The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer And The JV Headchoppers Team

Last January, The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer dismissed the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as a junior varsity terrorist outfit compared to al-Qaida. “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate,” he told The New Yorker, “is if a JV team puts on a Lakers uniform that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.”  Now the savage beasts are threatening to raise the black flag of Allah over the White House.

On Friday, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken about TWMDCO’s strategic shallowness.  Tapper seemed incredulous as he posed the question.  In a twofer Jim Acosta, CNN’s Senior White House correspondent, asked WH press secretary Josh Earnest, “Is it safe to say that ISIS are no longer the ‘JVs’?”

Here is Earnest’s angst-ridden response:

“I think what is appropriate to say is there is no question that the Lakers uniforms that were worn, to use that analogy a little bit, that were worn by the al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan has been decimated and defeated in Afghanistan. There is no question that is the result of the many decisions made by the president and the courageous service of our men and women in uniform and in the intelligence agencies. What is also true is that there are other organizations that subscribe to the violent extremist ideology that is espoused and promulgated by al-Qaeda.” 

“Many of those groups in the nations across the globe are not particularly sophisticated and are focused on local sectarian conflicts that don't pose a significant or immediate threat to U.S. interests or the U.S. homeland. There are, of course, a couple other organizations that do pose a more substantial threat to the United States and our interests. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is one of them, and you've seen the United States in concert with our allies and partners take significant, important steps to mitigate the threat that is posed by those organizations that do have designs and capabilities to try to strike the United States, and in some cases try to strike the homeland.” 

“We do remain concerned about the military proficiency that has been demonstrated by ISIL and that's why you've seen the president take steps, including the authorization of military force that would protect American citizens who might be harmed by them.”

Let me see if I have this straight.  The administration remains “concerned about the military proficiency that has been demonstrated”.  How reassuring.  I suppose the thousands of Christians stranded atop Mount Sinjar who are thirsting and starving to death are not evidence of a metastasizing force of pure, unadulterated evil and neither is the beheading of a toddler.  (WARNING:  Do not visit this link unless you are prepared to see extremely disturbing images.)

The errand boy sent by grocery clerks may not want a war with the brutal, hateful, oppressive, murderous, genocidal face of Islam, but it is at war with us.

He has known for months, as the rest of the world has, that ISIS has a stranglehold on vast swaths of Syria and Iraq.  It took the gut-wrenching pleading of Yazidi Prime Minister Vian Dakil to Iraq’s Presidential Council to stir the world’s awareness of the systematic genocide occurring in the region.

I have to agree with Turkish poet Serkan Engin:  “…the world will meet with a big tragedy when the Islamists get more power, as the world suffered because of Nazism.”

About That “Leading From Behind” Foreign Policy Of Yours

When The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer campaigned for re-election two years ago, he repeatedly reassured us al-Qaeda had been “decimated” and “is on the path to defeat”—even after the attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including the US ambassador Christopher Stevens.

Today, The Washington Post sounded the alarm that the so-called Islamic State “now controls resources and territory unmatched in the history of extremist organizations.”

Brilliant!

Calling Up The Devil

Rockets being fired from the Gaza strip into Israel 

Israeli police remove part of a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip towards the city of Tel Aviv 

A Palestinian child shouts at al-Shifa hospital after Israeli forces shelled her house 

I must commend Richard Fernandez for his elucidation of the conflict between Israel and the militant Islamist Hamas terror group and Palestinian militants.

He brings into crystal clarity evidence that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda affiliated jihadist militias and Fatah have zero interest in a peaceful coexistence with Israel.  They are committed to the extermination of Israel and its Jews.

There are estimates that Hamas’ military is still only using less than 20% of its military weapons capacity, according to an expert in Hamas affairs.  This suggests that there may be more months of rocket firepower.  Those closely watching events on the ground contend that the number of rockets being launched from Gaza into Israel is neither increasing nor decreasing.

After 12 days of fighting, Israel’s military said that Palestinian terrorists have fired at least 1,705 rockets out of an estimated stockpile of 10,000.

Their arsenal includes Qassam rockets with a range of 17km (10miles) that can reach into Ashkelon and Sderot, Grad rockets with a range of 20km (12 miles) that can hit Beersheba and Grad WS-Es 40km (24 miles) than can attack Tel Aviv, Dimona and Jerusalem.  The destructive power of their long-range Farj-5/M-75 missiles 75km (46 miles) can reach Haifa, Zikron Yaacov and Hadera and their Khaibar-1 missiles 160km (99 miles) are capable of reaching into the neighboring country of Jordan.

Mr. Fernandez explains:

“Nihilism isn’t the absence of a belief. It is something subtly different: it is the belief in nothing. The most powerful weapon of terrorism is therefore the unyielding No. “No, I will not give up. No, I will not tell the truth. No, I will not play fair. No, I will not spare children. No, I will not stop even if you surrender to me; I will not cease even if you give me everything you have, up to and including your children’s lives. Nothing short of destroying me absolutely can make me stop. And therefore I will defeat you even if you kill me. Because I will make you pay the price in guilt for annihilating me.” 

“It’s an extremely powerful weapon.  The Absolute No is a devastating attack on the self-image and esteem of civilization.  Hamas will demonstrate the No, the Nothing. It will show that deep down inside Israelis—and Americans—are animals like them.  This can be called the Seven Gambit, from a 1995 film which explores this exact theme. It depicts two detectives versus the devil in the shape of nameless man, who kills people not by attacking them directly, but by creating situations where they kill themselves by yielding to one of the seven deadly sins: sloth, gluttony, vanity—and finally vengeance and wrath.”

Sara Roy, in a warped diatribe at The Boston Globe, penned the following:

“Gaza’s present anguish did not emerge in a vacuum nor in response to a single terrible event as the Israeli government would have us believe. Instead, it emanates from a context of ongoing occupation and repression that has transformed Gaza—the center of Palestinian nationalism and resistance to Israeli occupation—into one of the most impoverished, imprisoned areas of the world.”

Spittle-laced voices here and abroad share Ms. Roy’s perverted view.  One such example was CNN’s Diane Magnay who called a group of Israelis “scum” and today in London and Paris tens of thousands of protesters holding placards and banners chanted pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel slogans.

"Saturday’s demonstration in London came on the heels of numerous protests Thursday and Friday worldwide, including Cairo, Istanbul, Cape Town, Berlin, New York and Washington. Many of the protests have turned violent."

"In Istanbul, police warded off hundreds of rioters who attempted on Thursday to storm the Israeli embassy building. Demonstrators in Ankara and Istanbul also hurled stones at several compounds where Israeli officials reside. Calls for the destruction of the Jewish state were heard in both Turkish cities. Police responded by firing tear gas canisters and water cannons at the crowds. Israel decided Friday to pull some of its diplomatic staff out of Turkey in the wake of the protests."

Less than ten years ago, Israel uprooted 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip withdrawing its entire military and thereby relinquishing it to the Palestinians.  The Israelis gave the Palestinians 3,000 greenhouses worth $14 million that had produced fruits and flowers for export in an effort to promote the economy in Gaza. Palestinians looted them walking off with irrigation hoses, water pumps and plastic sheeting in a blow to fledgling efforts to reconstruct the Gaza Strip.

It has been 47 years since the 1967 Six Day War and throughout Israel’s existence efforts to bring peace to the region have largely failed.  In 1967, UN Security Council Resolution 242 called for the exchange of land for peace.  Jimmy Carter brought together Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin at Camp David for the Camp David Accords in 1978 that resulted in two agreements.  Then followed the Madrid Conference in 1991 and the Oslo Agreement two years later that tried to build on UN Resolution 242 and 338.

The purpose of the 2000 Camp David peace talks was to offer the Gaza Strip and part of the Negev desert to the Palestinians and the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees.

The 2001 Taba talks were held amid an election campaign for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.  Barak said that "nothing is agreed upon until everything is agreed upon". He said that he could not commit a subsequent government to what he called the "ideas" coming out of the talks. With the election of Ariel Sharon in February 2001, time ran out.

In 2002, the Arab Peace Initiative introduced a two-state solution.  Efforts to have the parties agree have failed at every turn.  The Roadmap talks in 2003 attempted to hammer out how a settlement could be reached.  This eventually led to the 2003 Geneva Accord in which the Palestinians would give up their “right of return” in exchange for almost the whole of the West Bank.

Hamas, in 2007, had just won parliamentary elections and taken control of the Gaza Strip.  The Annapolis Peace Talks that year failed because Hamas was not represented and declared it would not be bound by anything declared at the talks.

In Washington in 2010, Mahmoud Abbas wanted a guarantee of a Palestinian state based on 1967 lines.

It is impossible to understand the uncontrollable hatred of Jews.  So demented is Hamas’ insanity that they wantonly use women and children as human shields. (Please go to this link and this link to view Hamas’ confessions about the use of human shields.)

Benjamin Netanyahu said, “It must be understood that our enemy hides in mosques, puts weapons stores under hospitals and situates command posts next to kindergartens. The enemy uses the residents of Gaza as a human shield and inflicts disaster on them. The responsibility for harm to the citizens of Gaza lies on the shoulders of Hamas and Israel regrets any harm to them. The difference between Israel and Hamas is that we use missiles to defend the citizens of Israel while they use the civilian population to defend the stores of their missiles.”

Charles Krauthammer, the American Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist, shares his thoughts on the moral depravity of the terrorist group known as Hamas:

"To deliberately wage war so that your own people can be telegenically killed is indeed moral and tactical insanity. But it rests on a very rational premise: Given the Orwellian state of the world’s treatment of Israel, fuelled by a mix of classic anti-Semitism, near-total historical ignorance and reflexive sympathy for the ostensible Third World underdog, these eruptions featuring Palestinian casualties ultimately undermine support for Israel’s legitimacy and right to self-defense." 

"In a world of such Kafkaesque ethical inversions, Hamas’ depravity begins to make sense. This is a world in which the Munich massacre is a movie and the murder of Klinghoffer is an opera—both deeply sympathetic to the killers. This is a world in which the UN ignores humanity’s worst war criminals while incessantly condemning Israel, a state warred upon for 66 years which nonetheless goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid harming the very innocents its enemies use as shields." 

"It’s to the Israelis’ credit that amid all this madness they haven’t lost their moral scruples. Or their nerve. Those outside the region have the minimum obligation, therefore, to expose the madness and speak the truth. Rarely has it been so blindingly clear."

Romney: America Carries A Torch And Must Hold It High Enough That All The World Can See Its Light

Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney gave his much anticipated foreign policy speech today at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, VA.  He began by citing its contributions to the nation both in war and in peace by the students’ “transformation into citizens and warriors and leaders.”

Romney continued,  “Of all the VMI graduates, none is more distinguished than George Marshall—the Chief of Staff of the Army who became Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, who helped to vanquish fascism and then planned Europe’s rescue from despair. His commitment to peace was born of his direct knowledge of the awful costs and consequences of war. General Marshall once said, ‘The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.’  Those words were true in his time—and they still echo in ours.”

Romney then began in earnest to demolish the president’s foreign policy by raising the issue of Benghazi. “As the dust settles, as the murdered are buried, Americans are asking how this happened, how the threats we face have grown so much worse, and what this calls on America to do.  These are the right questions.  And I have come here today to offer a larger perspective on these tragic recent events—and to share with you, and all Americans, my vision for a freer, more prosperous, and more peaceful world.”

“The attacks on America last month should not be seen as random acts.  They are expressions of a larger struggle that is playing out across the broader Middle East—a region that is now in the midst of the most profound upheaval in a century.  And the fault lines of this struggle can be seen clearly in Benghazi itself.”

“The attack on our Consulate in Benghazi on September 11th, 2012 was likely the work of forces affiliated with those that attacked our homeland on September 11th, 2001. This latest assault cannot be blamed on a reprehensible video insulting Islam, despite the Administration’s attempts to convince us of that for so long.  No, as the Administration has finally conceded, these attacks were the deliberate work of terrorists who use violence to impose their dark ideology on others, especially women and girls; who are fighting to control much of the Middle East today; and who seek to wage perpetual war on the West.”

Lara Logan, CBS correspondent told 60 Minutes in a passionate plea, “that our government is downplaying the strength of our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a rationale of getting us out of the longest war.  We have been lulled into believing that the perils are in the past:  ‘You’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight.  In your arrogance, you think you write the script.  Our enemies are writing the story and there’s no happy ending for us.’”

Romney emphatically said it is the “responsibility of our President to use America’s great power to shape history—not to lead from behind, leaving our destiny at the mercy of events.  Unfortunately, that is exactly where we find ourselves in the Middle East under President Obama.”

The world is in the throes of a crisis and this president has grabbed at baubles and glitter, made endless speeches, attended fundraisers and played at least 100 rounds of golf.

Romney said he would support Israel, the nation most obviously at risk if Iran acquired nuclear weapons, and charged that Obama’s poor relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has helped embolden Iran and other adversaries.

“I will reaffirm our historic ties to Israel and our abiding commitment to its security,” Romney said. “The world must never see any daylight between our two nations.”

He closed his speech with optimism, “The 21st century can and must be an American century. It began with terror, war, and economic calamity. It is our duty to steer it onto the path of freedom, peace, and prosperity.”

“The torch America carries is one of decency and hope. It is not America’s torch alone. But it is America’s duty—and honor—to hold it high enough that all the world can see its light.”

Bing West echoes my sentiment about Romney’s speech today:  “In summary, Mr. Romney has presented a foreign-policy view akin to that of President Reagan, asserting faith in American leadership—while equating Mr. Obama’s leadership to that of the timid President Jimmy Carter.”