Trump: Achieving Real Peace
Trump: Achieving Real Peace
On our way to a first-class government.
By Michael Ledeen
Peace.
You could probably write a very short summary, something along these lines: “we’re going to actively search for ways to cooperate, bring more countries into this deal, and turn the Middle East into a new zone of peace.”
It could be a turning point. Or not.
If the bulk of the predictions are correct, most of the Arab countries in the region will join the party, and the Arab-Israeli entente will become the organizing document for them all. If that is the case, there will be a fundamental transposition in the relations among most of the nations in the Middle East, an explosion in trade and travel, reciprocal access to each other’s schools, and as yet unforeseen advantages to all concerned.
As the Arabs join, the Middle East will take on a distinctly different coloration, changing from a near-universal disdain for Israel to a virtually unanimous embrace. The big turning point will come when Saudi Arabia sends an Ambassador to Jerusalem, a double reversal of the traditional disdain.
In truth, the Saudis are already members of the new Middle East, opening their air space to commercial planes using Saudi routes to travel to and from Israel, discussing joint ventures with the Israelis in amazingly advanced technology, and drafting plans for new high-tech joint ventures. Together, they will constitute the anti-Iranian armed force that will bring down the mullahs’ regime.
If we were insects on the walls of the negotiating rooms, we’d hear some fascinating exchanges. And we would be able to listen to our elected officials apologize for their abandonment of our basic principles.
Meanwhile, the president has just announced his intention to create a new commission to institute the study of American patriotism in public schools.
There is no more powerful force than a parent’s love for their children — and patriotic moms and dads are going to demand that their children are no longer fed hateful lies about this country,” he said. “The only path to national unity is through our shared identity as Americans. That is why it is so urgent that we finally restore patriotic education to our schools.
It’s called the 1776 Commission, and we’ll see if it works. It follows years of neocon criticism of Progressive redoing of curricula K-12, and the virtual takeover of liberal arts programs at our finest universities. I think the best strategy is to install grownups at schools that have been captured by radical leftists, and slowly invite older, prolific scholars to round out the faculty. That way, students will be taught by a broad variety of scholars, and their thinking will be shaped by a variety of advocates.
Some of the highest-ranking officials in the government are acutely aware of the urgency of such measures. At the moment, the schools are dens of indoctrination, rather than the sort of even-handed debate that we so desperately need.
The Attorney General gets it, and put it well in a recent speech:
The Justice Department abets this culture of criminalization when we are not disciplined about what charges we will bring and what legal theories we will bless. Rather than root out true crimes — while leaving ethically dubious conduct to the voters — our prosecutors have all too often inserted themselves into the political process based on the flimsiest of legal theories. We have seen this time and again, with prosecutors bringing ill-conceived charges against prominent political figures, or launching debilitating investigations that thrust the Justice Department into the middle of the political process and preempt the ability of the people to decide.
This criminalization of politics will only worsen until we change the culture of concocting new legal theories to criminalize all manner of questionable conduct. Smart, ambitious lawyers have sought to amass glory by prosecuting prominent public figures since the Roman Republic. It is utterly unsurprising that prosecutors continue to do so today to the extent the Justice Department’s leaders will permit it.
As long as I am Attorney General, we will not.
Would that the president named more such stalwarts to key positions, so that cases could be brought against the ideologues who are, alas, shaping the “thinking” of our youth.
But he’s hopefully got four more years to sort it out, and after all that time we may have a first-class government. Time will tell.