SOTU: How Obama has made the foolish, false, and arrogant ‘normal’

New post up at Liberty Unyielding.  Enjoy!

Paris attack: The West’s time for choosing

Barbarism: Hostages are evacuated from the Jewish market in Paris where associates of the Charlie Hebdo terrorists made their last stand. (Image: AFP, Thomas Samson via Twitter)

New post up at Liberty Unyielding.  Enjoy!

Euphrates corridor: Jihadis, and territorial gains, metastasizing

There’s always a risk in putting data points out there without having prepared the way for them, by starting with a comprehensive analytical piece.  (Well, technically, I did the fundamental analysis back in 2009, when I posted the “Next Phase of World War IV” series, whose theses have been borne out by the Arab Spring and other developments since.)

That said, I am trusting readers to understand that what we have here is an emerging trend, whose course is not set in stone, but whose potential impact is very far-reaching.  The basic element of the trend is Sunni jihadis gaining control of territory in the Middle East, as they are currently doing in Iraq and Syria.

Israeli security: “War war” returns to the Middle East

 

Kerry on the Peace in Our Time tour.

One of the peculiar features of the Obama administration has been its apparent belief that it can maneuver against America’s longstanding security posture, and yet continue to subsist inside of it, as if the strength or credibility of it won’t change with the change in policy.  Team Obama’s blinders about this clearly extend to the Middle East situation as a whole.  That means they extend to Israel’s situation as well.

John Kerry may or may not realize that he is pressing for a security deal

The curious case of the al Qaeda threat warning

One thing struck me immediately about the recent al Qaeda threat warning, when U.S. officials claimed that the Hoover-like NSA surveillance program was what enabled us to detect the threat.  Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, was emphatic in making this claim:

Those [NSA] programs “allow us to have the ability to gather this chatter,” Chambliss said. “If we did not have these programs then we simply wouldn’t be able to listen in on the bad guys.”

What struck me was that this simply isn’t true – at least, not in terms of the comprehensive implication Chambliss seems to suggest.