RubinReports on Turkey's Terrorist Tendencies...

RubinReports

And again what is Obama going to do to bring about this objective? 'Will he continue to follow advice from Erdogan which has already proven to be wrong  because it is based on the interests of a Turkish Islamist regime seeking to promote Sunni Islamism and Turkish influence in the region?

Obama’s expressed hope of creating a Syria that is “a source of stability, not extremism” is very dangerous because he might well hope that but it is not a realistic goal. And again what is Obama going to do to bring about this objective?  

[Incidentally. the U.S. government has apologized to Israel for U.S. officials confirming to the New York Times that a ground attack within Syria earlier this month was staged by Israel. Publicly stating this information forced Syria (and Hizballah and Iran) to officially threaten Israel with retaliation, thus endangering Israel.] 

Now, too, Iran, Russia, and Hizballah are stepping up support for Assad. It is clear that Russia will block tougher action in the UN Security Council.  It is also stepping up arms shipments to Assad. If Russia provides Syria with advanced anti-aircraft missiles these could be used to shoot down any U.S. planes that tries to enforce a no-fly zone. Yet Obama doesn't have the credibility or leverage with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who from every indication holds him in contempt as a weakling, to stop Moscow from showing that it is the stronger, more reliable ally. Hizballah has up to 5,000 fighters inside Syria now, though they have been mainly employed in holding territory vital for Assad's survival.

The rebels will not win without a lot of U.S. help. This civil war is becoming an international test of wills in which Obama--for reasons that are not unreasonable--doesn't want to fight. Yet does that mean the United States will accept a humiliating defeat at the hands of Tehran and Moscow? Fortunately, while the rebels cannot win, they also are likely to hold much of Syria. In other words, Assad can't put down the rebellion either. But the result will be: stalemate; continued war for two years or more; tens of thousands of more deaths.

One day there will be congressional investigations on how U.S. policy armed terrorist and even, albeit unintentionally, al-Qaida groups. It will be too late.  The situation in Syria makes the Iran-Contra affair--U.S. involvement during the Reagan Administration in supplying arms to pro-American Nicaraguan rebels--look like a picnic.

The situation is getting very dangerous and with a "friend" like Erdogan it is clear that Obama’s policy toward Syria, Iran, the advance of revolutionary Islamism, and the Israel-Palestinian “peace process,” is in serious trouble.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the Wall Street Journal on Stopping Terrorist Immigrants

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324767004578486931383069840.html

The Tsarnaev brothers are emblematic of the divided loyalties of our times—and they are not the only ones. Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani national, is a naturalized U.S. citizen who lived the American dream: He arrived on a student visa, married an American citizen, graduated from college, worked his way up the corporate ladder to become a junior financial analyst for a cosmetics company in Connecticut, became a naturalized citizen at the age of 30 and then, a year later, in 2010, tried to blow up as many of his fellow citizens as possible in a failed car bombing in New York's Times Square.

Prior to sentencing, the judge asked Mr. Shahzad about the oath of allegiance he had taken, in which he did "absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen." The defendant replied: "I sweared [sic], but I didn't mean it." He then expressed his regret about the failure of his plot and added that he would gladly have sacrificed a thousand lives in the service of Allah. He concluded by predicting the downfall of his new homeland... The naturalized citizen swears to "support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic…bear true faith and allegiance to the same…[and] bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law." Naturalized citizens tie their own destiny to the destiny of this society, not their former one, for better or worse. So the potential bomber takes an oath to defend the Constitution and the U.S. against all enemies, while committed in his heart to a radically different political order.

The challenge that this would-be bomber poses for us is not to change our foreign policy or improve economic conditions in the Muslim world. We already do that. The challenge is to uncover the deceit of such phony citizens..."I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion: so help me God." Those closing words of the Oath of Allegiance are now etched indelibly in my memory. But as I said them, I thought of the Tsarnaev brothers, whose mental reservations about America grew to the point that they were prepared to sow murder and mayhem.

Immigration reform that does not make it harder for such people to settle in the U.S. would be, to say the least, very incomplete. 

Althouse: IRS Scandal May Mean GOP Took Dive in 2012 Election...

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-didnt-romney-why-didnt-republicans.html

Robert Spencer on Islam v Islamism

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/05/islam-vs-islamism-again.html

Moderate Islam is a solution that does not exist, and can only be a solution if it could be successfully invented. Calling upon Muslims to renounce the aspects of their theology that violate basic human rights will never be effective if we do not acknowledge that those aspects exist -- and that requires talking about Islam. As I said in that National Review article: "Andy is wrong in his claim that I have ever said that any form of Islam is 'the only Islam,' but the fact is that throughout its history, and in all its theological, legal, and sectarian manifestations, Islam has always been supremacist and political. Acknowledging that is simply acknowledging reality. Pro-Western Muslim reformers have to start there. In Christian history, the Protestant reformers did not pretend that Church doctrine was other than what it was. They confronted and refuted portions of that doctrine. But Andy seems to expect contemporary Islamic reformers to succeed by pretending that Islam is not what its authoritative texts teach and what it always has been historically. He says that he does not see 'what purpose is served' by telling Islamic reformers that 'Islam is incorrigibly supremacist and political.' But if it is supremacist and political, whether 'incorrigibly' or not, then sincere reformers have to start there in order to fix it. Wishful thinking and self-deception are not reform. Ultimately those doctrines can be combatted only by actually combatting them."

I stand by that.

NY Times Blog (but not newspaper) Coverage of Save New York Public Library Rally

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/opponents-plan-rally-against-new-york-public-library-plan/?smid=pl-share

Barry Rubin on Benghazi's Tragic Importance

There is something terribly and tragically and importantly symbolic about the Benghazi attack that may be lost in the tidal wave of details about what happened on September 11, 2012, in an incident where four American officials were murdered in a terrorist attack. This point stands at the heart of everything that has happened in American society and intellectual life during the last decade.

And that point is this:

America was attacked once again on that September 11, attacked by al-Qaida in an attempt to destroy the United States—as ridiculous as that goal might seem. Yet the U.S. government blamed the attack on America itself.

...

The truth is, however, extremely simple: The United States faces a revolutionary Islamist movement that will neither go away nor moderate itself. To understand this movement and its ideology, how it is and is not rooted in Islam, its weaknesses and divisions, the forces willing to help combat it, and ways to devise strategies to battle it is the prime international need for the moment.

It is as necessary to do these things for revolutionary Islamism today as it was to do the same things regarding Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s; and for Communism in the 1940s and 1950s.

...

And finally what could be more symbolic than the hiring of Islamist terrorists to guard the consulate, men who deserted or even turned their guns against the Americans there? It is truly symbolic because the Obama Administration has turned to Islamists—in Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, Syria, and elsewhere--in the belief that they are best suited to guard U.S. interests in the Middle East.

In discussing the Benghazi affair none of these broader issues should be forgotten. It was not merely an order for the American rescue forces to “stand down” but for the United States to bow down.

http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-benghazi-issue-is-overwhelmingly.html

Peter Van Buren on Benghazi Hearings

We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People by Peter Van Buren

RubinReports on Syria

RubinReports

There is no good alternative. The Christians, Druze, Alawites, and even some of the urban Sunni middle and upper classes want Assad to win because they are afraid of the Islamists. Yet in strategic terms the weakening of Tehran and Hizballah by Assad's fall is by a small margin better for U.S. interests. The official Free Syrian Army and the handpicked exile leadership--headed by a mild version of a Muslim Brotherhood supporter long resident in Texas--are of no real importance on the ground though their doings fill the Western news.

This is the mess now faced by the Obama Administration. It could have been avoided if the president had understood from the start that he should have supported moderate, not Islamist forces. using covert operations and even helping local warlords and pious Syrian traditionalist  forces.  Instead, before the civil war broke out he first backed the radical regime in Syria, America’s enemy and Iran's client state, and then only when the revolt made that stance impossible he switched to the rebels, empowering the opposition Islamists every step of the way.

But then he didn’t want to do what his predecessors would have done. Curiously, Obama believed that Islamist rule is good because it would moderate the radicals, deter terrorists from attacking America, and make enemies into friends. In Syria today there is no good choice. No matter which side wins—the Syrian regime as part of the Iranian bloc of Shia Islamists or the rebels as part of the Muslim Brotherhood bloc of Sunni Islamists—the winners will be radical Islamists. In fact, if Assad creates a fortress in the Alawite region of the northwest stretching down to Damascus, it will be both varieties of Islamists simultaneously.

It is a tragedy. I remember when I met a Syrian democratic dissident about three years ago and as he was leaving to return home he asked me, "Do you think there will ever be real democracy in Syria?" I choked up because I didn't want to lie to him. He saw my expression and said sadly, "Well, perhaps in my childrens' time." 

For a while, hope sprung up that the country might undergo a transformation. The conservative periphery rose up against the centers of power that had so long oppressed it. These people were pious Sunni Muslims angry at decades of a regime that was a combination of secularist dictatorship and Alawite (supposedly Shia Muslim) ethnic domination. They might have found a relatively moderate leadership, as happened in Iraq.

Yet that just didn't happen. The West failed to get behind potential leaders; the Islamists were better organized and more willing to sacrifice their lives. It could well be argued that if anyone has to win it should be the rebels since that would be a devastating defeat for Iran and Hizballah, because also the Sunni Islamist bloc lacks a patron to finance an aggressive anti-Western, anti-Israel program and to supply arms for it. But can one be enthusiastic about those who want to impose a new dictatorship, carry out ethnic massacres, include al-Qaida, and might even use nerve gas to make propaganda?

Sadly, the truth is that there are Islamists all the way down.

Rally to Save the New York Public Library

> PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY
>
> Dear friend -
>
> Take action to save the 42nd Street Library and stop the Central Library Plan! We have received multiple reports that the historic seven-story book stacks in the 42nd Street Research Library have now been emptied. Removing the books is a prelude to the planned demolition of the stacks later this year or early in 2014.
>
> There are two things you can do:
>
> RALLY MAY 8TH AT THE 42ND STREET LIBRARY
>
> Join us for a rally on Wednesday, May 8th, during the quarterly meeting of the New York Public Library Trustees. The rally will begin at 3:30 PM in front of the 42nd Street Library facing 5th Avenue. The rally will start promptly! We want to have a strong presence as the Trustees enter the building for their meeting. If you can't make it at 3:30, join us after work at 5 PM to greet the Trustees on their way out. The rally is being cosponsored by our friends at Citizens Defending Libraries.
>
> To promote the rally, we have been leafleting outside the 42nd Street Library daily. Join us from Noon to 1 PM this coming Monday (May 6) and Tuesday (May 7). We will have plenty of flyers, and also have signs to hold.
>
> HELP PROMOTE OUR NEW WEBSITE
>
> Second, please help spread the word about our new website:
> www.savenypl.org
> Publicize our site via social media, via twitter, via linking from your blog, via plain old-fashioned word-of-mouth. If you have friends who you think might be concerned about preserving the integrity of the 42nd Street Research Library, our website is an easy way to introduce them to the issue.
>
>
> TALKING POINTS
>
> The Central Library Plan, at enormous cost to New York City and its taxpayers, would irreparably damage the 42nd Street Research Library – one of the world’s great reference libraries and a historic landmark. The NYPL plans to demolish the Library’s historic seven-story book stacks, install a circulating library in their stead, and displace 1.5 million books to central New Jersey. The new circulating library would be a reduced-size replacement for the Mid-Manhattan Library (at 40th and 5th Avenue) and SIBL (Science, Industry and Business Library, at 34th and Madison), which would both be sold.
>
> • The plan will cost $350 million (probably more), of which $150 million will come from New York City taxpayers.
> • The plan will jam patrons of the circulating library into a space one-third the size of the existing Mid-Manhattan Library and SIBL.
> • The plan will threaten the 42nd Street Library’s role as one of the world’s great research libraries, and threaten the architectural integrity of the landmarked 42nd Street building.
> • The plan does not take into consideration more efficient and less destructive alternatives, such as combining SIBL and the Mid-Manhattan into a rehabilitated and expanded building on the Mid-Manhattan site.
>
> Underlying our concerns is the extraordinarily closed process through which the Library administration has made its decisions. Despite the fact that the 42nd Street building is owned by the City and is one of our most iconic structures, the plan was formulated with minimal public notification and no public input. The $150 million which the City has earmarked towards the project was awarded without any oversight by the City Council and with no public hearings. If alternatives have been seriously considered they have never been disclosed, and no cost-benefit analysis or detailed budget has ever been presented to the public.
>
> It has become increasingly apparent that the CLP is part of a larger effort by New York City’s public library systems to shrink their capacity and sell off valuable real estate, which started with the controversial sale in 2008 of the beloved Donnell Library to real estate developers.
>
> For more information or to join our low-volume email list, see www.savenypl.org
>
> Thank you!
>
> The Committee to Save the New York Public Library
> 232 East 11th Street
> New York, NY 10003
> www.savenypl.org
> info@savenypl.org

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Eric Schmidt on the Importance of Teachers in the Digital Classroom

Thank you Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, for saying this about teachers in the Q&A for The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business at the New America Foundation on May 3rd. Video link: http://youtu.be/kEmwIo6xNZQ.

 "The role of the teacher becomes more important when there's infinite information, not less. So, you would conclude from reading our book that we believe that teachers, and particularly human teachers, and judgement, are more important in the presence of all this information, and that we are delighted that all of these tools and techniques and so forth will get there. The best scenario by far is an empowered teacher, an excited student, and an infinite amount of information...(on YouTube clip at 54:10-54:55).