The Past is Prologue

“There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity; it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.” — George Washington, Fifth Annual Message — 1793

Today is the 14^th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and the failed attack on the Capitol. Most everyone over the age of twenty can remember where they were and what they were doing at 8:45 a.m. (EDST) on a clear Tuesday morning, an American Airlines Boeing 767 loaded with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.

It was a mere 18 minutes after the first plane hit, a second Boeing 767–United Airlines Flight 175–appeared out of the sky, turned sharply toward the World Trade Center and sliced into the south tower near the 60th floor. The collision caused a massive explosion that showered burning debris over surrounding buildings and the streets below. America was under attack!

As millions watched the events unfolding in New York, American Airlines Flight 77 circled over downtown Washington, D.C., and slammed into the west side of the Pentagon military headquarters at 9:45 a.m. Jet fuel from the Boeing 757 caused a devastating inferno that led to the structural collapse of a portion of the giant concrete building. All told, 125 military personnel and civilians were killed in the Pentagon, along with all 64 people aboard the airliner.

Less than 15 minutes after the terrorists struck the nerve center of the U.S. military, the horror in New York took a catastrophic turn for the worse when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed in a massive cloud of dust and smoke. The structural steel of the skyscraper, built to withstand winds in excess of 200 miles per hour and a large conventional fire, could not withstand the tremendous heat generated by the burning jet fuel. At 10:30 a.m., the other Trade Center tower collapsed. Close to 3,000 people died in the World Trade Center and its vicinity, including a staggering 343 firefighters and paramedics, 23 New York City police officers and 37 Port Authority police officers who were struggling to complete an evacuation of the buildings and save the office workers trapped on higher floors. Only six people in the World Trade Center towers at the time of their collapse survived. Almost 10,000 others were treated for injuries, many severe.

Meanwhile, a fourth California-bound plane–United Flight 93–was hijacked about 40 minutes after leaving Newark International Airport in New Jersey. Because the plane had been delayed in taking off, passengers on board learned of events in New York and Washington via cell phone and Airfone calls to the ground. Knowing that the aircraft was not returning to an airport as the hijackers claimed, a group of passengers and flight attendants planned an insurrection. One of the passengers, Thomas Burnett Jr., told his wife over the phone that “I know we’re all going to die. There’s three of us who are going to do something about it. I love you, honey.” Another passenger–Todd Beamer–was heard saying “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll” over an open line. Sandy Bradshaw, a flight attendant, called her husband and explained that she had slipped into a galley and was filling pitchers with boiling water. Her last words to him were “Everyone’s running to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.”

The passengers fought the four hijackers and are suspected to have attacked the cockpit with a fire extinguisher. The plane then flipped over and sped toward the ground at upwards of 500 miles per hour, crashing in a rural field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania at 10:10 a.m. All 45 people aboard were killed. Its intended target is not known, but theories include the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland or one of several nuclear power plants along the eastern seaboard.

The attackers were Islamic terrorists from Saudi Arabia and several other Arab nations. Reportedly financed by Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist organization, they were allegedly acting in retaliation for America’s support of Israel, its involvement in the Persian Gulf War and its continued military presence in the Middle East. Some of the terrorists had lived in the United States for more than a year and had taken flying lessons at American commercial flight schools. Others had slipped into the country in the months before September 11 and acted as the “muscle” in the operation. The 19 terrorists easily smuggled box-cutters and knives through security at three East Coast airports and boarded four flights bound for California, chosen because the planes were loaded with fuel for the long transcontinental journey. Soon after takeoff, the terrorists commandeered the four planes and took the controls, transforming ordinary commuter jets into guided missiles.

The man behind these attacks was Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden the son of a Saudi billionaire. Osama bin Laden was a radical Islamic terrorist who began his terrorist career fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan with the assistance of our CIA and U.S. Weapons. One would imagine he would have been grateful to the U.S., but that was not the case. As soon as the Soviets left Afghanistan he turned on his benefactors with a vengeance. He wanted the U.S. out of Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Muslim world.

Our CIA and other intelligence agencies knew who and what bin Laden was. There was even a small group within the CIA charged with tracking bin Ladens moves, tactics and alliances.

On February 26, 1993, a truck bomb was detonated below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The 1,336 pounds urea nitrate–hydrogen gas enhanced device was intended to send the North Tower (Tower 1) crashing into the South Tower (Tower 2), bringing both towers down and killing tens of thousands of people. It failed to do so but killed six people and injured more than a thousand. The mastermind behind this attack was bin Laden’s second in command, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This was the opening shot by bin Laden and al Qaida against the United States. Soon after there were attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killing hundreds. Then there was the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. During the 2000 presidential run up bin Laden and his al Qaida crew attacked the USS Cole (a U.S. Warship) in the Yemeni port of Aden. 17 American sailors were killed, and 39 were injured.

All of these attacks were masterminded by bin Laden and al Qaida yet the U.S. intelligence and criminal agencies were not reading the signs of things to come or ignoring them. We were going about our business as usual more concerned with hanging chads and domestic issues. The signs were there. The United States was in denial.

After the 9/11 attacks President George W. Bush issued orders to send Special Forces into Afghanistan to search for bin Laden with no success. Soon after the U.S. invaded Iraq following faulty intelligence that Sadam Hussein processed weapons of mass destruction. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars were long a bloody giving the U.S. thousands of causalities.

As these wars wound down under the Obama administration a new threat began to surface. This threat came from ISIS (or ISIL). ISIS is a Salafi jihadist extremist militant group and self-proclaimed Islamic state and caliphate, which is led by and mainly composed of Sunni Arabs from Iraq and Syria. They are much more brutal than al Qaida and have no problem killing Muslims who oppose them. Also, ISIS is supported by Iran, the leading sponsor of terrorism in the world.

While the Obama administration forces his deal with Iran on the United States against the will of the majority of Americans ISIS continues its march towards a caliphate through Syria millions of refugees are being created. These refugees are flooding into Europe creating a mass problem. Germany's plan to take in 500,000 Middle East refugees per year is being hailed as humanitarian around the world, but uneasy critics inside the European power fear the huge influx could not only skew the nation’s demographics in a hurry, but could also include terrorists hiding among the war weary masses.

The United States is making plans to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees in the coming budget year, a significant increase from the 1,500 migrants that have been cleared to resettle in the U.S. since civil war broke out in the Middle Eastern country more than four years ago, the White House said Thursday.

There are various explanations for the hundreds of thousands flocking to Europe, but the ultimate responsibility for the crisis is the Western refusal to commit itself to two issues: a solution to the strife and Islamist control of a considerable part of Iraq, and ending the slaughter in the civil war in Syria. That war has so far led to about 250,000 deaths and millions being displaced inside and outside Syria. The whole world is threatened by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS) and the self-styled caliphate that organization has established.

The main problem in the area is the contending Arab and Muslim political and religious groups, yet the refusal of the West, particularly the U.S., to play a role is crucial. In 2003 a major mistake was made, during the Bush administration, by Paul Bremer when he disbanded the Iraqi army and the Baath party in Iraq, leading to unemployment, resentment, and the empowerment of a corrupt and inefficient Shiite minority.

But even more important has been the overly cautious foreign policy of Obama. Somewhat surprisingly, it was Hillary Clinton, after she was secretary of state, who remarked that Obama's phrase "Don't do stupid stuff" is not an organizing principle for foreign policy. It is true that no policy can solve all problems. However, it is now apparent that the initial Obama mistake was the failure to build up or to aid a credible fighting force of those originally opposing the Assad regime in Syria.

Many in the U.S. applauded Obama's refusal to commit ground troops of any kind to the region. Yet the total withdrawal of the Obama administration from Iraq and refusal to render sufficient help to Syria, as well as the refusal of European countries to intervene directly after the Arab Spring, meant losing the opportunity for moderate elements to emerge in the Arab world.

As a result, the countries of the EU had neither the will to participate nor the willingness to secure their borders sufficiently to prevent smuggling of people, some of whom were terrorists, from North Africa and the Middle East. Those countries, except Germany, are today hesitating — partly for economic reasons, but even more for political and security reasons — to absorb the mass of migrants.

Those migrants will exacerbate conditions in and among European countries. First, the migration has caused friction among the European countries because of the difficulty in agreeing on a quota system for claims for asylum. It will put pressure on economic resources as far as welfare and benefits are concerned. It will almost inevitably increase the strength of the anti-immigrant, far-right parties, with unfortunate consequences in both national and global politics.

Moreover, the danger of the migration influx has already become apparent. Media reports have shown migrants in Bulgaria, and some on a train in France, shouting "Allahu Akbar" and obscene language in struggles with police. Migrants in a camp near Milan have resorted to violence, destroying traffic signals and attacking shops in riots over "poor living conditions." The Greek island of Lesbos, six miles from the Turkish shore, has been invaded by thousands and become a war zone, with frequent violence and riots. Mytilene, the main town of Lesbos, has become a public urinal.

Despite media coverage that plasters images of women and children on this centuries-old invasion, it is worthy to note that, per the United Nations, 72% of these “Mediterranean sea arrivals” are single men. (“Mediterranean sea arrivals” being innocuous terminology for Islamic conquest.)

Breitbart also reports: “They are young. They are fit. They clearly know what they want. Yes, there are families. Plenty with young children. But if you stand and take a rough count it is hard not to come to the conclusion that young men are in the overwhelming majority.”

Without a doubt, young Muslim males often pose a special kind of threat. However Muslim women present a risk, as well, because traveling with them and their children is a totalitarian ideology that is incompatible with Western values. And that is the problem.

When many in the West look at photographs of Muslims arriving en masse to the southern shores of Europe they fail to see the hatred that lies in the hearts of many of these imports from Islamic nations – hatred, I might add, for us, our values, and our way of life. Hatred we have seen played out here and across Europe, from creeping Sharia to overt acts of terror and everything in between.

And so, not unexpectedly, this mash up of Muslims from the Middle East and North Africa are causing an outbreak of violence across Europe, along with a hefty dose of entitlement as these conquerors make demands.

The U.S. role cannot be misunderstood. Candidate Barack Obama on July 14, 2008 called for the phased redeployment of combat troops that he had long advocated, which he thought was needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States. He pledged that, if elected president, on his first day in office, he would give the military a new mission: to end the war. On January 21, 2009, his first full day in office, he did as he promised by asking the U.S. military leadership to plan for a responsible military drawdown from Iraq.

U.S. policy must take account of present realities: the threat of Islamic terrorism and militancy, essentially in the case of Iran but more immediately with the Islamic State. ISIS, originally an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq, had been weakened after 2006 but became stronger with the emergence of Baghdadi as leader in 2010 and his merger of the various jihadist groups in 2013. This happened during the Obama administration, which failed to appreciate this development and did little to help destroy the caliphate that IS established. With control over some 80,000 square miles and a population of 10 million, and a fighting force of more than 30,000, ISIS has created a brutal state based on Islamic law and made notorious by its cruelty, public beheadings, full veils for women, and special taxes imposed on non-Muslims.

So on Thursday, September 10, 2015 after Republican leaders spent months colluding with the Democrats, the Washington cartel ensured that our children and grandchildren will live in a world with a nuclear Iran. This is to be Obama’s legacy as bin Laden was Clinton’s legacy and Iraq and Afghanistan is Bush’s legacy. None of these legacies are based on solid intelligence and an understanding of the radical Islamic mind or goals. Iran, under its current leadership (and no doubt its future leadership) will not live up to is agreements. Obama will be gone to Hawaii and his Presidential Library will be full of propaganda but Iran and ISIS will remain for the next man or woman to occupy the White House.

Addressing the Republican’s role in Thursday’s outcome, Mark Levin had this to say:

“And I want Mitch McConnell to know something. You will have blood on your hands for the rest of your life and so will the Republican Party. You have taken a once great party, that stood on principle, that stood against slavery, that stood against segregation, that stood against the Nazis and the fascists, that stood against the communists, led by great men…And you, Mr. McConnell, you’re a quisling. You’re a little man. You’re a no nothing.

And this is on your head. You could have stopped this simply by following the Constitution. You claim to support the Constitution. You don’t support it any more than Barack Obama…You violated the Constitution. You’re no better than him. As a matter of fact, you’re worse than him. We know what he is. And you pretend to be something that you’re not.

The wrath of the nation should fall on your head, Mr. McConnell. And all the fools, all the lemmings who follow you over the cliff in the Republican party in the Senate.

And these fools will be all over TV this evening. They’ll be all over TV tomorrow and over the week-end, lamenting Barack Obama, lamenting what the Senate Democrats did, lamenting how dangerous this all is when they created the circumstances for this.

They have a majority. A majority in the Senate means everything. All they had to do was say this is a treaty in every respect. We’re going to treat it as a treaty…Obama can treat it as a cucumber. He can do whatever he wants. We’re going to treat it as a treaty. And you need 67 out of 100 votes, or 2/3rds of the senators present to get it ratified.

McConnell didn’t want to do it.

McConnell didn’t want to stand up, this man of very few brains; very inarticulate. This is a man who wouldn’t even have an Assistant Managers job at McDonalds. Look how high he’s gone in the Byzantine world of the United States Senate.

And so we now not only have a 9/11, but a 9/10 – when our leaders sold us down the river. Yet again. But this time the stakes are as high as they get.”

Today, as in the past 12 years there are ceremonies for the victims of 9/11. There are museums and memorials. There will be speeches by politicians and bureaucrats and comments by analysts. There will be the laying of wreaths and the playing of taps. Then all will be forgotten until next year when we will do it all over again.

Perhaps many elected officials don’t care about America, their oath of office, or our children. Apparently their allegiance to party and power trump concern for even their own children.

Yes, Mark Levin is right. The wrath of the nation should fall upon them.

Yes, the Past is Prologue.

This Cannot Stand

"There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war." — George Washington, Fifth Annual Message, 1793

In 1802, in response to President Thomas Jefferson's request for authority to deal with the Barbary Pirates, Congress passed "An act for the Protection of Commerce and seamen of the United States against the Tripolitan cruisers", authorizing the President to "employ such of the armed vessels of the United States as may be judged requisite for protecting effectually the commerce and seamen thereof on the Atlantic ocean, the Mediterranean and adjoining seas." The statute authorized American ships to seize vessels belonging to the Bey of Tripoli, with the captured property distributed to those who brought the vessels into port.

On the night of 16 February 1804, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur led a small detachment of U.S. Marines aboard the captured Tripolitan ketch rechristened USS Intrepid, thus deceiving the guards on captured warship Philadelphia to float close enough to board her. Decatur's men stormed the ship and overpowered the Tripolitan sailors. With fire support from the American warships, the Marines set fire to Philadelphia, denying her use by the enemy. British Admiral Horatio Nelson, himself known as a man of action and courage, reportedly called this "the most bold and daring act of the age.” This action is memorialized in the first line of the Marine Hymn; “from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.”

In 1812 when the British Navy began the impressment of hijacked American Merchant seamen forcing them into service aboard British warships President James Madison declared war on Great Britain. The war was a great risk for the fledging Republic, but the United States prevailed and Great Britain never again attacked the United States or its interests.

Both of these actions were bold and necessary for the future of the United States to be respected around the world. As George Washington stated in his 1793 Fifth Annual Message to Congress:

"There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war."

Washington, like Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and Monroe, knew that to survive in the world as an independent republic they had to stand strong against those who would take advantage of this nation. This is not the case today.

On Thursday, July 17, 2014 Ukrainian separatists shot down a Boeing 777 belonging to Malaysian Airlines as it was flying at 33, 000 over eastern Ukraine near the Russian border. Flight MH-17 was shot down with a sophisticated SA-11 surface to air missile launched from a Russian supplied BUK mobile launcher near Torez, an area controlled by pro-Russian rebels. 298 innocent civilians were murdered in this brutal act or terrorism.

According to a report in the Mail Online during a phone call one of the rebels was heard to say ‘holy s***’ when he realized their error in shooting sown a civilian airliner was intercepted by Ukraine’s security services, according to a Ukrainian newspaper.

“Militants nicknamed ‘Major’ and ‘Grek’ were recorded speaking as ‘Major’ inspected the crash site and found only ‘civilian items’.

Also on the line were Igor Bezler, who authorities says is a Russian military intelligence officer and leading commander of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, and a colonel in the main intelligence department of the general headquarters of the armed forces of the Russian Federation, Vasili Geranin.

The unverified transcript was posted online by the Kiev Post newspaper:

Igor Bezler: We have just shot down a plane. Group Minera. It fell down beyond Yenakievo (Donetsk Oblast).

Vasili Geranin: Pilots. Where are the pilots?

IB: Gone to search for and photograph the plane. Its smoking.

VG: How many minutes ago?

IB: About 30 minutes ago.

After examining the site of the plane the terrorists come to the conclusion that they have shot down a civilian plane. The next part of the conversation took place about 40 minutes later.

'Major': These are Chernukhin folks who shot down the plane. From the Chernukhin check point. Those cossacks who are based in Chernukhino.

'Grek': Yes, Major.

'Major': The plane fell apart in the air. In the area of Petropavlovskaya mine. The first '200'. We have found the first '200' - which is code for a civilian.

'Grek': Well, what do you have there?

'Major': In short, it was 100 percent a passenger (civilian) aircraft.

'Grek': Are many people there?

'Major': Holy sh__t! The debris fell right into the yards (of homes).

'Grek': What kind of aircraft?

'Major': I haven’t ascertained this. I haven’t been to the main sight. I am only surveying the scene where the first bodies fell. There are the remains of internal brackets, seats and bodies.

'Grek': Is there anything left of the weapon?

'Major': Absolutely nothing. Civilian items, medicinal stuff, towels, toilet paper.

'Grek': Are there documents?

'Major': Yes, of one Indonesian student. From a university in Thompson.

Militant: Regarding the plane shot down in the area of Snizhne-Torez. It’s a civilian one. Fell down near Grabove. There are lots of corpses of women and children. The Cossacks are out there looking at all this.”

There is little doubt that MH-17 was shot down by Ukrainian rebels using a Russian supplied sophisticated, radar controlled anti-aircraft missile. There is also little doubt that for these rebels to operate this equipment they needed training from the Russian army

The first response to this event by President Obama took place several hours after the reports of the shoot down began to come through from the Ukraine and Malaysia. Obama spoke for about 38 seconds during a break between on his fund raisers and a stop at a burger joint to chuck and jive with the customers there. That was the last heard from the White House until the next day, Friday, July 18^th

On Friday Samantha Power, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations delivered a scathing indictment of Vladimir Putin, the president of the Russian Federation, for his direct involvement in the actions of the Ukrainian rebels in their war against the legitimate, duly elected government of the Ukraine and the shoot down of MH-17. She squarely placed the blame on Putin and his military for only supplying the rebels with advanced military equipment but also supplying “advisors” who no doubt are Russian intelligence FSB operators and former Spetsnaz fighters.

At the same time Power was indicting Putin President Obama was having a press conference where he addressed the shoot down of MH-17 and Israel’s incursion into Gaza to put an end to Hamas’ constant launching of rockets into Israel. In itself this was inappropriate as the two issues are not related and Obama should have focused entirely on MH-17. This made the act of the rebels look more like a afterthought than the act of international terrorism it was.

During his tepid remarks on MH-17 he mentioned Russia and Putin one time. This was in direct contradiction to the remarks of his UN ambassador. He laid out the known facts of the MH-17 shoot down in an almost nonchalant professorial manner calling on the Europeans to take action and mentioning that the Dutch, where MH-17 originated, lost 198 souls. He also mentioned the apathetic sanctions he placed on the Russian Federation earlier in the week. Sanctions of several of Russia’s defense contractors that can be easily evaded by their operating through front companies. At no time did Obama mention any steps we would take to bring the perpetrators of the act of international terrorism to justice or what we could do to ensure that the FBI and NTSB would have access to the crash site.

I can understand Obama’s lack of remarks on Thursday right after reports of the shoot down began to surface. The President should not make statements for which he has no facts on the table although Obama has done that in the past with racial issues and gun violence. Remember his famous remark; “if I had a son he would look like Travon Martin.” Obama has no problems shooting from the hip when it suits his political base, but has a definite aversion to taking a leadership role. He looks to others for that.

President Obama spoke for 38 seconds on Thursday after learning that a Malaysian Air flight had been shot down over Ukraine. In the process, he said in those 38 seconds that a plane falling from the sky “may be a tragedy”.

Conservatives were quick to point out Ronald Reagan’s response to the Korean Air 007 flight in 1983. The shoot down was September 1, 1983. On September 5th, Reagan addressed the nation calling it “a crime against humanity” among other things. Some perspective is important.

Ronald Reagan addressed the nation on the four days after the event. That is being fair to President Obama. But there is more worth considering.

President Reagan may have spoken four days after the event, but what he did on the day of the event is striking compared to Barack Obama. Reagan was in California on vacation with various private events scheduled.

Ronald and Nancy Reagan had gone out to their ranch on August 26th and had intended to stay at least through September 4th. Instead, when he found out, he cancelled all his events and headed back to the White House on the morning of September 2nd. He suspended all campaign and other activity and instead sat in N.S.C. meetings where he decided to rally the world to ban Aeroflot flights and get reparations for victims. In fact, according to his daily calendar, he arrived at the White House at 5:43pm, was in the Oval Office by 5:46pm, and in the Situation Room at 6pm.

More striking, on the day of the attack, once our intelligence confirmed the Soviets had shot down the plane, U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz held a press conference and revealed a great deal of intelligence and intercepts to show conclusively what happened to the plane. We made sure the world knew as quickly as we knew so that the Soviets could not dare attempt a global propaganda campaign. The South Koreans had claimed the Soviets just forced the plane to land. They kept that up for more than five hours. But once the facts were known, we were forceful, thorough, and damning in exposing what had happened.

Reagan sat in N.S.C. meetings the evening of September 2nd and committed the national will to getting our allies on board a plan that included banning Aeroflot flights and demanding reparations.

While this was all going on, the situation in Lebanon and Israel had destabilized and Reagan was juggling meetings on the KA-007 situation and the Middle East situation.

Neither Reagan nor his staff said the downed jetliner “may be” a tragedy, nor did they go out for burgers, fries, or fundraisers. They stayed in the White House, cancelled outside events, examined intelligence, met with allies, consulted with Congress, and then Ronald Reagan addressed the nation on September 5, 1983. When he returned to campaign activity on September 9th, he did it by closed circuit TV instead of traveling for the event. Interestingly enough, he also called for a day of mourning to be scheduled for September 11, 1983.

KA-007 marked a turning point for Reagan. Up until that time he and others had hoped to compromise with the USSR, trusting them to do the right thing for themselves and the world. The incident changed Reagan’s mind.

He concluded the Soviet system was corrupt, malignant, and would ultimately fail. He knew that compromise with Soviet leaders wasn’t possible, and that we had to negotiate from a position of strength to have any chance of success.

Reagan took pen to paper and wrote his own speech to the American people, explaining what the Soviets had done and why it was so dangerous to us and the world.

“…make no mistake about it, this attack was not just against ourselves or the Republic of Korea. This was the Soviet Union against the world and the moral precepts which guide human relations among people everywhere. It was an act of barbarism, born of a society which wantonly disregards individual rights and the value of human life and seeks constantly to expand and dominate other nations.

They deny the deed, but in their conflicting and misleading protestations, the Soviets reveal that, yes, shooting down a plane — even one with hundreds of innocent men, women, children, and babies — is a part of their normal procedure if that plane is in what they claim as their airspace.

They owe the world an apology and an offer to join the rest of the world in working out a system to protect against this ever happening again.”

Reagan followed strong words with even stronger actions. He accelerated work on the Star Wars missile defense system. He urged Congress and the American people to continue the Reagan defense buildup. He shored up our European allies and encouraged them to stand up to the Communists. And he understood that the Soviet economy depended on high oil prices, so he set about to bankrupt them. Six years after the Soviets shot down the Korean airliner, their empire collapsed.

Reagan led. Barack Obama could learn from the last guy from Illinois to sit in the Oval Office.

This is Barack Obama’s chance to make history. Will he seize the moment and reverse course? If so, he will restore defense spending. He will take back all those pink slips he’s just sent to members of the military. He will reinstate the defense missile shield for Poland and the Czech Republic. He will rally our European allies to stand up to Putin. And he will accelerate American energy independence efforts, so that we and our European allies are no longer subject to Russian energy blackmail.

Now is the time of Obama’s testing. Will history make him a great man? Will he rise up to be a great man who makes history? Or will he just play out the clock for his last two years in office, hobnobbing with celebrities, playing golf with moguls, and living the good life?

If so, history will soon move past him, and he will spend the next thirty years as a former president coming in first in polls for the worst president in modern American history.

To follow in the footsteps of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Kennedy, and Reagan here is what Obama should do:

1. Tell the Russians and Ukrainian rebels the United States is sending in our FBI and NTSB to inspect the crash site of MH-17. We have a right under international treaty as the manufacture of the Boeing 777 to do so. He should work with the legitimate Ukrainian government to do so. He should inform the rebels that if they attempt to thwart our investigators we will take the appropriate military action. This will no doubt encourage the Dutch, Germans, Malaysians, and Australians to join us. In this way Obama can lead the international community in getting all of the facts. The Europeans will not take this on their own and Russia and China can prevent any effort by the UN to take any action.
2. Find out who was the commander and trigger man of the SA 11 BUK battery and by any means necessary, including operations by a CIA special action team, to capture and bring the perpetrators to justice — including killing them. We did this with bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists.
3. Restore all cuts in the Military. Obama likes spending money on illegals and welfare. Instead he should take that money and rebuild our military enduring we have the resources and technology to take on any foe.
4. Impose strong sanctions on the Russian oil and gas exports. This will really hurt the Russian economy as over 10% of their economy is dependent on the oil and gas industry. By increasing our oil and gas production and building the XL pipeline the United States along Canada can supply Western Europe with oil and gas.
5. Reinstate the defense missile shield for Poland and the Czech Republic. He will rally our European allies to stand up to Putin. Also Putin will get the message that we will not stand for his outlaw actions.

That’s what a true leader does.

Without Obama’s leadership none of this will happen. Even though the vast majority of souls lost on MH-17 were Dutch, Germans, Malaysians and Australians (including 100 AIDS researchers heading for a conference in Australia) they will do nothing about this act of terrorism. They never have. They are great at pointing fingers at us but do little to protect themselves. They couldn’t in 1938 and without the shield of the United States they would have fallen under the boot of the Soviet Union.

In Dinesh D’Souza’s latest book and the subsequent film “America: Imagine a World without Her” D’Souza explores a world without the United States. Is America a source of pride, as Americans have long held, or shame, as Progressives allege? Beneath an innocent exterior, are our lives complicit in a national project of theft, expropriation, oppression, and murder, or is America still the hope of the world?

New York Times bestselling author Dinesh D'Souza says these questions are no mere academic exercise. It is the Progressive view that is taught in our schools, that is preached by Hollywood, and that shapes the policies of the Obama administration. If America is a force for inequality and injustice in the world, its power deserves to be diminished; if traditional America is based on oppression and theft, then traditional America must be reformed—and the federal government can do the reforming.

In America: Imagine a World without Her D'Souza offers a passionate and sharply reasoned defense of America, knocking down every important accusation made by Progressives against our country.

With all of pimples and blemishes the United States is still the greatest, ablest, and freest nation every to inhabit this planet. It is time for Obama to stand up and led against this act of terrorism and its sponsors.

Oh, and it’s time for Obama to get tough with Mexico and get U.S. Marine Sergeant Andrew Tahmooressi released. I would remind President Obama of U.S. Code, Title 22, Chapter 23, Section 1732. It is entitled, “Release of citizens imprisoned by foreign governments.”

“Whenever it is made known to the President that any citizen of the United States has been unjustly deprived of his liberty by or under the authority of any foreign government, it shall be the duty of the President forthwith to demand of that government the reasons of such imprisonment; and if it appears to be wrongful and in violation of the rights of American citizenship, the President shall forthwith demand the release of such citizen, and if the release so demanded is unreasonably delayed or refused, the President shall use such means, not amounting to acts of war and not otherwise prohibited by law, as he may think necessary and proper to obtain or effectuate the release; and all the facts and proceedings relative thereto shall as soon as practicable be communicated by the President to Congress.”

Apparently he’s been too busy with political fundraisers and vacuous speeches about the “Republican war on women,” economic injustice, and Congressional ineptness. There just hasn’t been time to pick up that famous phone and call Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and I am sure he will soon find MH-17 to be boring and of little interest.

Note: General Anatoly Kornukov, commander of Sokol Air Base who ordered the shoot down of KA-007 (later to become commander of the Russian Air Force), insisted that there was no need to make positive identification of KA-007 as "the intruder" had already flown over the Kamchatka Peninsula. Kornukov received an award from Vladimir Putin in the Grand Kremlin Palace, Moscow (2000).

Obama Fails in Berlin

“There are many people in the world who really don't understand-or say they don't-what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin!” — John F. Kennedy, Berlin, June 26, 1963.

Barack Obama returned to Berlin on Wednesday, almost five years to the day from when he delivered his famous "Victory Column" speech that cemented his reputation as an international rock star. Unfortunately, his reception this time was a lot different.

An estimated 200,000 people turned out in July 2008 to see then Candidate Obama deliver an address in front of one of Germany's most notable landmarks. He took a lot of criticism from Germans for his choice of location and from his U.S. political opponents who weren't happy about seeing an American presidential hopeful being adored by tens of thousands of foreigners. The Berlin event was larger than any of his U.S. campaign stops, though some critics even disputed the crowd figures. (Republicans in the heat of a campaign, obviously found other flaws with the speech.)

Fast forward to 2013, and many are now saying that Obama's reputation is "tarnished," by his recent snooping scandals, his extensions of the war on terror, and the hard luck realities of failing to deliver on all your promises. (Even ones you didn't really make.) He's "demystified" and "no longer a superstar" in German eyes. Now he's just another world leader on a state visit, and whatever problems people have with U.S. policy are on his shoulders.

And instead of opening up the speech to the whole city, Obama spoke in front only about 5,000-6,000 spectators, all of them invited guests.

The White House pool report revealed that only 6,000 will be in attendance for Obama's Berlin speech on Wednesday:

“The stage for the president's speech is set up on the East side of the Brandenburg Gate, in the old East Berlin. The sun is pounding down and there are around 6,000 invited guests according to German authorities. There are bleachers set up either side of the square, with a big two story riser facing the stage which has a row of bullet proof glass and 12 U.S., German and EU flags and the grand backdrop of the Gate. There is a large standing crowd between the bleachers.”

The actual crowd count at the Brandenburg Gate speech was 4,500.

His speech on Wednesday (you can click here for a detailed comparison vs. the 2008 speech) called for a reduction in global nuclear weapons (through more negotiations with Russia) and defended the idea of Western intervention in Syria. Hammering on the theme of "peace with justice," he also discussed closing Guantanamo Bay and taking action on climate change, calling it the "global flood of our time." (Much more on that here.) But it was notably different in tone than 2008's more sweeping view of the world, which was a speech more fitting for a candidate.

Nonetheless, directly out of the Brandenburg gate, the president commenced with injecting race and gender into the conversation when he said "Angela and I don't exactly look like previous German and American leaders." Obama then informed the audience, consigned by invitation to stand in the blistering heat listening to his blather, that Michelle, Malia, and Sasha, rather than endure his grueling speech, chose instead to experience the "beauty and the history of Berlin" (at American taxpayers' expense).

But probably the most amazing aspect of Obama's Berlin speech was his typical lack of self-awareness when making assertions that conflict with everything he does. For instance, although President Obama is actively persecuting the "unoriginated birthright of man," he quoted German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who said "freedom is the 'unoriginated birthright of man, and it belongs to him by force of his humanity.'"

Obama even posed questions Americans ask about him:

“Will we live free or in chains? Under governments that uphold our universal rights, or regimes that suppress them? In open societies that respect the sanctity of the individual and our free will, or in closed societies that suffocate the soul?”

In Berlin, Obama attempted to one-up Ronald Reagan's "Peace through Strength" strategy by stealing John F. Kennedy's "Peace with Justice" mantra and scheduled the revision to take place at Brandenburg Gate, where his social justice spiel paled in comparison to authentic Reagan strength.

The president's references were pitiful attempts to support the liberal dream of a daisy-holding, Kumbaya-singing utopia that the human condition prevents.

Ignoring nations stoking the nuclear flames, President "Ich bin ein Dumbkopf" cited JFK's famous 1963 "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech when suggesting that Germans "lift their eyes beyond the dangers of today to the day of peace with justice." Caught up in the rapture of the moment, Obama apparently missed the contradiction in mentioning Kennedy's assassination five months after he promoted "peace with justice."

Speaking of contradictions, Mr. Obama shared that Kennedy's words are "timeless because they call upon us to care more about things than just our own self-comfort." This from a president who's about to embark on a $100 million African vacation, toting along a wife whose "self-comfort" demands recently included bunking in a $3,300-a-night Princess Grace suite in Ireland.

President Obama has been facing increasing scrutiny both at home and abroad as scandal after scandal rocks the administration. From Ireland the president went to Germany to talk about the dangers of global number of nuclear weapons, climate change and his views on social justice.

After encouraging youthful unemployed Germans to relinquish self-comfort, citizen of the world Obama shifted to "For we are not only citizens of America or Germany — we are also citizens of the world. And our fates and fortunes are linked like never before." That is, unless linking "fates and fortunes" means sharing a $3,300-a-night hotel room with Michelle Obama.

Never mentioning pressure cookers, hijacked airplanes, banana hammock bombers, or wild-eyed Muslims gunning down American soldiers, and after riding around in an armored limo and building a mysterious underground bunker beneath the White House, Obama proclaimed, "We may no longer live in fear of global annihilation, but so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe."

President Obama also seemed to imply that food stamps and unemployment checks may be the answer to the threat of worldwide terrorism, which he claimed results from the "agony of an empty stomach or the anguish of unemployment."

Then, after dissing Catholic education in Ireland, Obama dredged up sins that penitent nations have already remediated when he unnecessarily brought up intolerance and abuses "based on race, or religion, gender or sexual orientation."

Obama then advanced a concept that he doesn't apply to Christians or American conservatives, which is that "When we stand up for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters and treat their love and their rights equally under the law, we defend our own liberty as well."

That's when the "Peace with justice" rant began. Obama cited free enterprise and freedom, neither of which he's a huge fan of. From there, he segued into environmentalism, closing Guantanamo, ending the Afghan war, controlling the drones he has surveilling U.S. airspace, undermining the Constitution and calling it "balancing the pursuit of security with the protection of privacy," and meeting moral obligations that have nothing to do with morality.

Funny, Obama proves he's vulnerable to nuclear self-destruction whenever the Teleprompter is unavailable. Yet, he imagines peace can only be realized through sending a message to America's enemies that in a nuclear-aggressive environment the most powerful nation in the world is voluntarily reducing the number of its nuclear warheads.

Not to worry though; Barack quoted James Madison and then claimed that he too is moving "beyond a mindset of perpetual war." The president cited a 2016 'secure nuclear materials' summit, which despite the growing threat of international terrorism, Obama believes is a "step" toward "creating a world of peace with justice."

The problem is that the guy who said "Threats to freedom don't merely come from the outside. They can emerge from within" is the one threatening America's freedom, and the perpetual warfare he speaks of is not America's doing.

Appearing on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports on Wednesday, NBC's chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd came up with a long list of excuses for President Obama's poor speech performance in Berlin: "I want to give you a little context here there was an attempt to shrink the crowd size. Maybe they would have gotten 25, 30, 40,000 people. President Obama feeds off a crowd very well."

Todd then grasped at other reasons for the lackluster event: ".you had that very distracting glass and you could just see that the President himself wasn't feeding off of the crowd. And I think look, part of it, it was hot. Those folks were out there for two and a half hours it can sap your energy a little bit. And I just wonder if that added a little bit to this."

Barack Obama ended with a Martin Luther King Jr. quote crescendo:

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

In the end, so too does "loss of freedom in America threaten freedom everywhere." That loss is precisely why, both in Germany and here at home, free people must grasp the potentially harmful impact the 'peace-loving' guy riding around in a million dollar armored vehicle and standing behind eight inches of bulletproof glass seeks to impose on the Western world.

Is It Just A Shopping Center?

“Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.” — John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law — 1765

Hundreds of Turkish riot police backed by armored vehicles stormed Istanbul's Taksim Square just after dawn today clashing with protesters. Police fired tear gas and water cannons, and groups of protesters threw stones and petrol bombs. Just hours afterward, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for demonstrators in the adjoining Gezi Park, where demonstrations first began about a week and a half ago, to disperse. Governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu said police were working to clear "marginal groups" from Takism Square, but the government was not planning to intervene against peaceful and sensible demonstrators in Gezi Park. The move to clear Taksim came a day after Erdogan agreed to meet with protest leaders. The meeting is expected on Wednesday. Meanwhile, in possibly increasing tensions between the Islamist-backed ruling party and secular Turks, President Abdullah Gül approved a bill Monday tightening restrictions on the sale and consumption of alcohol. (Click on pictures for larger image(

According to the Wall Street Journal:

“Hundreds of Turkish riot police backed by armored vehicles stormed Istanbul's Taksim Square just after dawn on Tuesday clashing with protesters. Police fired tear gas and water cannons, and groups of protesters threw stones and petrol bombs. Just hours afterward, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for demonstrators in the adjoining Gezi Park, where demonstrations first began about a week and a half ago, to disperse. Governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu said police were working to clear "marginal groups" from Takism Square, but the government was not planning to intervene against peaceful and sensible demonstrators in Gezi Park.

As clashes began to break out and scenes from the square broadcast live on television, Turkey's currency sank to fresh 2011 lows, prompting the central bank to intervene to stabilize the lira.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered a robust defense of the police incursion, saying that the protests were illegal and being spurred on by radical groups and shadowy foreign elements.

"This is an illegal uprising but some are trying to mask it," Mr. Erdogan said in Ankara. Delegates at the party headquarters chanted, "Turkey is proud of you," in a stronger sign of the polarization between party supporters and the demonstrators around Taksim.

"These protests were used on purpose and on a systematic basis. There is a huge game they want to play on Turkey," the prime minister said, telling his party base that democracy was thriving in the country in a way unimaginable a decade ago, when his party swept to power.

Mr. Erdogan spoke shortly after Istanbul Governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu convened a news conference to draw a distinction between violent protesters at Taksim who the government says are damaging the country's image, and peaceful demonstrators at the adjacent Gezi Park, a patch of grassland that activists are trying to save from a government rebuilding project. Protests there spawned wider demonstrations.”

…

"We have been waiting for this to happen," said protester Ugur Hacan, a 24-year-old artistic director for TV series and movies, who was sleeping at the park with friends when police entered the square.

"As long as the police don't interfere with Gezi Park, the protests will continue. I believe more people might come after this action," Mr. Hacan said. He and three other friends at the park said police didn't confront the protesters directly.

Taksim Square subway was still functioning on Tuesday, and some commuters emerging from the metro were caught in the melee. "We need to talk rather than fight each other. I hope this can be resolved quickly," said Can Ozdemir, a hotel waiter, as his eyes streamed from the tear gas.

Speaking after a weekly cabinet meeting in Ankara Monday, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said Mr. Erdogan would meet some demonstration representatives Wednesday and others at another time, without providing additional details.”

Fox News reported today that bulldozers were taking down the protester’s barricades in Istanbul as riot police clashed with demonstrators:

”Riot police firing tear gas and water cannons re-entered Istanbul's Taksim Square on Tuesday night after defiant protesters swarmed back in by the thousands.

It was the latest sign that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government may have run out of patience after 12 days of unrest in Turkey's largest city and beyond. Earlier in the day, he accused the protesters of sullying Turkey's image, raising the possibility that he had ordered police to show no restraint in clearing Taksim Square.

In the chaos of a confrontation that began about 8:45 p.m., several fires burned in the square and protesters exploded fireworks, threw stones and waved banners.

As a phalanx of helmeted officers moved forward, water cannons doused a man in a wheelchair carrying a Turkish flag. Plainclothes officers in gas masks yanked down banners.

For the police, the marching orders appeared to be: fire tear gas, advance, spray water cannons and peel back. Then, after the tear gas dissipated in the wind, the protesters again stepped into the void -- clanging fences, shooting fireworks, and erecting makeshift barricades.

At one point, they set alight a huge bonfire in the middle of the square.

Several people were being placed into ambulances during the clashes, which have trained an international spotlight on Turkey's democracy.

The protests have swelled from a peaceful demonstration first aimed to stop developers from cutting down trees in a park into nationwide disturbances.

Earlier Tuesday, many of the protesters in Istanbul had fled into the adjacent Gezi Park, where hundreds have been camping out to stop developers from cutting down trees in the park. As police moved in, bulldozers began demolishing the barricades and the makeshift shelters.

At the same time, Erdogan made it clear in Ankara, the capital, that he had come to the end of his patience with the protesters.

"To those who are at Taksim and elsewhere taking part in the demonstrations with sincere feelings, I call on you to leave those places and to end these incidents, and I send you my love. But for those who want to continue with the incidents I say: `It's over.' As of now we have no tolerance for them," Erdogan said.

"Not only will we end the actions, we will be at the necks of the provocateurs and terrorists, and no one will get away with it," he added.

The unrest -- which has spread to 78 cities across Turkey -- has been inspired in part by what some see as Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian style of governing and his perceived attempts to impose a religious and conservative lifestyle in a country with secular laws.”

The protests that have been convulsing the center of Istanbul and other Turkish cities over the last several days are more than the comeuppance of its intolerably high-handed prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Both the diversity of the protesters and the nature of their grievances show that Turkey has become a much more liberal society over the decade the ruling AK Party (AKP) has been in power. Turkey has a democracy — now protestors are demanding a liberal democracy.

Turkey has witnessed big demonstrations before, of course but they've always been staged by a single group, defined by either ethnicity or ideology. This is the first time that people from all walks of life have joined forces to constrain the power of their country's leaders.

Whit Mason writes in Foreign Policy Magazine:

“The changes occurring in Turkey are evident in its new, up-and-coming middle class, whose members have formed the core of the protest movement. A friend of mine -- let's call him Mehmet -- works near Istanbul's Taksim Square, the center of the demonstrations. Mehmet had always been a pretty typical yuppie, more interested in wine-tasting than politics. But since the demonstrations erupted, he has been consumed by them and vows to carry on until Erdogan backs down. Another friend, who teaches at a private college in the coastal city of Izmir, says his best students, all from conservative, prosperous families, were exhausted from their nightly clashes with police. He tells me that taxi drivers and shopkeepers who hail from the Black Sea, like Erdogan's family, have told him they voted for the AKP but have been turned into the party's enemies by the brutality of the police and the prime minister's contemptuous rhetoric.”

Those who have opposed the AKP since it won power in 2000 have always believed that Erdogan and his cohorts are thinly disguised Islamists, intent on using the mechanisms of democracy to impose their values on the rest of the country. Their fears have been bolstered in recent days, as the government has seemingly tried to force them to conform to its religiously inspired conservatism — most notably through a new raft of laws regulating alcohol. However, the problem with the AKP has never been that it's Islamist -- but that, much like every other party that's ruled Turkey, it's illiberal.

Erdogan has become a caricature of this illiberal style. He has opined that if people want to drink, they should drink ayran, a traditional yogurt drink. He has spoken about building a canal through Istanbul to replace the Bosporus Strait as a shipping channel, which even he describes as his "crazy project," as if only to underscore that no scheme is beyond his power. According to my daughter-in-law who is Turkish and watches Turkish TV more ominously, a record number of journalists and military officers have been imprisoned under his watch. He has blamed the current protests on drunks, extremists, and foreign agents. Such behavior has helped the protesters to clarify what it is they actually want — which is for the power conferred by Erdogan's undeniable electoral mandate to be constrained, as it would be in a liberal democracy.

Turkish governments have always been happy to dictate how to behave in areas that liberal political cultures would regard as off-limits to state intrusion. The state's predilection for intruding into people's private affairs reflects the illiberalism of the wider society. Despite pockets of social liberty, until recently Turkey has remained what political anthropologists have called a "segmentary" society — individuals are expected to rigidly conform to the mores of their group, while other members of the group are happy to intrude into others' lives to enforce those norms.

When I first began working in Turkey in 1995, manifestations of this group-oriented conformism were ubiquitous. Though the state has licensed the production of alcoholic drinks since the founding of the Republic, 83 percent of all Turks today are still teetotalers — a vivid measure of Turkey's cultural distance from Europe. Before the economic growth of the past decade, both credit to buy an apartment or launch a business were in short supply. For almost all Turks, the only way to get access to either was through family connections or by supporting a powerful political party. This fact of life required people to go to extraordinary lengths to avoid offending their prospective patrons.

From my experience, many Turks manage inevitable differences of opinion with their elders through what might politely be termed prevarication. This tendency, beginning in childhood, has long retarded the competition of ideas at the heart of liberal political cultures.

The cumulative effect of such conflict avoidance is that many Turks have not experienced the constructive potential of conflict that plays out within civil bounds. In Turkey's political life, the lack of experience with constructive, civil conflict takes a number of reactionary forms: Party leaders assume a paternalistic posture toward their supporters, who reciprocate with a loyalty that survives even humiliating electoral defeats. Turks have traditionally displayed an easy tolerance of state restrictions on civil liberties, and share their leaders' inability to consider political compromise or admit misdeeds, such as the Armenian genocide.

Most of the people I was associated while working in turkey were of that government class — including my daughter-in-law. They drank alcohol and dressed in western garb. They had disdain for those walking about in traditional Islamic dress. In fact a close friend of my daughter-in-law visited the United States in February. When we had them over for dinner they drank wine, beer and the Kagan, the husband, drank a fair amount of bourbon. In fact when he returned to Turkey he had a bottle of Jack Daniels and Makers Mark in his suitcase. It should be pointed out that he is a mid-level government bureaucrat involved with privatization.

My son, Kagan, and I sat around the fire pit drinking and smoking cigars while we talked about our Constitution — something he was extremely interested in. He asked many questions about our Founding Fathers and how the Constitution was developed and how it worked for our system of self-governance.

When I was working in Turkey I was involved with two United States Trade and Development grants to prepare feasibility studies for the implementation of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in the City of Bursa and the Southeast Anatolia Project (Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi, GAP). The GAP’s headquarters, were we worked out of, were in Ankara. I found Ankara to much more liberal than Istanbul. The Turkish team I worked with was all western in nature and university educated. They had one thing in common — they were dedicated to the secular society established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — considered the father of the modern Turkish state. It should be noted that every government office and most homes — including my son’s in the United States has a portrait of Atatürk hanging on the wall.

During my tenure in Turkey I worked under two Prime Ministers — Tansu Çiller and Mesut Yılmaz. Çiller was educated in the United States while Yilmaz at the University of Ankara, but both spoke perfect English with an American accent. They were both dedicated to the development of Turkey into a power in the region and to the betterment of the population through public works such as the GAP for the farmers and growers in the southeast along with roads, water projects and bridges. They also had the full support of the military.

It was not until 2003 and our invasion of Iraq that relations between the United States and Turkey began to sour. We wanted to move military units across Turkey by rail to the Kurdish territories boarding Iraq on the north. The Turkish Military supported our request but the parliament responding to protests nixed the deal.

In 2003 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan became the Prime Minister and things began changing in Turkey. The former mayor of Istanbul and a devote Sunni Muslim Erdoğan began to institute a more Islamic form of rule. A member of the Justice and Development Party (AKP in Turkish) Founded in 2001 by members of a number of existing parties, the party won a landslide victory in the 2002 election, winning over two-thirds of parliamentary seats. Abdullah Gül became Prime Minister, but a constitutional amendment in 2003 allowed Erdoğan to take his place. In early general elections in 2007, the AKP increased its share of the vote to 47%; its number of seats fell to 341, but Erdoğan was returned as PM, while Gül was elected President. In the general elections held on June 12, 2011, the AKP further increased its share of the popular vote to 49.8% and secured 327 parliamentary seats to form a third-consecutive majority government.

Erdogan has been widely considered to be one of the most influential Turkish leaders of the Republican era since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Under his premiership, the country continued to grow economically and consolidate its position as a regional power with global ambitions. His foreign policy vision is claimed to rest on Neo-Ottomanism, the policy according to which, Turkey should maintain and increase its presence in the lands formerly ruled by the Ottoman Empire.

Turks like Kagan expect to be treated with respect — and that includes being consulted on matters that directly affect their daily lives. Such consultation has been entirely absent from the project to bulldoze Gezi Park outside Mehmet's office, and replace it with a faux-Ottoman shopping mall.

President Abdullah Gül — a gentler, more sophisticated man than Erdogan and the obvious alternative to lead the AKP — has said the government needs to listen to the people. "The message has been taken," Gül told the protesters, in a statement imploring them to return home. "Democracy is not only about the ballot box."

This is a hopeful moment for Turkey. All Turks have been raised to revere the father of the nation, Ataturk, who set Turkey on the path toward becoming a European-style state. Ataturk died in 1938 having made revolutionary changes to Turkish political life, but without having created a liberal political culture. A leader who manages to use the current crisis to help Turkey embrace the constraints on state power at the heart of liberalism would earn himself a place in the country's remarkably sparse pantheon of political heroes.

But if the events now taking place in Turkey come to be regarded as a landmark in its evolution as a liberal European society, as may well happen, their hero will not be a great leader but the thousands of Turks, Kagan, who refuse to be dictated to by anyone.

Turkey has a very young population. As of 2010, the population of Turkey was estimated to be 73.7 million with a growth rate of 1.21% per annum (2009 figure). The population is relatively young with 25.9% falling in the 0-14 age bracket. The 15-64 bracket consists of 67.8%. While this is good news for their social welfare programs it presents problems for the politicians with such a large percentage under 14-years old. These kids are coming of age in a world dominated by social media and TV. They are becoming aware of the world around them and this world will influence their thinking in the future —.especially women.

Obama Does It Again

"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind." — Thomas Jefferson

Yesterday President Obama rewarded the incompetence and radical bias of his political friends by appointing Susan Rice as National Security Advisor and Samantha Power as Ambassador to the United Nations.

Let’s look at Samantha Power first.

The woman charged with the protection of global human rights for the White House for the last four years was promoted Tuesday to represent the United States at the United Nations.

Despite leading an embarrassing policy of inaction — during which 80,000 plus Syrians were killed by violence created by their own government, thousands of Sudanese were ethnically-cleansed in Darfur, and hundreds of thousands were murdered and displaced in the Congo — President Obama announced Tuesday that he has selected Samantha Power, an academic and 2008 Obama presidential campaign aide, as his next nominee to represent the United States as ambassador to the United Nations.

Power, a former Harvard professor known for lecturing U.S. government officials to do more to stop international violence, ran the White House’s Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights until March of 2013. She was also appointed in April 2012 by the president to chair a newly-formed Atrocities Prevention Board. Power’s book “A Problem from Hell, America and the Age of Genocide” even won a Pulitzer Prize.

Power has spent most of her career advocating for increased U.S. government involvement to stop rights abuses around the world.

Her appointment to run the White House office for human rights was loudly trumpeted as a coup for the NGO community: The woman whose career skyrocketed by lecturing President Bush on his inaction in Sudan was now in charge of the U.S. government’s response to future crises.

However, it didn’t take long before Power’s decades of big talk was put to the test.

In a position of power and proximity to the president of the United States, from which she could meaningfully act against any unfolding injustice, Power was largely silent and completely ineffective.

In a position of power and proximity to the president of the United States, from which she could meaningfully act against any unfolding injustice, Power was largely silent and completely ineffective.

The NGO community was left wondering which Samantha Power was getting to speak inside the Oval Office.

Prior to entering government, Power was a loud supporter of the international concept “Responsibility to Protect (R2P)”, a U.N. supported term that pressures those in power to protect the vulnerable during war, crisis and poor governing.

In fact, it’s not an over-statement to say her career was built on the idea that the government should act more and talk less.

But from inside government while sitting comfortably ensconced at the White House’s National Security Council, she was one of the most disappointing leaders to the R2P activists.

Before entering government, Power consistently espoused her strong R2P views.

In August 2004, while happily perched at Harvard, Power wrote a lengthy piece for the New Yorker on the issue of Sudan where she lamented the slowness of the Bush administration to confront the killing of tens of thousands of Sudanese, questioned President Bush’s motives for confronting the killings, and criticized him for not getting other countries to help. Power opined:

“Neither President Bush nor Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, spoke publicly about the killings in Darfur before March of this year, by which time some thirty thousand people had died as a result of ethnic cleansing.”

Even when giving President Bush credit for later dealing with the issue, Power cynically questioned his reasons. She said, “The stage was set: Bush would delight his Christian constituency; U.S. businesses would gain access to Sudan’s oil; and Sudanese civilians would stop dying.”

Yet once Power finally achieved a position of actual authority, she continuously failed to act or even forcefully speak out in favor of U.S. government action.

She espoused little to no support of Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution when Iranian students and others took to the streets to protest the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

She sat silent during the crucial moments when the Syrian crisis first started and has remained absent for two years as 80,000 plus Syrians have been killed.

And despite years of fierce rhetoric against Bush for inaction in Darfur, she has become mute as genocide continues to ravage the region.

An academic with zero real-world diplomatic experience, her biting words ring hollow from inside the White House.

Elizabeth Blackney, an NGO activist on human trafficking said, “For Samantha Power to be promoted is disturbing. She shed her record as an anti-genocide, human rights advocate for political power and affiliation. She became the bystander, the "person sitting in an office" implementing a bad policy that ensured greater suffering."

Sending Power to the United Nations sends the message that President Obama doesn’t care as much about actually helping the world’s vulnerable as he does about loyalty and academic prestige.

Sadly, the U.S. may be represented at the U.N. by someone who has no multilateral diplomatic experience outside of one-hour classroom exercises.

Power’s record at the NSC proves academic success means little in the real world, but all-too-much to the president of the United States.

While not being very effective as a human rights advocate and more of an Obama political operative Power has a history of controversial comments that could haunt her in confirmation — including likening U.S. foreign policies to those of the Nazis.

In a March 2003 New Republic magazine essay, Samantha Power wrote that American foreign policy needs a "historical reckoning" which would entail "opening the files" and "acknowledging the force of a mantra we have spent the last decade promoting in Guatemala, South Africa, and Yugoslavia."

She continued: “Instituting a doctrine of the mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors. When (German Chancellor Willy) Brandt went down on one knee in the Warsaw ghetto, his gesture was gratifying to World War II survivors, but it was also ennobling and cathartic for Germany. Would such an approach be futile for the United States?"

Republicans in the Senate, which must approve Power for the diplomatic post, could press her during her confirmation hearing on a number of other topics, including comments she's made on Libya and Israel. If confirmed, Power would take over for Susan Rice, whom Obama appointed as his new national security adviser. Rice, unlike Power, will not face a confirmation hearing

Power, aside from being a well-known foreign policy expert, is also married to Obama's former regulatory "czar" Cass Sunstein.

Asked Wednesday if the White House is girding for a contentious confirmation, Press Secretary Jay Carney said, “We would not expect one.”

He lauded Power’s “remarkable career” as a journalist and foreign policy adviser, as well as her “passion” for issues like shedding light on genocide.

But others say her views on the Middle East spark concerns about her position on Israel. She once suggested the possibility of military intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

During a 2002 interview with Harry Kreisler, host of Conversations with History, a program produced by the University of California Berkeley Institute of International Studies, Power said America needs “a willingness to actually put something on the line in sort of helping the situation."

“Not of the old, you know, Srebrenica kind or the Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence, because it seems to me at this stage — and this is true of actual genocides as well and not just, you know, major human rights abuses, which we're seeing there. But — is that you have to go in as if you're serious, you have to put something on the line,” she said.

Power, a Pulitzer Prize winner, Harvard Law School graduate and Harvard professor, created a public ripple during the 2008 Democratic primary race when she was quoted in a foreign newspaper calling then-candidate Hillary Clinton names.

"She is a monster, too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything," Power told The Scotsman, which published her comment.

"But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive," she added.

Power resigned from Obama’s campaign following her comments.

Power, a human rights expert and former White House adviser, left the White House earlier this year, though she was considered the president’s likely pick to move to the U.N. She has long been connected to Obama. And if you’ll recall, she has had her fair share of controversy, specifically after she was forced to resign from the president’s 2008 campaign following negative remarks she made about Hillary Clinton.

Power’s comments though didn’t lead to completely severed ties to Obama, as she was soon back in the fold. So, too, was her husband — she is the wife of former regulatory czar Cass Sunstein. As early as 2011, TheBlaze covered expectations that Power could possible secure greater power, specifically if the president was elected to a second term. Her U.N. appointment appears to solidify these expectations.

In the past, Irish Central called her one of the main architects of the Obama administration’s policies in Libya, noting her influence over the White House. And Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a 2011 New York Times profile that “She is clearly the foremost voice for human rights within the White House and she has Obama’s ear.”

Bloomberg has more about her Libya involvement as well:

“She played a role, along with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and other NSC advisers, in convincing Obama to push for a UN Security Council resolution to authorize a coalition military force to protect Libyan civilians. Other administration figures were concerned about the effectiveness of a no-fly zone and differences within NATO over what Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned would be a “big operation.” [...]

Power, who sought the limelight as a writer and public intellectual, has learned to be a behind-the-scenes policymaker over the past two years, associates say.”

Eventually, she repaired relations with Clinton. That said, she’s still widely seen as a problem by conservatives who oppose her ideals. After all, it wasn’t only her comments about the former Democratic presidential candidate that has caught the ire of critics; her foreign policy, too, is seen by some as problematic.

Power has a complicated history with the Obama camp and has also been accused, in the past, of making disparaging remarks about Israel.

In March 2011, Glenn Beck covered Power on his radio show and a subsequent article on GlennBeck.com recapped the host’s stance:

“For anyone who thinks that Samantha Power is just some low level cog in the Washington machine, the New York Times just did a nice profile on her role in the current administration. It turns out that Mrs. Cass Sunstein is probably the most dangerous woman in America, after all.

“Samantha Power took the podium sounding hoarse and looking uncomfortable. In two hours, President Obama would address the nation on Libya and Miss Power, the fiery human rights crusader‑‑ they shouldn’t use the word crusader in this instance, should they? The human rights crusader who advises Mr. Obama on foreign policy did not want to go out in front of the boss,” Glenn said, adding some of his own commentary to the article he was reading from.

“I’m not going to talk much about Libya, she began, but when it came for her question, she count help herself. Our best judgment, she said, defending the decision to establish a no‑fly zone was the failure to do so would have been extremely chilling, deadly and, indeed, a stain on our collective conscience,” Glenn continued.

“Now from her perch on the national Security Council, she is in a position to make the case for the commander in chief and to watch him translate her ideas into action. She’s clearly the foremost voice for human rights with in the White House, says Kenneth Ross. She has Obama’s ear. The Irish‑born Miss Power, 40, functions as kind of an institutional memory bank on genocide,” he continued.

“So we have Cass Sunstein’s wife advising on the Responsibility to Protect,” Glenn said “If you’re in the circle of George Soros, she was a queen. George Soros immediately funded a group to push the Responsibility to Protect.”

“[UN official Richard Falk] has been pushing for the right to protect or the Responsibility to Protect to be used against Israel and they’ve been trying this now for the last couple of years, and that’s what this is really all about, period. This is about going after Israel,” Glenn said.”

Last year, The Chicago Sun-Times provided information about Power and her involvement in Obama’s Atrocities Prevention Board, an effort to prevent future genocide (i.e. the doctrine of a “Responsibility to Protect”) and other horrific occurrences:

“Samantha Power — who won a Pulitzer Prize for her book on genocide and now advises the Obama administration on the subject–will chair President Barack Obama’s new Atrocities Prevention Board, which gets down to work Monday as Obama delivers a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. [...]

The Obama White House efforts to address genocide is headed by Samantha Power, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. Power won a Pulitzer Prize for her book, “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide” and worked briefly for Obama when he was a U.S. senator from Illinois.”

But that has largely been seen as an interventionist policy — something many Republicans and Democrats shy away from.

Considering her past comments about Israel and her perceived stance on the Middle Eastern country, it’s likely that her appointment will be contentious, drawing particular frustration from conservatives and those who believe that her policy stances will be damaging to the current Middle Eastern scenario.

Past comments do little to temper these fears. In her 2002 interview with Harry Kreisler, the director of the Institute for International Studies at Berkeley Kreisler asked her the following:

“Let me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the following: without addressing the Palestine – Israel problem, let’s say you were an advisor to the President of the United States, how would you respond to current events there? Would you advise him to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, at least if one party or another starts looking like they might be moving toward genocide?”

Power’s response, in the eyes of those who support Israel, was problematic, as she claimed support for “external intervention” in the Israeli-Palestinian dilemma and said that it’s important to consider the “lesser evils” associated with getting involved in alleviating the issue.

She also, at one point in her commentary, claimed that Middle Eastern leaders — including Israel, it seems — are “destroying the lives of their own people.” Here is a portion of her response:

“What we need is a willingness to actually put something on the line…and putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import. It may more crucially mean…investing literally billions of dollars not in servicing Israeli military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine.

In investing billions of dollars it would probably take also to support, I think, what would to be, I think, a mammoth protection force…a meaningful military presence because it seems to me at this stage — and this is true of actual genocides as well and not just major human rights abuses which we’re seeing there — but is that you have to go in as if you’re serious. You have to put something on the line and unfortunately the position of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful, it’s a terrible thing to do, its fundamentally undemocratic.

But sadly, you know — we don’t just have a democracy here either — we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide, you know, our policy, or that are meant to, anyway. And there, it’s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to people who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people, and by that I mean what Tom Friedman has called “Sharafat.” I mean, I do think in that sense, there’s — that both political leaders have been dreadfully irresponsible, and unfortunately, it does require external intervention which, very much like the Rwanda scenario — that thought experiment, of ‘if we had intervened early’ — any intervention is going to come under fierce criticism, but we have to think about lesser evils, especially when the human stakes are just becoming ever more pronounced.”

DiscoverTheNetworks.org also makes some fascinating claims about some of Power’s other most recent statements. Here’s just a sampling:

In her 2004 review of Noam Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival, Power agreed with many of Chomsky’s criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and expressed her own concerns about what she called the “sins of our allies in the war on terror,” lumping Israel together with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Russia, and Uzbekistan. She called Chomsky’s work “sobering and instructive.”

In 2005–06, Power worked as a foreign policy fellow in the office of U.S. Senator Barack Obama. In this role, she helped to spark and inform Obama’s interest in the deadly ethnic and tribal conflict of Darfur, Sudan.

In a 2007 interview, reported in FrontPage Magazine, Power said that America’s relationship with Israel “has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics.” The United States, she explained, had brought terrorist attacks upon itself by aping Israel’s violations of human rights.

Naturally, many will still wonder if her views surrounding Israel and the Middle East will impact how she manages her position at the U.N — and, more specifically — her treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Now for the tarnished Susan Rice.

Much is known about Susan Rice since her disgraceful appearance on five Sunday talk shows immediately following the attract on our consulate in Benghazi where she followed the fictitious party line of blaming a YouTube video for the murder of our Ambassador and three others.

It is worth considering the reason Obama appointed Rice for the position of National Security Advisor — a position not requiring Senate confirmation.

In an op-ed piece on Fox News.com by K.T. McFarland, who served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs under President Ronald Reagan from 1982 to 1985:

“Tuesday morning my reaction was why appoint Susan Rice as national security adviser? She will be a DISASTER.

Here's why: I spent seven years working for the most successful NSC adviser in history, Henry Kissinger.

I watched him conceive new policies, negotiate with foreign leaders, ride herd over the bureaucracy, massage the press and foreign policy intelligentsia and work behind the scenes with congressional leaders.

Susan Rice can’t do any of those things.

She has zero credibility with the media, on Capitol Hill, with the foreign policy community and foreign leaders, and is so badly tarnished by the Benghazi scandal that she walks into the job on Day One weak and wounded.

The most obvious problem is her disastrous performance on the Sunday talk shows peddling the administration’s fairy tale on Benghazi; when she was either complicit in the cover-up or incompetent.

Either she knew what really happened and deliberately lied to the American people or she was a mere actress who read the script she was given and didn’t know enough to question whether the words she spoke were accurate.

Rice might have been able to overcome the Benghazi debacle if she had other strong credentials, for example being a senior military officer like Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft, or a respected academic like Henry Kissinger and Zbig Brzezinski. But Susan Rice is none of these.

When the spotlight was on her at the U.N. she was an ineffective ambassador who couldn't get Russia or China on board to deal with Syria or impose strict sanctions against Iran.

Not only did she fail to persuade those key members of the Security Council, she didn't know it until after the votes on sanctions were taken!

Benghazi was supposed to be her audition for the Secretary of State job -- go on all the Sunday talk shows and be the Obama administration’s primary spokesman.

She was so eager for the try out that she didn't stop and ask why they wanted her. The decision to send someone from the administration to appear on all five talk shows is a decision made at the highest levels of the White House.

It should have been the Secretary of State, or maybe Secretary of Defense, or CIA chief, or NSC Adviser or White House Chief of Staff – they were part of the decision process.

Susan Rice was the one senior administration official who knew nothing about events leading up to Benghazi and the attack itself, yet the White House asked her to go on those shows?

Alarm bells should have gone off in her head!

I checked their schedules and most of the other senior officials were in Washington and available that morning. It’s just that they were smarter than Rice and realized it was a poisoned chalice.

So what is Obama thinking with the Rice appointment? He’s doubling down and circling the wagons. He's rewarding Rice for being a loyal (if incompetent) soldier. He is hanging tough on the scandals and claiming that he knew nothing about them until he read about them in the papers.

On the other hand, maybe Obama's appointment of Rice is smarter than it looks on the surface.

By appointing Rice to the NSC job the president can invoke executive privilege and claim she doesn’t have to testify on Capitol Hill. And even if she does talk about Benghazi, at some point, she will certainly be a loyal soldier if she is now sitting just steps from the Oval Office.

But despite what the president might want the Benghazi isn't over, not by a long shot.”

The Obama administration is all about failing. If you have lied to the American people, overseen policies that resulted in the deaths of American citizens, created other policies that have undermined American law and interests, screwed up royally, and covered up your actions, then you are primed for position and promotion in the Obama administration.

The most recent example this is Susan Rice. Rice is, of course, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations who was wheeled out on September 15th of last year on five Sunday morning show to peddle a whopper of a lie. She said that they believed the terror attack in Benghazi (which they all knew at the time was a terror attack committed by forces linked to al Qaeda) was simply a “spontaneous demonstration as a result of what had transpired in Cairo,” and she explicitly blamed an obscure YouTube video. That was a lie, she knew it was a lie, everyone around her knew it was a lie, and she said it anyway.

Now she’s getting rewarded with a big promotion to National Security Adviser. That gig requires no Senate confirmation, so she’s in. Great work if you can get it.

Taking her place at the U.N. will be Samantha Power, the wife of Obama’s radical regulatory czar Cass Sunstein. Power is the one who came up with the basis for our disastrous intervention in Libya — which ultimately led to the Benghazi attack and the deaths of those four brave Americans. Called “Responsibility to Protect,” Power’s doctrine argues that the U.S. has a moral responsibility to intervene anywhere there is a slaughter or the potential of slaughter (whether our strategic interests are involved or not). She successfully argued R2P and Obama led the NATO operation that helped to overthrow Moammar Qaddafi (who had not initiated an assault against his people). Qaddafi fell, was killed, and then we went on a social engineering experiment that led to the outpost in Benghazi and gunrunning out of Libya to Syria.

This brings us to Syria. If Power’s “R2P” were applied consistently, then Obama should have intervened there 2 years ago, when Assad’s slaughter began. There is still no intervention there, 70,000 to 80,000 lives later. I’m not arguing for intervention — in fact, I don’t think we should be injecting ourselves in that Arab civil war. But there is no consistency in policy: intervene in Libya where there was no slaughter, but don’t intervene in Syria where there is an actual slaughter. Whatever exists of an Obama “doctrine” (which is quite a mess and is resulting in the rise of anti-American regimes and forces around the world) is Samantha Power’s worldview. Lord help us, now she’s going to be our U.N. Ambassador. Failing upward!

Not to mention Victoria Nuland, who led the charge in demanding the edits to the Benghazi “talking points” documents that protected “her building’s leadership.” She’s now being promoted to Assistant Secretary of State.

Top IRS officials who oversaw the targeting of conservative and patriot groups remain in their jobs, and those who aren’t still employed by the IRS were scheduled to leave and retire anyway. Lois Lerner, a major villain in this scandal, is on “administrative leave” while still drawing her $177,000 salary. Paid by you. (You may want to work a little harder.)

And don’t forget that several of the officials overseeing Fast and Furious in Arizona — which resulted in the deaths of two brave Americans — were merely shuffled around to different jobs. Not fired, not held accountable, just moved around.

If you suck at your job and are willing to lie through your teeth, I’ve got good news. In this horrendous Obama Economy, you can always get a job among your fellow liars in the Obama administration. You might even get promoted.

On an interesting note it appears that President Obama is prone to surround himself with weak and incompetent women who are devoted to him and his ideology. We have Susan Rice a nobody when it comes for foreign policy and national security. Then there is Samantha Power an Irish political operative, who will be, no doubt, our next Ambassador the United Nations. This is really a dead end job that usually results in a book deal and fairly good speaking fees. Janet Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security has been as dreadful as she was as governor of Arizona. For the life of me I can’t understand why he picked her. She did not deliver Arizona to Obama in 2008. Kathleen Sebelius has been a joke as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Her job was just saved when a federal judge told her to reverse course — a 10-year-old girl dying from cystic fibrosis should be added to the adult lung transplant list. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has been an overbearing greenie now accused using phony e-mail accounts associated with the pseudonym Richard Windsor to take online training programs on subjects including ethics, whistleblowers and records preservation. The EPA is now under investigation for targeting conservative groups. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, who submitted her letter of resignation last week, was in the pocket of the unions and brought the action against Boeing for moving to South Carolina. Now Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, is being considered as her replacement.

And of course there is his mentor and power behind the throne Valerie Jarrett. President Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden three times before saying yes, because he got cold feet about the possible political harm to himself if the mission failed. Instead of listening to advisors from the U.S. military, Defense, or even State, Obama was acting on the advice of White House politico and close friend Valerie Jarrett.

This account comes from Richard Miniter's upcoming book “Leading From Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors who Decide for Him.” Miniter has written six books on the war on terror. He is relying on an unnamed source within the U.S. military Joint Special Operations Command who was directly involved in the operation and planning of the Osama bin Laden kill mission.

Is the story credible? According to Edward Klein, a reporter once asked Obama if he ran every decision by Jarrett. Obama answered, "Yep. Absolutely."

Edward Klein, former foreign editor of Newsweek and editor of the New York Times Magazine for many years, describes Jarrett as "ground zero in the Obama operation, the first couple's friend and Consigliere." Klein -- who claims he used a minimum of two sources for each assertion in his book on the Obama presidency, The Amateur -- writes in detail about Jarrett opposing the raid on bin Laden. She told Obama not to take the political risk. Klein thought Obama ignored Jarrett's advice. Miniter tells us he listened to her, three times telling Special Operations not to take the risk to go after bin Laden.

We need to understand the role Valerie Jarrett plays in Obama's private and political life.

"If it wasn't for Valerie Jarrett, there'd be no Barack Obama to complain about," starts Klein's chapter on Jarrett. He quotes Michelle Obama on Jarrett's influence over her husband: "She knows the buttons, the soft spots, the history, the context."

No one outside Michelle has the access or power over Obama's decision-making like Jarrett does. Here's an odd little fact that gives some insight into what kind of president Obama is: Michelle, Michelle's mother, and Valerie, and only a few others in Washington, are allowed to call Barack by his first name. After work, Jarrett joins Obama at night in the Family Quarters, where she dines often with the First Family. She goes on vacation with them.

Jarrett's title is the weird mouthful "Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs." She is the gatekeeper, but she is also much more than that. She occupies Karl Rove's and Hillary's old office and has an all-access pass to meetings. She shows up at the National Security Council, at meetings on the economy and budget. She stays behind to advise Obama on what to think and do Obama uses her as his left-wing conscience. Klein's sources describe how at each pressing issue, Obama turns to ask her, "What do you think the right thing to do is?" As president, he likes to have her next to him "as the voice of authentic blackness in a White House that is staffed largely by whites."

A longtime friend told Klein that Jarrett is the "eyes, ears and nose" of the Obamas. She tells them whom to trust, who is saying what, whom to see at home and abroad. Michelle wants her there: "I told her it would give me a sense of comfort to know that (Barack) had somebody like her there by his side." As Obama told the New York Times, "Valerie is one of my oldest friends. I trust her completely."

To understand why Obama relies so heavily on Jarrett, we must remember the president's identity crisis as a black man, which is the main subject of his memoir, Dreams from My Father. Valerie Jarrett's adoption of the Obamas as her friends and protégés in Chicago's upper-crust black society was one of the greatest things that ever happened to Obama. Until becoming a community organizer, Obama tells us he felt himself to be an inauthentic American black. Nothing in his life helped him understand or fit into the American black community.

Within a few weeks of Obama's birth, conceived out of wedlock as he was, his mother moved away to a different college, leaving Obama's African birth father behind in Honolulu.  There may have been a shotgun wedding or not — in the memoir, Obama says he is not sure. The only time Barack set eyes on his father was a brief visit when he was ten. Our president lived with his white mother, then with her and her Indonesian husband in Indonesia from age six to ten. He was so unhappy that he chose to leave his mother and live with his white grandparents back in America. Obama's America was the tolerant, wealthy American world of Honolulu's top prep school.

His only black experience was his grandfather's creepy old friend, Frank Marshall Davis, a card-carrying Communist and self-disclosed pederast, who was Obama's voice of authentic blackness. One result of this lonely and unhappy childhood as a mixed-race child was Barack Obama's envy problem. The key to understanding Jarrett's power over the president is that Obama didn't just envy people with normal parents and loving, successful fathers. He envied American blacks, especially those who grew up in intact black families, knowing who they were, comfortable in their black skin.

Valerie Jarrett reflects Obama in many ways. Like himself, Valerie looks more white than black. Her mother had three white grandparents, and her father was black. Like Obama, she lived in the Muslim world for part of her childhood, when her father practiced medicine in Iran. Like Obama, she is a committed leftist. But there are crucial differences. Her father was not a drunk Kenyan polygamist like Obama's, but a famous pathologist and geneticist. Her mother was not a leftist expatriate like Obama's, but a distinguished psychologist. Valerie married into Chicago's black elite, the top rung of African-American society. She went to Stanford, got a law degree from Michigan, and became Mayor Richard Daley's deputy chief of staff, "the public black face" of his administration.

When Valerie Jarrett hired Michelle to work for Daley and befriended her, the Obamas gained access to the exclusive world of upper-class black Chicago politics. Valerie knew everyone whom it was important to know in black and Jewish money circles. She gave Barack entrée and legitimacy. She financed and promoted his ambitions for national office.

Obama finally belonged. Not that Jarrett's record in Chicago was anything to be proud of. Jarrett was known for her corruption and incompetence. Daley finally had to fire her after a scandal erupted over her role in misuse of public funds in the city's substandard public housing. She went on to become CEO of Habitat Executive Services, pulling down $300,000 in salary and $550,000 in deferred compensation. Again, she managed a housing complex that was seized by government inspectors for slum conditions. The scandal didn't matter to Obama. The sordid corruption was all part of Jarrett's Chicago success story.

Every insider in Chicago told Klein the same thing: Jarrett has no qualifications to be the principal advisor to the president of the United States. She doesn't understand how Washington works, how relations with Congress work, how the federal process works. She doesn't understand how the economy works, how the military works, how national security works. But she understands how Obama works and Chicago politics.

The president turns to Valerie Jarrett for definitive advice on all these issues. She has given him terrible advice over and over, and still he turns to her.

Her true job is to make Obama feel proud of himself. When Obama looks at Jarrett, he sees himself as whole and good and real. He is no longer the fake black, the fatherless kid flailing around in a white world, tortured by the unfairness of it all. She fills the emptiness at the core of his identity. She admires and adores him. Jarrett told New Yorker editor David Remnick that the president is "just too talented to do what ordinary people do." And the icing on the cake —she shares his left-wing politics that project unfairness out onto white America.

Obama relies on Jarrett to create the White House bubble he likes to live in, where his narcissism is stroked and his desire to do the big, left-wing thing is encouraged. Jarrett is the doorman. She runs access to the president. As Klein puts it, she guards him from meeting with "critics and complainers who might deflate his ego." No one gets past Jarrett who has an incompatible point of view.

Jarrett pushed ObamaCare. At the beginning of Obama's presidency, there was pressure on Obama to focus on the economic crisis. Rahm Emanuel advised a small, bipartisan health care reform with popular items such as coverage for young adults — to get it passed quickly and focus on the country's money problems. Jarrett urged the president to be true to his left-wing agenda. She was all for having Reid-Pelosi create the ObamaCare assault on the American health system and ramming it through on a one-party vote, using Chicago-style politics, while Obama crossed the country doing what he does best: make speeches. Obama liked Jarrett's idea. Emanuel is now out of the White House.

Jarrett pushed the Solyndra fiasco. Jarrett promoted Solyndra because one of her richest Chicago connections, billionaire George Kaiser, a top Obama bundler, had a 35% share in Solyndra. Kaiser visited the White House sixteen times.

Larry Summers, the director of the president's National Economic Council, warned Obama that the federal government should not get involved in venture capital of any sort. Summers understood that crony capitalism sabotages economic growth. Huge government funding distorts and destroys whatever market segment it touches, replacing economic decisions with political ones.

A member of Obama's finance committee warned the president that Solyndra was going bankrupt. But it is Obama and Valerie who see eye to eye, and they saw the value to Obama of rewarding his political cronies. It worked fine in Chicago. Larry Summers is now out of the White House.

Jarrett pushed Obama to take on the Catholic Church over contraception, arguing that it would appeal to single women (she was right) and that religious freedom isn't important (she was wrong). Bill Daley, who had replaced Rahm Emmanuel as chief of staff, argued against Obama pushing contraception on the Church and invited Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan of New York to meet with a displeased Obama, who didn't appreciate hearing from the Church. Daley is now out of the White House.

Valerie Jarrett is the most powerful woman in Washington. She has guided the president's decisions on health care, the budget, the stimulus, the deficit, foreign affairs.

So when Jarrett told Obama that the mission to kill bin Laden was too politically risky, and to play it safe, it is entirely plausible to believe that the president listened to her. It is consistent with everything we know about Obama's dependence on her. According to Miniter's source in the U.S. Military Joint Special Operations Command, Obama listened to her for four months, dithering and deciding no the first three times the military told him that the time to get bin Laden was now.

The only possible exception to Obama’s proclivity for women would be Hillary Clinton who would stab him in the back when she gets the chance. No doubt her appointment as Secretary of State was a payback to Bill Clinton for supporting him in 2008. But after four years of Obama’s feckless, confused, and misguided foreign policy Ms. Clinton decide to bail out as she needed four years for the public to forget she was associated with Obama. It’s a wonder Ms. Clinton lasted as long as she did with the specter of Valerie Jarrett hanging over her head.

I can’t help but wondering if Obama’s proclivity to surround himself with women is due to his lack of a father figure in his youth and being raised by a domineering, radical left-wing mother along with his marriage to a strong and equally domineering wife along with having two very needful daughters. Daughters who seem to get whatever they desire and their mother wants from a weak and ineffective father. The question to ask is Valerie Jarrett his advisor or his mother?