08 Mar TED CRUZ’ SYRIA POSITION AND THE WSJ HIT PIECE
As we write this on December 3, 2015, US Senator and GOP Presidential candidate Ted Cruz is the subject of a classic ‘two-fer’: (1) a transparently angry yet pointlessly shallow tantrum of a hit piece by New York Times’ columnist Frank Bruni; and (2) a lead editorial of the Wall Street Journal trying desperately to make the case that Cruz is aligned with the ‘lead from behind’ nonsense of the Obama/Hillary left, and is therefore unqualified to be a Republican candidate for Commander-in-Chief.
We’ll focus on the WSJ piece, because it shows how and why Ted Cruz reflects the bedrock values of America—and therefore has it right on foreign policy; and how and why the establishment voices (like the WSJ) just can’t seem to come to grips with what’s facing our country.
Again, as we write this, the homepage of the WSJ online edition, referring to the San Bernardino massacre by two radicalized Muslims, carries the headline “Police Hunt for Motive in California Massacre”. That’s about as plain an example of an out-of-touch establishment voice as one can imagine.
Americans to establishment: Stop the hunt; the ‘motive’ is the ideology of Islam.
Islamic ideology is not and has never been peaceful, and Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is a totalitarian combination of church, state and military ideology that is incompatible and irreconcilable with the U.S. Bill of Rights; sharia—the composite of laws and doctrine that define what it means to be a ‘devout’ Muslim—compels jihad against infidels and non-believers using behaviors and tactics (such as the Ft. Hood and Boston and Chattanooga and San Bernardino massacres) that are absolutely unacceptable and increasingly intolerable to the overwhelming majority of Americans.
Americans in huge and increasing numbers understand and frankly ‘sense’ the truth of everything written in the paragraph above. Ted Cruz most assuredly understands it.
That doesn’t mean Americans hate people who call themselves Muslim; that doesn’t mean they are about to go vigilante to rid America of Muslims.
But it does mean they want to see some common sense in their political leaders, who ought to understand and sense what Americans are feeling now.
At minimum, Americans want the flow of unvetted Syrian Muslim refugees—who very plainly may and likely do include jihadi terrorists—stopped, immediately and indefinitely.
Americans also do not want to hear any more foreign policy built on the nonsense of wise western discernment of exactly who is a “moderate” Muslim that America should be arming and financially aiding.
Americans are not stuck on stupid: they have watched so-called Muslim ‘allies’ turn tail when confronted with more radical Muslims; and they have seen American military equipment and arms now in the hands of Al Qaeda and ISIS. They are just now absorbing the fact that the San Bernardino murderers just returned from a visit to ‘our friends the Saudis’.
So when Ted Cruz says the US does not have a dog in the Syrian fight (and when Cruz affirms on many other occasions his unwavering commitment to Israel), Americans hear a leader increasingly attuned to the urgent need to reevaluate America’s relationship with Islam and with all Islamic countries.
Americans say amen to that; they breathe a sigh of relief that someone in American political leadership finally ‘gets it’ at a far deeper level than the profoundly inadequate starting point that ‘ISIS is the problem’.
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Some say leaders are best understood by who their enemies are; others like to point out that the left will always tell the world who they fear the most by the level of vitriol thrown at the target. If either of those observations is true, today may mark Ted Cruz as Enemy No. 1 of the ruling class and the left—which may make him Favorite No. 1 of the American people for their next President.
The New York Times has long been wildly out of touch with the bedrock and heartland of America; a hit piece like Bruni’s is a badge of honor for Senator Cruz.
The Wall Street Journal is obviously not known as wildly leftist like the New York Times, but the political upheavals of this era have revealed its editorial board to be so locked into establishment wisdom and political power status quo that they are becoming about as out of touch as the NYT.
Our own view: the WSJ knows it’s time to rethink America’s relationship with Islam and Islamic countries, but it believes it’s even more important to take out Ted Cruz for his uppity, disrespectful attitude toward his ruling class elders. The result is a bunch of convoluted mental gymnastics that produce an editorial blasting Ted Cruz for saying in effect that it’s time to rethink our relationship with Islam and Islamic countries.
Ted Cruz is right, and right with the vast and growing majority of Americans. The NYT and WSJ aren’t.