Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Only a few years ago a politician might have been laughed out of Congress for postulating that the troubles in the Middle East – Islamic irredentism; the emergence of Iran, still considered a terrorist state, as a regional Middle East power; the attempt by Shiites, rebuffed during the Iraq war, to establish a caliphate in northern Iraq and Syria; the threats against the United States and other western nations that pour like a flood of mighty waters from the throats of its former enemies; the scurrying of foreign states once friendly to the United States from a U.S to a Russian protectorate; the sea of women, children and young men murdered, homeless and enslaved Christians, immigrant hordes persecuted by Islamic terrorists now flooding Europe’s shores, largely owing to the recession of U.S. power and influence in the Middle East; all this and more --  were traceable to global warming, the tocsin of a boisterous environmental movement.

November 16, 2015 Paris will learn soon enough what we have known for some time: that President Barack Obama, shrouded in the fog of unknowing, is not a reliable friend, which is to say – he is not a fraternal friend, as the French understand fraternity. I wonder if that expression will surprise you. You are a student of history and, as such, you owe it to yourself to drive all false but comforting thoughts from your mind, particularly now that Paris, “the city of light,” has gone dark. It is important at such moments to embrace lucidity, so that we should not go dark as well. I may point out that of the two, comforting and discomforting thoughts, comforting thoughts are the more dangerous; they lull us to sleep, when we ought to be fully awake. We are always alert to danger, unless we are put to sleep by soothing words.

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy has released in USA Today a manifesto   that details his view on U.S. foreign policy and  ISIS, the Islamic terrorist state that has gobbled up large chunks of Iraq and Syria, in the process creating the “orphans and widows” President Barack Obama hopes to house, among other places and with the concurrence of Governor Dannel Malloy, in Connecticut. Following the ISIS inspired attack in Paris, France, jihadi websites proclaimed that the warriors of Muhammed, blessings be upon him, would similarly attack the United States. “The American blood is best,” some boasted, “ and we will taste it soon .” Islamic scholars in India strongly condemned the attack .     

US Senator Chris Murphy might have said simply that the US invasion of Iraq in March, 2003 radicalized enemies of “the Great Satan” – that’s us. At best, this was a half-truth. There is some discussion afoot as to whether George Bush’s largely successful overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime during a three month war radicalized ISIS. Perhaps ISIS has been radicalized by something else. Some people, staring at Mr. Murphy from across the political barricades,  assert that the premature withdrawal of American troops from Iraq following the war was the precipitating event that gave birth to ISIS’ largely successful advance from Syria to northern Iraq. ISIS, according to this reading of events, simply exploited a military and political weakness issued from President Barack Obama’s “lead from behind” Middle East strategy: When the cat’s away, Islamic terrorists will play. The propriety of the war to dislodge Saddam Hussein has become an  political briar patch so thick and tho...

The good news is that Secretary of State John Kerry is not Ayaan Hersi Ali , and therefore his address to Yale graduates on College Class Day was not cancelled by a tremulous administration responding to charges that the appointed speaker had needlessly denigrated Islam. Yale, one may be thankful, is not Brandeis University, which first announced plans that it would bestow an honorary degree on Hersi Ali and later cancelled her invitation to speak at the college when students and Muslim organizations became restive. Mr. Kerry, assuredly, is no Hersi Ali. His comments concerning the murderous assault on Christians by Muslim Salafists in the Middle East and Africa are so mild and inoffensive as to be barely noticed at all.     Nor is Mr. Kerry Condoleezza Rice, currently a professor of Political Economy in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and  the first African American in U.S. history to be appointed Secretary of State. Ms. Rice...