Obama’s Iraq Policy Did Not Create ISIS. By Andrew C. McCarthy.

Obama’s Iraq Policy Did Not Create ISIS. By Andrew C. McCarthy. National Review Online, August 13, 2016.

McCarthy:

Our challenge in the Middle East is that sharia supremacism fills all vacuums.

The early Cold War wisdom that “we must stop politics at the water’s edge” has never been entirely true. In endeavors as human as politics, no such altruistic aspiration ever will be. But Senator Arthur Vandenberg’s adage does reflect a principle critical to effective national security: The United States is imperiled when partisan politics distorts our understanding of the world and the threats it presents.

We’ve been imperiled for a long time now. The most salient reason for that has been the bipartisan, politically correct refusal to acknowledge and confront the Islamic roots of the threat to the West. It has prevented us from grasping not only why jihadists attack us but also that jihadists are merely the militant front line of the broader civilizational challenge posed by sharia supremacism.

Inevitably, when there is a profound threat and an overarching strategic failure to apprehend it, disasters abound; and rather than becoming occasions for reassessment of the flawed bipartisan strategy, those disasters become grist for partisan attacks. From 2004 through 2008, the specious claim was that President Bush’s ouster of Saddam Hussein created terrorism in Iraq. Now it is that President Obama is the “founder of ISIS,” as Donald Trump put it this week.

The point here is not to bash Trump. He is hardly the first to posit some variation of the storyline that Obama’s premature withdrawal of American forces from Iraq led to the “vacuum” in which, we are to believe, the Islamic State spontaneously generated. Indeed, this narrative is repeated on Fox News every ten minutes or so.

The point is to try to understand what we are actually dealing with, how we got to this place, and what the security implications are. There is no denying that American missteps have exacerbated a dangerous threat environment in the Middle East to some degree. It is spurious, though, to suggest that any of these errors, or all of them collectively, caused the catastrophe that has unfolded.

The problem for the United States in this region is Islam — specifically, the revolutionary sharia-supremacist version to which the major players adhere. There is no vacuum. There never has been a vacuum. What we have is a bubbling cauldron of aggressive political Islam with its always attendant jihadist legions.

The question is always: How to contain the innate aggression? The fantasy answers are: (a) let’s convert them to Western democracy, and (b) let’s support the secular democrats. In reality, the region does not want Western democracy — it wants sharia (Islamic law), even if there is disagreement about how much sharia and how quickly it should be imposed. And while there are some secular democrats, there are far, far too few of them to compete with either the sharia-supremacist factions or the dictatorial regimes — they can only fight the latter by aligning with the former. At best, the secularists provide hope for an eventual evolution away from totalitarian sharia culture; for now, however, it is absurd for Beltway Republicans to contend that ISIS emerged because Obama failed to back these “moderates” in Iraq and Syria.

The fact that top Republicans use the term “moderate” rather than “secular democrat” should tell us all we need to know. They realize there are not enough secularists to fight either Bashar Assad or ISIS, much less both of them. For all their justifiable ridiculing of Obama’s lexicon, Republicans invoke “moderates” for the same reason Obama uses terms like “workplace violence” — to obscure unpleasant truths about radical Islam. In this instance, the truth is that the “moderates” they claim Obama should have backed include the Muslim Brotherhood and other anti-Western Islamist factions, including al-Qaeda. Of course, if they told you that, there wouldn’t be much bite in their critique of Obama’s infatuation with the Muslim Brotherhood . . . and you might even start remembering that, during the Bush years, the GOP couldn’t do enough “outreach” to “moderate Islamists.”

The Middle East is aflame because of sharia supremacism and the jihadism that ideology always produces. That was the problem long before there was an ISIS. The Baathist regimes in Iraq and Syria, like other Middle Eastern dictatorships, kept sharia supremacism in check by alternatively persecuting Islamist insurgents, turning them against each other, or using them to harass Israel and the West. In Iran, to the contrary, the shah was overthrown by a revolutionary Shiite jihadist movement that he failed to keep in check.

Bush, with what started out as bipartisan support, ousted the Iraqi regime without any discernible plan for dealing with Iran, Syria, and the wider war — delusionally calculating that Iran might actually be helpful because of its supposedly keen interest in Iraqi stability. Iran, of course, went about the business of fueling the terrorist insurgency against American troops. Saddam’s fall unleashed the competing Islamist forces that continue to tear Iraq apart. The thought that we could democratize the culture was fantasy; far from taming sharia supremacism, the government we birthed in Baghdad was converted by the Iran-backed Shiite parties into a mechanism for abusing Sunnis. Naturally, the Sunnis turned to their own sharia supremacists for their defense.

It is fair enough to argue that Obama should not have pulled U.S. forces out of Iraq just as the security situation was badly deteriorating in 2011. But a big part of the reason that Democrats thrashed Republicans in the 2006 midterms, and that Obama was elected in 2008, was mounting American opposition to maintaining our troops there. Critics, moreover, conveniently omit to mention that (a) the agreement with the Iraqi government to withdraw our troops on a timeline unrelated to conditions on the ground was made by Bush, not Obama, and that (b) Bush reluctantly made that agreement precisely because Iraqis were demanding that Americans get out of their country.

The war became unpopular in the United States because it seemed unconnected to U.S. security interests: so much sacrifice on behalf of ingrates, while Iran exploited the mayhem to muscle in. There was no public appetite for a long-range U.S. military presence. What would be the point, when Bush had given the increasingly hostile Iraqi government the power to veto U.S. military operations to which it objected, and had agreed that our forces would not use Iraqi territory as a base of operations against Iran, Syria, or any other country? (See 2008 Status of Forces Agreement, articles 4 and 27.) This was not post-war Europe or Japan, where the enemy had been vanquished. Most Americans did not see the point of further risking American lives in order to stop anti-American Shiites and anti-American Sunnis from having at each other, as they’ve been doing to great lethal effect for 14 centuries.

ISIS (now, the Islamic State) got its start as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the primary culprit (along with Iran) in the Iraqi civil war. ISIS thus long predates Obama’s presidency. Furthermore, the oft-repeated GOP talking-point that al-Qaeda in Iraq was defeated by the Bush troop surge is a gross exaggeration. Our jihadist enemies could not be defeated in Iraq, because Iraq was never their sole base of operations. Since we’ve never had a strategy to defeat them globally, we were never going to do more than temporarily tamp them down in Iraq. They were always going to wait us out. They were always going to reemerge, in Iraq and elsewhere.

One of the places in which they regrouped was Syria. That made perfect sense, because Syria — the client of al-Qaeda’s long-time supporter, Iran — was always a waystation for jihadists seeking to fight American and Western forces in Iraq. Meanwhile, there was an internal Syrian uprising against the Assad regime. To be sure, the revolt had some secular components; but it was thoroughly coopted by the Muslim Brotherhood (as analyst Hassan Hassan comprehensively outlined in Foreign Policy in early 2013).

Notwithstanding the Republicans’ ISIS myopia, it was not the only jihadist presence in Syria — not even close. Al-Qaeda still had a franchise there (al-Nusrah), along with several other tentacles. Importantly, in its rivalry with breakaway ISIS, al-Qaeda has adopted the Muslim Brotherhood approach of ground-up revolution — the antithesis of the Islamic State’s top-down strategy of forcibly expanding its declared caliphate and implementing sharia full-scale.

As Tom Joscelyn perceptively explained in 2015 congressional testimony, al-Qaeda is attempting to spark jihadist uprisings in Muslim-majority countries while appealing to local populations with fundamentalist education initiatives. Like the Brotherhood, al-Qaeda leaders now preach a gradualist implementation of sharia, which is more appealing to most Middle Eastern Muslims than ISIS’s inflexibility and emphasis on sharia’s barbaric hudud penalties (mutilation, stoning, scourging, etc.). Understand: Al-Qaeda is just as anti-American as it has ever been. In Syria, however, its shrewd approach has enabled the network to insinuate itself deeply into the forces that oppose both Assad and ISIS. So has the Brotherhood.

These forces are the “moderates” that Republicans, apparently including Trump, claim Obama failed to support, creating the purported “vacuum” out of which ISIS emerged. The charge is doubly specious because Obama actually did provide these “moderates” with plenty of support. The GOP rap on Obama is that he failed to jump with both feet into the Syria civil war and take the side of “moderates.” But jumping in with both feet, at the urging of Beltway Republicans, is exactly what Obama did on behalf of the “moderates” in Libya. How’d that work out?

Our challenge in the Middle East is that sharia supremacism fills all vacuums. It was this ideology that created ISIS long before President Obama came along. And if ISIS were to disappear tomorrow, sharia supremacism would still be our challenge. It is critical to be an effective political opposition to the Obama Left. But being effective means not letting the political part warp our judgment, especially where national security is concerned.

Dr. Keith Ablow: Obama’s Anti-Police Rhetoric Is to Blame for Violent Protests in Milwaukee.

Dr. Keith Ablow: Obama’s Anti-Police Rhetoric to Blame for Violent Protests in Milwaukee. Video. Fox News Insider, August 14, 2016. YouTube. Also here.

FNI summary of the interview:

Violent riots erupted in Milwaukee Saturday night after an armed man fleeing police after a traffic stop was shot and killed.

At least four businesses were burned, a police car was set on fire and one officer was hurt after as many as 100 people gathered to protest the shooting.

On Fox and Friends Weekend this morning, Dr. Keith Ablow said that President Obama and his administration have created an anti-law enforcement environment, which leads to violent protests like what occurred in Milwaukee.

“Word has gone out from the corner office that there’s terrible injustice afoot in America,” Ablow said. “We’re seeing – literally – a projection of the president’s ambivalence about America and his real rage at America.”

“I’d love to see the president come out and say, ‘Look, bottom line is, if you run away from a police officer, armed, and you won't stop, bad things can happen.’ Where is the surprise in that? How does that lead to rioting? That’s craziness. It has to be a message from the corner office.”

First Crush Trump. But Then What? By Jennifer Rubin.

First crush Trump. But then what? By Jennifer Rubin. Washington Post, August 8, 2016.

Rubin:

Prominent #NeverTrump advocate and GOP consultant Rick Wilson (reportedly assisting in the independent Republican bid of former CIA veteran Evan McMullin) persuasively argues that it is in the party’s and country’s interest for Donald Trump to lose — by a lot. He explains:

[I]f there’s a loss by a slim margin in the popular vote or electoral college, millions of already embittered Americans, worked into a frenzy by a shameless leader who will surely refuse to accept the returns, will start the next four years convinced that the United States of America is little more than a banana republic — and the presidency of Hillary Clinton is irretrievably illegitimate.

That will be awful for the country.

The second reason Trump needs to fall hard in November is that the Party of Lincoln needs a complete, top-to-bottom reset — one that completely purges the Trumpkins who believe racial animus is a governing philosophy and that their ignorant and angry primal screams can ever build a Republican majority.

In other words, Trump, Trumpism and the unhealthy network of right-wing apologists (the American Conservative Union, talk radio, Fox Non-News primetime hosts, the senior staff of the Republican National Committee) all need to go down to crushing defeat so that the center-right can begin anew. (“No more hate and reckless group blame. No more fact-free fearmongering,” Wilson urges. “No more feeding the obese ego of a man who’s transparently unfit for the job.”)

If there is to be a viable alternative to liberal statism, a center right party must prioritize character, tolerance, intellectual honesty and decency — not a check list of policy positions from the 1980s — as the minimum requirements for elected office and party leadership. Most large organizations have a “mission” statement and the post-Trump center-right party surely needs one that emphasizes those attributes. A national center-right party should not be tethered to a check list of granular positions on dozens of issues, but instead to general propositions (e.g. American leadership in the world is essential; all Americans are deserving of the right to pursue earned success) and to a type of political honor code that insists upon civility, respect for fellow Americans and cultivation of an informed electorate. If this sounds ethereal and old-fashioned it is only because the GOP and Republican leaders have demonstrated incivility, lack of respect for their fellow Americans and perpetration of political myths and flat-out untruths. The party at the highest levels must eschew the politics of resentment, anger and hate.

Defining how the center-right party must behave needs to precede the decision as to whether the GOP can be that vehicle or whether a new party is preferable. Frankly if the Trumpist elements cannot be purged and will not tolerate an extensive reworking of the party, it will be time for men and women of good conscience to leave the wreckage of the GOP. The resulting political entity, whether the revised GOP or something altogether new, will need to be a 21st-century party that does not cultivate kooks, conspiratorialists and bigots.

A party that treats Sean Hannity as a journalist, the National Enquirer and talk radio as authoritative, and the email harangues and score cards of Beltway hucksters as more authentic than the views and needs of actual voters cannot survive. It does not deserve to survive. The election exposed a raft of right-wing media types undeserving of the center-right’s attention or indulgence. Voters can tune off or click past the schlock news, but the party itself should cease treating propagandists as legitimate journalists. Conservatives should decline to go on their shows, refuse to invite them to moderate panels or officiate at party functions; or speak respectfully of outfits that have flacked for Trump, contrary to the interests of conservatives and the country.

Trump belonged in a fringe right-wing, nativist party akin to the far-right European parties. If there is a segment of Americans who prefer that sort of thing, so be it. But that party cannot be the GOP or its successor. So, yes, after the election it will be time to clean house and clean out the intellectual cobwebs. Honor politicians who resisted Trump and look for future leaders among their ranks.

The election already has discredited the evangelical charlatans who claim political virtue and moral authority. Meanwhile, Libertarians (on limited government, trade, immigration and individual rights) in many respects have preserved the essence of the modern conservative movement (or 19th-century small “l” liberalism). It is time to reconnect with the latter (despite some significant differences of opinion) and to end toadying to the former.

Finally, it is time to eschew anti-immigrant fervor, opposition to gay marriage (which is as much a part of the legal landscape as is desegregation) and anti-government nihilism. These are not consistent with 21st-century America nor the attributes of a successful national party. The country will never return to its pre-New Deal size, nor will the American people tolerate evisceration of the safety net. Federal regulations of some sort will exist. The question is what kinds of government, regulations, tax and budget measures are implemented — ones that enlarge the federal government and centralize power or which, where possible, employ market forces and cultivate strong communities.

All of this requires, per Wilson, Trump’s sound thrashing. Then reform, revitalization and refurbishment of the GOP — if not abandonment — can proceed.

Sean Hannity’s Veneration of Ignorance. By Bret Stephens.

Sean Hannity’s Veneration of Ignorance. By Bret Stephens. Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2016.

Stephens:

The right’s political huckster gives Al Sharpton a run for his money.

It was probably inevitable that Donald Trump and his media munchkins would alight on the stab-in-the-back theory to explain his probable defeat in November. The surprise is that they are doing so with the election still three months out.

“If in 96 days Trump loses this election, I am pointing the finger directly at people like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and John McCain and John Kasich and Ted Cruz,” Fox News host Sean Hannity told his radio audience last week. “I have watched these Republicans be more harsh toward Donald Trump than they’ve ever been in standing up to Barack Obama and his radical agenda.”

“Establishment Republican types,” he insisted, had in effect “created Donald Trump.”

Mr. Hannity has never made a secret of his feelings for Mr. Trump, which is the love that dares to speak its name. But his comments were also a revelation, and not just that it has dawned on him that the Republican nominee is likely to lose and lose big. Like members of a cult who discover too late that their self-proclaimed messiah is mortal after all, rationalizations are required.

Mr. Trump has lately been road-testing one such rationalization, saying the election will be “rigged.” Voter fraud is a reality in American elections, but it is typical of the candidate to confuse anecdote with data and turn allegation into conspiracy. Mr. Trump also says the media is “rigged” against him, which is amusing coming from the beneficiary of the equivalent of $3 billion in free advertising.

Mr. Hannity’s excuses are even more disgraceful, combining oily self-absolution with venomous obloquy for the very conservatives who have spent the year warning that a Trump candidacy is an epic GOP disaster that all-but guarantees Hillary Clinton’s election. The habit of shifting blame and refusing to take responsibility is supposed to be the curse of the underclass and its political hucksters, but Mr. Hannity is giving Al Sharpton a run for his money.

Mr. Hannity’s other goal is to preserve the fiction—first cultivated by Ted Cruz and later adopted by the Trumpians—that a wan GOP “establishment” and its “Acela corridor” voters sat on their hands while Mr. Obama traduced the Constitution and sold us out to the enemy. “They did nothing, nothing!” the anchor fumed Thursday on his show. “All these phony votes to repeal and replace ObamaCare, show votes so they go back and keep their power and get re-elected.”

Maybe Mr. Hannity thinks that Messrs. Ryan and McConnell should have jumped the White House fence and stuck a pitchfork in the president. Or that they should have amended the Constitution to repeal Article One, Section Seven—the one that gives the president his veto. Otherwise, it’s hard to understand the constant lament about a do-nothing Congress except by wondering whether Mr. Hannity is stupid or dishonest.

On Thursday evening I opted to give him the benefit of the doubt by writing on Twitter that he was Fox’s “dumbest anchor.” He immediately proved my point by re-tweeting me to his 1.5 million Twitter followers—an audience I could never have reached on my own. Later, on the radio, he called me a “dumba— with his head up his a—,” demonstrating he can’t even swear competently.

But Mr. Hannity’s tantrum obscures the uglier side of what he is trying to do, which is to paint targets on the GOP’s genuine Reaganites—pro-trade, pro-immigration, pro-NATO, pro-entitlement reform—and replace them with the Party of Trump—anti-all of the above—no matter what happens to the candidate come November.

Who might help lead this Unglorious Revolution of the crass, clueless and shoulder-chipped? Those who can make themselves rich by shouting and hearing echoes of themselves even as the GOP loses one presidential election after another.

This is the reason I’ve consistently argued that the only hope for a conservative restoration is a blowout Hillary Clinton victory, held in check by a Republican majority in Congress. If Mr. Trump loses the election narrowly, the stab-in-the-back thesis will have a patina of credibility that he might have won had it not been for the opposition of people like me. But a McGovern-style defeat makes that argument impossible to sustain except among the most cretinous. We can count on Mr. Hannity for that.

***

Last week, I appeared on Fareed Zakaria’s CNN show opposite a Trump supporter named Emily Miller. At the end of the show, I said Americans deserve a president who can speak grammatical English. Ms. Miller retorted that it was “snobby” of me to say so.

There was a time when the conservative movement was led by the likes of Bill Buckley and Irving Kristol and Bob Bartley, men of ideas who invested the Republican Party with intellectual seriousness. Today’s GOP is on the road to self-immolation, thanks in part to the veneration of ignorance typified by Ms. Miller and Mr. Hannity. As conservatives go through their pre- and post-mortems, they should think about the damage that such veneration can do.

When Breath Becomes Air: Dr. Paul Kalanithi’s Battle with Terminal Lung Cancer.

Late neurosurgeon documented his battle with terminal cancer. Lucy Kalanithi interviewed by Megyn Kelly. Video. The Kelly File. Fox News, August 5, 2016. YouTube.






When Breath Becomes Air. By Paul Kalanithi. New York: Random House, 2016. Amazon.com.

Paul Kalanithi website.

Paul Kalanithi Twitter.

Lucy Kalanithi Twitter.

Lucy Kalanithi with Megyn Kelly

How Long Have I Got Left? By Paul Kalanithi. New York Times, January 24, 2014.

My Last Day as a Surgeon. By Paul Kalanithi. Excerpt from When Breath Becomes Air. The New Yorker, January 11, 2016.

Why I gave up on atheism. By Paul Kalanithi. Excerpt from When Breath Becomes Air. FoxNews.com, May 27, 2016.

Paul and Lucy Kalanithi

Lucy Kalanithi: “Paul’s view was that life wasn’t about avoiding suffering.” Interviewed by Lisa O’Kelly. The Guardian, February 14, 2016.

My Marriage Didn’t End When I Became a Widow. By Lucy Kalanithi. New York Times, January 6, 2016.

Lucy Kalanithi: When Breath Becomes Air. Interviewed by Neel Shah. Video. WGBHForum, May 18, 2016. YouTube.





Dr. Lucy Kalanithi: When Breath Becomes Air. Interviewed by Mark Zitter. Video. Commonwealth Club, June 17, 2016. YouTube.





Aspen Words Presents: Lucy Kalanithi in conversation with Ann Patchett. Video. The Aspen Institute, June 27, 2016. YouTube.

Russia Scholar Stephen Cohen: Trump Wants to Stop the New Cold War.

Russia Expert Stephen Cohen: Trump Wants to Stop the New Cold War, But the American Media Just Doesn’t Understand. Video and Transcript. Real Clear Politics, July 30, 2016. YouTube. Also here, here.

Transcript:

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN: When looking to blame someone for the cyberattack [against Hillary Clinton and the DNC], Russia was more than convenient. Is this a new cold war or political pot-stirring? Does this accusation have any basis in fact, and if not, could it cause real harm? Here to discuss is Stephen F. Cohen, American scholar of Russian studies at both Princeton and New York Universities. Professor Cohen, does Vladimir Putin indeed have a dog in our U.S. [election]?

STEPHEN F. COHEN: Vladimir Putin wants to end the “New Cold War” – and so do I.

Let me say, I have no ties to the Trump campaign or the Clinton campaign. But if I were to write your headline for you today, I tried on the way down here, I couldn't fit it on the front page, but it would go like this:

“We’re in a new and more dangerous Cold War with Russia.”

We’re approaching a Cuban Missile Crisis nuclear confrontation with Russia, both along Russia’s borders and possibly over Syria. There is absolutely no discussion, no debate, about this in the American media – including, forgive me, on CNN.

Then along comes (unexpectedly) Donald Trump, who says something that suggests he wants to end the new Cold War, cooperate with Russia in various places. What we used to call detente, and now –astonishingly—the media is full of what only can be called neo-McCarthyite charges that he is a Russian agent, that he is a Manchurian candidate, and that he is Putin’s client.

So the real danger is what’s being done to our own political process.

This is a moment when there should be, in a presidential year, a debate.

Because Mrs. Clinton’s position on Russia seems to be very different [than Mr. Trump’s], has been for a long time.

Trump speaks elliptically. You’ve got to piece together what he says. But he seems to want a new American policy toward Russia. And considering the danger, I think we as American citizens, deserve that debate, and not what we are given in the media today, including on the front page of the New York Times.

I end by saying, that this reckless branding of Trump as a Russian agent, most of it is coming from the Clinton campaign and they really need to stop.

SMERICONISH: Okay. I don’t know where to begin in unpacking all that you just offered to us. But I guess I’ll start as follows. As one who can’t match your credentials, here’s what I see from the outside looking in. I see Donald Trump having said to the New York Times, just within the last ten days, that he’s not so sure he would stand with NATO allies, and I’m paraphrasing, he would want to know whether they would be pulling their own weight. The import of his comments seems to suggest he could provide Putin with unfettered, undeterred access to the Baltic states –whose independence he resents. So it all seems to fit, therefore, that Putin would have a dog in this fight, would want to see Donald Trump win this election so that he, Putin, could do as he pleases, in that part of the world. CNN is covering that. I have to defend the network in that regard. But why does that not all fit, and why does it not all fit in the headline in today’s New York Times, which says Russian spies said to have hacked Clinton’s bid.

COHEN: “Said to have.” Said to have. That’s not news, that’s an allegation. James Clapper. I don’t know who hacked. Everybody hacks everybody. I mean, we hacked into Chancellor Merkel’s cell phone. We learned that from Snowden. The Israelis hack, the Americans hack, the Chinese hack. Everybody hacks. The point is, and I know you said it, not to defend it, but as a provocation, that let’s take the position you just set out. That Putin wants to end the independence in Baltic states. There is no evidence for that. None whatsoever.

The point is, is that on the networks – and I’m not blaming CNN, and there’s none on any network. There is none in the New York Times.

I am old enough to remember that during the last Cold War, all these issues were debated in that you had a proponent to each point of view. But you have now got accusations, both against Putin, both against Trump, which needed to be debated.

The most – let’s go back to what you said – Trump said about NATO. Trump said early on, he wanted to know, 60 years after its foundation, what was NATO's mission today.

100 policy wonks in Washington since the end of the Soviet Union, 25 years ago, have asked the same question. Is NATO an organization in search of a mission? For example, it’s a mission for the last 20 years was to expand ever closer to Russia. So people have now asked why isn't it fighting international terrorism? That's a legitimate question --but we don’t debate it. We don't ask it.

We just say, oh, Trump wants to abandon NATO.

I don’t defend Trump. Trump raises questions. And instead of giving answer to the substance of the question, we denounce him as some kind of Kremlin agent. That’s bad for our politics, but still worse, given the danger we’re not addressing it.

Neanderthals in Germany Went Extinct Right After Their Population Peak.

A reconstructed Neanderthal with a modern human girl.

Neanderthals in Germany Went Extinct Right After Their Population Peak. By Ginger Perales. New Historian, July 25, 2016.

Neanderthals in Germany: First population peak, then sudden extinction. ScienceDaily, July 21, 2016.

Leave at the height of the party: A critical review of the Middle Paleolithic in Western Central Europe from itsbeginnings to its rapid decline. By Jürgen Richter. Quaternary International, available online, April 12, 2016.


Perales:

Approximately 45,000 years ago, Homo neanderthalensis was the dominant human species in Europe, populating the whole of the continent. Although archaeologists have discovered numerous settlements in Germany, they have also uncovered evidence which shows that Neanderthal populations there came to an unexplained, sudden end.

Based on the analysis of several archaeological sites, Jürgen Richter (Collaborative Research Center 806 — Our Way to Europe), has concluded that shortly after Neanderthals reached their peak population in Germany, their numbers rapidly declined, leading to their extinction.

Neanderthals lived during the Middle Paleolithic, the time between 200,000 and 40,000 years ago. Richter’s research suggests that over 50 percent of the identified Neanderthal settlements in Germany specifically date back to between 60,000 and 43,000 years ago. Therefore, the peak Neanderthal population lies within this period.

Neanderthals were an ancient human species, part of the genus Homo, that became extinct approximately 40,000 years ago. With 99.5% of the same DNA, they’re closely related to modern humans. Bone and stone tools left by Neanderthals have been found throughout Eurasia, in western to central Europe, and northern and western Asia. Their species is generally classified as Homo neanderthalensis, believed to have separated from Homo sapiens around 600,000 years ago. Some experts however, believe Neanderthals were a subspecies of Homo sapiens and therefore should be classified as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.

The number of Neanderthal sites, as well as the analysis of artifacts discovered in them, indicate the Neanderthal population in Germany were subjected to extreme demographic changes. For example, during the Middle Paleolithic there seem to have been numerous migrations, increases and declines in population, even extinctions in certain locations followed by a return of settlers.

During the time period between 110,000 and 70,000 years ago there were only four identified Neanderthal settlement sites in Germany, however, during the following period between 70,000 and 43,000 years ago there were ninety-four. Less than 1,000 years later, after this peak in population, there was a rapid decrease and the Neanderthals disappeared. Why the species went extinct is still unknown. It may have been the result of decreased genetic diversity; another possibility is competition for resources with the growing number of Homo sapiens.

Around 55,000 years ago, the climate began to fluctuate back and forth from extremely cold to milder cold conditions in the span of a few decades. Neanderthals had bodies that were well suited for surviving in cold climates, with stocky limbs and barrel chests that stored body heat much better than Cro-Magnons (the first early modern humans). However, these rapid climate fluctuations also caused ecological changes that the Neanderthals could not easily adapt to; familiar animals and plants would have been replaced by completely new ones within the space of a lifetime, and the Neanderthals’ ambush hunting technique wouldn’t have worked as trees replaced the grasslands. Neanderthals eventually went extinct in Europe between 41,000 and 39,000 years ago, coinciding with a period of extreme cold.

Nancy Pelosi: Hillary Clinton Struggles with White Men Because of “Guns, Gays, and God.”

Nancy Pelosi: Hillary Clinton Struggles with White Men Because of “Guns, Gays, and God.” Video and transcript. Real Clear Politics, July 27, 2016. YouTube.

Nancy Pelosi blames “God, guns and gays ”for Clinton’s struggles with white bros. By Sarah K. Burris. Raw Story, July 28, 2016.

Nancy Pelosi on her own glass ceiling and Hillary Clinton’s. Interviewed by Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff. Video and transcript. PBS NewsHour, July 26, 2016. YouTube.

RCP Transcript:

JUDY WOODRUFF: You know that place very well. Right now, Donald Trump is doing much better than Hillary Clinton among white men, and particularly white men who have not attended college. How does Hillary Clinton counter that?

REP. NANCY PELOSI: With an economic agenda to create jobs, good-paying jobs, increasing paychecks.

The economic agenda is what is really — it’s about the economy. You know that statement. It’s not a cliche. It’s a fact. And I think that, so many times, white — non-college-education — educated white males have voted Republican. They voted against their own economic interests because of guns, because of gays, and because of God, the three G’s, God being the woman’s right to choose.

That is softening. Some of those people were never going to be voting Democratic anyway. But I believe that, with the turnout that we expect to have, we will draw some of them in with our message, and enough other people to win the election.

Hillary Clinton Accepts the Democratic Nomination for President.

Hillary Clinton’s full speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Video. PBS NewsHour, July 29, 2016. YouTube.

Katy Perry Opens for Hillary at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

Katy Perry performs “Rise” and “Roar” at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Video. PBS NewsHour, July 28, 2016. YouTube.

Katy Perry: Rise. Video. KatyPerryVEVO, August 4, 2016. YouTube.






Katy Perry: Rise. NBC Olympics video. KatyPerryVEVO, July 15, 2016. YouTube.






Katy Perry: Roar. NJBR, September 21, 2013.

Donald Trump Accepts the GOP Nomination for President.

Donald Trump Accepts the GOP Nomination for President. Video. Right Side, July 21, 2016. YouTube. Transcript here, here.

Trump’s Speech Signalled the End of an Era for the GOP. By Robert W. Merry. The National Interest, July 22, 2016.

Genesis: That’s All. Live at Wembley Stadium, 1987.

Genesis: That’s All. Live at Wembley Stadium, 1987. Video. zaza, November 24, 2014. ok.ru. Full concert here.

Is America Heading Toward a Clash of Civilizations? By Michael Laitman.

Police officers conduct a manhunt after a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California December 2, 2015. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Is America heading toward a clash of civilizations? By Michael Laitman. Jerusalem Post, July 7, 2016.

Laitman:

The San Bernardino and Orlando massacres are not isolated incidents; they are the beginning of a new, bloody era in America.

This week, America celebrated 240 years of independence. Much has changed in America since the original thirteen states agreed to unite under the premise that all men are created equal, and are endowed with the unalienable rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Now, it seems, America is about to face a final, lethal blow to these truths, which are apparently no longer self-evident.

In recent years, the Muslim “occupation by immigration” of Europe has crossed the Atlantic and introduced itself to the US. If successful, it will transform America from a democracy into a fundamentalist tyranny whose law is the Sharia, and the First Amendment will become a distant memory.

While this doom and gloom scenario is not inevitable, the situation requires resolve, and an understanding that while all faiths are welcome in America, Islam included, they must also respect the freedom of practice and belief (or lack thereof) of all other people. Without this fundamental understanding among all the forces shaping American society, a clash of civilizations will be unavoidable, with horrific consequences to the American society and to the rest of the world.

The Boon after the Bust

America emerged from the despair of The Great Depression and the ashes of World War II as a superpower that dominated the international political arena. The necessity to rebuild its economy, and the need to manufacture weapons and produce food for the war effort, turned America into a factory that created exemplary goods such as cars, planes, tanks and home appliances. America was progress; America was the future. The hard work of the 1930s and 40s paid off, and by the 1950s, America had become the symbol of success and power. The American Dream, it seemed, was within reach for every American.

Economic success and military might lead to dominance on the international arena. The American values of free speech, capitalism, and democracy dominated the West, and the US became the undisputed leader of The Free World.

Taking Success for Granted

However, as it often happens, when something we do works well, we assume that the next generation will naturally take after us. Yet, America’s strength came not from its wealth and power, but from hard work, the commitment of many people to help themselves and their country, and the sense of shared, just social values. Hard work and sound ethics are not hereditary; they must be infused and cultivated. As Americans grew affluent, they became condescending, spoiled, and gradually abandoned the values that had given their country its strength. Discipline at school grew lax, and JFK’s aphorism, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” gradually became devoid of substance. This was the beginning of America’s decline.

The Melting Pot

Another important aspect of America’s success is its diversity of cultures, faiths, and ethnicities. The more these different elements strove to blend into the American society, the more robust the society became, creating jobs and growing markets for American goods and services.

But perhaps the most important ingredient in the American melting pot is that all strata of society aspire for the goal described in the Declaration of Independence: Everyone is equal and endowed with the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for African Americans, he did not advocate separating them from America. On the contrary, he fought for their unalienable rights to become a legitimate, equal part of American society. Around the same time, the classic musical, West Side Story, portrayed the clash of ethnicities and raised a cry against ethnic hatred. In those days, it seemed as though America was a leader in acculturation and assimilation.

But all this has changed in recent years.

A Clash of Civilizations

After decades of cultivating excessive consumerism and self-indulgence, Americans have become too self-absorbed, overworked, and socially indifferent to notice what is happening around them. This has made the country susceptible to the aspirations of foreign elements to rise to power. When a new kind of Islam began to pour into America, there was no one to stop it. This is not the Islam that America had known—the inclusive, tolerant Islam that Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. adopted when he converted and became Muhammad Ali.

Just as it is currently doing in Europe, the newly imported Islam has come to take over, not to become part of America’s melting pot or even to coexist. The San Bernardino and Orlando massacres are not isolated incidents; they are the beginning of a new, bloody era in America: an era of a clash of civilizations where the more determined will win.

This war of cultures is just beginning. If America wakes up now, it will still be able to cope with the invasion. But if it stays asleep and lets the stealth infiltration continue uninterrupted, then America can look at Europe to see where it will be a few short years from now.

The Weapon: Education

To win the battle for its values and traditions, America must return to its original tenets. There is nothing wrong with healthy nationalism when it represents a country that believes that all men are born equal and therefore have the right to choose their faith freely. There is also nothing wrong with securing the future of these cornerstones of society by requiring that newcomers uphold them, too.

King Solomon said that “love covers all crimes” (Proverbs, 10:12). A successful education for cohesion must not only accept, but embrace differences, and use them to enrich and fortify society. Accordingly, America need not ban the entrance of Muslims, or of any other group of people. Instead, it must introduce its foundational values to all aspiring newcomers before they immigrate.

Indoctrination to American values, which are actually Western values, must begin abroad, in the immigrants’ native countries. Upon evaluation of their sincere desire to become part of American society and culture, they can be admitted for a trial stay. After several years, when it is evident that they have adopted their hosts’ values, they can be granted full citizenship and be accepted as integral members of the American society. In this way, social integrity will be maintained, while diversity, which cultivates its beauty and vitality, will be enhanced.

The principle of love and cohesion that covers all differences must be the leading factor in determining who may enter “the land of the free.” If America adopts this principle, its diversity of ethnicities and faiths will enrich the people and empower the country. If America wants to be great again, as one candidate for presidency has put it, this is the way to go. If not, it will stop being America.