Most certainly the Democrats have a "strategy." It is the one created and managed since day-1 of his presidency by Barack Obama = the transformation of America via redistributing and reallocating the wealth and power of the nation to black citizens, as well as setting in cement radical ideas that are dear to the president's heart.

Basically, Obama's plan is an extension and updating of Radical Reconstruction, which also intended to take power and wealth from one group of Americans and hand it to another. It failed in the end, because there was no way Americans were going to allow a minority segment of this country, most of whom could barely read and write, exert political and economic control over them.

And the same applies today. Blacks make up a mere 13% of our population. Few blacks, proportionally, have distinguished themselves in the areas necessary to set our minds at ease re: playing a dominant role in determining our future. No sense trotting out the usual statistics regarding rates of children born out of wedlock, high school graduation, incarceration in state and federal prisons, gang membership, murder, etc. Fact is, Obama wants to hand those he calls "his people" what every other group, most recently hispanics and Asians, has had to earn through hard work, tenacity and ingenuity.

Obamacare is a program, for instance, whose main purpose is to fund black citizens' medical care by means of tax revenues paid by others. That's "redistribution" pure and simple. The other purpose of the Affordable Care Act is to strengthen the grip of the federal bureaucracy on our private lives. Why Obama seems intent on this is most worrisome, from a historical perspective.

Therefore, to wonder whether Democrats have a plan or strategy is puzzling. How can anyone have failed to discern this president's passions and intentions at this late date?

As for the GOP, it is still recovering from the aftermath of the Bush presidency.

John Boehner, a weak and utterly pathetic Speaker of the House (relative to what is needed right now in order to lead an effective Loyal Opposition), is the most obvious symbol of the terrible state of the Republican Party, just as Mitt Romney was a year ago.

If, as is likely, the Republicans cannot manage to climb out of the hole they're in, we may see a Democratic House next fall. If that happens, one would hope Republicans would consider disbanding the party, as being too hidebound and corrupt to go forward in ways the country needs and demands. Ours is a two-party system, but as long as one party is hopelessly dysfunctional this republic is vulnerable to men with big egos, radical ideologies and a thirst for revenge. Men like Barack Obama.

We'll see.....

Max Boot would do far better if he mused on ways the Egyptian military could succeed, rather than waiting for his worst fears to be realized. It's no different from what the "Republican watchers" are doing today, re: the government shutdown. Will Ted Cruz et al. be proven right, or will the shutdown turn into a Republican rout in 2014? The curse of the "analyst?"

The Middle East demands order if it is ever to emerge from its tribal, religiously fanatical, warlike past. No civilization evolves in ways that would satisfy the West, absent order. And yet, Boot seems stuck on some romantic notion of who the Arabs are at present. As if, but for their dictators and kings and religious kooks, they'd be---copasetic! Nonsense, such thinking.

The Arabs are only lately emerging from the pages of National Geographic Magazine for most Westerners. They are a people that once was great and powerful---1,000 years ago, but now is being hard-pressed by modernity and clueless as to the right response.

Let the Egyptian officers, among them the most accomplished, educated and enlightened members of Egyptian society, calm things down for a decade or two. Let them first of all figure out what to do with millions of unemployed college graduates who cannot hope to find a job in an economy with a zero-growth rate! Egypt's got a huge overpopulation problem, just as many countries in the world do today. And that's got to change. Who but the military can "change" it?

Or, Max Boot, would you rather have the Egyptians expand southward, into Ethiopia and Eritrea? Because that is what will happen unless Egypt is forced to mount an orderly transition to the modern world, including a realistic approach to feeding and employing the Egyptian people and weaning them off of Moslem clerical medievalism.

One is tired of reading what academics whose specialty is not the Middle East blabber their advice, most of it irrelevant or even harmful to the realities that region faces today. The best sign that its army is right for Egypt: they are enforcing the peace with Israel. That's a first step for Egyptians, towards bringing order to their homeland via getting along with their neighbors.

Unfortunately, you are not right in your assumptions. Iran and Obama share a common goal: the weakening of Israel. And this shared goal will be the centerpiece of any agreement the two sides reach. It will go something like this:

Iran will agree to suspend their nuclear program and allow unconditional on-site inspections on one condition: that Israel agree to dismantle and/or destroy their nuclear arsenal and give the same intrusive, unconditional access to their nuclear sites by UN inspectors! Since Israel cannot ever agree to what amounts to a suicide pact like this, the Iranians can feel secure in knowing their "generous offer" will go nowhere!

But they and Obama will achieve their primary aim: weakening Israel. How so? The day after Israel announces "Thanks, but no thanks," the media throughout the world will headline: "Israel stands in the way of a non-nuclear Middle East." Checkmate!

Those of you who cannot or will not understand the real nature of our president and those who "advise" him (including dozens of anti-Israel leftist Jews), can still jump aboard the "reality train." Our president, one way or another, will find a way to hurt Israel in ways few seem to have foreseen. But the issue is now at hand. And this is why Obama's media machine is spewing his "hope for a sit-down with Rouhani" into the air we all breathe! He is preparing the way, for something few of us could ever have imagined would be possible for an American president!

But, I think our shock is a reflection of our inability to understand how profoundly and perhaps irreversibly the demographics and political realities of this nation have changed over the last 50 years. We are not the people we once were. We have a people who, incredibly, elected a man like Barack Obama their president. And that says it all.

Peter Wehner is doing what must be done in this article. Somehow, the reputation of Barack Obama must be tarnished beyond repair, for the sake of future generations of Americans. No future citizen must think: "Maybe he wasn't so bad as they made him out to be."

I recall writing a friend in 2008, shortly after the election, where I said: "The way to stop this guy from ruining the United States---maybe the only way---is to make him into an object of ridicule. Not to get our jollies off, but for the survival of the United States itself! We must never again have such a president. To ensure this, the facts must be marshaled to project as accurate a portrait of this sociopathic president as we can manage, with no holds barred. He must be disgraced, deconstructed, rendered laughable.

Then, maybe, the process of recovery can begin.

We must change our identity as a people. Who are we? Beyond the usual, self-serving platitudes ("shining city on the hill," "land of opportunity," "home of the free and the brave"), who are we today? No one knows. We'd better find out. Quick.

The place to begin our "voyage of self-discovery": We are the folks who elected Barack Obama our president---twice!

All that matters in this issue is that we adhere to the promise: Never Again. We cannot argue our way out of this one.

Why comments about NYC's politics are seeping onto this page---demands attention from whomever's in charge of the Commentary website.

*****

First, it's about time Israelis stopped their "flirtation" with the American defensive umbrella. As long as Americans are willing to elect men like Barack Obama to run the nation's foreign affairs, any close alliance with the United States is an exercise in futility, no better than wishful thinking.

Second, it's not Obama who left Israel on its own. It was America's Jewish community, who paid for Obama's presidential campaigns, provided logistical and intellectual support and infrastructure, and then voted for him to the tune of 70-80%. Barack Obama, as many are now reminding us, is not "America." But its citizens are. And since they elected this man twice, in spite of knowing his sympathies with and ties to Islam, it is they who abandoned the close relationship with Israel.

But again, it's time that cord was cut. Long overdue. America must look out for its own interests, and despite the emotional and spiritual ties we share with the Jewish state, what is best for Israelis is not always good for us.

N.B. I am a lifetime passionate Zionist and advocate for Israel in every way possible. But the kind of dependency---fraught with psychological and strategic pitfalls and distractions---that has defined the US-Israel alliance from the start, must end. Israel must either find other, more constant friends among the nations, or it must resign itself to being isolated, at least for now.

Today a member of the Congressional Black Caucus announced on the Neil Cavuto evening show that he was likely to vote against attacking Syria. His only reservation: "I want to support President Obama." No mention of what's best for the United States. Just Obama.

Then, he went on to describe his vision of how we might avoid a military confrontation with the Assad government: "Surely, reasonable people can sit down and discuss this rationally, and then arrive at a mutually acceptable solution." Something like that!

What strikes me about black Americans today is this: They do not consider themselves citizens of our country, but as recipients of whatever the country is willing to give them. On that score, Obama is their best hope!

Last, the black congressman said that his vote would "reflect what my constituents have been saying to me. They don't want any more money spent on foreign wars." While I sympathize with their desire, my next thought would not be what they're thinking: "Because we want the money spent on us!"

Am I the only one who understands where this is heading, and how dreadful the outcome---for either them or us---is likely to be? One dares not go down such a road---the "redistribution and retribution highway"---unless one a wholly Pyrrhic victory, where one "gets" but in the process loses.. No matter how this turns out, we're all going to lose.

It happened once before, after the Civil War, when a huge undertaking was set in motion, aimed at both redistributing the wealth and ;power of the nation as well as achieving for blacks a measure of retribution for the centuries of cruel enslavement. In the end, what we all got was---a century of Jim Crow.

Who could have blamed newly freed black slaves for wanting "compensation" and a just measure of revenge? And yet, history has shown us many times that it is unjust, to say nothing of "unfair!" When a society seeks to take from others and to punish them for their misdeeds, its members had better be mighty certain of their power to enforce their will on their former tormentors! And I believe that this is precisely what Barack Obama is patiently working towards. I believe it is the raison d'etre of his presidency.

Last night the answer to "why would any president want drug criminals released from prison?" Sure, most of them are "his people," i.e., black Americans. And, sure, locking kids up for decades for "possession" is wrong. But could there be another reason for the proposed, massive prisoner-release? Could it have anything to do with giving blacks what they lacked during the Reconstruction era---the power to enforce the redistribution and retribution?

Could this be Barack Obama's way of fulfilling his 2008 campaign promise---of creating a "civilian force larger and better funded than the military." For what purpose, a "civilian force" of such magnitude? And one whose ranks include tens of thousands of convicted black felons?

We might also ask---why did Obama so methodically remove and/or ruin the reputations of the top generals of our armed forces? Where have we seen that one before? Stalin, Mao, Hitler, even Hugo Chavez! Why is this so difficult for our people to grasp?

Speculation? Yes, but not "conspiracy theory," which implies pulling reality out of thin air. This is not thin air. This is the stuff of history, repeated over and over again, every time a people fails to prevent a demagogue from amassing huge political power. Every absolute ruler requires a "private army," in part to protect him from the national army, the one whose oath is to the Constitution, not to any one individual.

Most Americans believe "it could never happen here." Sadly, it is happening here.

No argument here re: Obama's "incompetence." However, focusing on what some call incompetence, others amateurism, misses the point in my view. What we need to watch in our president is not his lame-brain approach to foreign policy and strategic thinking, but his diabolical maneuvering with our nation's laws and institutions.

I believe a few things about this man:

First, that he he is mentally unstable. I think he is hanging on by a thread to whatever bit of sanity has survived his intense hatreds and thirst for revenge against white America and all those elsewhere who committed grievous sins against "his people," i.e., black Africans. They include the Arabs, who were the cruelest and most heartless black-slavers of them all---and in some places in the Arab world, still are!

Second, Obama is fixated on Radical Reconstruction, i.e., what the reconstruction of the South became without Lincoln's guiding wisdom. Obama seeks to complete what Radical Reconstruction began---i.e., the redistribution and reallocation of wealth and power, from whites to blacks. And he means to do it via things like Obamacare and other legislative/regulatory schemes that stymie and confuse both the American people and their mediocre "representatives" in Congress.

Third, Obama I believe entertains a failsafe position that, in the event he cannot achieve his goals, would seriously degrade and diminish the United States---in terms of our national wealth and our military power. He seems implacable when it comes to this, for instance, with his incessant, embarrassing public statements when overseas, about how "sorry" the United States is for the terrible things it's done. And he says this in Cairo and Berlin---of all places! Imagine, apologizing to the marauding Arabs and the murderous Germans for what WE did! But this is what comes of a feverish devotion to hatred and a lust for revenge.

Last, by complaining about what Obama CANNOT do, we forget all about what he is doing just beneath the radar. Who cares what he does in Syria? Who in his right mind believes that, if the "rebels" fighting Assad had the chemical weapons, they would resist using them? Anyone who does think that is a fool. The Arabs don't fight to be fair; they fight to win.

Which brings me, at last, to Israel, a tiny nation of (now) 6.2 million Jews who have managed for 65 years to hold 250 million Arabs and another 50 million Iranians at bay for the last 65 years. Last time I did the calculation, Israelis are outnumbered by their enemies by a factor of 50-1. And this excludes their latest "enemy," Erdogan's Turkey.

In the event that these Islamic enemies launch an attack on Israel, that is when a US involvement is "justified." One helps one's allies, not one's enemies. What about the Syrian "rebels" defines them as our "friends?" a

Stay focused on Obama. He's the one to watch. Not Bashar Assad, and not the al-Qaeda and other extremist jihadis fighting against him. Our job is to fight for our civilization---against men like Barack Obama.

Releasing 100 or so Palestinians from prison is not the reason why Europeans and others "think Jewish blood is "cheap!" Even our friends the evangelicals think Israel is something akin to a "biblical miracle," one that fits their notion of biblical, end-of-days prophecy! EVERYONE on earth, including us (primarily) thinks our blood is a freebie.

Why? Because that's the message we broadcast: " We Jews will do whatever you tell us to do, no matter what, so long as you love us!" We want them to think we're "good," "holy," "chosen," "special," "Nobel Prize winners," "patent holders," and even "superior to everyone else." Odd, that last one, when you're looking for "love," but you know the song: looking for love in all the wrong places!

We Jews suffer from the illusion that bullies can, and should, be romanced---rather than resisted. Sidle up to a bully, do as he wishes, or beg for mercy---and what you get is: The Holocaust. So everyone of these "petits hatreds" is a "miniature Holocaust." These are what leads to 6 million dead at a stroke!

Anyone who has taken the trouble to read the clinical literature on "bullies and their victims" knows how this works. The bully seeks out victims who excite his imagination re: helplessness in another human being. He taunts, torments, tortures, persecutes and, finally, murders such people. Now, you'd think every Jew in the galaxy would, after all that's happened to us, know about the dynamics of bullying, so they could preempt the next round of Jew-murder. But they simply could care less. Why? Because this kind of objectivity interferes with our innate habit of "creating worlds" in our mind. We'd rather invent all manner of mystical claptrap to "explain" why bad things happen to us, than sit down with one another and set a concrete strategy centered on Never Again!

Israel was founded specifically in the spirit of Never Again. And this really bothers the bullies. They don't know what to make of "Jews who say no!" The Arabs and Christians are nonplussed at this phenomenon---they've bullied us for many centuries, held our lives in their hands, decided our fate, ridiculed us, accused us of "killing Christ" and of putting their children's blood in our Passover matzoh. Israeli are anathema to them both. Israelis will kill you if you try to kill them. Not the Jews the Christians and Arabs once knew!

But the key to it all is the perfectly logical enmity felt by many US Jews towards "Jews who defend themselves." Nothing is more threatening to most of the Jews in the Diaspora than to admit that "carrying a gun is good." The opposite---"guns are the problem"---is the religion of most liberal US Jews! While guns may, or may not, be "the problem," one must admit that this is not where most of us go for our religious highs! Many American Jews characterize Israelis as "pushy," "overly aggressive," and even "nasty." Why? Because Israelis are those things? No, because they are Jews who will kill anyone who tries to kill them!

This is not an argument that will appeal to everyone. We have grown, in my view, too accustomed to inventing all manner of fancy, complex reasons why anti-Semitism exists, and why the Holocaust happened. We will, further, do anything to absolve ourselves from having any part in these events. It is as if "When it comes to Jews, things just happen." We are, so we claim, folks who walk around and "bang" a brick falls out of the sky and kills us. That's the moral reality most of us believe in. Poor Jews!

And the Holocaust museums are the most disturbing part of this argument. They are our national propaganda: "Look what you did to us!" But what we should have been saying is "Do it again, and we'll kill you." The Diaspora wants Holocaust museums. Most Israelis want no part of them. And that, my friends, is the explanation that underpins all of the bad things that have been happening to us, and to Israel, for a very long time. They will continue to happen, if we don't stop building those museums, and if we keep listening to what the US or any others tell us to do---for their convenience, to realize their goals, to make them safer and more prosperous. There is not one nation or people, including the Jews of the Diaspora, who will not abandon Israel in its time of dire need. And that, not all the other nonsense, must be the be-all and end-all of Israeli strategic thinking for all eternity.

The problem conservatives face is surely---Reaganism, which has no relevance whatsoever to the current circumstances we find ourselves in, or is what most Americans find appealing as a message. As we say, "that was then, this is now," but for some reason conservatives think "taking America backwards in time" is the way to go! Well, they certainly got that right with both John McCain and Mitt Romney, each of whom breathed sudden life into the meaning of "fossilized!"

And what to make of the broad spectrum of Republicans who still don't understand who McCain and Romney are, why they are all wrong for us, and why it requires much introspection from us, if we're to avoid making the same mistake again!

We do not need Ronald Reagan any more. He's long-gone, better left that way. Like many other presidents, Reagan did one great thing: he used his transcendent rhetorical skills to gut the Soviet Union! For that single triumph, he deserves to be immortalized. But today there is no Soviet Union, and many of the problems we face at present, e.g., in the Middle East, are in large part what Reagan bequeathed us.

We need another Reagan---like a hole in the head. What we need is an intellectually sharp and rhetorically powerful Republican governor to snub his nose at the "Republican base," including the religion and abortion folks, and focus on getting tens of millions of centrist voters---right and left, men and women, all races, all sexual natures, all classes---to vote for him or her!

We must not continue looking to the "base" for our ideas and strategies. It's the center that should run this nation, not them. And this is not to advocate marginalizing or taking the base out of the Republican equation. Rather, it's to inform them that the tail must stop wagging the American dog.