Last weekend, the Feds popped two more US citizens who yearned to kill their fellow Americans for Allah.  Add them to the would-be Times Square car bomber, the guess-what's-in-my-knickers Christmas Day airline bomber, no end of got-‘em-in-time apprehensions, plus the Ft. Hood butcher, Major Nidal Hasan... both the Feds and the media barely hint at what all these fanatics have in common. Dare to suggest that radical Islam might be to blame, and you're a bigot.  Just as pointing out that Palestinian terrorism led to Israel's hard line stand makes you a fascist.  But those who reject radical Islam's role as the driving force behind today's terrorism must answer one obvious question: Where are the Christian terrorists? The ignored persecution, deprivation and massacres aren't in Gaza, the global left's favorite petting zoo.  The cover-up victims are the Middle East's Christians.

In other times, Hearst Newspapers White House Correspondent Helen Thomas's demand that the Jews "get the hell out of Palestine," and go back to Poland, Germany and America would have been front page news in every newspaper in the US the day after the story broke. In other times, had the dean of the White House Correspondents Association expressed such hatred for the Jews, the White House would have immediately removed her accreditation rather than wait three days to criticize her. In other times, the White House Correspondents Association would have expelled her.  In other times, her employer - Hearst Newspapers - would have fired her. Our times, instead, are times of Jew hatred. Our times are times when hatred breeds strategic madness -- especially among those on the Left.

In hindsight, it probably will be obvious that the missteps of the Obama administration vis-a-vis Israel were critical catalysts to a war that today seems ever more likely to engulf the Middle East, and perhaps the world more generally. Assuming - assuming - such an outcome is neither the intention of the president and his team nor is desired by them, American course corrections must be taken urgently. Throughout their 17 months in office, the president and his senior subordinates have been at pains to demonstrate a more "evenhanded" approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to "engage" the Moslem "world." The practical effect, however, has been to excuse, empower and embolden those hostile not just to Israel, but to the United States as well. Consider just a few ominous examples:

The "aid convoy" incident off the coast of Gaza on May 30 wasn't about bringing humanitarian supplies to the terrorist-ruled territory. It wasn't even about Israel. It was about Turkey's determination to position itself as the leading Moslem state in the Middle East. Three ships of that six-ship pro-terror convoy flew Turkish flags and were crowded with Turkish citizens. The Ankara government -- led by Islamists these days -- sponsored the "aid" operation in a move to position itself as the new champion of the Palestinians. And Turkish decision-makers knew Israel would have to react -- and were waiting to exploit the inevitable clash. The provocation was as cynical as it was carefully orchestrated.

This week (5/26), the New York Times published another front-page article based on a leaked classified document. This time, it was an order signed by Gen. David Petraeus authorizing black operations against adversaries and such dubious friends as Iran, Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Gee, thanks. We really needed to know that. The world's a better place now. Yet the Times' sin was the lesser one. The paper has long since given up any pretense of patriotism.  Its editors are just publishing and perishing as citizens of the world. It's whoever leaked the document that bears the burn-in-hell blame. And that person resides somewhere in the White House.

The world changed this week and we yawned. Our government and media utterly failed to grasp the meaning of the Iran-Brazil-Turkey nuke deal. What Brazil and Turkey just did wasn't intended to impede Tehran, but to make it harder for Western powers to impose sanctions. Both countries want Iran to run interference for them. Once Iran gets the bomb and takes the (slight) heat, Brazil and Turkey both intend to go nuclear. As Western states fantasize about a "nuclear-weapons-free world," their developing-world darlings are scrambling like mad to develop nuclear arsenals. And we don't get it. Which leads to the second problem with our asleep-at-the-wheel foreign policy (content to equate Arizona's human-rights record with China's): New alliances are developing that are already destabilizing our strategic architecture -- even without nukes. Let's connect a few of the Iran-Turkey-Brazil dots:

The Afghan room has more than its share of corners, and we've painted ourselves into every single one of them. Setting aside the Taliban, we're suffering from plenty of self-inflicted wounds. To start, there's the continuing denial that Islam has anything to do with the Taliban's persistence or Afghan resistance to our goodwill gestures: This mullah's corrupt; that suicide bomber wasn't very religious(!); that local uprising's just a neighborhood feud. Religion has nothing to do with it. Next, Afghans aren't interested in fighting for a foreign-backed government or for ethnic groups other than their own. If you want to succeed in a tribal society, you exploit tribal identities. Our officials insist that would undercut our goals. Well, perhaps our goals should be more realistic. So we wind up supporting yet another disdained "president" because we insist that a tribal society must subject itself to a strong central government defended by an American-model army that refuses to be built. This is not a formula for success. Another sign that Afghanistan's in "beaucoup deep kimchee" (as a former NCO of mine used to say) is that the pundits are already assigning blame -- even on Obama.

Appeasement doesn't work. It doesn't work with dictators, and it doesn't work with terrorists. The attempted Times Square bombing on May 1st was yet more proof. We've allowed Islamist extremists to dictate what we can say, print or portray. We don't want to offend them. The First Amendment bows before Islam. The Obama administration has ducked all unwelcome evidence that such appeasement doesn't work. Instead, it goes to absurd lengths to convince Moslem radicals that we respect their views.  Since the Obama administration deepened our submissive attitude toward Islam -- banning all references to "Islamist terror" or "Moslem radicalism" from government documents and statements -- the number of terror attacks on our soil has gone up. Do any of you believe this is just a coincidence?

American and European leftists share the conviction that the immigrant, legal or illegal, is always right -- and the native-born citizen is always wrong. This bigotry toward the law-abiding American, Brit, Frenchman or Italian doesn't help the immigrant in the end. Instead, it's a powerful engine driving divisiveness. There are deep differences between Europe's experience with legal immigrants intent on importing intolerant lifestyles and our problem with illegals responsible for social friction and violent criminality. But the left's blame-game is identical: Anyone who doesn't elevate the "rights" of the immigrant over the rights, safety and desires of the citizen is a bigot. No exceptions. Could there be a formula better designed to excite anti-immigrant sentiment?  As the left's blame-the-citizen demands for special privileges for all immigrants only intensify an anti-immigrant backlash, let's apply some commonsense maxims:

South of the border, down Mexico way, a new and savage revolution rages just beyond our inspection lanes. After less than five years of fighting, estimates of the dead have reached 22,000. The rate of killing accelerates each month. And Washington covers its eyes like a kid at a scary movie. Well, the Mexican narco-insurgency, in which well-armed guerrilla forces confront the authority and presence of the state, is our No. 1 security challenge. The chaos in northern Mexico has far deeper implications for our country than Islamist terror or even an Iranian nuclear capability (as grim as those threats are). The rule of law has collapsed from Tijuana (across from San Diego, California) on the Pacific's edge to Matamoros (across from Brownsville, Texas) on the Gulf of Mexico. Major cities are now "ungoverned spaces," as our diplomats refer tidily to distant trouble spots. And Arizona's "discriminatory" new state law empowering police to pursue criminal aliens? Should Phoenix let the rule of law collapse because Washington prefers political correctness to public safety? In DC, it's about politics. In Arizona, it's about survival.

Israel's status as the US's most vital ally in the Middle East has been so widely recognized for so long that over the years, Israeli and American leaders alike have felt it unnecessary to explain what it is about the alliance that makes it so important for the US. This week - April 19 - we celebrate Israel's 62nd Independence Day.  As the Obama administration is openly distancing the US from Israel while giving the impression that Israel is a strategic impediment to the administration's attempts to strengthen its relations with the Arab world, recalling why Israel is the US's most important ally in the Middle East has become a matter of some urgency. Much is made of the fact that Israel is a democracy. But we seldom consider why the fact that Israel is a representative democracy matters. The fact that Israel is a democracy means that its alliance with America reflects the will of the Israeli people. As such, it remains constant regardless of who is power in Jerusalem. All of the US's other alliances in the Middle East are with authoritarian regimes whose people do not share the pro-American views of their leaders. The death of leaders or other political developments are liable to bring about rapid and dramatic changes in their relations with the US.

Ever heard of Richard Armitage?  Assistant Secretary of Defense for President Ronald Reagan.  Deputy Secretary of State for President George W. Bush.  An impressive résumé as long as your arm.  Why would such a man lie about being a Navy SEAL? SEAL is an acronym for SEa, Air, and Land for the comprehensive training required to be a member of the most elite special operations force in the US military.  It was my great privilege to serve my country as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam, and ultimately to be the Commandant of the Naval Special Warfare Training Center in Coronado, California, where graduates of the BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) course earn the right to be a SEAL. I had heard Armitage's claim before and knew it was false, because I had researched the student personnel files at the Naval Special Warfare Command in Coronado, and there was no record of an Armitage ever having been enrolled in BUD/S (much less graduated). This got me to thinking - how many others are there who lie about their being a SEAL?  I decided to look into it, and got a number of retired SEALs to help me.  What we discovered astounded us.

A few years back, I wrote that Russia's Vladimir Putin was the most impressive major leader on today's world stage. Since then, he's gotten better. Back then, he was eating President George W. Bush for breakfast. Now he's snacking on President Obama as sushi -- eating him raw, in happy little bites.  Mr. Obama is so naïvely pliable in the Russian leader's hands Putin should nickname him President Putty. Putin is ruthless, unforgiving, and murderous. He is the Evil Empire's belated answer to President Ronald Reagan. Where the Gipper focused uncompromisingly on bringing down the Soviet imperium, Putin focuses uncompromisingly on restoring imperial Russia. Putin doesn't seem like a man much given to hilarity, but he must be laughing his butt off at our incompetence. Consider his strategic achievements in just the last few months:

Last month, President Barack Obama opened a diplomatic war on Israel. The proximate cause of his offensive was the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Board's decision to approve the future construction of 1,600 housing units in northern Jerusalem. The goal of the assault is twofold. First, it seeks to undermine the legitimacy of Israel's control over Jerusalem in order to weaken Israel's standing among the American public. As Obama advisor Martin Indyk mocked, Obama's onslaught against Israel has made the Netanyahu government "supersensitive," about Jerusalem. Second, through his unprecedented attacks on Israel's right to sovereignty over its capital city, Obama is working to topple Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government in the hopes of replacing it with a leftist government led by Tzipi Livni and Kadima. In other words, the "crisis" between the US and Israel -- so named by Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama -- was a set up, created by a conspiracy between the Kadima and Democrat Parties.