Daily Archives: October 3, 2014
Obama and Foreign Policy Detox
By: Denise Simon
Gulag Bound
Baraq Obama remains a community organizer and cannot bend his thinking to anything in the foreign realm. If a sitting president can apply the nickname of the JV squad to Daesh (Islamic State) and then do the same by applying Khorasan Group to the most battle-hardened factions of Pakistan/Afghanistan based al Qaeda then clearly he is dismissive.
This apathetic policy by the White House when it comes to foreign leaders manifests the threat matrix of terror. Due to Mr. Obama ignoring the matter of Syria three years ago has caused a humanitarian crisis of historic proportions. Lebanon has 1.2 million Syrian refugees, Jordan and Turkey has hosting over 2.0 million each in tent cities and the United Nations is screaming that they are out of funds to continue humanitarian aid to those three countries and even Iraq and Syrian refugees. Those that have died at the hands of Bashir al Assad has exceeded 200,000. This crisis of Daesh, al Nusra, death, chemical weapons, al Qaeda and more sits squarely in the lap of Baraq Obama. Just the recent air-strikes has cost the Pentagon over $700 million.
Today Syria remains the incubation and training locations for jihads interns globally and thousands of militia groups and terror organizations flow in and out of Syria. Yet today, America has become Bashir al Assad’s air force. Twisted conditions.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an,
image: BareNakedIslam.com
Now, Turkey a NATO country, has jumped the allied side and is supporting terror factions. In case there is any question, Daesh (Islamic State) has opened their very own consulate in Turkey. Qatar is the resort of choice for yet other top terror leaders such as Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and the Taliban, who only recently beheaded 15 people in Afghanistan.
So, what about terror and safety in the rest of the world?
US government to its people: Stay away from these countries
The world can be a dangerous place. Depending on where you live, you’re reminded of that every time you turn on the TV or read the news.
If you are citizen of the United States there’s also another consistent reminder: State Department travel warnings.
According to the US Passport and International Travel Office:
“We issue a Travel Warning when we want you to consider very carefully whether you should go to a country at all. Examples of reasons for issuing a Travel Warning might include unstable government, civil war, ongoing intense crime or violence, or frequent terrorist attacks. We want you to know the risks of traveling to these places and to strongly consider not going to them at all. Travel Warnings remain in place until the situation changes; some have been in effect for years.”
We catalogued all the travel warnings now in effect and created the graphic below to show all the places where the US government doesn’t want its citizens going:
Let’s also not forget that the United States can be a very dangerous place itself, and that US foreign policy has helped turn some of these countries into the dangerous places they are now.
Click on any of the countries below to see the detailed warning issued by the US State Department:
Security Warning for Some Regions: Colombia and Mexico.
Security Warning for Entire Country: Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Honduras, Djibouti, Venezuela, Iran, El Salvador, Burundi, Niger, Mozambique and Haiti.
Defer Non-Essential Travel to Some Regions: Philippines, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Israel, West Bank, and Gaza.
Defer Non-Essential Travel: Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Pakistan.
Avoid All Travel to Some Regions: Ukraine, Nigeria, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Chad.
Avoid All Travel to This Country: Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, South Sudan, Somalia, Lesotho, and North Korea.
Citizens Remaining Here Depart Immediately: Central African Republic, Libya, Syria, Eritrea, and Yemen.
So much for having a commander in chief that has influence, power and leadership worldwide and keeping America safe and not even a local community like Moore, Oklahoma is safe either. This sitting president and his community service is not working either.
Keep safe my friend…lock and load.
Robin Frazier launches write-in campaign against corrupt unions
By: James Simpson
DC Independent Examiner

Robin Bartlett Frazier‘s story personifies the threats we face nationwide by the corrupting influence of public employee unions. For the last four years Robin has been District 1 Commissioner in Carroll County, MD. You may have seen her on the Megyn Kelly show when she was interviewed after saying in a public meeting that she would be arrested if necessary but would not stop praying before meetings and invoking the name of Jesus Christ. The video is posted here.
She and fellow Commissioner Richard Rothschild were pretty much the only voices on the five member board for spending restraint, cutting taxes, reducing government, protecting property rights and protecting freedom. The power of their arguments often won the day despite the fact that two of the other three commissioners were hardcore RINOs and the third went whichever way the wind was blowing.
She and Commissioner Rothschild spearheaded the effort that turned Carroll County into the first “Second Amendment Sanctuary County” following the state legislature passing Governor O’Malley’s unconstitutional gun control bill last year. There is a stunning video on her website where a full house cheers wildly when she talks about it. Really inspiring talk. The three hapless RINOs on the Board saw the writing on the wall and fell in behind, so it was a unanimous decision in favor of the 2nd Amendment. Her leadership has also prevented the County planning board from adopting many regulations that threaten private property.
Anyway, the state teacher’s union put big bucks into defeating her in this year’s primary. They won and got a lifelong union man, Steve Wantz, to take her place. They also supported the two RINOS, Rothschild’s opponent (but Rothschild won anyway) and another candidate slated to replace one who is retiring. The Maryland State Education Association (MSEA), bragged on its website that it won “four of five Carroll County commissioner seats” in the June primary.
Wantz was bought and paid for by them. His only articulated issue is unions, supporting them and giving them more money. He also supports other big government spending projects promoted by state Democrats and county RINOs, but that support is couched in very vague, mealymouthed terms. He claims to want to “change direction” in the County, long recognized as the most conservative county in Maryland and routinely savaged in the press for being so. Wantz wants to make nice, and not surprisingly, the local leftist media has gotten behind him 100 percent. The whole exercise is a fraud. In Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker defeated public employee unions after a hellacious fight, but they are still fighting, and have taken that war nationwide. They will do everything they can – corrupting the process and undermining our Republic – to take ever more of our hard won tax dollars.
Robin decided she wouldn’t allow it to happen. She is running a write-in campaign. Her website is www.robinbartlettfrazier.com. Please share her website on Twitter and Facebook and ask your friends to visit the site. Just visiting it makes it more visible to Google search engines. If you can, also give her a little support. She is in an uphill battle in this critical race against a massive, taxpayer-funded union machine. Her opponent is a RINO at best, and may well be just another Democrat plant, put there to undermine conservatism. It is happening everywhere and we need to fight it!
A BEHEADING IN OKLAHOMA
Hat Tip: BB
The Denise Simon Experience – 10/02/14

THE DENISE SIMON EXPERIENCE
Hosted by DENISE SIMON, is the Senior Research / Intelligence Analyst for Foreign and Domestic Policy for Stand Up America US as well as the aide de camp for MG Paul E. Vallely, US ARMY (ret.)
This week’s Guest: CLIFF KINCAID, President, America’s Survival, Inc. (www.usasurvival.org)
This week’s Topic: Russia is at the core of worldwide terrorism in lock step with Iran…
LIVE: THURSDAYS – 9:00PM (eastern) / 6:00pm (pacific) on WDFP.us
The Council Has Spoken – This Weeks’ Watcher’s Council Results – 10/03/14

In remembrance of the Oklahoma Jihad victims: Traci Johnson (left – stabbed), Colleen Hufford (right – beheaded); Photos courtesy of Facebook and GoFundMe


Obama: We have always been at war with ISIL
The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match-up.
“We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.
The Ambassador [of Tripoli] answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise – (Letter from the commissioners, John Adams; Thomas Jefferson, to John Jay, 28 March 1786)” ― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson.
“…it is the duty of those who have accepted them [Allah’s word and message] to strive unceasingly to convert or at least to subjugate those who have not. This obligation is without limit of time or space. It must continue until the whole world has either accepted the Islamic faith or submitted to the power of the Islamic state” – Bernard Lewis in The Political Language Of Islam, 1988.
…We — with Allah’s help — call on every Muslim who believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply with Allah’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan’s U.S. troops and the devil’s supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson. – Osama bin-Laden, World Islamic Front Statement, 23 February 1998
Thanks to the jihadist beheading ‘workplace violence’ in Oklahoma and other recent events, Islamist terrorism was very much on some Council member’s minds among them Bookworm Room, whom came out with Is it time to dig out the bullets packed in pig grease? (And let’s identify the real Islamophobes.) *UPDATED*, a funny yet right on target essay about the question of whether pork ammo ought to be used against jihadis.
Here’s a slice:
Practically from the moment after September 11, 2001, people started saying that the most effective way to fight Muslims was to lace American ammunition with pork. Finally, in 2013, an Idaho company came up with pork-laced ammunition for non-military customers:
Jihawg Ammo today announced release of the industry’s first truly defensive ammunition.
Not only does Jihawg guarantee that all of their ammunition meets or exceeds S.A.A.M.I. standards for velocity, penetration, and accuracy, they also coat each projectile with a special ballistic paint infused with pork to make it “Haraam” or unclean to a radical Jihadist.This makes Jihawg Ammo the only commercially available ammunition with the added deterrent factor of eternal damnation for fundamentalist Islamic Jihadist.
The response was swift: Islamophobia! Ignorant, Islamophobic hicks thought that they could out-think the religion of peace. These bullets were the equivalent of a Muslim-directed genocide. And they were insulting!!
In the remainder of this post, I’ll explain why the military should start using pork-laced weapons (or spread rumors that they’re doing so), as well as explaining why those exposed to pork-laced bullets are the real Islamophobes.
Clearly, the U.S. military will never use pork.
But maybe it should….
At American Thinker, Clarice Feldman directs readers to Louis René Beres’s article for the Gatestone Institute, The Jihadists’ Promise: Power over Death. Boiled down to its essence, the article explains that the Quran holds, and fervent Muslims believe, that this life is but a way-station to the real world, which real world is an afterlife complete with unending, exquisite, and quite carnal, earthly pleasures. In other words, Muslim fanatics don’t have a death cult; they have an (After)Life Cult. Their entire goal is to shuck this mortal coil in such a way as to ensure that they go straight into the arms of those seventy-two virgins (or raisins).
Christians, too, have an afterlife, but (as I understand it), they do not envision it as the carnal pleasures of this life, only on steroids. It is, instead, a higher form of existence. Moreover, you don’t get there by killing but, instead, by living this life well. Both Christians and Jews (who do not have a specific heaven) believe that, to the extent that God has blessed us with life, we have a moral obligation to cherish and enjoy life as a prerequisite to ascending to a higher level upon our death. The Judeo-Christian culture has, if you will a (This)Life Cult as a necessary prerequisite to an (After)Life Cult.
Much more at the link.
In our non-Council category, the winner was the one and only Mark Steyn with a piece that may very well become a modern classic, Winning Heads And Minds submitted by The Noisy Room. Umm, let’s just say it a real head’s up and cuts to the heart of the matter.
Here are this week’s full results. Only Ask Marion was unable to vote this week, but was not affected by the 2/3 vote penalty:
Council Winners
- *First place with 3 votes! – Bookworm Room – Is it time to dig out the bullets packed in pig grease? (And let’s identify the real Islamophobes.) *UPDATED*
- Second place with 2 2/3 votes – Joshuapundit – Obama Soils Himself At The UN With Weakness, Appeasement And Israel Bashing
- Third place with 2 1/3 votes – The Right Planet – What’s a Khorasan?
- Fourth place with 1 2/3 votes – VA Right! – Hanover Schools Teaching Students to Blame America for 9/11 With Classroom Video
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Colossus of Rhodey – Will School ‘Heckler’s Veto’ Ruling Get Shot Down by the SCOTUS?
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Noisy Room – Bloody Jihad Comes To Oklahoma
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Simply Jews – Idle thoughts on Scottish independence and whether it’s good for the Jews (of course)
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Rhymes With Right – Speaking Of Racist White Democrats
- Sixth place with 1/3 vote – The Razor – Pill Heads in the Waiting Room
Non-Council Winners
- *First place with 3 2/3 votes! – Mark Steyn – Winning Heads And Minds submitted by The Noisy Room
- Second place with 2 1/3 votes – Sultan Knish – It’s time to kick ISIS members out of here submitted by The Independent Sentinel
- Third place with 1 2/3 votes – Amity Shlaes/NRO – Progressives Enthroned submitted by The Watcher
- Fourth place with 1 1/3 votes – Camille Paglia – The Modern Campus Cannot Comprehend Evil submitted by Nice Deb
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes – Mick Hartley – Just Happen To Be Muslim submitted by Simply Jews
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes – National Journal – Obama’s Pass-The-Buck Presidency submitted by The Razor
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes – JustOneMinute – Border Security Begins (Or Ends) At Home submitted by The Glittering Eye
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes – The Federalist – Neil DeGrasse Tyson and the Science of Smug Condescension submitted by The Right Planet
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes – Dennis Prager/Townhall – What The Arab World Produces submitted by The Watcher
- Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – National Review/Matt Continetti – Journalists for Hillary Clinton submitted by Bookworm Room
- Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Outside The Beltway – Ben Carson: ‘Strong Likelihood’ I’ll Run For President submitted by Rhymes with Right
See you next week!
Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum and every Tuesday morning, when we reveal the week’s nominees for Weasel of the Week!
And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council and the results are posted on Friday morning.
It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere and you won’t want to miss it… or any of the other fantabulous Watcher’s Council content.
And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter… ’cause we’re cool like that, y’know?
Beware of the walking time bombs from Africa.
By: Nelson Abdullah
Conscience of a Conservative
Barack Hussein Obama, the former community organizer from Chicago who was mentored for ten years by a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, USA, was raised on corrupt machine politics. His former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, now mayor of Obama’s former hometown, had a favorite rule of thumb, Never let a crisis go to waste. The person known today as Barack Hussein Obama who was once known as Barry Soetoro while attending university has taken all that he has learned and used it to maintain his quest for power. Obama entered politics as a state legislator in Illinois with the help of the Marxist New Party. He won his first election after successfully challenging the petition signatures of four rival Democrats leaving himself unopposed on the ballot. He quickly jumped into national politics running for U.S. Senator when he managed to acquire the salacious divorce records of popular Illinois Republican Jack Ryan which forced him to drop out of the race within months of election day. As soon as he was elected Senator Obama began his campaign for president. Since occupying the White House Obama, who has never admitted he was still a Muslim, has publicly sympathized with Muslims and aligned himself with Islamic supremacists. He has made excuses for underestimating the surge of Islamic terrorists in Iraq and Syria and denied Muslim acts of terrorism at home. That same group of Muslim terrorists advancing on Baghdad today, riding on a wave of unspeakably barbaric terror, have issued numerous threats against America. Meanwhile on the West Coast of Africa in Liberia and Nigeria there is a plaque of Ebola spreading like wildfire, killing thousands. So what does Obama do to prevent this disease from spreading to America? Obama has banned all flights to Israel and continued to allow flights back and forth to the African nations desperately fighting a losing battle against this incurable virus. Hedging his bets that another crisis should not be allowed to go to waste that he could use to stay in power.
Muslim terrorists have a unique outlook on life. In fact, Muslim leaders boast that they love death as much as Westerners love life. Their Islamic faith teaches them to love death and is replete with fantasies of Islamic martyrs who committed suicide in the name of Allah and going to the afterlife with 72 Virgins. And yet no one connects the pieces together to envision a plausible scenario that could threaten millions of Americans. Would-be Muslim suicide volunteers purposely infecting themselves with Ebola Virus and then traveling to the United States to spread the disease. With the aid of Barack Hussein Obama who is desperately trying to avoid an imminent impeachment once the Republicans retake the Senate and remain in power, Obama does nothing to prevent infected travelers from Africa from entering America. One confirmed case is already developing into a fiasco in Texas where the infected carrier was allowed to leave the hospital after complaining of symptoms and admitting he just returned from Africa. Now over 100 people who came in contact with him are being monitored. But what about some people who would bring the Ebola Virus here with the intent to spread a biological disaster? The first person to bring the disease to our shores did so unintentionally and tried to get help at a hospital. Would-be terrorists would not do that. There could be hundreds of them traveling right now to all of our major cities just waiting for the Ebola Virus to incubate so they can begin to spread it around. And our Dear Leader Barry is also waiting for this next crisis to declare Marshall Law and use this attack to keep people from going out to vote in less than six weeks.
My name is Nelson Abdullah and I am Oldironsides.
Updated October 3, 2014
From Bare Naked Islam
Oct 3 2014The perfect ISIS WMD? Muslim in a burqa infected with Ebola
Allegedly, ISIS will try to send Muslims infected with Ebola into America to infect and kill Americans. ISIS threatened the United States, and its allies to spread the Ebola virus, within those states, if they continue to wage war on the Islamic State’s growing caliphate inside Syria and Iraq.
Shoebat (h/t Mike F) ISIS explained that among the viruses that its members can “synthesize and produce” are “Ebola and Corona”. ISIS also said,
followers and soldiers of the Islamic State are mostly suicide bombers and all of them are ready not only to carry Ebola, but to drink Ebola if they were asked to carry and spread it in the United States. This is not difficult but we need a decision from the leaders jihadist.
Ebola could easily be transmitted through bodily fluids, including sweat, tears, saliva, blood, urine, semen, etc., including objects that have come in contact with bodily fluids (such as bed sheets, clothing, and needles) and corpses.
It is said that “this disease will go airborne, and there are many other mechanisms through which mutation might make it much more transmissible.”
The statement from ISIS said that:
the process of spreading disease is not difficult, it is easily transported in a bottle in your bag and take them from Africa to America and open in a air-conditioning duct or put it in the public drinking water by elevator doors
The statement from ISIS also said:
the process of cultivating bacteria can be done by any student in the Faculty of Science or Department of Biology. They do not need complex laboratories and even a makeshift laboratory can be made in a small apartment in which we can farm millions of germs and viruses.
Read the rest here: http://www.barenakedislam.com/2014/10/03/the-perfect-isis-wmd-muslim-in-a-burqa-infected-with-ebola/
How Putin is Using ISIS to Help Iran
By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media
Former world chess champion and Russian dissident Garry Kasparov tells Yahoo News that Vladimir Putin is “the most dangerous man in the world,” and that he is playing poker on the world stage “while everyone else is playing chess.”
In an interview with Yahoo News and Finance Anchor Bianna Golodryga, Kasparov says the war against ISIS “can be won on the ground,” if the U.S. has the will to win, but that Putin is “a permanent threat” with a nuclear weapons arsenal who must be confronted as well.
Kasparov, who was born in the former USSR, is the chairman of the Human Rights Foundation and has been fighting to bring democracy to Russia.
The implication of the Kasparov interview is that the problem of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is a diversion from Russian aggression in Ukraine and Putin’s plans for further aggression. “America lacks a comprehensive strategy,” said Kasparov.
A peculiar fact about ISIS adds to the perception that it is a diversion. The Islamic State, by all accounts, is based in Syria, where the group could have concentrated on overthrowing the Russian-based regime of Bashar Assad. Instead, it moved into Iraq against the government in Baghdad and started beheading Americans. Yet, because Obama has refused to commit ground troops to finish off the terror group, the U.S. is being put in the position of seeking Russian and Iranian help against ISIS.
We have previously commented on the fact that the Islamic State has a Russian-trained Islamist, Omar al-Shishani, as its chief of military operations. It is a safe assumption, as one analyst points out, that the Russian secret police agency FSB (former KGB) has infiltrated many of the cells and brigades of foreign fighters from Russia.
We hear all the time about how the Islamists supposedly hate the Russians. Yet, in this case, the Islamic State seemingly lets Assad off the hook and moves into Iraq, getting Obama’s sudden attention and a mass media frenzy over where this terrorist group came from and what Obama knew about it. Quickly, Obama mobilizes for military action, with Republicans in Congress voting for training and weapons for supposedly “vetted” Syrian rebels.
Today, the U.S. and its allies are conducting air strikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria that are already being criticized for killing civilians. Russia issues verbal protests on behalf of its client state in Syria, saying the U.S. is violating international law. But the end result is that Assad’s position is strengthened.
Now we are starting to hear that the U.S. will need the cooperation of the Iranian regime in order to make sure ISIS disappears as a problem.
At the Family Security Matters website, William Hawkins notes that CNN recently featured several segments “advancing the argument that the United States should radically reorient its foreign policy in the Middle East so it could work with (rather than against) the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
For example, Hawkins notes, on his influential show “GPS,” that Fareed Zakaria devoted his opening remarks to “Why Iran is key to success against ISIS.”
Almost on cue, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zariff says, “If we agree to do something in Iraq, the other side of the negotiations should do something in return. All the sanctions that are related to Iran’s nuclear program should be lifted.”
At the same time, the Kennan Institute in Washington, D.C. has planned an event, “Russia and US : is a real partnership still possible?,” featuring former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. The Russians are proposing cooperation with the U.S to defeat ISIS that includes Iran and Assad. The Kennan Institute is a division of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
“Could IS [Islamic State] Bring Russia and the U.S. Together?” is the title over an article in the Moscow Times. There is “considerable potential for Russia and the U.S. to work together in the Middle East,” the author writes.
Ivanov surfaced as a co-author, with former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, of a 2013 article headlined, “On Syria and Iran, U.S. and Russia Can Work Together.” They wrote, “With a positive track record on Syria and Iran, our two countries will be in a much better position to reconcile their differences on issues such as missile defense, new steps in nuclear arms reductions, and other regional crises.”
The Brookings Institution reports that the op-ed stemmed from an October 4, 2013 discussion in Washington of the Albright-Ivanov Track II dialogue hosted by Brookings President Strobe Talbott. It said, “The dialogue, launched in 2009, focuses on nuclear arms control issues but also touches on other key U.S.-Russia questions, and has produced several joint memoranda to senior U.S. and Russian leaders.”
Despite the invasion of Ukraine after these discussions began, it appears that the agenda of U.S.-Russian “cooperation” is still on track, as the Kennan Institute event makes clear. The host of this October 6 event is Jill Dougherty, the former CNN Foreign Affairs Correspondent who still appears regularly on the channel. Dougherty is in charge of the Kennan Institute’s project titled “Re-defining Russia: Vladimir Putin’s Ideology.”
The work being done by organizations such as the Wilson Center and Brookings in cooperation with the Russians is covered in the new book, Back from the Dead: The Return of the Evil Empire, under the heading of “infiltration through cooperation.” Former KGB officer Konstantin Preobrazhensky, who fled Putin’s Russia, talks about how Washington think tanks have been infiltrated by Russian agents who shun those who have inside knowledge of Putin’s KGB-dominated government and geopolitical strategy.
Not surprisingly, Ukraine is forgotten in all of this, just as another Lenin statue in the country—this one in the Ukrainian city of Kharkov (or Kharkiv)—has been toppled. This is why Kasparov says Putin is playing poker while the rest of the world is playing chess.
It looks like another Moscow victory in the making.
We are already hearing that regardless of the situation in Ukraine, U.S.-Russian cooperation in the Middle East will have to be maintained for the sake of world peace, and that more deals have to be made.
Then, when Ukraine is forgotten, just as the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 was forgotten before that, Moscow will make its next move. Perhaps the Baltic states. Perhaps Poland.
Analyst Paul Goble notes that a Russian diplomat is now saying that Russia will do “everything possible” to defend its “compatriots” in the Baltic countries, the same kind of rhetoric that preceded the invasion of Ukraine.
It is significant that Ivanov, the former Russian official appearing at the Kennan Institute, is one of the leaders of the Global Zero movement to somehow eliminate nuclear weapons. This has been one of Obama’s dreams since his student days at Columbia University. Obama defense secretary Chuck Hagel used to be a leader of the group. As President, Obama has declared it is “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”
Interestingly, the U.S. chair of Global Zero is Ambassador Richard Burt, who has emerged as a foreign policy adviser to Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), a likely 2016 Republican presidential candidate.
But before a true “global zero” in nuclear weapons can be achieved, a goal of “global zero” in the Middle East is certain to emerge on the agenda. That means that Iran will never agree, even on paper, to give up its nuclear weapons program as long as Israel maintains its own nuclear arsenal. Israel, of course, can’t afford to trust Iran or its sponsor Russia in any such deal. So, once again, Israel will be isolated and put under tremendous international pressure to sacrifice its military security.
Ironically, Ukraine is the country where global zero has actually been achieved. It gave up its Soviet nuclear weapons after the Kremlin promised in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum to respect its territorial integrity and sovereignty. President Clinton signed the document on behalf of the United States.
Madeleine Albright was then the Permanent Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations. She, too, signed on behalf of the U.S. and later became the first female Secretary of State.
In 2012, her bio states, Albright was chosen by President Obama to receive the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, “in recognition of her contributions to international peace and democracy.”
Tell that to Ukraine.
“I think we were on our way to trying to figure out how to make Russia a responsible member of the international community,” Albright had said on CNN, after Russia seized Crimea.
It looks like she never figured it out. And Ukraine is now paying the price.
But none of this has to get in the way of business. Albright is currently chair at the Albright Stonebridge Group, a so-called “premier strategic advisory and commercial diplomacy firm” whose Russia and Central Asia “team” includes “former Russian government officials.” One of them, Yevgeny Zvedre, “advises clients on issues related to expanding market access in Russia…”
Business with Russia must go on.
Unless the U.S. gets serious about the Russian threat, Putin and the Ayatollah win, and the U.S., Israel and the Free World lose. Checkmate.