Obama Fighting War of His Making Ignoring Others

President Obama is fighting what he believes is the greatest of evils facing mankind in the world today. He is marshaling the Democrat troops, sending Vice President Biden across the oceans, having Democrat Senators enter meetings of the greatest urgency, hoping to coral as many Democrat House Representatives to hold their meeting concurrently as the Senate Democrat meeting, and calling for efforts on the ground in Israel to canvas the nation warning against the greatest evil challenging the world in hopes of gathering the Israeli public in his efforts to right the wrongs and defeat the greatest of evils. But what is the nature of this evil which demands such efforts and coordination across two continents marshalling the people to fight and finally put this menace to all that is holy to rest. Senators, Representatives, public leaders and political ground forces capable of raising awareness with resultant actions across two nations to face an evil; a pernicious and foreboding evil that has threatened the very ties between two civilizations risking a calamity which if not addressed immediately could result in explosive violence across the Middle East. This threat has taken the highest priority on the President’s plate, but first let’s take a look at the solutions the President has in place on some of the other problems before we debate the merits of the President’s present obsession.

There is a deadline approaching, well, not so much a deadline as the latest date by which the negotiations between the P5+1 (United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany) with Iran over their nuclear program and the concerns that they just may be working towards the manufacturing of nuclear weapons are to conclude. Secretary of State Kerry let slip this week the secret negotiating technique the State Department has been applying to this recent and seeming last ditch effort to reach an agreement by March 24 avoiding a third procrastinating setting of a new date which would probably set yet another date towards the end of summer. But the new negotiation technique should resolve any outstanding issues as the instructions are should the Iranians balk at any of the demands then they are to drop said demand and move along to the next position and hopefully there will be sufficient time to readdress the outstanding and dropped issues. It is far more likely that we will see some agreement which will allow for President Obama to announce the reopening of an United States embassy in Tehran during his visit to Tehran where he will join Iranian President Rowhani in a signing ceremony setting the parameters and inspection format permitting only peaceful and low level uranium enrichment under IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) oversight. What could ever go wrong with having the IAEA inspectors under the guidance and power of the United Nations?

Then there is the problem with the JV (Junior Varsity) of the terror world, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), sometimes simply referred to by their preferred title of IS (Islamic State) or the Caliphate. They had swarmed across one third of Iraq’s central regions and almost half of Syria before being slowed and finally contained by the Kurdish militias, Peshmerga forces, contained them in northern Iraq and reinforced the Kurdish YPG (People’s Defense Unit) and its complimentary YPJ (Women’s Defense Unit) stopping ISIS dead in the northern Syrian town of Kobanê, <a href=http://ypgrojava.com/en/ target=blank>their official Internet Site</a> and slowly retaking their home town. Further, the allied efforts of sixty nations carrying out airstrikes have also prevented ISIS from taking the Iraqi capital city of Baghdad as well as assisting Kurdish efforts to take back some lands in Syria and northern Iraq. The areas liberated by the Kurdish forces in Iraq have revealed a telling and horrid tale spelled out by the mass graves of Yazidis and Iraqis with numerous of the dead having single bullet wounds to the back of their heads and some with signs of having had their hands tied. Many of the witnesses have retold stories spinning a tale revealing the atrocities and degradations committed by the forces under ISIS, many of which are too horrific to be spoken of except as an impetus to action by those opposing the butchers of ISIS. One such horror that was regaled before the world in a video showed the execution by immolation of the Jordanian pilot held prisoner by ISIS. This atrocity has steeled the Jordanian people in any efforts to avenge their countryman’s fate. Jordanian monarch, King Abdullah II referred to ISIS as “Islamic Extremists” and vowed that Jordanian military was able and readying to ramp up their efforts to destroy ISIS claiming they would be “relentless” with strikes upon “their own homes,” and to continue the fight until Jordan runs “out of fuel and bullets.” When the video which showed the Jordanian pilot’s fate was released to the world, King Abdullah was in Washington D.C. where President Obama refused the Jordanian King’s request to be supplied with drone aircraft to make reconnaissance and other tactical missions thus aiding and increasing the effectiveness of the Jordanian efforts against ISIS.

Another front facing the world and especially the United States as the head of NATO and presumably the free world, President Obama has been all but absent from the uprising and Russian interference in eastern Ukraine. The uprising has had the telltale signs of Russian intervention as many of the fighters, especially those manning the heavy weapons and armored vehicles, have what appear to be wearing Russian military combat fatigues with no rank, name, unit or other markings. These troops are further tied to Russia as they are most often noted in numbers immediately after there have been additional armor or heavy weaponry crossing the border from Russia into the eastern Ukraine. While the Europeans had installed deep sanctions on Russia which had been starting to have their full effect felt, President Obama was busy leading the way for calls to remove the crippling sanctions were made and eventually heeded by the Europeans. In return, the United States has delivered non-lethal equipment such as night vision equipment, blankets, meal packets and similar supplies. The United States will be debating the pros-and-cons of providing the Ukraine so-called “defensive lethal aid,” that might be permitted to include anti-tank, anti-air and anti-mortar systems. The Russians led by President Putin who will likely call President Obama and remind him of the message he had relayed through then President Medvedev stating that, “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.” The aim is to put an end to the Russian adventurisms before Russian backed rebels rise up against the government in any NATO nation whose government then invokes Article V which requires the other NATO members to come to the aid of the nation facing such an invasion. Where the Ukraine is not as of yet a NATO member, they had been inching in that direction and it was the fears of their being accepted thus placing them under NATO Article V protection. The problem will boil over should Russian President Putin attempt the same scenario in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland or even Poland as Putin had boasted in a threat late last year when he described his feeling and disrespect for NATO implying that it was a hollowed out paper tiger completely devoid of the strength or will to prevent Russia from retaking the lands which had been under the influence of the Soviet Union. Such a threat would reveal the true intestinal fortitude of President Obama assuming that he has any to stand upon.

These problems would appear to be capable of filling the plate of even the greatest of leaders and of taxing their ability to fulfill their obligations as the leader of the free world. They surely have filled President Obama’s cup to overflowing, but as we have seen above, the President is right there with a resolute stance and the will to back that up if required. When the time comes to put up or go home he inevitably chooses to stay home and lead from behind. In Mali President Obama allowed the French to take the lead while he waited should any catastrophe require he stand up and be heard defining why this particular problem was not such a serious threat requiring any further actions, especially requiring American “boots on the ground.” He followed in Libya and then walked away with the job at hand only half completed. The refusal to step up and clear out all of the rats and their nests eventually assisted in leading to the tragedy which occurred in Benghazi where United States Ambassador to Libya John Christopher Stevens was murdered while the United States Consulate building was torched and burned to the ground. Also murdered were Sean Smith, U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer and aide to Ambassador Stevens along with two former Navy SEALS, Glen Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods who answered the desperate calls for assistance and eventually were murdered during the ensuing battle at the Central Intelligence safe-house where they managed to hold out for close to eight or nine hours calling for an air strike and any relief though none was ever going to be sent. Thus far investigations have yet to place the blame for giving the orders to “stand sown” to all units who were close enough to have rescued the two former SEALS who had rescued a number of Consulate staff and were fighting the insurgents attempting to save anybody still requiring their assistance.

The above challenges and the numerous scandals have the administration attempting to run out the clock until the term is complete and interest in them should die. Despite the appearance of great importance some of the situations such as with ISIS in both Iraq and Syria, Iran on the verge of producing nuclear weapons, and Russia threatening to overrun the Ukraine as well as potentially striking Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania or even Poland, and keeping the lid on the many scandals his Administrations, and especially Attorney General Erik Holder has produced, such as the Veterans administration keeping multiple lists to conceal their atrocious wait times which were actually killing many of the United States’ most vulnerable and destitute veterans, the NSA (National Security Agency) peering and hacking into personal files and other information stored on their computers as well as from credit card records and other such files, the Fast and Furious Program which could of added Fiasco to its alliterated name. The firearms placed intentionally in the hands of the Mexican drug cartels resulted in one dead American Border Patrol Agent, Brian Terry, and who even knows how many Mexican innocents, police officers and military forces assisting in their war on drugs. The rest of the tragedy which was Fast and Furious was that the firearms were never recovered nor were there any arrests or convictions attained due to the intentional arming of the worst criminals throughout Mexico and especially on the United States southern border. Add in the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) scandal where groups applying for tax exemption due to their nonprofit status were placed last to be processed and made to go through the most twisted demands and requirements to prove their nonprofit status including the answering of thousands of questions and even required them to turn over lists of their donors simply determined by if their name included words which were deemed suspicious and automatically placed the petitioner in the slowest and most intensive inquiries possible. What were some of these words? Words such as freedom, independence, guns, firearms, Constitution, Bill of Rights, Tea Party, 9/12 Organization, and other keywords which were considered to dictate the inquiry came from conservative or libertarian motivated organizations. There additionally were the attacks on the privacy of selected news and editorialists with whom the White House had difficulties or disagreements with their slant. These invasions of their private lives even went so far in at least one instance that the reporter’s parents’ files and information was run through the mill to see what may fall out. There is even more on the domestic scandal front but you get the idea.

Either side, the domestic scandals and the terror and Russian threats and other menaces on the world’s stage would be enough on their own plate and would lead anybody into a dizzying schedule just attempting to keep up, but the President has a singular mission he has placed before all others, the changing of the make-up of the Israeli government resulting in the replacing of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu with the collaboration of Tzipi Livni and Yitzhak Herzog at any cost. Towards this end the White House has set up a funding headquarters in an office in New York City on West 38th Street under the name of the NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) V15/One Voice. In a surprising effort in Israel there exists another NGO with a name very similar to the NGO in New York, the Israeli one is named V2015 though on some of its material the name is shortened to V15. We have covered some of the particulars, and more should become available as we approach the March 17 Israeli elections. Our previous article was titled, <a href=http://wp.me/pIou8-1G7 target=blank>“Obama’s Deceits Over Israeli Elections”</a> and includes the letter written by Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Lee Zeldin who are both Member of Congress sent to Secretary of State John Kerry demanding to know and have an accounting over whether government funding of V15 and One Voice are being utilized in efforts to affect the Israeli elections. The efforts the White House is taking to attempt to embarrass Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for accepting an invitation from Speaker of the House Boehner to address the combined houses of Congress on the Iranian nuclear issue and to give a summary of anything the Israelis might know that the State of the union address failed to mention. What is interesting about the protestations being staged by the White House is that they are premised on some false information. Firstly, the Prime Minister was going to be in the United States to speak to the AIPAC Conference the first week of March and it has been almost a given custom to have the Israeli Prime Minister address the Congress while he is in the United States. Additionally, the White House had been given notice that the Speaker of the House was going to request that the Israeli Prime Minister address Congress, the Speaker simply did not wait for an answer as the last time he made such a request it took the White House almost, if not all of, three months before granting him a reply. Additionally, the Speaker was aware that the White House would take an equally lengthy time this time as well so he decided that advising them of his intent to request such an audience was sufficient, for which there exists no reason that the Speaker of the House is required to have such invitations approved by anybody, the third in line to become President in a catastrophe where both the President and the Vice President were rendered unable to continue as the leader of the United States.

The White House has taken an additional step beyond their very public statement repeated numerous times stating that President Obama will refuse to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu and that Secretary of State Kerry has been instructed not to meet with the Israeli Head of State; they have further made grand mentioned that Vice President Biden will also not be present as he will be out of town in the midst of travels on the date of Netanyahu’s speech. Adding insult to injury, Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Kerry both made particular effort to conspicuously hold excessively visible meeting with Israeli Labor Party leader Yitzhak Hertzog demanding the press make note of this public display intended to send a visceral message to Israelis that the White House has found their lackey with whom they can arrange what President Obama has wanted since he made his very first official call as President to Mahmoud Abbas, to force Israel to surrender all of Judea, Samaria and Most of Jerusalem returning to within the Green Line which guarantees a bloody war will soon ensue when Arab rockets close Ben Gurion Airport and destroy numerous skyscrapers in the heart of Tel Aviv. The lengthy discourse stressing the complete lack of any relations between the two groups have continued to the point of absurdity and cemented the ties in place for all to see if only they desire to seek the truth. In all honesty, Benyamin Netanyahu or his Likud Party have retained the services of a political group which assists with campaign organizational functions and all other aspects who have previously been used by Republican candidates. The difference is that the firm assisting the reelection of Prime Minister Netanyahu and the return of his predominant Likud Party has been done straight up without any denials or other shenanigans. The V15 or V2015 and One Voice campaign refuses to even come out and say for whom they are working. When approached they claim they are not supporting the Labor Party-Hatnua Party alliance list running under the name “Zionist Camp,” a misnomer intended to mislead the electorate, and even refuse to recognize that they are attempting to bring down Prime Minister Netanyahu from forming the next coalition and say instead that they desire to force a change in the government from the nationalist to something else. They do not presumably care as long as the governance changes, I wonder what their reply would be if somebody then stated they must be supporting Jewish Home Party leader Naftali Bennett which my bet is would elicit the response of dismissing such as a silly idea as Bennett is not the next in line should Likud not be tapped to form the next government. The final incriminating piece of evidence is the stated plan of feeding the Israeli staff through the New Israel Fund (NIF) which is an NGO which has a history of being a clearing house of sorts for progressive groups, NGOs and even political campaigns to funnel moneys from outside of Israel into Israel such that the entity receiving funding from NIF can sometimes be dirty money being funneled illegally into Israeli politics. This has been the method of choice by the Anthropomorphic Climate Change entities when receiving funding from European governments or even from the European Union (EU) or the United Nations (UN). The final push will come in the final week to week and a half which is also when the New York office intends to flush the monies into Israel hoping that its late entry will not be revealed and caught by the agency which monitors the election for irregularities. Perhaps once the Israeli elections have concluded then President Obama can address some of those trifling matters such as Russia’s President Putin threatening to return the world to the Cold War days or address ISIS who is intent on introducing the hottest conflagration of war possible to the whole of the world given sufficient time and munitions.

Beyond the Cusp

The Turning of President Obama

I will admit right up front that President Obama would never likely be my first choice for President or any other elected office. On the other hand, the candidates put up against him by the Republican Party did not offer much of an alternative leaving no real different choice in the past two elections. When President Obama won election and took the oath of office for his first term I hoped that he would at least minimally fulfill some of my hopes and not necessarily make some of the changes I most feared. I have attempted to satisfy myself by believing it could have been far worse. The passage of Obama’s healthcare reforms has instilled in me a trepidation which goes very deep. The biggest trouble I perceived was the fact that the main enforcement agency for the Affordable Health Care Act is the Internal Revenue Service. This little fact makes it appear that the healthcare bill will be more aligned as a revenue enhancement system which by default supplies healthcare while its primary mission is to collect funds. The evidence implies that the government will take whatever measures possible to minimize the costs of healthcare even if the cost saving measures result in denial of care as the general rule for any costly measures such as surgeries, experimental procedures, highly priced new drugs, extended physical therapies, and other costly procedures. But at least we did not see such items in legislation such as a carbon tax and some of the socialist causes which are counter to a free market economy that candidate Obama claimed he would enact.

 

I do not pretend to understand why it almost always seems to be that Presidents become entangled in conspiracies or other legally questionable events soon after beginning their second term. Such has definitely struck President Obama with the first scandal began during the final leg of the campaign and election cycle in which President Obama still managed to be reelected. The scandal concerned the events around the murder by a terrorist attack of our Libyan Ambassador Scott Stevens and three support personnel in Benghazi. As if this was not causing sufficient problems for the Obama Administration officials, now there are another pair of predicaments that have struck the Administration with the IRS conducting politically motivated audits and special treatment of applicants for tax-free classifications and the Justice Department snooping into Associated Press phone records and tapping their reporter’s phones in order to uncover the identities of any whistleblowers. Each of these tribulations would be sufficient to trouble a President sufficiently to add a dozen years to his appearance and President Obama has definitely begun to show the signs of stress of a man under siege. He even joked about such affects during 2013 White House Correspondents’ Dinner when he said, “I’m not the strapping young Muslim socialist that I used to be.”

 

While Benghazi is about more than just President Obama, he is still the leader and must be held to answer for the actions or lack of actions for those within his Administration. From what has transpired resulting from the catastrophic events of that fateful day of September 11, 2012, President Obama has appeared to have dodged much of the blame until these other two items hit the news cycle. The entire Benghazi troubles had appeared to begin to wind down and might have passed into the darkness of history after very short hearings held last week but for some reason it appears to be resurrecting itself back into the mix. The apparent tie in has been the lack of personal involvement by the President in these disparate scandals which gives the appearance that either President Obama is not truly in control of his subordinates or is simply uninterested in performing the requirements of his position and has relegated the running of the country to others while he simply reads his teleprompter and otherwise enjoys the privileges of the office. Such suspicions make for a serious problem for the President as if he now takes complete and total ownership of these issues he will face possibly serious charges and if he allows his actions to be interpreted as his being disengaged and uninvolved he risks being seen to be complacent and diminished. The other possible difficulty which could come out of the disaster in Benghazi is what might follow if Benghazi ends up being tied to Syria and the movement of weapons and manpower from Libya into Syria as some of the rebels in Syria are aligned with the same organizations as rebels forces which fought in Libya, namely al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. Such assistance to some of the rebel forces in Syria would also serve the desired results sought by Turkey and Prime Minister Erdogan, a close Obama friend and ally.

 

The common element connecting the Internal Revenue Service scandal with the Associated Press phone tapping and records outrage is the evidence of an Administration out of control taking vindictive retribution against all opponents and utilizing every possible office and force that government can bring to bear. This is exactly the manner of overreach and abuse of political and governmental power which most angers a plurality if not an outright majority of American voters. In addition there are all the untruths, obfuscations, invasions of privacy, exchanging sensitive information, illegal use of confidential information, and any denials or cover-ups that will be the eventual downfall if anything develops and has lasting effects. The obvious targeting and investigating of conservative political groups, small government organizations, anti-tax political action groups and Pro-Israel Jewish groups on the grounds of potential support for terrorism because terror groups exist all around Israel are blatant politically motivated witch-hunts which go way beyond the cusp and into the valley of underhanded deceits and dirty tricks. President Nixon was charged with similar activities leading to his impeachment hearings, especially those currently being committed by the Internal Revenue Service at the presumed behest of the Obama Administration. If nothing else, all of these potential investigations which some may even birth other areas to investigate will have one extremely positive result, Congress will have something to fill their days and thus might just be sufficient to keep them from inventing more problems for which they will then proceed to solve by causing even more problems.

 

The particular items which are most likely to have the strongest legs and persist both in the congress and the media will be the phone scandal of the Justice Department snooping through the Associated Press phone records to discover the names of whistle-blowers and the excess of requirements and information gathering demanded by the Internal Revenue Service of any groups deemed problematic by the Obama Administration. I would be remiss if I did not admit that the entire debacle of Benghazi being relegated to trail off like echoes bouncing off the canyon walls until they fade beneath the winds is not an insult to the senses and patriotism of every red-blooded American as well as to the dignity and efforts put forth by our Ambassador and those who gave all in an attempt to protect him and defend the honor of the United States. There are a number of questions which I very much desire to have answered. I would like to know whether any of the Commanders of the various assets available even considered breaking orders and coming to the aid of our people under siege in Benghazi. I would have hoped that we had one Commander somewhere in theater who would act as did the Naval Commander of the Navy destroyer USS Bainbridge, Cmdr. Frank Castellano, who took action on Sunday April 12, 2009, when he determined the situation was dire and waiting for the requested clearance from the White House might come too late to save the hostages from Somali Pirates and took actions necessary and successfully rescued everyone. Beyond this I so dearly demand that the person who was responsible for the stand-down order to be identified and brought up on charges for dereliction of duty. Whoever gave such a heinous and odious order deserves the most extreme punishment which can be brought under whatever code of law is applicable be it the UCMJ or civil laws. The originator of the order which left at least two of our bravest stand against unbelievable odds where they, through miraculous personal efforts, withstood an onslaught of a combination of small arms, rocket propelled grenades, and mortar fire brought down on their defensive position by over one-hundred-fifty terrorist forces carrying out an organized assault. To allow such a cowardly act to go unpunished would serve for all time as an insult to our fighting forces who given even the most remote possibility of success would grab any opportunity to save their countrymen no matter the extremes of the odds or direness of the situation. That is the kind of operation which many of our most elite forces train long, hard and mercilessly so as to be prepared in any situation when the order comes down. Unfortunately, they feel cheated in such an instance as Benghazi where their unequalled abilities are not even given the chance to prove that to our military personnel there is no such thing as impossible, only that which will take a little while longer.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Benghazi and Gaza Reveal Government Spin Over Action

In the United States the public is being slowly traumatized by the horrors slowly coming to light as the putrefied onion that is Benghazi, Libya is slowly peeled one rotting later after another while in Israel there is the escalation by the terror governance in Gaza of rockets being hurled across the border at civilians and often timed to strike while children are transiting to or from school thus traumatizing the millions within the ever increasing range of these explosive projectiles. In both countries the government in general and the leadership in particular; President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, United Nations Ambassador Rice and others in the Administration in America and Prime Minister Netanyahu and the military and coalition leadership in Israel; are dodging responsibility and avoiding directly addressing the truth in a futile hope that neither problem will have any defining affect upon the upcoming elections. The similarities in both of these horrid and tragic instances go further than simply the attempt to wish them away by each nation’s leaders, they also have similar solutions which are based on honestly admitting some painful truths, taking responsibility for protecting the people and interests of the nation, giving an honest and complete assessment of the realities each nation faces, admission of mistakes and shortcomings committed by those in the positions of leadership and decision making, and finally refusal to take bold steps that would protect those in harm’s way and use necessary military steps that would prevent any further damages and show an understanding and consideration for protecting those who stand vulnerable from these threats.

The United States leadership needs to admit that it is very possible and even likely that the changes brought on by the so-called Arab Spring are more likely to result in situations less favorable to the West, freedom, liberties and even the economies of the nations where the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamist entities have taken over the governance and are going to resemble an Arab Winter and relations are going to turn colder, not warmer. This places our personnel in the embassies, consulates, and other assets in greater threats of danger either directly from the new governance or from other terror-like threats acting with the permission of the governments if not directly being organized by these governments. It will not only be unwise to allow for security to be provided by the governments of the countries in which there are personnel and must insist on having United States Marines on duty guarding these people or should let it be known that American personnel will be pulled if forced to do so as well as financial and other consequences. Niceties cannot be extended if they will result in the death or threats of violence to American personnel. There are times when niceties must be put aside and putting forth a steel gloved hand becomes necessary instead of a white silk glove that President Obama appears to believe will solve everything. Reality is often not as pretty and in this case is extremely unseemly and ugly, but the truth is the truth.

Meanwhile, in southern Israel there have been close to one hundred rockets, mortars, bombs and other attacks originating from the Gaza Strip in less than one week. While the Iron Dome system protecting the city of Ashkelon has been of adequate success by intercepting at least eight rockets fired in its theater, there are simply not sufficient Iron Dome systems to protect all of the communities. There have been mounting casualties and an even larger number of people suffering stress and other nervous attacks and disorders as a result of this seeming declaration of war. If this many explosive rockets and mortars had been fired across a border into any country in the world other than Israel, the United Nations would be holding emergency sessions and there would be world-wide concern and denunciations against the senseless violence and provocations. Of course, since these attacks are against Israel there will be no fury of concern, hand-wringing and denouncements unless and until Israel should retaliate with any appropriate force which will be labeled as disproportionate as is the custom of the world in its current state of affairs. But just because the rest of the world will likely get their panties in a wad should Israel launch a ground attack that is carefully planned and executed sweeping through the entire length and breadth of the Gaza Strip searching every single building, shed, hospital, and mosque for rockets, mortars, rocket launchers, mortar launch tubes and any other such equipment of war and confiscate and destroy every single piece found does not preclude the possible necessity for just such an action. There should also be arrests of every leading terrorist and the rocket, mortar, bomb and explosive expert should be arrested or taken as prisoners of war to be released once all violence originating from the Gaza Strip has ceased for twelve straight months and a treaty negotiated. It may even have reached the point in time where returning IDF forces into the Gaza Strip to patrol the area and keep the peace has become a desirable and necessary option. Simply promising to reinforce the homes, businesses, hospitals, schools, malls, and other buildings to make them better able to withstand the rocket attacks is insufficient, irresponsible and completely inadequate. Election or no election in the offing, protecting the people of Israel is job one Mr. Netanyahu, not the strengthening of your coalition in the Knesset. What may not be obvious to you is that by assuring the safety and security of the people you also assure the size and loyalty of your coalition in the Knesset.

In both the United States and Israel there will be elections within a few months. The United States will have their election within fourteen days and may very well end up a referendum not only on President Obama’s performance in his first term, Obama Care, the economy, or any of the other items the American people have been fed for the whole election year thus far, it may well be a referendum on Benghazi and who will most likely keep the American people safe and the United States strong and respected with a sufficient dose of feared that nobody would ever consider attacking Americans anywhere in the world. In Israel the election might be a referendum on the authenticity of a return as an innocent man into politics by Ehud Olmert, or the return of Tzipi Livni. What should be the issues are a leader who will put the final nails to seal the coffin where the Oslo accords have been laid for some time by Mahmoud Abbas and his refusal to compromise or even discuss compromise, protection of the citizens living under constant threat in southern Israel from the rockets, mortars and other attacks originating from the Gaza Strip under the direction of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and related terror groups, the acceptance and application of the Levy Report along with all it implies, and stand firm before the hatreds and bigotries of too much of this world and establish that Israel is entitled to every millimeter of lands guaranteed under the numerous agreements including but not limited to the Peel Commission, San Remo Conference, Churchill White Papers, and Article 80 of the United Nations. The other way in which the United States and Israel are facing a similar situation is the possibility that the upcoming election in each country could have an effect on the entirety of each country’s future beyond what anyone can anticipate. Act One in two weeks and Act Two scheduled for late January of next year. The time between these two important dates should prove interesting, especially on how the results of the first could have influences on the second. These surely are interesting times but as such, are these a good thing or a curse as the Chinese believe.

Beyond the Cusp