Three Speeches That Destroyed Presidencies

Andrew Johnson's speech on Washington's Birthday 1866.  He compares himself to Christ and his Radical Republican political opponents in Congress to the recently defeated Confederates.

Jimmy Carter's "Crisis of Confidence" or "Malaise" speech.  He lays out a laundry list of demoralizing American problems with no solutions and no real hope of success.

Barack Obama's stunning admission, after a summer full of golf and vacations that he has no strategy for ISIL revolutionaries.

Are Hamas Attacks a Catalyst For Acceptance of Israel?

For the first time in almost 70 years, Israel has the active backing of nearly all Arab states in its battle against Palestinian extremists.  One long time CNN reporter called the support "unprecedented" and speculated that it could represent a new era in Middle Eastern relations.  Moderate governments fear extremism more than they wish to nurture historical hatreds.

The process of breaking down the walls of anti-Semitic diplomacy is nothing new, however.

In the beginning, Israel faced enemies on every side.  The British evacuated the old Roman named territory of Palestine in 1948.  The United States, followed quickly by the Soviet Union, recognized the new state almost immediately.  President Harry Truman later recalled that he had resolved that "the United States would do all that it could to help the Jews set up a homeland."  In this, he went against the "striped pants boys" advice at the State Department.  Truman believed that Israel had very strong potential for development.

All bordering states, however, pledged themselves to Israel's destruction.  Since then, both time and the ago old maxim of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" have started to soften the old hate filled viewpoints.

Despite repeated wars between Israel and its Arab neighbors in the 1960s and 70s, Israel had one friend in the Middle East.  Iran under the Shah.

Iran's monarch served as a pole of power within the Middle East, navigating between the Arab states, the United States, and Iran's neighbor the Soviet Union.  Repeated Soviet and Czarist Russian attempts to absorb some or all Iranian territory meant Iran would support US interests through much of the Cold War.

Many Americans mistrusted professions of friendship. Shah adviser Asadollah Alam remembered columnist Joseph Kraft coming to Iran in 1976 at the request of several senators.  "Apparently the senators who were here recently disbelieved the US ambassador's stories about close relations between Iran and Israel," Alam noted.  Under the Shah, Iran pursued its self-interests of building national strength and wealth alongside American priorities.  Productive relations with Israel enhanced those bonds and gave Iran some leverage when it did disagree with the US over issues such as oil production.

In the 1970s, nationalist authoritarians and monarchs led most Arab states.  At the time, the nationalists seemed radical.  They linked American influence to the real and imagined sins of the old British Empire. Israel, an oil free haven of liberty and prosperity, had to remain a whipping boy to corrupt regimes with little freedom and much economic misery.

But that decade also brought revolutionary violence.  The formerly nationalist radicals now saw Islamic revolutionaries and Palestinian terrorists disrupting order in the region.  Another pillar of the anti-Israel gang fell away.  President Jimmy Carter brought Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachim Begin to the United States to hammer out normal relations.

Sadat helped to open the conference by saying "I hope the spirit of King David will prevail at Camp David."  In a sense it did.  David's reign over Israel was often contentious and occasionally messy, but overall succeeded tremendously.  Similarly, Begin and Sadat bickered for 13 days, but found common ground in the end.

For the next 40 years, however, the anti-Israel front remained almost in stasis.  It neither overtly threatened nor worked to reconcile with Israel, regardless of whether or not negotiations with Palestinian groups went well or poorly.  Anti-Semitism remained unofficially and sometimes officially endorsed. The Anti Defamation League notes that "Anti-Semitism often serves as a political device intended to undermine normalization with Israel."  Even Egyptian media joins other Middle Eastern states in promoting points from the Russian secret police forgery Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. 

 The Hamas attacks on Israel this summer come in a different context.  With ISIS/ISIL expanding its murderous control over parts of Iraq and Syria, with Turkey moving in a direction closer to its medieval Ottoman past rather than secular democracy, with Muslim Brotherhood and associated terrorist groups threatening moderate national governments, many governments now shy away from indiscriminate support of Palestinians against Israel.  Eric Trager of the Washington Institute For Near East Policy told CNN "The Arab Spring showed the region that uprisings can lead to the Brotherhood gaining power.  So it's a threat to the governments it opposes"

Also, no one expects Hamas to stay quietly within the boundaries agreed to.  The Washington Free Beacon's Adam Kredo reported on the contents of a Hamas terror handbook that included television shrapnel bombs and how to use donkeys as mobile device carriers.

Kredo also notes the war for public opinion, which dupes outlets such as BBC and others into sympathetic coverage. "Anyone killed is to be called a civilian of Gaza or Palestine" regardless of their military rank or "role in the jihad."  It also encourages the tactic of talking about martyrs in the Middle East, about wounded or dead to Westerners.

Although the public relations strategy has swayed some in the Western media, it has not blinded many in the Middle East to the fact that the new Islamic radicalism has the potential to overrun many countries and impose its terrifying brand of totalitarianism.

And also that Israel is a capable ally, or at least the enemy of their enemy, against that fate.

Our Dangerous World . . .

Just a few stories this week from a world grown increasingly terrifying . . .

Liberia has closed its border, quarantined many communities, and has seen even top experts stricken with the dreaded Ebola virus.  Sick officials made it onto international flights despite stringent precautions by the Liberian government.  West Africa has seen the most serious outbreak of the extremely contagious disease yet.  No end in sight.

Libya faces its worst violence since 2011, causing several nations to shut down their embassies there. The country's "fragile government and fledgling army" currently struggle to keep control of the capital's international airport.

War continues in Gaza.  Secretary of State John Kerry continues to undermine the cease fire agreement supported by Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority in an effort to kowtow to Hamas extremists.

Boko Haram crossed the Nigerian border, raiding Cameroon.  The terror group best known for kidnapping hundreds of young girls seized the wife of Cameroon's vice prime minister.  Cameroon has suffered three attacks from the terrorist group.

European Jews, particularly in France, are fearful of a continent wide spike in active anti-Semitism.  Could this produce an exodus from Europe to Israel and the United States?  An ambassador appointed by Hungary to represent that nation in Italy resigned after criticism of his "raging" anti-Semitism.

US intelligence officials released images that seem to show Russian artillery firing into Ukraine in support of separatists there.  This threatens to escalate the conflict into a full scale war between two of the European continent's largest nations. With Ukraine the home of some of Europe's most productive farmland, a full scale war could disrupt food supplies for millions.

While the female mutilation edict attributed to ISIS may be fake, Christians have fled areas under its control by the thousands. Islamicist officials have imposed prejudicial sanctions on Christians which have not existed in Iraq in generations.  Islamic State officials also ordered the destruction of the tombs of Jonah and Daniel, figures holy to the Jewish, Christian, and other faiths.

Meanwhile China, which has threatened the neighboring countries of Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines in recent years, has accelerated its naval program. Iran also continues its quest for more effective weapons capable of hitting Europe and North America.

ISIS Versus the World?

Obama continues to gradually raise America's investment in protecting the tottering Maliki government in Iraq.  A total of 800 US troops, mostly Special Forces, have gone to help retrain the Iraqi Army to face this new threat.  According to Russia Today, widely seen as a Kremlin mouthpiece, Russia delivered five combat planes to Iraq to help in that nation's defense.

This comes as ISIS announced the formation of a caliphate.  In Islamic tradition, a caliph is a religious leader with somewhat less spiritual authority than a Roman Catholic Pope.  The closest Western approximation might be the Anglican title for the British monarch "Defender of the Faith."  Holy Roman Emperors also had similar combinations of temporal and spiritual authority.

According to Time, even Sunnis (whom the caliphate supposedly represents) have fears about the radicalism of the new movement.  Unease about new rules for worship and civil interactions could dampen enthusiasm for ISIS outside of areas it controls.

Control of Baghdad is key.  As the inheritor of civilized traditions reaching back 5,000 years, it would give legitimacy to the aspirations of ISIS terrorists.  This has spurred action from both the United States and Russia on the side of Iraq.

Russia has specific worries.  Around 20 million of its 142 million people worship in the Muslim faith.  Most of these live in the southern regions of the country.  The effect of a rising radical Muslim state must worry Moscow.  Similarly, Red China's Xingjiang Province has a high concentration of Muslims who have rebelled against Beijing.

Shi'ite Muslims have religious reasons to oppose the ISIS caliph.  Traditionally, they believe that it is blasphemous to name a caliph outside of the lineage of Mohammed.  Iran and much of Iraq worships in the Shi'ite tradition.  They likely would strongly resist rule by a Sunni caliph they found not only invalid, but a blasphemy against their faith.

The backing of Russia and the United States should boost the morale of the Iraqi government, so long as ISIS momentum can be dented.  Allegedly, ISIS plans to seize Africa north of the equator, Iran, India, and the rest of the Middle East and Central Asia.  Its designs include the conquest of three NATO states and parts of Russia, as well as Europe up to the borders of Germany and Poland.

Currently they control northeastern Syria and most of Iraq north of Baghdad outside of Kurdish territories.

Significant ISIS gains would likely bring together a number of states usually not on friendly terms.  Already, Iran has approached the United States to discuss a coordinated response, although working with the mullahs has its own danger.  Should Baghdad fall, likely many states would set aside differences in an international effort similar to the Boxer Rebellion expedition in 1898.

Iraq's Modern Day Mahdi: Bald Faced Terror On the Move In the Middle East

As the American media drones on about the primary defeat of a Virginia congressman, the lights may be going out around the Middle East.

A wound that started erupting in Syria has now brought infection to neighboring Iraq. The Islamic State of the Levant and Iraq (ISIS) has expanded its reach into many of Iraq's western provinces and the second city of Mosul.  Its forces now have started moving towards the central government in Baghdad.

Some see this as a historical correction.  From the Roman Empire through the Ottoman period to the League of Nations mandates, boundaries in the Middle East reflected the priorities of other states.  Turkey and Israel alone relate to ethnic and historical boundaries.

ISIS militants, however, have imposed the most severe forms of Islamic law with the most violent measures. Hundreds have been brutally killed, including many beheadings.  Hundreds of thousands have fled rule by terror.

At stake is the government of Iraq.  The Iraq War left the nation in a fragile infancy as a democracy.  Millions defied terrorists to dip their fingers in purple ink and vote.  American forces remained available as part of a status of forces agreement that would allow the US military to help defend the democratic government when necessary.

Unfortunately, Obama has neglected the victory that American troops (agree or disagree) fought to achieve. He failed to reach a status of forces agreement with Iraq and painted it as his own success.

Well over a century ago, British controlled Egypt governed the Sudan.  Egypt employed General Charles George Gordon to help defend their position in Sudan.

Britain had offended Sudanese Muslims, not with imperialistic greed, but their demand that the slave trade end.  A charismatic leader, Muhammad Ahmad, emerged to give a religious cloak to discontent over the end of the slave trade, among other things.

Ahmad took on the name "Mahdi" which is something like a messiah.  The Mahdi does not restore earthly or heavenly kingdoms, but sweeps through the land killing anything in his path.

The Mahdi annihilated those who would not join.  He slaughtered almost all of the city of Khartoum, not just General Gordon and his Egyptian soldiers.  Eventually he died at the hands of a British force under Lord Kitchener, sent too late to save Gordon and Egyptian allied troops.

The Mahdi of the 1880s and ISIS of today do not bring historical corrections.  They bring only death and suffering.  They do not debate the morality of saving other nations from dictators.  They torture and destroy.

What has happened while Obama plays golf games and promotes Democratic candidates to high school students is the worst case scenario.  A terrifying warlord has gained influence and momentum and could upset the entire political structure of the Middle East.  We can turn on all the coal mines and oil and gas taps possible and do very comfortably without the resources of that part of the world.  But millions could die and an entire region could lapse into anarchy, a dangerous proposition in the nuclear age.

One could not imagine a worse scenario in which to have a presidential disaster.