Something I've always wondered about - well, since the depth of the Islamist threat was so clearly enunciated on 9/11 - something I've wondered about is what would it mean and how problematic could it become if a significant cadre of young black males were swept up into a radical Islamist ideology that went way beyond Nation of Islam hectoring by idiots like Farrakhan and started to look more like something you get from AQ and now ISIS? A noxious nexus like that really would have the potential to set the country on fire, breed chaos. And then I read this about how ISIS is already there - that's disturbing.

Article also raises frightening spectre that hadn't occurred to me but obviously has to others of terrorists instead of strapping fairly easy to detect bombs to their 'martyrs' just sending their boys into Ebola ravished communities in Africa in order to create a 'stockpile' as it were of infected Islamist heroes who can then be smuggled into Mexico and across the border where they can just wander around Dallas for a few days infecting as many people as possible - imagine the chaos and upheaval 20 or 30 of these 'disease bombs' wandering around various American cities could unleash.  That too is quite disturbing - and, again, is there any reason to believe ISIS hasn't already set such a plan in motion?

It's an unpleasant juxtaposition - the threats out there ramping up and the only country that can really do anything about it, America, being led by a guy whose world view is utterly misguided and who clearly doesn't just distrust American power but in private probably scorns the idea of it and therefore is loathe to use it it any strategically coherent way - that's a troubling juxtaposition. 

With all the chaos rocking the Muslim world and drawing us once again towards the sinkhole, this may be the best thing I've read on misguided American policy even though it's nothing more than an intimation of things - it points out the key issue in all this way I see it: US political and intellectual elites do not get Islam in general and Islamism and the dysfunctional cultural dynamics of the Mideast in particular - this ignorance/foolishness has been on display since the first Gulf War,  but has really shown its ugly head recently with regards to rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, failure to understand and accurately predict how the supposed Arab Spring would play out, the pullout of Iraq, the delusion of leading from behind, the phony surge in Afghanistan, sham nuke negotiations with Iran, failure to understand that as long as Hamas is around peace with Israel is an impossibility, and even throw in failure to grasp what Erdogan is up to in Turkey - the essay rightly points out that this is not just about Obama since Bush made many of the same mistakes - still, Obama has taken the stupidity to a whole new level - and the essay also rightly points out something that really worries me: how Obama's awful foreign policy instincts are made much worse by a media that just cannot bring itself to criticise the man in the way he needs to be criticised - as WR Mead astutely put it, Obama's foreign policy is so awful the media has no choice now but to report on the ugly 'dots' but it still is not connecting those dots and without a connecting narrative the American people will never really grasp just how bad Obama is and therefore correcting the mistakes will be harder to do.  

Most disturbing thing about the Ferguson grotesquerie? Realization of how many on the left would apparently not mind much the cop being found guilty of 'murder' regardless of whether or not he actually is - these people seem to have no problem at all with a rush to judgement and almost openly scorn the idea of due process as if it were some rigged shell game serving the interests of white privilege - but on top of that, the realization that for many of these people [and that includes some in the media and possibly Obama and Holder themselves] the racial detached from reason hysteria they're trying to gin up may in fact be about forcing through that very thing: the cop charged with murder regardless of the facts, indeed regardless of the possibility that he may have been entirely justified in his actions - or, alternatively, the willingness of the left to feed this hysteria and come close to fomenting or inciting a race war [and again that possibly includes Holder and Obama] simply in order to drive up turnout in November.

I mean, the few things we do know about this shooting all seem to lean towards supporting the cop's version of things - and if the woman who Dana Loesch interviewed can be trusted there is physical evidence to support or upend his story as well - she said the cop was punched in the face and during a struggle his gun was discharged in his vehicle, so there's gonna be evidence of those two things if that's what happened - indeed, detectives may have already accumulated enough eyewitness accounts and physical evidence to exonerate the cop but are not releasing it for fear of stoking the flames - and yet so many on the left talk as it none of that matters - the left needs blacks to see themselves as victims in order to lend credence to the narratives they want to spin - the truth is of no use to them in this regard which is why they are so comfortable acting as if it's beside the point - I'm surprised no one's dug up yet who the cop voted for in 2012 - if it was Romney then that's it, case closed, he's obviously a racist. 

I like this turn of phrase from Vic Hanson where, regarding the lunacy of Ferguson, the babbling incoherence of extremist leftism that is critical race theory is seen expanding its idiotic reach into the brave new world of critical legal theory - everything in the America of Obama/Holder is now nothing more than a reflection of what they consider right and fair. Who cares if the officer was maybe justified in his actions - hell, why even care about what actually happened - when it comes to what the progressives deem fair, why should the constitution or a persons' rights or truth itself be allowed to get in the way of that? How can justice be anything other than what the left says it is?

It's as if you can't turn anywhere without seeing something that makes you shake your head in despairing wonderment at just how awful the Obama presidency is - I can't wait for the Warren administration, that will be like having front row seats to the fall of Rome.

No comment on the 'race war’ going on in Ferguson? No - you can’t have an intelligent discussion about race in America so long as liberals have a vested interest in blacks forever and always seeing themselves as victims - simple as that - all you can do is sadly stand back and watch the nightmarish farce play out over and over again until the great reckoning finally reaches us somewhere down the road. This is of course not to absurdly contend that blacks haven’t been victimized but rather to state the obvious: any culture that is told and encouraged to believe that any wrong it does or dysfunction it manifests is the fault of someone else is gonna develop some pretty problematic qualities and behavioural aberrations - this is exactly what liberalism has done to African-Americans - and as long as liberals need blacks to see themselves in this way and have the political wherewithal and media backing to make it so nothing is gonna change. Think about it: Asian ‘immigrants' were also treated quite badly by ‘white’ America as the country came of age - not as poorly as blacks but in many ways not that far removed either - a coolie was by and large in all but name a slave - and yet Asians in America flourish and their culture exhibits none of the dysfunction and constant embrace of grievance black culture does - why? Because liberals never adopted Asian Americans as a 'special cause’ and therefore they were spared the enervating ravages of white guilt coming to their ‘rescue'. Asian Americans had no choice but to put the injustice done behind them and move on, adapt - and now there’s no cultural group in America doing better than Asians. Much of this has to do with the fact that for Asians there’s never been a stigma attached to 'acting white’ therefore they were able to adopt those aspects of Western culture imminently worthy of being adopted - Western civilization beginning with Athens and ending with America is the most successful and dynamic culture to ever walk the earth and yet modern liberalism essentially tells blacks to scorn that culture, to demonize it, to treat it as the enemy - that’s pretty god damn stupid.

What’s happening in Ferguson is not about racism - it’s about the dysfunction and enervation the progressive's mindset and worldview give rise to - and as long as this dysfunction serves the liberal sympathies of the media and the electoral fortunes of Democrats and the selfish schemes of charlatan hucksters like Sharpton it’s hard to see this ‘racism’ problem ever going away, at least not quietly - you do get the feeling that waiting somewhere down the road is a rupture to public order that will be quite disturbing.

[for a fuller and much more erudite expression of the point I'm trying to make - that the problem with Ferguson is not racism but liberalism - see this very nice piece by Williamson over at NRO]

Heard Rove speaking on Hugh Hewitt show where he said Obama insists on intelligence reports being delivered in writing rather than coming from specialist briefers - if true that pretty much tells me all I need to know about Obama and why his foreign policy practice is so god awful - what it tells me is that he believes what he believes, he has zero interest in questioning those beliefs and little tolerance of someone else maybe challenging them, and if stubborn facts refuse to comport with those beliefs he doesn't care because as far as he’s concerned he’s smarter than the facts.

This dynamic was clearly on display in recent Gaza action - even if one opposed the Israeli action and could manage to summon up something of a coherent argument as to why, once the extent of the terror tunnels became obvious all opposition to the Israeli action was rendered irrelevant and no longer governed by reality and common sense - not for Obama who continued to resist the logic of it in both word and deed as we now know [the denial of arms shipments] - and this was true of all other lefties out there. Why? Because the tunnels proved Netanyahu et al right - that the Palestinians are not really interested in peace, or rather that the only peace they're really interested in is one that involves Israel’s implied or explicit destruction, which is why until Hamas is done away with and whatever's left over fully acknowledges Israel’s right to exist and Israel’s security needs are subsequently treated with utmost seriousness no agreement is possible - what the Israeli right has been saying for quite awhile is now proven true and Obama and all his lefty pals simply cannot admit to that because such an admission would tear down just about every naive sympathy they cling to.

Think about how illogical or misbegotten the left’s approach to Israel is: in order to isolate it and thereby force it into an agreement no one, left or right, in Israel any longer feels could be trusted, you have to by implication serve the interests and tactics of the Islamist extremists by in effect contributing to the delegitimization of Israel - and once you've done that, why should people committed to the destruction of Israel bother with compromise? The Islamist extremists have created a zero sum game: you're either with Israel or you’re by implication with them - and it’s amazing how many idiots in the West have chosen to be against Israel. Sure, they may not see it quite in those terms, but that in effect is the result you get to by naively believing in a peace that can never happen so long as Palestinians and all Islamists are wedded to preconditions and an ideological intolerance at odds with Israel’s survival.

Can this be true, that Obama halted arms shipments to Israel during assault on Gaza? Just when ya think that Obama's practice of foreign policy along the delusional, bereft of common sense, strategically inept lines of classical far left wingedness can't sink you any further into despair regarding the future of this little thing we call Western Civilization, the man manages to reach into his big bag of stupid to pull out another deformed imp to dance his farce on the world stage.

I guess congress is on vacation but they should really come back for one day to officially censure in some way this act of betrayal against Israel by Obama - you can't allow the stench of this perfidy to linger and add to the anti-Israel sewage currently streaming through the out-house of world opinion.

But actually shouldn't refer to Obama's practice of foreign policy as inept - of course in objective realist terms it most decidedly is - but relative to how the average leftist academic in the US views the world and America's place in it, Obama's foreign policy farce is very much in keeping with that progressively addled mindset and therefore in that sense not inept - utterly delusional, yes, and fraught with oh so many dangers - but in essence not inept. It's the default thinking of this ilk of intellectual to see Israel as the villain [in this role it becomes a proxy for American capitalism and white privilege colonialism in general], the Palestinians as the victims and if we just isolate Israel and back it into a corner they'll be forced to compromise and peace will fall magically from the sky. What makes this point of view so shockingly stupid and detached from reality is that ten years ago Obama could have found people on the left in Israel who agreed with that position - not anymore, left and right in Israel are more or less united in belief that the only peace the Palestinians are interested in is the one that ends with Israel's destruction and therefore the only option is to defeat the extremists in battle and hold down the fort until another American president comes along who actually has a clue when it comes to the Mideast.

[what makes this behaviour by Obama doubly shocking in its stupidity or if you prefer misguided conceits is that all the other players in the region know Israel has it right - not meaning they support Israel of course, although Saudi Arabia and Egypt are definitely on board when it comes to squashing  Hamas - but rather they know that Israel's reading of the situation is accurate and Obama's is way off - and the conclusion they draw is that Obama will not defend traditional American interests in the Mideast - and it's very hard to believe that that perception leads to anything 'good']

[so how do you explain the maladroit reasonings of Obama and his maenads? Ideological arrogance - arrogance is how the ideologue guards against ever having to imagine themselves wrong for the admitting of error about something so fundamental to a left wing ideologues thinking as Israel's culpability would threaten to unravel the entire belief system to which they cling - and consider the arrogance at work here: despite sound empirical evidence that supports Israel's position and against the opinions and perceptions of everyone in the Mideast whose opinions and perceptions we should care about, Obama is declaring he knows better - that's an impressive display of arrogance]

There may be nothing more annoying than pundits and talking heads pointing to public opinion polls in order to justify questionable foreign policy decisions, which many liberals are trying to do by saying Obama's seemingly flawed policies are really just him giving the people what they want. Saying a president needs to curry public support when it comes to policy and that the public's opinion matters are two entirely different things - the former makes sense and is pragmatic, the latter is meaningless and a recipe for disaster. The average voter is completely ignorant when it comes to foreign policy questions - they may have feelings which can vaguely approximate notions regarding foreign policy and those notions can often be more or less accurate -  but overwhelmingly the average voter has close to zero relevant understanding of the intricacies of foreign policy and therefore seeking out or being guided by their opinion would be about as daffy as a CEO asking the car park attendant for business advice or the surgeon asking the orderly how to go about removing a spleen. Support and guidance are two entirely separate things - the wise president will figure out a way to earn the former, but when it comes to the latter he or she is on their own. It may seem somewhat undemocratic, but when it comes to foreign policy the people by and large only get a say after the decisions have been made and results become evident and open to judgement - which is why it's so important for voters to get an accurate sense of how a candidate might act given a crisis and why it's not unreasonable to blame the media more than Obama for his foreign policy malpractice since it's the media that created and nurtured the illusion [or outright lie] of Obama as some brilliant operator whose understanding of just about everything under the sun was beyond reproach - this is why I say the real scandal of Benghazi was the left wing media's complicity in covering it up - the flawed logic and misguided preconceptions under girding Obama's foreign policy thinking were all in essence on display with Libya and Benghazi, and the media conspired with Obama to keep the truth safely hidden away - which is why no one should be surprised by how badly things are going right now.

So, when Obama and his retinue of progressive fools say the only thing that can ‘fix’ Iraq is the formation of an ‘inclusive’ western styled democracy isn't he basically contradicting his opposition to the Iraq war and declaring Bush right? Does he think respect for liberty, a free conscience and democracy just springs up magically in Muslim polities when very clearly it does not? If there’s a political path forward in Iraq it’s because Bush invaded and created the opportunity - you can't both damn that invasion and cheer on the benefits of it and remain credible - you cannot claim what Bush did both the cause of the problem and the solution and remain credible - you cannot claim that Iraq would have been better off if Bush had left Saddam alone and at the same time talk as if Muslim polities and Islamism in general are naturally inclined towards ‘inclusiveness’.

Liberals flat out make zero sense when talking about Iraq and the Mideast in general. I’m not gonna defend the mistakes Bush made but there’s a significant difference between saying the invasion was a mistake and saying the occupation was flawed - and if liberals are now gonna maintain that the only thing that can save Iraq is ‘inclusive’ Western styled governance then they are flat out contradicting themselves viz Bush - or declaring their belief that the world is run by magical fairies and wise and kindly left leaning wizards who live in the clouds.

But of course regardless of the hypocritical idiocy of liberals all this talk of ‘inclusiveness’ is pointless - ISIS controls Sunni Iraq and it ain’t giving it up even if Iraqi Sunnis in some general sense can be convinced to trust in Shiite dominated governance again.

So what’s Obama up to with his air strikes? He’s wrapped the op in ‘humanitarian’ terms of course because he does not see American power in strategic terms even though if he had we would never have left Iraq and therefore there'd be no humanitarian crisis - but aside from that, what’s Dear Leader up to, assuming he indeed has a clue of some sort? The air strikes are clearly too limited to be about some overarching strategy of ‘defeating’ ISIS and no sane person would ever imagine Obama agreeing to something like that anyway - so it ain’t that. Could be a holding tactic designed to contain ISIS while the Kurds are armed - but that would mean Obama unilaterally creating an independent and militarized Kurdish state because the amount of military upgrade required here to deal with ISIS is huge - which means arming the Kurds would also require a significant US military presence in this new Kurdish state to train, oversee, help with command and control and force protect - he may surprise, but I really don't see Obama agreeing to something like that - that would be completely out of character for him.

Leaves one with three options: this is just a one off humanitarian effort, which would I think be even too stupid and ill advised for Obama - although can't rule it out; Obama believes that limited air power can contain ISIS and that will be good enough - thoroughly misguided if that’s the case; it is about ‘containment’ but in order to buy time for the rise of ‘inclusive’ governance in Baghdad - as said though even if that is possible, which I highly doubt, it’s too late - ISIS is powerful and committed to its cause and has acquired significant military hardware left behind by the fleeing Iraq army - on top of that they've demonstrated a solid understanding of military tactics in general and as others have pointed out of Maoist insurgency theory specifically - which means they ain't going away quietly and therefore pushing Maliki aside in the name of a greater respect for Western styled ‘inclusiveness’ is pointless even if such a thing is feasible which as said I rather doubt.

Only conclusion I can draw from all this then is that once again Obama is demonstrating that when it comes to foreign policy he is utterly clueless - all of his instincts are wrong, all his sympathies misguided or delusional. Guess we just sit around now and wait for ISIS to take over Baghdad or for Iran to move into southern Iraq and create a new Islamist Shiite state - and if that happens Obama can wave goodbye to any putative nuke deal or rapprochement with Iran he might be dreaming about.

Of all the depressing detritus and flotsam populating the effluvia spilling from the wreck of ideologically driven idiocy that is the Obama presidency his claiming in a peevish snit to a hapless reporter the other day that it wasn't his idea to leave Iraq is potentially the most galling of the sad lot - he explicitly ran on the promise to get out of Iraq, he bragged about having done that once it was done, he put out campaign material in 2012 lauding the brave new war free world his brilliance had created - the brazenly cynical point of covering up Benghazi was to keep this whole ‘I end wars’ illusion/delusion alive - it’s public freaking record for christ sake that he scorned the opinions of military leaders who advised against a complete withdrawal - since running away he has twice rejected pleas from Maliki to come back, the second of which had to do with the baleful rise of ISIS, a rise which the military advised him would require an American presence to stop and advice which he once again ignored - and now he wants to claim it wasn't his idea to get out of Iraq? Somebody please tell me - is this man delusional, so locked in his little liberal echo chamber that he actually believes that everything he says is more or less true regardless of how false it may be? Or is this the behaviour of a person so utterly convinced of the media’s desire to protect him that like some horribly spoiled miscreant child he feels he can do and say whatever the hell he pleases?

[and while we're on this whole indulgent media/Iraq thing - is it true that in Friedman interview Obama claimed that he was surprised about how Libya fell apart and that his biggest regret was not paying enough attention to something resembling a post war plan? Are you fucking kidding me? The man made his career by opposing the Iraq war, a GLARING frickin' example of the problems that ensue when you do not properly plan for the post hostilities phase - and he was surprised by Libya? Everyone who opposed Libya as a foolish, ill conceived, strategically flawed misadventured said that the half in, half out leading from behind model would bring ya nothing but chaos and a failed state - all of us who called Libya stupid pointed at Iraq and said the one clear lesson to be learned from the removal of Saddam was that the post war plan was just as important if not more so than the war plan itself - we all saw the inherent problems associated with 'lead from behind' thinking - and what's more all of us who opposed Libya pointed to the Arab Spring and said Iraq teaches us that the toppling of these regimes does not lead to freedom and democracy flowering in the Muslim world - it leads to trouble, upheaval and extremism returning in a different form. And yet Obama was surprised by Libya? Give me a fucking break. And let me guess - Friedman didn't challenge this absurd statement - I suppose I could go read the interview but I can't stand that lapdog Friedman - but I'll take a wild guess and say he didn't challenge this astoundingly absurd statement from Obama]

Well, looks like maybe Hillary is gonna stand up and be from the sidelines the president America needs at the moment since Obama is clearly incapable, unwilling or completely uninterested in being that president:

overall, she indicated that she considered President Barack Obama’s approach to foreign policy to be too cautious. Responding to Obama’s self-described foreign policy doctrine of: “Don't do stupid shit,” Clinton, who served as his top diplomat for four years between 2009 and 2013, said: “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don't do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.”

What she calls 'too cautious' is really just a polite way of saying 'too liberal' which itself is just a polite way of saying 'delusional' but as a liberal guess asking too much of her to say that - still, nice to hear someone on the left speak with at least a hint of common sense that's willing to see the world as the rather ugly thing it actually is - ludicrous as it seems, it's almost as if at this point Obama's foreign policy can be paraphrased as: America retreats, forswears its white privileged arrogance, and the void is filled by reasonable people coming together, talking nicely to each other and everything working out fine. The man is dangerously misguided and worse than that shows no sign of possibly reevaluating his flawed preconceptions. I'm no fan of Hillary, but someone of import on the left needed to stand up and say something.

So what has the Gaza conflict revealed about Obama? What many people uncorrupted by bias have known since before he was president: he's not a pragmatist, not a realist, not a clear thinking moderate, not a conscientious and evenhanded rationalist - he's an ideologue who gets away with pretending to be all the former because of media complicity - his foreign policy is governed not by reasonable analysis but by ideology and that ideology is of the weak kneed, America hating uber left. He has one goal as president: push the country as far left as possible before his term is over regardless of damage that might do and dangers that might give rise to.

The policy approach to the Gaza conflict should have been a no brainer for an American president: the American people supported Israel, the congress supported Israel, both left and right in Israel were firmly behind the steps taken, especially once the dire threat of the tunnels became obvious, virtually all our Arab allies behind the scenes supported the action since they hate Hamas too because of its ties to Iran, Egypt, no friend of the Muslim Brotherhood which Hamas is an offshoot of, openly supported Israel by refusing to accept Hamas' demands for a truce, and finally Hamas is a recognized terrorist outfit without any political legitimacy whose sworn purpose in life is the destruction of Israel and whose tactics of choice are to indiscriminately target Israelis and then when Israel responds throw as many of their own people as possible in front of bombs so as to feed the anti-Semitic idiocy of 'world opinion' - this should have been a no brainer, all the more so because Obama didn't have to act, all he had to do was say the right words - and yet still he got it wrong. That tells you all you need to know about his presidency: he's not driven by common sense or an objective analysis of what's in America's best interests - he's driven by ideology, he's there to serve the interests of the far left [the only faction in the country that didn't side with Israel] and quite frankly I think couldn't care less about those who do not share his vision - and he's gotten away with this because he's an expert manipulator of a media utterly corrupted by bias.

[hey, the Obamaphiles cry - what do you mean he got it wrong - he supported Israel's right to defend itself! Please, people, enough with the bullshit - if you truly supported Israel's actions you would do so knowing that there's gonna be civilian casualties because that's exactly what Hamas wants to have happen and you'd figure out how you're gonna talk about those casualties without undermining Israel's actions and needs - that's not what Obama did: out one side of his mouth he defended Israel's right to defend itself and out the other he talked about the death toll in a way that undermined Israel's actions and served the interests of Hamas - which tells me Obama did not support this operation but had to pretend he sort of did because the country did - that's the reality here and so just stop with the bullshit. Israel knows this is the case, they know they were betrayed by Obama - and word coming out that Netanyahu in a phone call yesterday with Kerry hung up on him is testament to that and probably a good indication that Israel is more or less done with this administration - and how that impacts the Iran negotiations ought to make for an interesting spectacle]

Spain and Britain to review military sales to Israel - it's getting harder and harder to resist the feeling that the entire Western world is at this point in history governed by fools - this shaming especially rich coming from England who gave us Bomber Harris and his deliberate targeting of civilians in WWII, a strategy that Eisenhower did not agree with. And then you get Obama's America hating gnome Valerie Jarrett throwing in her brilliant insight that Israel's security needs do not justify the killing of civilians - that's some real fancy thinkin' there - aside from Hagel, is there anyone in the Obama administration that has read a single book on military strategy, practice and history? If there is, Obama clearly doesn't listen to them. Was it in Gates' memoir that he mentioned Obama displaying something resembling contempt for the opinions of the military when it came to foreign policy questions? I don't remember - somebody said it - regardless, who doubts that it's true?

It's getting difficult to know what to say anymore - ya just watch this mess with a sense of dread crawling up your back knowing that something bad is coming and the West is too compromised by the musings of fools to do a damn thing about it.

[as a sidebar to this sense of doom - see what irreprehensible bile and hate and irrational, unhinged bellicosity Erdogan is spewing at Israel now - almost as disgusting as the explicit or implied condemnation of Israel by the West is the failure of anyone to criticise Erdogan's extremist ranting - does anyone in NATO have the balls or at least common sense to stand up and censure this man? Why at this point is Turkey even a member of NATO - and why the hell do we still intend on selling them F-35s? Any country or person who speaks about Israel this way absolutely cannot be trusted to protect the interests of America - to quote Casey Stengel with depressing aptness: can't anybody here play this game?]

It would seem that Sam Power used the adjective 'horrifying' to describe an action in Gaza by Israel - and in doing so she has won the war for Hamas. Whether it will be expressed or not, who knows - diplomatic restraint will probably prevail - but I'm guessing across the board in Israel right now there's nothing but outrage and contempt felt for the Obama administration. What the consequences of this will be, hard to say - but one imagines they'll be bad since Power just gave Hamas exactly what it wanted.

Let me try and explain this simply - for Hamas, there's no greater honor for a Muslim than to die for Allah, especially if that death adds to the destruction of Israel - so when Hamas puts its people in the way of bombs what they're doing is using these 'martyrs' to terrorize Western media and governments because the West cares more about these people in secular terms than Hamas does - Hamas is 'terrorizing' its own people, but the real target of that terror is Western media and governments and now Obama - and the purpose of this terror is to provoke these dupes and fools into contributing to the delegitimization of Israel - which is exactly what Power has done - hell, which is exactly what Obama's entire Mideast policy has done since the day he took the oath.

I think I'd have to describe this as shameful behavior - in a capitulation to what amounts to terrorism the Obama administration has betrayed Israel - I don't think I'm being unreasonable putting it in those terms, and I'm pretty sure the vast majority in Israel would agree with me.

We'll see what the consequences of this will be - hard to predict - but I'd say, as bad as Obama's practice of foreign policy has been to this point, it appears to have just taken a turn down a road that is very dark and very dangerous and it's very hard to see any way that this can end well.

[well, may be a tad unreasonable to say won the war for Hamas since losing those tunnels is a pretty big loss and it's hard to imagine how they'll go about reversing that loss - which brings up interesting question: why did Hamas risk exposing these tunnels by continuing the missile barrage till the point Israel had no choice but to invade? That seems like a pretty big tactical blunder - I did speculate before things got hot that Hamas seemed to be gambling that Israel would not go for the big kill - maybe with Egypt shutting down the smuggling tunnels Hamas' finances were so bad they had no choice but to tempt fate - and again, I'd like to know if Abbas knew about these tunnels because if he did that would be revealing]

[and as emphasis to my claim that Obama's response to Gaza amounts to a capitulation to terror, there's these brief thoughts from WR Mead which are not about Gaza per se but relate to the wider problem of which Gaza is a part - Obama is stuck thinking of Muslim extremism as a manifestation of western arrogance and the idiocy of Bush, that's his worldview and he's not gonna re-examine that misguided perception no matter what because to do so would upend every sentiment that undergirds the ideology of the left - Obama had a perfect opportunity with Gaza to move his foreign policy in a more coherent and reality based direction and not only did he not do that, seems to me he's doubled down on his foolishess - and we've got two more years left of this - every bad actor out there who wishes ill on America and what it represents is paying attention to this mess and drawing pretty scary conclusions]

Let’s ask - albeit fraught with problems and complications galore, but was there really any other option available to Israel but to move into Gaza? Well, they could never have left in the first place or, once gone, the residents could have exploited that opportunity in a positive way rather than enabling the rise to power of an Islamist terror group whose stated and practically sole purpose is the utter destruction of Israel - that would have helped.

But things being what they are, was there really any way to avoid what has happened? Seeing as how if Israel had had prior knowledge of how extensive and sophisticated and therefore how absolute a threat the terror tunnels were that that in and of itself would have been just cause for entering Gaza regardless of the thousands of missiles and Hamas’ clear intention to cross a line that Israel could not ignore so as to happily martyr their people for the myopic and dumb as dirt world media - I really don't see how anyone could think Israel had a choice here: the existence of the tunnels makes that clear - I mean of course I see how anti-Semites and those who tend to hate Israel as a proxy for hating America and of course liberals in general who as a rule are quite addled when it comes to these things would be able to convince themselves about the viability of ‘other options’ - but for any objective, rational, clear thinking person determined not to cower before the unpleasant facts it’s pretty hard to see how Israel had any choice but to do what its done.

The only thing that possibly could have convinced Israel to forbear the aggression from Hamas would have been a firm, an unequivocal commitment from Obama regarding both Israel’s security needs and America’s intention to back that commitment up fully, even with action on the ground if need be - and on top of that a crystal clear statement challenging the legitimacy of Hamas as a political entity worthy of respect - but there’s not an American ally left in the world who feels they can trust Obama in such a fundamental way - when it comes to Israel what you get from Obama are gestures and platitudes - read between the lines of his words and actions and what you see is a default liberal hubris that is hostile to Israel and naively indulgent of Islamism - like most of the liberal elite he sees Israel as the main problem in the region and not the dysfunctional extremism of Islamist polities - I mean, Kerry and Obama didn't even raise much of a fuss when Fatah and Hamas announced a unity gov't, with Kerry even saying he could work with such a thing - just read this article on Hamas’ ‘covenant’ to get a good idea why such an egregious betrayal of Israel and common sense in general as that from the Obama administration would cause any sane Israeli not to trust it when it comes to the hardcore facts of Israel’s survival. Netanyahu may have to smile for the cameras and tolerate Obama - but trust him to do what's right when push comes to shove? My guess is he stopped doing that a long time ago.

[actually the default liberal thinking on Israel was that conservatives in Israel were the problem and that someone like Livni could make peace - but when it comes to security issues left and right have closed ranks in Israel - most Israelis now believe that the only peace the Palestinians are interested in is one that explicitly or implicitly involves the death of Israel, and with 'world opinion' actively or by implication enabling that sentiment, most Israelis would hold that when it comes to an obscenity like Hamas you only have two choices: fight or surrender - which is why support for this war is huge in Israel. Of course these people understand that the war feeds the anti-Israel narrative - but that only matters if you believe Palestinians are sincerely interested in a peace deal that recognizes Israel's right to exist. This is why I say unequivocal American support for Israel is essential because anything that looks hesitant or reluctant or ambivalent or sophistic ends up rewarding the tactics of Hamas et al and guarantees that eventually Israel will have no choice but to act - because, as said, the only other choice is surrender. Obama has acted all along as if he could use the dubious leverage of 'world opinion' to force Israel into making unwise compromises - I've said all along that that was misguided and would only make a modicum of sense if the Palestinians, and quite frankly the Muslim world in general, were actually serious about defending Israel's right to exist - otherwise you're just backing Israel into a corner from which eventually they'll have no choice but to fight back from]

[a corollary not yet raised by anyone far as I know: did Fatah know about how extensive the Hamas tunnel system was? If so and said nothing to Israel that would make them complicit in terror acts against Israel - you can argue that of course they wouldn't have said anything if they knew - but think about it: if Fatah was actually serious about making peace with Israel, what better way to build trust than to reveal intel on the tunnel system? And on the contrary, if the peace negotiations were nothing but a charade playing off of the gullible idiocy of Kerry in order to drive negative opinions of Israel, what better way to make that clear than to keep hidden such a serious threat?]