Category Archives: Current Events

A Strong Nation

Posted on July 3, 2014 | 19 comments

The Jewish people, too familiar with mourning the murder of our innocents, has again been plunged into national grief over the unsurprising discovery that the three teenagers kidnapped more than two weeks ago were murdered in cold blood shortly after they were seized. Once again, faithful practitioners of the “religion of peace” have trampled on the flower of Jewish youth and, as has happened across the globe, become celebrities within their large circle of co-religionists. As PM Netanyahu said today at the funeral, “we sanctify life while they sanctify death.” If there are Muslims with a conscience and sense of decency, their voices are drowned out – or perhaps they too have been smothered – by the evil wind that blows through their faith.

Reactions, for the most part, have been predictable. President Obama, whose name apparently begins not with an “O” but with a zero, waited weeks to react and then offered a generic denunciation even though one of the murdered youth was an American citizen. Other administration entities decried the “cycle of violence” and pleaded for “restraint on both sides,” as if there is some moral equivalence between the murderer and the victim, or between the murderer and the victim who wishes to defend himself against future homicides. That moral obscenity stains the American government, and those Europeans who embrace that notion as well. The people of Israel are truly a “nation that dwells alone.”

We are also an inherently decent people that has never fully developed the tools to deal with absolute evil. And so as Israel’s government struggles for a response, it has unfortunately fallen into one of its bad habits – that of distinguishing between the “good enemies” and the “bad enemies.” Hamas serves the desirable purpose of being the bogeyman of choice, a convenient (and deserved) target. But Hamas is largely supported by a society. Hamas is not operating in defiance of their national consensus but in furtherance of it. The Palestinian Authority, a terrorist entity propped up by Israel so – for unclear reasons – there should be a “partner” with whom to negotiate Israel’s gradual surrender, or at least maintain the illusion that there is a diplomatic solution, is as guilty as Hamas. After all, it is the PA that has tried to rehabilitate Hamas by bringing them into the government through their unity agreement. It is the PA that pays terrorists and their families a salary (partly with American money) which rewards, encourages and incentivizes the murder of innocents. The Arabs who dwell in the land of Israel are a pathologically sick society in which mothers rejoice over the homicidal and suicidal madness of their children. It is not human.

Conversely, the faith of the people of Israel has been profoundly moving. The grieving families are symbols, because Jews rightly sense it could have been anyone. The three boys – Eyal Yifrah, Gil-ad Sha’er and Naftali Fraenkel hy”d– are everyone’s sons, a point underscored by their burial together in the city of Modiin which is roughly equidistant from their three homes. Although the entire nation mourns, we can’t escape the fact that the three precious families bear the bulk of the grief and the loss affects them the most. And yet, their grace under pressure has been consistent, and their messages affecting and pointed. Uri Yifrach, father of the slain Eyal, eulogized his son by saying that “We cry not because we are afraid but because we are human. We have hearts of flesh. We have love and love will triumph.”

And their faith, their strength, has been astonishing and inspirational, even through the pain. Few will forget Rachel Fraenkel’s message sent especially to young people that “G-d is not our employee.” We can pray, make requests, and storm the heavens but G-d has His own calculations to which we are not privy. It is especially heartrending to realize that all the prayers for their safe return occurred after they were already murdered. Many have understandably questioned G-d’s role and justice. Perhaps we should first look closer to home.

G-d’s Torah is quite clear that hostile elements must be removed from the land of Israel, or “they will be pins in your eyes and a thorn in your side” (Bamidbar 33:55). G-d’s Torah is quite clear that murderers are to be executed, so that there is atonement for the spilled blood and atonement for the land in which the blood was shed (ibid 35:33-34). We are admonished several times “to burn the evil from your midst.”

When the government of Israel serially negotiates with terrorists, gives terrorists a territorial stronghold in the land of Israel, provides terrorists with weapons, arrests terrorists and then coddles them in prisons with color TVs and advanced academic study, supplies a terrorist society with its water and electricity, captures terrorists and then releases them back into a society which welcomes them like heroes, and makes terrorism a worthwhile, even lucrative, career choice, then perhaps the problem is not G-d but man, and not just any man but those men and women who have propounded and implemented such policies, and of course never been held accountable for them.

That the Jewish people unify in times of tragedy is as welcome as it is typical, as typical as are the calls that such unity should carry over when the immediacy of the tragedy fades. We can hope, but as always, this unity also won’t carry over. People’s political positions are usually hardened by tragedy rather than transformed by it. The monstrous evil of our enemies confirms our world view, whatever it is. The kidnapping and murder by Arabs (never caught, by the way) of two other teenagers, Koby Mandell and Yosef Ish-ran in May 2001, changed no minds. The televised and gruesome lynching of two Israeli soldiers in Shchem in October 2000 shocked and horrified Israelis but ultimately changed no minds. (One of the lynchers was released in the Shalit exchange.) There are many other such incidents, too macabre to mention. I fear it will be the same here and I have no reason to assume it will not be the same.

Those who see no use for negotiations and no hope for peace are justly bolstered by the recognition that Jews are surrounded by a barbarian society that has spawned such beasts with two legs that murder children and then celebrate their accomplishments. On the other hand, peaceniks are even more emboldened to pronounce elements of that evil entity – the “good enemies” – as true partners for peace and rush even more headlong into oblivion. After all, nothing can stop a “process;” it just goes on and on.

Yet, two events give me hope that something has changed and can make a profound imprint on Israeli society. For all our flaws, it turned out that the default position of Jews is faith and prayer, no matter how estranged from tradition some people seem on the surface. It was natural, and moving, to see secular Israelis don kippot, pray in public, recite tehillim and join all of Israel in beseeching G-d’s compassion. They may not pray tomorrow but they will surely remember that during a crisis they, like all Jews, reached out to G-d in prayer. They will remember that this heinous act served as a catalyst to reinforce their Jewish identity, not just their Israeli one. That can only have an ennobling effect, even if we soon return to the political shenanigans of old.

And, even if we didn’t need the reminder, it was rewarding to feel (here and in Israel) the overpowering sense of family that is the Jewish people. We all hoped and prayed together, as we all mourn and grieve together. Everyone in whom a Jewish heart beats feels the loss intensely. In the rest of the world people are preoccupied with soccer and in the United States with Obama’s endless scandals and missteps. All of that pales before the Jewish people – the family of Yaakov – coming together, overcome by the brutal and senseless murders of three of our children.

It was moving to see Yair Lapid state at one funeral yesterday that “behold I accept upon myself the positive commandment of ‘And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Notwithstanding that we all accepted that commandment (and 612 others) at Sinai some time ago, it was poignant. Whether or not it carries over, and perhaps it will, it perfectly captured the spirit of the moment that gripped an entire nation, one family.

The day of reckoning is to come. Terror cannot be defeated because it is rooted in a depraved ideology that will endure, but it can be deterred by inflicting such pain on their society that the murderers are restrained by their own population, admittedly a tough call in a world that glorifies suicide bombing. But terrorist prisoners can serve their terms under harsh conditions; hunger strikers can be allowed to die, thereby purifying some of the world’s air; their leadership can be terminated, as can their successors; disputed land can be annexed, new settlements can be built and negotiations can cease, for a generation or two; riots can be suppressed, forcefully, the world’s outrage ignored; the IDF’s rules of engagement can be relaxed; each rocket attack (the recent upsurge is Hamas’ attempt to deter Israel from retaliating for the murders) can be responded to with proportionately overwhelming force. Their atrocious society can be broken, such that those who aspire to a normal life for their children will want to leave.

The enemy will use every means available – including that old standby, the blood libel – in order to lessen the impact of the moment, in order that our memories should fade. We cannot let that happen, but we must rather crush evil even as we fill the world with good.

As the three boys take their place among all the holy martyrs of Jewish history, we all pray that G-d should grant strength and comfort to the families, and to His people, enable us to retain our goodness even in the fight against Israel, and send His righteous Moshiach to redeem His turbulent world. And soon.

19 Comments

Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Israel, Machshava/Jewish Thought

A Teen’s Lament

Posted on June 27, 2014 | 17 comments

This essay, written by a teenage girl and now several years old, came to my attention recently. It is a window into a certain part of our world, but a darkly-tinted, grotesquely-distorted window. Here are relevant excerpts:

“The service ends and one of the boys rises and begins to dole out aliyot for the boys to read next week: “Who will be here next week?” he asks. (I will.) “Who can layn?” (I can.) “Who wants shlishi (the third aliyah)?” (I do.) “OK, great, we’re done. Who wants to say Kiddush?” (Me.) None of these silent cries for religious participation are ever heard, of course, and kiddush is served without anyone wondering why the ratio for guys to girls is almost three to one.

What I don’t understand — it really does baffle me — is how we call ourselves Modern Orthodox. This patriarchal design we call a religious experience is not reflective of modern society; it’s as anachronistic as possible. The few allowances—the girls’ dvar Torah and the prayer for the State of Israel—take some of the sting out of the experience of invisibility, yet I still find myself perpetually irked. The caging restrictions are conducive to the small number girls present — why come when you mean nothing to the service? …….

I know in my case certainly, and in the cases of many of my female peers, that this is an age where we will either fall into religion — or out. Thus I really don’t know how we can call ourselves Modern Orthodox and let every teenage girl grow up with no interest or opportunity and condone rabbinic indifference.

In modern society, we have women’s suffrage — women vote, women run organizations and women speak in public. So why should it be that suddenly the shul is the only area where women are denied such rights? When girls live in a time where gender roles are being demolished, no one associated with such modernity is going to want to connect to religion. As members of Modern Orthodoxy, we care so much about not upsetting the boundaries set up by the other more stringent sects of religions that we lose ourselves — and our girls……

Does anyone realize that if this keeps up, there will be no future movement because there will be no girls who know or care about any of this religion — and that it is your fault, Modern Orthodox society, not ours!”

I do hope in the ensuing years she has made peace with G-d’s Torah, but I assume there are others who have not (I pray not too many). We have to excuse the narcissism, the self-centeredness, of her generation; they were raised being told that they were all “special,” and they actually believe it. Life has not yet taught them that if everyone is “special,” then no one is special. That mistaken proposition also ignores the truism that “specialness” is earned by some unique ability or contribution to society, not acquired merely by virtue of respiration and ambulation.

I hope as well that she learns the meaning of Kabbalat Ol Malchut Shamayim – the acceptance of the yoke of G-d’s kingship – a recognition that we are just servants of the Master, and not in a position to dictate to the Master what we think His Torah should decree, or else. As Rachel Fraenkel, for whose son’s freedom, and his two friends, we pray daily, said this past week: “G-d is not our employee.” We don’t get to prescribe to G-d how He is to be worshipped. And it is the implicit threat – “if I don’t get my feminist way, I will take my toys and go elsewhere”– that is so off-putting. But, again, that can be attributed to youth and an overestimation of the self. Perhaps she will outgrow it – but not if she does not receive guidance from her mentors.

And here’s the most troubling aspect of her writings, for which she is not at all to blame. In all her years of “Modern Orthodox” education, hasn’t there been even one person – parent, teacher, rabbi – who taught her that a shul is different, indeed, that Judaism is different, because its value system is not premised on nor beholden to the values of the modern non-Jewish society? Has she never been taught that Judaism has its own divinely-based system, and we do not judge the worth of that system or its precepts by measuring it against the prevailing mores of the rest of the world?

Is it too much to expect that a yeshiva or day school – wherever, and run by whomever – should at some point introduce the notion to its students that the Torah, both written and oral, is of divine origin; that there is a Mesorah that has guided Jewish life since Sinai; that its values represent the Divine will and were given to us to provide us with the means to actualize our human potential and live fulfilling lives as divine servants? Is that too much to ask for $20,000 per year?

That is the biggest failing in her education, and that of her like-minded friends. We have to ask ourselves what is happening in these communities that children are not taught that, or that Rabbis are not preaching that when necessary. And why not. What is the fear or hesitation?

Obviously, those in the camp of the discontented have an a priori conception of what Judaism should be – even what Modern Orthodoxy should be – that bears little relation to what it actually is. Here’s a news flash: there is a system that was entrusted to us in which we are mandated to both observe its laws as the faithful and preserve it as the guardians for future generations. A Torah that changes with the times to conform to modern sensibilities is not only not divine but also not worthy of preservation. It could not – and should not have survived – the Babylonians, the Persians, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Christians, the Muslims and a host of others. (Indeed, the values of modern America are uncannily similar to those of ancient Rome in its decadence, to a great extent in its emptiness and its yearning for distractions from real life – World Cup? Who cares! – and even in the decay that has already set in.) What does any of that have to do with Judaism, and why would we want to import the failures of Western morals into our system, even if we could?

There is “unfairness” in the world with which we all must reckon in shul, in the workplace, and in life. For example, in baseball, a batter is out after three strikes, but takes first base after four balls. Unfair!! That gives the advantage to the pitcher and should be unacceptable to any thinking egalitarian. Why should the pitcher be advantaged? Alas, that is the system of baseball. We either accept the system or create a new game. Why is this so complicated?

It is further troubling that our young writer perceives Modern Orthodoxy as inherently capable of deviating from the Mesorah in order to accommodate her personal needs, or else it must be construed as hostage to the “stringent sects of religions” that clearly have no appeal to her. But a Modern Orthodoxy in which the veneer of ritual is superimposed on a degenerate lifestyle – as in the yarmulke-wearing off-color young comedian who recently appeared on American television, clearly clueless as to the boundaries of propriety in Jewish life – is less orthodox than it is modern, and in the worst sense of the term “modern.” Young girls who obsess over Tefillin and ignore the strictures of tzniut are really living in a different reality and have abandoned the pretense of serving G-d in favor of self-worship. One might as well daven in front of a mirror.

Indeed, Torah Judaism, modern or otherwise, is “not reflective of modern society.” That is to be celebrated, not lamented, for that is the whole point. We wouldn’t need the Torah if we could determine how to live – what G-d expects from us – by reading “The Feminine Mystique” or some female teen magazine. That is what is unique about Judaism and Jews. And so her explicit threat – if she and her friends are not accommodated, they will opt out – leaves me sad but also detached. I think of what Queen Esther was told by Mordechai at a critical moment in Jewish history and paraphrase it here: if indeed you want to establish your own religion or your own version of Judaism because you find the Torah unsatisfying at present, good luck with that. “Relief and salvation will come to the Jews from some other place, and you and your father’s house will be lost” (Esther 4:14). It has happened before; indeed, it has happened in every generation since Sinai. It is your choice whether or not you want it to happen to you.

Consider this not the “rabbinic indifference” that you castigate but the rabbinic truth to which you have apparently never been exposed. The answer to your complaints is intellectually straightforward even if it is emotionally unappealing to you. Orthodoxies that pander to the masses are not orthodoxies, even if they claim the name for themselves. Orthodoxies that have fluid belief systems are oxymorons with short shelf lives. The embrace of leftist political doctrine has already permeated the newest attempt to reform Orthodoxy, and with predictable results. That decline has already started, as the Torah faithful have retrenched and defined what is inside and/or outside the Mesorah. That flash in the pan is already fading, despite the repeated hoopla in the media.

I would not worry at all whether there is a future for Torah; that is guaranteed.

I would only worry whether you and those like you will be part of that future.

17 Comments

Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Machshava/Jewish Thought

Life in the Jungle

Posted on June 20, 2014 | 11 comments

“Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind.”

So wrote the famed Prussian general and military theorist Karl von Clausewitz referring to the motivation of nations that wage war against each other. But when savages employ the resources of the intellect to perpetrate their savagery, the civilized world suffers, and struggles for a suitable response.

That is the initial reaction to the latest profanation of humanity committed in the name of Islam, the kidnapping of three young Israeli children hitch-hiking home from school and now being held incommunicado, their fates still unknown. The ongoing debate whether these barbarians distort Islam or reflect Islam has probably passed the point of relevance, if indeed it remains unanswered. Suffice it to say that, although the politics and motives differ, there is really little distinction in kind between the kidnappings in Israel by Hamas terrorists or of hundreds of Nigerian girls by the Boko Haram terrorists; the unfortunate common denominator is that in all cases the kidnappers are Muslims and the victims are innocent children.

The sadder phenomenon to ponder, besides the horrific personal suffering of the captives and their families, is that we have made kidnapping, and to a certain extent, terror, a rational act. Evil can be rational, and still remain evil. The simple fact is that terror pays. These crimes provide a maximum

benefit to the perpetrators at a minimum cost. They inflict terrible pain on their captives and on society generally (the pervasive and accurate sense that these boys could have been anyone’s children, the refusal by the captors to make known their demands or even the condition of the victims, etc.) and fear no real repercussions. They will be martyred if killed and then enjoy the heavenly pleasures their delusions have fabricated, or they will be captured and eventually freed while in the meantime, they and their families are handsomely rewarded by the mainstream Arab leadership for their efforts. From a cost-benefit perspective, their actions are quite rational because the price they have to pay is minimal.

Again, Clausewitz: “If one side uses force without compunction, undeterred by the bloodshed it involves, while the other side refrains, the first will gain the upper hand.” While his point is that such a scenario would tend to lead each side to extremes but for other considerations, the point stands alone as well. The side without compunctions, that targets civilians, that seeks to disrupt normal life, that has no goal other than to weaken and demoralize the civilized society, will always have the upper hand – unless the moral majority makes such outrages extremely painful, unpleasant, and counterproductive for the perpetrators. (It is worth noting that the brutality the radical Arab-Muslims exhibit to those who cross them in their own societies is far more bestial than what they have done to Jews, to date, a most dreary thought.)

Part of the “problem” is Israel’s self-definition as a moral society that constrains it from responding fully or in kind to these criminal, terrorist provocations. That self-definition is not only a source of pride but is also perceived as a national asset, even if the definition of “moral” is not rooted in any Torah concept but in an amorphous internationally-accepted framework for morality that is largely ignored by all other countries when it suits them and is in essence a chimera. It provides purpose and context to the suffering. Additionally, Israeli doctrine clings to the illusion that a diplomatic solution is possible, or at least that the illusion of a “peace process” has its political advantages. This, a truly forceful reaction that will complicate the “peace” negotiations or cause Israel to forfeit that other fool’s paradise – world sympathy – is simply not worthwhile.

Consequently, Israel resists the imposition of measures that would reduce the ardor for terror among its Arab population – e.g., permanently eliminating the pleasures and freedoms that Arab prisoners currently have (televisions, telephones, university education, frequent family visits, etc.), destroying the homes of the families of terrorists as was once done (how about entire villages?), categorically prohibiting exchanges of terrorists to gain the freedom of innocent captives, banning access of Arabs to the Temple Mount, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron, and other restrictions that will get the attention of the Arab community who will either leave for more hospitable climes or apply counter-pressure on their co-religionists to halt their savagery. The silence of the Arab-Muslim world in the face of the depravity of their co-religionists is still the norm, itself an embarrassment and an outrage notwithstanding that such scattered protests in the past have often resulted in the unwanted detachment of the heads of the protestors from their necks. But there are a variety of measures that Israel can take and implement on a permanent rather than a temporary basis that would make incarceration a less attractive proposition and career choice even for a thug.

Furthermore, and without trying to sound crass or even critical, Israel benefits from these fiendish acts because it places inordinate value on propaganda, here meaning the attempt to generate sympathy for its narrative and plight. While the government and the people are rightly moved by the personal quandary of the victims and their families, and I trust doing everything to alleviate it, the political class has situated the kidnapping in the context of attempting to dissolve the new unity government of Fatah and Hamas. That reunification – as cynical as it was, and as ephemeral as it is likely to be – engendered a typically duplicitous and feckless response from the Obama administration but nonetheless can serve the Israeli purpose of defining the enemy without illusions. Instead, Israel seems intent on ending that partnership, which thankfully has put all diplomatic negotiations on hold, simply in order to resuscitate a diplomatic process that – in the best scenario – can only lead to Israeli concessions, withdrawals, vulnerability, more terror and public disenchantment. Far better to keep the unity government, define it as a hostile enemy, treat it accordingly (in terms of freedom of movement, provision of water and energy, and other measures) and focus on strengthening the Israeli polity.

That won’t happen, perhaps because it makes sense, and perhaps because Israel has no strategic concept of long-term victory. Its victories are measured in what we would call the simple joys of life – serving G-d, shopping, hiking, raising families and pursuing a variety of pleasures, notwithstanding the sporadic and repugnant interruptions of normal life that these outbursts of sadism provide.

Israel has reached an understanding of sorts with its nation-state neighbors, and could live quite well with the status quo. Its main threat – not an existential one by any analysis – comes from non-state actors (Hezbollah, Hamas, the PA) and the exception of Iran, which is not a neighboring state and is on the ascent due to the ineffectual response of the West, especially the US administration. And so, paradoxically, Israel has an interest in keeping the PA alive (but weak and ineffectual) and maintaining a diplomatic process in order to satisfy the domestic needs of its neighbors who still do not want a “Palestinian” state nor care at all about the lives of the so-called Palestinians, except insofar as they don’t want them living in their own countries. Thus, Israel could re-take Gaza within a day or two – but the Israeli government does not want it, not the people and not the responsibility for the people.

Of course, a nation under attack does not always get to choose its targets, and of course the land is still defined as the sacred land of Israel, but it will take a sustained assault from Gaza to induce the Israelis to return and recapture it. Israel has chosen – like with the occasional terror – to, in effect, tolerate a number of rockets per diem because the military option is less attractive and the damage caused in strategic terms (the personal is another matter) is negligible. That is a plausible approach, until such time as the terror becomes intolerable, but it solves nothing in the long term.

In the short term, we can only pray for Heavenly compassion, strength and courage to the victims, their families and the security forces, a swift end to their captivity, and the appropriate punishment meted out to their captors and supporters. While campaigns such as #bringbackourboys are well-meaning efforts to keep their predicament in the public domain, they are generally not successful in convincing the enemy (witness the utter disappearance from the news of the #bringbackourgirls for the Nigerians), simply because an appeal to the heart of heartless savages who consider their cruelty a religious devotion is futile. What should gratify but not surprise us is the outpouring of concern from across the Jewish world, a beautiful reminder that we are one family, the children of Avraham, Yitzchak and. Yaakov.

Far better to pray, remain strong and faithful, realize the enemy is not disappearing, encourage sanctions on the enemy population so they can feel real pain and hardship, react with righteous fury if the boys are harmed, annex Judea and Samaria, build more homes throughout the land of Israel, be vigilant that the government does not seek to revive its diplomacy with the brutes in suits who occupy parts of the Jewish homeland and threaten the remainder, and support the government in the use of all measures necessary to free these captives.

Perhaps then we will merit salvation, redemption, and good tidings. Am Yisrael Chai!

11 Comments

Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Israel

The Fruits of Disgruntlement

Posted on June 13, 2014 | 12 comments

Prisoner exchanges have become bonanzas for modern politicians, a political trifecta: the “gains” are tangible and immediate, the “losses” are remote and speculative, and therefore the public usually approves. For President Obama, who has developed the reverse-Midas touch (everything he touches turns to dross, or worse), the repatriation of Bowe Bergdahl has brought no respite from criticism, and indeed has intensified it. And for good reasons.

Seeing as the Taliban suggested this exchange – five terrorist commanders for the one American soldier – exactly one year ago only to have the administration reject it would tend to indicate that the deal was primarily a political, as opposed to a humanitarian, endeavor. On one level, the US negotiated a numerically better deal than did Israel for the freedom of Gilad Shalit. Shalit was traded for more than 1000 terrorists, whereas Bergdahl fetched only five in that execrable marketplace. But, from another perspective, the terrorists exchanged for Shalit, notwithstanding that they had collectively murdered hundreds of Jews in cold blood, were field terrorists, not commanders who were responsible not for one attack but for planning, coordinating and executing hundreds of attacks. A moral case can be made for both but has never seemed that compelling. The potential for future attacks still lingers (more than two dozen of Shalit’s tradees have already returned to terror, and some have already been apprehended again) and the blow to the morale of the families of terror victims who are forced to watch their loved ones’ murderers feted as heroes is substantial. Such doesn’t exist in the American exchange, which involved unrepentant commanders whose return to terror is guaranteed, and whose initial apprehension was carried out with bravery and sacrifice – now for naught.

Of course, the other distinction is even more troubling. Shalit, whose failure to defend himself according to doctrine has been noted but muted by the Israeli military, was at least a patriot serving his country. The well-founded suspicion that Bergdahl was a deserter exacerbates the moral question and introduces another dynamic completely different from the Israeli analogy. Why would America trade murderers, enemies of civilization, in order to free a deserter?

Obama referred to the American “military code” that requires that no soldier be left behind on the battlefield, implying that such applies to a prisoner-of-war (understandably so) but even to a deserter. The latter, though, is less clear. I spoke this week with a Marine captain, still on active duty with two long tours in the war zone to his credit, and he knew of no such code, either formal or informal, that demands the repatriation of deserters. Nor did he know of any obligation to rescue a deserter, allowing, of course, for the possibility of an immediate rescue attempt due to the uncertainty regarding the motives of any soldier and the difficulty in ascertaining such motives immediately after a soldier’s disappearance. But, this case aside, assuming that a particular soldier announced to all verbally and in print that he hates America, the military, the mission and himself and wishes to defect to the enemy, the Marine captain was unaware of any code that would necessitate risking lives in order to rescue such a person, and certainly not to trade active terrorists for him, a good reason why his entire unit was vehemently opposed to this exchange. (He added, delicately, that the President is the Commander-in-Chief, but clearly doesn’t know much about the military.)

My working assumption – and it is an assumption – is that deserters are pursued because otherwise they get away with their treasonous crime. If they are just left to be, then there is no penalty and therefore no deterrence for desertion. Capture or repatriation is thus a law enforcement tool, not a military one; as such, the fact that so many American soldiers were killed, and many others diverted from their essential military mission, in attempting repeated rescues of this suspected deserter, is most unsettling. And even if Bergdahl is proven to be a deserter, it is highly unlikely that he will be prosecuted; this most politicized of White Houses will never allow it.

Thus, what usually becomes a politician’s win-win – freedom for an American, parents beaming, basking in the glow of the pretensions of concern for the welfare of the US military – has become for Obama another flashpoint of controversy, and another example of his ineptitude in the exercise of foreign affairs. Unless, of course, Obama’s objective was to thrust Bergdahl into the care of the VA medical system, a fate that might have him yearning for an expeditious return to Taliban custody.

In any event, the collapse of American foreign policy – notwithstanding all the miles traveled by Hillary Clinton (touted as her major accomplishment), and probably because of them – is a tragic story whose conclusion has not fully played out and whose deleterious consequences will be felt for year to come. Obama’s America has lost its ability to positively influence world affairs, and probably has lost the will to do so as well. He operates in an environment that prizes words and gestures, especially empty but high-sounding ones, orchestrated by his handlers and media acolytes and admired by his adoring public. And his contempt for Congress and his indifference to laws he doesn’t like reflect a high-handedness that will only encourage future presidents and leave the populace even more disenchanted with their government.

Meanwhile, America meanders between an indifference to the growing world anarchy and favoring the wrong side of a variety of conflicts: the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; for Assad and then against Assad in Syria; the Palestinian narrative in the land of Israel; et al. History will record that Hillary Clinton’s infamous “reset” button actually worked; unfortunately, it was successful in re-activating the Cold War. One retired diplomat said recently to a private group that Obama’s diplomacy is drawn straight from the “Model UN” structures that are so popular today from elementary schools through universities, and is about as realistic: all problems can be resolved, and quite quickly at that, if only the Obama script for the proper functioning of mankind is followed. Since the real world does not operate that way, Obama’s naiveté only encourages rogue states in their roguery. A future American president will not have the resources to pacify every zone of chaos forged by Obamaplomacy, and even if he could, he would need to have the desire to reassert American influence. The vacuum is that enormous, and the global system today is that anarchic.

While it would be comforting in part to attribute all this to incompetence, it is likelier and infinitely more dangerous that it is a willful effort on Obama’s part to reduce America’s footprint in the world, a footprint that he has perceived since his childhood as wrong, criminal, imperialistic, wholly unjustified and worthy of serial apologies. He wanted to be and is a transformative president, in which America’s global position reflects his disgruntlement with the American way of life. And so his tenure threatens to leave the United States and the world unrecognizable, with nuclear weaponry in the hands of rogue regimes and their proxies, terror ascendant, imperial Russia reborn and revanchist, and liberty under siege – not to mention a health care system for all modeled on efficiency of the government-run veteran’s health care network.

For sure, there is a temporary benefit in all this ineffectiveness in the avoidance of immediate war, even if more protracted and deadlier conflicts in various points across the globe are the long-term outcome. Short-term gain leading to long-term harm? Hmmm…

That sounds precisely like the Bergdahl case, one vivid detail in the tapestry of failure which we behold before our eyes.

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Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events