Ben Weingarten

Reader. Writer. Thinker. Commentator. Truth Seeker.

Category: Foreign Policy (Page 8 of 11)

A Response to Jim Geraghty on Republicans’ Willingness to Prevent the Iran Deal (or Lack Thereof)

By

On August 31, 2015

In Foreign Policy, National Security, Politics

National Review’s Jim Geraghty asks an essential question in a recent edition of his Morning Jolt that every member of Congress — not just Republicans — should have to answer: “[W]hat are you willing to do to prevent a mushroom cloud either in the Middle East or closer to home?”

As it pertains to members of the GOP, the proof is in the pudding: The party will prove pusillanimous — unwilling to exhaust every avenue to block an Iran deal disastrous for the entire West.

How do we know this?

Sen. Bob Corker’s Iran legislation in and of itself was a complete and utter abdication of Senatorial prerogative, and perhaps the crowning act of Failure Theater of this Republican Congress.

For a refresher, as Geraghty’s colleague Andrew C. McCarthy noted in April:

Read More

ISIS Isn’t Winning So Much as America Is Mentally Defeated

By

On August 28, 2015

In Defense, Foreign Policy, National Security

In an age of victimology, moral relativism and a supreme lack of confidence in Western Civilization, you get comments like this from senior military officials:

“In testimony on Capitol Hill this year, Lt. Gen. Vincent R. Stewart, the [Defense Intelligence] agency’s director, said sending ground troops back into Iraq risked transforming the conflict into one between the West and ISIS, which would be ‘the best propaganda victory that we could give.'”

Lt. Gen. Stewart’s statement fittingly comes from the Times’ exposé on the alleged politicization of intelligence estimates regarding our nation’s supposed military campaign against ISIS in Iraq.

The half-hearted effort against ISIS as dictated by President Obama — more political than substantive in nature — is a symptom of which Stewart’s demoralized mindset is part of the cause.

We are in a war in which Islamic supremacists are and have been fighting infidels worldwide for multiple decades, while the infidels cower.

We do not need to transform any conflict into one between the West and jihadists because the jihadists have already defined their war with us as such.

We are losing today to ISIS and to Islamic supremacism more broadly not so much because we lack the capability to destroy them

Read More

Samantha Power’s Shameless But Unsurprising Iran Deal Shilling

By

On August 27, 2015

In Foreign Policy, Government, Politics

Did you know that if America does not release $150 billion to the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, and provide protection for its nuclear infrastructure — among other gifts — that it will hamper America’s ability to “confront global threats?”

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power says it is so, and if the former proponent of boots on the ground in Israel says it, it must be true:

Such tweets follow Samantha Power’s defense of the Iran Deal in Politico, which boils down to the following curious assertion: If America does not do this deal, we will hamstring ourselves when it comes to future matters of foreign policy.

Power says we would be isolating ourselves from the P5+1 nations with whom we negotiated the deal. She writes that the “partners believe that this is a sound deal,” conveniently omitting the fact that two of said partners, the Russians and Chinese, benefit by the strengthening of an Iran that has been at war with the West since 1979. She also neglects to mention that the French were steadfastly opposed to this deal, pounding the table that the terms were too weak during negotiations.

Moroever, Power writes that “We would go from a situation in which Iran is isolated to one in which the United States is isolated,” in the inconceivable scenario in which Congress is able to override a presidential veto.

To this I say:

Read More

ESPN Silenced Curt Schilling, So What Would It Say to This Arab Writer Who Compared Hamas to the Nazis?

By

On August 27, 2015

In Foreign Policy, Media, National Security, Politics

According to the invaluable MEMRI, an Arab writer named Majed Hadib recently published an article in a PLO-affiliated publication in which he compared Hamas to Hitler and the Nazis.

In particular, he argues that the terrorist group’s tactics are going to lead those under its control to destruction akin to that of the Germans during WWII:

[Hamas’] measures resemble those taken by Hitler when he sought the permission of the Germans to lead Germany and its people towards years of glory. [However,] Hitler led Germany to collapse and division, after murdering, arresting and oppressing the German people. The laws he passed were meant to protect his regime on the one hand, and on the other hand to rally the people behind him and lead Germany towards the ‘glorious skies,’ as he called it. If Hamas continues to march on his path and try to rally the people around it without any comprehensive and unified national strategy, and under the pretext of letting the resistance win – it will lead our people to doom and to the end of its lengthy historic struggle, which is soaked in the blood of martyrs…

The author continues:

Hamas must understand now, before it is too late, that its adherence to the principle of attempting to eliminate the other, the steps it is taking to silence others, its increasing oppression of Palestinian national forces and of the people of Gaza, the legislation of the so-called ‘Mutual Responsibility [Tax] Laws’[2] and the taxation that preceded them, the restriction of general liberties… and the hobbling of all media that oppose its activity – all this will not cause the Palestinian people to rally behind it. This, because the Palestinian people is not a herd, but rather a people with a national cause [which has shown] creativity throughout its lengthy struggle. The attempts to eliminate the national forces of the Palestinian people or suppress them will not enable Hamas to lead [the Palestinians] to victory and to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Rather, [Hamas will lead them] where Hitler led the German people – namely to defeat and years-long destruction.

He concludes:

… Will Hamas learn a lesson and cease seeing the other components of the people as something that must be uprooted in order to strengthen [itself], under the pretext of ‘resistance’ and of leading the people towards victory? Or will it insist on following in Hitler’s footprints by levying taxes, legislating harsh laws, and taking increased security measures – [which] will lead the people to the brink of disaster and cause it to deteriorate for many years, even decades, has happened to Nazi Germany?

Now I grant that the rationale behind the comparison of Nazi Germany to Hamas-controlled Arab is not the one I would have made.

Hamas seeks the annihilation of the Jewish state of Israel, and I think that pretty much says it all. Not to mention the fact that we could loosely trace Hamas’ ideology to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, one of Hitler’s close allies.

But given the comparison of Hamas to the Nazis, one wonders what ESPN would say.

In the case of current ESPN anchor and former pitching great Curt Schilling, he might have had a more compelling case than this Palestinian author, and his comment was far less pointed.

The image Schilling tweeted, deleted and paid for — with ESPN canceling his telecast assignment for the Little League World Series — made the comparison of Islamic supremacists to Nazis.

(Image Source: Twitter)

(Image Source: Twitter)

Read More

The Ignored Influence of the Iran Lobby on Obama’s Useful Idiots

By

On August 27, 2015

In Defense, Foreign Policy, Government, Politics

The incomparable Daniel Greenfield has the story:

Both of Obama’s secretaries of state were involved in Iran Lobby cash controversies, as was his vice president and his former secretary of defense. Obama was also the beneficiary of sizable donations from the Iran Lobby. Akbar Ghahary, the former co-founder of IAPAC, had donated and raised some $50,000 for Obama.

It’s an unprecedented track record that has received very little notice. While the so-called “Israel Lobby” is constantly scrutinized, the fact that key foreign policy positions under Obama are controlled by political figures with troubling ties to an enemy of this country has gone mostly unreported by the mainstream media.

This culture of silence allowed the Iran Lobby to get away with taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times before the Netanyahu speech asking, “Will Congress side with our President or a Foreign Leader?”

Iran’s stooges had taken a break from lobbying for ballistic missiles to play American patriots.

Obama and his allies, Iranian and domestic, have accused opponents of his dirty Iran deal of making “common cause” with that same terror regime and of treason. The ugly truth is that he and his political accomplices were the traitors all along.

Democrats in favor of a deal that will let a terrorist regime go nuclear have taken money from lobbies for that regime. They have broken their oath by taking bribes from a regime whose leaders chant, “Death to America”. Their pretense of examining the deal is nothing more than a hollow charade.

This deal has come down from Iran Lobby influenced politicians like Kerry and is being waved through by members of Congress who have taken money from the Iran Lobby. That is treason plain and simple.

Despite what we are told about its “moderate” leaders, Iran considers itself to be in a state of war with us. Iran and its agents have repeatedly carried out attacks against American soldiers, abducted and tortured to death American officials and have even engaged in attacks on American naval vessels.

Aiding an enemy state in developing nuclear weapons is the worst form of treason imaginable. Helping put weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists is the gravest of crimes.

The Democrats who have approved this deal are turning their party into a party of atom bomb spies.

Those politicians who have taken money from the Iran Lobby and are signing off on a deal that will let Iran go nuclear have engaged in the worst form of treason and committed the gravest of crimes. They must know that they will be held accountable. That when Iran detonates its first bomb, their names will be on it.

But will the Democrats who lavished the world’s largest state sponsor of jihad with billions of dollars, provided cover for its nuclear activities and spat in the eyes of America’s servicemen and women maimed and murdered by Iran and its proxies, along with the craven Republicans who willfully engaged in failure theater, actually pay a price for their treason?

 

Featured Image Source: PBS.

Sen. Robert Menendez: Traitor, Sider With Tehran Hardliners, Teahadist. Kudos to Him.

By

On August 18, 2015

In Foreign Policy, Government, Politics

In some respects, the indictment of Sen. Robert Menendez may have been the best thing to have ever happened for those who oppose President Obama’s appeasement of Iran in the form of his disastrous nuclear deal.

For the New Jersey senator — no longer forced to be loyal to the Obama administration that cut his legs out from under him by way of the Justice Department — was able to take a position on Iran that his craven colleague Sen. Charles Schumer would not: No to the Iran Deal and no to any presidential veto.

Following up on his under-appreciated but compelling statement against the raising of the U.S. flag in Cuba (perhaps the only other issue on which I agree with Sen. Menendez), the senator made an emphatic and pointed speech at Seton Hall University, formally declaring his opposition to the Iran Deal.

It surely must have stuck in the Obama administration’s craw.

From the address:

Read More

Apropos John Kerry’s ‘Emotional’ Jews, the Holocaust and Iran

By

On August 11, 2015

In Foreign Policy, Politics

Matti Friedman, he of some truly exceptional reporting on blatant anti-Israel bias in the media, has written a book review highly relevant in a time in which those who oppose President Obama’s Iran Deal are derided as “emotional” by the likes of Secretary of State John Kerry and others.

Describing Padraig O’Malley’s theories about Israeli Jews in The Two State Delusion, Friedman writes:

The “bonding, primal element” of the Jewish psyche, we learn, is the Holocaust. Israelis are in thrall to weapons because of the Holocaust; they are obtuse to the suffering of others because of the Holocaust; and in general they are sort of crazy because of the Holocaust. Actually, half of the Jewish population in Israel has roots in the Islamic world. Their families were displaced by Muslims, not Nazis. Israelis think many of their neighbors are out to destroy Israel not because of the Holocaust, but because many of their neighbors say they are out to destroy Israel. Israel’s actions in the Middle East, in other words, have to do with its experience in the Middle East. The country’s objective success against long odds would have to indicate that at least some of its decisions have been reality-based, if not quite reasonable.

The idea that a collective memory renders Jewish judgment defective seems to be something acceptable to say aloud these days in connection with Israel, which is why I’ve dwelled on it. It’s important to point out not only that this observation is wrong, but that it is a patronizing ethnic smear. I don’t like the careless generalizations in Mr. O’Malley’s book or his shaky grasp of the facts. But I don’t think they have anything to do with the potato famine.

One would expect an exercise in conflict resolution to end with a few suggestions on resolving the conflict. Friends of the author who read the manuscript shared this expectation, we learn, and wondered about the absence of constructive ideas. If not two states then what? “But why should I be so presumptuous as to dare provide a vision for people who refuse to provide one for themselves, not just in the here and now, but in the future too?” he replies. “For people who have no faith in the possible? Who themselves believe the conflict will take generations to resolve? Who are content to live their hatreds? Who are so resolutely opposed to the slightest gesture of accommodation? Who revel in their mutual pettiness?”

On behalf of my Holocaust-addled, Uzi-wielding countrymen and—if I may—on behalf of our intellectually depleted neighbors, I would like to express gratitude for being led to common ground: our mutual pettiness.

“The Two-State Delusion” illustrates a strange aspect of our current intellectual moment: At a time when the Middle East has achieved a truly surreal level of awfulness, many in the West have become even more acutely fixated on the Jewish minority enclave in one corner of the region. The death toll in Syria alone in four years is more than double the Israel-Arab death toll in a century. That being the case, it should be clear that believing Israel’s conflict to be the most important in the Middle East is, and always has been, a delusion—one that unconsciously underpins this treatise about the delusions of others.

Read More

If Jews Are ‘Emotional’ About the Iran Deal, Then What Does That Make the Obama Administration?

By

On August 10, 2015

In Defense, Foreign Policy, Politics

Kerry: Let me put this in very precise terms. Look, I’ve gone through this backwards and forwards a hundred times and I’m telling you, this deal is as pro-Israel, as pro-Israel’s security, as it gets. And I believe that just saying no to this is, in fact, reckless.

Goldberg: So why do you think you can’t convince the majority of Israelis, or the majority of the organized Jewish community, of this?

Kerry: Because there’s a huge level of fear and mistrust and, frankly, there’s an inherent sense that, given Iran’s gains and avoidance in the past, that somehow they’re going to avoid something again. It’s a visceral feeling, it’s very emotional and visceral and I’m very in tune with that and very sensitive to that. – John Kerry’s Interview With Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantic

So just to be clear, Secretary of State Kerry and the Obama administration have cut a deal in which Iran will be subjected to no inspections, no disclosures, no verification and no sanctions, that will equip the world’s leading state sponsor of terror with billions of dollars, and requires that the U.S. help protect its nuclear infrastructure, among many other travesties, but Secretary of State Kerry believes that critical Israelis in particular and Jews in general are responding “emotionally,” as opposed to rationally with fear and loathing?

Contrast the reaction of Jews, Christians and others who comprise the majority of Americans who oppose the Iran Deal with the Obama administration that claims that its political opponents are siding with Iran’s “hardliners” — that is, the mullahs to whom President Obama has not only capitulated but in effect made common cause.

In a parade of horribles chronicled in a powerful editorial in the Jewish magazine Tablet (no enemy of President Obama mind you), the publication’s Editors write:

Read More

Ernest Moniz, Iran and the Imprimatur of Science

By

On August 6, 2015

In Foreign Policy, Politics

Watching the Obama administration trot out Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on the Sunday shows and in testimony to Congress following the consummation of what I believe will be a nuclear weapon-ensuring deal for not only the world’s leading state sponsor of jihad in Iran, but their Sunni counterparts, it should have been clear to all what a charade it was.

Moniz — an MIT physicist turned Obama administration shill — was there to provide the imprimatur of unimpeachable Science™ to the transparently deceptive deal. And who can fight with science, especially of the kind that is already settled?

In this light, I am reminded of a quote from an expert in financial markets and economic history, Jim Grant, he of the legendary Wall Street newsletter Grant’s Interest Rate Observer.

During an address delivered on June 2, 2015 to the Manhattan Institute in connection with his winning of the Hayek Prize, Grant stated:

Read More

Refugee Resettlement in America: The Nexus of Leftism, Corporatism and the Global Jihad

By

On May 7, 2015

In Books, Business, Foreign Policy, Government, National Security, Podcast, Politics

Full Interview

Read More

Page 8 of 11

← Previous

Next →

PURCHASE BEN’S NEW BOOK

Subscribe to Ben’s Newsletter

LISTEN TO THE BIG IDEAS WITH BEN WEINGARTEN PODCAST


Support the Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten Podcast

PayPal

Follow Ben on Twitter

Follow Ben on Facebook

Follow Ben on Facebook

Archives

Categories

Subscribe

Receive the latest and greatest by email.

AMAZON AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

COPYRIGHT

All content © 2024 by Ben Weingarten or the respective publications excerpted.

RSS Feed

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén