Ignatius: Fighters in Syria Cheer Mention of Trump’s Name

"More seriously, the big attacks that have taken place around Raqqa, one in particular, a surprise landing by helicopter, I was told, by the top U.S. commanders, would not have taken place if it hadn't been for President Trump's decision to delegate military authorities down to the level of command," Ignatius said. "Under Obama, that would have taken a couple weeks of White House meetings, and they still wouldn't have made up their mind."

Free Beacon

"Washington Post columnist David Ignatius said Monday that during his travels in Syria, rebel fighters there cheered any mention of President Donald Trump's name.

"Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Ignatius prefaced his comments by warning that he would say something "sympathetic to Trump." It was only the second airing of the show since Trump touched off a firestorm with his tweets mocking Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

" 'As I traveled across Syria meeting with Syrian fighters who were trying to take down the regime of Bashar al-Assad, every time the name President Trump was mentioned, there were cheers from the audience," he said in a clip flagged by Legal Insurrection.

"One Syrian Kurdish commander, Ignatius said, colorfully remarked Trump had the equivalent of what would be called "cajones" in Spanish. Ignatius said Trump's looser approach allowed commanders on the ground to more expeditiously carry out operations." . . .

Max Boot: "We Didn’t Kick Britain’s Ass to Be This Kind of Country"

Foreign Policy  "On July 4, 1776, church bells rang out across Philadelphia. The Continental Congress had approved a Declaration of Independence to inform the world that the goal of the colonial revolt, which had begun more than a year earlier, was not mere autonomy within the British Empire. Rather, the rebels were seeking the creation of an independent republic the likes of which the world had never seen. Their demands were couched in the then-novel language of natural rights; “all men are created equal,” they wrote, and “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The authors of this revolutionary text warned all governments to respect these rights or else face the consequences: “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.”

"This was a radical stance to take in a world still dominated by kings who claimed to rule by divine will, and it would have profound implications for the new republic’s foreign policy. Unlike their cynical, Old World counterparts, American statesmen could never be content with a realpolitik foreign policy based on Thucydides’s admonition that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” The Founding Fathers, writes Robert Kagan in his history of American foreign policy, Dangerous Nation, had “unwittingly invented a new foreign policy founded upon the universalist ideology that the Revolution spawned.” As Thomas Jefferson said, “We are pointing out the way to struggling nations who wish, like us, to emerge from their tyrannies.”

"Admittedly, America’s devotion to its ideals has always been incomplete and imperfect; in its early years it tolerated slavery and in more recent times it has done deals with dictators. Nor have our ideals always translated into foreign policy success; sometimes, as in Vietnam or Iraq, they have led us astray. But . . .

U.S. ready to let Russia decide Syria

The Daily Caller

"Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says the U.S. is prepared to allow Russia to take the lead in negotiations over the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad so that Washington can focus on eradicating ISIS from its strongholds in Syria.

"Tillerson told U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres during a private Department of State meeting Wednesday that the U.S. will yield to Russia on questions about Assad’s future, and that the Trump administration’s priority remains defeating ISIS, three diplomatic sources familiar with the exchange told Foreign Policy Monday.

"The secretary of state also reportedly assured Guterres that recent U.S military action in Syria is not part of a larger policy of regime change. Washington’s goals in Syria are limited to deterring future chemical weapons attacks by Syrian government forces and protecting U.S.-backed elements fighting ISIS, reports Foreign Policy. " . . .

Your place or mine? Texas liberals and California conservatives swap states

UK Guardian

"Paul Chabot is a native Californian who stood for Congress last year as a Republican, in a district near Los Angeles. After his defeat, he decided the only option was to move to Texas.

'A good friend in the White House': how Texas became Trump's frontline

 

Read more

“California’s become a lost cause,” he said. “I was born and raised there when it was a Republican state. Ronald Reagan was from there, Nixon was from there, we had great schools back in the 70s and 80s, low crime, great paying jobs. Now it’s a 180, it’s a complete opposite of that.

“I lost to a very liberal Democrat that the people elected and I came to the conclusion that you can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves. That really was the end of it for us in California. We realised then that the majority of the people around us no longer shared the same values that my wife and I believe in.”

Chabot, his wife Brenda and their four young children relocated to Collin County, which covers some of the most affluent and manicured suburbs of Dallas and where a four-bed home can be yours for under $350,000. And all 38 elected officials, from the sheriff to the district attorney to the tax assessor-collector, are Republicans.

“In California we always jokingly said, ‘If this state goes to hell we’ll end up moving to Texas.’ And a lot of people say it and some people actually do it,” Chabot said." . . .

Ever read about Harry Truman's opinion of the press?

My dad couldn't stand the man and he was the topic of much dinner table conversation. Naturally as a grade-schooler with a "skull full of mush", I couldn't stand the man either because of what I heard at home. TD

Harry Truman once compared the press to ‘prostitutes’  . . . "Truman’s letter – in which he uses the word “penis” – is expected to get $150,000."

"Harry S. Truman and the News Media; Contentious Relations, Belated Respect"  . . . "Based upon extensive research in the papers of President Harry S. Truman and in several journalistic collections, Harry S. Truman and the News Media recounts the story of a once unpopular chief executive who overcame the censure of the news media to ultimately win both the public's and the press's affirmation of his personal and presidential greatness.
. . . 

"President Truman's advocacy of a liberal Fair Deal for all Americans and a prudent and visible role for the nation in world affairs drew fire from the anti-administration news media, particularly the publishing empire of William Randolph Hearst, the McCormick-Patterson newspapers, the Scripps-Howard chain, and the Time-Life newsmagazines of Henry R. Luce. Despite press opposition and the almost universal prediction of defeat in the 1948 election, Truman was victorious in the greatest miscalled presidential election in journalistic history.

"During his full term, Truman's relations with the news media became contentious over such matters as national security in the Cold War, the conduct of the Korean War, and the continuing charges of communism and corruption in the administration. Although Truman's career in politics was based on honesty and the welfare of the people, his early political alliance with Thomas Pendergast, Kansas City's notorious political boss, provided the opportunity for a portion of the press to charge Truman with subservience to Pendergast's own agenda of corrupt government." . . .

Never trust a tyrant’s tale

"As I read and listened to the details of the show trial, I was reminded of the fact that a bizarre number of progressive commentators seem to believe Warmbier had it coming, and that his “white privilege” led him to think he could steal."

Lahav Harkov

"Thirty-three years ago, Soviet dissident Yuli Edelstein was arrested by the KGB and sent to the gulag for committing the “crime” of being a religious Jew and a Hebrew teacher. Last week, Edlestein, now the speaker of the Israeli Knesset, addressed the Russian parliament in Hebrew.

"It was a memorable reminder of the free world’s victory over Communism. And its timing was apt. Edelstein took the Israeli press on a brief tour of his life as a refusenik, and eventually we found ourselves in the courtroom in which Edelstein was convicted and sentenced.

"I couldn’t help but notice the important lessons Edelstein’s story holds for those trying to make sense of another totalitarian prisoner whose fate was much more tragic: Otto Warmbier, the American man sentenced in North Korea in 2016 to 15 years of hard labor under the pretense that he stole a poster. He was released while in a coma last month, and died days after reaching the United States.

"And for some reason, many commenting on the case are taking at face value the North Korean government’s version of events. Prisoners of totalitarian regimes, like Yuli Edelstein, could show them the folly of such credulity." . . .