, “Our politicians are stupid.” He did stop short of calling Mexicans “rapists,” but not by much. “We need to build a wall, and it has to be built quickly,” he said. “We need to keep illegals out.”

While the moderators went after Trump, the candidates mostly shied away from him. In fact, consciously or otherwise, several echoed his points and nearly everyone tried to match his energy. Some even seemed to genuflect. “Donald Trump is hitting a nerve in this country,” Ohio Governor John Kasich said at one point. “Mr. Trump is touching a nerve because people want to see a wall being built.”

Only Paul mustered the nerve to launch a pair of (pretty weak) direct attacks. He might have regretted it. Trump dispatched him with a single, withering aside (“You’re having a hard time tonight”) that was all the more effective because it was true.

Trump’s Fox News antagonists had their moments, too. When moderator Chris Wallace invoked the four bankruptcies his companies have suffered, Trump, seeming genuinely angry, repeatedly fell back on an oddly phrased legalism: “I have used the laws of this country just like the greatest people you read about in the business section,” he said.

But it was Kelly who inflicted the deepest cut by rattling off the liberal positions Trump once held and stopping him cold with the question: “When did you actually become a Republican?” Trump’s bluster escaped him. He stammered nervously and seemed lost. “I’ve evolved on many issues over the years, and do you know who else has? Ronald Reagan,” he said feebly. “Very much evolved.” That’s as un-Trump-like a phrase as I’ve heard from him, something more befitting 2012 nominee Mitt Romney.

What’s more interesting than any Trump question or answer, though, was the larger dynamic at play...

Still more.

'The Silent Majority Is Back!': Donald Trump Rallies Thousands of Supporters in Phoenix (VIDEO)

At the Blaze, "‘The Silent Majority Is Back!’: Donald Trump Criticizes Border Policy in Fiery Speech."

Watch, "Full Speech: Donald Trump Brings Down the House in Phoenix, Arizona (7-11-15)."

And at the Arizona Republic, "Donald Trump visits Phoenix, talks immigration":

Final official headcount was 4,200 in the crowd. https://t.co/qVcYeSVUUu

— Dan Nowicki (@dannowicki) July 12, 2015

.@realdonaldtrump #phxtrump "The silent majority is back and we're going to take the country back!" CHEERS

— YvonneWingettSanchez (@yvonnewingett) July 11, 2015

.@realdonaldtrump #phxtrump: "The press are liars. They're terrible people." He adds not all are, though.

— YvonneWingettSanchez (@yvonnewingett) July 11, 2015

Obama is "weak and he's ineffective," @realDonaldTrump says. He rips Obama on deal to free Bowe Bergdahl, "a no-good traitor." #PhxTrump

— Dan Nowicki (@dannowicki) July 11, 2015

"ISIS will be in such trouble" if he becomes president, Trump says. #PhxTrump

— Dan Nowicki (@dannowicki) July 11, 2015

.@realdonaldtrump #phxtrump: If you people go with Bush, you're going to lose.

— YvonneWingettSanchez (@yvonnewingett) July 11, 2015

.@realdonaldtrump: We have to get rid of Obamacare. We have to build up our military. (hoots and hollers on that one) #phxtrump

— YvonneWingettSanchez (@yvonnewingett) July 11, 2015

.@realDonaldTrump #phxtrump: I don't need anybody's money. People are setting up PACs all over the place. ...I'll take it.

— YvonneWingettSanchez (@yvonnewingett) July 11, 2015

Trump now attacking @HillaryClinton, saying she was "the worst" secretary of state and would be "terrible" as president. #PhxTrump

— Dan Nowicki (@dannowicki) July 11, 2015

It's bedlam in the ballroom as @realDonaldTrump takes the microphone. #PhxTrump pic.twitter.com/ZbXmwPrwEG

— Dan Nowicki (@dannowicki) July 11, 2015

#WHCD is a Celebration of a System of Access Journalism That Enables Democrat Lawbreaking and Treason

Actually, I changed the headline above from that seen at Mediagazer, "WHCD is a celebration of a system of access journalism that failed to detect a phony war."

I obviously don't believe the Iraq war was a "phony war," especially since the Democrats and the entire international community considered Saddam Hussein's Iraq to be a threat to international security, as demonstrated by numerous U.N. resolutions and the continuance of economic sanctions and the no-fly zone right though the decade of the 1990s, until President George W. Bush took office. But Jay Rosen's a leftist. I give him that. All he had to do is add a couple of more paragraphs to his essay and he wouldn't have been able to avoid discussing the institutional press corp's guilt in enabling the current crimes of Washington, D.C., from Benghazi to Bowe Bergdahl to Russia securing massive strategic mineral deposits on U.S. soil. The Clinton Foundation violating U.S. law by taking foreign donations while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state? We're only now seeing the beginning of the biggest political lie of the 21st century.

But then, even people like Jay Rosen can't follow their otherwise immaculate logic to the very end.

At Pressthink, "On the deep grammar of the White House Correspondents Association Dinner":

“The Washington press corps is like that big extended family with a terrible secret that cannot be confronted because everyone knows how bad it would be if the discussion ever got real.”

Have you ever come to know members of a family who collaborate in staying silent about something bad that happened in the past, something no one wants to talk about because to talk about it would probably tear the family apart?

The innocent would have to accuse the guilty. The guilty to defend themselves would find a way to spread responsibility around— or just lie about what happened. Which would then enrage people who were there because it rewrites history and erases their experience. If you have ever come to know such a family — or been part of one, as I have — then you know how participants in the conspiracy share a signaling system that can instantly warn an incautious member: you are three, four hops away from violating the pact of silence… if you don’t want to bring the whole structure down, then I suggest you change the subject… or switch to one of the harmless work-arounds we have provided for the purpose of never getting too close to the source of our dread.

None of that has to be said, of course. It’s all done by antennae. The result is that serious talk about certain subjects is off limits. Key routes into that subject are closed off, because the signaling system activates itself three or four rings out from dread center. To an outsider this manifests itself as an inexplicable weirdness or empty quality, difficult to name. To insiders it becomes: this is who we are… the people who route around—

I mention this because I think it helps in interpreting a bizarre event that unfolds tonight in Washington and on many a media platform: the White House Correspondents Association dinner. How bizarre? Well, look at the evidence of compulsion:

entering #WhiteHouseCorrespondentsDinner weekend. We all hate it; it's antithesis of journalism; but everyone goes to every party they can.

— Howard Fineman (@howardfineman) April 24, 2015

It’s not like they don’t realize it. This is from Politico, house organ for the insider class in DC.

Everyone knows the White House Correspondents Association dinner is broken. What started off decades ago as a stately formal celebration of the best of presidential reporting has morphed into a four-day orgy of everything people outside the Beltway hate about life inside the Beltway— now it’s not just one night of clubby backslapping, carousing and drinking between the press and the powerful, it’s four full days of signature cocktails and inside jokes that just underscore how out of step the Washington elite is with the rest of the country. It’s not us (journalists) versus them (government officials); it’s us (Washington) versus them (the rest of America)

“Everything people outside the Beltway hate about life inside the Beltway.” True! And yet they keep doing it. Why?

I’m sure you have your ideas. Here is mine. I know it will sound crazy (and provide a few chuckles) to those in the room tonight at the Washington Hilton, but I don’t care because the event is itself one gigantic neurotic symptom that begs for some interpretation...

Keep reading at the top link.

The Bergdahl Desertion

At WSJ, "Obama wanted to ‘whittle away’ the killers at Guantanamo":

The United States Army intends to charge Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. That was Wednesday’s news, but the bigger story is the extravagant price the U.S. has paid because President Obama wanted to score political points.

Readers will recall that then-Private First Class Bergdahl went missing from his post in Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan in June 2009. Fellow soldiers suspected desertion, though the Army conducted a risky manhunt to recover him. The sergeant was quickly captured by the Taliban and held for five years.

The Associated Press has reported that an internal Pentagon investigation in 2010 found “incontrovertible” evidence that he had walked away from his post. Journalists also uncovered an exchange of letters in which the soldier wrote to his father “the title of U.S. soldier is just the lie of fools,” that he was “ashamed to even be american,” and that “the future is too good to waste on lies.” Replied father Robert: “OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE!”

All of this would have been known to President Obama and National Security Adviser Susan Rice when the Administration decided to swap Sgt. Bergdahl for five Guantanamo Bay detainees—all top Taliban leaders—in May 2014. Mr. Obama even invited Sgt. Bergdahl’s parents to a Rose Garden ceremony to announce the swap, while Ms. Rice declared on a Sunday talk show that the soldier had served his country with “honor and distinction.”

At the time of the release, Mr. Obama said he had a sacred obligation as Commander in Chief to do everything possible to bring the sergeant home. Maybe so, but the President made his real motives clear when he noted that the transfer was part of “the transition process of ending a war” and that he wanted to “whittle away” the number of Gitmo detainees. That, he told NBC, “is going to involve, on occasion, releasing folks who we may not trust but we can’t convict.”

This is the language of a President more concerned with pursuing his ideological fixations, and fulfilling a misbegotten campaign pledge, than winning a war or securing the country.

The Bergdahl swap unleashed a torrent of criticism at the time, including from Senate Democrats, so it’s not surprising that the charges against the soldier are only being unveiled now, five months after the midterm elections. There was no Rose Garden ceremony, and Ms. Rice issued no statement that we saw.

Meanwhile, the war in Afghanistan shows no sign of ending, while an emboldened Taliban can look forward to getting their old commanders back after their obligatory year in Qatar ends in June. Sgt. Bergdahl will now face a court martial, but we already know that the White House is guilty of deserting its obligations to U.S. security.

More at Free Beacon, "Former Sergeant Who Served with Bergdahl: He’s Lucky No One is Talking About the Death Penalty."

PREVIOUSLY: "Bowe Bergdahl Charged With Desertion and Misbehavior."

Bowe Bergdahl Charged With Desertion and Misbehavior

See WaPo for the report (via Memeorandum).

And Megyn Kelly blasts State Department spokeswoman Jen "Doe-Eyed" Psaki:

#ISIS Offered to Exchange U.S. Hostages for Pakistani Neuroscientist and al-Qaeda Gun Moll Aafia Siddiqui

At the Los Angeles Times, "Islamic State has offered to trade hostages for imprisoned 'superstar'":

For months, Islamic State militants have engaged in a high-stakes game of deadly extortion, threatening to behead American captives they are holding in the Middle East unless their demands are met, including an end to U.S. airstrikes targeting their strongholds in Iraq.

But the price tag for the hostages' freedom has also included another prize: a diminutive, 90-pound Pakistani neuroscientist who studied at MIT before launching into a two-decade relationship with some of the best-known terrorists in the world.

The figure at the top of Islamic State's want list is Aafia Siddiqui, the wife of a key facilitator of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and a former employee of the Al Qaeda mastermind who planned them. Siddiqui is serving an 86-year sentence at a federal prison in Texas on her conviction four years ago of attempted murder for grabbing an unsecured rifle and firing on U.S. agents who were interrogating her in Afghanistan.

Siddiqui was arrested in the town of Ghazni in July 2008, having made her way onto the U.S. most-wanted list for her work with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, identified by the 9/11 Commission as the principal architect of the 2001 hijackings.

But it was her activism with Islamist groups in the United States in the 1990s that first brought her to the attention of U.S. agents. Siddiqui was active with the Muslim Students Assn. and a Muslim charity linked to fundraising for Osama bin Laden while she was studying biology at MIT, later earning her doctorate in behavioral neuroscience at Brandeis University.

Siddiqui's name as a potential trade for U.S. captives first emerged in back-channel negotiations that led to the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in May, said Joe Kasper, deputy chief of staff for Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee.

"On several occasions, both the Taliban and Islamic State have asked for either the release or extradition of Dr. Siddiqui in exchange for U.S. captives," said Kasper, who has been privy to communications with the militant networks.

More.

Obama's Foreign Policy Meltdown

A scathing piece, from Bret Stephens, at Commentary, "The Meltdown":

In July, after Germany trounced Brazil 7–1 in the semifinal match of the World Cup—including a first-half stretch in which the Brazilian soccer squad gave up an astonishing five goals in 19 minutes—a sports commentator wrote: “This was not a team losing. It was a dream dying.” These words could equally describe what has become of Barack Obama’s foreign policy since his second inauguration. The president, according to the infatuated view of his political aides and media flatterers, was supposed to be playing o jogo bonito, the beautiful game—ending wars, pressing resets, pursuing pivots, and restoring America’s good name abroad.

Instead, he crumbled.

As I write, the foreign policy of the United States is in a state of unprecedented disarray. In some cases, failed policy has given way to an absence of policy. So it is in Libya, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and, at least until recently, Ukraine. In other cases the president has doubled down on failed policy—extending nuclear negotiations with Iran; announcing the full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

Sometimes the administration has been the victim of events, such as Edward Snowden’s espionage, it made worse through bureaucratic fumbling and feckless administrative fixes. At other times the wounds have been self-inflicted: the espionage scandal in Germany (when it was learned that the United States had continued to spy on our ally despite prior revelations of the NSA’s eavesdropping on Chancellor Angela Merkel); the repeated declaration that “core al-Qaeda” was “on a path to defeat”; the prisoner swap with the Taliban that obtained Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl’s release.

Often the damage has been vivid, as in the collapse of the Israel–Palestinian talks in April followed by the war in Gaza. More frequently it can be heard in the whispered remarks of our allies. “The Polish-American alliance is worthless, even harmful, as it gives Poland a false sense of security,” Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister and once one of its most reliably pro-American politicians, was overheard saying in June. “It’s bullshit.”

This is far from an exhaustive list. But it’s one that, at last, people have begun to notice. Foreign policy, considered a political strength of the president in his first term, has become a liability. In June, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that Americans disapproved of his handling of foreign affairs by a 57-to-37 percent ratio. Overseas, dismay with Obama mounts. Among Germans, who greeted the future president as a near-messiah when he spoke in Berlin in the summer of 2008, his approval rating fell to 43 percent in late 2013, from 88 percent in 2010. In Egypt, another country the president went out of his way to woo, he has accomplished the unlikely feat of making himself more unpopular than George W. Bush. In Israel, political leaders and commentators from across the political spectrum are united in their disdain for the administration. “The Obama administration proved once again that it is the best friend of its enemies, and the biggest enemy of its friends,” the center-left Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit noted in late July. It’s an observation being echoed by policymakers from Tokyo to Taipei to Tallinn.

But perhaps the most telling indicator is the collapsing confidence in the president among the Democratic-leaning foreign-policy elite in the United States. “Under Obama, the United States has suffered some real reputational damage,” admitted Washington Post columnist David Ignatius in May, adding: “I say this as someone who sympathizes with many of Obama’s foreign-policy goals.” Hillary Clinton, the president’s once loyal secretary of state, offered in early August that “great nations need organizing principles, and ‘don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national-security adviser, warned in July that “we are losing control of our ability at the highest levels of dealing with challenges that, increasingly, many of us recognize as fundamental to our well-being.” The United States, he added, was “increasingly devoid of strategic will and a sense of direction.”

What's worse is we've still got over two more years of this.

Keep reading.

Bowe Bergdahl Lodged False War Crimes Allegations Against His Platoon

Boy, Lt. Col. Ralph Peters is going to be pissed!

At the Washington Post, "Soldier: Bowe Bergdahl lodged false war crime allegations against his unit":

An Army veteran who served alongside Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in Afghanistan said Wednesday that the long-captive soldier was deeply frustrated with the mission and had lodged false allegations that their unit had carried out atrocities.

Bergdahl “didn’t understand why we were doing more humanitarian aid drops, setting up clinics, and helping the populous instead of hunting the Taliban,” former Spec. Cody Full told lawmakers during a hearing on the exchange of Bergdahl for five Taliban detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “He wanted to hunt and kill.”...

Full, who was honorably discharged and served with Bergdahl in the same fire team, the military’s smallest type of organized unit, railed against Bergdahl’s attitude during his deployment in 2009 and rejected media reports that he was a sensitive young man trying to define himself during a time of war. His handwritten journal, along with essays, stories and e-mails provided to The Washington Post, painted him as a soldier full of worry about his own mental health and the situation in Afghanistan.

“Bergdahl was complaining to his parents that our platoon was committing atrocities instead of helping the local populous,” Full told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “But he was telling our platoon that we needed to stop trying to win hearts and minds and focus more on killing the Taliban.”

Full also dismissed suggestions that Bergdahl’s platoon had discipline issues.

“It’s a ridiculous charge,” Full said. “Security was always in place. These acts of common sense survival did not jeopardize the security or put anyone in danger.”

Bergdahl, who is not believed to have spoken to his parents since his release, is currently recovering in San Antonio, Tex., after a brief stay at Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany. He is set to be released in the coming weeks following the completion of reintegration treatment.

Video: "Bergdahl SPC Cody Full June 18, 2014."

Also at London's Daily Mail, "Bowe Bergdahl's platoon-mate testifies before Congress that he should face EIGHT criminal charges including desertion."

Obama Sneakily Releases 12 Jihadis from Parwan Detention Center in #Afghanistan

Obama's sending the terrorists back to the battlefield, very quietly and secretly.

At Jihad Watch, "U.S. quietly releases 12 jihadis from U.S. military prison in Afghanistan":

Just in case the five jihadis traded for Bowe Bergdahl weren’t enough, Barack Obama has released twelve more. What could possibly go wrong? Ten of them are Pakistanis, and “Pakistani officials have said that returned detainees would be kept under surveillance to make sure they had no militant links.” We all know that Pakistani authorities are completely honest and indefatigably anti-jihad!

Keep reading.

Leftists 'Re-Litigate' the #Iraq War

I noted the other day how MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski wanted "to go back and 're-litigate' the origins of the war in 2003."

I suppose it's a standard of our time, but everything nowadays --- and I mean everything --- is evaluated through the harsh lens of political polarization.

Today's exhibit: David Atkins' piece attacking the evil "neocons" at the Washington Monthly, "The brutal neoconservative legacy in Iraq."

The funny thing about this: I don't disagree with a lot of the criticism. It's just too obviously bothersome to note that President Bush had bipartisan support for approving 2002's Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution, including a majority of the Democrats (58 percent) in the Senate, and especially Hillary Clinton. (And recall President Bill Clinton signed the Iraqi Liberation Act in 1998, authorizing regime change in Baghdad as a continuation of U.S. policy since the 1991 Persian Gulf War).



So, yeah, a lot went wrong with the war, but the deployment had the support of the American people, as well as top political leaders across the spectrum. The attacks on the war since 2003 have been the most treasonous political about-face in modern times, if not in American history. The true face of the Democrat Party was revealed for all to see at that time, and the country ultimately elected Barack Obama to the White House on a hard left antiwar platform. And how's that working out? The fruits of the antiwar movement are now seen today from the release of Bowe Bergdahl to the coming collapse of Baghdad. That's the Democrat Party legacy. And that's what's going to be remembered when people ask "Who lost Iraq"?

Hat Tip: BooMan Tribune and Memeorandum.

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters on #Iraq Crisis: 'Very Good Chance Our Embassy Will Be Attacked...'

"This is going to make Benghazi look like chump change."

Listen at the second half of the clip. Peters has sources inside the military intelligence community and they are "horrified" at developments in Iraq.



The first half, also excellent, discusses Bowe Bergdahl's return to the U.S.

Peters is livid that he's receiving better medical care than our veterans. Rather than a court martial, Obama wants to give Bergdahl a "general discharge" at full benefits for life.

PREVIOUSLY: "Lt. Col. Ralph Peters: 'In the Middle East, the United States Is Now In its Weakest Position Since 1945...'"

Traitor Bowe #Bergdahl Set to Return to the United States

At CNN, "Bowe Bergdahl returning to U.S. for more treatment after release."

Pragmatism, Obama and the #Bergdahl Swap

From Caroline Glick, at the Jerusalem Post:

For nearly six years, Obama and his supporters have managed to fend off allegations that his foreign policy is even more ideological – and far more radical – than Bush’s by channeling the public’s aversion to pie-in-the-sky rhetoric and obfuscating facts.

US President Barack Obama is an artist of political propaganda. Both his greatest admirers and his most vociferous opponents agree that his ability to manipulate public opinion has no peer in American politics today.

So how can we explain the fiasco that is his decision not only to swap five senior Taliban terror masters for US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, but to take ownership over the decision by presenting it to the American people in a ceremony with Bergdahl’s parents at the White House Rose Garden? Clearly Obama overreached. He misread the public’s disposition.

This much is made clear by the immediate criticism his actions received from the liberal media. It wasn’t just Fox News and National Review that said Obama broke the law when he failed to notify Congress of the swap 30 days prior to its implementation.

It was CNN and NBC News.

MSNBC commentators criticized the swap. And CNN interviewed Bergdahl’s platoon mates who to a man accused him of desertion, with many alleging as well that he collaborated with the enemy. It was CNN that gave the names of the six American soldiers who died trying to rescue Bergdahl from the Taliban.

What was it about the Bergdahl trade tipped the scales? Why is this decision different from Obama’s other foreign policy decisions? For instance, why is the public outraged now when it wasn’t outraged in the aftermath of the jihadist assault on US installations in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, in which US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were murdered? Politically, Obama emerged unscathed from failures in every area he has engaged. From Iraq to Iran to Syria to Libya to Russia and beyond, he has never experienced the sort of across the board condemnation he is now suffering. His political allies and media supporters always rallied to his side. They always explained away his failures.

So what explains the outcry? Why are people like Senator Dianne Feinstein, who have been supportive of Obama’s nuclear appeasement of Iran, up in arms over the Bergdahl swap? There are three aspects of the Bergdahl deal that distinguish it from the rest of Obama’s foreign policy blunders....

Obama’s success in getting away with serial foreign policy failures, and his success in hiding the radical ideological basis of his decisions has always owed to his supporters’ ability to plausibly deny both the failures and the ideological motivation for his actions.

His Rose Garden announcement made such spin all but impossible. Americans are not particularly interested in foreign policy. But there are a few things that they won’t buy.

They won’t buy that a man who comes to the White House sporting a Taliban beard and praising Allah in Arabic is a normal American father.

They won’t buy spin that describes a deserter as an exemplary soldier.

They don’t want to free five senior terrorists and mass murderers in order to buy Bergdahl’s release.

In believing that the public would side with him and Bergdahl and Bergdahl’s dad against critics of the deal, Obama showed that for all his propaganda prowess, he doesn’t understand the public...

Keep reading.

The New York Times Defends Al-Qaeda

From Raymond Ibrahim, at the Gatestone Institute:

The New York Times is never the first to report on atrocities committed by jihadis against Christians and other minorities, but it is always the first to whitewash and apologize for the jihadis' role whenever news of jihadi atrocities appears from other media outlets.

Continue reading.

Yeah, it's been pretty bad lately at the Old Gray Lady.

More at Gateway Pundit, "OUTRAGE!! NY Times Smears Bowe Bergdahl’s Platoon Mates for His Desertion."

Officials Predicted Detainees in Bowe #Bergdahl Swap Would Rejoin Taliban

As Krauthammer noted earlier, it's lie after lie with this administration.

And now at WSJ, "Classified Assessment Says Two of the Men Would Return to Senior Positions":

WASHINGTON—Before the U.S. transferred five Afghan Taliban detainees to secure the freedom of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, American intelligence officials predicted that two of the men would return to senior positions with the militant group, according to U.S. officials.

The classified assessment, a consensus of spy agencies compiled during the prisoner-swap deliberations, said two others of the five were likely to assume active roles within the Taliban, while only one of the five released detainees was considered likely to end active participation in the group's effort to undermine the elected government of Afghanistan.

The existence of the assessment adds to the debate over the release of the five Taliban officials. It gives lawmakers who oppose the transfer ammunition that the move was ill-advised. Obama administration officials said there were larger strategic and political goals in play, most crucially clinching the freedom of the sole American prisoner of war, who was believed to be in danger.

Some administration officials also saw in the swap a chance to establish a precedent for reconciliation talks with the Taliban as the U.S. presence in Afghanistan winds down, and some argue the same five Taliban could have been released someday even without a prisoner-exchange agreement.

Some officials also thought the transfer could speed up the stalled effort to eventually close the Guantanamo prison, although angry lawmakers now are proposing even steeper restrictions on the administration's transfer authority.

The Pentagon and other government officials defended the decision to go forward with the exchange despite the intelligence community assessment, citing an agreement with the emirate of Qatar, which took in the detainees, that will allow the U.S. to monitor and track them.

Qatar also agreed to provide a "re-education program" designed to draw the detainees away from militancy, which some officials hope will help in the next year to ease some of the risk that the detainees will return to the battlefield.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said the assurances the U.S. has received will substantially mitigate the threat posed by the release of the detainees. Adm. Kirby said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel wouldn't have signed off on the deal if it weren't in the best interest of the U.S.  "They re-enter the fight at their own peril," Adm. Kirby said...

Keep reading.

The Endless Invasion of America

From Patrick Buchanan, at VDare:

For 10 days, Americans have argued over the wisdom of trading five Taliban senior commanders for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

President Obama handed the Taliban a victory, critics contend, and imperiled U.S. troops in Afghanistan when the five return to the battlefield. Moreover, he has inspired the Haqqani network and other Islamists to capture more Americans to trade.

But which represents the greater long-term threat to the safety and security of our people and nation: sending those five Taliban leaders to Doha, and perhaps back to Afghanistan, or releasing into the U.S. population last year 36,000 criminal illegal aliens with 88,000 convictions among them?

According to a May report of the Center for Immigration Studies, of the 36,000 criminal aliens who, while awaiting deportation, were set free by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 193 had been convicted of homicide, 426 of sexual assault, 303 of kidnaping, 1,075 of aggravated assault, 1,160 for stolen vehicles, 9,187 for possession or use of dangerous drugs, and 16,070 for driving drunk or drugged.

Those 36,000 criminal aliens are roughly equivalent to three-and-a-half divisions of felons and social misfits released into our midst. [ICE Document Details 36,000 Criminal Alien Releases in 2013, by Jessica Vaughan, CIS, May 2014.]

And this does not include the 68,000 illegal aliens against whom ICE declined to press criminal charges last year, but turned loose.  How goes the Third World invasion of the United States?

More.