People supportive of or incensed by Netanyahu stepping past the White House to accept an invitation to speak to congress are missing the very simple either/or point of it - if you believe Obama is serious about stopping Iran then, sure, you may have a point in being upset about it being unhelpful and also maybe even have a point in seeing in the action nothing but contempt for Obama on the part of Republicans and the Israeli right - on the other hand if like me you think Obama is lying about stopping Iran and long ago either 'secretly' embraced a policy of containment and a jejune fantasy of detente with the theocracy or is just simply trying to run out the clock so he can hand the problem off to someone else, then the actions by Boehner and Bibi make perfect sense - you can't simply just come out and call Obama a liar, but you can act as if that's what you believe - and that's what this is. What Congress and the Israeli right are saying to Obama and the American and Israeli people is: we no longer are going to enable this charade by pretending the President has credibility on this issue.

What's involved is just too important, the threat too grave, especially for Israel - if you think Obama is lying about what his true intentions are when it comes to Iran, and if you think those true intentions are perilously misguided and naive, then you have no choice but to act out. This isn't like Obama lying about his healthcare law, which he clearly did - the GOP can repeal that if they can ever manage to figure out a way to win back the White House - but once Iran has the bomb you can't repeal that and all the bad that flows from it cannot be stopped. As Vic Hanson says about what's implied by Obama's seemingly anti-American approach to the practice of foreign policy - Après moi, le déluge:

Obama is abetting five new empires that believe their reactionary autocracy, anti-Americanism, and growing military power should earn them greater material rewards and global influence. To paraphrase the Roman historian Tacitus, where Obama has helped to create chaos, he calls it peace.

We are witnessing empire-building unlike anything seen since the 1930s and early 1940s. What is different this time around is not just the older themes of American isolationism, indifference, and appeasement, but also a new, bizarre twist. The Obama administration feels almost as if these rising suzerainties have a more legitimate right to carve out regional empires than the United States has to stop them.

So, wait a second, Kerry is saying that a putatively false linking of Islam to the violence done in its name might offend the Islamist sensibilities of Muslims and therefore hinder our ability to combat a 'violent extremism' engendered amongst Muslims that apparently noted theologian Kerry claims has nothing at all to do with Islam? I see. Clear as mud.

Progressives are people who will without blinking an eye lampoon fundamentalist Christians or ridicule the Pope's stance on birth control etc etc and not for a second think that they're insulting or besmirching all Christians or all Catholics - but suddenly when it comes to Islam no negative opinions can be countenanced because that would be an offense to all Muslims. The very fact that you have to contort yourself into such illogical word games and manufacture some special safe zone unpolluted by free speech in order to ostensibly 'protect' Muslims is a near perfect demonstration of the fact that obviously there's a problem with Islam - you can argue about what the problem is - an inherent incompatibility with values we in the West view as central to modernity is where I'd start - but whatever, point is if you have to jump through so many absurdly illogical hoops and engage in such abstruse word games in an attempt to rationalize a belief you hold as true then that belief probably ain't true.

Again, I get that there's a practical side to this 'cultural sensitivity' - that without the willing cooperation of Muslim countries you can't fight the extremism therewith engendered - still, to me that's fighting a war with one hand tied behind your back, that's fighting a war that makes little sense. It's the same misguided illogic that doomed the invasion of Iraq and the practice of COIN in Afghanistan - this refusal to acknowledge that you're in these countries because the prevailing culture was dysfunctional and gave rise to a menace - if your goal isn't to change that culture, to address the roots of the dysfunction, then what are you fighting for? And how do you expect to win? Nazism wasn't an aberration of German culture - it was a natural, albeit extreme byproduct of German nationalism as it existed at the time and had existed for several hundred years - tell me how you were going to defeat it without laying bare and attacking the root cause? I'd argue that all extremist behaviour is a natural outgrowth of a precondition that in and of itself may not be dangerously extreme but given the right circumstances can germinate into something that is - for Germany the right circumstances were its nationalist pathology running up against the humiliation and poverty brought on by the Treaty of Versailles and Hitler's clever leveraging of this dynamic against the perceived threats of communism and impure non-Aryan elements degrading the culture.

For those who want to argue that extremism is an aberration of some hermetically sealed 'true' version of Islam I'd simply say look at Turkey, supposed poster child of a progressive Muslim country, and see what devout Islamist Erdogan is doing to it - and with the consent of devout Turkish Muslims who obviously see democracy, true democracy and all that comes with it as a threat. This is not aberrant behavior - indeed it's expected behavior given the history of Muslim countries. For Islam there's a pronounced antipathy for and fear of the modern world as expressed through the attributes of Western culture - you marry the parochialism born out of that fear to the political machinations embraced by Islamists and you've got yourself a problem - and the right circumstances for the rise of extremist ideologies.

[I should add that I find it astoundingly myopic and remarkably hypocritical that the left would never think of excusing examples of Western 'extremism' as mere aberrations having little to do with a prevailing culture - no, things like slavery and colonialism etc etc are all original sins and endemic to the evil doings of a white y chromosome capitalist driven culture - but when it comes to Islamist extremism that's just an aberration and has nothing to do with a prevailing culture. You can't have it both ways - but that's just another example of the left living in denial of any facts that do not fit their narrative. Of course the depredations of colonialism and the extreme behavior it often exhibited were a natural extension of a culture that prevailed at the time - but here's the key: the fact that we evolved out of that behavior was also an extension of that culture. To argue that the same rules of exegesis do not apply when it comes to analyzing the culture of the Muslim world and the dysfunction and extremism that roil it today is a hypocritical absurdity] 

In this article about the left's petulant hatred of a movie that is both quite popular and full of good will towards the military this sentence probably captures the key as to why progressives and good foreign policy are virtually mutually exclusive concepts, a disturbing dynamic clearly made manifest during Obama's run as Commander-in-Chief:

Leftists simply can’t digest the fact that their own safety is predicated on the willingness to fight of courageous men they openly disdain.

The left hates the military, they dislike, object to, disdain the 'types' that make it great, the ideas that motivate it and the cold reality it is a reflection of and resent the feeling of being dependent on such people and things - and so out of this resentment of a truth that cannot be reconciled with what they want to believe is hatched foreign policy thinking that, swathed in delusion and fantasy, attempts to delegitimize that power, to render it unimportant or at least less significant or fundamental to our security than some would have - resentment of a truth they cannot abide forces them artificially with clever conceits to try and elevate what they fancy as 'smart ' power over what I guess they'd scornfully label 'brutish' power - we know it otherwise as 'leading from behind' - but LFB is not smart power, it's a naive self-serving rationalization utterly detached from reality - and that pretty much sums up Obama's performance when it comes to foreign policy.

[this reminds me of the whole 'bring back our girls' farce - those left wing celebs holding up their little signs for a photo op and having no clue, no conception whatsoever of what it would take to go into a country like that and actually bring those girls back - the hypocrisy of it was just astounding - the left despises gun loving god fearing white boys from middle America but that's precisely who would have been called on to pull off such an impossible mission - that's left wing foreign policy for you: a weepy slogan and a selfie - and a completely delusional detachment from reality]

A word on latest crisis roiling the waters twixt Israel and the Obama administration - that word is predictable. Obama policy all along when it comes to Iran has been to dissemble while moving incrementally to the inevitability of 'containment' - all that talk about all options being on the table, i.e. the use of force, to stop Iran from going nuclear? A lie. All that talk about Rouhani being a moderate and a true partner for peace? Lies [remember Obama started talks with Iran and offered to cut sanctions before Rouhani was elected]. All that talk about the negotiations moving forward. albeit slowly, to something viable? Lies. The policy all along has been containment and everyone in Israel knows this, any unbiased observer has known this, the powers that be in Iran surely know this, Russia and China know this. Obama has had one goal here, to avoid at all costs the use of force, either by the US or Israel - and then eventually you get to a defacto policy of containment. Draw out the negotiations for as long as possible and that gets you two things: it keeps Israel stuck on the sidelines till it's too late to act; and then, regardless of whether a deal is signed or not, when Iran eventually breaks the 'trust' and moves on nukes anyways, Obama will be at or near the end of his term and can then 'argue' that he tried to fight the good fight but Iran cheated and with that simply pass the problem on to whoever takes over the White House. Obama has had one goal: avoid the use of force which necessarily means embracing containment. He may also have harboured an illusion about forging a detente with Iran and forming a new strategic relationship with them - that's possible - but that delusion would have been born out of the central theme: avoid the use of force.

And this is why Obama cannot abide any talk about the renewal of sanctions nor any gestures which undermine the appearance of negotiations being legitimate - it's too soon - Iran has all the leverage here because they see exactly what Obama's game is - they can walk away which will put Obama in a very bad spot with still two years left in his term - at which point he probably caves and signs any deal in a desperate attempt to keep the lie viable just long enough for him to leave. Sure, he can blame republicans if the talks fall apart, and he will - but in the end he's still the one who has to act and that's exactly what he's trying to avoid. And Iran knows it.

So you see, all predictable - you try and spin lies like this about something with such huge strategic implications and with this dissembling essentially undermine the security concerns of two key allies, Saudi Arabia and especially Israel, it's delusional to think the charade can be maintained - eventually responsible people are going to push back, they have no choice - Obama can throw his temper tantrums [releasing falsified Mossad briefings] and poison the water further - but the buck still stops on his desk and he'll be stuck with two options: cave on the deal, or get tough - fully expect it to be the former.

Of course there is one other way this goes - senate Democrats wimp out, bow to Obama's demands, making the sanctions bill no longer veto proof - and then we're back to the charade - but now with everyone's cards on the table and Obama's bluff having been exposed. At that point I think maybe Iran ignores Obama's veto and still threatens to walk out knowing that they really have the upper hand - Obama absolutely needs one of two things: a deal that 'looks' viable even though it isn't, or negotiations that drag on and on - and so Iran may use the threat of renewed sanctions to really turn the screws on Obama.

Eli Lake in an article makes point that when it comes to isolating Islam from the extremist behavior it tends to generate Bush was just as bad as Obama - but for a practical reason - you couldn't fight the extremists without the help of Muslim states and therefore you had to pretend that the extremism was just an 'aberration'. Obama's motivations are different I would argue since he clearly believes that if the Muslim world is at odds with modernity that's somehow America's fault.

But aside from how practical or not this politically correct 'wordplay' is the onerous fact remains: closed theocratic societies will generate extremist behavior - that's not an anomaly, that's to be expected because by their very nature closed systems must be extreme since they are fixated on dogmatic purity. If we're going to continue to deny this central fact then I don't know how we protect ourselves against the dangers that will necessarily crop up - the extremism closed societies naturally evince can easily metastasize into something quite dangerous if the threat the extremist oppression is intended to defeat or suppress cannot adequately be suppressed. What's the threat aggravating the parochialism of the muslim world? Western freedoms, Western culture - unless you completely shut yourself off from the world it's impossible to stop the impact of Western culture on your closed system - unless of course you destroy the West or at the very least constantly portray it as the inherently evil enemy. Thus the rise of a virulent form of Islamism.

So you see the extremism we're witnessing is simply the natural consequence of a closed system against all odds desperately trying to keep itself closed. And we've seen this before - we saw it with Nazism and Stalinism and Maoism - it mattered not one little bit when countering the threat of communism that most Chinese were not devout Maoists - all that mattered was that Mao was a devout Maoist and his extremist actions were a completely natural consequence of a closed system's absolutist need for control and purity. Thus it is with Islamism. Doesn't matter whether or not most Muslims share in the extremist vision - the young woman wanting to drive a car in Saudi Arabia has very little power - the guy screaming in the madrassa that no way that's gonna happen has much - that's how closed systems work, and that's all that matters.

My God I am so sick and tired of hearing people reference Obama's use of drones as proof that he's tough on terror - and it's not just liberals making this claim in defense of their chosen one, conservatives do it too as a means of trying to say something positive about Obama's approach to foreign policy - does it really not occur to any of these people that that's exactly why Obama has embraced such a small footprint, in the shadows, leading from behind tactic? So that he can pull America back as a leader of the free world while pretending that's not exactly what he's doing? That is the whole point of his embrace of drones - liberals like him see American power as a bad thing, as something that must be suppressed, a sentiment which is behind their absurd refusal to refer to Islamic extremism as Islamic extremism - reliance on drones is an utterly insufficient approach to such a large threat - but they don't want to acknowledge the threat because that acts as justification for the use of American military might - so rather than upgrading the response they downgrade the threat. Over reliance on drones is a perfect reflection of Obama's disdain for American power - and for the life of me I do not understand how it is so many people fail to grasp this. Drones are tactical instruments meant to serve a strategic end - but Obama has no strategic end aside from leading from behind and pulling America back - therefore his use of drones is virtually pointless, unless of course you see it for what it is: a shell game, a show he's putting on to convince the gullible that he isn't exactly what he is - a feckless uber liberal who disdains conventional conceptions of American power.

And he's not gonna change - so all those people out there anxiously wringing their hands in expectation of that are fooling themselves - people like him are not amenable to change - indeed there may be nothing more resistant to change than vain ideologues fuelled by the fancies of an arrogant idealism - such people are not only convinced of their superiority their philosophies are absolutely dependent on that conviction because their beliefs are a house of cards that cannot admit to a single doubt for fear the whole presumptive fantasy comes tumbling down - that's why people like this are so good at surrounding themselves with sycophants who ruthlessly keep truth from the door. There's nothing more frightening to the vain delusions of the idealist than empirical facts.

Why do you think Gates and Panetta said what they said in their books? They know this guy is not fit to be Commander in Chief of a superpower like America - they know that his inner circle, Jarrett and Rice etc, the only people he apparently deigns to listen to, are utterly misguided in their foreign policy thinking and practice and probably just parrot the nonsense they know he wants to hear - they probably felt or hoped that by speaking up they could bring about some kind of change - no way, just don't see it - pigs will fly first. At best, at best you'll see some theatrics meant to counter the image of weakness - but that's all it will be, political theatre designed to do one thing: protect Obama.

Is there any way we can make this mayor of Rotterdam president of the US? I mean it's just amazing how many Western leaders cannot bring themselves to express this very simple but absolutely fundemental thought when it comes to Islamism - the West is about empowerment of the individual, the rule of an independent and secular law, and freedom - chief among which is the freedom to say and think what you want - if you're not comfortable with those things then why are you here? If you move to a Western democracy the obligation is upon you to adapt, not for it to start re-writing its traditions and principles and history in order to accommodate whatever backward notions and cultural sensitivities you may have brought with you. Very sad days when the President of the United States for christ sake refuses to be seen as a staunch and adamant defender of a freedom that lies at the very heart of what made America great - never mind that American universities and other bastions of ostensibly enlightened liberalism increasingly seem to have a view of open and free debate more in keeping with Iran's mullahs than the Founding Fathers.

I'm getting a kick out of people slamming Obama for not going to Paris for the 'protest' against terrorism [really, we need to march for things so fucking obvious as terrorism is bad and free speech is good? Seems to me this was just another empty 'bring back our girls' type gesture - although at least the French are actually referring to it as Islamist terrorism] - but I'm getting a kick out of criticism directed at Obama because most of it seems to be of the opinion that this slight was some kind of 'tone deaf' or 'ham-fisted' mess up - why is no one saying that maybe this was a deliberate expression of Obama's uber left ideological sympathies? The uber left abhors the idea of calling the extremism Islamic because they want to blame the West in general and America in particular for this behavior and that's hard to do if you lend credence to the notion there's something inherently Islamist about what's going on - idiotic, sure, but then idiocy is the air they breathe in the delusional echo chambers of the left.

All this time gone by and people still want to think of Obama as this pragmatic moderate - the man is an uber leftist who skillfully uses his protected status with the media to spin false representations and narratives to the contrary - like his uber liberal comrades in the Academy the idea of taking part in a march where terrorism might be linked to Islamism is unthinkable. I mean, c'mon people, wake up - this is the man who labelled the terrorist attack on Fort Hood 'work place violence' and did it with a straight face - there's a reason he sat in Reverend Wright's church all those years - he may not be as radical as Wright [although I would't rule it out] but he's certainly sympathetic to the point of view. Examine the man's words and actions with a clear mind and what you see is an Alinskyite leftist who with cynical cunning knows that if Americans know that's what your are you ain't getting elected or, if you do manage to fool the people into voting for you thanks to a media corrupted by bias, you won't be able to govern because once you've spun a lie that big everything afterwards becomes a function of that falsehood, that deception - which is why he has lost his majority and is now simply going to rule like a King. 

And this whole line of 'reasoning' by liberals that suggests or wants to contend that only speech that does not offend should be 'free' is absurd - the whole point of free speech lies in its ability to offend because otherwise without that potentiality it ceases being free speech and instead becomes allowed speech - and who then will be so ordained to judge what's allowed and what isn't? What august authority draws that line? Hell, since liberals take offense to almost anything conservatives say according to the logic of this Obama would then be justified in unilaterally shutting down Fox News.

Likewise this contention that somehow a person is free to criticize or lampoon Christianity or Judaism or Mormonism or Buddhism but not Islam is equally absurd - because what you're saying or implying with that is that Islam is beyond reproach, perfect - because what logically follows a denial of the right to criticize something is the assumption that there's nothing there that can be legitimately criticized - and that's just manifestly idiotic and an abuse of common sense. According to this logic the entire Protestant faith is a mistake that should never have been allowed to happen since Luther was offending catholics.

[this related story is quite revealing - not only regarding the meaning of free speech but also how it shows that even 'Westernized' Muslims struggle with acceptance of the core values that make and made the West the West - possibly chief among which were all those things in Western culture that led to us having the right to think and say what we want]    

Liberals insistence on trying to pretend that Islamic extremism has nothing to do with Islam is not just an expression of naïve delusion but also a desperate attempt to preserve the viability of their worldview, a view which is strongly motivated by a dislike of America and a lingering hatred of the capitalist driven colonialist past of the west now often simply referred to pejoratively as 'white privilege' - by pretending or convincing themselves that Islamic extremism is an aberation and not rather a to be expected manifestation of Islamist thinking they are essentially laying blame at the feet of all those things about western culture and America that they hate - the chickens coming home to roost as Obama's America hating pastor once put it. This motivation has been clearly on display in the wake of the terrorist attack in Paris where we've seen the liberal media either overtly or by insinuation try to blame the victims for having the nerve to express their right to free speech or in attempts to excuse or rationalize the terrorism with the now stock liberal complaint of how racism bred the hatred and therefore the violence is in a sense justified - chickens coming home to roost.

Liberals see everything through this jaundiced prism of a contempt for working class white culture, a contempt for capitalism, a contempt for the military, a contempt for those aspects of Western history that they find regrettable and so on and so forth. This subverting of reality in order to safeguard their delusional ideological givens when it comes to the clear problems evinced by Islam regarding integration with Western value systems and the modern world [just look at what's going on in Turkey for a glaring example of how western notions of freedom and Islamism do not play well together] was also recently on display with the Ferguson shooting where liberals deliberately ignored objective truths in order to spin their ideological fantasies - for them if the facts do not support their philosophical prejudices and sympathies then the facts must be wrong and can therefore be ignored.

It does not bode well for the republic or western culture in general that the liberal elite, which controls so much of our media output and therefore controls much in the way people vote, is becoming increasingly estranged from a coherent notion of objective analysis and wedded to an agenda that with seeming ease is willing to put ideological preferences ahead of the truth.  

See that in Paris the 'religion of peace' has drawn blood once again in the name of Islamist 'purity' - Tobin over at Commentary gets it right. As long as the liberal elite and its media cohorts continue to turn a blind eye to the true root and cause of Islamist extremism by apologizing for and refusing to defend Western values and thereby indulging the inherent dysfunction that drives Muslim culture this problem is never going away and will very likely get much worse.

There is no such thing as a 'religion of peace' - any religion - strike that - any absolutist belief system is vulnerable to the embrace of extremism in the name of safeguarding its 'sacred truths' unless it is acted upon by extenuating circumstances that mitigate and tame the threat. There are several key elements to the Western Tradition that allowed us to tame the excesses of Christianity and other absolutist claimants - but probably central to that development is fact that the Western Tradition was well on its way to being a thing of great value long before Christianity as an influential belief system mattered and the central tenets of Christian belief reflect that reality. Hell, Athenian democracy flourished almost a thousand years before Christianity did and I'd say facts like that are the reason why Christianity is inherently not political and therefore could be tamed - it has of course been used for political purposes and Western imperialism definitely had an evangelical side to it but Christianity's focus on personal revelation and its lack of access to political power during its developmental stage means it by nature, at its core is apolitical and not in need of a political apparatus in order to fully express and protect its values - or at least this focus on personal revelation make it a religion that would be very appreciative or accepting of a political system that encouraged freedom of conscience. None of that can be said of Islam which is why Muslim culture has utterly failed to tame the intolerant excesses of Islamist thinking.

As long as the West refuses to acknowledge this reality we will be hounded by the fallout from it. I mean look at the liberal elite's attitude towards Israel, it's completely detached from the reality that riles the region - here's a hint guys: Israel is not the problem in the Mideast - the country could disappear tomorrow and the region would still be an intolerant, backward, dysfunctional mess. Or look at the West's refusal to even comment on the Islamist tyranny our presumed ally Erdogan is slowly building up in Turkey. Or how 'bout England, so cowed by Islamist grievance that it has with astounding blindness indulged the flourishing of Sharia courts - this is the country that gave us the Magna Carta and John Locke and constitutional democracy for fuck sake! But in order to preserve the delusions of the liberal worldview it has planted a bomb under the very foundations of its culture and lit the fuse.

There are very good reasons why Western culture and Muslim culture have travelled such different paths over the last 1500 years - but look no further than the fact that it was several centuries ago that Elizabeth felt free enough to state that it was none of her business dictating to a man's private conscience what his god should be - try saying that today in a Muslim country, especially as a woman, and you're like to lose your life.

[Kevin Williamson makes my point better than me - culture matters because outcomes produced by cultural differences matter - and judging by outcomes for all its flaws Western culture is far superior to Muslim culture - which is why indulgence of Islamism at the expense of Western values is so idiotic - yet dare say such things and the left will beat you down as a racist when in fact race has absolutely nothing to do with culture - and then in turn outrage from the thought police of the left empowers the far right because it then sweeps up people discouraged by the pronounced idiocy of modern liberalism - as many have pointed out the big winner of todays violence is Marine Le Pen - and with that you're heading down a road that looks quite perilous.

To put it in its simplest terms the desire of liberals to try and frame Islamic extremism as an aberration from true Islam flies in the face of reality, common sense and history - we know from our own experience that when religion gets tied to political devices in the name of exerting power and control extremist behavior is to be expected - and the problem with Islam is that unlike Christianity it has a strong desire, a need for political devices - The Koran clearly enunciates the importance of a political component to Islam - you'll find elements of that in the Old Testament, sure, but not the gospels. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's. Extremist behavior in the name of Islam is no more an aberration than witch burnings and the inquisition were aberrations of Christian theology - absolutist belief systems will tend towards extreme behavior if not acted upon by countervailing forces and given the strong political component attached to Islam countervailing forces in the Muslim world have been rendered virtually nonexistent. I mean wasn't there a poll done last year that showed a large majority of people in Muslim countries believe it is just that apostasy and blasphemy are against the law? And this nearly 500 years after Elizabeth claimed such things were none of her business. Seems to me that says it all. Think about it, taking such deep offence to a cartoon depiction of Mohammed or any depiction of Mohammed for that matter is a clear expression of Islam's need for political devices summoned in the name of protecting the 'purity' of the faith - that is why this extremism is not an aberration, it is in fact rather to be expected - and that is why Islam is fundamentally, not just provisionally, at odds with the core values that make up the Western Tradition - and the huge problem for Europe is they've imported this alien culture in large numbers without ever it seems considering the notion that it might not be a real good idea and therefore have only recently woken up to disturbing reality that many Muslims are not just failing to integrate into the prevailing culture but are increasingly hostile to the notion of integrating into the prevailing culture]

Is Carly Fiorina getting serious about running for president? I hope so. The best and possibly only way to beat Hillary [or Warren] in 2016 is to take the whole Obama landmark election redux off the table - as with Obama the media is gonna play the 'historic moment' message to death and Hillary will skate by without ever having to enunciate a policy approach that is even remotely viable or in touch with reality - which is what she will need to do because the liberal base does't like her and therefore she's gonna have to talk a whole lot of 'hope and change' type nonsense. The only sure way to defeat this menace is for the GOP to put a woman at the top of the ticket - take away the only thing other than her husband that Hillary has going for her and force her to move to the left in order to squeeze out Warren and keep the base happy or move to the centre so as to make a case for herself that is about something other than how 'historic' her presidency would be. So if there's a viable female conservative out there with serious credentials, and the republicans I think have several, then all things being equal I want her at the top of the GOP ticket.