How Do You Solve a Problem like AOC?

By Michael Walsh

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/20/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-aoc/

March 20, 2019

I first noticed something was up in the New York City backwater called the 14th Congressional District when a friend across the aisle, a well-respected political columnist, tweeted out the news of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “upset” victory against the incumbent Democrat, Joe Crowley, just minutes after it happened.

Who cares? thought I.

Crowley, one of the last of the Irish machine politicians, had safely sailed to reelection to the House for a decade, often without even a primary challenger. But the 29-year-old AOC, as she is colloquially known, beat him in the primary with 57 percent of the vote—a number that sounds impressive until you realize that it was a mere 15,897 votes to Crowley’s 11,761, a difference of 4,136 votes. In the foregone-conclusion general election, she beat the Republican tomato can, Anthony Pappas, 110,000 to 18,000. Pappas was so indifferent to the outcome that he brushed aside offers to help and did not actively campaign.

Naturally, the media went wild immediately. Literally overnight, this former intern for Ted Kennedy, an ethnic Puerto Rican, became a national celebrity; you can tell the stories were prepped and in the can once her victory was assured.

Crowley’s name stayed on the fall ballot, under the rubric of the Working Families Party, but like the GOP candidate, he did not campaign. His reward was to land a choice spot last month as a lobbyist with the law firm of Squire Patton Boggs, whose bipartisan ranks of swamp-dwelling trough snouts include former Speaker of the House John Boehner, former Senator Trent Lott, and other Washington hacks. With his future assured, and his services to the latter-day equivalent of Tammany Hall rewarded, he finally got around to giving up his government parking pass just this week.

In other words, the fix was in. Clearly, somebody was behind the rise of Ocasio-Cortez and that somebody didn’t care much about the niceties of getting her elected—including elements of her “girl-from-the-Bronx” biography, her actual residence, and her campaign finances. Tant pis!

Democratic firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rode into office railing against the influence of big money and hidden donors in U.S. elections. Yet the political operation that helped elect her to Congress was itself less than transparent—exposing her to attacks from conservative foes.

The New York congresswoman raised a hefty $2 million for her 2018 election while refusing to take money from business-related political action committees. Of that, 61 percent came from individuals giving less than $200—the highest rate of small-dollar funding among current U.S. House members.

At the same time, Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign committee and two PACs paid almost $900,000 to a consulting company for campaign services, providing few details on what the money was for or who ultimately received it.

That’s the question, isn’t it? Two million dollars for 15,000 votes and a shoo-in general election? Her mission accomplished—the first term is the hardest election to win—she’s been “quietly removed” from the board of the Justice Democrats PAC, according to the Daily Caller:

Democratic Rep. Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez and her top aide are no longer board members of the outside PAC credited with orchestrating her political rise, according to a corporate document filed Friday to a Washington, D.C., agency.

The New York Democrat and her chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, who served as her campaign chair, joined the board of Justice Democrats in December 2017, according to the political action committee’s website. It also said the two held “legal control over the entity” at the same time it was playing a key role in supporting Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign prior to her shock victory over incumbent Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley in June 2018.”

“Orchestrating her political rise.” You have to admit the timing was impeccable. The three freshwomyn—AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib need only a fourth to bring on the apocalypse, having quickly established themselves as the new triumvirate of the Democrat Party. The girl named for a city in Egypt, has openly sassed Maerose Prizzi, the speaker of the House, who, when it came time to offer even the most oblique censure of Omar’s blatant anti-Semitism, wound up deploring all “bigotry” instead, including “Islamophobia.”

Ocasio-Cortez is, as Obama was when the media invented him, too young to run for president for this cycle, but she can squeak in just under the wire in 2024 if her handlers deem that her time has come. Even then, if the example of Obama is any guide, that might be too soon: imagine if Hillary had been the nominee in 2008 and then a more mature and even more radical Obama had come along in 2016, on the tails of her two “moderate” terms; as it was, he was too inexperienced and frankly, too lazy, fully to implement the plan his backers had in mind for him.

And so, as the Democrats bum-rush to the 2020 starting gates, the two cheeks of their party have swung into view. Yes, they have become the party of peons and plutocrats, but for our purposes—and for AOC’s—they will soon be the party of geriatrics and the turkettes, who loathe their masculine forbears with true “feminist” ignorance and impatience. They know this is the last roundup for superannuated pols like Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and even the former Nancy d’Alesandro, the pride of Ballamer, and that the future—one version of it, anyway, belongs to them:

For make no mistake: these neo-Socialists—whether they call themselves national or international and whether white, brown, or black—are all fascist brothers and sisters under the skin, bent on both submission and punishment. Behold how far and how fast even the “moderate” Democrats have adopted such things as reparations, the elimination of ICE, the abolition of the Electoral College, overt infanticide and other extremist positions—if that’s the platform they hope to run on next year, then they have well and truly earned their sobriquet, the Evil Party.

There are some signs that such extremism is turning off voters; despite the media’s cheerleading, AOC has seen her popularity polls crater; it seems that the more sensible Americans see and hear of her, the less they like her. Which means there’s hope for the Republic yet—but this is no time to get complacent.

Every socialist demagogue of the 20th century started life as an underestimated figure: Mussolini was expelled from the Italian Socialists as too radical; Hitler was a comic-opera figure who wound up in Landsberg prison; Lenin was exiled twice; Stalin was a seminarian who had lost his Orthodox faith and found a substitute in the writing of Karl Marx. Ilhan Omar may not be the brightest bulb in Minnesota, much less in Congress; Rashida Tlaib’s naked hatred for the West may be jarring; and AOC’s vapid, goofy “Green New Deal” narcissism will strike mature adults as risible and clownish, not to mention ruinous.

Just remember this: they mean it. As Rosemary says in “Rosemary’s Baby”:

Wake up, America. For, as scary as this may sound, after Joe and Bernie and Nancy comes le deluge.

How do you solve a problem like Omar, Tlaib, and Ocasio-Cortez? By making sure their first terms in Congress are also their last.

Michael Walsh is a journalist, author, and screenwriter. He was for 16 years the music critic and foreign correspondent for Time Magazine, for which he covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. His works include the novels As Time Goes By, And All the Saints (winner, 2004 American Book Award for fiction), and the bestselling “Devlin” series of NSA thrillers; as well as the recent nonfiction bestseller, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace. A sequel, The Fiery Angel, was published by Encounter in May 2018. Follow him on Twitter at @dkahanerules

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Rashida?

By Michael Walsh
https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/13/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-rashida/
March 13, 2019


Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar

Upon her accession to the U.S. House of Representatives last fall, practically the first words out of Rashida Tlaib’s mouth were: “We’re going to go in there and we’re going to impeach the motherf—er.” The object of the freshman Michigan Democrat’s derision was, of course, President Trump. This sentiment naturally got whoops and cheers from the guests at a MoveOn.org reception, who were there to celebrate the election of the Muslima from Dearbornistan, one of two female followers of Mohammed—the other is Ilhan Omar—now occupying chairs in the Capitol.

The triumphalism was multi-layered: not only had the Democrats—thanks, Paul Ryan!—retaken the House by both hook (free stuff for everybody except old toxic-male white guys, served up piping hot by the media) and crook (ballot harvesting in California that delivered once solidly Republican Orange County over to the Democrats) but, in the guise of “diversity,” they had also put two more co-religionists of the 9/11 hijackers into the Congress. Tlaib and Omar have wasted no time in getting to work against American norms and the republic itself.

Omar, born in Mogadishu, has been getting most of the attention lately; her unfiltered mouth can’t help but spout anti-Semitic drivel, and a recent attempt by a flailing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to rein her via a resolution against Jew hatred wound up as a boilerplate denunciation of “bigotry”—thus handing Omar a propaganda victory. As Britain’s hard-left Guardian put it in a headline: “Everyone’s against bigotry, right? Not 23 House Republicans, apparently.” Well played.

But Tlaib may be the more dangerous of the pair, cannily redoubling efforts to blame some (Jewish) Democrats’ antipathy to Omar’s casual slurs on . . . you guessed it: “I think Islamophobia is very much among the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party. And I know that’s hard for people to hear, but there’s only been four members of Congress that are of Muslim faith. Three of them currently serve in this institution. More of us need to get elected, but more of us need to understand as we come into this institution that I have a lot of work to do with my colleagues.”

This is typical Muslim thinking, to always be the aggressor and yet simultaneously the victim as well. Tlaib comes by it naturally. Born in Detroit to Palestinian parents—her father is from Arab East Jerusalem, and apparently spent some time in Nicaragua before winding up in Michigan—Tlaib has been hailed by the Left as “the way forward,” as in this laudatory article in Politico from last summer:

The left—particularly the new-school, say-it-loud-and-say-it-proud democratic socialist left inspired by Bernie Sanders’ 2016 primary run—has a tendency toward maximalism. And it’s only natural: The progressive project, as both its subscribers and Fox News scaremongers alike would tell you, is revolutionary, seeking to fundamentally remake the relationship Americans have with their government and that the government has with the economy.

In Michigan’s 13th Congressional District, where the former Rep. John Conyers Jr. resigned the seat he’d held for more than a half-century after facing allegations of sexual misconduct, another Sanders-backed candidate scored a primary victory that might prove more ultimately instructive: Rashida Tlaib, a former state legislator who ran on a platform of “Medicare for All,” a $15 minimum wage and tuition-free college.

For years, Democrats have struggled with a top-down, executive-focused approach to electoral politics that has left them with their smallest representation in Congress since the Truman administration—and now, thanks to Donald Trump, no White House to protect them . . . . Tlaib, on the other hand, represents the most logical path for the left to claim its seat at the table, both within the Democratic Party and in national politics: a candidate unabashed in her progressivism, politically skilled enough to implement it, and, most importantly, savvy enough to identify a constituency ready for her brand of unapologetic socialist politics.

Aye, there’s the rub—or rather the nub. With an own-goal assist from the Bush Administration (“Islam means peace”), the Left quickly forged an alliance of convenience with the more respectable elements of Islamic activists in the West, in order to attack their common enemy, Western civilization. Tlaib is unabashed in her defense of “progressive” socialism while at the same time wearing her faith loudly and with a chip on her shoulder.

“We always said the Muslims are coming,” she told an audience from the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Chicago. “We’re not only everywhere in all kinds of different governments but, mashallah, we’re in the United States Congress. And it was after this president, not once, twice but three times issued a Muslim ban against our community."

So it wasn’t surprising that Tlaib immediately led the calls for the president’s impeachment and has continued her agitation. Last week, she warned she and others are preparing an impeachment resolution in the House. For what, you ask? “We cannot allow the pay-to-play to continue. We cannot allow the direct violation of the Emoluments Clause. Anybody else would already be in impeachment proceedings.”

Might as well throw in the Logan Act, spitting on the sidewalk, and picking your feet in Poughkeepsie while we’re at it. It doesn’t matter. For Tlaib as a radical, Trump is an affront to every discredited idea she holds; for her as a Muslim, it’s personal.

Although the old-folks’ home known as the Democratic “leadership” has sought to downplay the likelihood of impeachment, it’s more likely that Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) are simply playing good cop to the Omar-Tlaib axis of bad cop. Pelosi has to walk a tightrope between hanging on to her own power and accommodating the infantile demands of her instantly restive kiddie corps of radicals without losing the 2020 election in a landslide of revulsion.

Count on a sympathetic media to cover for the young turkettes:

Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota were hailed as symbols of diversity when they were sworn in last month as the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress, Ms. Tlaib in her mother’s hand-embroidered Palestinian thobe, Ms. Omar in a tradition-shattering hijab.

Four weeks later, their uncompromising views on Israel have made them perhaps the most embattled new members of the Democratic House majority. Almost daily, Republicans brashly accuse Ms. Tlaib and Ms. Omar of anti-Semitism and bigotry, hoping to make them the Democrats’ version of Representative Steve King as they try to tar the entire Democratic Party with their criticism of the Jewish state.

The tussle over Ms. Tlaib and Ms. Omar has exposed a growing generational divide within the Democratic Party, pitting an old guard of stalwart supporters of Israel against an ascendant wing of young liberals—including many young Jews—willing to accuse the Israeli government of human rights abuses and demanding movement toward a Palestinian state.

For the Democratic Party, where most Jews have long made their political home, the risks are clear . . .

That was written a month and a half ago. Today, it’s abundantly clear where Tlaib’s sympathies lie, and they’re not with the Jews. Nor are they with traditional American values, although in the Muslim tradition of taqiyya they’re cloaked in benign appeals to the usual suspects: diversity, tolerance, religious freedom, and fairness.

And then recall that in her first public statement she wants to “impeach the mofo.” That tells you all you need to know about her.

Right now, she’s the Democrats’ problem. As Henry Kissinger famously said about the Iran-Iraq War, “it’s a pity they both can’t lose.” Left unchecked and unopposed, however, soon enough she’ll be our problem. And then where are we?

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Ilhan Omar?

By Michael Walsh
https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/06/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-ilhan-omar/
March 6, 2019


Representative Ilhan Omar at a news conference in the Capitol on January 10, 2019. (Tom Williams / AP Images)

Nothing in the Constitution requires that members of Congress either be born in the United States or have at least one American parent. We’ve got plenty of foreign-born politicians, and always have; in the U.S. Senate alone, right now, Ted Cruz was born in Canada, Mazie Hirono is from Japan, and Tammy Duckworth was born in Thailand to a Thai mother and American father. The House includes Cubans, Mexicans, Indians, and Dominicans. We’ve had refugees as well, including the late Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor.

But now we have Ilhan Omar, one of the first Muslims in Congress, born in Mogadishu, Somalia, brought here as a child, and now representing Minnesota’s  5th Congressional District as a result of the 2018 midterm elections. Along with her Islamic compatriot, Rashida Tlaib (representing Detroit and Dearbornistan), and the ineffable Alexandria  Ocasio-Cortez (the Bronx by way of Long Island and Boston), the trio of female radicals has jerked the geriatric-led Democrat Party abruptly far-leftward as we approach the 2020 presidential election, tossing previous political calculations into a cocked hat.

But in Omar’s case, that’s far from the worst of it. Conservatives are accustomed to leftists hiding their true motives and feelings as they attempt to claw their way to political control over all of us, but Omar is different in that she makes no attempt to disguise her true feelings, either about America or the Jews. Anti-Western to her core, she rewards the generosity of the Americans toward the Somali Muslim community by spitting  in our faces.

As I wrote recently at PJ Media, there’s something about the Somalis that makes them different from other cultural aliens who have arrived in—or, in the Somalis’ case, been deliberately imported to—the United States. An ethnic group low on its share of geniuses but long on violence, the Minnesota Somalis have the disgraceful distinction of sending more men and boys to join foreign terrorist organizations such as al-Shabab and ISIS over the past dozen years than any other place in the country. And this, of course, is Omar’s district—why would we have any doubt that she will represent it faithfully?

Recently one of the first Somali policemen in Minnesota, Mohamed Mohamed Noor—with a name like that, what could go wrong?—was charged with murder in the 2017 shooting death of Justine Damond; he goes on trial next month, having pleaded not guilty. (Be sure to read the details of the killing at any of the links.) And now, open gang—perhaps “militia” will soon be a better word—warfare is breaking out in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in Minneapolis as the Somalis (known colloquially in the military and intelligence services as “skinnies”) recreate the same hellish conditions they fled in their East African homeland:

As for Omar, she spoke up for a group of six Somalis arrested in 2015 for trying to cross into Mexico, as part of a plan to join ISIS in Syria. As the case went to trial the following year, the then-state representative wrote a letter to the trial judge requesting “compassion”—and lighter sentencing on behalf of one of the Minnesota men, who was facing 30 years jail time.

“Such punitive measures not only lack efficacy, they inevitably create an environment in which extremism can flourish, aligning with the presupposition of terrorist recruitment,” Omar wrote. “The best deterrent to fanaticism is a system of compassion. We must alter our attitude and approach; if we truly want to affect change, we should refocus our efforts on inclusion and rehabilitation.”

And how did that plea for mercy work out? One young lad was sentenced to “rehabilitation” after being caught trying to join ISIS; six months later, at a halfway house, he was found watching a documentary about westerners fighting for ISIS. What’s bred in the bone . . .

But coddling terrorists is the least of Omar’s problems. For one thing, there’s some reason to suspect that Omar married her own brother in order to get him American citizenship—something she denies, although her marital history is, shall we say, culturally colorful. (There’s a good, if confusing, summation of it at Snopes.com, which rates the issue “unproven,” and you can find a video on the subject here.) It’s hard to fathom why she might do such a thing, since even the most dedicated open-borders activist might blanch at outright fraud; further it makes little sense for a lawbreaker to then raise her profile and run for Congress—although, in succeeding Keith Ellison, now Minnesota’s attorney general, she was bound to get elected no matter what.

For her part, Omar issued a statement during her campaign, which basically elided the issue and naturally framed herself as the real victim: “I will offer clarity and share a difficult part of my personal history that I did not consider relevant in the context of a political campaign, so that we can put these rumors to rest. Insinuations that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is my brother are absurd and offensive.”

Most troubling of all is her consistent anti-Semitism, relayed to the public via a series of tweets, some of which she later deleted. Incredibly, Omar sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and thus far Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has refused to remove her, despite requests from prominent Jewish organizations. Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said that defenestrating her “will not solve the problem of anti-Semitism” and would merely be “retribution.” Still Pelosi had planned a vote on a House resolution condemning anti-Semitism on Wednesday, but the vote was abruptly postponed after “progressives” objected to it.

And so the stage is set for a major battle. Pelosi cannot afford to alienate the Democrats’ sizable Jewish constituency, but neither can she blow off the freshmen radicals, who are pushing BDS and outright socialism:

House Democratic leaders are struggling to contain the controversy over Rep. Ilhan Omar’s comments criticizing Israel, with the caucus fighting behind closed doors over whether—and how—to respond. Tensions ran high at a caucus meeting Wednesday as some Democrats privately vented that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team had failed to adequately respond to the escalating political crisis, with too little outreach to their own rank-and-file.

[There is] widespread anxiety in the caucus over how to handle the latest bout of remarks from Omar—one of the first Muslim women to serve in Congress—after she suggested that pro-Israel advocates had “allegiance” to Israel. The remarks offended multiple top Democrats, who said it was assuming painful, decades-old stereotypes that Jews had “dual loyalties.”

Multiple Jewish lawmakers, including Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) stood up in the caucus meeting to explain why Omar’s latest remarks were so offensive and potentially dangerous. But other Democrats—including a Jewish lawmaker—stood up to defend their colleague and say they didn’t see the remarks as deeply offensive.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus had spoken out loudly against a measure aimed at Omar’s comments at a time when Omar herself has been the target of anti-Muslim attacks . . .  Omar did not speak in the meeting, multiple sources said, although she was spotted chatting with some Democrats one-on-one and received hugs from others.

Isn’t that sweet? The Democrats and their “progressive” media allies are so obsessed with the “historic” nature of Omar’s membership in the American congress that they can’t see the danger she poses. By background, religion, and upbringing she is a dedicated enemy of the United States, the camel’s nose under the tent of what the Left likes to call “our democracy.” As such, she’s a useful tool, protected by her faith and her ethnic origins; any criticism of her immediately triggers accusations of racism and “hate.” Indeed, the resolution against anti-Semitism is now being rewritten to include denunciations of other forms of “hate speech.”

It’s a nasty nettle to grasp, although it’s impossible not to enjoy Pelosi’s discomfiture. In order to hang on to her gavel—because you just know the Republicans are going to “pounce” on this—Pelosi has to reduce the public profiles of the radicals lest the rest of America catch on to what they’re up to. Once San Fran Nan was the public face of the Democrats; now, among others, it’s Ilhan Omar, wearing a hijab.

Upon her arrival in Congress, Omar demanded—and got—a change in a 181-year House rule forbidding head coverings on the House floor. If you think that’s the last change she wants to make, you’d better think again. Pelosi should strip her of her committee assignments and, if she continues these antics, the House should expel her. It’s the right thing to do.

Trump Knows When to Fold ‘Em

By Michael Walsh
https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/01/trump-knows-when-to-fold-em/
March 1, 2019

President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference after he failed to strike a deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 28, 2019.

 Evan Vucci/AP

In the course of a high-stakes negotiation, the player who walks away from the table is the one with the least to lose. Ronald Reagan did it to Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik in 1986, and Donald Trump did it to Kim Jong-un this week in Vietnam. Good for the president.

A lot of people have brought up Reykjavik; I discussed the similarities on the Hugh Hewitt radio show with guest host Kurt Schlichter on Thursday. Reagan met Gorbachev in Iceland in the fall of 1986 and the two men were approaching an agreement that might have included the abolition of all nuclear weapons. But the Soviet premier wanted the Americans to drop the Strategic Defense Initiative, colloquially known as “Star Wars.” That was a bridge too far for Reagan, who abandoned the talks and went home.

Naturally, the hostile press was appalled—the abolition of all nukes! And this cowboy won’t give up a pet program that probably won’t work anyway! Warmonger! Reagan was widely viewed at the time as an “amiable dunce” who didn’t understand the first thing about the complexities of international diplomacy; why, the doddering old fool actually thought “We win, they lose” was a strategy.

As I wrote in my most recent book, The Fiery Angel:

Quick: would you rather read a think-tank white paper from around the time of the Reagan-Gorbachev Reykjavik summit in 1986, assuring the Boston-Washington corridor that the Soviet Union would remain the only other superpower indefinitely, and that its stability was vital to the balance of power, or watch “Rocky IV,” released in 1985? Which better predicted the events of November 1989?

Consider, for example, this review of Strobe Talbott’s 1984 book on arms control, “Deadly Gambits.” Talbott, then a writer for Time Magazine—he later left to join the Clinton administration as Deputy Secretary of State, and parlayed that into becoming president of the Brookings Institution—undertook in a widely unread book to contrast the arms-control policies of the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations, to the latter’s detriment, of course. This concluding passage from the contemporaneous New York Times review provides a flavor:

Mr. Talbott, who is diplomatic correspondent at Time, had previously written “Endgame: The Inside Story of SALT II.” What is striking about the two books is that ‘‘Endgame’’ was about how President Carter and his top aides—Zbigniew Brzezinski, Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, and Defense Secretary Harold Brown—were directly in charge of the arms control process. “Deadly Gambits” shows how President Reagan, Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Mr. Weinberger, and the three different national security advisers, had little to do with making arms control policy because they lacked the intellectual tools or interest in the subject.

He is particularly mocking of Mr. Reagan, who, Mr. Talbott writes, liked to give speeches on arms control, “but behind the scenes, where decisions were made and policy was set, he was to remain a detached, sometimes befuddled character.” Mr. Talbott says that even though Mr. Reagan presided at 16 meetings of the National Security Council on strategic arms talks, “there was ample evidence, during those meetings and on other occasions as well, that he frequently did not understand basic aspects of the nuclear weapons issue and of policies being promulgated in his name.” (Emphasis mine.)

A year later, the Russians were back at the bargaining table, this time in Washington, the result of which was the INF treaty, which regulated intermediate-range missiles (and which Trump recently scuttled, complaining that the Russians had long been violating the terms of the agreement). Two years after the signing, the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed and disappeared in 1991.

We won, they lost. And the media fell utterly silent.

The point is that Reagan’s refusal to give up the SDI was instrumental in helping topple the USSR of late, unlamented memory. Because, for all the scoffing in the American media about it at the time, it plainly terrified the Russians, and had been doing so for several years. In February 1985, I heard East German party chief Erich Honecker denounce it vociferously in an outdoor speech before the re-opening of the Semper Opera House in Dresden, which had been destroyed by the Allied bombing raids 40 years earlier. Honecker did nothing without the Kremlin’s approval, so you knew it was on their minds.

Signs of the imminent Russian collapse were everywhere. In April 1986, I was in Leningrad when Chernobyl—Soviet technology at its finest—blew up; I didn’t find out about it until a few days after I had left the country because the Russians blacked out the news from their own people. But my first visit to Russia taught me a lot about countries in decline: everyone was a criminal. Russian women freelanced as prostitutes, while the men could be bribed easily (and stay bought), and everybody trafficked in contraband to make extra money on the side. The unofficial unit of exchange was not the worthless ruble, but a pack of Marlboro cigarettes.

When your women are selling themselves and your men are offering boosted tins of Beluga from the trunks of their cars, you know your country is in trouble.

Most of the media missed that, of course, preferring to stick to the eastern establishment narrative that the Soviet Union was the other superpower, with military parity with the United States and superior socialist domestic benefits—hey, they had free healthcare, right? And yet it was gone in the blink of an eye.

Reagan sensed it; Gorbachev knew it. The fragility of the system, brought on by the moral evil at its core, could be rouged and mascaraed but underneath the makeup still was a diseased trollop on her way to becoming the cheapest whore in town. When Reagan walked, the Russians panicked. And in that moment, the Cold War was won.

Trump’s job is actually easier: to bring a negotiated end to the Korean War, which has been in limbo since 1953, when hostilities ceased and an armistice was signed. Ever since, North and South Korea have faced off over a heavily armed border, and while the south has prospered and grown rich, the north is a Stalinist basket case ruled by a family of Communist thugs. It won’t last because it can’t last: Kim’s embarrassment at the hands of the American president will only make him more eager for another summit. At the same time, though, it weakens him in the eyes of his countrymen, thus making him even more vulnerable to a revolution when the times comes, which it will.

So Kim, a dead man walking now, gets back in his armored train while Trump flies back to freedom aboard Air Force One, knowing that it’s just a matter of time before the phone rings again. And this time, his terms for what in effect will be North Korea’s final surrender will be even tougher than the ones he offered now.

You've Come a Long Way, Baby — or Have You?

BY MICHAEL WALSH
https://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/youve-come-a-long-way-baby-or-have-you/
February 25, 2019

The Navy destroyer USS Fitzgerald, which was involved in an early Saturday collision with a merchant ship, is seen at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, Sunday, June 17, 2017.

TYLER HLAVAC/STARS AND STRIPES

Given the Leftist drive to annihilate the differences (and there are many) between the sexes, this was inevitable. But what's amusing about it is the latest blow for "equality" came not from the harpies and the Furies but from a group of men who just might be doing a signal service for the women of America:

Even though America hasn’t had a military draft since 1973, men — but not women — are required to register with the Selective Service. A federal judge Friday said that must change — calling the system unconstitutional but not requiring women 18-25 to register. 

U.S. District Judge Gray H. Miller in Houston agreed with the San Diego-based National Coalition for Men and granted its request for summary judgment in a class action suit. “The male-only registration requirement of the Military Selective Service Act, 50 U.S.C. § 3802(a), violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” says Miller’s “final judgment.” 

“Women are now allowed in combat, so this decision is long overdue,” said Marc Angelucci, attorney for NCFM. “After decades of sex discrimination against men in the Selective Service, the courts have finally found it unconstitutional to force only men to register.”

What's interesting about this decision is that it was decided on "discrimination" grounds. For decades, even a century, American women have pushed to be allowed within formerly male-only precincts: at the ballot box, in the Yankees' locker room, in sex-restricted clubs and even in the Boy Scouts. They haven't made it into the NFL, the NBA or Major League Baseball just yet, but no doubt one of these teams is just itching to do something "historic" and break the gender line.

They've been allowed into the Navy, into combat roles in the Army and, alas, even the Marine Corps. Naturally, physical standards have had to be effectively lowered, and female officers promoted beyond their physical and emotional capacities. Many female sailors return home pregnant, but who cares? The only thing worth caring about these days is "equality" -- a slogan one might have thought died on the guillotine along with Robespierre during the French Revolution, but here we are.

In a long and harrowingly detailed takeout on the wreck of the USS Fitzgerald, which was T-boned by a giant cargo ship off the coast of Japan in 2017, ProPublica reports:

Sarah Coppock, lieutenant junior grade, was the officer of the deck, responsible for the safety and navigation of the ship while [Captain] Benson slept.

Sixteen minutes after the collision, at 1:46 a.m., Benson staggered onto the bridge. Adrenaline, fear and anger shot through him. The ship was listing, wheeling in the dark uncontrolled. The electricity was out. The screens were off. Only emergency lanterns and moonlight illuminated the bridge. Benson found the officer who had been in charge of the ship sobbing. “Captain, I fucked up,” she told him.

It turns out that the ship was largely under the control of a group of young female officers at the time of the collision, which took place in the middle of the night in one of the busiest waterways in the Orient.

At 1:25 a.m., the Fitzgerald was 6,000 yards from the Crystal, 5,000 yards from the Wan Hai 266 and on a collision course with the Maersk Evora, approaching from 14,000 yards away. There was still time for the highly maneuverable Fitzgerald to get out of the way. 

But Coppock disobeyed Benson’s standing orders. Rather than call Benson for help, she decided to continue on her own. Coppock didn’t call down to the combat room to ask for help, either. “I decided to try and handle it,” she said. At around 1:30 a.m., time had run out.... 

To avoid the Crystal, Coppock decided to order a hard turn to the right, the standard action for an evasive maneuver under international navigation rules. She shouted the command to [Ensign Francis] Womack to pass on to the helmsman. But Womack did not immediately understand her order. After Womack hesitated, Coppock decided that she was not going to clear the Crystal by going toward the right. Such a turn would put her on a possible collision with the Wan Hai 266.

“Oh shit, I’m so fucked! I’m so fucked!" she screamed.

Still, this very junior officer could have saved the ship. But she panicked:

Coppock could have ordered the Fitzgerald into reverse; there was still time to stop... Instead, Coppock ordered a move that disregarded the very basics of her training.  She commanded the helmsman to gun the destroyer’s powerful engines to full speed and duck in front of the Crystal by heading left. “All ahead flank,” she ordered. “Hard left rudder.” 

Helmsman-in-training Simona Nelson had taken the wheel of a destroyer at sea for the first time in her life 25 minutes earlier. Nelson froze, unsure of how to respond. Petty Officer 1st Class Samuel Williams noticed Nelson struggling. He took control of the helm and did as Coppock ordered: He pushed the throttle to full and turned the rudder hard left. The ship’s engines revved to full power. 

The move put the Fitzgerald directly into the path of the oncoming Crystal. Coppock did not sound the collision alarm to warn sailors of the impending risk. “I just got so wrapped up in trying to do anything that I had to just drop the ball on everything else that I needed to do,” she said.

Seven male sailors died in the wreck. The captain was relieved of command and faces serious charges. Coppock is still in the Navy.

To the riposte that a man, especially another Lt. j.g., might not have done any better, the only proper response is that a young woman should not have been in charge of a Navy destroyer in the first place. But she was, with fatal results. What's worse, the Navy under Clinton, Bush, and Obama embarked on a conscious policy to promote female officers as quickly as possible in order to satisfy the lust on the Left for weakening the military in the name of "progress" and "equality." Conservatives, unable to effectively stand on the side of history and tradition and articulate a moral defense against the coarsening of women as a matter of national policy, instead just rolled over.

The result has been a victory for "inclusiveness" in warfighting -- odd that no one ever asks why, like "diversity," that should be a factor -- at the expense of standards, unit cohesion, effectiveness, and readiness. The argument is made that differences in physical strength, bellicosity, and stamina are less important than they once were. It is impossible to imagine female centurions in the Roman army, or women in the trenches during World War I. On the battlefield, every woman sees in her enemy a symbolic son; every man sees an actual son of a bitch.

Today's remote-controlled drones and satellites mean that some battles take place in cyberspace, or on a computer screen. The vast majority of them, however, are in the air, on the ground, or on the high seas, at the tip of the spear. And in this, we are no different than the Greek hoplites, the legions, the Army of the Potomac, or Patton's Third Army. We may never again witness the clash of giant hosts on the field of battle, as there have been since Alexander, but there is no way to know that. Should that day come, is an army of women likely to defeat and overwhelm an army of men? When your women are forced into hand-to-hand fighting in the streets, and slaughtered like men, you've lost the war.

And yet, what the National Coalition of Men has done is a very good thing, because it's forced us to take a good long gander at the law of at least semi-intended consequences. Forcing the young women of America to register for the draft is now inevitable; the only thing that had prevented it was their exclusion from combat, in part for physical reasons but in larger part for moral and cultural reasons: women, as the bearers of future generations, needed to be protected and sheltered from the violence of war. It was no accident that a lost battle or war would result in widespread rapine, as a revenge and a humiliation upon an enemy literally not man enough to prevent it. Just ask the Sabines.

Jacques Stella, The Rape of the Sabines (Princeton University Art Museum)

What started the push for women in the military and then later (something they assured us would never happen) in combat was the profoundly anti-female "feminist" notion that the Platonic Form of a woman is a man: a gorgeous 120-pound kick-ass lethal weapon that can take out a score of hombres with practically her bare hands, and then look great that evening in a cocktail dress, high heels, and a diamond choker. Nobody really believes in such a creature, of course, but such is the power of the Narrative (what ought to be) over human nature (what really is) that Hollywood has swallowed the fantasy whole; then again, fantasy is Hollywood's stock-in-trade.

The "feminist" war is not with men, but with God. And yet we will go on indulging this fantasy until it becomes impossible to maintain, in which case it will quickly become a luxury we can no longer afford. As long as we have women playing at being soldiers while the U.S. plays at being at war in such places as Afghanistan (17 years and counting), not wishing to lose but not wishing to win, either. Grant, Sherman, or Patton would have disposed of our famously cowardly foes in the Middle East in a few horrifically punitive yet dispositive months with nary a woman at arms among them. This is not to denigrate the fighting abilities of our troops, nor their courage, commitment, or patriotism. No doubt some women have fought valiantly, and yes, the Israeli girls do their part; still, war is not a woman's game, and never has been.

In Virgil's Aeneid, there appears the lovely and brave warrior, Camilla. As I wrote in my most recent book, The Fiery Angel, Camilla takes up arms against the invading Trojans. "What an entrance she makes, and how powerfully the poet draws her, in some of the most beautiful and descriptive verses in any literature. In an epic that features the lives and deaths of countless warriors, Camilla stands out for her beauty, her bravery – and her femininity. Leading a cohort of Amazons, she is, in fact, the original wonder woman."

Ah, but the poet's famous opening incantation goes, Arma virumque cano. "I sing of the arms and the man." Not the woman.

Last, from the Volscians fair Camilla came, 

And led her warlike troops, a warrior dame; 

Unbred to spinning, in the loom unskill’d, 

She chose the nobler Pallas of the field. 

Mix’d with the first, the fierce virago fought, 

Sustain’d the toils of arms, the danger sought, 

Outstripp’d the winds in speed upon the plain, 

Flew o’er the fields, nor hurt the bearded grain: 

She swept the seas, and, as she skimm’d along, 

Her flying feet unbath’d on billows hung, 

Men, boys, and women, stupid with surprise, 

Where’er she passes, fix their wond’ring eyes: 

Longing they look, and, gaping at the sight, 

Devour her o’er and o’er with vast delight; 

Her purple habit sits with such a grace 

On her smooth shoulders, and so suits her face; 

Her head with ringlets of her hair is crown’d, 

And in a golden caul the curls are bound. 

She shakes her myrtle jav’lin; and, behind, 

Her Lycian quiver dances in the wind.

Alas, Camilla is soon killed in battle; the Trojans are bound to win the day and found the Eternal City of Rome, and there's nothing a girl can do to stop them. She is also... entirely mythological.

Maybe, baby, you haven't come such a long way after all.