Rubio, Cruz, and U.S. Global Leadership. By Caroline B. Glick.

Rubio, Cruz, and U.S. global leadership. By Caroline B. Glick. Jerusalem Post, December 17, 2015. Also at Real Clear Politics.

Glick:

For the first time in a decade, Americans are beginning to think seriously about foreign policy; But are they too late?

At some point between 2006 and 2008, the American people decided to turn their backs on the world. Between the seeming futility of the war in Iraq and the financial collapse of 2008, Americans decided they’d had enough.

In Barack Obama, they found a leader who could channel their frustration. Obama’s foreign policy, based on denying the existence of radical Islam and projecting the responsibility for Islamic aggression on the US and its allies, suited their mood just fine. If America is responsible, then America can walk away. Once it is gone, so the thinking has gone, the Muslims will forget their anger and leave America alone.

Sadly, Obama’s foreign policy assumptions are utter nonsense. America’s abandonment of global leadership has not made things better. Over the past seven years, the legions of radical Islam have expanded and grown more powerful than ever before. And now in the aftermath of the jihadist massacres in Paris and San Bernadino, the threats have grown so abundant that even Obama cannot pretend them away.

As a consequence, for the first time in a decade, Americans are beginning to think seriously about foreign policy. But are they too late? Can the next president repair the damage Obama has caused? The Democrats give no cause for optimism. Led by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential hopefuls stubbornly insist that there is nothing wrong with Obama’s foreign policy. If they are elected to succeed him, they pledge to follow in his footsteps.

On the Republican side, things are more encouraging, but also more complicated.

Republican presidential hopefuls are united in their rejection of Obama’s policy of ignoring the Islamic supremacist nature of the enemy. All reject the failed assumptions of Obama’s foreign policy.

All have pledged to abandon them on their first day in office. Yet for all their unity in rejecting Obama’s positions, Republicans are deeply divided over what alternative foreign policy they would adopt.

This divide has been seething under the surface throughout the Obama presidency. It burst into the open at the Republican presidential debate Wednesday night.

The importance of the dispute cannot be overstated.

Given the Democrats’ allegiance to Obama’s disastrous policies, the only hope for a restoration of American leadership is that a Republican wins the next election. But if Republicans nominate a candidate who fails to reconcile with the realities of the world as it is, then the chance for a reassertion of American leadership will diminish significantly.

To understand just how high the stakes are, you need to look no further than two events that occurred just before the Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate.

On Tuesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency voted to close its investigation of Iran’s nuclear program. As far as the UN’s nuclear watchdog is concerned, Iran is good to go.

The move is a scandal. Its consequences will be disastrous.

The IAEA acknowledges that Iran continued to advance its illicit military nuclear program at least until 2009. Tehran refuses to divulge its nuclear activities to IAEA investigators as it is required to do under binding UN Security Council resolutions.

Iran refuses to allow IAEA inspectors access to its illicit nuclear sites. As a consequence, the IAEA lacks a clear understanding of what Iran’s nuclear status is today and therefore has no capacity to prevent it from maintaining or expanding its nuclear capabilities. This means that the inspection regime Iran supposedly accepted under Obama’s nuclear deal is worthless.

The IAEA also accepts that since Iran concluded its nuclear accord with the world powers, it has conducted two tests of ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons, despite the fact that it is barred from doing so under binding Security Council resolutions.

But really, who cares? Certainly the Obama administration doesn’t. The sighs of relief emanating from the White House and the State Department after the IAEA decision were audible from Jerusalem to Tehran.

The IAEA’s decision has two direct consequences.

First, as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday, it paves the way for the cancellation of the UN’s economic sanctions against Iran within the month.

Second, with the IAEA’s decision, the last obstacle impeding Iran’s completion of its nuclear weapons program has been removed. Inspections are a thing of the past. Iran is in the clear.

As Iran struts across the nuclear finish line, the Sunni jihadists are closing their ranks.

Hours after the IAEA vote, Turkey and Qatar announced that Turkey is setting up a permanent military base in the Persian Gulf emirate for the first time since the fall of the Ottoman Empire a century ago. Their announcement indicates that the informal partnership between Turkey and Qatar on the one side, and Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State on the other hand, which first came to the fore last year during Operation Protective Edge, is now becoming a more formal alliance.

Just as the Obama administration has no problem with Iran going nuclear, so it has no problem with this new jihadist alliance.

During Operation Protective Edge, the administration supported this jihadist alliance against the Israeli-Egyptian partnership. Throughout Hamas’s war against Israel, Obama demanded that Israel and Egypt accept Hamas’s cease-fire terms, as they were presented by Turkey and Qatar.

Since Operation Protective Edge, the Americans have continued to insist that Israel and Egypt bow to Hamas’s demands and open Gaza’s international borders. The Americans have kept up their pressure on Israel and Egypt despite Hamas’s open alliance with ISIS in the Sinai Peninsula.

So, too, the Americans have kept Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at arm’s length, and continue to insist that the Muslim Brotherhood is a legitimate political force despite Sisi’s war against ISIS. Washington continues to embrace Qatar as a “moderate” force despite the emirate’s open support for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and ISIS.

As for Turkey, it appears there is nothing Ankara can do that will dispel the US notion that it is a credible partner in the war on terror. Since 2011, Turkey has served as Hamas’s chief state sponsor, and as ISIS’s chief sponsor. It is waging war against the Kurds – the US’s strongest ally in its campaign against ISIS.

In other words, with the US’s blessing, the forces of both Shi’ite and Sunni jihad are on the march.

And the next president will have no grace period for repairing the damage.

Although the Republican debate Wednesday night was focused mainly on the war in Syria, its significance is far greater than one specific battlefield.

And while there were nine candidates on the stage, there were only two participants in this critical discussion.

Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz faced off after weeks of rising contention between their campaigns.

In so doing, they brought the dispute that has been seething through their party since the Bush presidency into the open.

Rubio argued that in Syria, the US needs to both defeat ISIS and overthrow President Bashar Assad.

Cruz countered that the US should ignore Assad and concentrate on utterly destroying ISIS. America’s national interest, he said, is not advanced by overthrowing Assad, because in all likelihood, Assad will be replaced by ISIS.

Cruz added that America’s experience in overthrowing Middle Eastern leaders has shown that it is a mistake to overthrow dictators. Things only got worse after America overthrew Saddam Hussein and supported the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi and Hosni Mubarak.

For his part, Rubio explained that since Assad is Iran’s puppet, leaving him in power empowers Iran. The longer he remains in power, the more control Iran will wield over Syria and Lebanon.

The two candidates’ dispute is far greater than the question of who rules Syria. Their disagreement on Syria isn’t a tactical argument. It goes to the core question of what is the proper role of American foreign policy.

Rubio’s commitment to overthrowing Assad is one component of a wider strategic commitment to fostering democratic governance in Syria. By embracing the cause of democratization through regime change, Rubio has become the standard bearer of George W. Bush’s foreign policy.

Bush’s foreign policy had two seemingly contradictory anchors – a belief that liberal values are universal, and cultural meekness.

Bush’s belief that open elections would serve as a panacea for the pathologies of the Islamic world was not supported by empirical data. Survey after survey showed that if left to their own devices, the people of Muslim world would choose to be led by Islamic supremacists. But Bush rejected the data and embraced the fantasy that free elections lead a society to embrace liberal norms of peace and human rights.

As to cultural meekness, since the end of the Cold War and with the rise of political correctness, the notion that America could call for other people to adopt American values fell into disrepute. For American foreign policy practitioners, the idea that American values and norms are superior to Islamic supremacist values smacked of cultural chauvinism.

Consequently, rather than urge the Islamic world to abandon Islamic supremacism in favor of liberal democracy, in their public diplomacy efforts, Americans sufficed with vapid pronouncements of love and respect for Islam.

Islamic supremacists, for their part stepped into the ideological void without hesitation. In Iraq, the Iranian regime spent hundreds of millions of dollars training Iranian-controlled militias, building Iranian-controlled political parties and publishing pro-Iranian newspapers as the US did nothing to support pro-American Iraqis.

Although many Republicans opposed Bush’s policies, few dared make their disagreement with the head of their party public. As a result, for many, Wednesday’s debate was the first time the foundations of Bush’s foreign policy were coherently and forcefully rejected before a national audience.

If Rubio is the heir to Bush, Cruz is the spokesman for Bush’s until now silent opposition. In their longheld view, democratization is not a proper aim of American foreign policy. Defeating America’s enemies is the proper aim of American foreign policy.

Rubio’s people claim that carpet bombing ISIS is not a strategy. They are right. There are parts missing from in Cruz’s position on Syria.

But then again, although still not comprehensive, Cruz’s foreign policy trajectory has much to recommend it. First and foremost, it is based on the world as it is, rather than a vision of how the world should be. It makes a clear distinction between America’s allies and America’s enemies and calls for the US to side with the former and fight the latter.

It is far from clear which side will win this fight for the heart of the Republican Party. And it is impossible to know who the next US president will be.

But whatever happens, the fact that after their seven-year vacation, the Americans are returning the real world is a cause for cautious celebration.

Ted Cruz’s Foreign Policy Triumph. By Peter Ferrara.

Ted Cruz’s Foreign Policy Triumph. By Peter Ferrara. The American Spectator, December 17, 2015.

Ferrara:

At the CNN Las Vegas debate Tuesday night, an important distinction was reintroduced to Republican politics. During the debate, Texas Senator Ted Cruz presented a well-thought out, foreign and national defense policy based on the original, Reagan conservatism. One that focuses on advancing America’s security interests around the world, not on sacrificing American lives and treasure on replacing foreign dictators with human rights, birthing new democracies, or building jobs and prosperity in foreign lands.

The Cruz and Reagan doctrine goes all the way back to America’s Founding Fathers. They wanted America to stay out of endless European wars, and foreign “entangling alliances.” They wanted America to stand for human rights, democracy, and prosperity for all. But they envisioned America advancing those goals by its own example, not at the point of a gun.

At the debate last Tuesday, Florida Senator Marco Rubio took the lead in advancing a different, more recent policy — the neoconservatism of George Bush, which committed America to replacing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with a modern democracy and economy, based on a culture of Western civil rights. Ohio Governor John Kasich and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham also appeared in supporting roles for Rubio’s vision. Cruz enjoyed the vocal, reasoned support of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.

Cruz explained his foreign policy vision in his opening statement, saying, “We need a President who understands the first obligation of the Commander-in-Chief is to keep America safe. If I am elected President, we will hunt down and kill the terrorists. We will utterly destroy ISIS. We will stop the terrorist acts before they occur because we will not be prisoners to political correctness. Rather we will speak the truth. Border security is national security and we will not be admitting jihadists as refugees.”

When Wolf Blitzer asked Cruz whether his policy would be “to preserve dictatorships, rather than promoting democracy in the Middle East?” Cruz answered by explaining, “I believe in an America first foreign policy, that far too often President Obama and Hillary Clinton — and unfortunately more than a few Republicans — have gotten distracted from the central focus of keeping this country safe…. We need to focus on American interests, not on global aspirations.”

Cruz later added, in supporting Rand Paul’s well-articulated opposition to regime change, “The question of whether we should be toppling dictatorships is asking the wrong question. The focus should be on defeating our enemies. So, for example, a regime we should change is Iran because Iran has declared war on us. But we shouldn’t be toppling regimes that are fighting radical Islamic terrorists….”

Cruz explained the roots of his foreign and defense policies in Reagan, saying “We need a Commander in Chief who does what Ronald Reagan did with communism, which is he set out a global strategy to defeat Soviet communism. And he directed all of his forces to defeating communism.” Cruz added, “We need a President who stands up, number one, and says, we will defeat ISIS. And number two, says the greatest national security threat facing America is a nuclear Iran. And we need to be focused on defeating radical Islamic terrorists.”

Bush’s neoconservatism has become so ingrained in Republicans that Cruz’s opponents think his rejection of it offers an opportunity to attack Cruz as not a genuine conservative. Bret Stephens, the highly articulate neoconservative spokesman and Wall Street Journal columnist, actually recognized the shortcomings of neocon foreign policy in writing Tuesday, “[T]he purpose of U.S. foreign policy cannot be to redeem the world’s crippled societies through democracy-building exercises. Foreign policy is not in the business of making dreams come true—Arab-Israeli peace, Islamic liberalism, climate nirvana, a Russian reset, et cetera. It’s about keeping our nightmares at bay. Today those nightmares are Russian revanchism, Iranian nuclearization, the rise and reach of Islamic State and China’s quest to muscle the U.S. out of East Asia.”

But he fails to grasp Cruz’s distinction in criticizing Obama, “We’re looking at a President who’s engaged in this double speak where he doesn’t call radical Islamic terrorism by its name. Indeed, he gives a speech after the San Bernardino attack where his approach is to try to go after the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens rather than to keep us safe.” Cruz would keep us safe by enforcing the border, which is anathema to Stephens. So Stephens, a man who is rarely wrong, foolishly labels this Cruz position as reflecting lack of character.

Cruz’s ultimate intellectual coup in this last debate is a very positive turn for Republicans. Reagan’s wise, conservative, foreign policy was enormously popular. All his political life, Reagan was maligned by Democrats as a warmonger. But once he got his chance as President, he won the Cold War without firing a shot. Bush’s neoconservatism, however, was hugely unpopular, and paved the way to the Republicans’ fall from Reagan’s grace.

His performance Tuesday will only further fuel Cruz’s rapid rise to a now probable, smashing Iowa victory. That will launch the next question on the road to Republican 2016 redemption: Cruz-Rubio, or Cruz-Kasich, or Cruz-Carson, or Cruz-Fiorina?

Securing America’s Freedom: National Security Address at the Heritage Foundation. By Senator Ted Cruz.

Securing America’s Freedom: Protect, Defend, and Champion American Liberties through a Strong National Defense. By Senator Ted Cruz. Video. The Heritage Foundation, December 10, 2015. YouTube. Also at The Daily Signal, Legal Insurrection.

Cruz: Obama believes American people are the “bad guys.” Ted Cruz interviewed by Megyn Kelly. Video. The Kelly File. Fox News, December 10, 2015. Fox News Insider. YouTube.

The Cruz Imposture. By Bret Stephens.

The Cruz Imposture. By Bret Stephens. Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2015.

Ted Cruz’s Un-American “America First” Strategy. By David Milne. Foreign Policy, December 16, 2015.


Stephens:

Not everything in Ted Cruz’s foreign policy speech on Thursday at the Heritage Foundation was awful. There was enough intellectual heft in there to suggest that the senator from Texas is too smart to believe the ideological contrivances and strategic impostures by which he seeks to gain the GOP nomination.

The central foreign-policy challenge facing the next president is how to re-establish American credibility with friends who no longer trust us and enemies who no longer fear us. Mr. Cruz gets this, just as he gets that the purpose of U.S. foreign policy cannot be to redeem the world’s crippled societies through democracy-building exercises. Foreign policy is not in the business of making dreams come true—Arab-Israeli peace, Islamic liberalism, climate nirvana, a Russian reset, et cetera. It’s about keeping our nightmares at bay.

Today those nightmares are Russian revanchism, Iranian nuclearization, the rise and reach of Islamic State and China’s quest to muscle the U.S. out of East Asia. How to deal with them? Mr. Cruz has thoughts on these and other important matters, but first he wants you to know that he intends to finish the wall along the border with Mexico. And triple the border patrol. And quadruple the number of aircraft patrolling the border.

Why? Because “when terrorists can simply swim across the Rio Grande, we are daring them to make the journey.”

By now, illegal immigration is to the GOP what global warming is to the Democrats: the all-purpose bugaboo that is supposed to explain nearly every problem and whose redress must be part of every solution. But immigration policy is not foreign policy, much less a counterterrorism strategy. And there are probably larger pools of would-be jihadists in Montreal and Vancouver than in Monterrey or Veracruz. Shouldn’t Mr. Cruz call for a wall from Quebec to British Columbia?

Similarly depressing—because he surely knows better—are Mr. Cruz’s efforts to paint himself as a champion of civil liberties when it comes to his recent success in gutting the National Security Agency’s bulk telephony metadata collection program.

Mr. Cruz must feel politically vulnerable on this score, especially after the San Bernardino massacre and the sense that the pool of libertarian-leaning GOP voters is fast drying up. But he’s decided to double down on his objections to the (now lapsed) NSA program. “Hoarding tens of billion of records of ordinary citizens,” he said last week, “didn’t stop Fort Hood, it didn’t stop Boston, it didn’t stop Garland, and it failed to detect the San Bernardino plot.”

All true—nobody ever said intelligence is foolproof. But here’s another plot the NSA program failed to stop. “Telephony metadata,” wrote Judge  William H. Pauley III of New York’s Southern District in a 2013 ruling affirming the constitutionality of the program, “would have furnished the missing information and might have permitted the NSA to notify the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the fact that [9/11 hijacker  Khalid] al-Mihdhar was calling the Yemeni safe house from inside the United States.”

At this point, readers may sense that Mr. Cruz is closer to President Obama when it comes to fighting terrorism than he lets on. His views on metadata collection are identical to those of  James Clapper, the incompetent and dishonest Director of National Intelligence whom Mr. Cruz cites approvingly in his speech. He excoriates the Obama administration for hollowing out the military but fails to note that he was one of just two Republican votes (the other was  Rand Paul) against the latest National Defense Authorization Act, opposition he justifies on obscure civil-liberty grounds. He cites Libya as a case study in why not to intervene in a Middle Eastern civil war. But he may also have noted that his anti-interventionist instincts precisely track those of Mr. Obama, who was reluctantly dragged into a war he led from behind.

As for Syria, Mr. Cruz insists “we do not have a side in the Syrian civil war” and endorses Israeli Prime Minister  Benjamin Netanyahu’s view that nonintervention allows two evil sides to exhaust themselves in the fighting. But this is indistinguishable from Mr. Obama’s hands-off approach to the conflict, notwithstanding the administration’s flaccid efforts to arm a credible opposition and bomb ISIS.

If your aim is to bomb ISIS until the “sand glows in the dark,” you are taking a side in the conflict. Mr. Cruz knows this. If you want to destroy ISIS without strengthening the Assad regime and its backers in Tehran, you have to target the regime, too. The truth about Syria isn’t that we have no dog in the fight. It’s that we’ve got to fight two dogs. The alternative is the endless chaos in which ISIS incubates and desperate refugees come knocking on our doors.

Again, Mr. Cruz knows this. Again, he’s too smart not to. Intelligence is never in question when it comes to the junior senator from Texas. Character is.

The G.O.P. at a Crossroads. By Ross Douthat.

The G.O.P. at a Crossroads. By Ross Douthat. New York Times, December 17, 2015.

Douthat:

A long time ago, in the era we now know as B.T. (Before Trump), it was possible to envision a Republican primary campaign that would be a real contest of ideas, a clash of genuine policy visions — and therefore different from the empty I’m-not-Obama, no I’m-not-Obama contest of 2012. My favored scenario would have pitted Marco Rubio against Rand Paul: The former representing a reform-minded conservatism in domestic policy and a hawkish internationalism abroad; the latter representing a more libertarian domestic agenda and a noninterventionist posture overseas.

We’ve had tastes, in the Republican debates, of what that contest would have looked like, mostly when Paul has sniped at Rubio from the corner of the stage. But the Kentucky senator’s moment came and went a year ago; in 2015, like so many others, he’s been Trumped.

Yet the possibility of a real clash of ideas hasn’t gone the way of Paul’s campaign. Instead, if the race came down to the three men currently leading in the national polls, Republican primary voters would be facing their most ideologically consequential choice since 1980. Unlike many G.O.P. campaigns, in which terms like “establishment” and “populist” are mostly about affect and rhetoric, this time the Republican front-runners offer three very different visions for the future of the party.

The first vision is Rubio’s. On domestic policy, his campaign assumes (reasonably) that the party lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential campaigns because Republicans were out of touch with middle-class pocketbook anxieties, and tries to remedy that fault by moving somewhat toward the center on economic policy. Hence his promise of a larger child tax credit, his talk about reinventing higher education, his pledge to reform rather than slash the safety net and his promise of tax credits to help Americans who have benefited from Obamacare to buy health insurance.

Ted Cruz, by contrast, is several ticks to the right on domestic issues, and often closer to Rand Paul; his vision assumes that a more ideological conservatism can carry all before it. His tax plan, which combines a flat tax and a disguised sales tax, would place him well to the right of every recent Republican nominee; he’s attacking Rubio as a squish and sellout on immigration; and his forays on health care and entitlement reform suggest that he’s closer to True Conservative™ orthodoxy on those issues as well.

That contrast extends to foreign policy, where Rubio has been more of an interventionist than Cruz, more open to deploying ground troops against the Islamic State, more willing to topple dictators (Bashar al-Assad in theory, Muammar el-Qaddafi in fact) rather than accepting them as a necessary evil.

The details can be a little fuzzy because nobody, right or left, has a clear plan for how to handle the Middle East. But Rubio’s vision seems generally aligned with George W. Bush’s moralistic, democracy-promoting view of America’s role in the world, while Cruz seems to be trying to devise a distinctive cocktail of Reaganism and Jacksonianism, or a more pro-Israel version of George H.W. Bush-era realism.

And then there is Donald Trump. On foreign policy, he can sound like Paul when he condemns both parties for the Iraq war and blames United States intervention for many of the world’s ills, and like Cruz when he promises to put an end to the Islamic State from the skies. On immigration and trade, he’s offering a fortress-America vision that echoes the 1920s and 1930s more than the Reagan-era G.O.P.

But on other domestic issues, he can sound center-left (he’s no religious conservative, he loves eminent domain, he’s made favorable noises about single payer) or even liberal — particularly on entitlements, where he’s argued that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid should be protected from any kind of restructuring and reform.

This combination of views isn’t incoherent; it just puts Trump closer to Europe’s nationalist right than it does to most of the post-1960s American conservative tradition. Like France’s National Front or euroskeptic parties elsewhere on the Continent, he’s a candidate of government programs for the old and native-born, high walls against outsiders and a romanticized idea of national greatness. And it turns out that this Old World combination, at this particular moment, has a great deal of New World appeal.

Which makes the looming choice a genuinely fraught one for the future of the party. Rubio aspires to be Reagan (with a dash of Bill Clinton-in-1992 thrown in) but risks being another Dubya. Cruz aspires to be Reagan (with a dash of the elder Bush and Richard Nixon) but might be Barry Goldwater in 1964. And then Trump aspires to be no one but himself, a mash-up of Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, Silvio Berlusconi — and Jean-Marie Le Pen.

So a vote for Rubio is a vote for adaptation and ambition — for a conservatism that seeks to reassure the anxious middle on domestic policy and shore up the Pax Americana overseas. A vote for Cruz is a vote for rigor and retrenchment — for a more intensely ideological conservatism at home and a narrower definition of the national interest abroad. A vote for Trump is a vote for rupture — for a conservatism defined more by identity politics than ideology, more by nationalism than libertarianism, more by caudillism than the Constitution.

I have sympathy for all three of these tendencies — if not necessarily the men who currently embody them — and I think the ideal nominee would find a way to synthesize them, to sift the best and the worst of each.

But that nominee may not exist. So it’s up to the voters to choose which Republican future they prefer, from a lineup that offers not just echoes of the same old conservatism, but a real and pressing choice.

Importing the Values of the Middle East. By Daniel Horowitz.

Importing the Values of the Middle East. By Daniel Horowitz. Conservative Review, December 15, 2015.

Horowitz:

Ask any American if they think the Middle East is a place that reflects our political, cultural, and societal values. You will find unanimity of opinion that the Middle East is a raunchy place to live and that they are thankful to live far away from that bad neighborhood. Violence, sharia law, subjugation of women, and hatred for Jews are just a few things that come to mind when conjuring up an image of that region. Which begs the obvious question, why then should we import the Middle East to our shores?

Just today, all LA schools are closed due to a widespread terror threat. A young Muslim was arrested in Harford County, MD yesterday on charges of giving material support to ISIS, which itself comes on the heels of a slew of similar arrests over the past week. Although the government and media, once again refuse to divulge the immigration status of this and almost every other radical jihadist arrested by the FBI, it is clear that there are an endless number of jihadists among us, even in rural areas such as Harford County, MD.

There is a lot of discussion about the lack of vetting that Tafsheen Malik underwent when applying for an immigrant visa from Pakistan. DHS prohibited their agents from searching her social media records. But the broader problem is even if we did “vet” their views, what do you think we would find? A love for America, Jewish people, and democratic values? Undoubtedly, there are some individuals yearning to escape the Middle East mentality. But take a look at the percentage of those from selected Muslim countries who dislike Jews and/or Support Sharia law.

Now take a look at some of those numbers from selected countries juxtaposed with the number of immigrants we’ve admitted since 2001.

It doesn’t take a genius to understand that when such large numbers of immigrants are invited from countries with such anti-democratic, anti-enlightened, and anti-Jewish sentiments, on average we will be importing their culture, too. At that point, it becomes a cumulative effect and a numbers game. It’s not just about the tedious task of vetting each one individually.

As a nation, over the past few decades, our political leadership has violated a principle of immigration policy that was shared by all our Founders and early leaders. They all understood that America was a better place than any other country in the world and that many regions of the world were downright repugnant to the values we champion. As such, they never encouraged immigration as a mass institution because they liked the America they had conceived and didn’t want to import the undesirable characteristics of other countries. With that said, they welcomed individuals of merit who would assimilate into our values system and benefit the country.

During the debate over the Naturalization Act of 1790, Rep. Theodore Sedgwick (Federalist-MA), who served as a delegate to the Continental Congress and later as Speaker of the House, warned that mass migration would import the values of the countries of origin. “The citizens of America preferred this country, because it is to be preferred,” said Sedgwick. Speaking of European immigrants who actually shared similar ancestry, Sedgwick feared “their sensations, impregnated with prejudices of education, acquired under monarchical and aristocratical Governments, may deprive them of that zest for pure republicanism.” [1]

Was Sedgwick anti-immigrant? No. And this is why he desired to admit “reputable and worthy characters; such only were fit for the society into which they were blended.” But it was a no brainer to him that carte blanche importation even of Europeans would result in bringing anti-republicanism to our shores. One could only imagine what he’d say of today’s mass migration from the Middle East.

This is why numbers, time and origin matter in immigration. It matters how many individuals are admitted over a short period of time and from which regions of the world. That equation will determine whether we are importing the values of other countries or selectively inviting meritorious immigrants to share in our values.

As it relates to the Middle East, it should not be controversial or divisive to say that this region represents an anathema to American values. With the successful growth of cyber-jihad, those values are more widespread and dangerous than ever. Liberals should certainly feel that way, given the views of these countries towards women and homosexuals. That is why, following the dictates of our Founders, we should be more judicious about immigration from that part of the world than anywhere else. Yet, without the consent of the citizenry, it has become the fastest growing source of immigration.

Any politician who suggests that barring the values of the Middle East (not necessarily all immigrants) is against our values and traditions lacks a basic understanding of our values and traditions.

[1] Annals of Congress. The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States. “History of Congress.” 42 vols. Washington, D.C.: Gales & Seaton, 1834-56. Feb 3, 1790.

K.T. McFarland on National Security and Foreign Policy Strategies at the GOP Debate.

Candidates clash on national security at GOP debate. K.T. McFarland interviewed by Martha MacCallum. Video. America’s Newsroom. Fox News, December 16, 2015. YouTube.

K.T. McFarland: Bomb ISIS, destroy their resources. Video. Stossel. Fox Business, December 14, 2015. YouTube.

Rubio vs. Paul vs. Cruz on Foreign Policy. By Conservative Review.

Rubio vs. Paul vs. Cruz on Foreign Policy. By CR Editors. Conservative Review, May 14, 2015.

CR Editors:

After many years without a clear direction on foreign policy, Republicans are now engaging in a robust and healthy debate over principles related to national defense and military intervention.

Unlike conservative domestic policy, which is clearly directed by ideological principles of governance within the confines of the Constitution, U.S. foreign policy is more complex and contains a broader philosophical approach.  There is no single doctrine to fully dictate the particulars of all foreign policy initiatives or questions of military intervention.  Foreign policy decisions are ultimately governed by prudence and discernment based on the subjective assessment of each individual conflict and how it affects the strategic interests of America and our allies.  The aforementioned assessment must weigh the potential costs and benefits through the prism of likely outcomes.

In recent years, right-leaning commentators and media figures have discussed competing foreign policy visions in broad and vacuous terms, offering false choices between so-called neo-conservatives vs. libertarians, hawks vs. doves, or interventionists vs. isolationists.  But these labels fail to capture the reality of the decisions America must confront.

Most mainstream conservatives are not Ron Paul libertarians who rule out supporting a robust foreign policy to combat emerging threats to our strategic interests, such as Islamic terrorism and the growing threat from Russia and China.  At the same time, most conservatives (and most Americans across the board) reject the notion that we can or should spread democracy to the Arab world and engage in nation-building, especially in countries that lack the building blocks of a civil society.  The challenges in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the colossal disaster of the Arab Spring, have certainly laid waste to the democracy project we see today in the Middle East.

Due to the after-effects of 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, what we are seeing within the Republican Party are three predominant camps forming, most prominently on display through the informal doctrines of three presidential candidates: Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz.

THE PAUL LIBERTARIAN CAMP

It would probably be more accurate to ascribe the following foreign policy views to Ron Paul rather than Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) simply because the younger Paul seems to be “evolving” on many foreign policy issues.

At its core, this capital “L” Libertarian view is seemingly rooted in the belief that Islamic terrorists and terror-supporting regimes only hate America because of endless U.S. interventions in their part of the world. Many in this camp argue that if only the U.S. military would stop engaging in either projections of military power or the use of soft power against them, and the U.S. would end its overt support for Israel, America would not be facing an existential threat from Islamic Jihad.

Not only do the Paulites oppose any military intervention in the Middle East, they vehemently oppose the use of soft power and sanctions against Iran.  They also typically believe our military and defense spending are well over the line of what is necessary to defend national security.

As Rand Paul’s CR Presidential Profile highlights, the lowercase “l” Libertarian view that defines Rand’s foreign policy is best described as “realism.” Rand Paul is a staunch advocate of U.S. sovereignty and has consistently opposed sending aid to nations hostile to the U.S. However, Paul has exhibited questionable positions that are cause for concern for conservatives including his support for Obama’s call for normalized relations with communist Cuba and his opposition to new sanctions on Iran.

THE RUBIO/GRAHAM CAMP

Senator Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) foreign policy views are rooted in the notion that Islamic terror is an existential threat.  However, much like Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), he believes that the way to combat the threat is by getting involved in Islamic civil wars and attempting to spread democracy.  Yesterday, Rubio delivered a major foreign policy speech unveiling the “Rubio doctrine.”

We must recognize that our nation is a global leader not just because it has superior arms, but because it has superior aims,” Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, intends to say. “As president, I will support the spread of economic and political freedom, reinforce our alliances, resist efforts by large powers to subjugate their smaller neighbors, maintain a robust commitment to transparent and effective foreign assistance programs, and advance the rights of the vulnerable, including women and the religious minorities that are so often persecuted, so that the afflicted peoples of the world know the truth: the American people hear their cries, see their suffering, and most of all, desire their freedom.

It is clear that Rubio feels the U.S. has a responsibility not only to combat Islamic terror through the spread of democracy via interventions, but has an obligation to get involved in other regional skirmishes on behalf of persecuted minorities or bullied nations.





To that end, Rubio has supported the Arab Spring interventions, such as the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi.  He also supports a “boots on the ground” intervention in Syria and the arming of the Syrian rebels along with an endless flow of foreign aid to many Arab countries and rebel armies.

Rubio’s CR Presidential Profile provides the full spectrum of his foreign policy record and position on national defense. He has made a name for himself in conservative circles as a leader on foreign policy as a result of his calls for decisive U.S. action against the Islamic State, his unyielding support for Israel, spearheading the passage of the Venezuela sanctions and introducing legislation that would place further sanctions on Iran and Russia. Unlike Senator Paul, Rubio – a Cuban-American – sees the dangers of normalizing relations with Cuba and has been an instrumental leader in sounding the alarm on the president’s plans.  However, the profile also details his eagerness to support involvements in civil wars that have often strengthened Islamic groups instead of weakening them.

THE CRUZ CAMP

To some, Cruz appears to be charting a new course that is neither “isolationist” nor “neo-conservative.”  But in fact, he argues that there is nothing new about his views, as they represent the authentic Reagan approach to foreign policy – one that emphasizes ‘peace through strength’ with robust defense, control of the seas, and effective use of soft power, but one that also eschews endless interventions and nation building.

As Cruz said Tuesday night on Fox News’ Kelly File, “Our military’s job isn't to transform foreign nations into democratic utopias — it's to hunt down & kill terrorists.”

The Cruz contemporary foreign policy is rooted in the same starting point as Rubio’s in that the threat of Jihad is viewed as the consummate challenge of our time.  However, those subscribing to the Cruz doctrine vehemently opposed the Arab Spring interventions, not because of isolationist sensibilities, quite the contrary, they would argue that opposition to tossing out relatively secular dictators is the true “hawkish” position.  Cruz would contend, much like Rand Paul, that those interventions helped strengthen the Islamic terrorists.  

The foundation for this view is built on the premise that there are two equally serious threats to our national security – Sunni Jihadists and Shiite terror groups and regimes, most prominently, Iran.  As such, every foreign policy decision in the Middle East has to be weighed against the logical outcome of how it strengthens or weakens one or both of those threats.

In the case of Libya, supporters of intervention swapped a nasty dictator, albeit a man who kept the radical Islamists in check, for a power vacuum that has been filled by ISIS and Al Qaeda.

Highlighted in his CR Presidential Profile, Cruz’s foreign policy record is one of the most impressive especially given his short tenure in the Senate. He has consistently led efforts to impose stricter sanctions on Iran and Russia, is a firm supporter of Israel, and continues to be a leader calling for the U.S. to take action to combat terror from the Islamic State without engaging in a protracted ground operation.

In Iraq, Cruz recently said that the 2003 invasion and regime change, in retrospect, was a mistake.  This is because Saddam Hussein, although a brutal dictator, was in fact the only person who served as a counterbalance to both existential threats – Sunni Jihadists and Iran.  It is certainly clear that Obama’s reckless pullout led to a quicker rise of ISIS and Sunni jihadists, but it is unlikely that the Iraq story would have ever ended well regardless of Obama’s actions.  Even before Obama’s irresponsible withdraw, Iraq had become a proxy for Iran.  Was it worth expending 4,500 of our finest soldiers plus over a trillion dollars to deliver Iraq into the hands of Iran?

Moreover, even without Obama’s pullout, it would have been hard to stem the tide of Sunni insurgents in the face of Iranian Shiite dominance.  U.S. “leadership” and the spread of democracy will never hold these volatile and unstable countries together without eastern countries standing against them and their radical Islamic terror regimes. Now we are seeing the vacuum being filled by entities that pose a much graver threat to us than Saddam Hussein did over a decade ago.

It is this guiding lesson from the Iraq war that is fueling the view of the Cruz faction that the U.S. military should stay out of the civil war taking place in Syria and parts of Iraq.  With a tangled web of Iranian-backed Assad forces, al-Nusra, ISIS, and dubious or ineffective “Syrian rebels” engaged in conflict, there is no good outcome for U.S. strategic interests.  With Iran and ISIS fighting each other in Iran, why risk our lives and war chest to tip the scales to one side, only to see that side eventually become the next volatile regime? Why not let our two biggest enemies slug it out?  It is for this reason that Cruz would oppose any boots on the ground beyond decisive air strikes against those threatening the Kurds or Christian minorities.

The aforementioned view can best be described with the following doctrine: A president should only use military force if the end result will bolster our allies and weaken our enemies, preferably when those allies have built a civil society and have their own military for which our efforts will result in a positive outcome and territory gained or preserved for our allies.              

But while Cruz would take a hands-off approach to some of the Islamic civil wars, he is as hawkish as they come on Iran.  That is because Iran represents an existential threat and is responsible for killing more U.S. soldiers since 1979 than any other regime.  And the remedy here, unlike in other geopolitical conflicts, is not to referee a civil war and nation-build a balkanized country; it is the effective use of soft power through sanctions, freezing assets, control of the seas, and other covert activity at our disposal.

This also explains why the Cruz camp wants to bulk up our military, increase our deterrent power and control over the seas, but save a lot of money by refraining from endless national-building escapades that have cost the U.S. trillions.  It’s why Cruz often cites the Reagan paradigm of increasing defense spending but never wasting money and lives with protracted military interventions.  After all, as Cruz also frequently points out, Granada was the largest country Reagan invaded during his tenure.

Those subscribing to this worldview also believe that securing our border and limiting the immigration of security threats is at least as vital, if not more important, than any projection of power overseas.  The same certainly cannot be said of the Rubio, Graham, and McCain camp.

If nothing else, the fact that conservatives are now debating some of the past and present foreign policy decisions is a welcome development.  A lack of coherent principles on domestic policy has gotten Republicans into trouble in the past.  Although foreign policy is more complex, it would be wise for the party to develop some cogent principles before they reassume power as the governing party.

Enemies. By Michael Lumish.

Enemies. By Michael Lumish. Israel Thrives, December 14, 2015.

Lumish:

The western-left refuses to stand up to the cruel bullies of political Islam.

In doing so, the Left has abandoned women in the Muslim-Middle East, gay people in the Muslim-Middle East, all non-Muslims in that part of the world, as well as freedom of speech even in Europe.  As a direct consequence, as I have argued ad nauseum, they have flushed adherence to the ideal of universal human rights directly down the toilet.

In this way, the progressive-left has abandoned its very reason to be because it has abandoned the heart of its movement in favor of the multicultural ideal.

When I think of the joyous escapades of our friends in the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) – such as, for example, burying Yazidis alive in mass graves or using young non-Muslim prepubescent girls as sexual slaves or the mass chopping off of “infidel” heads or the destruction of ancient antiquities, such as we recently saw in Palmyra - one word comes immediately to mind:

Enemy.

The thing about the western-left, in general, and the American-left, as well, is that it recognizes no such category of human being – beyond Republicans, Evangelical Christians, or conservatives – as an enemy.  They may actively and loudly despise people such as former president George W. Bush, but they can live with the Muslim Brotherhood or Islamic Jihad or Boko Haram.  This is because they tend to have little, or no, sense of ethical proportionality.  Sure, Boko Haram might kidnap hundreds of young girls for the purpose of raping them and selling them into sexual slavery but, aghghg!, George W. Bush is a Texas Republican!

The Left knows who their real enemy is and it is definitely neither Boko Haram, nor the Islamic State.

I understand, of course, that the concept of “enemy” is not a pretty one.  When a people or a nation have an enemy then their leadership is obligated to defeat that enemy.  This requires a willingness to stand up, put oneself forward, and actually do whatever is necessary to win the war.  People on the Left, however, have no such inclination unless they are spitting hatred at the likes of Dick Cheney or that heinous Zionist, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The rise of political Islam represents the single most significant geopolitical event since the downfall of the Soviet Union.  The crazed and vicious denizens of organizations like ISIS or Hamas despise essential western values such as the equality of women, freedom of speech or, even, freedom of thought, and they are perfectly happy to use even the most horrendous forms of violence to prove it.

And, needless to say, political Islam is the most violently anti-Semitic political movement that we have seen in the world since the Nazis were pulling gold out of Jewish teeth.  This makes them unequivocally my enemy and they should be the acknowledged enemy of anyone who believes in western-liberal values... which the Left no longer does, if it ever did.

There are at least two important reasons why the progressive-left finds it difficult to acknowledge groups like ISIS as an enemy.  The first is because the United States is a powerful, largely white country, and people “of color” in the Middle East are considered underdogs and the natural instinct is to protect the underdog even, apparently, if the underdog is burning people alive in cages.

The second reason is because most progressives blame the West for the rise of political Islam due to unjust material factors imposed by Europe for centuries and by the United States since early in the twentieth.  That is, they believe that western and American imperialism destabilized traditional societies, subjecting them to war, poverty, and thereby encouraged a rational hatred of the West.

There is only one major problem with this analysis.  It infantilizes Arabs in an exceedingly bigoted and prejudicial manner and it fails to acknowledge the linkage between strongly held religious beliefs and behavior.  ISIS, whatever else it may be, is a religious-political movement drenched in the Salafist form of Islam.  When they say that they wish to carry out the violent Jihad for the purpose of establishing the Caliphate, they mean it.  When they say that head-chopping is the pleasure of Allah and that if they die in Jihad they will go to paradise, they mean that, as well.

They act on their beliefs and those belief are not due to the fact that sometimes Jewish people build housing for themselves beyond the Green Line.  Their beliefs are grounded in their religious faith and the primary sources of that faith are the Qur’an and the hadiths.

Drop Sam Harris a line.

He will have a few words.