Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Syria

37 Comments

Michael Totten isn’t impressed with the Trump administration’s foreign-policy acumen:

…we need to get a couple of things straight here. Bashar al-Assad is not fighting ISIS in Syria. Not really. Nor are the Russians. Assad and the Russians are fighting every rebel army in the country except ISIS. Look at a map of the country. ISIS’s territory is centered on its “capital” in Raqqa in the northeast, but Assad and Russia’s theater of operations is in the west and along the coast. Only the United States has bombed ISIS in Syria, and only Kurdish militias have seriously resisted ISIS on the ground.

Assad did, however, facilitate ISIS’s rise in Syria and Iraq. Thousands of Americans and Iraqis are dead thanks to his sponsorship of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda in Iraq—the precursor to ISIS—during the Iraqi insurgency.

This is hardly a secret. “We in Syria intelligence opened all the doors for [the jihadists] to go to Iraq,” Mahmud al-Naser, an intelligence officer who defected to the United States, told the Daily Beast.

Before writing off Syrian malfeasance during the Iraq war as irrelevant history, understand something else: ISIS in its current form is also a creature of the Assad regime. Assad wanted ISIS to rise. He needed ISIS to rise. He made damn sure that ISIS did rise and that it did so inside Syria.

I wish I had some reason to think that Trump has a plan.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

This Presidency’s Worst Enemy

8 Comments

…is the president:

Douthat is right that Trump could use a brain trust. But some of us were told that Pence or Reince Priebus or Paul Ryan would serve that role. Certainly they’ve tried. Moreover, there are countless policy agendas sitting on the shelf for Trump to choose among.

Why so much chaos, then? A common answer you hear from all corners is “the tweeting” — the horrible, horrible tweeting. But when you talk to people with more hands-on experience in, or with, the Trump White House, the better answer is that the tweeting is just a symptom.

Trump brings the same glandular, impulsive style to meetings and interviews as he does to social media. He blurts out ideas or claims that send staff scrambling to see them implemented or defended. His management style is Hobbesian. Rivalries are encouraged. Senior aides panic at the thought of not being part of his movable entourage. He cares more about saving face and “counterpunching” his critics than he does about getting policy victories.

In short, the problem is Trump’s personality. His presidency doesn’t suffer from a failure of ideas, but a failure of character.

Yup. As I said throughout the campaign, Trump is terrible, she’s worse.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society, War Commentary

The Obama Administration’s Abuse Of Foreign Intelligence

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Did it start before Trump?

In a December 29, 2015 article, The Wall Street Journal described how the Obama administration had conducted surveillance on Israeli officials to understand how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, like Ambassador Ron Dermer, intended to fight the Iran Deal. The Journal reported that the targeting “also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups.”

Despite this reporting, it seemed inconceivable at the time that—given myriad legal, ethical, political, and historical concerns, as well as strict National Security Agency protocols that protect the identity of American names caught in intercepts—the Obama White House would have actually spied on American citizens. In a December 31, 2016, Tablet article on the controversy, “Why the White House Wanted Congress to Think It Was Being Spied on By the NSA,” I argued that the Obama administration had merely used the appearance of spying on American lawmakers to corner opponents of the Iran Deal. Spying on U.S. citizens would be a clear abuse of the foreign-intelligence surveillance system. It would be a felony offense to leak the names of U.S. citizens to the press.

Increasingly, I believe that my conclusion in that piece was wrong. I believe the spying was real and that it was done not in an effort to keep the country safe from threats—but in order to help the White House fight their domestic political opponents.

It would be perfectly in character.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society, War Commentary

Russia?

4 Comments

No, “the pony in the manure is the corruption of our intelligence officials.”

It’s both appalling and amusing to watch the Democrat operatives with bylines in the media attempt to “cover” this story (as in, in the immortal words of Iowahawk, hold a pillow over it until it stops moving).

[Update a couple minutes later]

It’s worth reading the Victor Davis Hanson piece that Clarice cites. Sure, after all the lies about Benghazi and the deserter, I totally believe Susan Rice now. As noted, if Obama was Nixon, she’d be one of his “plumbers.”

[Update a couple minutes later]

Rice, Obama’s hatchet woman, proves Lord Acton right again.

[Update a while later]

Why is CNN trying to refute a story it refuses to cover?

[Update another while later]

Susan Rice’s unmasking: A Watergate-style scandal:

Understand: There would have been no intelligence need for Susan Rice to ask for identities to be unmasked. If there had been a real need to reveal the identities — an intelligence need based on American interests — the unmasking would have been done by the investigating agencies.

The national-security adviser is not an investigator. She is a White House staffer. The president’s staff is a consumer of intelligence, not a generator or collector of it.

If Susan Rice was unmasking Americans, it was not to fulfill an intelligence need based on American interests; it was to fulfill a political desire based on Democratic-party interests.

Oopsie. What did the president know, and when did he know it? Will Susan Rice wear orange to protect him?

[Update late morning]

More links and thoughts from Glenn Reynolds.

[Update early afternoon]

Susan Rice has no defense. Only one I can think of is “I was ordered by the president,” but that one doesn’t pass the Nuremberg test.

[Update a while later]

A Watergate-level scandal? Looks like it to me, particularly if they can find a link to Obama. Of course, the IRS scandal should have been as well. Obama did what Nixon could only dream of doing.

Education, History, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Who The People?

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Thoughts on the duty of the courts to enforce the Constitution and the law, from Glenn Reynolds. It’s based on new book by Randy Barnett.

[Late-morning update]

Actually, Neil Gorsuch is for the little guy:

It’s hard to see what Hirono, Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer and all the other Democrats are talking about when they say Gorsuch doesn’t stick up for the little guy. But if you look more closely at his cases and the Democrats’ charges, you realize what the Democrats mean.

First, in Yellowbear, Little Sisters, Makkar, Carloss and the burping case, Gorsuch was ruling against government overreach. In Kelo, he praised the ruling against the government. And there’s the issue. When Democrats talk about being for the little guy, they often mean being for government power. The two concepts are inseparable in the liberal mind-set.

And when they conflict, they go for the government power every time. That’s why they shouldn’t be called “liberals.”

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

“Now To Make It Pay Off”

2 Comments

Jeff Foust’s take on the SpaceX success, over at The Space Review. I’d like to be surprised that people are surprised, but I’m not. Elon could have regular service operating between earth and Mars, with thousands living there, while NASA is still planning the first flight of SLS, and some people would complain that he’s not building starships.