London Terror and the Message it Sends

 

Imagine the horror felt by the people stuck in the gondolas of the London Eye, also known as the Millennium Wheel, the supersized Ferris wheel along the Thames River near Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Palace of Westminster, Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament as well as overlooking the entirety of the terror attack (see map below). Basically held captive while a 4X4 Enterprise rental vehicle plowed through pedestrians below on the Westminster Bridge as well as the shooting attacks which followed after the attack vehicle had slammed into the iron fence protecting the House of Commons, their ordeal had just started. After the area had been secured, authorities slowly disembarked those civilians from the gondolas one by one taking statements and debriefing each person before moving on to the next gondola. We were unable to ascertain how much time this procedure required before the final groups of people were free to leave. These poor people had paid to take a leisurely ride on the famed London Eye and instead of a fun frolic they were live, front row witnesses to a mass terror attack followed by a torturously slow and measured taking of their statements which for some the ride lasted it must have been hours of tedium. Hopefully some at least made new friends as they certainly had time for conversing while waiting to have their one on one with the police. As of this writing it has been reported that eight people arrested at six addresses, including in Birmingham and London, the death count revised to four, with at least 40 injured, seven critically, and it was released that the murdered police officer was named as PC Keith Palmer.

 

Map of London with Terror Attack Locations

 

London Mayor Sadiq Aman Khan is a Muslim which simply shows that the terrorists are not as concerned with whether a nation or city has accepted members of the Islamic faith as equals or even elected them as the mayor of the city; their aim is high visibility attacks which immortalize those who plan and commit these atrocities. They cannot be appeased or accommodated, only hunted down and removed from being capable of inflicting harm on people, any people. It has been noted that the Islamic State in its various forms since its inception has murdered more Muslims than any other religion. One could make an argument that their first and foremost desire is to purify Islam allowing only those who accept their leadership and views on the teachings of their faith. This leads to a problem as there are other groups with similar goals but diametrically different views. It could easily be stated as truth that Hezballah has opposing views to the Islamic State as Islamic State is Sunni while Hezballah is Shiite, two incompatible views if one is being excessively strict as these two terror groups have proven. Hezballah has also murdered more members of the faith of Islam than other religions despite some intense efforts against Israel. One would not be far off than to expect that should Islamic State take control over an area where Hezballah has already purified the city to Shia Islam that when Islamic State left there would be no one left alive as they would purify the city in the name of Sunni Islam. An identical result could be expected should the order of occupation and pacification be reversed. Islamic State has also been at war with numerous other groups which also claim to believe in Sunni Islam which begs the question of where these groups are found deficient in their faith by the Islamic State and why these other Sunni groups fight against the Islamic State. Sometimes trying to wrap our heads around these realities makes our heads hurt badly.

 

Sometimes the problem appears to be not so much the form of Islam but the historic tribe or groups one’s origins are derived. This is made excessively evident when it comes to the Kurds. They are apparently hated by Sunni and Shiites alike and seem to have no friends with which to ally. Their manner of observing Islam is apparently different than most of the others as they took great risks in rescuing the Yazidi as best as they were able when the Islamic State stood poised to slaughter the entirety of these people. While the rest of the world stood paralyzed unable to formulate any plan for saving these people, the Kurds simply went to where the Yazidi were holed up on Mount Sinjar and rescued as many as they were able and provided them with protection. The Yazidi practice a religion which is based purely on their Oral traditions which include a blending, a syncretic religion, influenced by pre-Islamic Assyrian traditions, Sufi and Shiite Islam, Nestorian Christianity, and Zoroastrianism. This blending of religions has left the Yazidi basically with no allies as almost all look upon them as those things which make them different and not the fact that they have anything in common with their neighbors, which is why they remained together as a tight tribal groups heavily dependent on each other for protection. Against the Islamic State the Yazidi had neither the manpower nor the weapons to defend themselves. Their one link is that they are a Kurdish speaking minority which is probably the familial identity they shared with their rescuers.

 

This brings us back to the London terror attack which Islamic State, or ISIS, claimed responsibility and took great pride in their destruction. The attacker who they claim was one of their “soldiers” and he was, according to Prime Minister May, “What I can confirm is that the man was British-born and that some years ago he was once investigated by MI5 in relation to concerns about violent extremism. He was a peripheral figure. The case is historic. He was not part of the current intelligence picture. There was no prior intelligence of his intent or of the plot.” Another victim of this horror was Spanish teacher and department head Aysha Frade, 43, worked at DLD College, London and was married with two daughters. She was believed to have been crossing Westminster Bridge to pick up her children aged eight and 11 from school when she lost her life in the attack. One of the more moving of the stories of the tragic events was that of Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood who was among those who rushed to help PC Keith Palmer. Mr. Ellwood, who lost his brother in the Bali bombing, was seen pumping the officer’s chest then standing above him, his hands and face smeared with blood as was reported live from the scene by numerous reports. His bravery and efforts as well as those of all involved, police, emergency medical teams, ambulance crews and those other civilians who lent a hand in assisting the many wounded and giving comfort to those around them most in need from the shocking scenes all witnessed and the order which was kept and especially to those people who waited patiently, or not so patiently, in the gondolas and then gave full accountings to the authorities after, what for some must have been insufferable, long waits to finally disembark and end their ordeal. The fact that most remained and assisted as best they were able is a testament to British comradery and pulling together and showing their best in a difficult and horrific situation.

 

Terror Victims PC Keith Palmer and Aysha Frade

 

We can hope that this will be the final time we need to review the heroism, bravery and other stand-out performances by regular people, law enforcement and emergency crews, people from all walks and from diffuse backgrounds all assisting people they likely never met before but giving them somebody to lean on for support, working to save a life, preventing further harm, stopping an attacker or other general acts of bravery or relief in the immediate and tumultuous aftermath of a terror attack like those we have seen far too many times. Paris, London, New York, Jerusalem, Istanbul and Cairo are all amongst cities struck by these horrors while there is apparently nowhere on Earth perhaps other than Antarctica is safe from such violence. The world sometimes appears to be awakening to the threats yet all too often after attacks such as what we saw in London we all jerk ourselves and scream in our minds that this must be fought with more than words and within a few days, hours for some and moments for others, we fall back into our nominal state of dealing with those daily tasks and requirements of our jobs, families, friends and getting the car repaired, paying bills, food shopping, kids science project, you name the distraction, it takes our minds back to the everyday. That complacency needs to be shaken up and dispelled such that we take the needful steps to end these attacks by whatever means are required. We owe it to those whose lives we have already lost, their families and friends, their coworkers and people they simply may have once given a smile making their day and we owe it to those who have not yet been the tragic target and their friends, families, coworkers, people they attend religious services with or those who will not get that needed smile because we did not take the steps immediately such that they never face the horror of being caught in such a nightmare. These are the prices we have paid and we need to prevent those costs from rising any further than unavoidable and that will take remembering those we lost and taking the needful steps to demand that those who are in our governments and have the responsibility to prevent these events do so. That is what we need demand and stop with the petty day-to-day bickering between parties and unite and do what is right finally and for a change, please.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Where Again Are Six-Million Jews to Go?

 

The anti-Semites, anti-Zionists and anti-Israel forces are still at it claiming that the Jewish State must be dissolved and the Jews of Israel, well; they never really quite say what they are supposed to do. Often we hear that false adage that they can simply go back where they came from. That ignores the nearly four-million born right here in Israel as they came from here. Ah, right, they are supposed to return to where their parents or grandparent or back as far as necessary to find a forefather who came from elsewhere. For some that would be Babylonia, a place somewhat difficult to find in the modern world. How about the approaching half whose lineage came from the Arab world, they are supposed to return where again? Their former home nation if followed back is in the Middle East or North Africa, not exactly the garden spot for Jews these days. Even those who came here from Europe are not exactly going to be permitted back into those nations; they are too busy finding homes for displaced Syrian refugees. The ones who can from the former Soviet Union and others from Russia cannot return to a nation which does not even have sufficient economy to support its dwindling population. The United States made their position on where does one place six-million Jews whose lives would otherwise be forfeit quite clear with the SS St. Louis which they not only had forbidden landing in any American port even to take on fuel lest a single Jew escape over the side and instead sent the ship and its nine-hundred plus Jews back to Germany. Canada, same story. Then there was that other nation suggested by some Muslim spokesperson, Alaska, which apart from not being a nation would have the nativists in the United States claiming the native Inuit People were being displaced and we do not need to start all over with a real native population this time as the false claims of a Palestinian Peoples is bad enough. And what of the small but still related to tens of thousands of native Jews whose parents can trace their lineage back to the tribes arriving from out of Egypt, an Egypt which is nonexistent today? The problem is nowhere near as simple as they can go back where they came from. Nowhere from which they came from wants them either. So, once again, where do we place over six-million Jews?

 

We could go from nation to nation and give the logistics as to why an influx of six-million people, let alone six-million of the world’s most notoriously unwanted people, would be an imposition making such a transfer impossible. To be entirely honest, the transfer of the Arabs residing in Judea and Samaria would be less problematic as for them as refugees, if it were not for the desire to abuse them as a bludgeon to destroy Israel and murder her Jews, would be readily accepted throughout the Western World with open arms as are the Syrian refugees, or at least the Syrian refugees were being accepted until some legal difficulties arose. Now accepting even the Syrian refugees is proving to be quite difficult. The one continent which would not have a voice from its native population would be Antarctica as the penguins are a fairly affable lot. Still, does the world really want to risk turning Antarctica into the next Garden of Eden when the Jews turn it into a garden like environment? Oh, wait, the nativists’ ecological wing of the world would really be upset and would start screaming climate change. And the world’s oceans might be upset with all that melting ice but I presume the Jews might be persuaded to keep a frozen ring around their new Garden of Eden and store the water within just as long as they did not permit it to spill into the oceans. Face it, wherever the Jews would be placed would become the next garden spot on the planet and somebody would immediately claim it was their peoples’ native land and demand the Jews be sent elsewhere. That is what happened here in Israel.

 

Early American and European Zionists
Returned and Rebuilding the Holy Lands

 

Early Zionists Working the Land,
Digging Irrigation Channels, Removing Tree Stumps
and Other Structures Needed by the Community

 

Perhaps we should refresh everybody’s memories, and for some inform them for the first time. Before 1850 the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea was where people were sent as a punishment all the way back to before the Roman Empire. When Pontius Pilate was sent to Judea, yes, Judea as it was not named Syria Palaestina a Roman province around 135 AD; he was sent off into oblivion hoped never to be heard from again as Judea was where the romans sent people as a punishment. The same with the Greeks and the sole people ever to want to come to this region were the Jews and whenever they did they were sent gleefully as those remaining behind snickered. The strange thing is the heat and lack of rain for much of the year and flooding the other three months and some fetid swamps and rocky terrain were viewed as a curse. Even the British sent their unkind here to perish in the heat and swamplands. Yet, as soon as the Jews have returned to these lands they would blossom and some empire would sweep in and conquer them, remove the Jews and then puzzle as to what it was they ever saw in this forbidding land. After a while when the Jews screaming and kicking up a fuss to return to their homeland became too much of a headache, the Jews (originally called Hebrews) were sent packing with the blessings of whichever empire wished to be rid of them. The Jews would return, refurbish and rebuild as the busy little beavers they appear to emulate and rebuild the land. The newest empire, not knowing the heartache that awaited them, would sweep in, remove the Jews and the land would spit them out and cry for the Jews to return. Yes, the land wanted the Jews and the Jews wanted the land and they too were always happy with one another. Read the Bible, the Old Testament.

 

This cycle is still true to this day. Ask yourselves exactly what do you think the Arabs, there are no real people called Palestinians and were none before 1964 when Yasser Arafat and the KGB invented them and before that was a phrase used to describe the Jews. What do you think the Arabs will do once they are given Israel? Yes, that’s right, kill the Jews and take the land for themselves. And exactly what do you expect to happen then? Right, the land will grow wild and inhospitable and the Arabs will flee back from whence they came and the land will be empty again just as Mark Twain, almost every British historian and so many others including the leader of the Muslims who ruled from Damascus found even Jerusalem to be inhospitable and gave up attempting to make it into a fun park for vacations and ran back to nice, civilized and temperate Damascus. When one compares Damascus favorably to a land, that land is not a nice place to live, but we Jews love it here and the land loves our being here, so why not save everybody a real load of difficulty and trouble, leave the Jews alone here for a change and allow everyone else to go on their merry way. Those Arabs who really want to remain here and live in peace with the Jews, wonderful, they can sign a loyalty oath and we will design some path to full citizenship and the rest can return where their ancestors came from as the vast majority arrived after 1900 anyways, and that is documentable by simply reading the British census information going back to just after World War I and the Ottoman census information for centuries before that. Can we try that for a change instead of allowing everything the Jews have built to go into ruin again and eventually sending the Jews back and the next “indigenous peoples” to claim it was all their land before the Jews came despite everyone knowing it was a lie but stealing Israel from the Jews only to have it turn to rubble within fifty to one-hundred years as this cycle will need to be broken eventually, why not now?

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

A Chance America Riding Off Into the Sunset

 

There has been speculation about what role the United States will play on the world’s stage as threats abound of various severities and natures almost everywhere one looks and still we hear from United States President Obama that he awaits final strategy and complete plans laid out before him from the Pentagon before he can act. This excuse from President Obama for not committing to some plan of action sounds unrealistic, especially as it is well known even personally after having served in the United States Army, the Pentagon has plans, War Scenarios, for near any contingency which might arise. This makes President Obama’s excuse of not having any plans before him sound quite lame. Even had the Pentagon not had an exact battle plan in place when ISIS first reared their ugly heads and started chopping heads, especially since some belonged to the United States, you can bet the Pentagon went to their files and had cobbled together six ways come Sunday for dealing with ISIS which probably had added contingencies for removing Bashir al-Assad from power and potentially addressing the Iranian nuclear issue as well. The one thing is, they were not short of was plans. The only thing necessary would be for the President to choose one and they would be implementing within forty-eight hours. Each set of plans would have in the full layout exactly which units were trained for that exact mission and which of those units was at full strength and had a ready status. They would have decided whether or not to use the ready actions units of which at least two brigades of Army would be on immediate deployment status and I can assume the Marines, Navy and Air Force have similar plans for immediate response to any call up.

 

We can trust the Pentagon has plans and that all the President need do is pick up that phone he claims he could use to call for action if Congress did not pass his legislation in a timely manner and instead call the Pentagon and request their actions and plans be presented. Then he could pick up that pen with which he threatened Congress to use to write Executive Orders and use it to sign off on a plan of action and then write an Executive Memo to the leaders in Congress informing them of the impending actions and the Pentagon would take care of the rest. There is one contingency for which the Pentagon likely has plans but would be unable to implement them until the President ordered them to follow and support somebody else’s initiation of actions. That is President Obama’s famous plan of leading from behind, better known as following which often is the action of those too cowardly to commit to actions and stick their neck out, something which would be risky against ISIS but the President can go ahead and stick his neck out, the military would be out in front and would do or die even knowing that in the end the President would claim the glory, after all he took out Osama bin Laden haven’t you heard. Leading from behind is not an option on this crisis but President Obama is not one to make definitive decisions which might have him owning his actions. President Obama would rather simply follow and take only that action was dictated by somebody else, the United Nations, the European Union, NATO led by another member, actually President Obama would follow anybody, well, anybody but Israel. Were Israel to engage ISIS, it would not be a complete surprise if President Obama gave weapons to ISIS through some obscure middleman leader of another nation who might be supportive of ISIS though doing so would be risky. But until somebody else takes the lead we can expect more excuses over action from the White House.

 

One wonders if President Obama has even requested the Pentagon produce their plans for dealing with ISIS and said plans actually called for the United States to sit this round out. We can figure that the United States is loath to send troops back into Iraq after being pulled out by President Obama in a manner that military planners had informed the President was a premature action which would cause more problems than it could solve. The one problem leaving a residual force would not have addressed was President Obama winning reelection on his promise to bring our boys home come something (keeping it family friendly) or high water. The Pentagon may have been requested to provide plans which would include supporting UN or EU or NATO action taken to facilitate leading from behind at which time the Pentagon action would most likely be exactly what we are seeing, doing nothing waiting for somebody else to take the initiative so they could follow thus leading from behind again allowing President Obama to risk nothing which actually making a choice and lead would mean. But this begs a question; what happens if the United States is about to return to her historic role of isolationism where the United States trades with her friends and with her enemies but on a lesser scale and dares not interfere in worldly matters allowing them to work themselves out without United States interventions. United States entering an isolationist perspective would only allow her deployment of troops to be limited and almost always to support trade more than worrying about such trivialities as world balance and defeating evil, that’s better left to the knights of Europe who have always done this before. Of course this before was before the United States encouraged Europe to stop their militarism and that the United States would spread her umbrella and cover them so they could turn to less harmful pursuits such as taking on debt and squabbling amongst each other, just this time no world wars starting in Europe, that was the deal the United States imposed on Europe. But now it appears the United States may be folding up that umbrella and claiming not to see the storm clouds rising out of the Middle East, a denial which is difficult to swallow.

 

The going theory is that the United States will return to the role of the world’s police and enforce the good behavior between the nations extending force projection where needed. That is not the historic tendency of the United States after any major conflicts; her historic stance has been a laissez-faire attitude of simple sitting back keeping her hands politely to herself, which is the norm from the United States. The average American knows little about world affairs and cares even less. The average American was defined by President Clinton in his initial campaign for the Presidency with his slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid.” The stupid in this case was George Herbert Walker Bush (the elder and first Pres Bush) and the elections proved it as President Bush did not gain reelection largely due to his having broken his promise of, “Read my lips; no new taxes,” and then was forced to raise taxes by a Democrat Congress in order to get his budget passed with the military spending not slashed by the Congress. The election of President Clinton over reelecting President Bush was all about domestic policies over foreign policies.

 

You start to talk about foreign policy with the average American and their eyes gloss over and they drift into some zombie like state all catatonic and in shock after the first two or three sentences. Talk about immigration, taxes, domestic hot-button issues, government spending of which all is unnecessary except those they are or will receive, and the economy then you will engage in a sometimes heated debate. Talk about money and they will listen, talk about something happening in the Mille East or Asia and they will repeat what the media stated, that is bad, that is good and those people sure have as rough time, but then they will turn it back to how the government needs to take care of things at home first. The average American has all the sympathy you could ever ask for and they will donate more to charities than any other peoples on earth but when it comes to sending their young men off to fight in what they mostly see as somebody else’s war, then they need a ton of convincing and President Obama surfs waves, seldom makes waves when it comes to world politics. The President came from a past as a community organizer, read rabble rouser causing trouble to force government actions usually spending more money of which they get the lion’s share, and knows little outside of Chicago, let alone outside of the United States. He treats foreign policy as if it was a plague and to his outlook, as well as many Americans outlooks, simply does not go past the horizon and possibly not past the water’s edge.

 

We can bet that should the Democrat candidate become the next President, they too will do little as they can in foreign policy. We need remember that the Democrat candidate will not likely be Hillary Clinton but more likely somebody not even announced as of yet. Ms. Clinton’s campaign van has the wheels flying off and the engine is about to quit. The van is driving down the road to oblivion. But what if it is the Republican candidate, you inquire. There we need to find out who will take the lead and which ones do not survive the first three or four actual primary votes. We can make some specific and general observations. Rand Paul is an isolationist libertarian who believes if the United States hurts nobody then nobody would target the United States. Of all the governors and ex-governors running, only Jeb Bush might be a President inclined to use military force and actually have an active foreign policy. Others have claimed that they will repair the United States relations with Israel as well as Egypt and Saudi Arabia largely undoing some of the changes made under President Obama. Still, such actions do not necessarily mean a return into Iraq to defeat ISIS unless it becomes a dire threat to the stability of the Middle East. Only Senator Marco Rubio has direct experience with foreign policies as he in on the Senate Intelligence Committee which gives him access beyond the average Senator under the need to know doctrines. Almost any Republican candidate becoming President would easily take four months to a year to become fully briefed on every hot-spot that the Pentagon had plans and counter plans and different options under each plan and time granted each. Such amounts of information is why the President has a Secretary of Defense whose staff is divided so they can divide their work and attend to each contingencies. Still, the final decisions and person who must form the overall foreign police and who has to call in the troops for action when deemed to be necessary lies with the President and the President alone. That is one of the reason it is said that it is lonely at the top. We still have no real available input that any of the Republican candidates would press for an interventionist approach to foreign policies.

 

Likely the most pressing foreign policy might already have their hands tied should President Obama make any Iran nuclear deal somehow into a treaty without gaining Congressional affirmation. Such a decade long deal would actually prevent the next administration from taking any actions without smoking gun style proof that Iran had broken the agreement but as the agreement includes steps all the way through twelve years with little margin for change in the terms or even the terminology during that time period with the Iranians presumably free to complete their desired goal of deliverable nuclear warheads and the ICBMs on which to place them after ten years according to President Obama’s own admission which would leave them at a minimum two years to produce as many weapons systems as they are able starting with an unknown amount of LEU (low enrichment Uranium) with which to work and all of that Uranium a simple two day’s processing to be made weapons grade HEU (highly enriched Uranium over 90% purity) and then they would be capable of molding the cores and producing actual weapons. All of this is a guess of what the eventual agreement will appear to say and Iranian compliance to the terms and inspection protocols as well as their answering numerous questions about previous work performed largely by the military which Iran insists is an unprecedented and unnecessary invasion of their privileges and privacies. So, when it comes to the Iranian nuclear program the next President may be acting with his hands tied and possibly looking at a negative response from a nuclear armed Iran claiming their dominion over Iraq and dismissing the need for United States interference in their area of control which they will claim includes Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and who knows where else by January 21, 2017 when the next President takes office. After Iran there will be other situations such as Russia and their low-grade war with the Ukraine and its possibilities, China and their expansion Islands being built and potentially taking territorial control semi-legally over the entire South China Sea giving them control over one of the most active shipping lanes in the world. Speaking of choke points for shipping, Iran already has menacing control over the Straits of Hormuz where almost one third of the world’s oil is shipped by tankers and may through their proxies in Yemen, Houthis can also threaten to control the Bab-el-Mandeb which would cut off the southern exit of the Red Sea making the Suez Canal unusable and the Israeli southern port to the orient and Africa blockaded, a casus belli which could lead to a state of declared war by Iran on Israel and Egypt as both would have their shipping access to the world impeded illegally as Iran would have no other excuse other than they could close all shipping. These are just the top three and none of these includes the ISIS threat which may grow to the point where Iran and ISIS meet on equal footing with ISIS having gained an Air Force even if of a limited nature, and tactics which are prone to working, at least working well against the Iraqi army. ISIS has had far less success against the Kurdish Militias such as the Peshmerga (literally “one who confronts death”) and the People’s Protection Units (known as the YPG). These have held the northeast parts of Syria having an astonishing turning point in the city of Kobanê as well as the northern third or so of Iraq where the Kurdish forces saved thousands of Yazidi and whose Yazidi Militias have joined ranks with the Kurdish Militias. We could continue to the other continents and their probabilities for causing distress but that would leave Antarctica as probably the only safe haven if you desired no strife, or at least not yet.

 

Beyond the Cusp