Obama Iran Ploy is Working and We’re the Fools

 

Almost daily we can read any number of articles from all parts of the Western nations and even at times in Asian and Middle Eastern news services proclaiming how President Obama is such a rube and a fool allowing himself to be led by the nose down the primrose path to oblivion. Many of these articles also point out what fools his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have been for not insisting that President Obama wake up and smell the nuclear weapons. Now where I may agree heartily that Secretary of State John Kerry is one of the grandest fools to ever walk out onto the world’s stage for all to assess, I am a little more reluctant to claim the same of Hillary Clinton though I will agree that she is an opportunist and knew that crossing President Obama would have been political suicide if she was going to ever gain his support in her quest for the White House. Her foolishness was believing he would ever stoop to assisting anybody where it serves him not. So, now on to President Obama who is without a doubt the grand architect and even has Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani (from here on to be referred to as the ‘Smiling Cheshire Man’ after the cat from Alice in Wonderland that after its gone its oddly wicked smile remained to charm the unsuspecting {see picture below}) both believe they are playing the American President for the fool. It serves President Obama to have his detractors believing and calling him an idiot who is unable to see the forest for the trees as this forces the Democrats and leftists who support President Obama and tout him as the most brilliant man to ever grace the Oval Office to line up and defend him and placing the majority of the left wing media, and especially the New York Times to support his craftiness in that he is drafting an agreement with numerous little technical details which will deviously prevent the Iranians from reaching a breakout point on nuclear weapons for the rest of eternity. So, who is right and why?

 

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani smiling for report on how he and Iran charmed the world reminding all of the evil laugh as the Cheshire Cat faded away leaving only his wicked smile and it just fit calling him the ‘Smiling Cheshire Man’

 

 

A quick aside we had to include about Iranian President Rouhani and the quotes we caught right before press time and just felt had to be distributed to our friends and readers. The Iranian President Rouhani the ‘Smiling Cheshire Man’ was quoted by Nasim news agency stating, “Even if the nuclear talks fail, our diplomacy showed the world that we are logical. We never left the negotiation table and always provided the best answer.” Further, the ‘Smiling Cheshire Man’ stated, “Twenty-two months of negotiation means we have managed to charm the world, and it’s an art.” Well Mr. Smiling Cheshire Man, we have some news for you, we have not been charmed and know you for the jovial, familial, back stabbing, confidence grabbing, lying, betrayer of trust, sinister evil Smiling Cheshire Man that you are.

 

Believe it or not both sides are right and for the wrong reasons. Those calling President Obama the fool are wrong though they are correct that only a President of the United States who was a fool would allow these negotiations to have dragged on and be giving away the store as each deadline approaches before extending the talks one more time. The Democrats are close to right when they claim that President Obama is a smart man but are wrong that he is designing an agreement which will trick the Iranians preventing them from developing nuclear weapons as quickly as they are able. What most people are overlooking, likely because to even think it is considered treasonous even if it becomes known as true is that President Obama has been aiming the entire time to give Iran the cover, the funds and the freedom from inspections and the ability to do as they please precisely because his aim is for Iran to join the nations of the nuclear club and at the same time facilitate the Russian bear, a.k.a. President Putin, to flex his bare chest and retake control over whatever he feels bold enough to take and to provide China the wherewithal of claim all of the South China Sea as their private bathtub and the control over all the islands and atolls they can reclaim and/or build in the remaining time he is in office. Still, the crown in President Obama’s crown will be the hegemonic rise of Iran with their taking control of the southern Shia provinces of Iraq, defeat ISIS and impress their rule on all of Syria and possibly Lebanon as well placing them on the northern border of Israel and closer to Hamas to supply them through military convoys through the Israeli blockade, a confrontation he would condemn in the most serious terms while sliding them a private note congratulating them on their bold strategies. If I were Saudi Arabia I would be very wary of any Shiite uprisings in the northeast territories, especially the oil field lands and I cannot give serious enough warnings to King Abdullah II ibn al-Hussein of Jordan as his lands would stand between the Ayatollahs and their desired conquest of the Arab Palestinian lands in Judea and Samaria giving them fronts against Israel on three sides and nearly encircling the Jewish State. Where Iran would tout being on Israel’s borders as their greatest achievement and opportunity, they would eventually rue the day they strove to accomplish that feat in order to attack Israel directly.

 

Meanwhile, President Obama sits back in the White House, or out on the golf links, reveling in his brilliant handling of the United States media, his fooling the right into believing he was merely incompetent and not treasonous thus avoiding possible impeachment. Imagine how fast the House would bring up charges of impeachment and the Senate find the President guilty if it ever became known that he was actually planning the neutering of the United States’ ability to project power beyond her shores, leave the nuclear weapons stores in such disrepair as to possibly render over half the American nuclear arsenal beyond retrievable repair through not funding inspections and cancelling critical maintenance, rendering the United States military to a state of lacking in readiness rivalling their state right before World War II. And President Obama has further worked on souring relations with the most vital of allies starting with his disrespect shown the British Queen, Prime Minister and the entire British Isles with his thoughtless and insulting gifts when they first met, the disrespect of actually touching the Queen when they first met as Michelle Obama did and on top of all this having called on the British Embassy for them to come and remove the bust of Winston Churchill during his first few days in office. Then moving on to the barrages of insults thrown at Israel and her Prime Minister being refused press meetings as was the norm and having him enter through a back door of the White House and leaving him to, as stated to Netanyahu’s face, go have dinner with his family and for the Israelis to reconsider their position and send for him should they decide to be more reasonable and even arranging to meet Israeli President Peres in the Blair House rather than in the White House as is customary between heads of state. Additionally, his disregard of the Saudi Arabian Royal Family as well as his treasonous interference in Egyptian politics in a bald-faced attempt to place the Muslim Brotherhood as rulers in Egypt and retain them there even against the will of the Egyptian people. What else does he need to do, go to Paris and ask President Hollande if he has any clean white flags he can borrow as he forgot his handkerchief?

 

President Obama still has to tread his near treasonous path at the very least until the fall of next year though he will probably be permitted great amounts of latitude as the Republicans appear almost fearful of protesting President Obama’s actions too vehemently afraid they may be accused of being racist while the Democrats, at least those completely in the tank for the President, seem all too eager to use that label on anybody who dares to challenge the greatness and brilliance they appear to hold Obama as possessing. Meanwhile, President Obama can simply continue and carry on in much the same manner as he has to this point with possibly a few extra rounds of golf thrown in thus aiding in the belief that he is unconcerned with the pressures and responsibilities of the office. Of course the Presidency has appeared to have drawn an extra decade or more off of his life judging by the greying of his hair and other certain differences in his appearance and mannerisms (though I have often suspected that since Richard Nixon Presidents have dyed their hair greyer rather than to cover the grey). Most Presidents, as with President Obama, tend to become more deliberate and slow down in the meter of their speech and become more soft spoken as the office has likely taxed them and struck them with some very unexpected and, as they were unappreciated, sleepless nights and shocking revelations and forced the meeting of threats beyond those we are ever aware of and perhaps that is for the better. A sure sign that there has been collusion between the American Administration and the Iranians will be if come next fall the two parties are still negotiating a mutually agreeable parting gift that President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry can cheerily grant the Iranians virtually everything they could possibly have dreamed to have had included. Negotiations being handed off to the next President is near completely impossible as the Iranians would not tempt the following administration being anywhere near as accommodating as has the Obama administration. It would be doubtful that President Obama would want to have the negotiations continuing during the lead-up to the elections as it would play into the hands of a Republican campaigning on foreign policy disasters such as the Iran negotiations and having it hurt the Democrat candidate. The one thing that has been so troubling about the Iranian nuclear program negotiations was who in the State Department thought having pretty much the same team members from the failure that were the North Koran nuclear negotiations that resulted in North Korea testing their first nuclear weapon within a year of completing negotiations now negotiating for the United States with Iran unless the desired end is identical to those results. Would it beyond probability that should President Obama sign an agreement with the Iranians mere days, or even weeks, before the end of his term in office and after the elections have determined the next President might actually lead to an investigation into possible irregularities and even collaboration between President Obama, certain high members of his administration and high officials in the State Department be investigated as a credible investigation could be useful in setting the record straight and alleviating suspicions which would be sure to arise.

 

There are many other suspicious events and seeming collusions to foil the regular systems and critical checks and balances through the two terms of the Obama Presidency which have given witness either to a level of competence by the administration or a level of collusion which would be extremely troubling should it be proven true. The original passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), Obamacare, which was not supported by a single Republican vote but still required party discipline beyond normal enforcement yet this is exactly what was achieved. Then the two separate reviews by the Supreme Court, both of which many had predicted would cripple the entirety of the program as should either case have struck down vital and necessary implementations and interpretations would have mortally wounded the legislation and potentially caused a crisis which could have caused the complete rollback of all of the many tentacles of Obamacare throughout the healthcare industry and forced a reset back to the systems which existed previous to the passing of Obamacare. There have been reports of irregularities with elections which have exceeded previous levels in scope and severity which could be relegated to better tracking abilities using computers and predictive software as well as possible party politics. The record increases in people receiving food stamps, welfare, disability payments and other government relief payments which have come under scrutiny but still there has not been irrefutable evidence of collusion by the White House beyond pressing changes in policy attitudes, a change which within the prerogatives of any Administration and are not outside of party politics. Still, it would seem that we have been bombarded with a seemingly unending and ever building torrent of such reports and suspicions which may also be another result of the widening distance between the two extremes in the political arena where candidates who just a decade or so past would have easily been considered mainstream in each party are now looking at their party which seemingly have slid ever further to the extremes making agreement and cooperation nearly impossible or at least highly improbable. Perhaps President Obama’s terms in office may be the harbinger of a new normal where whichever party is out of control of the White House will be critically hyper-scrutinizing every single word, policy, spokespersons, advisors or any other iota of data all seeking any crack in the armor to launch a partisan attack in an attempt to wound and weaken the President and thus impair their ability to get their agenda accomplished. In all honesty, if this results in near paralysis in domestic policies and forces future Congress sessions to each be even less productive each term, then this just could be to the benefit of the American people as there are already more laws and regulations than any law abiding person could ever comply with and not be in contradiction of the law almost hourly if not at least daily. At some point the people need to honestly ask when does a society become too litigious, when does a government be found to be passing laws to justify their positions and salaries? By the time such discussions reach the general public it is way past time to turn things around and there will never be an end in sight through the existing systems, so once it becomes an issue the issue has already passed by and the evidence will soon permeate that society. Such a question can never be discussed too early and yesterday will always have been preferable to tomorrow to breach such a discussion.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Islamic Reformer in Egypt

 

The video below is what will hopefully be the opening salvo placing Islam on a path to having its own reformation. The timing is pretty much right on schedule as Judaism had its expansionism where it took lands by force and eventually ended that stage of its history after which it only fought to retain the small area of lands which it occupied, a struggle the Jewish state is facing today as the forces of the world continuously attempt to slice and carve Israel up leaving an ever smaller piece of land for the Jewish state to continue existing. The first story telling of Avram’s belief that idolatry was an empty concept and likely led Avram on his quest for the knowledge which eventually led him to finding G0d tells of Avram going into the showroom where his family sold idols to make a living. Avram smashed all of the idols in the shop except the largest idol which he placed the large hammer he had used to smite the rest of the idols. When his father entered the shop he was beside himself and furious demanding that Avram explain what had happened. Avram calmly explained that when he arrived that morning he caught the largest idol, the one holding the hammer, smashing and destroying the other idols. His father rejected the ridiculous story yelling that stone idols were incapable of such acts which Avram simply and calmly inquired why his father and family were selling idols under a false claim. This episode was the beginning of the travels and tribulations for Avram as most certainly he was invited to vacate his family home by his irate and distressed father. The amount of anger Avram probably received from his father and the rest of the family likely drove him to the farthest lands he could find where he felt safe from their reach and where Avram’s life was drastically changed and he started the seeds of what would become Judaism. During this struggle to find truth Avram found G0d and upon G0d instructing him, he changed his name to Avraham.

 

Some five or six hundred years later, after the Jews had been enslaved in Egypt, their numbers had increased to a point that the Pharaoh saw the Jews within Egypt as a potential threat and so placed them in bondage such that they would not revolt and join with one of Egypt’s enemies thus toppling his rule. After four hundred years we are told that the Jews were led to freedom by Moses who gave the Jewish people the Torah gaining Moses the title of the law-giver. Moses also led the Jewish people back to their ancestral homelands, the lands which presumably were granted to Avraham by G0d. The path to freedom and liberty and the forming of a people who did not have their minds enslaved and fearful, as were the minds of the vast majority of the Jewish people whom Moses led out of Egypt; Moses had to turn the nation of Israel around and journey back into the dessert. Moses had initially led the Jews directly to what was to be their homeland but the test of the spies who told of a formidable peoples who had cities with insurmountable walls and themselves were giants with great strength which was given by all but two of the twelve men sent to reconnoiter the land and the people’s panic caused Moses to lead them back into the desert until a new generation had been raised not under the oppression of slavery and with the mindset of a freed people. This, we are told, took forty years of wandering through the desert. To make this telling short we will simply list that Moses did not enter the Promised Land but turned the leadership over to Joshua who led the Jewish people on their initial efforts to conquer what would become their homelands. Initially the Jewish people broke into their individual tribes with each being autonomous. It was not until King David melded the twelve tribes into one nation and King Solomon built the L0rd’s Temple, the First Temple, in Yerushalayim. This was the pinnacle of Jewish expansion and conquest of lands and the rest of time until the Romans dispersed the Jews to the far corners of the Roman Empire in order to make them cease to exist and to perish from the pages of history that the Jewish People lived in the lands straddling the Jordan River and across the plains of the Galilee, much of these lands are where Israel exists today. The Israelites took approximately fifteen hundred to seventeen hundred years from their founding as a people and a religion by Avraham to their conquest and settling their lands centered on Yerushalayim and the Temple. This was the end of military expansionism and the adopting a kinder and gentler Jewish People, the same area approximately that the Jews are attempting to rebuild their homelands which had sat desolate for almost two millennia. Without going through the periods of conquest, rebirth and reconquering their area across Europe but instead look to when Christianity also became nonviolent and no longer expansionary, one sees that this happened for the Christian faith approximately fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred years. Checking the Islamic calendar one would notice that Islam is approaching the time-period where both Judaism and Christendom went through their transformations and became less violent and mostly no longer expansionist. So, perhaps this video has arrived and this will be the first salvo for the transformation of Islam. Here is the video and more continues below, but first the video requires watching if you have not yet come to see it already as it did appear on the social media circuit.

 

 

 

 

Time will tell if Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the latest general turned leader of Egypt will turn out to be the man who began the reformation of Islam or at least the reformation of Islamic beliefs and thought in Egypt, the most populous Islamic nation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the location of the oldest and most prestigious Islamic university in the world, Cairo’s Al-Azhar University. This was the University where el-Sisi gave his landmark speech. When I first viewed this speech made by el-Sisi I immediately feared for his life. There exists probably nobody in a more advantageous position to foment this transformation. The previous time such a reformation in Islam might have been possible was just after World War I with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the secularly based Turkey which he had placed what he considered an unimpeachable guardian of the works of his lifetime when he placed the enforcement of the secular state he had set for Turkey. Much of his work is being undermined and undone by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who has been slowly and inexorably sliding Turkey away from the standards put in place by Mustafa Ataturk a century ago and has already replaced the top generals thus coopting the military from interfering with his designs on returning Turkey to the glory of its time as the head of the Caliphate. Now we have General el-Sisi aiming to turn Egypt into a modern and functional Islamic state. One has to give Abdel Fattah el-Sisi credit for giving this address before the faculty and administrators of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the recognized premier and most prestigious Islamic institution for higher learning in the world. If Abdel el-Sisi can persuade the Imams who teach at Al-Azhar University to teach a reformed and flexible version of Islam more centered on the original teachings of Muhammad during the time in Mecca where he initially wrote the Quran and find some evidence or writing which defines Islam in the manners of Turkey then Abdel el-Sisi may turn out to be the man who started the reformation of Islam. What might the signs be that Abdel el-Sisi is making progress and what form and nature would a reformed Islam take?

 

We can all probably agree that the first accomplishment that Egyptian President and Islamic reformer must achieve will be remaining alive. The fate that awaited former Egyptian President Muhammad Anwar El Sadat after signing a peace treaty with Israel was that he was assassinated while watching a military revue when a soldier broke ranks and charged the reviewing stands and shot President Sadat at almost blank range. Anwar Sadat, like Abdel el-Sisi, was a general in the military before becoming President for Life and that relationship with the military was short-lived as it was from amongst the ranks of the military that the Muslim Brotherhood was able to reach out and assassinate him. So remaining alive and the symbol of a reformed Islam which is being practiced within Egypt, the largest Islamic state in the world, as well as taught at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the premier institute of higher learning and scholarly discourse in all of Islam, will produce a base for Islamic reformation in which Islam is transformed into a religion which is finally capable of living in a world in which other religions are deemed to be permitted and Islam will finally be able to be practiced side-by-side with the other faiths and will no longer pose a threat challenging all other faiths demanding to be the sole religion of the world. Making such a transition will take time, hopefully not too much time, but time just the same as such a transformation cannot be expected to take place overnight, or even in a single year.

 

The signs that such changes are being effectively spread throughout Islam and there will be more than sufficient pushback making the task of spreading the reformed version of Islam that much more difficult. There will be the resistance from the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia who with Saudi oil monies who have been at the forefront of Jihad as a violent manner of spreading Islam if coercion and conversion failed to convince a people to adopt their version of Islam. Then there is the not so small matter of Shiite Muslims as Abdel el-Sisi is Sunni and thus will not hold any acceptable powers of persuasion or authority, moral or otherwise unless Abdel el-Sisi is planning to conquer all of existing Islam in order to teach then a version which is non-violent. Then there are places where Islam is practiced solely because of their willingness to use brute force to enforce the laws of Islam as they perceive such. There are entities whose very existence is dependent on violent Jihad such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezballah, the Twelvers which had their influence solely through nonviolent means. Then there are the recent events in Paris which may have revealed something extremely threatening about Islam today. The two brothers claim that they received training and that the plans were worked through and rehearsed before they were sent to France to perform their deadly acts. This would not seem to pose any problem except that one brother claimed to have worked with al-Qaeda while the other claimed he worked through ISIS. If what this implies is true then the world and Abdel el-Sisi have a serious problem on their hands. The merging of the two of the largest, best trained, and militarily capable of ruling over entire nation is seriously frightening. The world can only hope that al-Qaeda and ISIS are not working together, even if only on Jihadist acts which both terror entities have an interest, then reforming Islam will have become that much more difficult. Abdel el-Sisi made clear that he was speaking about changing the thinking and not the religion, the interpretation and not actual Islam. What he likely meant by these declarations was that he aimed to preserve the writings of Islam and simply shift the emphasis to coexistence as the Quran was first written and that the changes he was purporting were things which the Quran already states but which are not currently stressed and utilized thus getting Islam to change from being a threat to the other religions of the world into a more gentile and pleasant form where it coexists with the other religions in the world. Abdel el-Sisi reflected on his realization that should Islamic practices continue insisting on violent Jihad and the transformation of the entirety of the world to Islam by spreading Islam by the sword that Islam was facing a problem. Abdel el-Sisi described that problem perfectly when he stated, “It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire Ummah to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible!! That thinking, I am not saying ‘religion’ but ‘thinking’, that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world! Is it possible that 1.6 billion Muslims should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7 billion – so that they themselves may live? Impossible!!” Abdel el-Sisi has looked at the world through open eyes and seen that should Islam continue in its current path its hand will be against every religion, and every religion’s hand against Islam, and will in the end lead to the destruction of Islam, thus its path must change. Abdel el-Sisi has awakened from a nightmare revelation where he realizes that Islam will only continue if it refuses to continue raising its hands against the world thus he has taken upon himself the task of teaching the Imams and the presumed greatest of those preaching Jihad to now preach kindness. Can he win against the likes of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Feisal Abdul Rauf and Abu Hamza al-Masri? All the rest of us can do is pray that Abdel el-Sisi is making an honest attempt and not trying to aggrandize himself, and that should his intents be pure, from the depths of his heart, and guided by his reason, that he be blessed in his quest as, should he succeed, then both Islam, the Muslim world and the world as a whole will benefit from his efforts.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

How Obama has Forced the World to Change for the Better

 

There are those who claim that President Obama has been a disaster both at home and in foreign policy. Let us look at domestic policy and accomplishments and resolve those first. The largest area of agreements are President Obama’s signature policy accomplishment according to most, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obama Care, and the Presidents most recent controversy with his announced intended amnesty of illegal immigrants should they be able to prove they meet requirements generally described criteria which will be defined through not Presidential Executive Actions but through merely ‘memos’ sent to Cabinet Secretaries to implement these changed definitions of policies and not changes of actual policies. The much maligned ACA may be established law as its defenders claim makes it sacrosanct and thus untouchable. Actually, it is as touchable as was the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution which was later repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment to that very same Constitution. So, there is precedent of the highest order that laws can be overturned, amended, redefined or altered in ways approaching uncountable and the ACA is not an exception. If the American people express an overwhelming and honest majority demanding the ACA be repealed, it will eventually be repealed, but only by such pressures being maintained until the repeal or redefinition of the changes within meet the people’s expectations. The immigration amnesty can be altered simply by finding a middle ground with legislation and holding President Obama to his promise to revoke his immigration ‘memos’ and sign the Congressional immigration reform legislation once it reaches his office. Further, if the President refuses to sign a truly compromise and rational approach which the American people have heard explained and support, then that veto can be overruled through constitutionally defined votes of both houses of Congress. Finally, the Congress can also prevent the implementation of President Obama’s immigration ‘memos’ by simply interceding and cutting off any federal funding of those changes and allowing them to die on the vine. So, anything that President Obama has done in domestic policies can be altered, repealed, amended, defunded or otherwise neutered by the Congress or potentially by the courts even if it needs to be taken to the Supreme Court making those alterations to the American legal fabric more compatible with the desires of the American people.

 

This leaves us with the effects and affects President Obama and his policies and actions have had on our world. The biggest problem caused by President Obama on the world’s stage was the damages he caused to the trust that both America’s allies and enemies could have in the promises made by any individual President because of the many standing policies which President Obama either ignored or worked with a great animosity and actually reversing previous American constants in foreign policy. Because many NATO countries came to fear that the United States no longer was there to protect them, they began to arm themselves and take on defense for themselves and many met the demanded minimal investments as required as a percentage of their budgets and national wealth on those defenses. Other nations such as Japan, Philippines, Israel, Taiwan and South Korea also realized that the promises made by previous administrations and even treaties may not be fulfilled to the extents they had always been guaranteed in word and actions including cancellation of joint exercises, the withholding of arms, changing promised arms sales replacing the weapons systems like aircraft and submarines with similar but lesser capable systems as well as actually cancelling some already planned and promised radar systems which were replaced with promises to have similar capabilities in place using naval systems or orbital surveillance satellites. No matter what good may come as nations react to a new reality where the United States can no longer be relied upon to keep its word and live up to promises to protect them from deadly threats or simply meet promised sales or stationing of resources, but they now know that promises from any President of the United States becomes null and void as soon as he leaves office and it depends upon the whims and fancies of his successors on into perpetuity. This alone will damage the United States and its foreign policy for decades, even centuries and potentially forever if the Obama perfidy is recalled into the distant future.

 

Now perhaps a closer look at the individual crises which have resulted to date and will likely play a large part of the historical legacy of President Obama’s two terms and its foreign policy and the ripples they have caused. First to examine Japan, Philippines and South Korea and their similar reactions and new realities they face due to President Obama’s foreign policy changes. The primary adversaries these three nations face is obviously China who has been developing advanced weapons systems, upgrading their military capabilities on the land, the sea and in the skies. Their other main adversary who is extremely unpredictable and potentially dangerous is North Korea with its new leader, Kim Jung Un who murdered his own Uncle for reasons which are unknown. With both of these adversaries possessing nuclear weapons, and with China developing a deep sea capable navy, what is often referred to as a blue water navy, these nations used to depend upon the United States and her nuclear threat to balance the nuclear potential threat from China and North Korea. With their faith and assurances broken, at the very least both South Korea and Japan have started to consider whether developing their own nuclear arsenals might be an idea whose time has come. Furthermore, both the Philippines and Japanese have conflicting claims for Islands located between them and China that China also makes claims to. This has caused a great potential for conflict to break out should the Chinese decide to exercise her ownership while the Philippines or Japan also have troops on exercises on the disputed Islands. The conflict potentially brewing for Japan is over the Senkaku Islands which the Chinese claim calling them the Diaoyu Islands. The Philippines dispute is over the Spratly Islands which the questions of ownership is also contested with Brunei, China, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam. And finally there is the problem caused by China claiming the entirety of the South China Sea which is heavily navigated water as it is the central leg of almost every trade route from Southern Asia to Western Asia, Hawaii, the Americas and the Panama Canal. Should either South Korea or Japan decide to go nuclear and develop nuclear arsenals, then the world will then contain two more nuclear armed nations and might spawn North Korea to expand their nuclear capabilities which would make the unpredictability of North Korean young, homicidal, vicious dictator Kim Jung Un even more threatening and of much greater concern for both Japan and the Philippines.

 

Taiwan has all of the same concerns as do Japan and the Philippines. The difference is that unlike the Philippines and Japan, Taiwan ranks mainland China as their greatest concern and threat. This is most likely due to the fact that China has already declared that Taiwan is simply another province of China which they intend to restore and place under Beijing’s control. One of the items which Taiwan was depending on was for the United States selling them a number of highly advanced submarines. Former President George W. Bush April 2001 offered Taiwan a substantial arms package which included eight diesel-electric submarines. Facing the problem that the United States has not designed or built diesel-electric submarines they faced a design problem which they were unable to solve simply by purchasing the plans and schematics of a European ally’s submarine but were turned down. After an exhaustive and determined search, come late 2004 the United States presented plans which included consideration for building the diesel-electric submarines for Taiwan from scratch. In early January of 2010, President Obama had his Defense Department announced a new offer of an arms package for Taiwan which did not include any submarines of any sort. This about-face greatly shocked and distressed the Taiwan defense officials. Taiwan’s reaction was to begin their own ability for building the most modern and advanced diesel-electric submarines on their own and have set out in that direction. The difficulty most nations reported in providing any military aid to Taiwan was their fear of provoking Chinese ire which has been growing in its potential recently.

 

Then there was the ready to be installed and promised placement of a radar and anti-missile battery system already agreed upon and the places were set aside in both Czech Republic and Poland. The reasons explained and guarantees given to Russia and the other nations in the area, that they were not the targeted areas, which would have been their primary concerns, but that the system was being placed in these two countries was for defense of any missiles launched from Iran towards Europe or even the United States and Canada. Russia was nervous but ready to accept the missile interceptors as the mere ten interceptors would be next to useless if they were to attempt to prevent an all-out Russian missile launch. By the end of President George W. Bush leaving office the only step left was to pack up the systems and ship them to be set up by American troops with aid from the two nations of Poland and the Czech Republic. President Obama took office and initially did not act or even press any steps to transit the systems to Europe. President Obama along with then Secretary of State Clinton were busy initially with the reset they were planning to reach with Russia. Finally, in September 2009, newly elected and still within his first year as President, Obama cancelled the entire system and promised to leave an AEGIS Destroyer in the eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea. This cancellation of the radar and anti-missile system was not taken well and considered to be a huge betrayal of their trust and as accepted allies. The promise of keeping a naval vessel to replace an entire system was seen an inadequate and less reliable as the ship, even one of the advanced and new AEGIS Destroyers, would not be capable of having its rockets placed in central Europe as there was no accessible body of water. This was also a broken trust and further proof that the United States has been basically changed and could no long trust the promises from one administration to the next administration as they could only take the promises of the President of the United States to have their weight and veracity disappear with the swearing-in ceremony of the next President.

 

And finally there is Israel where the changes signal an alignment change which they had best internalize if Israel has any plans for permanence. The changes in the United States relations with Israel were startling and shocked many an Israeli. The withholding of critical resupply of weapons and ammunition during the Gaza operation Defensive Shield was reminiscent of the delay in permitting resupply during the Yom Kippur War in October 1976 by President Nixon under the advice of Secretary of State Kissinger. The difference this time was the fact that President Obama added an additional review stage where it must be approved by the State Department after the Pentagon had cleared any supplies, provisions, replacement parts, weapon systems and even aircraft. Forcing any provisions of a military nature to also be granted the approval of the State Department places all military to military agreements and assurances given Israel all voided and allows for the Arabists who have infiltrated deeply into the State Department to interdict any resupply or even initial supply of armaments being shipped to Israel. Add into the mix the open hostility and animus shown to the Prime Minister of Israel as well as many Israeli politicians was another sign that all was not well between Jerusalem and Washington. Then there have been the silent demands on the leadership of Israel which has forced a silent building freeze, refraining security police and the IDF by insisting on Israeli rules of engagement, demanded that the Israeli government back away from any restrictions to Muslim access to the Temple Mount or in resolving the continuous rioting by Muslims while all the time refusing Jewish prayer and even access to the Temple Mount which is the most sacred place for Jews in the world and further demanded that Israel make concession in order to meet all of the demands of Mahmoud Abbas. These overt and far reaching plans by the United States to hamstring Israel and force them to all but surrender completely to the Palestinians demands and allow Muslims to act and enjoy every conceivable freedom even from the law while the Jews are to be treated as if they were Dhimmis within an Islamic state have even turned much of the Israeli public to question whether America is still an ally or has the good and solid relations become a memory from the distant past. There are those in Israel who now believe that the United States has turned on their homeland accusing them of taking the side of Israel’s enemies and joined their efforts to destroy Israel. The one place that thus far the United States has not betrayed the trust of Israel is the United Nations Security Council where the veto of the United States has very often been the savior required while much of the rest of the nations represented on the Security Council vote almost religiously to condemn Israel no matter what the charges or evidence. Should the United States ever break this trust, then the Israelis will know that there has been such a change that they can no longer count on anybody in the United Nations Security Council to mount sufficient, if any, opposition to the assaults upon Israel within that body just as nobody can save Israel from endless condemnations from every element of the United Nations. Potentially the worst entity when it comes to Israel would have to be the United Nations Human Rights Council which has as part of its operations a stipulation for them to issue a condemnation of Israel at the beginning of every session before they even conduct the reading of the minutes from the previous meeting. The one truth which is easily witnessed from as far as Jerusalem is the support and warmth of the feelings of the American people for Israel. This devotion and support for Israel is one of the things which has appeared to only grow as the Administration has slid further and further from Israel. Their support and devotion are highly treasured across all the lands and peoples of Israel.

 

The question in all of these nations’ minds is will the United States they knew return once it comes into new management with the next President. Then what jumps to the front of their minds is what are the possibilities that there may be President after President where the United States runs hot and cold in their treatment of each nation. Their greatest fear would be the United States not bouncing back to the familiar relations and traditional allies. The one probably permanent change caused to be implemented by the drastic changes experienced over the past six years has been the realization that even the most powerful nation which had been the greatest protector of freedoms, democracy, human rights and progress can falter and vanish for all intents and purposes leaving the world scrambling to cope with the collapse of what had appeared to be the natural order in the world. Now we do not have to imagine a world without the United States as we have been living in such a world where the United States was leading from behind rather than boldly going forth to support truth and justice, or at least profits, commerce and unfettered trade routes.

 

Beyond the Cusp