by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch
I. PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS
TWO REPUBLICAN ENEMIES OF MR. TRUMP: John McCain played a major role in moving opposition data to security agencies. The Russian dossier on Mr. Trump was gathered by Republicans as opposition research when the party establishment was trying to derail his candidacy. McCain’s recruitment of federal agencies to evaluate and hopefully supplement opposition research against Mr. Trump was intended to help his favorite candidate, Lindsey Graham. This abuse of his office and influence is much more the story here than the wild hooker tales about Mr. Trump.
Marco Rubio never appeared so small or so invigorated as he did during his performance in the hearings on Mr. Trump’s pick for Secretary of State. "Little Marco" took on all the big guys: Tillerson for secretary of state; and Donald Trump who is organizing a team of truly accomplished men to effect a truly different foreign and domestic policy. Finally, the cameras allowed the Florida senator an opportunity to condemn Vladimir Putin who saved Russia from Boris Yeltsin, but is a war criminal to Rubio. Mr. Trump defeated the uber-hawk wing of the Republican party in the primary. One of his alternative strategies was to engage Russia as an ally or co-belligerent against ISIS. Senator Rubio, with an eye toward a one-term Trump presidency bedeviled by tumult, is positioning himself as an opposition leader the press and anti-Trump Republicans as well as the Democratic Party can rally to.
THE SOLDIER AND THE FEMINISTS -- GENERAL MATTIS FOR SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
Several of the the female senators on the Armed Services Committee bring a decidedly Human Resource approach to their duties. They are interested in breaking up the all-male group brotherhood which has served as the anthropological backbone of the military since its inception. Their fixation on this goal and the inadmissibility of questioning their core assumptions is one of the worst fruits of the Sixties cultural revolution and present-day political correctness. General Mattis was grilled but did not directly confront them on the issue. They know in the past he has said eros has no place on the battlefield. A full-throated cultural rejection of the sexual revolution is the task of public Christian culture, not officials in the Trump administration. They are giving us room. We must take back territory. Large all-male groups of brothers in a shared protective stance like male/female couples in domestic love are fundamental patterns of Christian and human agreement. Time to defend the normal.
A RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE ON THE LARGEST US FORCE DEPLOYMENT IN HISTORY IN POLAND
As President Obama leaves office and Mr. Trump seeks a new relationship with Russia, the US transferred troops and tanks to Poland. This is our largest eastern European deployment since WWII. Why now?
CIA REFORM -- GOING TO THE PERIPHERY: An old interview with Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn on integrating intelligence and field operations. The kinetic force of drones is not enough. The Trump administration comes to office with some very definite ideas about military and intelligence reform. President George W. Bush had Condi Rice as national security advisor. President Obama had Susan Rice. President Trump has General Flynn. Which president has the best chance to have a coherent foreign policy?
TRUMP BY MILITARY HISTORIAN VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Insights from one of the few writers who supported Trump at a magazine deeply opposed to his candidacy from the right.
II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST
AN ARGUMENT NOT TO FIGHT IRAN: From Pat Buchanan.
UNDERSTANDING ISRAEL - AT WAR WITH IRAN: Ya'alon: Iran, Not ISIS, Is Israel's Central Enemy - Yonah Jeremy Bob, "Former defense minister Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Moshe Ya'alon said Monday that the IDF operation against Hamas in 2014 had brought 'complete quiet' on the Gaza front, despite small groups of Salafists who occasionally fire rockets. He added that the Lebanese, Syrian and Jordanian borders are all relatively quiet and that threats from jihadists in Sinai do not rise beyond a certain threshold.
"Ya'alon also noted, 'Everyone views ISIS as an enemy. For us, Iran is still the central enemy and suddenly it changed to part of the solution for the U.S.' He argued that Iran is exploiting the current situation to 'acquire hegemonic power in the region.' Ya'alon expressed hope that President-elect Trump would take a stronger stance to press Iran to reduce its sponsorship of terror." [Jerusalem Post]
ISRAEL OUR ALLY, BUT ISRAEL AT CROSS-PURPOSES
If President Trump organizes the anti-Salafist forces in the region against ISIS this will necessitate a breaking of the de facto alliance of Israel and Saudi Arabia. Right now, Israel is fighting a very different strategic war than the US. Israel has basically joined the Saudi regional anti-Shiite campaign as a continuation of its war with Iran waged since 1979. Slogans like "no light between us" do not clarify the disastrous reality of US/Israel cross purposes. This is one fundamental cause of the incoherence of US Mideast policy. Here is Prime Minister Netanyahu’s map of Israel’s True Enemies: Five Countries.
IN GERMANY AND FRANCE, LEADERS NAME THE SALAFIST ENEMY: A German and a Frenchman have brought refreshing clarity to the nature of the fight against the Salafist jihadists. It sounds tough to say all of Islam is the enemy, but that remains a recipe for inaction spiced with hate. To say terrorism has nothing to do with Islam is the failed mantra of the last decades. So it is quite significant that in both Germany and France the real enemy is being named. In Germany, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel says the Salafist mosques must be banned and their preachers deported. That will take some sorting out, but sorting out is what the war on one part of Islam is all about.
In France, presidential candidate and Catholic Francois Fillon is equally specific. He wants a grand coalition of all those powers, including Iran and Hezbollah, that are willing to fight the Islamic State, which he regards as Enemy No. 1. That is the same alignment of the guns that Russia saw years ago, and we have advocated in our writing.
III. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION
RACE AND TORTURE IN CHICAGO - CHICAGO HEADLINE SAYS "APPARENT" RACIAL ATTACK: Don’t want to jump to judgment when a disabled white guy is tied and tortured on video with racist taunts against Trump filling the air. A Chicago paper in "reporting" didn’t use the quotes, just said the torturer was incoherent. This kind of reporting is not a double standard -- it is a lie. The media miss again.
HUMAN RIGHTS, THE RELIGIOUS IDEA OF THE PERSON IS NOT MODERN INDIVIDUALISM: Some history of religious ideas in the 1930-40’s that precede the human rights revolution in politics.
GENDER EQUALITY AND FOREIGN POLICY: These people were at the top of the Obama policy team on this cultural mission. Tom Donilon was a top national security advisor, and Catherine Russell was/is ambassador at large on women issues. Their religion was to disrupt the human ecology of gender differences and they were missionaries about it. The disruption of the natural masculine bond to protect shared territory (all females and children included) undermines our real national security. The Obama presidency was a much more effective battering ram for the sexual revolution than for interracial brotherhood. Just as the adults returned after the Chinese cultural revolution and reestablished order, Americans must end the war on human nature waged by feminism and gender ideology against the protective patterns of Christian culture.
ASTONISHED AT CARDINALS' PUBLIC DUBIA TO THE POPE: An argument not to publicly buck the Pope from Cardinal Mueller of the CDF. In this momentous time of national ferment in America, it is incredible how much of the Catholic conservative press is miniaturized in petulance against Pope Francis. For a century we have prayed for the conversion of Russia and now as the new openings present themselves, the Catholic intellectuals are absorbed with other matters. The Catholic layman is needed at the wall of his city, but he is down in a self-constructed catacomb deluding himself that Christianity is collapsing under the pope from Argentina.
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