National Security / Foreign Policy Sunday

Some good readings ....


Two and a Half Cheers for Joe Lieberman [Frank J. Gaffney Jr.]

On Fox News Sunday, Sen. Joseph Lieberman announced that he has written President Obama’s homeland-security adviser, John Brennan, expressing strong objections to the administration’s systematic dumbing-down of its characterization of the enemy we face. This has been manifested most recently in the leak last week that the National Security Strategy now being drafted by the White House will not use the term “Islamic terrorism” and similar formulations in describing the contemporary threat. The senator noted that this practice flies in the face of “thousands of years” of sound military and intelligence practice, which makes accurate characterization of the enemy a prerequisite for developing and executing strategies for his defeat.

Senator Lieberman expressed frustration that he had failed in previous, evidently private, efforts to persuade the president and his senior subordinates to recognize the reality that “Islamist extremism” is the ideology that animates our enemies. The Senator was particularly and properly contemptuous of the after-action report issued on the Fort Hood massacre, which failed even to mention the fact that the shooter, Dr. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was a Muslim — let alone that his business card called him a “Soldier of Allah,” that his thesis at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences explained why he was obliged to kill “infidels” who were going to kill Muslims, and that he shouted “Allahu Akhbar” (the Islamic martyr’s cry, meaning “God is great”) as he murdered his comrades.

Senator Lieberman is, of course, absolutely right that we have no chance of defeating the enemy unless we can properly identify him. The senator deserves our heartfelt thanks for calling out the Obama administration for adamantly and repeatedly refusing to do that — and, thereby, for increasing dramatically the danger we face from such foes.

That said, it would be desirable if the distinguished senator from Connecticut, who chairs the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, would refrain from characterizing the enemy as “Islamic extremists,” as a way of disassociating them from the many millions of Muslims, at home and abroad, who are not determined to destroy us. Our foes are most accurately depicted as adherents to Shariah — the virulently intolerant, supremacist, and totalitarian ideology of authoritative Islam — not as “extremists” who are somehow, in the preferred formulation of Mr. Brennan, “hijacking” the religion of peace.

The political ideology known as Shariah is the fault line between Muslims who are enemies and those who are not. Joe Lieberman is absolutely right in trying to move the Obama administration toward honesty, transparency, and accuracy in understanding and depicting the threat we face today. If Senator Lieberman will, himself, be more accurate about its wellsprings and character, he will make an even more vital contribution to our national security and public safety.

— Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy and host of the nationally syndicated program Secure Freedom Radio.


Is There a Rhyme or Reason to U.S. Foreign Policy? [Victor Davis Hanson]

During the 2008 campaign, the Obama group argued that Bush & Co. were insensitive to allies and had acted in clumsy, unilateral fashion, permanently damaging our stature in the world. Given the first 15 months of foreign policy in the new administration, we can see now that Obama's critique largely meant that we had damaged relations with supposed belligerents like Cuba, Iran, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela — inasmuch as right now, British, Colombian, Czech, German, Honduran, Indian, Israeli, Japanese, Polish, and South Korean leaders might privately prefer the good "bad" old days of the supposed cowboy Bush. All of which raises the question: Why Obama's shift in foreign policy? I offer four alternatives, uncertain of the answer myself.

a) Obama in 2007 and 2008 created a campaign narrative of Bush the cowboy, and then found himself trapped by his own "reset button" rhetoric, which meant he could hardly credit his maligned predecessor by building on the multilateral work that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had established from 2006 onward (cf. the similar quandary of libeling Bush as a war-mongering anti-constitutionalist and then using new, kinder, gentler anti-terrorism euphemisms to mask the adoption of embracing Predators, tribunals, renditions, wiretaps, intercepts, and continuance in Iraq and Afghanistan);

b) Obama sincerely believes that states that were pro-American under Bush are now somewhat dubious, while other states' anti-American rhetoric during 2001–08 was understandable and so rightfully now earns them empathy and attention as a reward;

c) Obama genuinely believes that those abroad who are more statist and voice rhetoric that dovetails with his own equality-of-result efforts at home are sympathetic, inasmuch as they too define "freedom" in holistic terms of state entitlements rather than individual liberty, free markets, and free expression — so to the degree a leader casts himself as a "revolutionary," he finds resonance with an equally progressive Obama; or

d) Obama has no idea of what he is doing, and wings his way from one embarrassment to another, from snubbing Gordon Brown to gratuitously insulting Benjamin Netanyahu to abruptly changing the terms of commitments with the Czechs and Poles to constructing nonexistent Islamic historical achievements to browbeating Karzai to courting Putin to bowing to the Saudis, etc., all as he sees fit at any given moment — with an inexperienced but impulsive Hillary Clinton and gaffe-prone Joe Biden as catalysts rather than arresters of Obama's own haphazardness.

Keep reading this post . . .


I Guess He Didn't Get the Memo that Petraeus Didn't Really Mean It [Andy McCarthy]

General David Petraeus's most ardent fans continue to believe their honey rather than their lyin' ears. Yet, as I detailed in Thursday's column, leftists and Islamists have no difficulty grasping that (a) he quite clearly blamed what he portrayed as Israel's intransigence for America's woes in the Muslim world, and (b) he has not "set the record straight" in a way that comes close to retracting or debunking his statements. What's more, they are basing their interpretation on what the general actually said, not the purported "spin" on it that Petraeus — while not retracting — has ascribed to "bloggers."

The latest is Palestinian journalist and activist Daoud Kuttab [h/t Ruthfully Yours], who writes:
The taboo was finally broken and the genie is out of the bottle, despite some attempts to force it back. America's military leaders have had enough and decided to speak out about the liability that a hardline Israel causes to America's national interest. Popular American General David Petraeus finally said the words that many have been saying behind closed doors for decades. The statement of the star-studded general puts American blind support for Israel in direct opposition to the country's most sacred institution, the military.... Petraeus has made a courageous statement that could play a key role in weakening the pro-Israel lobby and allow for a much more balanced US approach to the Middle East conflict....

This glowing tribute, it is worth noting, comes two weeks after claims that Gen. Petraeus had walked back his assertion that it is principally the lack of "progress" in resolving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that strengthens Iran, weakens "moderate" Arab regimes, and drives al Qaeda recruitment. As I noted, in supposedly setting the record straight, Gen. Petraeus made a point of embracing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's statement of Obama administration policy — which was indistinguishable in any material way from what Petraeus had said in the first place. Moreover, shortly after Petraeus and Clinton made their feelings known, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates chimed in, complaining that "the lack of progress toward Middle East peace is clearly an issue that's exploited by our adversaries in the region" and "does affect US national security interests in the region."

In any event, if Gen. Petraeus really does want to set the record straight in a way that reassures supporters of Israel, it is a very simple thing to do. He just needs to say that America's bias in favor of Israel is not a "perception" but a reality; that it will always be a reality unless and until Palestinians and their Islamist backers unequivocally acknowledge Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state and convincingly foreswear terrorism (aka "resistance"); that until those conditions are met, the United States realizes that there can be no resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict; and that, if we are truly to "live our values," we have no alternative but to favor a Western-style democracy over a would-be Islamist regime that glorifies violent jihadists, endorses sharia principles, and inculcates anti-Semitism in its people through its control of the media, the schools, and other institutions.

I'm not holding my breath. How shameful it is, though, that there should be any question about whether these are the non-negotiable, bedrock principles of American policy.


Finally:


Good article by Caroline Glick http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=172706