Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Monday, September 29, 2014
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Monday, September 22, 2014
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Friday, September 19, 2014
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Monday, September 15, 2014
Saturday, September 13, 2014
Why Muslims Must Hate Jews
August 3, 2012Why Muslims Must Hate JewsRecently, a Pakistani religious leader, Pirzada Muhammad Raza Saqib Mustafai, said: "When the Jews are wiped out ... the sun of peace [will] begin to rise on the entire world." The same preaching is routinely done not only by clerics, but by politicians -- in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and elsewhere. This is not just Ahmedinijad; it is at the heart of Islamic theology that world peace will be established only when all the Jews are wiped from the earth. But few people in Western media are alarmed by this kind of rhetoric or care to expose this dreadful dark side of Islam's obsession with Jew-hatred.I do not believe that one has to be an authority on human behavior or group thinking to find out the obvious pathology in Islamic Jew-hatred. It is time for all of us to uncover and expose this atrocity against the Jewish people. We owe that to humanity and the truth.No true Muslim can see that such hatred is unbecoming and unholy for a world religion to focus on and that the credibility of Islam is tarnished by such hatred. No Muslim is allowed to go far enough to self-analyze or ask why such hatred. Muslims defend Jew-hatred by claiming that Jews betrayed Muhammad and thus deserve of this kind of treatment. Even when I was a Muslim, I believed that the one-sided story against Jews by Islam was enough to justify all the killing, terror, lies, and propaganda by Islamic leaders against Jews. To the average Muslim, routinely cursing Jews in mosques feels normal and even holy!After a lot of thinking, analysis, research, and writing, I discovered that Jew -atred in Islam is an essential foundation to the Islamic belief system that Muslims cannot seem to be able to rid themselves of. Jew-hatred masks an existential problem in Islam. Islam is terrified of the Jews, and the number-one enemy of Islam is the truth, which must be constantly covered at any cost. It does not matter how many Muslim men, women, and children die in the process of saving Islam's reputation. The number-one duty of Muslims is to protect the reputation of Islam and Mohammad. But why would a religion burden its followers like that? This is why:When Mohammed embarked on his mission to spread Islam, his objective was to create a uniquely Arabian religion, one created by an Arab prophet, which reflected the Arabian values and culture. Yet to obtain legitimacy, he had to link it to the two previous Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Christianity. He expected the Jewish tribes who lived in Arabia to declare him their Messiah and thereby bring him more legitimacy with Arabs, especially with his own tribe in Mecca, the Quraish. Because his own tribe had rejected and ridiculed him, Mohammed needed the approval of the Jews, whom he called the people of the book. But the conversion of Jews to Islam was part of the scenario that Mohammed had to accomplish in order to prove to Meccans that they had made a mistake by rejecting him.That was one of the reasons Mohammed chose to migrate to Medina, a town that had predominantly been settled by Jewish tribes and a few impoverished Arabs who lived around the Jews. The Jews allowed Mohammed to move in. At the beginning, the Koran of Mecca was full of appeals to the Jews, who were then described as "guidance and light" (5:44) and a "righteous" people (6:153-154), who "excelled the nations" (45:16). But when the Jews rejected the appeasement and refused to convert to Islam, Mohammed simply and completely flipped. The Quran changed from love to threats and then pure hatred, cursing, and commandments to kill Jews. Rejection by the Jews became an intolerable obsession with Mohammed.Not only did the Jews reject him, but their prosperity made Mohammed extremely envious. The Jewish Arabian tribes earned their living from legitimate and successful business, but Mohammed earned his living and wealth through warfare -- by attacking Arab tribes, some of whom were from his own tribe -- and trade caravans, seizing their wealth and property. That did not look good for a man who claimed to be a prophet of God. The mere existence of the Jews made Mohammed look bad, which led Mohammed to unspeakable slaughter, beheading of 600 to 900 Jewish men of one tribe, and taking their women and children as slaves. Mohammed had the first pick of the prettiest woman as his sex slave. All of this senseless slaughter of the Jews was elaborately documented in Islamic books on the life of Mohammed -- not as something to be ashamed of, but as justified behavior against evil people.One does not have to be psychiatrist to see the obvious: that Mohammad was a tormented man after the massacre he orchestrated and forced his fighters to undertake to empower and to enrich himself and his religion. To reduce his torment, he needed everyone around him, as well as future generations, to participate in the genocide against the Jews, the only people whom he could not control. An enormous number of verses in the Koran encouraged Mohammed's fighters to fight, kill, and curse Muslim fighters who wanted to escape fighting and killing Jews. The Quran is full of promises of all kinds of pleasure in heaven to those who followed Mohammed's killing spree and curses and condemnation to those who chose to escape from fighting. Muslims were encouraged to feel no hesitation or guilt for the genocide because it was not they who did it, but rather "Allah's hand."Mohammed never got over his anger, humiliation, and rejection by "the people of the book" and went to his grave tormented and obsessed that some Jews were still alive. On his deathbed, Mohammed entrusted Muslims to kill Jews wherever they found them, which made this a "holy commandment" that no Muslim can reject. Muslims who wrote sharia understood how Mohammed was extremely sensitive to criticism, and that is why criticizing Mohammed became the highest crime in Islam that will never be forgiven even if the offender repents. Mohammed's message on his deathbed was not for his followers to strive for holiness, peace, goodness, and to treat their neighbors as themselves, but rather a commandment for Muslims to continue the killing and the genocide against the Jews. Killing thus became a holy act of obedience to Mohammed and Allah himself.Mohammed portrayed himself as a victim of Jews, and Muslims must avenge him until judgment day. With all Arab power, money, and influence around the world today, they still thrive at portraying themselves as victims. Sharia also codified into law the duty of every Muslim to defend Mohammed's honor and Islam with his own blood, and allowed the violation of many commandments if it is for the benefit of defending Islam and Mohammed. Thus, Muslims are carrying a huge burden, a holy burden, to defend Mohammed with their blood, and in doing so they are allowed to kill, lie, cheat, slander, and mislead.Mohammed must have felt deep and extreme shame after what he had done to the Jews, and thus a very good reason had to be found to explain away his genocide. By commanding Muslims to continue the genocide for him, even after his death, Mohammad expanded the shame to cover all Muslims and Islam itself. All Muslims were commanded to follow Mohammed's example and chase the Jews wherever they went. One hundred years after Mohammed's death, Arabs occupied Jerusalem and built Al Aqsa mosque right on top of the Jewish Temple ruins, the holiest spot of the Jews. Muslims thought they had erased all memory of Jewish existence.Mohammed's genocide of the Jews of Arabia became an unholy dark mark of shame in Islamic history, and that shame, envy, and anger continues to get the best of Muslims today. In the eyes of Mohammed and Muslims, the mere existence of the Jewish people, let alone an entire Jewish state, delegitimizes Islam and makes Mohammed look more like a mass murderer than like a prophet. For Muslims to make peace with Jews and acknowledge that Jews are humans who deserve the same rights as everyone else would have a devastating effect on how Muslims view their religion, their history, and the actions of their prophet.Islam has a major existential problem. By no will of their own, the Jews found themselves in the middle of this Islamic dilemma. Islam must justify the genocide that Mohammad waged against the Jews. Mohammad and Muslims had two choices: either the Jews are evil sub-humans, apes, pigs, and enemies of Allah, a common description of Jews still heard regularly in Middle Eastern mosques today, or Mohammad was a genocidal warlord not fit to be a prophet of God -- a choice that would mean the end of Islam.Then and now, Mohammad and Muslims clearly chose the first worldview and decreed that any hint of the second must be severely punished. Jews must remain eternally evil enemies of Islam if Islam is to remain legitimate. There is no third solution to save the core of Islam from collapsing; either Mohammed was evil, or the Jews were evil. Any attempt to forgive, humanize, or live peacefully with Jews is considered treason against Islam. How can Muslims forgive the Jews and then go back to their mosques, only to read their prophet's words, telling them they must kill Jews wherever they find them? It does not add up, if someone wants to remain Muslim.That is why the number-one enemy of Islam is, and must remain, the truth. If the truth exposes Islam's unjustified Jew-hatred, Muslims will be left with an empty shell of a religion, a religion whose prophet was a murderer, a thief, and a warlord. Without Jew-hatred, Islam would self-destruct.
The Forever War - Pat Buchanan
Friday - September 12, 2014
The strategy that President Obama laid out Wednesday night to "degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL," is incoherent, inconsistent and, ultimately, non-credible.
A year ago, Obama and John Kerry were straining at the leash to launch air strikes on Syrian President Bashar Assad for his alleged use of chemical weapons in "killing his own people."
But when Americans rose as one to demand that we stay out of Syria, Obama hastily erased his "red line" and announced a new policy of not getting involved in "somebody else's civil war."
Now, after videos of the beheadings of two U.S. journalists have set the nation on fire, the president, reading the polls, has flipped again.
Now Obama wants to lead the West and the Arab world straight into Syria's civil war. Only this time we bomb ISIL, not Assad.
Who will provide the legions Obama will deploy to crush ISIL in Syria? The Free Syrian Army, the same rebels who have been routed again and again and whose chances of ousting Assad were derided by Obama himself in August as a "fantasy"? The FSA, the president mocked, is a force of "former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth."
Now Obama wants Congress to appropriate $500 million to train and arm those doctors and pharmacists and send them into battle against an army of jihadist terrorists who just bit off one-third of Iraq.
Before Congress votes a dime, it should get some answers.
Whom will this Free Syrian Army fight? ISIL alone? The al-Nusra Front? Hezbollah in Syria? Assad's army? How many years will it take to train, equip and build the FSA into a force that can crush both Assad and ISIL?
"Tell me how this thing ends," said Gen. David Petraeus on the road up to Baghdad in 2003.
The president did not tell us how this new war ends.
If Assad falls, do the Alawites and Christians survive? Does Syria disintegrate? Who will rule in Damascus?
The United States spent seven years building an army to hold Iraq together. Yet when a few thousand ISIL fighters stormed in from Syria, that army broke and fled all the way to Baghdad. Even the Kurdish peshmerga broke and ran.
What makes us think we can succeed in Syria where we failed in Iraq.
If ISIL is our mortal enemy and Syria its sanctuary, there are two armies capable of crushing it together -- the Syrian and Turkish armies.
But Turkey, a NATO ally, was not even mentioned in Obama's speech. Why? Because the Turks have been allowing jihadists to cross into Syria, as they have long sought the fall of Assad.
Now, with the Islamic State holding hostage 49 Turkish diplomats and their families in Mosul, Ankara is even more reluctant to intervene.
Nor is there any indication Turkey will let the United States use its air base at Incirlik to attack ISIS.
In Iraq, too, thousands of ground troops will be needed to dig the Islamic State out of the Sunni cities and towns.
Where will these soldiers come from?
We are told the Iraqi army, Shia militia, Kurds and Sunni tribesmen will join forces to defeat and drive out the Islamic State.
But these Shia militia were, not long ago, killing U.S. soldiers. And, like the Iraqi army, they are feared and hated in Sunni villages, which is why many Sunni welcomed ISIL.
A number of NATO allies have indicated a willingness to join the U.S. in air strikes on the Islamic State in Iraq. None has offered to send troops. Similar responses have come from the Arab League.
But if this is truly a mortal threat, why the reluctance to send troops?
Some of our Arab allies, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Gulf Arabs, have reportedly been providing aid to ISIL in Syria. Why would they aid these terrorists?
Because ISIL looked like the best bet to bring down Assad, whom many Sunni loathe as an Arab and Alawite ally of Iran in the heart of the "Shia Crescent" of Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus and Hezbollah. For many Sunni Arabs, the greater fear is of Shia hegemony in the Gulf and a new Persian empire in the Middle East.
Among all the nations involved here, the least threatened is the United States. Our intelligence agencies, Obama, says, have discovered no evidence of any planned or imminent attack from ISIL.
As the threat is not primarily ours, the urgency to go to war is not ours. And upon the basis of what we heard Wednesday night, either this war has not been thought through by the president, or he is inhibited from telling us the whole truth about what victory will look like and what destroying the Islamic State will require in blood, treasure and years.
Friday, September 12, 2014
Thursday, September 11, 2014
The 11 ways you know you live in a country run by idiots
Wednesday, Sep 10, 2014
There is a list making its way around the internet that lays out the 11 ways you know you are living in a country run by idiots. Junius P. Long is said to be the original author of this “Food For Thought” essay that runs through a simply yet startling list of situations that prove there are some leadership issues in this country. Glenn read through the 11 reasons on radio this morning.
1. If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for being in the country illegally, you live in a country run by idiots.
2. If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on a field trip or take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion, you live in a country run by idiots.
3. If you have to show identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor or check out a library book, but not to vote on who runs the government, you live in a country run by idiots.
4. If the government wants to ban stable, law-abiding citizens from owning gun magazines with more than ten rounds, but gives 20 F-16 fighter jets to the crazy leaders in Egypt, you live in a country run by idiots.
5. If, in the largest city, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas, but not a 24-ounce soda because 24-ounces of a sugary drink might make you fat, you live in a country run by idiots.
6. If an 80-year-old woman can be stripped searched by the TSA but a woman in a hijab is only subject to having her neck and head searched, you live in a country run by idiots.
7. If your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more, you live in a country run by idiots.
8. If a seven year old boy can be thrown out of grade school for saying his teacher’s “cute,” but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable, you live in a country run by idiots.
9. If hard work and success are met with higher taxes and more government intrusion, while not working is rewarded with EBT cards, WIC checks, Medicaid, subsidized housing and free cell phones, you live in a country run by idiots.
10. If the government’s plan for getting people back to work is to incentivize NOT working, with 99 weeks of unemployment checks and no requirement to prove they applied but can’t find work, you live in a country run by idiots.
11. If being stripped of the ability to defend yourself makes you more “safe” according to the government, you live in a country run by idiots.
The government gives nothing to anyone that it has not taken from someone else.
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Fox News Special Re-ignites The Benghazi Scandal - Roger Aronoff
Fox News’ Special Re-ignites the Benghazi Scandal
Fox News aired new revelations this weekend in its documentary based on the forthcoming book, 13 Hours in Benghazi, but the left is not interested in what it calls old news. Benghazi is a “phony scandal,” right?
In fact, the left is on the defensive about this story, and is releasing salvos from all quarters. The Washington Post, The New York Times, Media Matters, and the Democratic members of the Select Committee have all gotten involved in the effort to dismiss what eyewitnesses have said about what happened that night, sometimes preemptively, as I cited in a previous column. Their message is loud and clear: This has already been investigated thoroughly; both sides agree that there was no wrongdoing other than bureaucratic missteps; this is another Fox News story and a phony scandal at that. Time to move on.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
What cannot be undone now is that eyewitnesses have publicly spoken out about what happened in Benghazi two years ago. What they say threatens to haunt the left’s strategy machine, which seems more concerned with spin than finding the truth.
Three contractors who were on the ground in Benghazi two years ago during the attacks on the U.S. Mission and CIA Annex said on Fox News that they were told specifically to “stand down” three times before defying orders, and heading out to try and save the personnel at the U.S. Mission, which was under fire—quite literally—less than a mile away from the Annex, where they were located at the time. They were delayed by 25 minutes, and say they could have possibly saved the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and Sean Smith if they’d been allowed todepart sooner. As a matter of fact, they all said that they believe the two would still be alive today had they been allowed to leave when they first made the request.
Washington Post writer Eric Wemple apparently received an advance copy of the book and said that these claims written therein, and previously reported by Jennifer Griffin in October 2012, were exaggerated for effect and “report after report has shredded this contention.” This is, of course, the line in the book that he voiced a problem with, saying it was mined for “maximum literary effect:”
“The more time the attackers had to dig in, the more likely they’d secure the Compound perimeter and organize defensive positions, at least until they achieved their objectives.”
“Maximum literary effect?” One wonders what world Wemple inhabits. Wemple points readers to the media’s favorite left-wing group, Media Matters, which also ran a hit piece on the broadcast sight unseen.
The day the documentary first aired, September 5th, the Democrats on the Select Committee on Benghazi went into full damage control mode. Representative Elijah Cummings (MD) stated that “these individuals were delayed while their supervisor attempted to ensure that he was not sending his team into an ambush,” the intelligence committees have already spoke to multiple witnesses on this issue, and “it is critical that the Select Committee understand what came before it to ensure we are not re-investigating the same issues all over again.” In other words, look somewhere else for your smoking gun. How many other topics are conveniently off limits for Rep. Cummings?
Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), a member of theHouse Intelligence Committee , also stated that “The team said they were prepped and ready to go within minutes, but the senior CIA officers responsible for the welfare of all Annex personnel were concerned they might be sending theirsecurity team into an ambush so they tried to obtain better intelligence and heavy weapons before dispatching the team.”
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) did, indeed, explore “claims that there was a ‘stand down’ order given to the security team at the Annex” but found “no evidence of intentional delay or obstruction by the Chief of Base or any other party.” Will the bipartisan Select Committee on Benghazi reach the same conclusions? Shouldn’t it at least be allowed to re-investigate the issue?
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who heads the Select Committee, issued a statement on September 5th that “The Committee has heard of these concerns and they go to the heart of why Congress established this Committee—to determine all of the facts of what happened in Benghazi before, during and after the terrorist attack that day…There are still facts to learn about Benghazi and information that needs to be explained in greater detail to the American people.”
Something smells, however, in the approach that the Obama administration has taken in the past towards the optics of this particular piece of “old news.” Greta Van Susteren of Fox News recently outlined on her show how her channel was excluded from State Department and Central Intelligence Agency media background meetings. “Well, I think Fox News is being punished for aggressively asking questions, doing our jobs,” she said. That wasn’t all. “A few weeks later, when reporter Jennifer Griffin said she was told that there was a stand down order at Benghazi, I got a weird call from the Obama administration trying to pressure me to get Jennifer to back down on her report. I thought the call from the Obama administration was dirty,” contended Susteren. The story was published.
Why, exactly, did the Obama administration not want to have this particular piece of information, now confirmed, not published in October nearly two years ago? Was it merely because of how it would affect the election, or was there something else motivating President Obama?
Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS), also on the Select Committee, reacted to the eyewitnesses’ story on Susteren’s show, saying, “We need to then establish in detail the timeline that you refer to, so that we know whether it was, in fact, 30 seconds, three minutes, or 30 minutes as described by these three men in the clip that you played.” Is Pompeo questioning the integrity of the three men interviewed by Bret Baier?
“There might have been a good reason to delay,” said Rep. Pompeo. “It might have been safety of those very men that were standing there. It might have been a bad reason. There might have been something political.”
And while Bret Baier and Fox News deserve a lot of credit for bringing this story to the public’s attention, they barely scratched the surface of these men’s stories. The rest of the media have been predictably uninterested in acknowledging even this bombshell part of their story.
The Select Committee on Benghazi can, and should, get to the bottom of these particular issues, regardless of the mainstream media’s sensibilities.
Obama's Credibility In Short Supply - Roger Aronoff
President Obama’s Credibility Is in Short Supply
President Barack Obama has consistently deceived the American people when called out on statements that he’s made in the past, but the media have not consistently reported on these often farcical inconsistencies. However, the President’s recent “evolution” regarding the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a Sunni militant group active in those countries that has been beheading kidnapped American journalists, has been so obvious that it could not fail to spark some media criticism. So, too, are the President’s contradictory comments on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And much, much more.
Back in January of this year, President Obama referred to ISIS as the junior varsity team and said, “I think there is a distinction between the capacity and reach of a bin Laden and a network that is actively planning major terrorist plots against the homeland versus jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes, often sectarian.” Now that ISIS is terrorizing Americans, not just Iraqis, the danger seems more imminent to the average citizen, and President Obama finds it politically necessary to deny ever downplaying the threat.
To that end, he recently sent out Press Secretary Josh Earnest, who contended in a press conference that “…the President was not singling out [ISIS], he was talking about the very different threat that is posed by a range of extremists around the globe.” One of those groups is Ansar al Sharia (AAS). State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki argued, also in January, that AAS is not an “official affiliate” of al Qaeda, despite the fact that its leadership has ties to al Qaeda and formerly to Osama bin Laden himself.
How useful are these distinctions, really, when all of these terrorist organizations are intent on killing Americans?
Earnest earned four Pinocchios from The Washington Post’s Fact Checker Glenn Kessler for “Spinning Obama’s reference to Islamic State as a ‘JV’ team.” It isclear from the exchange that the question posed was specifically about ISIS. David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker magazine conducted several interviews with the President, but this one was just days after ISIS took control of Fallujah in Iraq. Obama made the JV (Junior Varsity) reference (“…if a JV team puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.”), and then Remnick said, “But that JV team just took over Fallujah.” Obama replied, “I understand. But when you say took over Fallujah…let’s just keep in mind, Fallujah is a profoundly Sunni city…”
Yet again on Meet the Press on Sunday , September 7th, Chuck Todd raised the JV issue, asking the President if his use of the term JV to describe ISIS was “bad intelligence or your misjudgment?” Obama replied, “Keep, keep, keep in mind that I wasn’t specifically referring to ISIL.”
But the President’s and Earnest’s dissembling doesn’t end there. In early August, Josh Earnest said, “There are no military solutions to the very difficult problems that exist in Iraq now.” Then, on August 28, President Obama admitted on camera that he doesn’t “want to put the cart before the horse. We don’t have a strategy yet.”
America’s strategy against ISIS is clearly not transparent to President Obama himself. First, in early September, he spoke of “degrading and destroying” ISIS “so that it’s no longer a threat not just to Iraq but also the region and to the United States.” In the same speech, he said this: “Our objective is to make sure that [ISIS] is not an ongoing threat to the region.” Time magazine called this a “muddled vision.” It’s definitely a contradiction.
Containment and destruction are mutually exclusive actions. Which has the President chosen? Maybe we’ll find out this Wednesday when he speaks to the nation about his plans for ISIS.
In that same news conference the President spoke of “shrink[ing] [ISIS’s] sphere of influence, its effectiveness, its financing, its military capabilities to the point where it is a manageable problem.” By September 5, the President’s messaging had evolved to this: “We are going to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL, in the same way we went after Al Qaeda” and “you can’t contain an organization [like ISIS]. The goal has to be to dismantle them.” Business Insider ran his new comments under the headline, “Obama Just Completely Changed His Tune On ISIS.”
It turns out that Obama’s strategy to dismantle ISIS will last three years, according to The New York Times. The Times reports, “The final, toughest and most politically controversial phase of the operation—destroying the terrorist army in its sanctuary inside Syria—might not be completed until the next administration. Indeed, some Pentagon planners envision a military campaign lasting at least 36 months.”
This reveals that President Obama is kicking the can down the road to another administration, just as he seems fond of delaying action after action until after the next election, so that the votes of informed citizens cannot actually reflect his policies.
Given that Josh Earnest won’t admit on camera that the President’s policy toward ISIS has even evolved over time as the threat was more fully comprehended—an understandable administration mistake—it seems apparent to all that President Obama won’t admit his faults publicly. Is he capable of learning from his flaws, even when the mainstream media are calling him out on his past mistakes?
Optics must trump everything this election season, and the President is concerned about the health of his Democratic Party. So are the media.
Remember how Obamacare regulations were pushed back past the elections in 2012? “The bottled-up rules to set up President Barack Obama’s health care reform law are going to start flowing quickly right after Election Day,” reportedPolitico on November 5, 2012. And thirty-something times, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it. Period,” which earned the President PolitiFact’sLie of the Year. But when later challenged on this once it had become obvious that it wasn’t true, the President changed his tune, saying, “What we said was, you can keep (your plan) if it hasn’t changed since the law passed.” The only problem was, that word “if” wasn’t stated in the earlier promises.
Political expedience trumps everything.
Similarly, Obama has announced that he won’t use executive action on immigration until after the elections in November. He had promised—or threatened—to do so in late summer. The New York Times wrote on September 8th that “What had once looked like a clear political imperative for both parties—action to grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants—had morphed instead into what appeared to be a risky move that could cost Democrats their majority in the November midterm congressional elections.”
“I want to spend some time, even as we’re getting all our ducks in a row for the executive action, I also want to make sure that the public understands why we’re doing this, why it’s the right thing for the American people, why it’s the right thing for the American economy,” President Obama disingenuously commented on NBC’s Meet the Press this past weekend. Such a sensitive issue as immigration should be discussed in the halls of Congress, not executed by presidential fiat.
As with immigration, the employer mandate in Obamacare, and the Keystone pipeline, Obama has also pushed the deadline for a deal with Iran on their nuclear program past the November election. The original six-month interim agreement reached in January of this year was extended for four months to, you guessed it, just past the November election. At the same time, Obama and Kerry agreed to release an additional $2.8 billion of frozen Iranian assets, and two people who had previously worked for Obama on this very issue, blasted the move. Dennis Ross, President Obama’s former adviser on Iran, said the delay “marks a significant but predictable failure for President Obama’s befuddling strategy of seeking diplomatic success through reduction of leverage—by eschewing tougher sanctions and a credible military option.”
Accuracy in Media has also reported on President Obama’s refusal to label the invasion of Ukraine an “invasion,” for political reasons. When asked outright on August 28th whether this was an invasion, President Obama said, “I consider the actions that we’ve seen in the last week a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now.”
Then, due to political pressure, he upgraded it in September to “a brazen assault on the territorial integrity of Ukraine—a sovereign and independent European nation,” and said that it “undermines an international order where the rights of peoples and nations are upheld and can’t simply be taken away by brute force.” The word invasion still doesn’t appear in those comments. The Guardian alsoreports that he “was careful not to say that NATO should become militarily engaged in the conflict” between Ukraine and Russia.
There are crises at hand, but the President is still busy mincing his words. Obama is certainly not the first president to put politics above principle, or to brazenly lie to the American people, but to do both so often and so transparently is, it seems, unprecedented.
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