One of President Obama’s pitches for re-election was “Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.” Or as the President said, slightly more elaborately, in a speech shortly before his re-election:
Remember, in 2008, we were in the middle of two wars and the worst economic crisis since the Great...
Yesterday’s New York Times featured an article Obama’s Uncertain Path Amid Syria Bloodshed that is probably one of the most devastating indictments of the President’s Syria policy published. I don’t think that the reporters set out to critique the President and the tone of the article was always respectful.
Read it and weep....
One of the problems with President Hassan Rouhani’s charm offensive is that he has a record.
It’s a record that shows that he excuses the death penalty for protesters, defends Iran for its sponsorship of terror and boasts that he duped the West ten years ago.
All of this is a matter of...
In a remarkable op-ed last week, Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post excoriated Obama’s Myopic Worldview.
After noting that the President claimed in his U.N. speech, “The world is more stable than it was five years ago,” Diehl responded:
So: Why, according to Obama, is...
In the little town of Candor in the last year of my
youth
I learned the final lesson of the levels to the truth – The Mayor
of Candor Lied – Harry Chapin
There was a line in a recent New York Times report that made me think about how the New York...
First the sequence:
a) Israeli Airstrike in Syria Targets Arms Convoy, U.S. Says by Isabel Kershner and Michael Gordon – January 30, 2013
Israeli warplanes carried out a strike deep inside Syrian territory on Wednesday, American officials reported, saying they believed the target was a convoy carrying sophisticated antiaircraft...
Troubles for Hamas in Gaza
In The New Republic, Ehud Yaari explains some of the reasons Hamas is in trouble. Its Muslim Brotherhood patrons in Egypt fell from power after it alienated Iran for stopping its support of Bashar Assad. These changes have precipitated a leadership split in Hamas.
For example, in contrast...
The Talks Begin
The past two days has seen the reporting on the beginning of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
First there was the reporting on the Israeli concession that made the talks possible. The New York Times reported Netanyahu agree to free 104 Prisoners:
An Israeli government official, speaking on t...
Getting to sort of know you
The New York Times published a rousing tribute to incoming Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, President-Elect Stirs Optimism in Iran and West. The profile starts with an anecdote:
Bogged down in faltering nuclear talks with the European powers nearly 10 years ago, Hassan Rouhani did something that no...
In the peace process nothing can be said to be certain, except Israeli confidence building measures and blaming Israel for failure
I agree with one aspect of Jeffrey Goldberg’s, Kerry’s Mide...
Europe vs. Hezbollah
Yesterday, the European Union’s foreign minsters voted unanimously to designate Hezbollah’s “military wing” a terrorist organization. This will give European nations the authority to disrupt the organization’s finances.
The vote required unanimity and it was a long time in coming.
Last August, an article written by Nicholas Kulish of the New...
1) The Executioners Demand Justice
Perhaps one of the oddest stories appearing yesterday was Iran’s Mullahs Demand Justice for Trayvon.
According to the semi-official Iranian website Press TV:
“The acquittal of the murderer of the teenage African American once aga...
A decade ago Ahmed Jubarah walked out of jail a free man. Twenty eight years after he killed 13 people and wounded dozens more detonating an explosive laden refrigerator on a crowded Jerusalem street, Israel released Jubarah and others in order to restart peace talks with the Palest...
1) The Union Strikes Back
The European Union (EU) has just released new regulations governing certain dealings with Israel.
Starting in 2014, the EU (as a unit, individual states are not governed by these guidelines) will prohibit any dealings with private Israeli entities that liver or operate in Judea and Samaria, what is...
Who shot first?
Yesterday’s New York Times ran an editorial, Bloodshed in Egypt:
It has been all downhill for Egypt since the military ousted President Mohamed Morsi last week. On Monday, according to reports in The Times, Egyptian soldiers fired on hundreds of Mr. Morsi’s supporters as they were praying outside the facility...
While violence in Egypt has been increasing, it’s important to remember that there was a coup in Egypt prior to the June 30th protests. That coup occurred November 22, 2012. That’s when President Morsi attempted to seize power for himself by fiat.
Here’s how Eric Trager later characterized the events:
The Brotherhood’s most...
The Misadventures of Morsi
Commenting on Reuel Marc Gerecht’s thesis that having Islamists take power was probably a necessary step for political liberalization in the Arab world, Ross Douthat writes:
As I said two years ago, I have serious doubts about whether Gerecht’s thesis — which sees Islamist rule in Middle E...
