But give a man a fish and he lives for a day. Give him a nuke and he can order dinner indefinitely. It is because Egypt is starving that will acquire the bomb. It’s not like they could afford it. Consider: if you had $500 and no skills would you invest in a suit for a job interview absent qualifications for anything or would you invest in a gun and stick up the convenience store?

Once this fact is grasped the failure of the Obama administration’s sanction and diplomacy policies can be readily understood. The more sanctions are applied, the hungrier North Korea gets; the hungrier it gets the more they need the Bomb. Regrettably there is no way to undo the perverse incentives in the short term. The more aid is given to North Korea — or Pakistan or Palestine — the better extortion is seen to work.

It is the characteristic of completely dysfunctional states that the poorer they are, the fancier their guns. In all the news photos of conflicts in Africa and the Middle East it obvious there is not a dime for shoes; not a dollar for medicine; not a drop of clean water. But millions of dollars for guns. The only difference between the Koni gang and North Korea’s Kim is the difference between an AK-47 and a fission atom bomb.

Obama wants the same thing from Israel that he’s trying to get by selling out Poland on missile defense. Peace. While the only times Israel had any measure of peace is in the aftermath of a war, Harvard grads and the people who listen to them know that peace only comes about at the tail end of a long string of concessions and appeasement. And then when you have finally given your tormentor your house keys, your car keys and your lucky 2-dollar-bill, then having rifled through your empty pockets, he will finally nod grudgingly and agree to peace at last.
That is if he doesn’t actually want to kill you.

And that is the trouble with peacemakers; they don’t really take into account how to make peace with killers. Most countries lock up violent murderers when they kill a dozen people for fun. But when they kill a dozen people in order to liberate other killers or lay claim to a piece of land, then they are worth negotiating with. And the only outcome of the negotiations is establishing murder as a negotiating tactic.

Peace leads to war because peacemaking rewards the warmakers. It rewards the obstinate killers who refuse to stop killing. And the more it rewards them, the more they kill.

That is why Israel has been decades late in delivering the peace that all the amateur peacemakers want. Every time it phones Terrorism Inc. to place an order for peace with extra brotherhood on top, a suicide bomber pulls up to its front door. And so for two decades, in a pesky reality of peacemaking that none of the peacemakers care to hear about… peace has meant war.

If the President told young Palestinians in Ramallah to demand that the PA “take risks” in “voices louder than” the opposition, it is likely that the Fatah government of Mahmoud Abbas would fall to the more radical and more popular Hamas. After years of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic indoctrination in the schools and the general media, it is not realistic to believe that Palestinians desire what the President told Israelis to desire: “A future in which Jews, Muslims and Christians can all live in peace and greater prosperity in this Holy Land.” And maybe that is why the President did not say it to the Palestinians.

President Obama, perhaps inadvertently, made the case for U.S.-Israel relations grounded in the most fundamental shared values. Israel — like the United States — is that rare country in which the government does not fear the protest of the people, and the people do not fear protesting.

American blunders through two administrations have set a regional Sunni-Shi’ite war in motion that the utopians in Washington are powerless to prevent. Young Mr Rhodes, who crafted the ”responsibility to protect” rubric under which American intervened against Gaddafi, can do nothing to protect the millions of Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis and others who will be drawn into the maelstrom. The resignation last month of the National Security Council’s human rights chief, the anti-genocide campaigner Samantha Power, might be an omen: the bungling do-gooders may not want to stick around to see the consequences of their mistakes.

The idea that Israel needs to persuade its neighbors to accept its existence is a line we have heard almost daily since the 1980s or even 1970s. Yet curiously the Arab street pays no attention to the scores of such Israeli gestures and the West soon forgets each one. And indeed Obama has forgotten those that took place during his first term, for example the nine-month-long settlement construction freeze, just as before that were forgotten the Oslo agreement, Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the 2000 Camp David offer (including the offer to redivide Jerusalem!) and many more. [See footnote, below]

Guess what? If today Israel were to make a huge new concession, six months from now that would be forgotten in the West, which would also forget that there was no considerable Arab response. Israelis know this and so saying this kind of thing about Israel proving its decent intentions can only fall with a cynical thud. Such statements remind Israelis why they are NOT rushing to make new concessions or take new risks.

Note, too, that Western and European promises to give Israel a big reward if Israel takes a big risk or makes a big concession and the Arab side doesn’t respond have also been repeatedly broken.

So the Obama Administration did not stand beside friendly regimes or help to manage a limited transition with more democracy and reforms. No, it actively pushed to bring down at least four governments—Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen.

It did not push for the overthrow of two anti-American regimes—Iran and Syria—but on the contrary was still striving for good relations with those two dictatorships. Equally, it did not push for the fall of radical anti-American governments in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. No, it only pushed for the fall of “valuable allies.” There was no increase in support for dissidents in Iran despite, as we will see in a moment, internal administration predictions of unrest there, too. As for Syria, strong administration support for the dictatorship there continued for months until it was clear that the regime was in serious trouble. It seems reasonable to say that the paper did not predict the Syrian civil war.

In giving his State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama will presumably brag about his greatest supposed achievement in the Middle East: support for democracy and human rights.

But consider this amazing fact. Exactly two years ago there were massive demonstrations in Egypt against the Mubarak regime, which was a U.S. ally. Today there are massive demonstrations in Egypt against the Mursi, Muslim Brotherhood regime, which hates the United States and opposes its interests. The Mursi regime has killed more demonstrators than the Mubarak regime did during the comparable period.

Yet what a difference in U.S. policy! Two years ago the Obama administration found this repression to be unacceptable. It demanded Mubarak’s immediate resignation and spoke of human rights and democratic norms. Today we hear none of that. On the contrary, the Mursi regime is praised by the White House and advanced arms are given as presents to it without delay.

So it isn’t surprising that Bahieddin Hassan,director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, has written an open letter to President Barack Obama. While many (most?) Americans think their country under the Obama administration has been supporting democracy and human rights in the Muslim-majority Middle East countries, the people who live in those places know better. Hassan begs: I’m not asking you to do anything except stop praising our oppressors!

In Iran, the U.S. government ignored the democratic opposition as it was repressed, and the same was true in Syria until the civil war in which, amazing as it may seem, that same government has backed particularly the anti-democratic Islamist elements in the opposition. In the Gaza Strip, the U.S. policy has helped protect the Hamas regime, while in Egypt and Tunisia the U.S. lifted not one finger to help the moderates but enthusiastically endorses the Muslim Brotherhood. Islamist-ruled Turkey, whose government has campaigned to limit democratic and human rights, is repeatedly cited by Obama as a role model.

If an unemployment rate of 7.9 percent and the economy shrinking by 0.01 percent a year — with a fifth consecutive $1 trillion annual deficit — are indicators of recovery, what would the old 5 percent unemployment, 4 percent growth in GDP, and $300 billion annual deficits mean? Or do the meaning of words and the nature of “facts” depend on who is in the White House at the time, or rather on whether the president is trying to make us more equal or to enrich the 1 percent?

At key points, whole controversies vanish without a trace. Suddenly, about four years ago, Guantanamo was no longer a gulag. Then it became no longer much of anything — in the manner that renditions, preventive detention, tribunals, and drone assassinations likewise disappeared from public discourse even as they became institutionalized.

We can scarcely remember now that the country tore itself apart over the waterboarding of three confessed terrorists, as it snoozes through its government blowing apart 2,500 suspected terrorists — and anyone caught in their general vicinity when the drone missiles hit. I think the logic must have been that a reactionary George Bush wished to waterboard a few confessed terrorists more just to bend the law than to derive any information that might save Americans — whereas Barack Obama actually reads the great ethical philosophers as he “reluctantly” signs off on targeted assassinations that have no doubt saved more people than he ordered killed. And we have to understand that if we were to object to such a kill tally, we would thereby be endangering the greater good to come at home over bothersome details abroad.

The last two weeks should go down as a period of vindication for former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and earn him the nickname, “soothsayer of the Western World” — a modern-age Nostradamus.

On Jan. 14, Chrysler’s CEO acknowledged that Jeeps would be built in China, confirming a statement that unfairly earned Romney the moniker “liar of the year.”

Score one.

Then, when forces linked to al-Qaida captured the government-held town of Konna, Mali, on Jan. 10, they drove home a statement Romney made during the second presidential debate in Boca Raton, nearly three months earlier.

“With the Arab Spring came a great deal of hope that there would be a change towards more moderation and opportunity for greater participation on the part of women and — and public life and in economic life in the Middle East,” he said then. “But instead we’ve seen in nation after nation a number of disturbing events.”

Describing violence in Syria and Libya, he added this kicker: “Mali has been taken over, the northern part of Mali, by al-Qaida-type individuals.”

This prompted, according to TheCommentator.com, a Bill Maher tweet: “Mitt, you do know that most of America thinks Mali is one of Obama’s daughters, right?” What far-left loon Maher doesn’t seem to understand is that it doesn’t matter if he knows what Mali is, so long as our president does.

Score two.

This week saw another Romney prediction come to pass — that a re-elected Obama would infringe on our Second Amendment rights.

“In a second term, he would be unrestrained by the demands of re-election,” Romney said at an April 2012 National Rifle Association convention in St. Louis, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “As he told the Russian president last month when he thought no one else was listening, after a re-election he’ll have a lot more, quote, ‘flexibility’ to do what he wants. I’m not exactly sure what he meant by that, but looking at his first three years, I have a very good idea.”

Referring to the right to bear arms, Romney told convention-goers, “If we are going to safeguard our Second Amendment, it is time to elect a president who will defend the rights President Obama ignores or minimizes. I will.”

The president’s signature on 23 executive on gun control this week, as well as his acknowledged support for a ban on certain weapons and magazines, show how right Romney was.

Score three.

Finally, Romney was ridiculed for using “binders of women” to describe what a Romney Cabinet would look like. Instead of mocking the poorly worded phrase, we should have listened to the words themselves.

The president’s announcement of his second-term Cabinet prompted ABC’s George Stephanopoulos to ask on Jan. 10, “Where are the women?” Apparently, they’re all still in Romney’s binders.

Score four.

In retrospect, this should come as no surprise to anyone. Romney is, after all, a businessman — a very successful businessman. What separates success from failure in the business world is an ability to assess a situation and to predict what will happen next.

This is called reality. Obama’s hallmark is “hope.” See the difference?

As I’ve been writing for about 30 years, the Muslim Brotherhood has always talked this way, as does Hamas, Hizballah, the Ba’ath Party, the Iranian regime, and many — though not all — Arab intellectuals, politicians, and journalists of living memory. In fact, already another Morsi statement has surfaced: ”We must nurse children on hatred towards Jews.” Note he did not add: “until I become president and then we can start teaching them to live in peace with others of different faiths.”

It isn’t just pathetic, but also strange that educated Europeans/North Americans who are eager to destroy the career of anyone who has ever uttered a single sentence that was or can be portrayed as hate speech will accept those who issue whole reams of the stuff. What is truly ridiculous about this kind of controversy is the outrage or apologia over one statement: Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood leadership, including leading figures in the ruling party, have made hundreds of radical statements. They are either ignored or explained away as insignificant.

To you newspeople at CBS, CNN, ABC, NBC. To you journalists at the New York Times, the Washington Post, at newspapers all over America.

You did it. You won. You were able to get Barack Obama his second term.

You knew that if you told the American people the truth, they would not have reelected this man.

Americans don’t vote to reelect a commander-in-chief who abandons our soldiers and agents and ambassadors when they’re under enemy fire.

But you, confident that you are much wiser than the American people, you decided we had no reason to think about this during the election.

When Romney questioned Barack Obama’s statements about Benghazi, you shouted him down. He learned his lesson — if he made an issue of it, you would merely attack him and distract the public from Obama’s wrongdoing.

You knew that Obama lied to cover up this culpable negligence, and then lied about lying. You had the video, CBS, which you could have aired immediately after the second debate, exposing him for the liar that he is.

Instead you held it back until two days before the election, when other stories predominated.

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Telling us the truth and letting us make informed decisions — that was your job. That’s why the press gets special protection in the Constitution. That’s why you’re called “the fourth estate.”

Democracy did not fail us in the presidential election of 2012.

You did.

If there are any awards to be given to anyone for what they did in 2012, one of those rewards should be for prophecy, if only because prophecies that turn out to be right are so rare.

With that in mind, my choice for the prediction of the year award goes to Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal for his column of January 24, 2012 titled: “The GOP Deserves to Lose.”

Despite reciting a litany of reasons why President Obama deserved to be booted out of the White House, Stephens said, “Let’s just say right now what voters will be saying in November, once Barack Obama has been re-elected: Republicans deserve to lose.”

To me, the Republican establishment is the 8th wonder of the world. How they can keep repeating the same mistakes for decades on end is beyond my ability to explain.

Bret Stephens said, back at the beginning of 2012, that Mitt Romney was one of the “hollow men,” and that voters “usually prefer the man who stands for something.”

General Carter Ham has described the inexorable spread of al-Qaeda in Africa. Al-Qaeda. You know, the agency that President Obama has declared dead? The New York Times reports that: “Al Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa is operating terrorist training camps in northern Mali and providing arms, explosives and financing to a militant Islamist organization in northern Nigeria, the top American military commander in Africa said on Monday.”

This came only a few days after an Obama administration official mulled the possibility of ending the war on terror in order to legally close Guantanamo.

In Johnson’s view, once al-Qaida’s ability to launch a strategic attack is gone, so too is the war. What will remain is a “counterterrorism effort” against the “individuals who are the scattered remnants” of the organization or even unaffiliated terrorists. “The law enforcement and intelligence resources of our government are principally responsible” for dealing with them, Johnson said, according to the text of his speech, with “military assets in reserve” for an imminent threat.

The war’s over. But who won?  Ham’s report said that “Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, has used the momentum gained since seizing control of the northern part of the impoverished country in March to increase recruiting across sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Europe”.