The Passing Signal Psychodrama When we finally learn the full melodrama of the so-called Signal 1-2 day “scandal” of inviting a leftwing, Trump-despising, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg onto a supposedly secure conference list, involving most of the top Trump security officials, lots of questions need asking and answering. Most importantly, who exactly had Goldberg’s private number, and ostensibly (in error [?]) could have possibly inserted it into the cleared list of participants in the discussions? Why Goldberg, rather than some random person of some 345 million Americans? So why in the world would any top Trump officials or their staffers ever even have Goldberg’s private contact information—given his quite public record of a) fabricating stories with unnamed sources, and b) suffering from a decade of chronic Trump derangement syndrome? Did Goldberg know the mechanisms that had prompted and continued his stealthy presence on the secure discussions? Why did citizen Goldberg not simply come clean on day one that he realized he was mistakenly included in key national security conference communications, to which he did not belong, and thus should be obviously excluded immediately? Why stealthily listen in for eleven some days? Was the idea of informing his hosts of his own improper presence too old-fashioned morality? Did Goldberg’s publicizing these discreet discussions really affect in any way at all the otherwise completely successful mission to neutralize years of appeased Houthis aggression and begin to end their veritable destruction of Red Sea international maritime commerce? How did this blunder rank with prior diplomatic and military screw-ups? Did it rate with the indiscretion of Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s January 1950 Press Club speech de facto excluding South Korea from the American defense umbrella—an omission that may or may not have contributed to the June 1950 North Korean invasion of the South? Was it comparable to Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie’s assurance to Saddam Hussein, “We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait”— a needless remark that may have mistakenly green-lighted his 1990 invasion of Kuwait? Was it comparable to Barack Obama’s March 2012 “hot mic” quid-pro-quo assurance to Russian president Medvedev? Obama got caught in front of the world promising Putin that he would have “flexibility” on American-Eastern European missile defense—if Putin gave him “space” during his “last” election. And indeed, it is forgotten that both kept their promises: Obama foolishly dismantled American-sponsored Eastern European plans for missile defense, and Putin stayed put for Obama, perhaps empowering Obama’s successful election cycle—postponing his preplanned invasions of Ukraine until 2014. Careerism at the expense of national security? Did it rank with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark Milley, stealthily contacting his Chinese communist counterpart Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng, to warn him that he would likely prewarn the People’s Liberation Army leader, if he, Milley, had self-diagnosed his Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump as supposedly dangerously likely to trigger an existential war? Why would Hillary Clinton weigh in given her illegal use of a private server to transmit classified State Department information and her subsequent destruction of subpoenaed communication devices? Why would the serial fabulist Susan Rice weigh in, given in the election-year 2012 she flat-out lied to the nation on five Sunday news shows, claiming preposterously that the deadly preplanned terrorist attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi were actually unexpected "spontaneous" demonstrations incited by anger over an anti-Muslim video? Ditto her fallacious Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl “honor” narrative or her lie about the removal of Syrian WMD. Why would Leon Panetta weigh in, when he was one of the supposed “51 intelligence authorities” in 2020 who ridiculously claimed Hunter Biden’s FBI-authenticated laptop had all the hallmarks of a Russian intelligence disinformation effort—a lie designed to arm Joe Biden before the last 2020 debate, and which might well have affected the 2020 election and for which Panetta has never apologized? In the end, this was a blunder, but also what the left calls a “teachable moment”, in which a) all future similar conferences should be either held in person or its participants triple-checked on a secure line; and b) all Trump high appointees and their staffers should know enough to have nothing to do with those who wake up each morning wishing to destroy them—and go to bed each night lamenting that they have not done enough to advance that destruction.

When Is Blowing Up the World A Success? Recently, Secretary of State Antony Blinken bragged in an op-ed that “The Biden administration's strategy has put the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago.” What? This is the latest campaign fantasy narrative also served up by Harris-Walz—analogous to the four-year untruth that “the border is secure” and “the economy is strong”—as they try to explain why the world utterly blew up on their watch and due to their own actions. And the mythologies continue. Harris just refused to concede that the Netanyahu elected government of wartime Israel is an ally of America. Walz on Sunday would not answer whether the U.S. approves of Israel hitting Iran hard in response to their recent massive barrages. Blinken ended his political op-ed by adding, "As secretary of state, I don't do politics; I do policy.” Actually, he proved far more adept at politics than at policy. Remember this apolitical fiction comes from Biden’s 2020 campaign foreign policy “expert,” who was rewarded with the appointment as Secretary of State after working with former interim CIA Director Michael Morell to round up “51 former intelligence officials” to lie in a public letter on the eve of the final 2020 debate that the Hunter Biden laptop (at the time in the possession of the FBI and authenticated as genuine) had all the “hallmarks” of a Russian disinformation operation. That letter was an orchestrated flat-out lie that was used, as intended, by a prevaricating Biden in the debate. It may have well warped the 2020 election, as the FBI operators further conspired with social media to suppress accurate news reports of the laptop’s incriminating authenticity. I suppose Blinken defines “a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago”, as believing the Putin 2022 invasion of Ukraine was preferable to him keeping inside his borders during the Trump administration. Did lifting the Trump terrorist designation of the Houthis, scuttling the Abraham Accords, and Biden’s campaign demagoguing the Saudis as a “pariah” all lead to a calmer Red Sea? Did restoring fungible funds to the West Bank and Gaza terrorists and tunnel builders ensure there would not be an October 7? Perhaps lifting sanctions on Iran, resulting in a $100-billion oil revenue windfall to Tehran, or arranging a payment to the theocracy of some $6 billion to return hostages, or begging Iran to reenter the Iran Deal, all meant that Iran so far has only sent 500 ballistic missiles, drones, and cruise missiles into Israel? Did the humiliating 2021 retreat from Afghanistan discourage Putin to keep out of Ukraine? Maybe abandoning $50 billion in American munitions and supplies to the Taliban terrorists scared Vladimir Putin, Jinping Xi, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei into their current supposed nonaggression? Did Biden stating that America’s reaction to a Russian invasion would depend on whether it was a major or minor offensive deter Putin? Did putting a hold on approved munitions to Ukraine in early 2021 or offering to fly Zelensky out of his country in the first days of the invasion dissuade Putin? Did the March 2021 Chinese communist public dressing down of Blinken and Jake Sullivan in Anchorage, Alaska prevent China from serially threatening Taiwan the last three years, or from sending a spy balloon with impunity across the United States for over a week? Did Biden’s 2019 campaign assurance that China was not in competition with the U.S. detour China from its subsequent combative stance toward Taiwan? Did giving millions to the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and Hezbollah persuade them not to send some 20,000 rockets and missiles into Israel after October 7? Will giving Lebanon some $157 million in “extra” aid persuade the population to turn on Hezbollah that has stored some 150,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israel in their midst? Did prior aid result in only 9,000 missiles being launched from Lebanon at Israel? Did the DEI mandates and advertising, the new woke protocols, and the vaccine expulsions all explain why the Pentagon was only 45,000 short in its targeted manpower recruitments? So please, Secretary Blinken, President Biden, a Vice President Harris, and candidate Walz, do not in the last weeks of the election gaslight us, the American people, that a world now in freefall and on the threshold of multiple theater-wide wars, all involving nuclear powers, is somehow a sign of a “stronger geopolitical position.”

Why the Epidemic of the Violent, Crybaby Protestors? After seven months of nonstop pro-Hamas protests on campuses and in our big cities, a certain predictable and monotonous pattern has emerged. The placards calling for the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel (“From the River to the Sea”) are now amplified with ever more venomous rhetoric and performance-art demonstrations—from “Death to Israel! Death to America!” shouts (vintage 1979-80 Tehran) to flag burning to chasing and assaulting Jewish students, to defacing iconic monuments (including veterans’ cemeteries), storming classrooms, and to interrupting congressional life on the Hill. Yet when a college president or government official on rare occasion calls the police and a few arrests or even suspensions follow, the fiery protestors melt. We were led to believe by their hateful sloganeering and disrespect for the law that they were the descendants of the do-or-die 1917 Bolsheviks, or the thuggish 1930s Mussolini black-shirted toughs. But on the slightest pushback by authorities, they metamorphosize into hot-house plants that whimper in “I can’t believe this is happening to me” undergraduate style. Last fall, we first saw glimpses of the fragility of the hate-Israel crowd at Harvard, where outrage followed when the names of violent protestors were spread among potential employers. At Vanderbilt, the thuggish demonstrators that broke into an administrative building when confronted with police removal descended into preteen whimpering—to the point of claiming it was so unfair because one protestor needed to change her tampon. During the near-day long pout, they further sobbed that the officers tasked to keep them away from university officials were treated with food from Panera Bread, but the poor protestors were not. When masked Pomona protestors swarmed the president’s office, they oddly found themselves subject to arrests and possible suspension. And then on spec their fury turned into self-pity and lamentation. At a Bakersfield, California city-council meeting, a fiery revolutionary, Ms. Riddhi Patel, screamed at the city council members in pro-Hamas fashion. And then she cowardly shouted out a murderous Parthian shot: “I hope one day somebody brings the guillotine and kills all you mother—…We’ll see you at your house. We’ll murder you.” Yet after throwing down the Maoist gauntlet, Patel was reduced to prepubescent sobbing at her hearing where she faced 18 felony counties. (Did she assume Bakersfield was Yale or San Francisco?). So questions arise: why do these fire-and-brimstone revolutionaries calling for death and destruction wear masks? What or whom are they afraid of? Why not show the world who they are and proudly advance their revolution? Why, after signaling their anti-establishment fides, do they fall into sobbing fetal positions when confronted with the possibility of being expelled from what we thought were their despised universities? Various explanations come to mind, none of them mutually exclusive: 1) This helicopter-parented generation is fragile and wilts when exposed to real consequences, since they have never really faced any—or much of anything beyond their sheltered lives; 2) Many sprout from mother-ship universities where their bullying of cowardly administrators means they are further coddled by protective DEI apparatchiks, convincing them they are gifted, special people; 3) They mostly come from upper-middle-class, well-off families, or the elite of the Middle East. Or they are on generous foreign student support and thus are used to having their way, given their parents have groomed them to go to elite schools, get cattle-branded degrees, and plug into lucrative jobs. Any interruption in that cursus creates hysteria; 4) They saw that the looters, arsonists, vandals, and assaulters of summer 2020 faced no consequences while the demonstrators of January 6 faced prison sentences. Thus they concluded that the leftwing administrative state would always exempt them (and it usually does) from all consequences; 5) They fear their coddling parents will be mad if their suspensions or arrests retard their oh so precious career paths; 6) Those on student visas and green cards who praise Hamas, trash the U.S. (literally and figuratively) in a manner that would get them jailed or killed in their romanticized birthplaces assume self-loathing Americans will always either appreciate or tolerate their hypocrisies. The more they show hatred toward the U.S., the more they are paranoid about being sent back to Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Jordan, or any of the beloved homelands. What would end the street-theater violence, the student anti-Semitic bullying, the shut downs of bridges and freeways at commute hours, the mobbing of classrooms and lectures? 1) Arrest violent offenders and charge them with major felonies when they threaten lethal violence (i.e. the case of Ms. Patel), stop commuter traffic, break into a lecture hall, or disrupt Congress; 2) Expel all students who violate university rules; arrest those who commit violence; bar them from re-admission; 3) Put a simple hold on all student visas for 1 year to sort things out; 4) Deport all on student visa-holders who are suspended from universities; and deport all green-card holders who break federal or state laws; 5) File federal racketeering charges against the interstate organizers of violent protests that shut down or occupy public buildings, disrupt transportation, and endanger public safety. 6) Get the government out of the student loan business; tax university endowment income; reduce non-scientific government grants to campuses. Just a few expelled students or deported visa holders would work pour encourager les autres.