Political Extremism Infiltrates the Pentagon
New Defense Department advisor Rosa Brooks is about as far to the left as one can go.
from Pajamas Media
April 24, 2009
by Ryan Mauro
Every once in a while something happens so shocking, so inconceivable, that it threatens to remove the last bastions of confidence I have in the federal government. The appointment of Rosa Brooks, the radical left-wing Los Angeles Times columnist, as an advisor to Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michelle Fluornoy is one of those moments. And by advisor, I don’t mean someone who talks on an informal basis — I mean a full-time advisor so committed to helping formulate policy that she had to leave her position as a fire-breathing partisan columnist.
It’s frighteningly unclear what caused Brooks to receive the appointment. She’s the author of a book about civil liberties during wartime, is a law professor, and is the director of Georgetown University Law Center’s Human Rights Institute. But why was Brooks, out of the thousands of legal experts in the country, chosen to become a high-level advisor? What made her so attractive? It can’t be her admittedly impressive resume, as there surely are other equally prestigious advisors available in this country of 300 million people.
Brooks could only have been chosen for the opinions she’s voiced, so it’s fair to ask what positions she has that made her catch the eye of Fluornoy and whoever else recommended her.
Was it her attitude towards the previous administration, which she described as “local authoritarians”? On more than one occasion, she’s questioned the sanity of President Bush, hardly the tone of respect President Obama sought to bring to today’s “broken politics.” In her piece titled “Straightjacket Bush,” Brooks says that the president and vice president should “be treated like psychotics who need treatment.”
Even more alarming are her stances on important national security issues. She opposed the surge, which she says “someday the history books will have harsh words” for. She also charges the Bush administration with exaggerating the threat from al-Qaeda. “At the time, most experts say, this description of al-Qaeda simply wasn’t true. It was little more than an obscure group of extremist thugs, well financed and intermittently lethal but relatively limited in their global and regional political pull. On 9/11, they got lucky,” she writes.
Brooks clearly does not see the horrid event as the culmination of a failed approach to a gathering threat, but an occurrence based on chance. Now, “al-Qaeda has become the vast global threat the administration imagined it to be in 2001,” she says, owing it to the neocon administration’s warped reality.
The Israeli offensive in Gaza against Hamas also drew ire from Brooks. “The assault in Gaza has more to do with internal politics than its national security,” she writes, apparently thinking that having neighboring territory controlled by a terrorist group that openly states its desire to destroy Israel isn’t worthy of a military offensive. She opines that a military campaign won’t bring about peace because Hamas will inevitably rearm and such actions create extremism which foments the conflict. If this logic is true, then the U.S. might as well leave Afghanistan and stop any attacks on terrorist targets overseas.
Brooks is also a member of the paranoid opposition — the type of political activist who so dislikes their rivals that they become convinced they are capable of all kinds of evil, reduced to an almost subhuman cornucopia of insanity and deceit. She sounded the alarm that the Bush administration was on the war path with Iran, willing to believe intelligence that incriminated their next target and showcase it to the media to make their case. She cast doubt upon the administration’s claims that the Iranians were helping arm the insurgents, giving the mullahs a benefit of the doubt she would never give the administration.
With Brooks’ appointment, this sentiment has gone from simply foolish and disrespectful to dangerous, as her hyper-partisanship has caused her to assume that one must be mentally ill in order to agree with President Bush’s positions. That sort of arrogance and narrow-mindedness, assuming your opponents’ disagreements can only be attributable to a disorder, is exactly the opposite of the type of minds we need at the Department of Defense.
This isn’t talk radio. This is policy formulation. Unless there’s an undisclosed advisor to Fluornoy of an opposite viewpoint, then a partisan enclave where the far left has a monopoly on intellectual discourse has been created in the Pentagon. For the sake of our national security, we must hope that Fluornoy’s admiration for Brooks’ viewpoints is limited to legal matters and hope that the marketplace of ideas hasn’t been banned from the debate on that issue.
Ironically, Brooks has criticized President Bush’s “cooking of the intelligence books.” If the politicizing of national security is of such a concern to Brooks, she should resign immediately.
Click to read the article and comments
Showing posts with label Lebanese. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lebanese. Show all posts
Monday, April 27, 2009
Obama is now Politically and Militarily Raping Israel - It Is Undeniable!
The flags of the United States and Israel shouold be flown at half-mast, because we are truly witnessing the death of our relationship with Israel.Rees
NATO member Turkey and Syria hold first joint military exercise
DEBKAfile Special Report
April 26, 2009
The joint Turkish-Syrian tank and armored infantry exercise backed by air power begins across the Turkish-Syrian border Monday, April 27, and lasts three days.
DEBKAfile's military sources stress that it is the first joint military maneuver any NATO member, including Turkey, has ever carried out with Syria. It appears to have received a nod from the Obama administration and another first: Never before has an important NATO power staged a joint exercise with any Arab army.
Ankara's decision to launch the drill on the day Israeli commemorates its war dead - in league with Iran's leading ally - is a measure of how far Turkey's longstanding strategic pact with the Jewish state has fallen by the wayside of recent changes.
Washington's approval underscores its new policy of boosting the strength of the Syrian army as partner in a strong a three-way military coalition with Turkey and Lebanon.
Ankara made its announcement while US secretary of state Hillary Clinton was on a short visit to Beirut.
It comes only four days after another first US step: Tuesday, April 22, DEBKAfile's exclusive sources reported that the Obama administration had just approved a large Turkish arms sale to the Lebanese army assigning Turkish military instructors to train Lebanese army units (half of whose personnel are Shiites sympathetic to Hizballah.)
Neither of the Obama administration's actions took into account Israel's vital security interests; nor was Jerusalem consulted about the strategic changes on its borders - or even informed.
DEBKAfile reports that both US drastic policy reverses are causing extreme consternation in Israel's top security echelons, which are criticizing the new Netanyahu government for taking too long to respond to the dire security setbacks piling up around its borders. The most troubling development confronting Israel in years is the grouping together of the Turkish, Syrian and Lebanese armies.
According to the statement from Ankara, the joint exercise "aims to boost friendship, cooperation and trust between Turkish and Syrian land forces and to increase the capability of border troops to train and work together."
In recent weeks, too many developments are closing in too fast and too dangerously for Binyamin Netanyahu to put the whole can of worms on hold until he has a chance to figure out his policies and talk to Barack Obama in the coming month. The dynamic on the ground will be in full flight by then. Too late, the Israeli prime minister will find the security situation running out of his control. Turning back the clock will be hopeless and he will find himself fed some unpalatable accomplished facts.
Click to read this and other great articles at the Debka File
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Obama Officially Abandons Israel - Continues charm offensive for radical rulers
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis
April 18, 2009
The new US president's dramatic global policy steps have easily dwarfed the knotty Israeli-Palestinian peace issue handed down from one US president to the next over decades. Barack Obama's outstretched hand to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Iran's best friend in the Americas, on April 17, at the summit of American leaders in Port of Prince, made the talk surrounding Special Middle East Envoy George Mitchell's mission to Jerusalem and Ramallah this week sound eerily like voices from the past.
After talking to Mitchell, Israel's prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and defense minister Ehud Barak tried the usual bromides: They protested that Jerusalem's ties with Washington and Jerusalem were as strong as ever and they would work together toward an agreed solution for the Palestinian problem.
But those words were lost in the black Iranian cloud hanging over the relations.
Barack Obama has set his sights and heart on friendship with the rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran and their radical allies. The name and policies of the occupant of the prime minister's office in Jerusalem do not matter - any more than Tehran's determination to complete its nuclear weapons program in defiance of the world, or even its first A-bomb test in a year or two, for which intelligence sources report Tehran is already getting set.
Obama's Washington believes America can live with a nuclear-armed Iran – a decision probably taken first under the Bush presidency. But Israel cannot, and may have no option but to part ways with the Obama administration on this point. As a nuclear power, Iran will be able to bend Jerusalem to the will of its enemies, make it unconditionally give Syria the Golan plus extra pieces of territory, tamely accept a Hamas-dominated Palestinian West Bank louring over its heartland and let the Lebanese Hizballah terrorize Galilee in the north at will. All three would make hay under Iran's nuclear shield, while Tehran lords it over the region in the role of regional power conferred by Obama's grace and favor.
In no time, Israel would be stripped of most of its defenses.
Israel is not the only nervous country in the region. But Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is the only Middle East leader brave enough to stick his neck out, albeit with Saudi backing, and stand up to the Iranian peril, direct and through Hizballah.
He has also outspokenly criticized Washington's courtship of the revolutionary Islamic republic.
Cairo's Al Ahram Saturday, April 18, accused Iran, Syria, Qatar, Hizballah, Hamas, al Jazeera TV of a conspiracy to overthrow Egyptian government.
But the US president is not daunted by the radicalism or enmity of his new friends or the loss of old ones. At the Summit of All Americas, Obama greeted Hugo Chavez 24 hours after the Venezuelan ruler said: "The United States Empire is on its way down and will be finished in the near future, inshallah!"
Using the Muslim blessing to underline the wish for America's downfall was no bar to the smile and handshake; neither was Venezuela's recent severance of its ties with Israel for no provocation or its willingness to host a delegation of Hizballah (internationally branded a terrorist organization) in Caracas.
What is relevant to Obama is Hugo Chavez's role as co-architect of the joint Russian-Iranian campaign to displace American influence in the southern hemisphere. The US president has opted for winning America's enemies over with smiles and embraces rather than punishing them like George W. Bush.
Obama continues to woo Bashar Assad apace despite his blunt refusal to loosen his strategic ties with Tehran or stop supporting the Lebanese Shiite group [with arms] because Hizballah is dedicated to fighting Israel, - as he is quoted as saying in the pro-Hizballah Lebanese publication al Akhbar on April 17.
For the first time in years, the administration this week sent a high-ranking delegation to Syria's independence day celebrations at Washington's Mandarin Oriental Hotel, headed by Jeffrey Feltman, former ambassador and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs.
The thaw in relations has gone so far that some Washington wags are calling Assad's capital "Syria on the Potomac."
The American storm besetting the Middle East leaves Israel's most vital interests way behind. The condition Netanyahu put before Mitchell for progress in peacemaking - that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state, which was instantly rejected by Palestinian Authority leaders – aroused scant attention in Washington or anywhere else.
As Netanyahu will find when he meets Obama in Washington early next month, Israel is no longer a prime factor in US global policy, because America has fundamentally reshuffled its Middle East allegiances and alliances. Even Tzipi Livni at the helm in Jerusalem would not divert Obama from his détente with Ahmadinejad, Assad and Chavez.
To gain points with his new friends, Obama's White House is not above nudging Israel to please them. This week, his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told Jewish leaders whom he met in Washington that if Israel wants America's help for thwarting Iran's nuclear program, it must first start evacuating West Bank settlements.
This was of course cynical claptrap.
Even if every single settlement were to be removed and Israel lined up with Obama's quest for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, the US president would not drop Tehran or help Israel strike Iran's nuclear facilities. He has already ceded Tehran's uranium enrichment program (and therefore its drive for nuclear arms), and would forcefully oppose any Israeli military action. US defense secretary Robert Gates indicated as much this week when he went to almost absurd lengths to play down the Iranian nuclear threat and Israel's ability to handle it.
So what options are left to Israel at this juncture?
1. To bow under the Obama tempest until it blows over in keeping with the old proverb which says that trees bowing in the wind remain standing. This would entail going along with US acceptance of Iran as a nuclear power. The question is will Israel's trees still be standing when the storm has passed and, if so, in what strategic environment?
2. To follow the example set by Likud's first prime minister Menahem Begin in 1981. He stood up to Ronald Reagan's fierce objections and sent the Israeli Air force to smash the Iraqi nuclear reactor before it was operational. Saddam Hussein never rebuilt the facility. By following in Begin's footsteps before it is too late, Netanyahu would change the rules of the game regionally and globally.
(The London Times reported from Jerusalem Saturday that the Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government. Two civil defense drills have been scheduled to prepare the population for missiles that could fall on any part of the country without warning.)
3. Israel could go for a more modest target, one of Iran's faithful surrogates – Syria or Hizballah – to warn Washington that a larger operation is in store for their boss. If the Gaza offensive against Hamas last January was meant to send this message, it failed. Hamas is still the dominant Palestinian power and Barack Obama was not swayed from forging ahead with his policies of rapprochement with Iran and other radical world leaders.
Click to read the article
April 18, 2009
The new US president's dramatic global policy steps have easily dwarfed the knotty Israeli-Palestinian peace issue handed down from one US president to the next over decades. Barack Obama's outstretched hand to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Iran's best friend in the Americas, on April 17, at the summit of American leaders in Port of Prince, made the talk surrounding Special Middle East Envoy George Mitchell's mission to Jerusalem and Ramallah this week sound eerily like voices from the past.
After talking to Mitchell, Israel's prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and defense minister Ehud Barak tried the usual bromides: They protested that Jerusalem's ties with Washington and Jerusalem were as strong as ever and they would work together toward an agreed solution for the Palestinian problem.
But those words were lost in the black Iranian cloud hanging over the relations.
Barack Obama has set his sights and heart on friendship with the rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran and their radical allies. The name and policies of the occupant of the prime minister's office in Jerusalem do not matter - any more than Tehran's determination to complete its nuclear weapons program in defiance of the world, or even its first A-bomb test in a year or two, for which intelligence sources report Tehran is already getting set.
Obama's Washington believes America can live with a nuclear-armed Iran – a decision probably taken first under the Bush presidency. But Israel cannot, and may have no option but to part ways with the Obama administration on this point. As a nuclear power, Iran will be able to bend Jerusalem to the will of its enemies, make it unconditionally give Syria the Golan plus extra pieces of territory, tamely accept a Hamas-dominated Palestinian West Bank louring over its heartland and let the Lebanese Hizballah terrorize Galilee in the north at will. All three would make hay under Iran's nuclear shield, while Tehran lords it over the region in the role of regional power conferred by Obama's grace and favor.
In no time, Israel would be stripped of most of its defenses.
Israel is not the only nervous country in the region. But Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is the only Middle East leader brave enough to stick his neck out, albeit with Saudi backing, and stand up to the Iranian peril, direct and through Hizballah.
He has also outspokenly criticized Washington's courtship of the revolutionary Islamic republic.
Cairo's Al Ahram Saturday, April 18, accused Iran, Syria, Qatar, Hizballah, Hamas, al Jazeera TV of a conspiracy to overthrow Egyptian government.
But the US president is not daunted by the radicalism or enmity of his new friends or the loss of old ones. At the Summit of All Americas, Obama greeted Hugo Chavez 24 hours after the Venezuelan ruler said: "The United States Empire is on its way down and will be finished in the near future, inshallah!"
Using the Muslim blessing to underline the wish for America's downfall was no bar to the smile and handshake; neither was Venezuela's recent severance of its ties with Israel for no provocation or its willingness to host a delegation of Hizballah (internationally branded a terrorist organization) in Caracas.
What is relevant to Obama is Hugo Chavez's role as co-architect of the joint Russian-Iranian campaign to displace American influence in the southern hemisphere. The US president has opted for winning America's enemies over with smiles and embraces rather than punishing them like George W. Bush.
Obama continues to woo Bashar Assad apace despite his blunt refusal to loosen his strategic ties with Tehran or stop supporting the Lebanese Shiite group [with arms] because Hizballah is dedicated to fighting Israel, - as he is quoted as saying in the pro-Hizballah Lebanese publication al Akhbar on April 17.
For the first time in years, the administration this week sent a high-ranking delegation to Syria's independence day celebrations at Washington's Mandarin Oriental Hotel, headed by Jeffrey Feltman, former ambassador and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs.
The thaw in relations has gone so far that some Washington wags are calling Assad's capital "Syria on the Potomac."
The American storm besetting the Middle East leaves Israel's most vital interests way behind. The condition Netanyahu put before Mitchell for progress in peacemaking - that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state, which was instantly rejected by Palestinian Authority leaders – aroused scant attention in Washington or anywhere else.
As Netanyahu will find when he meets Obama in Washington early next month, Israel is no longer a prime factor in US global policy, because America has fundamentally reshuffled its Middle East allegiances and alliances. Even Tzipi Livni at the helm in Jerusalem would not divert Obama from his détente with Ahmadinejad, Assad and Chavez.
To gain points with his new friends, Obama's White House is not above nudging Israel to please them. This week, his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told Jewish leaders whom he met in Washington that if Israel wants America's help for thwarting Iran's nuclear program, it must first start evacuating West Bank settlements.
This was of course cynical claptrap.
Even if every single settlement were to be removed and Israel lined up with Obama's quest for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, the US president would not drop Tehran or help Israel strike Iran's nuclear facilities. He has already ceded Tehran's uranium enrichment program (and therefore its drive for nuclear arms), and would forcefully oppose any Israeli military action. US defense secretary Robert Gates indicated as much this week when he went to almost absurd lengths to play down the Iranian nuclear threat and Israel's ability to handle it.
So what options are left to Israel at this juncture?
1. To bow under the Obama tempest until it blows over in keeping with the old proverb which says that trees bowing in the wind remain standing. This would entail going along with US acceptance of Iran as a nuclear power. The question is will Israel's trees still be standing when the storm has passed and, if so, in what strategic environment?
2. To follow the example set by Likud's first prime minister Menahem Begin in 1981. He stood up to Ronald Reagan's fierce objections and sent the Israeli Air force to smash the Iraqi nuclear reactor before it was operational. Saddam Hussein never rebuilt the facility. By following in Begin's footsteps before it is too late, Netanyahu would change the rules of the game regionally and globally.
(The London Times reported from Jerusalem Saturday that the Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government. Two civil defense drills have been scheduled to prepare the population for missiles that could fall on any part of the country without warning.)
3. Israel could go for a more modest target, one of Iran's faithful surrogates – Syria or Hizballah – to warn Washington that a larger operation is in store for their boss. If the Gaza offensive against Hamas last January was meant to send this message, it failed. Hamas is still the dominant Palestinian power and Barack Obama was not swayed from forging ahead with his policies of rapprochement with Iran and other radical world leaders.
Click to read the article
Friday, March 27, 2009
Israel successfully tests anti-rocket system
Israel successfully tests anti-rocket system
from Breitbart.com
Mar 27 06:30 AM US/Eastern
By MATTI FRIEDMAN
Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel has successfully tested a high-tech system designed to protect civilians from rocket attacks by militant groups in Gaza and south Lebanon, the Defense Ministry said.
Defense officials said Friday in the wake of the test that the Iron Dome system's development is on schedule and will likely meet its target date of 2010, when it is due to begin shooting down incoming rockets fired by Gaza militants.
A ministry statement released Thursday evening said that in a series of tests this week the system faced rockets of the type fired by Palestinian and Lebanese militants, and "operated successfully regarding the targets of the test."
The statement termed the tests a "milestone." It did not say specifically what the tests entailed and stopped short of saying the Iron Dome had actually shot rockets down with an interceptor missile, which it is designed to eventually do.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with defense ministry regulations, said there has yet to be an intercept by the system.
They have said in the past that the first intercept is expected at the end of 2009.
Developed at a cost of over $200 million, the system is intended to eventually fire missiles that home in on incoming short and medium-range rockets of the type used by militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups have launched thousands of rockets into Israel from Gaza since 2001, sparking numerous Israeli military incursions, most recently the devastating three-week Gaza war that ended Jan. 18. Rocket fire has continued since the war, though it has dropped off in recent weeks.
In 2006, Hezbollah and Israel fought a monthlong war that saw the Shiite militants launch thousands of medium-range rockets into northern Israel as Israeli forces pushed into south Lebanon.
Both militant groups have close ties to Iran.
Around one million Israelis live within range of Hamas rockets. Israel believes that Hezbollah possesses rockets that can reach the country's center in Tel Aviv, meaning that most Israelis are now in range of rockets from the north and the south. That makes the development of an anti-rocket system a priority for Israel.
Click to go to the article
from Breitbart.com
Mar 27 06:30 AM US/Eastern
By MATTI FRIEDMAN
Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel has successfully tested a high-tech system designed to protect civilians from rocket attacks by militant groups in Gaza and south Lebanon, the Defense Ministry said.
Defense officials said Friday in the wake of the test that the Iron Dome system's development is on schedule and will likely meet its target date of 2010, when it is due to begin shooting down incoming rockets fired by Gaza militants.
A ministry statement released Thursday evening said that in a series of tests this week the system faced rockets of the type fired by Palestinian and Lebanese militants, and "operated successfully regarding the targets of the test."
The statement termed the tests a "milestone." It did not say specifically what the tests entailed and stopped short of saying the Iron Dome had actually shot rockets down with an interceptor missile, which it is designed to eventually do.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with defense ministry regulations, said there has yet to be an intercept by the system.
They have said in the past that the first intercept is expected at the end of 2009.
Developed at a cost of over $200 million, the system is intended to eventually fire missiles that home in on incoming short and medium-range rockets of the type used by militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups have launched thousands of rockets into Israel from Gaza since 2001, sparking numerous Israeli military incursions, most recently the devastating three-week Gaza war that ended Jan. 18. Rocket fire has continued since the war, though it has dropped off in recent weeks.
In 2006, Hezbollah and Israel fought a monthlong war that saw the Shiite militants launch thousands of medium-range rockets into northern Israel as Israeli forces pushed into south Lebanon.
Both militant groups have close ties to Iran.
Around one million Israelis live within range of Hamas rockets. Israel believes that Hezbollah possesses rockets that can reach the country's center in Tel Aviv, meaning that most Israelis are now in range of rockets from the north and the south. That makes the development of an anti-rocket system a priority for Israel.
Click to go to the article
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