That’s what Alexander Zakharchenko, a leader of the rebels in Donetsk Oblast of Ukraine, is quoted as saying in Christian Neef’s article of that name in Spiegel Online International.
Fair enough. Then you and your rebels should leave Ukraine and move to Russia, which you think is a better nation than Ukraine, anyway. After all, you’re in Ukraine illegally, now.
Several Arab states, members of the Gulf Security Council, are looking for
major new weapons systems and security guarantees from the White House in exchange for backing a nuclear agreement with Iran, according to US and Arab officials.
There are a lot of valid arguments on both sides of that question in The Wall Street Journal article at the link (RTWT), but one thing jumps out at me, and it wasn’t addressed in the article.
Suppose the GSC nations get those security guarantees and promises of delivery of those weapons systems. On what basis do they think this administration would deliver on those commitments?
This administration pulled the rug out from under Poland and Czech Republic on missile defense systems. This administration pulled the rug out from under Ukraine, refusing to send them the equipment they need to defend themselves. This administration refused to take meaningful action against the Assad régime in Syria after painting a bright red line around the use of chemical weapons. This administration pulled the rug out from under Israel in the PA’s terror war against Israel just last summer. This administration currently is pulling the rug out from under Israel in agreeing to a framework that lets Iran obtain nuclear weapons.
A commitment to those Arab nations regarding security and weapons would be just another line this administration would shy away from in the moment of truth.
Or something. President Barack Obama, through his Press Secretary Josh Earnest, says that helping with a ransom payment isn’t paying ransom.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the FBI helped the family of Warren Weinstein make a ransom payment to his al-Qaeda captors by vetting a Pakistani middleman who helped deliver the money.
Here’s Obama, through Earnest:
Speaking generally, helping with a ransom payment…is not tantamount to paying a ransom….
Yeah. And my grandson isn’t pulling the cat’s tail; he’s just holding on. The cat is doing the pulling.
On the matter of the Clinton Foundation’s need to refile some past tax reporting records because others had discovered that the Foundation had underreported its income, the Foundation’s Acting CEO Maura Pally offered this:
We made mistakes, as many organizations of our size do, but we are acting quickly to remedy them. And [we] have taken steps to ensure they don’t happen in the future.
Fair enough. Based solely on this instance of underreporting, it’s difficult to lay the error off to corruption or incompetence, even though the erroneous underreporting is a massive error, and the underreported donations occurred while Hillary Clinton was sitting in the Secretary of State’s chair.
But then Pally added this:
the group has already announced that it will accept funding from only a “handful of governments….”
Thus, in addition to giving the appearance, if as yet undemonstrated fact, that the Secretary of State’s influence was…available…Clinton, through Pally, is giving the impression that the President’s chair will be similarly available to selected foreign governments, should she be elected.
The woman is either oblivious, and so incompetent, or she’s a corrupt politician, and so unfit.
Hmm….
That’s what Maximilian Popp, over at Spiegel Online International, thinks. The caption of the lead image is this:
The mass deaths of refugees like those seen this weekend on the European Union’s external borders is not a consequence of politicians looking away. We are in fact causing the problem with our Fortress Europe policies.
The capsizing of a refugee boat with the loss of the lives of hundreds was not caused by European policies, whether national or European. Neither was the murder of seven Christians on another refugee boat by their Muslim fellow refugees. Those were caused by a boat captain’s error and by Muslim murderers.
Sure, to some extent, incidents like those beg the question. But Popp is presupposing the wrong problem.
The mass deaths of refugees at Europe’s external borders are no accidents—they are the direct result of European Union policies.
Why are these refugees flooding the Mediterranean, the land bridges into Europe, or flooding the US’ southern border? They think there’s a much better life to be had in Europe and in the US. It’s as simple as that. EU policies have nothing to do with that, except to the extent that EU policies create an economic, political, and social environment that makes it possible for a man to realize his and his family’s full potential, instead of being held back by the barbarism of the environments these folks are fleeing.
A nation must first exist, and then it must first protect its own people, must first secure its own people’s prosperity. It must protect its own borders. Only when a nation has secured itself can it have any means of helping refugees. If borders aren’t protected, and protected first, nations won’t exist, and so there will be no entity extant with the capacity to help refugees. Indeed, rather tautologically, there will be no refugees, only people roaming and searching. And no place for anyone to search for other than “not here.”
No nation has an obligation to let anyone in who demands it, or even who simply comes across its border, no more than does a homeowner have an obligation to allow anyone in through the door, or window, who wants it or succeeds in the penetration. Allowing such a thing would directly destroy the house, and the nation.
A nation, and the men who are that nation, have a Judeo-Christian obligation to help those less fortunate—refugees here—certainly. But that help is best done, not by encouraging the flood of refugees, but by helping them at their source: correcting the barbarism in their originating environment, helping the people of those nations develop—and implement—the policies that will foster an economic, political, and social environment that will allow them to prosper where they are.
Until that’s done, the flood of refugees will only continue, the prosperity of their target nations will be drained away, and there will be no means of helping them anywhere. After that’s done, even after a good start has been made, there still will be a flow of refugees, but it will a trickle easily managed by the receiving nations. And that trickle will have far fewer incidents of boat captain error or of refugee on refugee murder.