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Feb. 8, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Lofty ideals must be followed with grounded applications

Clifford D. May: Letter from the West Bank
Steve Rothaus: Judge OKs plan for gay man, lesbian couple to be on girl's birth certificate
Gloria Goodale: States consider drone bans: Overreaction or crucial for privacy rights?
Environmental Nutrition Editors: Don't buy the aloe vera juice hype
Michael Craig Miller, M.D.: Harvard Experts: Regular exercise pumps up memory, too
Erik Lacitis: Vanity plates: Some take too much license
The Kosher Gourmet by Susie Middleton: Broccoflower, Carrot and Leek Ragout with Thyme, Orange and Tapenade is a delightful and satisfying melange of veggies, herbs and aromatics
Feb. 6, 2013

Nara Schoenberg: The other in-law problem

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. : A see-no-jihadist for the CIA
Kristen Chick: Ahmadinejad visits Cairo: How sect tempers Islamist ties between Egypt, Iran
Roger Simon: Ed Koch's lucky corner
Heron Marquez Estrada: Robot-building sports on a roll
Patrick G. Dean, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: How to restore body's ability to secrete insulin
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: 3 prostate-protecting diet tips
The Kosher Gourmet by Emma Christensen 7 principles for to help you make the best soup ever in a slow cooker
Feb. 4, 2013

Jonathan Tobin: Can Jewish Groups Speak Out on Hagel?

David Wren: Findings of government study, released 3 days before Newtown shooting, at odds with gun-control crusaders
Kristen Chick: Tahrir becomes terrifying, tainted
Curtis Tate and Greg Gordon: US keeps building new highways while letting old ones crumble
David G. Savage: Supreme Court to hear case on arrests, DNA
Harvard Health Letters: Neck and shoulder pain? Know what it means and what to do
Andrea N. Giancoli, M.P.H., R.D.: Eat your way to preventing age-related muscle loss
The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington Baked Pears in Red Wine and Port Wine Glaze: A festive winter dessert
Feb. 1, 2013

Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb: Redemption

Clifford D. May Home, bloody, home
Christa Case Bryant andNicholas Blanford Why despite Syria's allies warning of retaliation for Israeli airstrikes, the threats are likely hollow
Rick Armon, Ed Meyer and Phil Trexler Ex-police captain cleared by DNA test is freed after nearly 15 years
Harvard Health Letters: Could it by your thyroid?
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: When 'healthy food' isn't
Sue Zeidler: Coke ad racist? Arab-American groups want to yank Super Bowl ad (INCLUDES VIDEO)
The Kosher Gourmet by Nealey Dozier The secret of this soup is the garnish
January 30, 2013

Allan Chernoff: Celebrating 'Back from the Dead Day'

America isn't a religious country? Don't tell Superbowl fans!
Mark Clayton Cybercrime takedown!
Germany remembers Hitler rise to power
Israel salutes U. N. --- with the one finger salute
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: Get cookin' with heart-healthy fats
Ballot riles Guinness World Records
The Kosher Gourmet by Elizabeth Passarella Potato, Squash and Goat Cheese Gratin
January 28, 2013

Nancy Youssef: And Democracy for all? Two years on, Egypt remains in state of chaos

Fred Weir: Putin: West is fomenting jihadi 'blowback'
Meredith Cohn: Implantable pain disk may help those with cancer
Michael Craig Miller, M.D. : Ask the Harvard Experts: Are there drugs to help control binge eating?
David Ovalle Use of controversial 'brain mapping' technology stymied
Jane Stancill: Professor's logic class has 180,000 friends
David Clark Scott Lego Racism?
The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali The celebrated chef introduces us to PANZEROTTI PUGLIESI, cheese-stuffed pastry from Italy's south


Jewish World Review March 24, 2009 / 28 Adar 5769

Our enemies sense weakness

By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | President Obama's stewardship of the national security portfolio to date amounts to a wrecking operation, a set of policies he must understand will not only weaken the United States but embolden our foes. After all, the communist agitator Saul Alinsky, a formative influence in Mr. Obama's early years as a "community organizer," made the following Rule No. 1 in his 1971 book "Rules for Radicals" — "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."


According to this logic, the various steps Mr. Obama is taking with respect to the armed forces, the foreign battlefields in which they are engaged, our allies as well as our adversaries will not only diminish our power. They will encourage our enemies to perceive us as less powerful - with ominous implications. Consider some illustrative examples:


  • The Obama administration is cutting the defense budget by 10 percent. The result will preclude much, if not virtually all, of the modernization that will be required to prepare the U.S. military to contend with tomorrow's wars. Most of what the Pentagon spends goes to fixed — and growing — personnel-related costs (pay, bonuses, health care, etc.) and operations. As a result, at Obama funding levels, there will not be much available even to "reset" today's forces by refurbishing the equipment being used up in present conflicts.

  • The president is on a path to denuclearizing the United States by refusing to modernize the arsenal or even to fund fully the steps necessary to assure the viability of the weapons we have. He hopes to dress up this act of unilateral disarmament by seeking to resume arms-control negotiations with Russia, as though such throwbacks to the old Cold War and its bipolar power structure apply today — let alone that there are grounds for believing the Kremlin would adhere to new treaties any better than the previous ones it systematically violated.

  • For good measure, Mr. Obama is mounting a frontal assault on the armed forces. The president plans to repeal the law prohibiting gays from serving in the military. It is absolutely predictable that significant numbers of servicemen and — women — including many of the most experienced commissioned and noncommissioned officers - will retire rather than serve in conditions of forced intimacy with individuals who may find them sexually attractive. The effect will be to break the all-volunteer force.

  • Then there are the Obama initiatives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The president's adoption of a deadline for withdrawing most U.S. forces from the former and his signaling that — despite a near-term 17,000 troop "surge" — he is preparing to turn the latter over to the oxymoronically dubbed "moderate" Taliban convey unmistakable messages to friends and foes alike: Under Mr. Obama, it is better to be a foe of America than one of its friends.


This message is, of course, being reinforced strongly by the treatment he is doling out to nations in each category.


(1) Friends like the Poles and Czechs have been left in the lurch as the Obama administration intimates that the United States now thinks Europe after all does not need to be defended against Iranian nuclear-armed missile threats. Not since former President Jimmy Carter abandoned the NATO deployment of so-called "neutron bombs" has a president conveyed such a devastating message of weakness and irresolution in the face of hostile threats to our European alliance partners.


(2) Other allies have not fared much better. Israel is on notice that its security interests will be sacrificed to the Obama administration's pursuit of a Palestinian state — even one ruled by a terrorist organization like Hamas (or, for that matter, Fatah) committed to Israel's destruction. Britain has been told it neither deserves nor has a "special" relationship with the United States.


(3) Meanwhile, virtually every enemy of the United States is the object of assiduous cultivation and overtures for rapprochement by the Obama administration. It will reward Iran for "going nuclear" with normalized relations. Syria can expect the Golan Heights and removal from the terrorism list even as it pursues nuclear arms, renews its overtly colonial hold on Lebanon, supports the terrorists of Hezbollah and helps its abiding master, Iran, destabilize Iraq.


(4) As mentioned above, Russia gets to be treated like a superpower again while it arms Iran, inserts bombers and naval units into our hemisphere, wields its energy leverage against our friends in Europe, Ukraine and Georgia and squeezes our supply lines into Afghanistan. There are no repercussions for China as it makes a mockery of the administration's beloved Law of the Sea Treaty by threatening an unarmed U.S. naval vessel in its Exclusive Economic Zone.


(5) Last but hardly least, a "respectful" Obama administration seems keen to embrace those in the Muslim Brotherhood and like-minded Islamist organizations who seek to impose the toxic theo-political-legal program authoritative Islam calls Shariah on distant populations — and insinuate it into our country.


Can there be any doubt what America's adversaries make of all this? Great grief will come our way if they conclude, as Mr. Alinsky surely would, that our power is waning and that they can exercise theirs with impunity against our interests — and those of whatever friends we have left.


Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy in the Reagan Administration, heads the Center for Security Policy. Comments by clicking here.

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