Difficult Decision Time, White House Hibernates

[From article]
You can play it either way, but "a plague on both their houses" didn't cut it in 1941, and it doesn't cut it in 2015.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 gave Hitler room to conquer Western Europe without fear of an attack on his rear. Stalin was a committed member of the pact until Hitler broke it, at which point Stalin brazenly pivoted to the Allies and demanded rights as a) a full partner and b) an aid recipient. FDR might have said, "Boy, watching Adolph and Uncle Joe battle it out would be great – fascists vs. communists, and no American boots on the ground."
[. . .]
FDR made a great many difficult and ugly decisions – aside from interning Japanese-American citizens and not bombing the railroad tracks to Auschwitz. In this context, he made two for what he thought was the greater good: ignoring Stalin's crimes, and committing all the resources necessary to achieve the unconditional surrender of Axis forces. He put the American economy on a war footing, drafted millions of soldiers, and dropped tons of bombs that often didn't distinguish between military forces and civilians. He believed that the faster the war ended, the better it was for the civilians and everyone else. It wasn't a perfect understanding – particularly for the Jews waiting for deliverance. But it was his understanding, and Truman concurred. Dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a calculated decision to take the casualties, including civilians, up front.
[. . .]
The Cold War was the diplomatic way of boxing in the USSR until it collapsed.
That is not a tactical proposal for coming to grips with the dual horrors of ISIS and Iran. It is a strategic one.
The United States, President Obama, has to decide who the primary enemy is and how best to stop that one. Vladimir Putin posits that ISIS comes first, and requests – begs – the West to take on Sunni jihadists while giving Shiite jihadists a pass.
[. . .]
It is untenable for the U.S. to continue to dither.
[. . .]
Spending half a billion dollars training small groups of Syrians who lie when they pledge to fight ISIS rather than Assad; failing to provide weapons to the Kurds, who constitute the only serious fighting force south of Turkey; doctoring CENTCOM intelligence; and hectoring Putin – as the president did and continues to do – are also doomed to failure.
[. . .]
Thomas Hobbes is the prophet. "Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues. No arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."
If that works for you, fine. Otherwise, it is time to choose and get on with the war that is already raging around us.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/09/hitler_or_stalin_the_case_for_choosing.html

September 30, 2015
Hitler or Stalin? The Case for Choosing
By Shoshana Bryen

Changing Middle East Alliances

[From article]
Bibi Netanyahu must know how Chiang Kai-shek felt as he watched his old friend Nixon toasting Mao in Peking.
The Iran nuclear deal is not on the same geostrategic level. Yet both moves, seen as betrayals by old U.S. allies, were born of a cold assessment in Washington of a need to shift policy to reflect new threats and new opportunities.
[. . .]
But as U.S. and Iranian interests converged, those of the U.S. and its old allies — Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey — were diverging.
[. . .]
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown in the Middle East today.
The Israelis, too, see Iran as their great enemy and indispensable pillar of Hezbollah. For Bibi, any U.S.-Iran rapprochement is a diplomatic disaster.
[. . .]
Clearly the United States and Iran have overlapping interests.
Neither wants all-out war with the other.
[. . .]
For Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel all want the Assad regime brought down to break up Iran’s Shiite Crescent and inflict a strategic defeat on Tehran. But the United States believes the fall of Assad means the rise of ISIS and al-Qaida, a massacre of Christians, and the coming to power of a Sunni terrorist state implacably hostile to us.
Look for the Saudis and Israelis, their agents and lobbies, their think tanks and op-ed writers, to begin beating the drums for the United States to bring down Assad,
[. . .]
Any U.S.-Iran rapprochement would be dead, and we will have been sucked into a war to achieve the strategic goals of allies that are in conflict with the national interests of the United States. And our interests come first.

http://buchanan.org/blog/a-mideast-game-of-thrones-16275

A Mideast Game of Thrones
Tuesday - July 21, 2015 at 12:09 am
By Patrick J. Buchanan

US Ally, Qatar Funds Terrorists

[From article]
Few outsiders have noticed, but radical Islamists now control Libya's capital. These militias stormed Tripoli last month, forcing the official government to flee and hastening the country's collapse into a failed state.
Moreover, the new overlords of Tripoli are allies of Ansar al-Sharia, a brutal jihadist movement suspected of killing America's then ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and of trying to murder his British counterpart, Sir Dominic Asquith.
Barely three years after Britain helped to free Libya from Col Gaddafi's tyranny, anti-Western radicals hold sway. How could Britain's goal of a stable and friendly Libya have been thwarted so completely?
Step forward a fabulously wealthy Gulf state that owns an array of London landmarks and claims to be one of our best friends in the Middle East.
Qatar, the owner of Harrods, has dispatched cargo planes laden with weapons to the victorious Islamist coalition, styling itself "Libya Dawn".
[. . .]
On Wednesday, the 34-year-old Emir of Qatar, who was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, took pains to deny the accusation while standing alongside Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. "What is happening in Iraq and Syria is extremism and such organisations are partly financed from abroad, but Qatar has never supported and will never support terrorist organisations," he said.
The credibility of that denial depends partly on how you define a "terrorist organisation". Qatar has let Hamas, the armed Palestinian movement, base its political leadership in Doha since 2012. Qatar's government has funded Hamas and the previous Emir paid an official visit to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in 2012.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/qatar/11110931/How-Qatar-is-funding-the-rise-of-Islamist-extremists.html

How Qatar is funding the rise of Islamist extremists
The fabulously wealthy Gulf state, which owns an array of London landmarks and claims to be one of our best friends in the Middle East, is a prime sponsor of violent Islamists
By David Blair and Richard Spencer
10:00 PM BST 20 Sep 2014

New Obama World Order, Worse For U.S.

[From article]
we are still frozen in a Wild West moment, when everyone in the saloon has drawn his six-shooter, paused, and is wondering what happened to the sheriff — and wondering, too, who will be the first to dare start shooting.
[. . .]
We might scoff at Neanderthal notions like a loss of deterrence inviting aggression, but Neanderthals do not.
[. . .]
To Obama, old allies like Britain and Israel either did not need unflinching U.S. support or did not necessarily warrant it.
[. . .]
CENTCOM is based in Qatar, but it would be hard to find a more anti-American host. Add up Al Jazeera, support for Hamas, sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood, and the stealthy funding of all sorts of Middle Eastern insurgents and terrorists, and you do not find a reliable friend of the United States.
[. . .]
Can the old, pre-Obama postwar order be rebuilt? Of course, but it will require budgetary discipline, a visionary president, experienced national-security advisers, skillful diplomats, and a public that is informed and cares. In other words — not for another two years and five months.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/386779/new-world-disorder-victor-davis-hanson

September 2, 2014 4:00 AM
The New World Disorder
To Obama, the retrenchment of the West was not only inevitable but to be welcomed.
By Victor Davis Hanson

The Enemy of Your Enemy is Your Friend? How does it work out in this case?

Panic: As the jaguar attacks, the caiman attempts to make an escape

Is it like the situation in Syria? Is Assad the enemy of the United States? Are the rebel groups the enemy of the United States? Al Qaeda is a part of the rebel groups. Is it like the jaquar attacking the caiman? Who do we root for? Obama roots for the rebels, but does not explain why their interests are the same as ours. One caller to the Howie Carr radio show in Boston on Thursday September 5, 2013 suggested it was about a natural gas pipeline from Qatar to Europe. That it is opposed by Saudi Arabia due to their dwindling oil resources. Why is that not an issue for the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee? The Chairman, Robert Menendez, Democrat from New Jersey opened the hearing stating plainly that the decision whether to support the resolution would be based upon national security interests. Without missing a beat he shifted his opening remarks to focus on the use of chemical and biological weapons. There was little discussion of how the situation in Syria was a matter of national security for the United States. So even the chairman was misguided if not intentionally misleading. There is so much distortion in the public discourse it explains why so many civilians remain clueless about what the elected officials are doing and how much money they waste and steal. What's it gonna be? The jaguar or the caiman?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2412146/Brutal-moment-jaguar-stalks-ambushes-caiman-dragging-reptile-water-killing-it.html

Jaguar who turned into Jaws: Sneaky big cat swims across river and then pounces on reptile basking on a sandbank
Images show the 20-stone cat striking with lightning speed while eight-foot reptile basks on a river island in Brazil
The ferocious cat sinks its teeth and claws into the back of the leathery reptile before whisking it away in its jaws
Daily Mail (UK)
By Anthony Bond
PUBLISHED: 06:37 EST, 5 September 2013 | UPDATED: 06:57 EST, 5 September 2013