Obama's State of Union wrong on every issue

Heritage Experts Analyze the State of the Union

President Barack Obama laid out an ambitious agenda last night. Here are some highlights of our experts’ analysis of his claims, his plans, and his promises. 

Responding to Newtown

All Americans, no matter what our backgrounds or political perspectives, abhor the death of innocent human beings. We were shocked by the killings in Newtown and other recent mass shootings, and grieve with those who joined the First Lady at the State of the Union.

As we try to make society safer and stronger, constitutional and complex cultural factors must be taken into consideration. As we explain in a recent Heritage paper, policymakers should avoid a rush to judgment on prescriptions that violate first principles, ignore the real root of these complex problems, or disregard careful social science research. The most important solutions lie at the state and local levels, in the community and within the family.

The Second Amendment is an important safeguard of Americans’ security. Gun laws must be constitutional and should reflect the research on their effectiveness in preserving law and order. As to the President’s emphasis on background checks: The only way to enforce universal background checks for private sales is if law enforcement authorities know what firearms are held by private citizens.  And the only way to know what firearms are held by private citizens is through the creation of a national firearms registry. Federal law currently prohibits authorities from using data in the background check system to create a national firearms registry, although there are avid gun control proponents who would like to change that—a real threat to the Second Amendment rights of legitimate gun owners.

– John Malcolm, senior legal fellow, Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, and Jennifer Marshall, director, Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society

The “Voting Experience” in America

President Obama talked about voting rights, claiming we are “betraying our ideals” when any American has to “wait for five, six, seven hours just to cast their ballot.” He announced a “nonpartisan commission to improve the voting experience in America.” His view of “nonpartisan” is putting two attorneys, one from his campaign and another from Governor Romney’s campaign, in charge of the effort. While there may have been some Americans who waited for long periods to vote in 2012, the vast majority did not. A recent study of the 2012 election reported that the average wait time nationally was only 14 minutes.

We already had such an election reform commission back in 2005, the Baker-Carter Commission, whose findings were largely ignored. It is especially hard to have confidence in any commission Obama might appoint, given that his attorney general has tried to stop state election reform efforts like voter ID intended to improve the security and integrity of the election process. Moreover, Obama’s commission may just be a stalking horse to implement liberals’ latest partisan fantasies of automatic and election day voter registration, so-called reforms that will stifle real improvements and endanger the integrity of our elections.

– Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow, Edwin Meese IIICenter for Legal and Judicial Studies

“Comprehensive” Immigration Reform

Well, we certainly saw this coming. Another call for comprehensive immigration reform. We learned in his inaugural that our journey is not complete until “we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity.” Who can disagree with that? The time has come, he said. And we all know what needs to be done. Really?

We have long advocated and done extensive research on various policies that will reform immigration, but comprehensive reform is not the way to proceed: It won’t fix the root problems and will likely make matters worse. It doesn’t create opportunity, but restricts it. The better way to proceed is to go about solving problems, starting where there is broad agreement, and working toward a fundamental restructuring of our immigration system to emphasize work, opportunity, and assimilation under the rule of law. There is no reason to assume—and many reasons to doubt—that a “comprehensive approach” is the only reasonable and only fair way to proceed to reform.

– Matthew Spalding, PhD, vice president, American Studies and director, B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics

The Renewed Threat of Terrorism

The President’s statement that this nation “salutes those who defend it around the world” unfortunately rings hollow – when the Administration’s treatment of the Benghazi terrorist attack is considered. Anyone with a sense of irony would not have put such a line in the speech. And, even though the Administration has thumped its chest over the killing of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and its affiliates are growing in North Africa in places like Libya and Mali. Only a week ago, the U.S. embassy in Turkey was the target of a terrorist attack. And we are still sorting through the messy aftermath of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, which Obama has tried to move beyond.

Until this White House is willing to account for its actions and false storylines peddled following the Benghazi attack, its credibility on the issue of terrorism will continue to be severely compromised. With a President who failed miserably to show responsibility for Americans under attack, this country will continue to face grave dangers ahead.

– Helle C. Dale, senior fellow for public diplomacy, Douglasand Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies

National Education Standards: Greater Federal Control of the Classroom

“We need to give every American student opportunities like this. Four years ago, we started Race to the Top – a competition that convinced almost every state to develop smarter curricula and higher standards.”

What the President was talking about was Common Core national education standards. Since coming to Washington, the Obama Administration has been using federal dollars to “convince” states to agree to adopting national education standards. Not only is this a massive federal overreach into the nation’s classrooms, but there are various other reasons states should be concerned about these federally backed standards.  The standards are costly. Researchers project that it could amount to a total of $16 billion for states to implement the standards. Additionally, experts have expressed concern about the mediocre quality of the standards. Some states, like Massachusetts, have even been forced to “dumb down” their curriculum.

Instead of a federal takeover of curriculum, states need greater flexibility to implement the reforms they decide are best. Rather than serving the needs of Washington, schools should have the freedom to help children succeed.

– Rachel Sheffield, research associate, DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society

Afghanistan 

Perhaps the most ridiculous foreign policy statement of the evening was when President Obama said: “And by the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over.” This is naivete on a dangerous level. A war doesn’t simply end just because you say it has. It is not just up to President Obama to decide when the war in Afghanistan ends. The Taliban has a say; the Pakistanis have a say; the Afghans have a say; and al-Qaeda has a say. If Afghanistan is about national security, like we have been told and like most believe, then the only responsible act is to ensure that U.S. objectives are met before any hasty troop reductions. After all, the whole point of a war is to achieve your objectives—not to leave it as soon as possible.

Any decisions taken to reduce troops numbers should be based on improved conditions on the ground and on military advice—not on a desire to end a war that, in some capacity, and regardless of what Obama thinks, will still have to be fought after 2015.

– Luke Coffey, Margaret Thatcher Fellow, The MargaretThatcher Center for Freedom

Foreign Policy in Retreat

What was striking about Obama’s remarks was how strongly his foreign policy vision contrasted with his domestic policy prescriptions. At home, it seems that very little does not qualify as an “investment”: by his way of thinking, the government exists to start programs, spend money, tax the rich, and do things.

But abroad, the government exists mostly to stop doing things. One of the President’s biggest lines was the promise of bringing the troops home from Afghanistan and ending the war, under the mistaken belief that al-Qaeda has been defeated. He reiterated his stale promise to rely on diplomacy to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, an approach that has been tested to exhaustion by successive administrations and is nothing more than a program of kicking the can down the road. His approach to nuclear weapons was, predictably, to argue for doing less, and—in the face of the North Korean and Iranian evidence—to imply that cuts in the U.S. nuclear stockpile will induce others to behave better. And in the President’s telling, cyber attacks on the U.S. appear to stem from nowhere in particular; naming China, among others, might not be tactful, but it would have had the virtue of pointing out that this is not an abstract threat.

The overwhelming impression left by the address was of a foreign policy in recessional, and one that relies on rhetoric and the promise of future negotiations to create the impression of action and achievement.

– Ted Bromund, PhD, senior research fellow in Anglo-American relations, The Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom

Infrastructure “Investments” Don’t Deliver On Promises

President Obama is right to point out that the country’s infrastructure—its ports and waterways, roads, and bridges, are aging and in many cases “badly in need of repair.” Extensive, healthy infrastructure is crucial for commerce and to keep the country economically competitive. His “Fix-It-First” program solution, however, doubles down on failed policies of the past—federal stimulus with no way to pay for it.

He made another bold push for infrastructure investments (read: spending) to achieve his vision of a “smarter government.” Bold—in the irresponsible sense—because suchfederal stimulus failed to jumpstart the economy following the 2009 stimulus package, and it will fail in future iterations.

The private sector will not join in backing financially unviable projects, a reality from which the government could take a cue. Amazingly, the President insists on revisiting this financing mechanism with his new “Partnership to Rebuild America” initiative.

– Emily Goff, research associate, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies

State of the…Climate?

Swept into office four years ago based, in part, on promises to slow sea-level rise, President Obama initiated a radical climate agenda. It seems we are seeing a rerun in 2013. It is worth asking what is different four years after his first State of the Union Address?

There have been four more years of no global warming. In 2010, there had been no significant world temperature increase for over a decade. The streak is now 16 years long. We have four years of costly lessons on the waste and inefficiency of green-energy subsidies.

The scientific basis for catastrophic climate change gets weaker and weaker. The economic argument for green subsidies has already collapsed. It is time for the administration to quit using both arguments to justify a regulatory and fiscal power grab.

– David W. Kreutzer, PhD, research fellow in energy economics and climate change, Center for Data Analysis

“Balance” in Obamaspeak

Tonight’s State of the Union address reflected President Obama’s liberal ideology: Everything starts with government. His proposals for new “investments” in manufacturing, infrastructure, and so on rest on the false belief that only government can figure out how to make the economy grow. Hence his “Fix-it-First” program, and his Partnership to Rebuild America. If government doesn’t do it, it won’t happen.

When he claims his new spending proposals won’t add to the deficit, it proves he just doesn’t get it. The deficit is a symptom of excess spending; it’s spending that has to be controlled.

With the government drowning in red ink, Obama offers a life preserver made of lead: more spending. He has already pocketed a $618 billion tax increase in the fiscal cliff deal (in addition to $1 trillion in new Obamacare taxes). He needs to accept that true “balance” has two sides—and start cutting spending.

– Patrick Louis Knudsen, Grover M. Hermann Senior Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies

Obama Blames Conservatives for Whatever Happens with Sequestration

The President has executed the greatest act of political jujitsu in the modern age. His people convinced congressional leaders to put sequestration into the Budget Control Act, and then denied it when it looked unpopular.

Now, the President is smugly looking at conservatives and saying, “If only you guys were not so ideological, you’d let me raise taxes (again), and save Defense!” It does not seem to matter that only conservatives have offered solutions; only conservatives see the massive spending on entitlements as the problem (as do all reputable economists); and suddenly, the Joint Chiefs have finally started admitting what a disaster sequestration will be for our national readiness.

The kicker is that the President will get to “blame” conservatives for whatever happens. The sad truth is the ones who will “pay” for this are the young troops who get sent to the next conflict situation ill-prepared.

– Steve Bucci, director, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies

America’s Hurting Workers

The President said that “for more than a decade, wages and incomes have barely budged.” If spending and debt continue growing on their current trajectory, wages and salaries will be depressed because of the highest U.S. debt in a decade.

Rising government spending and huge deficits are threatening to ring in a period of depressed growth and fewer opportunities for Americans. Without sequester-level spending cuts, publicly held debt is projected to reach almost 90 percent of GDP in 10 years. Debt levels this high are associated with significantly slower growth for a prolonged period of time.

The President and Congress should balance the budget in 10 years by making necessary and prudent reforms to entitlement programs and cutting inappropriate, and often times wasteful, federal spending.

– Romina Boccia, research coordinator, Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies

For more analysis, including the President’s education initiatives for preschool and higher ed,visit the full State of the Union roundup.

Obama Arab Spring and consequences

Obama wanted Mubarack out. Consequences 

Report: Hamas militiamen helped prop up Morsi
Posted: 09 Feb 2013 09:17 AM PST
(Paul Mirengoff)
According to Khaled Abu Toameh at the Gatestone Institute website, there are reports that Hamas dispatched as many as 7,000 militiamen from Gaza to protect the regime of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi who faces a popular uprising. The reports quoted unidentified Egyptian security officials as saying that the Hamas militiamen had been spotted in the Egyptian border town of Rafah before they headed toward Cairo to shore up the Muslim Brotherhood regime of Morsi, which Hamas may have feared was in danger of collapse. The officials claimed that the Hamas militiamen had been deployed in a number of sensitive locations in the Egyptian capital, including the Al-Ittihadiyeh Presidential Palace.
These reports find support in documents published this week by a Gulf newspaper, Akhbar Al-Khaleej, that purport to show that Hamas, with the financial backing of Qatar, had plans to send hundreds of militiamen to Egypt to help Morsi’s regime. One of the classified documents, signed by Hamas’s armed wing, Izaddin al-Kassam, talks about the need to send “warriors to help our brothers in Egypt who are facing attempts by the former regime [of Hosni Mubarak] to return to power.”
Hamas would, of course, have every reason to supply Morsi with shock troops, and not just because of their ideological afinity. As Toameh reminds us:
The downfall of the Mubarak regime has been a great blessing for Hamas, which has since emerged as a major player in the Palestinian and regional arena. Thanks to Morsi, an Egyptian prime minister visited the Gaza Strip for the first time ever last November to express solidarity with Hamas during Israel’s “Pillar of Defense” military operation. Such a visit would have been unthinkable under Mubarak, who did everything he could to weaken Hamas and stop it from meddling in the internal affairs of Egypt.
But now Hamas knows that it can always rely on Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to stay in power and increase Hamas’s influence. In return, Morsi apparently expects Hamas to reward him by sending its men to defend his palace.
Jonathan Tobin concludes:
The Hamas connection should send a chill down the spines of anyone who still held onto hope that the Arab Spring would produce more, rather than less, freedom for Egypt. But it should also remind Americans that they are still sending more than $1 billion a year in U.S. aid and selling F-16 aircraft to Morsi’s Egypt. Members of Congress who continue to back this foolish policy need to ask themselves whether it makes sense to funnel taxpayer dollars to Egypt in the hope of supporting regional stability if what they are really doing is bolstering a government that depends on Hamas terrorists to stay in power.
And while they are at it, members of the Senate should insist that Chuck Hagel, as a condition of a vote on his confirmation, produce the information that will tell us whether he received money from “Friends of Hamas” or like-minded outfits.

Obama’s nauseating hypocrisy.

The Secretary of the Treasury: from tax cheat to “tax scam” beneficiary Posted: 09 Feb 2013 01:44 PM PST (Paul Mirengoff) The Washington Post reports that Jack Lew, President Obama’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, held money in an investment fund registered in the very Cayman Islands building that Obama called a notorious haven for tax abuse. The address of the fund is a building called the Ugland House. Obama singled out that building in a 2009 speech against tax haven abuse. With his characteristic subtely, the president declared, “Either this is the largest building in the world or the largest tax scam in the world.” Obama’s screeds against holding money in off-shore funds aren’t limited to this occasion, of course. During the 2012 campaign, he attacked Mitt Romney on similar grounds. Personally, I have no problem with Lew holding money in any legal investment instrument, and the fund in question appears to be perfectly legal. Moreover, there is no indication that Lew cheated on his taxes, as his predecessor Tim Geithner did. Thus, his use of what Obama calls a tax scam doesn’t bear on his fitness to head the Treasury Department. What we have, instead, is the umpteenth installment of Obama’s nauseating hypocrisy. If I live long enough, I’m confident of one day learning that Obama himself has benefited from this or that mechanism he has denounced as a tax scam.

Obama's open hostility to Israel

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12759#.UP7CSWcu34Q

Shifting Sands, Shifting Alliances

By Victor Sharpe

Tuesday, January 22, 2013 10:00 AM

Under the hostile and imperial presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, the mutually beneficial special relationship between Israel and the United States is rapidly and systematically being torn apart and may become irreparable.

To quote the esteemed conservative Talk Show host and expert on the U.S. Constitution, par excellence, Mark Levin, “Obama hates Israel.” And anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear cannot but agree with him.

The greatest threat to the Jewish state comes not from Iran, not from the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians, but from Barack Hussein Obama.

In a highly problematic article, US columnist Jeffrey Goldberg - yet another Jewish American who would presumably not resist seeing Israel forced back to the pre June 4, 1967 nine mile wide armistice (Auschwitz) lines - quoted US President Barack Obama as saying that, “Israel under Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu does not know what is in its own best interest. Netanyahu, while visiting the Gaza border last week, was told that December was the quietest month in the last 12 years and essentially replied to Obama: Yes I do.

“I think everyone understands that only Israel’s citizens will be the ones to determine who faithfully represents Israel’s vital interests,” Netanyahu said on a visit to an army base near Gaza in his first direct response to Obama’s criticism. “Over the last four years we stood up against strong pressure, and I will continue to do so for Israel’s security.”

And that strong pressure is set to become almost overwhelming in its intensity, especially if Netanyahu receives a mandate from the Israeli electorate to continue as Prime Minister for a third term. Not only will Obama, with his likely appointed Israel bashers – Kerry at the State Department, Hagel as Secretary of Defense and Brennan as head of the CIA – turn on Israel but the European Union is reported to be ready, even anxious, to isolate the Jewish state if it does not bow down to European diktats and allow the creation – for the first time in history – of a Palestinian terror state within the biblical Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria; or what the world likes to call the West Bank.

And yet, that vicious anti-Israel pressure may well have an effect the Europeans, ever anxious to appease the Arab and Muslim world, and the American president whose growing tyrannical posturing is transforming America for the worse, do not expect. According to Fox News, the circulation of Obama’s reported comments, far from being detrimental for Netanyahu’s leadership prospects, might only help to band Israelis together ahead of the election.

And according to the website Hot Air, senior representatives in Netanyahu’s governing Likud party seethed, accusing Obama of “gross interference.” Barry Rubin recently wrote that Obama, Kerry, Hagel and Brennan are the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” certainly as far as Israel and the Middle East are concerned - and likely beyond.

Brennan cannot bear to use the name Jerusalem when referring to Israel’s capital city. He prefers to use the Muslim Arabic term, Al Quds. And Hagel has talked darkly of a “Jewish lobby” and wishes to join with his master in the White House in drastically reducing the United States armed forces and its antiquated nuclear defense abilities. Kerry, for his part, infamously once threw America under the bus with his hysterical and largely false charges of American atrocities in Vietnam.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who recently returned from a visit to Israel, described President Obama as “arrogant and presumptuous” for reportedly claiming to have a better understanding of Israel’s best interests than Prime Minister Netanyahu.

So what is Israel best advised to do when the combined anti-Israel tsunami strikes sometime after Netanyahu’s re-election despite what the despicable Israeli Left spews against him and which anti-Semites around the world gloatingly love to repeat?

We should remember that the United States has not always been Israel’s consistent supporter politically or militarily since the Jewish state was reconstituted in its biblical homeland in 1948. It was the Soviet Union, not the USA, which sent the first shipment of arms to the Haganah on April, 1st, 1948 through its Czechoslovakian controlled satellite by air and sea. This supply helped the fledgling Israeli forces at a critical juncture in repulsing Arab aggression. And as Egyptian forces, led by the Egyptian 2nd Brigade, moved north towards Ashdod, the first four Messershmitt aircraft arrived from Czechoslovakia and their appearance had a disastrous psychological effect upon the invading Egyptian army.

Similarly Britain and France helped arm Israel, especially before and during the 1956 One Hundred Hour War. It was France, not the United States, that provided Israel with nuclear technology and supplied the IAF with the Mirage and Mystere 1V jets which were used to destroy the Arab air forces at the outset of the 1967 Six-Day War.

Little, if any, help came at that time from the United States and visits between U.S. Administrations and Israeli politicians were few and far between. It was Prime Minister Levi Eshkol who was the first Israeli head of state to visit an American president when he met with Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

Ironically the state that emerged from the breakup of Czechoslovakia, after the earlier Soviet collapse, is the Czech Republic. It alone stood out in an honorable act at the United Nations, rare among the cowardly European Union states. It opposed the recent illegal action by the Palestinian Authority in ditching all its previous peace agreements made with Israel by going to the General Assembly and predictable obtaining support from the 57 member Muslim bloc, the assorted leftist regimes and the majority of European appeasers for recognition as non-member state observer status.

The ever prescient Yoram Ettinger points out in his excellent website, www.TheEttingerReport.Com that, “since March, 2009, irrespective of harsh disagreements over the Palestinian issue, the mutually-beneficial US-Israel strategic cooperation has expanded, especially in intelligence-sharing, counter-terrorism, homeland security, missile defense, training, battle tactics, joint exercises, pre-positioning of military hardware, medical treatment of soldiers and civilians, research and development, space, commercial and defense industries and high tech in general.”

But though this relationship has been a boon to the United States as much as it has been to Israel, the Jewish state would be well served in realizing that alliances appear and disappear like the shifting sands of the desert as has happened before with countries like France and Great Britain. Under the hostile and imperial presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, the mutually beneficial special relationship between Israel and the United States is rapidly and systematically being torn apart and may become irreparable -even as the Obama Administration is sending F16s and Abrams tanks to the anti-Western Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt: Is this Presidential insanity or mendacity?

The Jewish state urgently must therefore prepare to recognize this unfolding tragedy and seek new alliances before it is too late. Even now the writing is on the wall as Obama trashes American exceptionalism and works tirelessly to bring America down to the same level as the failed states of the world. America’s few remaining allies may find themselves increasingly cold shouldered and betrayed; and Israel is no exception.

Even if the will would still be there to support embattled Israel, the U.S., after Obama’s term of office is at an end, may no longer have the ability to be even a shadow of its former super power status or a force for stability in an increasingly perilous world.

Victor Sharpe is a prolific freelance writer with many published articles in leading national and international conservative websites and magazines. Born and educated in England, he has been a broadcaster and has authored several books including a collection of short stories under the title The Blue Hour. His three-volume set of in-depth studies on the threats from resurgent Islam to Israel, the West and to Judeo-Christian civilization is titled, Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state. www.amazon.com

Dems vs Israel

recent Pew Research Center for the People & the Press poll that showed 75 percent of Conservative Republicans sympathizing with Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians, compared with 33 percent of liberal Democrats siding with the Jewish state

Hagel's possible nomination proves Obama's anti Israel

Chuck Hagel's Jewish Problem - Bret Stephens
Chuck Hagel, the former GOP senator from Nebraska who is now a front-runner to be the next Secretary of Defense, carried on about how "the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here." The word "intimidates" ascribes to the so-called Jewish lobby powers that are at once vast, invisible and malevolent; and suggests that legislators who adopt positions friendly to that lobby are doing so not from political conviction but out of personal fear.
    In 2002, a year in which 457 Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks (a figure proportionately equivalent to more than 20,000 fatalities in the U.S., or seven 9/11s), Hagel weighed in with the advice that "Israel must take steps to show its commitment to peace."
    In 2006, Hagel described Israel's war against Hizbullah as "the systematic destruction of an American friend, the country and people of Lebanon." He later refused to sign a letter calling on the EU to designate Hizbullah as a terrorist organization. In 2007, he voted against designating Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization. (Wall Street Journal)

Josh Rogin Foreign  Affairs

Former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, rumored to be in contention for the job of defense secretary, has a long record of opposing sanctions on countries including Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya, and Cuba.

Hagel, who serves as co-chair of President Barack Obama's intelligence advisory board, throughout his career has publicly supported the idea of engaging with rogue regimes and focusing on diplomacy before punitive measures. While in Congress, he voted against several sanctions measures and argued vociferously against their effectiveness.

"Engagement is not appeasement. Diplomacy is not appeasement. Great nations engage. Powerful nations must be the adults in world affairs. Anything less will result in disastrous, useless, preventable global conflict," Hagel said in a Brookings Institution speech in 2008.

In 2008, Hagel was blamed for blocking an Iran sanctions bill that Senate Democrats supported. That same year, he gave a speech calling for the opening of a U.S. diplomatic post in Tehran. As early as 2001, Hagel said that sanctions on Iran and Libya were ineffective. He was one of only two senators that year to vote against renewal of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, along with Sen.Richard Lugar (R-IN).

In his 2008 book, America: Our Next Chapter, Hagel wrote, "America's refusal to recognize Iran's status as a legitimate power does not decrease Iran's influence, but rather increases it."

That same year, Hagel praised the George W. Bush administration's deal with North Korea, which included lifting some sanctions on Pyongyang and removing North Korea from the State Department's list of states that sponsor terrorism in exchange for greater transparency into North Korea's nuclear program. North Korea later reneged on its side of that bargain.

"The last thing we want to do or should do in my opinion is try to isolate North Korea," Hagel saidin 2003. "They are very dangerous, they're unpredictable, and they have a past behavior pattern that's a bit erratic. That is not good news for any of us. So I think we keep the emotions down and keep working the channels."

On Syria, Hagel was a longtime supporter of engagement with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and his father before him, Hafez al-Assad. After meeting with Assad the elder in 1998, Hagel said, "Peace comes through dealing with people. Peace doesn't come at the end of a bayonet or the end of a gun."

In 2008, Hagel co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed with prospective secretary of state nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), entitled, "It's time to talk to Syria."

"Syria's leaders have always made cold calculations in the name of self-preservation, and history shows that intensive diplomacy can pay off," Hagel and Kerry wrote.

Hagel has long been a critic of the multi-decade U.S. embargo on Cuba. He has said the trade embargo on Cuba "isolates us, not Cuba," and voted several times to ease parts of it.

"On Cuba, I've said that we have an outdated, unrealistic, irrelevant policy," he said in 2008. "It's always been nonsensical to me about this argument, 'Well, it's a communist country, it's a communist regime.' What do people think Vietnam is? Or the People's Republic of China? Both those countries are WTO members. We trade with them. We have relations. Great powers engage...  Great powers are not afraid. Great powers trade."

That same year, Hagel signed onto a letter to Secretary State Condoleezza Rice urging her to alter U.S.-Cuba policy. In 2002, Hagel called then leader Fidel Castro a "toothless old dinosaur" and said he agreed with former U.S. president Jimmy Carter on Cuba.

"What Jimmy Carter's saying ... is exactly right: Our 40-year policy toward Cuba is senseless," Hagel said.

In 2000, Hagel fought against legislation that would have granted citizenship to Cuban refugeeElian Gonzales.

"Chuck Hagel, like many other great national security strategists including Bob Gates and Brent Scowcroft, thinks that unilateral sanctions fashioned by emotion rather than strategic interests make no sense," said Steve Clemons, editor at large for the Atlantic and a longtime Hagel supporter.

"In many of the cases that sanctions resolutions appeared in the Senate," Clemons said, "sanctions by the U.S., unaccompanied by global support, actually reduce America's leverage in seducing or compelling a problematic nation from taking a different course."

 

Obama backs Muslim Brotherhood terrorists

Obama doubles down on the Muslim Brotherhood

Posted: 18 Dec 2012 03:05 PM PST

(Paul Mirengoff)

The Muslim Brotherhood is a virulently anti-Western Islamist outfit committed to the destruction of Israel. Its history of engaging in and supporting terrorism is beyond dispute.

President Obama backs the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He backed it, for example, when the military tried to stand up against Mohamed Morsi, the Brotherhood man who heads the Egyptian government, and when he made Morsi look like the hero of Hamas’ recent mini-victory over Israel.

But in backing Morsi, Obama can claim that he is simply recognizing the reality that Morsi is the elected leader of Egypt. It’s a weak argument because, elected or not, Morsi is an anti-western, anti-Israeli Islamist whose intentions are malicious. We don’t have to back our enemies just because they win elections. Heck, Obama sees no need to back our friends on this basis. Just ask Benjamin Netanyahu.

In any event, we now learn (from Jonathan Spyer, via Barry Rubin) that Obama has decided to back the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. Here, we aren’t talking about backing an elected government; rather, the issue is which rebel group to support.

As Spyer shows, Obama’s “intention is to align with and strengthen Muslim Brotherhood-associated elements, while painting Salafi forces as the sole real Islamist danger.” Meanwhile, “secular forces are ignored or brushed aside.”

Spyer ponts to the new military council that Obama is backing:

The founder of the Free Syrian Army, the secular former Syrian Air Force Colonel Riad Asaad, is notably absent. General Mustafa al-Sheikh, the first of his rank to defect to the rebels, is also not there. Sheikh is known for his fierce opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood. Hussein Haj Ali, the highest ranking officer to defect so far, was similarly absent.

A Reuters report on the new joint military council calculated that the Muslim Brotherhood and their allies account for about two thirds of the 263 men who met in Antaliya and formed the new body. Salafi commanders are also there.

The new council is headed by Brigadier Selim Idriss, who is described as a non-ideological military man. But his deputies, Abdel-basset Tawil of Idleb and Abdel-qader Saleh of Aleppo governate are associated with the Salafi trend.

The same picture emerges from an anlysis of the new civilian leadership body – the Syrian National Coalition:

The leader of this coalition is Ahmed Mouaz al-Khatib, former Imam of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. Khatib is closely associated with the Damascus Branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The leader of the new coalition has a long history of antisemitic, anti-western and anti-Shia remarks (he praised Saddam Hussein, for example, for ‘terrifying the Jews’ and wrote an article asking if Facebook was an ‘American-Israeli intelligence website.’) He is also an admirer of the Qatar-based Muslim Brotherhood preacher Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

Within the body headed by Khatib, the Muslim Brotherhood dominated Syrian National Council controls around 27 of the 65 seats on the executive body of the new coalition. There are also Islamists and fellow travelers among the non-SNC delegates. The Brotherhood are by far the best organized single body within the coalition. One secular delegate at the first full meeting of the coalition accused the MB of “pushing more of its hawks into the coalition, although it already has half of the seats.”

In sum, the Obama administration is now backing a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated coalition as the preferred replacement for the Assad regime.

The excuse will be that the alternative is the al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra organization. But Spyer insists that “the difference between [al-Nusra] and the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated groups is one of degree, not of kind.” The “home grown, Muslim Brotherhood elements that the US is backing are no less anti-western and no less anti-Jewish,” he adds. Nor is it clear that the U.S. had no other alternatives.

In this regard, we should keep in mind that the Syrian incarnation of the Muslim Brotherhood is even more militant than its counterparts elsewhere in the Middle East, according to Glenn Robinson, an associate professor at the U.S. Naval Academy graduate school writing in the December issue of Current History. In this sense, Obama’s play in Syria amounts to more than a doubling down on the Brotherhood.

The bottom line, says Barry Rubin, is that if the Obama-backed group is Syria’s new government, then Syria now has an Islamist regime. And that, it now seems clear, is fine with Obama.