Who Leads the Free World?

 

The United States has for the time abrogated their right to be the leader of the free world. Despite the United States military being the most capable and well-armed and trained that the world has ever witnessed, they have been relegated to sentry duty and policing their own areas and otherwise been retreating from the world scene. The rumors that President Obama has recognized his error and is about to send some troops to fight against the Islamic State is but fifty troops who are not to engage beyond being spotters for air strikes and possibly performing training the indigenous troops will only cause the Islamic State to shift their positions more often, set up more dummy camps which look and sound on radio chatter as if they are an actual base and also doing a similar thing with tank formations in order to get the United states to waste their ordinance striking decoys just as was done in the Balkans.

 

Where next to look? Europe might be a logical place when one judges solely by history, but after World War II the United States basically neutered the Europeans such that their navies basically were relegated to the strength to perform coastal patrols and little more and their armies were basically reduced such that to field an effective army sized assault would take a combined force of much of the European Union nations which would lead to numerous other problems such as unit cohesion and command and control protocols and division of risk and other minutia some of which would still be important. Oddly enough the two nations in the free world who might have the resources militarily might be Canada and Australia but both currently have governments which would preclude their taking such grand risks. India has a respectable sized military but their equipment and training would likely need upgrading and the time to teach their commanders throughout the ranks how to utilize the features of modern command and control with which warfare becomes more effective and individual units with the right support made available in a timely manner and knowing how to anticipate such requirements through analysis would take quite some time. Much of the rest of the world are beyond consideration simply due to their voting records in the General Assembly which also would make a number of Europeans suspect as well. If one were to record all the votes taken in the past seventy-five years in the United Nations General Assembly one of the countries, the very few and possibly only nation, that had voted nearly if not perfect with the United States is Israel.

 

There are a few others which vote most often with the United States both in the Security Council and in the General Assembly. Those are Canada, Czech Republic, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Panama, and Palau. Together the army they could raise even if the rest of the European Union nations were added as well as Australia, Japan, India and the Philippines and your fieldable force would not exactly be formidable. The only nations to actively challenge United States President Barack Obama and the rest of the nations in backing the horrific Iran nuclear deal, which guarantees Iran developing and becoming a nuclear armed state in approximately an even dozen years should they obey the terms and if they do not obey the terms and simply go as fast as they are able then, by this time next year probably the Iranians will have produced three to ten deliverable weapons depending on how much Highly Enriched Uranium they have already stored at some undisclosed location plus the amounts they can produce running all their centrifuges running full-speed in long cascades all the time. But wait, it could be worse and in many ways it already is.

 

There are other major problems around the globe and more specifically across the Arab world of the Middle East and extending through Northern Africa (MENA). Taking the lead in this troubled region are Syria and Libya, not a total surprise. Another contender would have been Egypt if not for the secondary protests which demanded the army take control and run new elections where more parties which formed as a result of the initial efforts of the Arab Spring, an idea which implicitly bore witness to the chaos which has swept other regions as well emanating from the lack of the guidance and “interference” by the United States. The leading from behind was more like leading from within the gates of the White House as President Obama was leading from so far behind the United States almost had no influence and was of little assistance after the governments started collapsing. What was supposed to be an Arab Spring rapidly became the Arab Winter. The fracturing in Libya into tribal enclaves and Islamist sects, all of which take little note of those claiming to be the nation’s government though they control only most of the capital city of Tripoli. Syria has presented the world with the spectacle of a bloodbath which has claimed the lives of approaching half a million civilians and large numbers of military and militia casualties. The entrance of an overtly strong and well organized group took such advantage to grasp large tracks of lands in both Syria and in another area where death and chaos reigned in central Iraq’s Sunni areas. This group is of course the Junior Varsity, as referred to early on when if the United States President had entered the battle in strength for a brief period in the early stages they could have struck the forming Islamic State inflicting serious damage and death and possibly have captured or killed much of their leadership returning the forces into the disarray they suffered from before being organized by the Islamic State. Now this group commands lands greater in size than the United Kingdom and will likely grow stronger and gain more followers swearing their fealty all across the central Arab Middle East. The United States response had been an extremely weak and ineffective bombing campaign where often pilots return with their ordinance still in place as their target area had no targets and their search for suitable targets were unsuccessful and they were forced to return to base when fuel ran low. The fifty man force about to be unleashed by President Obama will likely prove the greatest military farce of his Presidency.

 

 

Display of the Muslim Nations of the World in the Middle East, Asia and Northern Africa in Green with Israel depicted in Red

 

 

The Middle East is not the only problem though when the problem is financial; its effects are more readily concealable. The difficulties in Europe can also be traced back to the United States as when the American public’s buying power becomes strapped, then every market in the world loses their primary market. In Europe the economic situation grew so severe in a number of states with Greece and Spain being unable to cover their difficulties and Greece even having riots over the difficulties and many police departments turning to foot patrols in the neighborhoods closest to the station houses as their vehicles were out of gas and the precinct out of funds. Some Fire Departments ran on crews who were often unpaid but had firefighters who refused to allow such an inconvenience to leave the people unprotected from fires. These were the modern heroes.

 

Meanwhile, even with the encouragement of President Obama who has signaled through unofficial channels which have included members of his administration have encouraged former allies of the United States of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to actively seek assistances and alliances with Soviet Russian holdover of the old ways and now President of modern Russia Vladimir Putin, though some of his actions prove his throwback to a former age and desiring to force things back to the good old days with success while the United States remains almost inert, as the United States has taken a pull back on all fronts as the United States imposing militarism was declared by President Obama to be one of the two most damaging influences causing all the strife in the world with the mere existence of the state of Israel being the other evil influence which may explain the cold treatment of Israel and her Prime Minister by the American leader and many in his cabinet and shadow cabinet of Czars. It never occurred to the Obama Administration that the United States presence in near every hotspot was as those tasked to address the situation and as repair and assist and not causality.

 

This misperception has also been expanded to the Arab/Israeli conflict. President Obama and many of his advisors, particularly Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett and Samantha Power were known anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and probably anti-Semitic problem children. The near universal denials of the slant to Israeli against Israeli security through supporting even the most absurd of Arab Palestinian demands and claims might be causes for concern for Israel and her security and being just one more administration to take the position that it is Israeli settling their ancient homelands and fulfilling Torah that are the problem and the Arab Palestinians are an oppressed indigenous peoples despite the Jewish presence documented to reach back near four-thousand year history and constant existence in Jerusalem since David took the city thirty-five-hundred year ago. This position has slowly been eroding as more and more leaders and people throughout the world have begun to realize that Arab intransigence and demanding that Israel be destroyed and that the destruction of the Jewish State and the genocidal slaughter of her peoples are the primary desire of Mahmoud Abbas and the rest of the Arab Palestinian cause. The next realization that will hopefully hatch within their consciousness is that Israel had already given up the entirety of the Gaza Strip in August of 2005, which was soon taken from Mahmoud Abbas and his Arab Palestinian Authority by Hamas and a host of terrorist Islamist entities; returned the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula, which is easily three times the size of Israel itself; plus the Zionist Congress when working to form the Jewish State agreed to permit the British to form Transjordan (Jordan) from over three-fourths the lands of the British Mandate surrendering the lands east of the Jordan river and reaching to Iraq on the east, Syria to the north and Saudi Arabia to the south; so all told, Israel has surrendered sufficient land mass to have increased the actual size of Israel close to ten times. So, do not claim that Israel has not returned or released their claims to land; that is a total myth and quite fallacious a myth at that.

 

 

Eretz Yisroel from back in the time immediately after Exodus and before the additional conquest by King David and King Solomon with the original division of the lands between the Tribes covering both sides of the Jordan River. The Israelis and Jews in general could attempt to demand that Eretz Yisroel, the Land of Israel be made whole as was First Apportioned by Hashem.

 

 

So, with the United States Executive Branch under President Obama and reflecting his beliefs which reflect with great credit the church he and his family attended for twenty years under the anti-Israel, anti-American, anti-Judeo-Christian ethic and beliefs Pastor the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, it is little surprise that in President Obama’s foreign policy has reflected his animosities and complete lack of foreign policy expertise. This has led to the retreat by the United States on all fronts and allowed for the brash adventuresome actions by American adversaries of Russia and China, amongst others which have bordered on being temerarious, risky and posing a serious threat to any President who follows these policies and their implications if and when such a foreign policy focused President might be elected. The foolhardiness of the American populace who are well permitted to ignore the outside and greater world and simply be concerned with their domestic situations, pretend that economics were their driving passions and even appear to have fallen for an idea whose time was claimed had come and the first Black President be placed in the White House and for his catchy and easily remembered themes of “Yes We Can” and of “Hope and Change”; though there never was anybody asking what changes are we presumably hoping for? The change has mostly been quite destructive in the world’s stage and a complete abrogation of the traditional importance to the world, strategic positioning of the United States military forces, the American political model being represented as the preferred model for good governance with concern for the people over and above the concerns of the political class and as the guarantor of order, human rights, civility and against the most disastrous proclivities of mankind such as genocide, oppressions, and the many other presumed actions the United States could provide the world at large when she is enforcing those principles under which she herself presumably performs her domestic policies. Some might claim that the United States internal policies have also suffered since the start of the Twenty First Century which was preceding the withdrawal and suffering of the rest of the world from the United States reduction of both interactions and direct actions across the globe and especially in the MENA areas which have suffered the most from this abatement.

 

This is what has led to the situation where the free world had no real or active leadership. Canada’s Stephen Harper took up some of the challenge as did Britain’s David Cameron; but even combined, the two men could not equal even the most minimal actions usually taken by the United States. Additionally, the only nations who are capable of deploying troops across the globe are China and, to a lesser extent, Russia. The pullback of American forces has permitted some adventurism by these two powers which would never have been undertaken had there been a remaining presence in force of the United States. Russia adventurism has extended to as far as Syria and even negotiating got permission for a naval base in Northern Africa. China has been even more interesting as they have been adding to their territories and expending their claims to the waters of the South China Sea by building new islands stretching well into this vital commercial water causeway through which much trade by shipping takes place.

 

So, who will take up the mantle of leader of the free world? Of all the potential candidates, it is likely that one of the smallest of nations and one which many would claim they would never look to for such directions, still it is Israel which may end up with the mantle due to her location as the cork in the bottle of the Middle East which appears ready to once again explode on the world’s stage starting with Europe. The explosion of “refugees” into Europe over the past weeks is in reality an invasion and not an influx of oppressed refugees. Despite the great care and effort of the media to find groups with children and women to snap their pictures defining the refugees flight into Europe but there have been a few news sources which have shown the reality of large and even overly common numbers of men between the ages of fifteen to forty and extremely able of being a deployed army which is now injected throughout continental Europe and a large number had gathered across Germany. If Europe is going to be capable of managing the troubles to come, they will very likely look to Israel as their model on how to handle their newly found problems. There is one result from this which will serve Israel as well as Europe as Israel will be forgiven taking control of all of Israel as promised in the British Mandate but limited by the later Churchill White Papers where Transjordan was taken out of the lands originally promised and the promise to keep the remainder sacrosanct for the Jewish State for a promise of all the lands west of the Jordan River. This newly found freedom of action will permit Israel to finally take the steps which has been obvious since the Second Intifada from 2000 through 2005 which claimed over a thousand Jewish and Israeli lives and many tens of thousands injured with all too many having life altering injuries with which they have been forced to live with as their injuries were too serious for modern medicine to repair and only to make things as best as the physicians were capable. The memories and witness of the pains still felt resulting from the last Intifada has cast a pall over Israel where people are determined to take any and all necessary steps to assure that no such situation comes into the violence which has been escalating since late last winter and finally made the world news with the stabbings. These attacks have become so permeating Israel with a half dozen to dozen daily and have become the new normal which means they will soon become considered everyday events in Israel and therefore no longer of any importance for the media to grant coverage. Those who choose to mention these attacks will come under criticism for saying the same thing day after day and as the media is no longer covering these events including the daily rioting on the Temple Mount there are no new pictures and as a Jew in Israel I would face certain injury or death were I to attempt to take my own pictures and videos and as such I am not that adventurous. Still, once Europe realizes that they are in the same boat as Israel and that boat is taking on water at an alarming pace, then Israel will be freed of her shackles and freed to do what should have been done ten to twenty years ago. This will put an end to the miscreants, actually murderous swine, who have indoctrinated their children so to send them on suicide missions as their deaths are to their propaganda media’s advantage and must be born witness by the Western Word for being what it truly is, child sacrifices. Their acts are no different than the idolaters from who Joshua led the initial conquest of Israel by the Jews who had come out of Egypt almost thirty-five-hundred years ago leading to the initial founding of the Jewish State which was recently reestablished restoring what is the only indigenous peoples to return from exile twice with one approaching two-thousand years and to retain their language, code of laws (Torah) and remained a peoples avoiding intermarriage for much of their centuries of life amongst other peoples as they resided in their Diaspora. This is the miraculous nation which may soon become a “Light Unto the Nations” as written in her historic Torah and kept alive in her oral laws as well, to quote Fiddler on the Roof, her “Traditions!”

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

A Jewish Israel Cannot be Destroyed

The ideas that people have about the Jewish faith and Israel have as much disinformation as any of the wildest conspiracy theories. The most erroneous myth about the Jews and Israel is that the two entities can be separate. How anybody can reasonably and logically believe that the Jewish people will ever give up on building their homes in Eretz Yisroel and erecting the Third Temple in their capital city of Jerusalem have obviously missed the lesson that came to a fruition on May 15, 1948 with the reestablishment of the Jewish State of Israel after almost two millennium. The theory that is spread through many of the communities who have chosen to have a confrontational relationship with Israel and the Jews is that if they can remove the Jewish presence in Israel they will have eradicated the Jewish people. This is far from an original idea as it has been tried previously by an empire that was probably the most efficient at crushing any adversary and erasing their memory from all of history. In the first centuries of the Julian calendar the Empire of Rome decided that the tribes that made up Judea (the remaining home of the Jews after the dispersion and loss of the ten tribes from the northern Kingdom of Israel who were conquered by Assyria around 722 BCE after which it is believed they assimilated so completely as to have lost all ties with Judaism) has caused Rome measures of difficulty beyond tolerance and dispersed the population to such an extent that Rome believed that they would cease to exist as a peoples. It took nearly two-thousand years but those dispersed tribes are now leaving the Diaspora and returning to their home of Yisroel. Conquer Israel today and all that will accomplish is to cause a reverent return to the commandments and covenant by the remaining Jews who will once again claim with all their hearts and end prayer in their homes on the nights of the Passover Seder including the prayer hoping for their next Seder will be held, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

The Jewish people have historically tended to slip from their religious observance and assimilate into their host societies as long as they are accepted and comfortable. Should their brethren become threatened they have historically come together and reestablished their roots and common heritage. Part of the reason behind this reaction has a historic root that often, whether they lived in Christian Europe or the Muslim lands of Northern Africa and the Middle East, when one area begins to persecute the Jews in their particular region the Jews begin to emigrate and as their number increase in the bordering area the new concentration of Jews makes this new location fearful of their increased numbers and react often by laying restrictions on the Jews to restrain their ability to flourish and gain too much influence and when this does not produce sufficient results, they too begin to persecute their Jews thus causing a wave of anti-Semitism which ripples across the landscape over time. This has been Jewish history through much of our many thousand year history replete with a fair number of exiles from which the Jews, or Hebrews or Israelites as they were also known for much of their early history, always returned to the same Promised Lands after each and every exile whenever it seemed auspicious. The main impediment until the modern age has been the logistics and cost of often traveling great distances across borders which were not always guaranteed safe passage and often lands whose transversal would be required forbid such transit by Jews. Even now there are communities of Jews who are unable to afford to return to Israel such as the Jews in Ethiopia who when they became threatened in their homeland petitioned Israel who has taken to ingathering these threatened Children of Israel regardless of the expense. Similar efforts have been extended for the Bnei Menashe Tribe of India, the Jews of the Soviet Union, as well as taking the influx that accompanied the nearly million Jews expelled from the Arab and Muslim world in the first decade after the founding of the modern state of Israel as well as the initial influx of the remnants of European Jews many of whom managed to survive the Holocaust only to find themselves penniless and dispossessed and turned away by the former communities who had taken whatever they had left behind when rounded up and transported to either ghettos, work camps, or death camps. Israel never placed their brethren into camps for extended times and did whatever it took to absorb and accept these Jewish refugees.

The Jewish desire and drive to inhabit the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is a part of their heritage and a tenet of Judaism. Abraham was directed to these lands when his name was Avram before the L0rd instructed him to adopt his new name of Avraham. This was the land the generation that followed their exodus from Egypt and bondage that they conquered and settled. This is the one small sliver of land in which Jews desire to reside and practice their religion and commit to performing those responsibilities and requirements of their covenant with the Almighty. The Jews of Israel have no desire to spread out into neighboring lands or to convert any non-Jewish person to Judaism unless they initiate the request, and even then we ask why they would choose to convert and have them discuss the why before allowing such conversions. The Jews do not proselytize as we are instructed to simply live as an example of a proper and good life obedient to G0d and be a light unto the nations. I would not claim that my brethren or I have necessarily been anywhere near as exemplary in practice as either we would desire or that is required of us by Torah. The only reason I might offer is we have only returned home for a little over sixty years and have not exactly been allowed to live without immediate threats and we have made some gains towards this idyllic code for righteous lives. But should the most unthinkable possible future include the loss once again of our home Israel it will not be the end of the story of the Jews who will return to longing for our homes to be in Israel. As a Jew one is not truly living a complete and blessed life as they are potentially capable of living unless they live in the Promised Land. As has been the contention of many of our revered Rabbis, a mitzvah which is committed in Israel counts as ten mitzvahs committed outside of Israel and merely living within Israel is a mitzvah all on its own. With this much importance placed on building a Jewish homeland in Israel over any other location in the world no matter how idyllic, how can anyone contend that the Jews can be removed from Israel and that the love and desire for Israel can be removed from the Jews. Neither is possible. So, instead of condemning Israel could the world just once give allowing the Jews their little sliver of land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea? Then as long as we live within the borders as described in Torah and act in a manner that not only does no harm to others but is an example of how to live harmoniously with the universe, everybody simply leave us be. Furthermore, we promise to share all the medical, scientific, agricultural, manufacturing and other nonreligious discoveries we make with the rest of the world to their benefit. We have no desire to conquer the world or even establish an empire or impose our faith on anybody else. We simply want to live in peace, obey and observe Torah, give praise to the L0rd our G0d, and build a nation which exemplifies living honorably and in harmony so as to be exemplary in our dealings and be as a light unto the nations of the world such that they desire to live in peace and harmony as a result. We do not desire to expect, let alone demand, anything from those who live beyond our borders and wish to treat with kindness those who wish to live within our borders as long as they act without violence or disruptiveness thus disturbing the functioning of our society.

Beyond the Cusp