Rand Paul at the Library of Congress 9/18/2013

Washington Post: Chief of Naval Operations Fled Navy Yard

https://news.google.com/news/story?ncl=dvVxw8-tJclpUPM2S7ApxZmJjwpUM&q=navy+yard+shooting&lr=English&hl=en

Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, the chief of Naval Operations, was evacuated from his residence at the Navy Yard complex shortly after the first report of shots fired, Navy officials said. Greenert, a four-star admiral and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was safely evacuated to the Pentagon along with his wife, Darleen, said Cmdr. Ryan Perry, a Navy spokesman.

Whatever happened to "a Captain goes down with the ship?"

RubinReports on Appeasement, Then & Now...

RubinReports

Wikipedia's Definition of "American Exceptionalism"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism

American exceptionalism is the theory that the United States is "qualitatively different" from other nations.^[2] In this view, America's exceptionalism stems from its emergence from a revolution, becoming what political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset called "the first new nation"^[3] and developing a uniquely American ideology, "Americanism", based on liberty,egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, populism and laissez-faire.^[4] This ideology itself is often referred to as "American exceptionalism."^[4]

Although the term does not necessarily imply superiority, many neoconservative and American conservative writers have promoted its use in that sense.^[4][5] To them, the United States is like the biblical shining "City upon a Hill", and exempt from historical forces that have affected other countries.^[6]

The theory of exceptionalism can be traced to Alexis de Tocqueville, the first writer to describe the United States as "exceptional" in 1831 and 1840.^[7] The term "American exceptionalism" has been in use since at least the 1920s and saw more common use after Soviet leaderJoseph Stalin chastised members of the Jay Lovestone-led faction of the American Communist Party for their heretical belief that America was independent of the Marxist laws of history "thanks to its natural resources, industrial capacity, and absence of rigid class distinctions". American Communists started using the English term "American exceptionalism" in factional fights. It then moved into general use among intellectuals.^[8][9]

Asia Times: Sen. Lugar, Nunn-Lugar, Obama, Putin & Syria

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-04-110913.html

M K Bhadrakumar writes in the Asia Times:

Now, as a young senator, Obama regarded himself as a protege ("pupil") of Lugar; he had served in the Nunn-Lugar program (which took him on his only visit to Russia before becoming president). 

In fact, the 20th anniversary of the Nunn-Lugar Program was one of the first public functions that Obama attended on December 3 last year after getting re-elected. He made a remarkable speech on that occasion in Washington where he hailed the track record of the Nunn-Lugar "far beyond the old Soviet Union". Obama said, 

Nunn-Lugar is the foundation for the vision that I laid out, once I was elected president, in travel to Prague - where nations come together to secure nuclear materials, as we're doing with our Nuclear Security Summits, where we build on New START and continue to work to reduce our arsenals; where we strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and prevent the spread of the world's most deadly weapons; where, over time, we come closer to our ultimate vision - a world without nuclear weapons. 

Suffice to say, Putin factors in that disarmament is a key policy agenda for Obama. Putin cannot be oblivious of the potential of the Russian plan on Syria going far beyond the resolution of the immediate conflict situation at hand in the Eastern Mediterranean. 

It could be Syria today that Russia is working on alongside the Obama administration. But it could as well be on Iran tomorrow. And incrementally, Obama also would need to think about addressing Russia's core concerns - missile defense, for instance. 

A paradigm shift 

Working with the Obama administration as "equal partner" has always been Putin's core Russian foreign-policy objective and any constructive cooperation over Syria can possibly change the entire alchemy of Russian-American relations. 

The pro-western Russian elites who dominate policymaking in Moscow whole-heartedly welcome Putin's working relationship with Obama. For the majority of Russian people, at the same time, Putin's brilliant handling of the Syrian crisis has enhanced the country's image and international standing. 

To be sure, an interesting paradigm shift is taking place as the Russian leadership identifies with American public opinion, with which Obama also instinctively empathizes, as his speech on Tuesday revealed.

Sen. Lugar Proposed US-Russian Syrian Solution on August 8, 2012...

As reported in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/world/europe/senator-richard-lugar-urges-united-states-and-russia-to-rid-syria-of-chemical-weapons.html?_r=1&

Mr. Lugar’s proposal comes at a delicate time, with Russia steadfastly resisting entreaties by the United States and other countries to authorize more forceful intervention in Syria, which has been locked in a conflict that is now a civil war for 17 months.

In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Lugar said his idea had been initially rebuffed by Russian officials, who noted that Syria had never joined an agreement to eliminate such arms, the Chemical Weapons Convention, which was signed by 188 countries.

“The initial response,” Mr. Lugar said, “was that Syria was not a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention — which is true — and we, that is, the United States and Russia, do not own these weapons, and that’s true. But it’s also true that it’s not really clear in the course of events who is going to own them, if anybody; who will be responsible; whether any party really will be a part of the convention.”

Yet, Mr. Lugar added, most countries see the weapons in Syria “as influencing very adversely the potential for peace and stability in the Middle East.”

Mr. Lugar, the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, is in Moscow this week to press for an extension of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, an effort that began in 1991 to safeguard and dismantle nuclear and chemical weapons in the former Soviet Union.

The effort is credited with deactivating 7,500 nuclear warheads and overseeing the end ofnuclear weapons programs in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus. It is named for Mr. Lugar and former Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia, who helped a reluctant Congress provide financing, and it also led to the construction of a facility in Siberia that has been working to destroy two million Soviet chemical weapons containing nerve agents and other poisons.

Mr. Lugar said the suggestion was his own, not the Obama administration’s. “The threats might be to both of our countries from elsewhere,” he said. “That’s what I am suggesting as maybe a new chapter in our cooperative threat reduction — that we think about our abilities really to be helpful to each other, but also the rest of the world.”

Moscow Times: Sen. Richard Lugar Brokered US-Russian-Syrian Deal

Quote:

At a news conference, Lavrov said Russia was working on an "effective and concrete" plan with Damascus to put its weapons under strict international control, though no specific details have yet been worked out. No Russian reaction to the potential security council resolution has been reported.

Dmitry Trenin, director of the Moscow Carnegie Center think tank, said "putting Syria's chemical weapons under international control, if it is achieved, would be the best real result of U.S.-Russian collaboration."

He said the idea had actually been proposed by Richard "Dick" Lugar, a former U.S. senator who was one of the sponsors of the Nunn-Lugar program to dismantle weapons of mass destruction in post-Soviet states.

Alexander Konovalov, president of the Institute for Strategic Assessments, said U.S.-Russia relations could benefit greatly from the plan if it turns out to be successful.
"We have many challenges that can only be resolved together," he said.

Read more: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/russias-syria-plan-gains-momentum/485873.html#ixzz2eb2tV8ww The Moscow Times 

9/11 Memorial, University System of Maryland, Shady Grove...

Angelo Codevilla: Parting Ways With the American People | Online Library of Law and Liberty

Parting Ways With the American People | Online Library of Law and Liberty In short, by 2013 the Republican Establishment had proved itself so alien to the domestic concerns of that majority of Americans who dislike the direction in which the ruling class is pushing it, that the party was becoming irrelevant. Despite the Bush Administration’s disastrous commitment to Nation-Building however, the memory of Ronald Reagan’s and Dwight Eisenhower’s forceful, levelheaded patriotism still lingered about the party.

But by urging war on Syria more vehemently than Obama, the Republican Establishment may have finished off the Republican Party, as we know it. Surely it has discredited itself.

President Obama and his followers say: “strike!” even while acknowledging that no military or political plans exist by which such strikes would make things better rather than worse. Reflecting the public, few Democratic and Republican lawmakers support the war publicly. Obama, while claiming the right to act without Congressional approval, has asked Congress to take responsibility for whatever war he might choose to make – and for its results. In the likely event that Congress were to say No, Obama is poised to pin responsibility on Republicans lawmakers and on the people they represent for America’s decline among nations and for whatever ill consequences may follow from all he has already done with regard to Syria.

We cannot be shocked that persons of the intellectual caliber of Obama and his officials would propose entering into a war without a notion of how they propose to leave it or of what they propose to get out of it for America. We dare not let ourselves take seriously their assertion that intervention in a struggle among fanatic sectarians can be either neutral about the substance of their hatreds or even favorable to moderation. Nor can we pretend surprise that persons of their moral caliber should use bloodshed abroad as a political weapon at home.

But we have a right and duty to remark and to reprove the manner in which the Republican Establishment is impugning the character of Americans who oppose the war. That manner, Obama-like, eschews argument in favor of insult. To argue is to deal with the opposite position on its own terms. But the Republican Establishment attacks the American people for being “isolationist” – an epithet that no one applies to himself.

US-Russia Deal on Syria?

Lavrov also denied allegations that Russia may have sponsored a deal between the U.S. and Syria during the Group of 20 summit in St. Petersburg last week, where Putin discussed the Syrian crisis with Obama. "There won't be and there can't be any deal behind the back of the Syrian people," Lavrov said. Read more: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/russia-to-push-syria-to-surrender-chemical-weapons/485773.html#ixzz2eQBud6Yg The Moscow Times

RubinReports: The Obama Administration's Seven Pillars of Idiocy (1-3)

RubinReports...Pillars 1-3;

These are the new (hopefully temporary):White House’s Seven Pillars of Idiocy in the Middle East: 

{NAMED AFTER LAWRENCE OF ARABIA'S VERSION)

First pillar:  Other than aid and official government rhetoric, the United States is now neutral on the Israel-Palestinian conflict and, to put it more accurately, tilting toward the Palestinian side.
This does not mean disaster for Israel--and no Israeli official will say so in public--but it is a strategic reality.
Part of the dynamic motivating this U.S. policy is that:
--The White House believes it can win over “moderate Islamists” in power, as in Egypt, Sudan, Turkey, Tunisia, Bahrain, Iran, and Syria, among other countries. This would form a pro-U.S. bloc against al-Qaida and, secondarily, the Iran-Syria bloc. Only al-Qaida cannot be won over; but the White House believes that even the Taliban, the Tehran rulers, Hizballah, and Hamas might be convinced. (I’m not kidding and can prove it.)
--Rather than mobilize active opposition to Palestinian Authority diplomatic gains in Europe, the UN, the World Court, and international institutions, the Obama Administration is either leading exploiting, or bowing to these gains.
--This of course intensifies Western cultural surrender to anti-Israel positions. Here’s an example: The highly prestigious Foyle’s bookstore in London has closed its Israel section. If you know London, you know what an intellectual earthquake that is.
--The United States will not privately pressure or publicly criticize Palestinian Authority policies or statements, but will not hesitate to do so for Israel.
--The Palestinian Authority is not even held responsible for its total inability to deliver half the Palestinian forces, including Hamas and the Gaza Strip. Imagine a White House not thrilled to use the Egyptian coup regime to press and suppress Hamas! Their strategy would be to make a deal: Palestinian concessions to get a state in exchange for the capture of Gaza! Who has even thought of that?!
Of course the talks will not go anywhere, because the Palestinians know that they have a strong hand and they will overplay it. But, the administration’s willingness to punish Israel to win public relations points and shore up the doomed U.S. alignment with Islamists has to be reckoned with. 

The problem is by no means regarding U.S.-Israel relations alone, but it is with every Middle Eastern ally and with every potentially pro-U.S democratic opposition movement.

Second pillar: The system the White House seeks to impose on the Middle East appears to be revolutionary Islamism! If many objective Iranian, Turkish, Kurdish, Israeli, and Arab observers see this as self-evident, Islamists themselves view Western policy, however, as a sign of their own victory due to Allah’s backing plus Western fear and weakness.

Consider the bizarre situation in regard to Egypt. The last time, Egypt had to join the enemy  Soviet bloc and wage war on a  U.S. ally to be America’s enemy; now it can do so by joining American goals,  opposing terrorism, and working closely with U.S. allies!

Third pillar: conservative traditionalists, moderates, and liberals seem to be viewed by the U .S. government as enemies, because only the Muslim Brotherhood can stop al-Qaida by out-jihading them. 

Gallup Poll: U.S. Support for Action in Syria Is Low vs. Past Conflicts

U.S. Support for Action in Syria Is Low vs. Past Conflicts

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' support for the United States' taking military action against the Syrian government for its suspected use of chemical weapons is on track to be among the lowest for any intervention Gallup has asked about in the last 20 years. Thirty-six percent of Americans favor the U.S. taking military action in order to reduce Syria's ability to use chemical weapons. The majority -- 51% -- oppose such action, while 13% are unsure.

Conrad Black: Fall of USA Parallels USSR

http://www.nysun.com/foreign/collapse-of-american-power-recalls-dis/88400/

RubinReports on Syria

RubinReports

Barry Rubin: Obama's Anti-Israel Foreign Policy

http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2013/09/03/obama-and-israel-the-next-three-years/

It is not every day that one can announce a shift in world history, but this day is today. And we are now in a new era in the Middle East and the world. This is not a joke–definitely not a joke–and as you will see, it is not an exaggeration. Let me explain. For the last seven weeks, I have been in the United States, mostly in Washington D.C. I have spoken and listened to many people. As a result, I am in a position to describe to you with a high degree of accuracy what the policy will be for the next 3.5 years, and perhaps for many more. The administration has crossed a line to, in simple terms, backing the “‘bad guys.” This is literally true in Egypt, Syria, Sudan, the Palestinian Authority, Bahrain (with its support for the opposition), Qatar, and Turkey. And in some ways, as we will see, the war on terrorism has been turned into the war for terrorism. Too extreme? On the contrary, this is not a conservative or liberal analysis but merely a true one. Come along over the next few weeks, and let’s take a serious analysis 0f Obama’s Middle East policy in the second term, from 2013 to January 20, 2017. The real diplomatic line is: Bad boy, Bibi (and Israel), why can he/they not be moderate and flexible (unlike releasing 100 terrorist murderers in exchange for nothing), like Palestinian Authority Leader Mahmoud Abbas (and the Palestinians, who [Abbas] in fact is inflexible, constantly; escalates demands; and rejects U.S. strategy on the peace process); or like Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan (throwing intellectuals and journalists in prison, betraying U.S. strategy 0n Iran, backing anti-American Islamists, and sending former army officers for long jail terms on phony charges)? During the coming months, and even years, if they are given to me, I will pursue these themes. You may not believe what you read here today or tomorrow, but you will, oh you will see it. But before we begin, let me repeat that this is going to happen. It will not change, and as shocking as it is, this is already happening. It is unavoidable, because with a president who will not learn, a bought-off elite, a sold-out second-term Congress, and a remarkably cowardly or partisan media, nothing will change. The situation will only get worse and more obvious. In this series of articles, I will describe eight very likely things that will almost certainly happen during the rest of Obama’s term, extending far beyond Israel, and how to minimize the harm to the interests of the United States and of its would-be Middle Eastern allied people and governments. Here are the inevitable themes, any one of which would be horrid enough. ISRAEL CANNOT DEPEND ON THE UNITED STATES.

Peter Van Buren's Letter to His College-Age Daughter

From http://wemeantwell.com/#sthash.5BUoVmUP.dpuf:

Mrs. We Meant Well and I sent off the last of the heirs to the We Meant Well fortune to college. She’s a good kid, smarter than me hopefully, and she should do well at school. Though she is more embarrassed than anything about half the stuff on this blog, her heart’s in the right place. It would be very odd if as a teenager she would be any different. Hell, if she was as cynical as me at her age, we’d need to have her see a doctor.

I kept my mouth shut at the college– there are rituals to these things and dad-confessions are not among them– but I wanted to say sorry to her more than simply goodbye. My kids all grew up overseas while I served with the State Department (though they of course did not accompany me to Iraq). Despite the occasional job hassles, it was not a bad life. For most of the time the world was mostly at peace. We started the adventure around the same time that Desert Storm happened. After a week of silly paranoid concern that the Iraqi Army might somehow attack us in Taiwan, life went back to normal and continued that way until September 11, 2001. We were assigned in Japan at that time, and like all of you, watched the terrible events unfold on TV, albeit late at night because of the time zone thing. As the second plane hit the World Trade Center, I got up to make some sandwiches to bring in to work, knowing the phone would ring soon and I’d be called in to the Embassy. I remember as clear as glacier water my wife saying “Why would they call you in? That’s in New York and we’re in Tokyo!” Then the phone did ring and that was that. Forever after I would feel like a shadow looking for the sanctuary of a light.

The world my kids grew up in no longer exists. We destroyed it. In reaction to the terror attack, we set the Middle East on fire (still burning), nearly bankrupted our own economy, turned air travel into a form of bondage play, and did away with our democracy in return for a security state that exists only to keep us perched on the edge of fear. Nothing pressed us into these actions; we did them all on our own, the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, the NSA amok, all that.

That night twelve years ago in Tokyo, when I was called in to the Embassy after midnight? As I approached the gate, I could see a large crowd gathered, not usual for after midnight and certainly not usual in calm-as-dust Tokyo. About a hundred Japanese had spontaneously gathered there, some with flowers bought who-knows-where at that time of night. They clapped for us as we walked in to work. They wanted to touch us as we walked by. It did not last long. Fast forward to March 2003 and a larger crowd gathered to protest the invasion of Iraq, and protest calls blew out the switchboard. Our security people let us out a back gate, saying it wasn’t safe to exit through the front door. In Tokyo. One bomb threat and false positive al Qaeda warning after another followed, hitting a low point when, after weeks of denying it, the State Department admitted that they had shipped diplomatic pouches into our Embassy that might have been infected by the anthrax that was in the U.S. mail system at the time. My office was near the pouch mail room and I had to take Cipro as a precaution and wonder if anything got into my home and my kids’ room off my clothes. Threats and terror alerts became a daily part of our new normal, there and in the U.S.

So I wanted to say I was sorry to my child. Sorry we messed up the world for you. Sorry for, what, how many dead? Sorry countries where Americans used to be at least tolerated with our awkward shorts and sandals ‘n socks are now too dangerous to even visit. Sorry you’ll never see the ruins of Babylon in Iraq, or the Pyramids, unless you join the Army. Sorry you will never know what privacy is. Sorry that you, and your children, will live in an America that exists in a constant state of low-fever war. Sorry you will never know peace. Sorry that we not only did not defeat the terrorists but, by our actions, gave their cause new life and seemingly endless new recruits. Sorry you will never enjoy an airplane trip, sorry you will never trust your government, sorry you will always have that tiny glint of reservation when you hear the anthem, read the Constitution or wonder what happened. And while I am sorry that you’ll blame us, you are right to do so. We did it. Some of us actively participated, some passively let it happen. Some that tried to make changes failed to make them significant enough to hold back even some of the water coming over the levies. Sorry, but if anyone is going to fix this, it is going to have to be you. Do a better job than we did if you want to really find a way to say thanks for the piano lessons and ballet lessons, the puppy, for using the car, for me not being too mad when you violated curfew to spend more time with that boy, for the college tuition.

Funny, but I also just sent my last draft for the new book off to the editor. He’ll make it much better and I know that, but I have given up something that used to be all mine at the same time. It’ll come back different.

We sent my daughter off to college this weekend and while my wife cried about 99% of the time, I held back some tears until the very end. While some kid my daughter had never met before said “C’mon, we’re going out with the guys from the next quad!” I stood there hugging her not in that room but in a million places where she had fallen down or asked for ice cream or needed a diaper changed or the causes of World War I explained. I didn’t hug an 18 year old woman but a six year old, a 13 year old, an infant in diapers, a two year old angry about being wet in the snow.

And despite my need to hold on to her for just that much more she felt closer in that moment to the anonymous roommate demanding she go out the door with her than to me and I knew simultaneously how I hurt and how right she was to need to leave. The space between us was a fraction of an inch but it was a distance I would never cross.

Back home it was quiet. Just my wife and the stupid, now old dog. I walked outside and saw the trees were still an unbelievable green, but just a hint of yellow, almost too little to really see, more of a feeling. There were nine empty beer cans in the recycling bin and I could hear cicadas. I swacked a mosquito. I’m gonna really miss summer.

- See more at: http://wemeantwell.com/#sthash.5BUoVmUP.dpuf

As-Safir Newspaper - Russian President, Saudi Spy Chief Discussed Syria, Egypt

As-Safir Newspaper - Russian President, Saudi Spy Chief Discussed Syria, Egypt

Bandar told Putin, “There are many common values ​​and goals that bring us together, most notably the fight against terrorism and extremism all over the world. Russia, the US, the EU and the Saudis agree on promoting and consolidating international peace and security. The terrorist threat is growing in light of the phenomena spawned by the Arab Spring. We have lost some regimes. And what we got in return were terrorist experiences, as evidenced by the experience of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the extremist groups in Libya. ... As an example, I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us, and they will not move in the Syrian territory’s direction without coordinating with us. These groups do not scare us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role or influence in Syria’s political future.”

Putin thanked King Abdullah for his greetings and Bandar for his exposition, but then he said to Bandar, “We know that you have supported the Chechen terrorist groups for a decade. And that support, which you have frankly talked about just now, is completely incompatible with the common objectives of fighting global terrorism that you mentioned. We are interested in developing friendly relations according to clear and strong principles.”

The DiploMad 2.0: Democrats on the Road to Damascus

The DiploMad 2.0: Democrats on the Road to Damascus: 

Mark my words, if our policy "succeeds," that is to say, it leads to the downfall of Assad, we soon will enter a world of hurt. Assad will be replaced by extremistjihadi psychopaths who will turn on us in a flash. If we don't "succeed," and we just wound the bear, what's left of our reputation is gone, and we will have one bloody-minded, revenge seeking pencil-necked dictator--backed by Iran and Russia--gunning for us and our interests. Some choice, eh?

The DiploMad 2.0: Conservatives and Their Responsibility...

The DiploMad 2.0: Conservatives and Their Responsibility...:

RubinReports: US and EU Back Islamist Imperialism

RubinReports

For example, about a year ago Dubai’s police chief addressed a major international Gulf Arab security conference. He said that there were about three dozen security threats to the Gulf Arab countries. But this well-respected security expert said the number-one threat was the United States.

Since that time, this American specter has become vivid. For instance, The New York Times had a recent editorial which stated that the only protection for Egypt’s democracy--meaning Muslim Brotherhood participation in the next Egyptian government--was the United States and Europe. The Egyptian regime, Israel, and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arab states were bad for wanting to protect their societies from Islamic ideology, revolution, and anti-Western Sharia states!

Might the  United States and its allies rather be expected to battle Turkey, Iran, Hamas, Hizballah, Tunisia, Bahrain, and Hamas or otherwise might it support Islamists while Saudi Arabia fought Europe’s and America’s response as too soft on Hizballah?

But what if a crazy notion seizes policymakers, blessed with the mush of ignorance about the Middle East, that they can take control of the troublemakers? Perhaps Germany (World War One and Two jihads), or the Soviet control of radical nationalist regimes in the 1950s and 1960, or the French rescue of the Palestinian leadership in the late 1940s, or Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran during the 1970s, or  America in the 1950s (Arab nationalism), or the 2010 Muslim Brotherhood would turn nominal extremists into friends?

Imagine, dunderheads in Washington, London, Paris, and so on thinking they are masterfully preserving stability, making peace, and harnessing Sharia in the cause of boosting democracy!

How smug would be the smiles when those who perpetrated September 11, 2001, were supposedly defeated by those mentored into power a decade later by the West in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, or in the Arab Spring or the Syrian revolution!

Look at it through the eyes of the Arabs, Iranians, Turks, Kurds, and Israelis who think they will try to impose a new order the region.

Consider a famous speech by Winston Churchill at Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946. In contrast to the Communist Manifesto,100 years later, Churchill began, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain is descended across the continent.” It might be strange that these two statements are compared to the current situation in the Middle East. But actually, they make a lot of sense.

The intention of great powers seemed to impose one (European) system on the region. In the first case, it was Communism. In Churchill’s case, it was anti-Communism he advocated, which in parallel would be Anti-Islamism.

But today, what is the system that Arabs, Iranians, Turks, and Israelis think they will try to impose on the region? The answer for those who have been watching in recent years is revolutionary Islamism.

It might seem strange that this is the thinking, but it isn’t. The question is whether there is a system that Western Europeans want to impose. And the answer is that to the Arabs and others in the region--although this does not mean it has to be true--since the 1979 Iranian revolution, they have supported radical Islamism. In fact, it should be understood that after the Arab Spring, Arabs did not generally identify Western interests with support for moderate democracy, but with support for Islamism.