Category Archives: International news

International news, national news, political news

President gets it … finally: 'Optics' matter

It took a little while, but President Obama has acknowledged something many of us out here knew already.

Visual images — the “optics,” if you please — matter to those who are watching the commander in chief’s every move.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/07/politics/obama-golfing-optics/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Obama said on Meet the Press this past Sunday that he should anticipated how the image would look as he headed for the golf course immediately after making a heartfelt statement condemning the gruesome assassination of an American journalist by Syrian terrorists.

The White House defended the juxtaposition of those events as it happened. It turns out the president has had some second thoughts about the sequence of events and their proximity to each other.

Obama told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd that James Foley’s murder moved nearly to tears as he spoke with the young man’s family. I believe him when he acknowledges how these events affect him emotionally. “I think everybody who knows me — including, I suspect, the press — understands that … you take this stuff in. And it’s serious business. And you care about it deeply,” he said.

He added that he understands that “optics” is important. “It matters. And I’m mindful of that.”

As a matter of substance, these things ought not to matter. However, the cliché about “perception becoming reality” in the eyes of those who see things also is important. His teeing off immediately after delivering such a statement offered the perception of a president who doesn’t care. He said that’s untrue and likely unfair.

Perhaps this brief tempest will have delivered a lesson to a president who’s trying right now to manage several international crises. Be mindful, Mr. President, of how your every move is being watched by the public — for whom you work.

 

 

 

International news, national news, political news

When did ISIL become such a threat?

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant dominated the Sunday talk shows.

Why not? ISIL has been on everyone’s mind these days.

Whether it’s ISIL or ISIS — po-tay -to, po-tah-to … whatever — the group has burst into our national consciousness in a way not seen since, oh, al-Qaeda did on Sept. 11, 2001.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/216871-obama-to-detail-nation-on-isis-threat

I’m left with this question: How does a terror organization operate under our noses and under our radar for as long as ISIL apparently has without there being some kind of forewarning?

I am quite sure I’m missing something here, but I pose the question because ISIL now has become the stuff of presidential addresses to the nation.

President Obama is going to speak to us Wednesday night and will detail a strategy for how he intends to destroy the terror organization. In a Meet the Press interview broadcast today, the president also said he will offer details on the specific threat he believes ISIL poses to Americans.

We’ve been operating in an ISIL-free environment ever since the war on terror began immediately after the 9/11 attacks. How can that have happened.

ISIL didn’t just emerge from a genie bottle overnight. It’s well-funded, well-organized, media-savvy and dedicated to the proposition that it intends to bring harm to Americans. No group just pops up from under the rocks without anyone knowing of its existence.

The same might be said of al-Qaeda. Yes, U.S. intelligence officials reportedly knew about that group before the 9/11 attacks. Al-Qaeda was responsible for the suicide attack on the USS Cole in 2000. It was known to have been involved in a bombing at the World Trade Center in 1993. President Clinton sought to kill Osama bin Laden but failed.

Did John Q. Public know about al-Qaeda then?

No. It took that horrific attack on New York and Washington to make us aware of who these monsters are what they are capable of doing.

Now it’s ISIL, the latest national threat. It’s good that ISIL is on our radar. It’s even better that it’s on the commander in chief’s radar.

I hope now that at his next news conference, someone in the White House press corps will ask: Mr. President, when did we know about ISIL and why are we only now getting revved up to fight this monstrous mob of murderers?

 

International news, national news, political news

Obama seeks to thread dangerous needle

Talk about a much-anticipated speech.

President Obama is going to speak Wednesday about his planned strategy for “degrading, defeating and destroying” the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

In that speech, the president is going to lay out a plan that will preclude American “boots on the ground.” What he will need to explain — and he’ll need to use his tremendous rhetorical skill to do so — is how this nation is going to defeat ISIL’s efforts to overthrow the government in Syria without aligning ourselves with the government that we also hate.

The president offered a hint of that strategy this morning in an interview broadcast on Meet the Press. He talked to new MTP moderator Chuck Todd about working with “moderate opposition forces” that also are fighting the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. ISIL is the new enemy on the battlefield in Syria, he said, and the United States will deploy its enormous air power to hit ISIL’s whenever and wherever we find it.

This, I submit, is where the equation gets very tricky.

Assad’s regime is as hated as any in the Middle East. He, too, is a monster who needs to go. ISIL, though, is an even worse monster. Do we take sides in this struggle, wishing for one enemy force to defeat another enemy force?

Obama said the aim ought to be to help those so-called moderates in Syria — with help from other Sunni Arab states in the region. He mentioned Saudi Arabia and Jordan, two nations that have received significant U.S. military support over the years.

It’s time, Obama said, for those nations to deploy the assets we’ve provided for them in the fight against ISIL.

The president took a lot of heat when he said recently that “we don’t have a strategy yet” in dealing with ISIL. The critics who pounded Obama over that statement forget the “yet” part of that statement.

It appears a strategy is forthcoming. I’ll wait with interest for what the president has to say.

I will be particularly interested in hearing how he plans to keep fighting Bashar al-Assad while destroying the dictator’s No. 1 enemy.

 

International news, political news

What's this? Ted Cruz is right about something?

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Imagine my shock and horror when I read something that came out of Sen. Ted Cruz’s mouth that I found agreeable.

The Texas Republican says the United States should revoke the citizenship of any American known to have taken up arms with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Being a fair-minded guy, I want to stipulate that not every loathsome politician is utterly devoid of a good idea once in a while.

Cruz’s notion, as I understand it, is perfectly OK with me.

“There can be no clearer renunciation of their citizenship in the United States, and we need to do everything we can to preempt any attempt … to re-enter our country and carry further attacks on American civilians,” Cruz said.

Amen to that.

I’d like to take that point a step or two further.

First, we should revoke the citizenship of any American known to associate with any terrorist organization. Let’s not limit it to ISIL membership. Al-Qaeda has done terrible things to Americans, as we all know; it, too, has boasted of American-born members, some of whom have been killed by U.S. forces in the on-going war against international terror.

Second, revoking U.S. citizenship of known terrorists removes them from any effort to exempt them from becoming victims of military strikes. I’ve said already that I have no difficulty with American forces killing Americans who’ve taken up arms against their country. Others have questioned the correctness of killing U.S. citizens without giving them “due process.” By my way of thinking, those citizens gave up their rights to due process the moment they suited up in enemy colors.

These so-called Americans have all but renounced their citizenship. Ted Cruz’s idea takes that renunciation a key step further.

Now that I’ve said something in agreement with Ted Cruz, I’ll need some smelling salts.

Still, his idea is on point.

 

International news, political news

Putin builds NATO solidarity

Russian President Vladimir Putin has succeeded in accomplishing one unintended goal: building unity among the nations comprising the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

NATO weighs lethal aid for Ukraine

NATO is meeting this week in Wales and leaders from member nations are pondering whether to provide lethal military assistance to Ukraine in its struggle to maintain its independence from Russian aggressors.

Given the success NATO had in keeping the Soviet Union from invading western Europe until its demise in 1991, this must be seen as a positive development.

NATO came into existence after World War II. The Soviets had liberated eastern Europe from the Nazi monsters. They didn’t give up control of those nations once the shooting stopped. NATO was born out of concern that the USSR would seek to expand its influence across all of Europe. NATO’s main mission was defend against Soviet aggression. An attack against one NATO nation would be seen as an attack on the entire alliance.

President Obama has reaffirmed that principle in declaring that Russia’s intervention in Ukraine must be stopped and he warned Putin against entertaining any notions of taking back other NATO nations — such as the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Ukraine isn’t a member of NATO, but the alliance’s concern about possible Russian aggression is well-founded.

The NATO nations are rediscovering why they are bound together.

International news, political news

Fox turns to 'expert' on Middle East policy

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Phil Robertson is a lot of things.

He’s the patriarch of the Duck Dynasty family of hunters, fishermen and reality TV.

He also now is a foreign policy expert. Fox News Channel had ol’ Phil on one of its talk shows and asked him how he thinks the United States should deal with the ISIL terrorists.

“We should convert or kill them,” Robertson said … in part.

There you go. Convert the Islamic extremist terrorists to Christianity or kill them dead, according to the Robertson Doctrine.

Well, what’s interesting is that the Obama administration is sort of following that doctrine, only without the conversion part. The Pentagon has unleashed our nation’s air power against ISIL killers in Iraq and it may start similar missions in Syria, where ISIL has beheaded two American journalists in a horrific display of human indecency.

It’s worth asking, though: Is this what the media have come to, asking reality TV characters for their view on international crises that are killing innocent Americans?

OK, I know. I’ve been bloviating in this space about ISIL as well. I’m not an “expert” either on how to resolve this crisis. I’m just a guy with some opinions on the matter. Am I qualified to offer my views on issues of the world? Technically, no. My platform, though, isn’t as far-reaching as the Fox News Channel.

My preference, though, is for the TV talkers to rely on actual experts to comment on these life-and-death matters. It might be the foreign policy experts would echo the Robertson Doctrine. Let them do so. As for ol’ Phil, let him talk about matters that he knows — like hunting and fishing.

 

International news, national news

How do you 'manage' these monsters?

Barack Obama is mistaken if he thinks the Islamic State and the Levant can be reduced to a “manageable problem.”

Yet that’s what the president of the United States said today in a news conference at the start of a NATO meeting in Estonia.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/mitch-mcconnell-isil-110566.html?hp=l4

Uh, Mr. President? ISIL needs to be destroyed. Wiped out. Eliminated. Obliterated. Exterminated.

I’m sure I can find some more active verbs here, but you get the point.

Should we go to war, as in a ground war, with troops, tanks and trucks? No. Air power, and lots of it, is needed here. We have it. We should use it.

ISIL has shown that it cannot be “managed.” It cannot be contained and made insignificant. It is a well-funded, well-armed, sophisticated, media savvy organization that must be dealt with in the harshest manner possible — with extreme prejudice.

I get why the president won’t commit to a ground war in Syria and/or Iraq to fight these monsters. We’ve installed a government in Iraq that now must defend itself. As for Syria, fighting ISIL house to house would in effect put us shoulder to shoulder with troops loyal to another bad seed, Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator who’s gassed his own people.

The president’s rhetoric, though, today took a startling turn toward the bland.

He’d declared the U.S. intention to destroy ISIL after it beheaded Stephen Sotloff. Today, he talked of reducing ISIL to a manageable size.

Destruction, Mr. President, is the only option.

International news

Terrorists give Islam a horrid name

This is no big flash, I’m sure you’ll agree … but the hideous monsters who call themselves the Islamic State and The Levant are giving a great religion a terrible name.

Consider this brief exchange this morning at the place where I work part time.

Colleague No. 1: “What’s in the news today? More bad stuff? Any more beheadings?”

Me: (Silence.)

Colleague No. 2, as he’s walking quickly past us: “Yeah, beheadings. It’s a peaceful religion. all right.”

ISIL has murdered another American journalist. Its goons are vowing to kill more Americans if we continue to bomb ISIL targets in Iraq. President Obama has called them what they are: murderers, cowards.

They claim to be doing this in the name of Islam.

In the process, they have defamed the very religion they claim to represent.

ISIL represents nothing but evil. It is no more faithful to Islam than al-Qaeda is faithful to it. The murderers have been described appropriately as an “apocalyptic” organization with an “end of the world view.” That is not in keeping with any mainstream religion with which I am familiar.

Are there comparisons between ISIL and other extremists? I won’t go so far as to suggest any direct comparison, given this group’s utterly bloodthirsty quest for vengeance. However, Islam isn’t the only religion known to foster extremist elements.

Zionists have been known to commit violent acts in the name of Judaism. The late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed a peace treaty with the Palestine Liberation Organization and then was murdered by a Zionist extremist.

Christianity isn’t immune, either, from heinous acts committed in the name of Jesus Christ. Abortion providers have been murdered in their homes by zealots acting in Jesus’s name.

Do mainstream Jews and Christians embrace these acts? Maybe some do. I, however, do not.

What’s happening in Syria and Iraq as ISIL continues its rampage is not at all about Islam. It is about terror.

Terrorists are the enemy, not the religion they purport to represent.

 

International news, national news, political news

Another beheading, more calls for 'action'

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Another American journalist, Steven Sotloff, reportedly has been murdered by ISIL.

Good God in heaven! This tragedy defies any civilized human being’s emotional tolerance. What should be our response? What must the United States do to punish these monstrous murderers?

I submit we must do what we’ve been seeking to do for weeks: Bomb them into oblivion.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/steven-sotloff-death-110516.html?hp=l4

The outcry from U.S. politicians is understandable and quite predictable. The chairman and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee — Republican Ed Royce of California and Democrat Eliot Engel of New York, respectively — say President Obama must take immediate action. He must do something more than what he’s been doing.

I keep circling back to the key question: To what end do we ratchet up our response to these monsters?

If we’re talking about sending troops into battle in Syria and back into Iraq, my strong sense is that the country has zero appetite for more warfare. If we’re thinking about boosting our aerial campaign, well, I’m all for that.

Everyone on Planet Earth now understands that ISIL — the Islamic State and The Levant — has redefined barbarism. No one wants them to continue operating.

In our rage over what’s reportedly happened to another U.S. journalist, let us be mindful of at least two key elements.

One, the administration is hitting ISIL hard already in Iraq and there are increasing reports of a stepped-up aerial assault against the monsters in Syria. I’m quite sure an expanded air campaign is about to commence.

Two, ISIL is fighting another enemy of the United States, forces loyal to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. It’s that dual-enemy threat that presents a seriously complicated task facing the United States of America. Destroying ISIL is in our best interest, but we must be mindful of who precisely benefits directly from ISIL’s elimination in Syria. I’m not saying in the least we should go easy in ISIL simply because Assad stands to gain. I’m merely saying that our rage over Sotloff’s gruesome death should not overtake rational thinking in preparing the right kind of response to this despicable act.

Keep bombing, Mr. President. If they respond with more heinous acts, bomb them some more.

 

International news

War is no option

President Obama makes it clear: There will be no U.S. military intervention in Ukraine.

That’s a relief.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir “Tough Guy” Putin makes it equally clear: Don’t mess with Russia.

Now, are the Russians tougher than we are? Which military establishment is stronger than the other one? This loyal American knows the answer to both questions.

None of that is the issue. World peace and the consequences of trying to force the Russians out of Ukraine militarily are too horrible to ponder.

The only option now must be the economic one.

http://news.msn.com/world/eu-to-slap-new-sanctions-on-russia-over-Ukraine

The European Union is pondering even more stringent sanctions on Russia. So is the United States of America, working in concert with the EU.

Meanwhile, the critics back here at home — far away from the struggle — keep yammering about the “military option.” None exists.

Russian troops reportedly have “invaded” Ukraine, violating that country’s territorial sovereignty. Obama has condemned the Russians, including Putin. He’s vowing that Russia will pay a price for its violating its neighbor’s territory. The sanctions already imposed are taking a big bite out of a Russian economy that’s on the ropes as it is.

Are we going to bomb the Russians? No. We should put the economic squeeze on them.

Keep tightening the vise, Mr. President.