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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14178/venezuela-monroe-doctrine.

We discuss not only the fascinating history of the Monroe Doctrine (Abe Lincoln was the first to invoke it) but why it is applicable to Venezuela. This article was listed as one of the top Google stories.

 THE HAMMER:  COMEY LAUNCHED TRUMP RUSSIA INVESTIGATION DAY AFTER GENERAL EXPOSED THE HAMMER

https://s3.amazonaws.com/operation-freedom-shows/MAY12_2019/GeneralTomMcInerney051219.mp3

                              ANOTHER HILLARY MOLE INSIDE MUELLER PROBE EXPOSED 

                                                                                     By

                                                                       Daniel John Sobieski

How objective can an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email investigation be when the FBI agent who played a lead role was removed from it this summer for texting his pro-Hilary and anti-Trump sympathies?  And why does House Intelligence committee Chairman Devin Nunes have to read about it in the New York Times and the Washington Post? As Byron York reports in the Washington Examiner:

House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes has issued an angry demand to the FBI and Department of Justice to explain why they kept the committee in the dark over the reason Special Counsel Robert Mueller kicked a key supervising FBI agent off the Trump-Russia investigation.

Stories in both the Washington Post and New York Times on Saturday reported that Peter Strzok, who played a key role in the original FBI investigation into the Trump-Russia matter, and then a key role in Mueller's investigation, and who earlier had played an equally critical role in the FBI's Hillary Clinton email investigation, was reassigned out of the Mueller office because of anti-Trump texts he exchanged with a top FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, with whom Strzok was having an extramarital affair. Strzok was transferred to the FBI's human resources office — an obvious demotion -- in July.

Are we to believe that Strzok was diligently and impartially examining evidence related to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Er, matters while being unable to contain his anti-Trump bias? Is he the only Hillary mole? Just look at Robert Mueller’s staff and James Comey’s exoneration of Hilary Clinton after the infamous tarmac meeting between AG Loretta Lynch and unindicted conspirator in Uranium One William Jefferson Clinton. Stop when  you detect a pattern.

This news comes as House Republicans, tired of leaks and finding out about things in the legacy media are moving to find both the FBI and the DOJ in contempt of Congress for failing to provide requested material:

U.S. House Republicans are moving to bring a Contempt of Congress resolution against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray for stonewalling the production material related to the Russia-Trump probes and other matters.

According to Bloomberg, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes and other Republicans decided to move against Rosenstein and Wray after the New York Times reported Saturday about the removal of a top FBI official assigned to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of the alleged Russia-Trump election collusion had been removed from the investigation.

If its hurtful to Team Trump, it gets leaked. If its damaging to Team Hillary, its treated like the gold at Fort Knox. That’s not really surprising in a probe where Michael Flynn gets dinged for making false statements to the FBI, the same crime committed by famous Russian colluder Martha Stewart, but Hillary Clinton is not. But then Hillary was never put another oath in an interview which was not conducted under oath and for which no notes were taken, unlike former FBI Director James Comey’s meeting with President Trump  Comey did not attend that meeting, nor was a grand jury convened.  And where are the Podesta indictments, pray tell?

Comey had the fix in for Hillary We now know why the FBI made the absurd claim that it would not release its files on the Hillary Clinton email investigation for alleged lack of public interest. The FBI was covering up its obstruction of justice in the, er, “matter” knowing full well that former Director James Comey had already exonerated Hillary Clinton before the alleged investigation was complete and all witnesses had been interviewed and months before Comey falsely claimed in his announcement that no competent prosecutor would take Hillary’s case.

In withholding the files sought under Freedom of Information Act requests, the FBI forgot that it and former Secretary of State Clinton are and were employees of the American taxpayer, taxpayers who have a right to know whether justice is being served or denied.  Claims that Hillary had privacy rights that trumped the public interest were absurd:

The FBI is declining to turn over files related to its investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails by arguing a lack of public interest in the matter.

Ty Clevenger, an attorney in New York City, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in March of 2016 asking for a variety of documents from the FBI and the Justice Department, including correspondence exchanged with Congress about the Clinton email investigation….

In July 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey famously called Clinton’s email arrangement “extremely careless” though he decided against recommending criminal charges….

On Aug. 8, the FBI asked Clevenger to detail why the public would be interested.

“If you seek disclosure of any existing records on this basis, you must demonstrate that the public interest in disclosure outweighs personal privacy interests,” the letter stated. “In this regard, you must show that the public interest sought is a significant one, and that the requested information is likely to advance that interest.”

Say what? ? Did it serve the public interest or James Comey’s interest when he publicly detailed all the reason Hillary Clinton should be criminally charged before saying lack of intent, a criteria which appears nowhere in the law, was the reason Comey was giving Hillary a gt out of jail free card, a judgment he did not have the authority o make? Didn’t his exoneration announcement violate Hillary’s alleged privacy rights by detailing the criminal violations of a subject that was not going to be charged?

If James Comey was seriously looking for evidence of intent he couldn’t have possibly taken a single step without tripping over it. Wasn’t having a private server that contained classified information, multiple devices that were later physically smashed, and using bleach bit to destroy 33,000 emails that were under subpoena sufficient evidence of intent?

Only a corrupt and complicit FBI director, acting as Hillary Clinton’s surrogate campaign manager, who months earlier had decided he would exonerate her, could ignore the damning evidence:

As FBI director last year, James Comey began writing drafts of a statement exonerating Hillary Clinton, even before all witnesses in the investigation — including Clinton herself — had been interviewed.

The Senate Judiciary Committee obtained the Comey memos as part of its investigation into his firing by President Trump, which occurred on May 9.The revelation that Comey had begun drafting memos of his exoneration statement comes from transcripts of interviews given last fall by two FBI officials.

James Rybicki, Comey’s chief of staff, and Trisha Anderson, the principal deputy general counsel of national security and cyberlaw at the FBI, gave the interviews as part of an investigation conducted by the Office of Special Counsel into the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation.

In a July 5, 2016, press conference, Comey said that he would not be recommending charges against Clinton for mishandling classified information despite her use of a private email server as secretary of state.

While the transcripts of those interviews are heavily redacted, they indicate that Comey started working on an announcement clearing Clinton in April or May of last year, before the FBI interviewed 17 witnesses in the case, including Clinton and some of her top aides.

Having already deciding he would exonerate her regardless of the evidence explains why he did not attended the Jult 2, 2016 interview of Hillary Clinton, did not put her under oath, or ever impaneled a grand jury in, there’s that word again, mater. The fix was in.

Yes, Virginia, this is a witch hunt. Robert Mueller III was appointed special counsel after his friend, the vindictive James Comey, committed a federal crime by leaking a memo which was a government record to the press. Mueller has picked staff and prosecutors as if he were stocking Hillary Clinton’s Department of Justice. He has picked a bevy of Clinton donors, an attorney who worked for the Clinton Foundation, a former Watergate assistant prosecutor, and evn a senior advise to Eric Hiolder. Objective professionals all (snarkiness intended ).

Mueller is in fact colluding with Comey to enact revenge on President Trump for Comey’s firing, something which even Comey said Trump was constitutionally entitled to do. There is no evidence of collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice. It is not obstruction of justice for a President to exercise his legal and constitutional authority.

The facts and the lack of an actual crime will not stop Robert Mueller. Robert Mueller is following in the proud tradition of Stalin’s chief of the secret police, Laverentiy Beria. Just show him the man, or woman, and he will show you the crime.

And then there’s Hillary mole Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. McCabe was in a key position overseeing the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s scandalous and treasonous handling of classified emails on her private server, a position from which he could assist FBI Director James Comey in putting the fix in. As Judicial Watch notes: 

Judicial Watch today released Justice Department records showing that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe did not recuse himself from the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unsecure, non-government email server until Tuesday, November 1, 2016, one week prior to the presidential election. The Clinton email probe was codenamed “Midyear Exam.”

While working as Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office, McCabe controlled resources supporting the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email scandal. An October 2016 internal FBI memorandum labeled “Overview of Deputy Director McCabe’s Recusal Related To Dr. McCabe’s Campaign for Political Office,” details talking points about McCabe’s various potential conflicts of interest, including the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s illicit server, which officially began in July 2015:

While at [Washington Field Office] did Mr. McCabe provide assistance to the Clinton investigation?

After the referral was made, FBI Headquarters asked the Washington Field Office for personnel to conduct a special investigation. McCabe was serving as [Assistant Director] and provided personnel resources. However, he was not told what the investigation was about. In February 2016 McCabe became Deputy Director and began overseeing the Clinton investigation.

The Overview also shows if asked whether McCabe played any role in his wife’s campaign, the scripted response was: “No. Then-[Assistant Director] McCabe played no role, attended no events and did not participate in fundraising or support of any kind.”

Of course that statement was a lie.  The exposing of Agent Strzok is just another shoe dropping in the course of a  corrupt and criminal enterprise masquerading  as an investigation in which the FBI, the DOJ, and now the special counsel are all involved.

Lady justice is not blind here. She has been bound and gagged and held for ransom by Robert Mueller and his political cronies.

          Daniel John Sobieski is a free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publication

                             NEW HILLARY EMAILS WARRANT SPECIAL PROSECUTOR

                                                                                     By

                                                                       Daniel John Sobieski

New emails unearthed by Judicial Watch confirm that the Clinton Foundation was in fact a pay-to-play influence peddling operation more worthy of a special prosecutor  than imaginary Russians colluding under Trump Administration beds. It is time for President Trump to keep the promise he made in a presidential debate to indict Hillary Clinton for her crimes:

About 20 minutes into the debate, Donald Trump delivered a menacing threat to Hillary Clinton. “If I win,” he warned, “I’m going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there’s never been so many lies, so much deception.” …

 “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” Mrs. Clinton observed.

“Because,” Mr. Trump replied “you’d be in jail.”

The emails fully incriminating Hillary are part of of documents obtained by Judicial Watch under a court order forcing the State Department to find the documents it said it couldn’t find, didn’t have or was too understaffed to look for:

Judicial Watch today released 1,617 new pages of documents from the U.S. Department of State revealing numerous additional examples of classified information being transmitted through the unsecure, non-state.gov account of Huma Abedin, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, as well as many instances of Hillary Clinton donors receiving special favors from the State Department.

The documents included 97 email exchanges with Clinton not previously turned over to the State Department, bringing the known total to date to at least 627 emails that were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over, and further contradicting a statement by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails had been turned over to department.

The emails show intentional mishandling of classified material and coordination between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation which involved the State Department granting favors and access to Clinton Foundation donors. Some of the emails were undoubtedly among the 33,000 Hillary Clinton and her operatives destroyed even though they were under Congressional subpoena.

Former FBI Director James Comey, who exonerated Hillary first and conducted a sham investigation later, concluded, usurping the authority of the Attorney General, that Hillary Clinton could not be indicted for her crimes because she lacked “intent”, even though the law imposes no such requirement  These new documents and emails indicate clear intent and purpose and the failure to produce them was part of the cover-up for her crimes. Among the examples cited by Judicial Watch in the documents:

The new documents show that Clinton donors frequently requested and received special favors from the State Department that were connected to the Clinton Foundation.

On July 14, 2009, Gordon Griffin, a XL Keystone lobbyist, sent an email to Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band, asking if Band could get him into a Council on Foreign Relations dinner at which Clinton was speaking. Band forwarded the email to Abedin, saying, “Can u get him in?” Abedin replied: “Yes will get him in.” Band was a top aide to President Bill Clinton and co-founder of Teneo. Griffin was a major donor to

Hi llary Clinton’s Senate and presidential campaigns….

 On September 11, 2009, Terrence Duffy, chairman of futures brokerage firm CME Group, a donor to the Clinton Foundation, asked Clinton to arrange “government appointments” for him in Singapore and Hong Kong. Clinton, using her HDR22@clintonmail.com address, forwarded the request to Abedin, “fyi.” Abedin responded to Duffy’s email, saying she would “follow up” with Duffy’s secretary, Joyce. Duffy gave $4,600 to Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign; CME Group paid Hillary $225,000 for a speaking fee and has donated between $5,001 and 10,000 to the Clinton Foundation. …

On May 5, 2010, major Clinton Global Initiative member, Clinton Foundation donor and real estate developer Eddie Trump forwarded to “Dougie” Band a request for assistance from Russian American Foundation Vice President Rina Kirshner to get the Russian American Foundation involved in a State Department program. Band forwarded the request to Abedin, saying, “Can we get this done/mtg set.” As Judicial Watch previously reported, the State Department doled out more than $260,000 to the Russian American Foundation for “public diplomacy.”

Major Clinton donor Bal Das, a New York financier who reportedly raised $300,000 for Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign, asked Abedin on November 11, 2009 if Hillary Clinton could address the Japan Society at its annual conference in 2010. Clinton did speak to the Japan Society’s annual conference in 2011.

Collusion with the Russians anyone?  How about Hillary Clinton’s collusion with the Russians in the Uranium One deal which gave Russia control of 20 percent of our uranium supply in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation?

Clinton played a pivotal role in the Uranium One deal which ended up giving Russian interests control of 20 percent of our uranium supply in exchange for donations of $145 million to the Clinton Foundation. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a federal crime. As “Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweitzer has noted:

Tuesday on Fox Business Network, “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” Breitbart editor at large and the author of “Clinton Cash,” Peter Schweizer said there needs to be a federal investigation into the Russian uranium deal then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved after the Clinton Foundation receiving $145 million from the shareholders of Uranium One….

 Discussing the Clinton Foundation receiving $145 million from the shareholders of Uranium One, he continued, “Look there are couple of things that are extremely troubling about the deal we touched on. number one is the amount of money $145 million. We are not talking about a super PAC giving a million dollars to support a candidate. We are not talking about campaign donations. We are talking about $145 million which by the way is 75 percent or more of the annual budget of the Clinton Foundation itself so it’s a huge sum of money. Second of all we are talking about a fundamental issue of national security which is uranium — it’s not like oil and gas that you can find all sorts of places. They are precious few places you can mine for uranium, in the United States is one of those areas. And number three we are talking about the Russian government. A lot of people don’t realize it now, in parts of the Midwest American soil is owned by Vladimir Putin’s government because this deal went through. And in addition to the $145 million Bill Clinton got half a billion dollars, $500,000 for a 20-minute speech from a Russian investment bank tied to the Kremlin, two months before the State Department signed off on this deal. It just stinks to high heaven and I think it requires a major investigation by the federal government.”

As Investor’s Business Daily editorialized, donations to the Clinton Foundation even played a factor in the refusal of Hillary Clinton’s State Department to designate Nigeria’s Boko Haram as a terrorist organization for two years:

Hillary's emails may be only the tip of an iceberg that could include Clinton Foundation donations to shield Boko Haram from being designated a terrorist group and her brother's involvement in a Haitian gold mine….

Last month, the Washington Post reported on another deal involving Rodham that could prove politically embarrassing and damaging for his sister. It seems that he sits on the board of a company that got a coveted gold-mining contract from the government of Haiti after the Clinton Foundation sponsored relief work in Haiti.

In interviews with the Post, both Rodham and the chief executive of Delaware-based VCS Mining said they were introduced at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, which seems more and more to be an unseemly mix of charitable work with the political and business interests of Clinton Foundation donors.

And then there's Hillary's strange dealings regarding the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram, which just recently pledged its allegiance to the ever-expanding Islamic State — dubbed the "JV team" by President Obama, who has yet to make good on his pledge to degrade and destroy them.

Last May, we wondered why for two years on Hillary Clinton's watch the State Department refused to designate a Nigerian Islamist group as a terrorist organization. This group has murdered thousands as it wages a real war on women. As Josh Rogin at the Daily Beast reports, the Clinton State Department "refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011" after the group bombed the United Nations headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria.

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry last week asking for all of Hillary's records relating to Boko Haram and her reluctance to designate it a foreign terrorist organization.

Vitter also requested all of Hillary's communications with Gilbert Chagoury, a Nigerian construction tycoon who has donated millions to the Clinton Foundation. Vitter noted that Chagoury had a financial interest in the potential impact of designating Boko Haram a terrorist group

How many of the more than 30,000 "personal" emails that Hillary deleted from her private account relate to these matters? Is that why she needed a private email server? We need to see that server. It might provide, er, a veritable gold mine of information.

The documents obtained by Judicial Watch constitute an equally valuable gold mine of information. President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have a chance to right a great wrong here. Director Comey tried to put the fix in for Hillary by not convening a grand jury, moving to have a special prosecutor appointed, and by not showing up for a cursory interview of Hillary which was not done under oath. The infamous tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch was merely the frosting on this cake.

Comey deserved to be fired for letting Hillary Clinton skate and he isn’t out of the legal woods himself yet. But  Hillary’s crimes in fact cry out for a special prosecutor. As Judicial Watch concludes:

“The emails show ‘what happened’ was that Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin obviously violated laws about the handling of classified information and turned the State Department into a pay for play tool for the corrupt Clinton Foundation,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The clear and mounting evidence of pay for play and mishandling of classified information warrant a serious criminal investigation by an independent Trump Justice Department.”

Lock her up, and while we’re at, how about Huma Abedin and James Comey as well.

          Daniel John Sobieski is a free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.               

By Jiri and Leni Friedman Valenta

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 500, June 17, 2017

“…if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.”
– Sun Tzu

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: “America will not lead from behind. America First does not mean America alone. It is a commitment to protecting and advancing our vital interests…” So wrote President Donald Trump’s NSA, General H.R. McMaster, with Gary Cohn, head of the National Economic Council, in the Wall Street Journal. What follows is a discussion of US leaders’ failed strategies in several wars, Trump’s team of generals, and the emerging Trump doctrine, which is here termed “strategic savvy”.

1964 Vietnam War; “Lies that Led to Vietnam”

Bullet-headed Lt. General H.R. McMaster, the US National Security Adviser, is not just a brave warrior. Like his mentor, General David Petraeus, he is a prominent military intellectual. Both men wrote their PhD dissertations on the lessons of Vietnam. In The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam, Petraeus concluded, “…significant emphasis should be given to counterinsurgency forces, equipment and doctrine.” McMasters’s thesis, Dereliction of Duty, addressed the roles of LBJ and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. His subtitle was “Lies that Led to Vietnam.”

On August 4, 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was pushed through Congress authorizing military action against North Vietnam as “vital” to US national interests. It sought to punish Hanoi for an allegedly unprovoked attack by three torpedo boats on a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin. In fact, it had not been unprovoked; the US had made repeated prior attacks on the North Vietnamese coast.

The major reason for the American war against North Vietnam, asserts McMaster, was the then-upcoming 1964 presidential election. To Johnson, the prime enemy that summer was not the North Vietnamese but his GOP opponent, Barry Goldwater, who had accused the president of being soft on communism. In response, LBJ and McNamara misrepresented the facts and the pretext for sending US ground forces to Vietnam, and deliberately concealed the costs of war. McNamara’s thinking was shaped by his “whiz kids,” DOD civilian nerds, who lacked combat experience and arrogantly believed quantitative statistical analysis could compensate for their deficits in geopolitics, history, and military strategy.

Boasting that he had won his election “bigger than anybody had won ever,” LBJ endorsed McNamara’s strategy of gradual pressure on Hanoi, seeking to wear it down by “attrition.” To McMaster, this was “not a strategy but a lack of it … reinforcing arrogance, weakness, lying in the pursuit of self-interest and above all dereliction of duty to the American people.”

2001 War of Necessity in Afghanistan

In this century, the one war the US won – at least in its initial stage – was Afghanistan. There, following the 9/11 attack on the US homeland, President George Bush defended America’s vital national interests. Nor was this a regular DoD operation by the US army. US forces consisted of CIA operators, Special Forces, and an anti-Taliban Afghan resistance, the Northern Alliance. The 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade was also involved, commanded by the current Defense Secretary, then Major General James Mattis, USMC. In addition, the US was given logistical help by Russian President Vladimir Putin, then Bush’s strategic partner. Within three months, the US had defeated its foe, liberated Kabul, and changed the regime.

2003 War of Choice in Iraq  

But afterwards, as Paula Broadwell observed, the initial brilliant success in Afghanistan “was squandered when the US marched headlong into Iraq in early 2003.” Instead of finishing the war of necessity in Afghanistan, Washington entered into a war of choice with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein – who had had nothing to do with 9/11.

Why? In the words of historian Jean Edward Smith, the president tried to sell the war on the basis of “the flimsy notion that he was removing a potential threat to the United States” because Saddam might have WMD. That threat proved to be nonexistent. In addition, as a born-again Christian, Bush believed he was divinely guided to bring democracy to the Iraqi people.

On August 4, 2002, the 38th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Senator Chuck Hagel, a distinguished Vietnam veteran, told Congress, “We didn’t ask any questions before we got into Vietnam … this is why it’s important to do so now.” Two senior members of Bush’s team did so: Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill, who questioned the costs of war in Iraq; and Secretary of State General (ret.) Colin Powell, who prophesied ethnic divisions and insurgency. Both were subsequently marginalized by the Bush administration.

Like McNamara, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his two principal assistants, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, lacked the combat experience necessary to make sound military decisions. In the end, the one who did have it – Powell – was proven right. He and Bob Richer, then head of the CIA’s Middle East Division, also blamed Bush’s NSA, Condoleezza Rice, for the subsequent attempt at instant democratic nation-building. As Richer explained, “Rice’s vision that Iraq had to look like us overnight was catastrophic.” The president, he observed, “was a realist, but he listened to her and was swayed.”

US forces were sufficient to topple Saddam following a major invasion. But instead of liberating the Iraqis, the Americans became hated occupiers. This gave rise to a Sunni insurgency, during which the US fired the Iraqi military without setting up a stipend program for the soldiers and their families (thus compelling them to subsist on nothing for five long weeks). The US then fired all Baath Party members down to Level 4 without any agreed reconciliation process. This gave tens of thousands of influential Iraqis – often Western-educated – an incentive to oppose the new Iraq rather than support it.

In the ensuing struggle over leadership, a virtual civil war erupted between Sunnis and Shiites, with Kurds in the mix as well – not to mention al-Qaeda, which was rising in the Sunni community in Iraq. The unfinished war in Afghanistan and the unending, Vietnam-like quagmire in Iraq produced two growing insurgencies.

The Surge of Petraeus and his “Shipmate” Mattis

Before he became, in early February 2007, Commander of Multi-National Forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus worked with Mattis to lead a prominent team of US Army and Marine experts on an Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Referred to as “King David’s Bible,” this manual became an outstanding social science study of insurgencies and counter-insurgencies, as well as a guide to how to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis (and Afghans).

Those principles and techniques were applied by the forces under Petraeus in Iraq for over 19 months in 2007-08. The Surge, as the effort was known (due to the deployment of well over 25,000 additional American forces), ushered in a new strategy that was a 180-degree shift from the previous one, which had been assessed as failing in December 2006 by then-commander and ambassador Ryan Crocker.

The result was an 85% reduction in the level of violence and significant progress in a host of areas. President Bush deserves enormous credit for supporting the deployment of additional forces and for backing Petraeus and Crocker.

In late 2011, after some three years of further progress and additional reductions in violence, President Barack Obama decided to withdraw the remaining US combat forces and the last four-star US commander, leaving only a modest training mission.  He reportedly was concerned that there would not be an Iraqi parliament-approved Status of Forces Agreement. Iraqi PM Maliki subsequently pursued ruinous sectarian measures – orchestrating legal charges against the Sunni Arab Vice President and his security detail, and later targeting the Sunni Arab Finance Minister and a prominent Sunni Arab parliamentarian. He returned to Iraqi military and police units abusive Iraqi leaders whom General Petraeus had insisted be removed before US support would be provided, then had those forces put down peaceful Sunni demonstrations very violently. He stopped honoring agreements to provide various forms of assistance to tens of thousands of former Sunni insurgents who had reconciled with the government during the Surge.

Tragically, these actions undid much of what coalition and Iraqi forces had sacrificed to achieve, and the Sunni insurgency in Iraq began to rise again. Islamic State arose out of the ashes of the defeated al-Qaeda in Iraq.

2011: Obama‘s Leading from Behind in Libya

In 2011, to make matters even worse, Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, began to militate for yet another war, this time in Libya at the height of the “Arab Spring.” They did not heed Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s strenuous objections that it did not encompass “our vital national interests,” especially amidst two ongoing wars in the Middle East. Nor did Obama consider the war’s costs. Once again, the naysayer was ignored. Nine days later, Gates resigned.

Like LBJ and McNamara in Vietnam and Bush and Rice in Iraq, Obama and Clinton engaged in deceit about the real purpose of the war. Clinton argued that a NATO intervention was urgently needed to avert a massacre of Libyan civilians by Muammar Qaddafi’s troops. But her subsequently hacked e-mails substantiated that the real objective was regime change in the service of democratic nation-building.

After the rebels murdered Qaddafi, Libya, like Iraq earlier, became a paradise for tribal fighters and jihadists, and there ensued a significant flow of migrants to Europe. None of this chastened Clinton. She began to support secretly arming the Syrian rebels in a proxy war with both its dictator Assad and his patron, Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Obama’s Strategic Patience  

On June 11, 2011, Obama announced that he would withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of December 2011 and the rest of the 30,000-member surge force by July 2012 (i.e., before the Democratic Party convention). Once again there arose a troublesome naysayer.

General David Petraeus objected to the premature withdrawal. Aware as he was of the actual situation on the ground, he was adamant that the projected timing of the draw-down would jeopardize the progress made in the previous year of the surge in Afghanistan. Obama was forced to compromise, but did not forget Petraeus.

Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s chief of staff and one of the president’s loyalists, suspected that Petraeus was contemplating his own presidential run in 2016. It did not help that Petraeus emphatically told Emmanuel he wasn’t. Two days after the 2012 presidential election, Petraeus resigned his post as CIA director because of an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. (The mishandling of classified information did not surface until months later.) When historian Smith queried “whether the Obama administration had taken advantage of his affair to cut his head off,” Petraeus smiled, but did not reply.

Towards Strategic Savvy

If there is any solace for Washington’s numerous follies in the Middle East, it is Donald Trump’s selection of an outstanding national security team: Mattis, McMaster, and General John Kelly (Homeland Security). With Trump’s election, America saw the dawn of a new doctrine to replace “strategic patience,” leading from behind, and the absence of strategy. We call the new approach “strategic savvy,” meaning the judicious use of military force, diplomacy, and economic instruments. Petraeus describes it as a “comprehensive and sustainable commitment” in defense of American vital national interests. The president and his security team seek to overturn policies that have produced only failed states, Islamist-fed chaos, growing terrorist attacks in Europe, and catastrophic debt.

We have witnessed the first actions defining this emerging doctrine. On April 7, 2017, US navy destroyers carried out a missile strike on a Syrian airfield in retribution for Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his subjects. A tactical move, it bore profound strategic significance, since it used judicious force to accomplish what Obama had failed to do in 2013 despite his own declared red line. So did the dropping of the “Mother of All Bombs” (MOAB, or Massive Ordnance Air Blast), the largest conventional bomb in the US arsenal, on ISIS fighters in Afghanistan on April 14.

Facing what Mattis has called a “clear and present danger” from North Korea, Trump’s team did not put the problem off in the manner of the past three US administrations. He is meeting it head on with an unprecedented deployment of three carrier groups with massive naval and air power. This is intended to send a clear message on the need to stop a maniacal leader from accomplishing a nuclear weaponization and delivery system that could eventually reach American shores. President Trump has communicated this need to Chinese President Xi very clearly as well. The era of Obama’s “strategic patience” is finally over.

Future presidents should consider replicating Trump’s placement of national security responsibilities in the hands of individuals with combat experience. America’s future leaders should be men and women with such experience combined with intellectual prowess.

In the meantime, the saga continues. Americans are transfixed by Russo-gate, much as they were by Watergate. President Trump’s political opponents seek to undo the results of the 2016 election by painting him as Putin’s Manchurian candidate.

Trump should now do what Obama did not: pardon Petraeus, whom Gates called “one of the nation’s great battle captains.” As Senator Rand Paul observed, Petraeus showed his personal journals, which did contain classified material, to only one person, an Army reserve intelligence officer with a top secret clearance. Her book was thoroughly checked for classified information and any sensitive political items by the then head of West Point’s Social Sciences Department, Colonel Mike Meese. The negligent Hillary Clinton, still unpunished, revealed classified material to the multitudes through her unsecured server.

Petraeus sympathizes with the beleaguered Trump’s predicament, but only to a certain extent. Like the authors, he realizes that Trump, a novice at presidential politics, has made big mistakes and then repeated them, making things worse.

In his final address as a general, Petraeus quoted Teddy Roosevelt’s 1910 Men in the Arena speech. The words are now surely applicable to both of them:

It is not the critic who counts … the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood … who errs and comes up short again and again … but who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotions, who spends himself for a triumph of high achievement and … if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

The authors are indebted to General David Petraeus for his comments and suggestions.

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Dr. Jiri Valenta and his wife, Leni, are the principals of The Institute of Post Communist Studies and Terrorism (jvlv.net). They are authors of a forthcoming book on Russia and US interventions in the 21st century. A prominent author and speaker, Jiri served for decade as a professor and coordinator of Soviet and East European Studies at the US Naval Post-Graduate School and former consultant to senior members of Reagan administration.

BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family

                                           ROBERT NUELLER ADOPTS STALIN TACTICS

                                                                                     By

                                                                       Daniel John Sobieski

We may be thankful to Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus, at Harvard Law School, for reminding us of the delicious irony of an investigation which began with “reports” of collusion with the Russians by Team Trump and charges of Russian hacking of our elections, noe reverting to the tactics of Russia’s most murderous tyrant, Josef Stalin. As Dershowitz writes in the Washington Examiner:

Special counsel Robert Mueller was commissioned to investigate not only crime but the entire Russian "matter." That is an ominous development that endangers the civil liberties of all Americans.

Federal prosecutors generally begin by identifying specific crimes that may have been committed — in this case, violation of federal statutes. But no one has yet identified the specific statute or statutes that constrain Mueller's investigation of the Russian matter. It is not a violation of any federal law for a campaign to have collaborated with a foreign government to help elect their candidate….

One does not have to go back to the Soviet Union and Lavrentiy Beria's infamous boast to Stalin, "Show me the man and I will show you the crime," in order to be concerned about the expansion of elastic criminal statutes. There are enough examples of abuse in our own history.

From McCarthyism to the failed prosecutions of Sen. Ted Stevens, Rep. Thomas DeLay, Gov. Rick Perry and others, we have seen vague criminal statutes stretched in an effort to criminalize political differences.

Indeed, now we here reports that Mueller’s investigation will range anywhere from Jared Kutchner’s finances to perhaps any unpaid parking tickets Sean Spicer may have. To paraphrase the boast of head of Stalin’s secret police ,  show Mueller the man, and he will find a crime, just as Mueller’s best friend, James Comey, found with Martha Stewart.

There too we see a vindicative prosecutor in search of a crime and it doesn’t have to be the original charge, if there is an original charge. As the Daily Caller reported:

FBI Director James Comey declined to recommend criminal charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified material Tuesday. But back in 2004, he led what legal observers call a “petty and vindictive” prosecution against interior design icon Martha Stewart for a lesser offense.

Stewart served a five-month prison sentence in 2004 at the Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia, also known as “Camp Cupcake,” for lying to federal investigators about possible insider trading. In the years since the case, there is a consensus in the legal community that Comey’s prosecution was overzealous and vindictive.

The Cato Institute’s Gene Healy condemned Comey’s actions as temperamental and political in a 2004 column. Healy argued that Stewart’s indictment was largely possible because the sheer volume of federal laws makes it possible to indict almost any individual on some basis — reasonable or unreasonable. Quoting former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, Healy wrote prosecutors “will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.”His Cato colleague Alan Reynolds argued Comey prosecuted Stewart for “having misled people by denying having committed a crime with which she was not charged.”

We saw this Stalinesque persecution in the case of Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. Libby was convicted, again of lying to the FBI, because he misremembered events under relentless questioning. He was charge long after prosecutors knoew it was Richard Armitage who leaked the name of CIA desk jockey Valerie Plame to the press. Instead of dropping the investigation at hat point, prosecutors persisted, knowing they had to find a crime committed by someone somewhere to justify their existence.

Libby was Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff when he was charged with obstruction of an investigation into the “outing” of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. Plame was in fact a desk jockey at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, not a secret agent in harm’s way. As Investor’s Business Daily noted:

Remember the alleged outing of the already known CIA officer and desk jockey Valerie Plame? We were told then that the Vanity Fair cover girl's 15 minutes of fame jeopardized our national security even if everybody already knew who she was.

"Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, went to jail because his memory of events and who said what to whom regarding Plame differed from the recollections of others, particularly news reporters.

Yes, Virginia, this is a witch hunt. Robert Mueller III was appointed special cunsel after his friend, the vindictive James Comey, committed a federal crime by leaking a memo which was a government record to the press. Mueller has picked staff and prosecutors as if he were stocking Hillary Clinton’s Department of Justice. He has picked a bevy of Clinton donors, an attorney who worked for the Clinton Foundation, a former Watergate assistant prosecutor, and evn a senior advise to Eric Hiolder. Objective professionals all (snarkiness intended ).

Mueller is in fact colluding with Comey to enact revenge on President Trump for Comey’s firing, something which even Comey said Trump was constitutionally entitled to do. There is no evidence of collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice. It is not obstruction of justice for a President to exercise his legal and constitutional authority.

The facts and the lack of an actual crime will not stop Robert Mueller. Just show him the man, or woman, and he will show you the crime.

          Daniel John Sobieski is a free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.               

JVLV: DAVID PETRAEUS IS BEST CANDIDATE FOR NSA!

Dr. Jiri Valenta

Published Author, U.S. Nat'l Sec., Russia,Terrorism. CFR member. Consult. U.S. gvt., Contrib. FP TNI, NYT, Wash.Times

Islamic State To Chicago: 'We Are In Your Streets'

Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/082514-714673-islamic-state-terrorists-threaten-chicago-via-twitter.htm#ixzz3BS6MTABP
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In doing some research on what if anything the founders thought about money in politics, in light of the persistent comments from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and others that billionaires are corrupting our system of government, we came across something highly germane to government corruption: Federalist Papers no. 62 and no. 63, under which James Madison discusses the purpose of the U.S. Senate in and of itself.

In light of the actions of Congress during the Obama administration alone, the irony here, which would likely make Madison himself cringe, is simply breathtaking:

To trace the mischievous effects of a mutable government would fill a volume. I will hint a few only, each of which will be perceived to be a source of innumerable others.

The internal effects of a mutable policy are…calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not for the many.

In another point of view, great injury results from an unstable government. The want of confidence in the public councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and profit of which may depend on a continuance of existing arrangements. What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim to an inconstant government? In a word, no great improvement or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the auspices of a steady system of national policy.

But the most deplorable effect of all is that diminution of attachment and reverence which steals into the hearts of the people, towards a political system which betrays so many marks of infirmity, and disappoints so many of their flattering hopes. No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.

…I shall not scruple to add, that such an institution may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions. As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind? What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next.

Read at:  http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2014/05/15/one-of-the-most-painfully-ironic-things-the-founders-ever-wrote-that-youve-probably-never-read/#more-809669

Did They Know?  When Did They Know?

Three questions that haunt Christopher Stevens, Tyrone Woods, Glen Doherty and Sean Smith’s families and all Americans; (1) Did they know?, (2) When did they know?, and (3)Why didn’t they send help? 

So let’s back track to September 11, 2012 – we have 3 Generals, Sec. of Defense & a Joint Chief of Staff who just filled in the missing pieces about the Benghazi murders.  “Top Secret” testimony on the Benghazi terrorist attack was just recently declassified. 

According to declassified testimony obtained by Fox News, Ham -- who was working out of his Pentagon office on the afternoon of Sept. 11 -- said he learned about the assault on the consulate compound within 15 minutes of its commencement, at 9:42 p.m. Libya time, through a call he received from the AFRICOM Command Center. By James Rosen  Published January 14, 2014,  FoxNews.com

Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time was head of AFRICOM, the Defense Department combatant command with jurisdiction over Libya, told the House in classified testimony last year that it was him who broke the news about the unfolding situation in Benghazi to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The tense briefing -- in which it was already known that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens had been targeted and had gone missing -- occurred just before the two senior officials departed the Pentagon for their session with the commander in chief.  By James Rosen, Published January 14, 2014, FoxNews.com

Sec. Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey briefed the Commander in Chief about the terrorist attack in Benghazi as it was happening?  After the President was briefed General Ham met again with Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey. 

Panetta was asked if he believed at the time this was a terrorist attack.  Leon Panetta responded saying, “There was no question in my mind that this was a terrorist attack.” http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/14/benghazi-transcripts-top-defense-officials-briefed-obama-on-attack-not-video-or/

CIA Director, General David Petraeus testified that the CIA believes the Benghazi attacks were conducted by terrorists, not a spontaneous demonstration. General Petraeus was in disagreement with Obama, Clinton & Rice’s talking points and wouldn’t play their political game. 

 http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83966.html#ixzz2t52nyWBz

So what we have here is a “Commander in Chief” who knew our American men in Benghazi were under terrorists attack and apparently he sneaked out of the White House to prepare for his campaign speech in Las Vegas.  Clinton hid in her dog house messaging the news media about a video during this time. 

Let’s check out Hillary Clinton (Sec of State,) the person while under oath said, “What difference does it make.”  The Senate Intelligence Committee after months of investigation and testimonies basically said the “buck stops here” pointing at the State Department and Clinton’s negligence and failure to do the job we Americans hired her for – the SIC stated in no uncertain terms that the Benghazi terrorist attack could have and should have been prevented.

Charlene Lamb (ex Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for international programs) testified that she followed the Benghazi Attack in real time. 

Charlene Lamb, the deputy assistant secretary of state for international programs, had this exchange with Rep. James Lankford (R-OK), describing how she followed via telephone the developments in the Benghazi attack as they were happening:

LANKFORD: Mrs. Lamb, can you clarify for me, where -- where were you working September 11? Were you in the Washington area -- were -- in the main facility there?

LAMB: Yes sir. I was in the D.S. Command center on the evening of the event.

LANKFORD: You -- you -- you note that in your testimony that you were in the Diplomatic Security Command Center and then you make this statement, "I could follow what was happening almost in real time." 

Here is one portion of Cheryl Lamb’s testimony that simply gives a way the fact that she thought help was on the way to Benghazi. 

Lamb:  Here is what she said, Sir, what was happening is they were making multiple phone calls and it was very important that they communicate with the annex in Tripoli because this is where additional resources were coming from. So they would hang up on us and then call back. It appears Military assistance was on its way???? 

Charlene was quickly snatched out of the “limelight” by Clinton and Cheryl Mills (Clinton”s Chief of Staff) muffled & gagged.  Charlene holds a very important key to Clinton’s whereabouts the night of the Benghazi attack. Cheryl Mills according to Gregory Hicks testimony is the one who ordered Gregory Hicks not to meet alone with Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) when he visited Libya following the attack.

We’ll never know who was communicating with whom during the 6 hours since the attack on our embassy, but we know someone nabbed “Rice” to do their dirty work.  Here’s the sequence of events.

Remember Obama and Gregory Hicks notified Hillary Clinton of the Benghazi attack which according to Politico started about 4:00 Eastern Standard Time or 10:00 PM Benghazi time –Clinton was obviously quite involved with covering her “ass” and Obama’s at this time.  So Obama, Clinton & without a doubt Jarrett were busy spinning the web of deception because of the upcoming Presidential election.  

Around 10 PM EST, Hillary issued a statement that one State official had been killed in an attack on the Benghazi Consulate along with a reference about about a video - MSNBC posted this information around 10:30EST including the mention of the video.  Hillary continued messaging, so sometime in a 6 hour interim (4:oo PM to 10:00PM) Obama, Clinton and probably Jarrett created the worst scandal in all of America's history. 

Obama went to Las Vegas to campaign, Rice appears on five Sunday shows saying the murders in Benghazi was due to a group of protesters over a video. 

Sept. 16: Libya President Mohamed Magariaf says on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that the attack on the U.S. consulate was planned months in advance.  Magariaf also said, Magariaf also said the idea that the attack was a “spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous.” Rice pounced on President Magariaf’s statement calling him everything but a liar 

Obama & Clinton created a 70,000 dollar ad on Pakistani Television denouncing the Anti-Muslim Video.  For weeks after the Benghazi massacre, Obama, Clinton, Rice, Carney & the Liberal news media beat this lie to death.

3 Generals, Sec. of Defense & a Joint Chief of Staff all verified that Obama knew that the attack on our embassy was a terrorist attack.  Hillary was notified about the terrorist attack by the Commander in Chief and Gregory Hicks. 

Petraeus, Ham, Charlene Lamb, Gregory Hicks and President Magariaf were all kicked under the bus.  

Obama and Hillary can run but they can’t hide for much longer –DEMS & the Liberal news media can continue spinning their stories, but the one fact that remains on the table is this…  Obama and Hillary knew the attack on Benghazi was a terrorist attack and they deliberately allowed 4 of our American men to die horrible deaths in the hands of terrorists. 

As Always,

Little Tboca

I have studied these Scriptures (Book of Daniel) out again having been taught these principals a few times by various pastors.  Dr. David Jeremiah teaches these principals again and gives an admonishment to the people (believers) that He will, in fact, judge this country of the United States of America for their wickedness if they don't turn away from idols and back to Him again.

But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come:

For men will be lovers of themselves. lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good,

traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God

having a form of godliness but denying its power.  And from such people turn away!

2 Timothy 3: 1-5

http://www.davidjeremiah.org/site/radio_player.aspx?id=1037

Thanksgiving 2012, finds a nation that has changed dramatically since the 1865 end of the U.S. Civil War.  There still remains an ongoing attempt to select racial winners and losers when a person’s conduct, professional or otherwise comes into question.  The latest example has been U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s ineptness in presenting the White House cover up account of the U.S. Benghazi Consulate American murders.

On Tuesday, Rep. James Clyburn, a Democrat, attacked nearly 100 Republican congressmen who sent a letter to President Obama, opposing a possible nomination of Susan Rice for Secretary of State.  The congressmen cited her recent apparent incompetent behavior as the reason for their opposition. Congressman Clyburn to the rescue!  He called the congressmen’s comments racist.  There Clyburn goes again.

Well, there is still Clyburn, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the diminishing exceptions who are the race-based clingers.  They cling to racial solutions for colorblind problems.  They embrace easy simplistic gotcha assertions, like “that’s racist!” or “They hate blacks” or they keep blacks down!”

This behavior must be called out for what it truly is.  This is race bating and hate mongering. Blacks and liberals engage in this practice to make political and racial hay.  They use racial division as a pay day card for their elections, non-profit race bating organizations and television network talk shows.  But America is tired and America must move on.

America must grow up and Americans of all colors must accept that bad attitudes, incompetent behavior, or irresponsible conduct should not be defended because of race!

So, enough is enough of this school yard nonsense.  The shadow of a racist past in America is not the nation of 2012. 

This nation does not need an affirmative action answer for every real or imagined problem or issue that besets American minorities.  America has to realize that if there is a civil rights issue that confronts a person who feel wronged or rights have been abridged, then repair it with the same laws that any person who has his or her rights abridged.

This is not a nation that should continue to have two sets of laws and two sets of results.  The law of the land should not be used to pick winners and losers as if it were some type of carnival game, where the deck is stacked.

( Read More )

There is a debt of service due from every man to his country, proportioned to the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him.

Thomas Jefferson[i]

Have you ever wondered what is meant by the term ‘public servants?’ I suppose these days it depends on who is either using or misusing the term. If you look at any of the signers of the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution, you will see men who believed in public service. And I will show you examples of this. I have absolutely no doubt the founding fathers of this nation knew what the term meant: to serve the public for the greater good; public servants. But what is today’s meaning? As I have shown in other treatises about the Legislative and Executive Branches, our politicians are extremely self-serving. They concern themselves with the aggrandizement of their bank accounts by trading stocks using classified information, they take money from lobbyists, they believe in nepotism even though House Ethics Rules forbid the practice and there have been earmarks where Congressmen have made vast sums of money at our expense. There have been incidents such as Watergate and Iran/Contra, plus there have been organizations like the Suite 8F Group. All of these examples have been of our present day public servants, but they only served themselves. I believe our illustrious, or should I say lusterless politicians believe public servant means something altogether different, such as the public as servants; public servants. The term public servants isn’t really a double entendre, but it has been perverted into just that; a term with a double meaning, which when used by our smiling two-faced professional prevaricators, has rendered us all into nothing more than offal on the slaughterhouse floor, to be devoured as carrion by our vulture-like politicians. I suggest we take a look at some of our forefathers and find out just what it means to be a public servant.

I found something interesting on a blog called Dover Beach. John Adams wrote, “Public business…must always be done by somebody…If wise men decline it, others will not; if honest men refuse it; others will not…Integrity should be preserved in all events…through every stage of his existence. His first maxim should be to place his honor out of reach of all men[ii].” John Adams does make me ask a few questions. Do our elected leaders today have this same belief? Are our leaders in any way wise or honest? Do they have integrity or honor? One might think that as the most powerful nation on the planet, the answer to these questions would be an unequivocal yes. Unfortunately, just the opposite would appear to be true. Our elected leaders are only wise in their deception to the public and their honesty is always a matter for debate. As far as integrity and honor, I seriously doubt you can have either if you aren’t wise and honest, but I would state our politicians possess neither. But there isn’t a reason to go over the dirty-laundry list of our politicians again; I would simply direct you to read some of my other treatises or read whatever you can find on our leaders of today, then you can answer the question yourself. This is more about the founding fathers of this nation and their beliefs with regard to public service, so we will know exactly what it is to serve the public. We can easily look back at history and state with certainty, the founders were an extremely wise and honorable group of men, who possessed a great deal of integrity and honor. All one really needs to do in order to know this is read the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and they will come to that conclusion.  John Adams finished his thoughts for the most part with these words, “In order to do this he must make it a rule never to become dependent on public employments for subsistence. Let him have a trade, a profession, a farm, a shop, something where he can honestly live, and then he may engage in public affairs, if invited, upon independent principles.” I cannot fathom in this day and age, a politician who isn’t a career politician; much less one who has undertook public affairs upon independent principles. Certainly some have been quite successful before they entered public office, but we see these people feeding from the public trough for twenty, thirty years at a time, while gorging themselves at the cost of our nation’s wealth and well being. And they consider themselves to be righteous! No matter how much they have, they want more and actually increase their net worth while in office at an astronomical rate. This isn’t public service, it’s gluttony and avarice.

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it is obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.

James Madison[iii]

As I was reading George Washington’s first inaugural address, it made me think about what was just written about John Adams and his beliefs regarding public service. While it may seem as though I am actually going backwards, from the 2^nd U.S. President to the 1^st U.S. President, I believe what George Washington said in his first address simply underscores what John Adams averred. George Washington stated, “Since there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained[iv].” Washington’s ardent belief that man is perpetually bound by his association to the truth through the immutable bond between his virtue and his happiness, his moral obligation and his circumstance, his generous course of action and the blissful rewards of his office, reminds me of Adams when he spoke of wisdom, honesty, integrity and honor; without these four maxims which Adams spoke of so fervently, there can be no truth which Washington spoke of so eloquently. As our first President, Washington knew this new nation would rely on his wisdom, honesty, integrity and honor, and his duty as our first President relied on truth to the people. His reward was not only his happiness but the divine advantage given to him by the people and by God. Washington was happy to serve, he sought nothing more than the opportunity to be a public servant in a prosperous nation of people, “When I was first honored with a call into the service of my country…the light in which I contemplated my duty required that I should renounce every pecuniary compensation…I must decline as inapplicable to myself any share in the personal emoluments…and must accordingly pray that the pecuniary estimates for the station which I am placed…be limited to such actual expenditures as the public good may be thought to require.” I cannot say it enough times; George Washington’s only desire was to serve the public. His reward was the honor of the office itself; he eschewed any monetary compensation other than the expenses which were appropriate in relation to the Office or greater good of the nation. I realize there are politicians in this day and age who receive no more than $1 for their service, which is admirable. I can only believe they are not only fans, but followers of our forefathers. Men like Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison truly believed leadership was best accomplished by being a public servant, and by being a public servant they were able to lead by example.

I would like to take a moment and speak about the 5^th President of the United States, a man who is considered to be the last founding father of this nation who was President, James Monroe[v]. Monroe had a long history of public service to this nation; his final service was obviously as the President. Just prior to Monroe’s departure for Europe after being appointed as Minister to France in 1794, he gave his nephew some advice which gives us some insight into Monroe himself, “You may by your industry, prudence, and studious attention to your business…advance your fortune and reputation in the world, whereby alone your happiness or even tranquility can be secured[vi].” I believe Monroe was telling his nephew that only through the careful and diligent application of his endeavors would he truly be able to increase his wealth and his repute or good name. And from those endeavors alone would he find happiness and the inner-peace of an honest businessman. How many men these days tell their own sons such things? Monroe then said, “Solid merit and virtue alone will support and carry you with credit through the world.” Once again, here is a man who espouses good, hard, work not only done honestly but done with a good moral center or righteousness as a mantra for a way to live a good life.  But if you look at Monroe’s reasoning for telling his nephew this, you can see where public service comes into play. “The principle danger…if he errs, he inflicts the most incurable wound on his reputation, is the abuse of pecuniary confidence. Let me, therefore, warn you never to use your client’s money…for the protection of virtue, it should never be commenced.” This was really just the beginning of Monroe’s cautionary advice to his nephew with regard to vice and virtue. Monroe, like the rest of the founders, believed that virtues were Heavenly as vices were not. The belief that a man’s reputation was his name meant everything. If one was to get caught with their hand in the so-called cookie jar the lack of confidence in the man and his name would simply be irreconcilable. This all goes right back to George Washington and trust, John Adams and wisdom, honesty, integrity and honor. Without any of those five traits, there is no virtue, no good reputation and certainly no happiness or tranquility would or could follow a man throughout his life. Monroe further stated to his nephew, “I would make it one of those sacred rules of my life which should not be violated.” There can be no doubt James Monroe knew any type of service to others, especially public service, cannot be done without a virtuous reputation which fosters trust. Are we able to say this of our present day politicians? Think about the seven deadly sins and the seven Heavenly virtues for a moment. Most people could name the sins, but not the virtues. Which seven do our politicians follow?

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

George Washington[vii]

I have been asked why I write these papers. My only response can be that I find what the founders said and wrote to be extremely enthralling. That being said, and with regard to this paper, in no way do I claim these treatises are a public service of any kind. If anything, I believe they are simply a vehicle for me to express what infuriates me with regard to our government today and if these treatises actually possess anyone to think about the state of the union, if I am allowed to make that pun, I believe it is a good thing. But I cannot help but to compare our modern times and political leaders of the day with that time of our past political leaders which we call our forefathers and recognize the predominant chasm which exists between them. Truly, I believe if our politicians carried themselves in a manner akin to the forefathers of this nation, with the same passion for our Constitution and showed the wisdom and an honorable determination to lead by virtue rather than vice; perhaps I could and would be content. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

I was asked by a friend, “Why do you put your own name on these treatises rather than using a pen name? Don’t you think if they ever read this stuff you will get into trouble?” My response was actually quite simple. I told him, “Do you really think the shameless lot of bottom-feeders who are running this nation into the ground care about what I think or say? After all, I really have nothing to lose.” Certainly, any fraudulent charge could be trumped-up against anyone, but that’s nothing more than an exercise in futility. I say this because it would only tend to confirm what I write and what I claim to believe. Of course, the point is moot. After all, today’s politicians habitually speak out publicly against each other without a modicum of truth to what they say and in as harmful a manner as possible. I at least give honest examples of what I believe. Their sole purpose is to publically malign and destroy their political rival for personal and political gain. As I have previously stated, I only want people to think. But privately, I would bet they [these political rivals] are friendly sipping Dom Perignon, eating fillet mignon and lobster while washing it down with a bottle of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild together, and on our dime. I simply can’t imagine the founding fathers of this nation carrying on in such a dishonorable manner. What we witness is nothing more than a public dog and pony show which is meant to appease us, as well as divide us in a partisan manner, while they privately scratch each other’s backs and reap the abundant rewards of the dishonest lawmaker. Besides, if you look at the bigger picture, such as the way our infant-like politicians constantly bicker with each other and the odious nature of their discourse (especially during an election year), I would have to say that I’m really being quite generous.

Think about John Hancock for a minute. This man didn’t just sign the declaration of Independence, his signature was so large compared to the rest of the signers, he may as well have had a neon-sign with arrows pointing directly at him. John Hancock had his wealth, property, position, family and his life to lose. Of course, in no way am I or would I compare myself with John Hancock who I consider to be a great man and leader. So that comparison just isn’t possible. I am only trying to point out a man, a leader, who really had something to lose, but did the honorable thing despite the overwhelming risk. The vast majority of us today are a mere fraction of what any of our founding fathers were, and we should all be extremely grateful for their sacrifice, intelligence, courage, selflessness, honor, integrity and public service. We should also remember to view them as true role models.

Stop and think about what it is to really put yourself in jeopardy. Look to our troops throughout the history of this great nation who courageously put themselves in harm’s way on a daily basis, that’s public service. Or look at the fire departments throughout the nation, while people are running out of burning buildings, who risks their lives by running inside to save people and property? The firemen do and that’s public service. When there is an armed robbery or a kidnapping or any number of other violent crimes being committed, who wades in while putting themselves in danger? Someone in law enforcement does. These people have families and they have something to lose, yet they still come to the aid of others, that’s public service. And there is a seemingly endless list of other professions which also provide a public service to our nation. Are any of these people our servants? No, of course they are not. However, they are all public servants and they all do their duty which serves the public interest. How can it be that the leaders of a nation are not held in such high esteem? Personally, if I was a politician, I believe I would be offended. Yet the ordinary people of America who are in these various professions, don’t stand there telling you how great they are, they stand there and tell you how great America is. Yet our politician can’t wait to have a press conference and tell you about their exploits and accomplishments, which are nothing more than mere fantasies! So I would have to ask you, who really are our leaders?

So, after all of this has been said.  Who are our leaders and public servants? Is it our forefathers, our elected and appointed politicians, or those Americans who daily risk their lives for us? The easy answer is our forefathers, there can be no doubt they knew what public service was all about; George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Hancock as well as every other founder who was an honest and honorable upstanding man. Then there are the regular Americans who work within the vast variety of professions who daily risk their lives or who work under conditions so deplorable that most of us would not wish it on an enemy, these people are certainly our leaders. Perhaps they aren’t elected, but they are leaders nonetheless and they certainly know what public service is. And lastly, we come to our elected and appointed politicians. What can I say? If these people had the wisdom, honor, integrity, honesty or sense of duty the size of a mustard seed I would undoubtedly fall over dead. But it would appear as though all they desire from public office is to find the lamp which holds their Djinn, so they may rub it and be granted whatever they wish. Sadly, what they wish for is the public to be their servants.

An avaricious man, who might happen to fill the office, looking forward to a time when he must at all events yield up the emoluments he enjoyed, would feel a propensity…to make the best use of the opportunity he enjoyed while it lasted, and might not scruple to have recourse to the most corrupt expedients to make the harvest as abundant as it was transitory.

Alexander Hamilton[viii]

God Bless this Great Republic, the United States of America.

Brett L. Baker

http://mytreatises.blogspot.com 

References