Navy SEAL Killed Near Mogadishu. What Are US Troops Doing There?

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A U.S. Navy SEAL was killed in Somalia Thursday on a U.S. mission involving the al-Shabaab terror group. It was the first U.S. military combat death in Somalia since the infamous 1993 Black Hawk Down mission.

Almost immediately upon arriving on a mission location 40 miles west of Mogadishu, American and Somali troops came under intense gunfire.

“We helped bring them in there with our aircraft,” Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said Friday, per ABC News. “We were there maintaining a distance back as they conducted the operation, that’s when our forces came under fire and we had the unfortunate casualty.”

In addition to the death of the Navy SEAL, two Americans were injured on the “advise-and-assist” mission.

So, what brought brings our troops to the east African state rife with Islamic extremism?

U.S. African Command (AFRICOM) says that American forces are there in an advisory role to the Somali National Army.

“Al-Shabaab presents a threat to Americans and American interests,” AFRICOM said in a statement Friday. “Al Shabaab’s affiliate, al-Qaeda has murdered Americans; radicalizes and recruits terrorists and fighters in the United States; and attempts to conduct and inspire attacks against Americans, our allies and our interests around the world, including here at home.”

U.S. forces are in Somalia to “degrade the al-Qaeda affiliate’s ability to recruit, train and plot external terror attacks throughout the region and in America,” the statement added.

Indeed, al-Shabaab has been able to successfully recruit a number of Somali immigrants resettled in an area of Minnesota that has come to be known as “Little Mogadishu.” As of late 2016, dozens of individuals from Minnesota’s Somali community have been recruited by al-Shabaab, Fox News reports.

However, as CR Senior Editor Michelle Malkin has argued, this internal radicalization issue is also largely due to a broken refugee program that allows individuals from radical Islamic countries to come into the country and live in resettlement zones that are detached from the American melting pot.

And given that Somalia hardly has a functioning government, it’s hard to see how American efforts in the country will pay off in the long term. Additionally, Somalia is one of the least free countries on the planet. Skeptics have challenged the wisdom of an American government picking a winner in a semi-failed state that does not have the ability to defend either its borders or its people.

But U.S. military officials are said to be encouraged by the new president of Somalia, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo (a dual-American citizen), who is reportedly more invested in the campaign against jihadi terrorism.

There are an untold number of American troops in Somalia (reports range from dozens to hundreds). In April, President Trump authorized a larger troop contingent there to assist in the mission to stave off al-Shabaab. The new deployment will consist of about 40 more soldiers, a military official told CNN.

The U.S. pulled troops out of Somalia after the “Black Hawk Down” battle that saw 18 U.S. servicemen killed and another 73 wounded.

Somalia was one of the countries listed when President Trump attempted to impose an immigration moratorium on individuals coming from radical Islamic strongholds. The executive orders, however, were struck down by federal judges under questionable authority. (For more from the author of “Navy SEAL Killed Near Mogadishu. What Are US Troops Doing There?” please click HERE)

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Atheist Group Sues Trump Over Religious Freedom Executive Order

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A Wisconsin-based atheist group has filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to strike down President Donald Trump’s order easing enforcement of an IRS rule limiting religious organizations’ political activity.

A 1954 federal law prohibits tax-exempt charitable organizations such as churches from participating in political campaigns. Violators could lose their tax-exempt status, but the law — known as the Johnson Amendment — has rarely been enforced.

The IRS doesn’t make its investigations of such cases public, but only one church is known to have lost its tax-exempt status as a result of the law. Still, Trump has long promised conservative Christians who supported his White House bid that he would block the regulation. (Read more from “Atheist Group Sues Trump Over Religious Freedom Executive Order” HERE)

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Fraternity, 18 Members Charged in Penn State Hazing Death

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Eighteen Penn State fraternity brothers have been charged with crimes ranging up to involuntary manslaughter in the death of a pledge who authorities say repeatedly fell down a flight of stairs after he and others were made to run a gantlet of drinking stations guzzling vodka, beer and wine.

Beta Theta Pi members resisted getting help for 19-year-old Timothy Piazza, causing him to suffer for hours and possibly making his injuries worse, a prosecutor said Friday in announcing the results of a grand jury investigation . . .

Eight of the fraternity brothers and the chapter were charged with involuntary manslaughter. Other charges include aggravated and simple assault, evidence tampering, alcohol-related violations and hazing. (Read more from “Fraternity, 18 Members Charged in Penn State Hazing Death” HERE)

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Turning ‘Extra’ Embryos Into Jewelry: We Must Stop Manufacturing Children

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I could not swallow the horror I felt as I read this story. Thanks to a jewelry company called Baby Bee Hummingbirds, a couple in Australia has turned their seven “extra” embryos conceived through IVF into a necklace. Yes, you heard me. The mother is wearing her babies around her neck.

Most people do not understand why the Catholic Church refuses to approve the practice of in-vitro fertilization, or any form of artificial insemination, or any method of conception at all apart from sexual intercourse. The Church teaches that all such means of conception are morally wrong. The reasons are profound, thoughtful and humble. If you’d like to hear it from the horse’s mouth, read this, especially CCC 2375 – 2378.

But allow me to say it succinctly this way: What you manufacture, you own. It belongs to you, and you call the shots with authority. What you manufacture, you can control.

THAT is precisely why it is morally wrong to manufacture children. Many people will object to the word “manufacture” here, but it’s the only accurate term. Babies are ordered up and created in a lab, purchased and paid for by adults who have commissioned their creation. That’s manufacturing.

Babies are not ours to control. Human life is not ours to manipulate in that way. We have no right to create life, keep it in some suspended animation, and then decide to destroy it whenever it suits us. We are not God.

We do not own our children. We have no claim on their lives. It is not for us to decide whether they live or die and when. The Lord God is the giver and creator of life. We can only receive our children as gifts. No one can demand a gift, or claim any right to receive a gift.

Assuming the Prerogative of God

It is proper and good for a husband and wife to desire children, since that is precisely the purpose of marriage. Children are the gift and fruit of marriage; the visible result of married love as God intended. I don’t minimize the heartache and pain of couples who are unable to naturally conceive a child. Such infertility is a heavy cross to bear.

Even so, we are not justified in using any means necessary to create a child. Our longing is not a free pass to assume for ourselves the prerogative of God.

But, you may say, God has blessed our modern medicine with such amazing capabilities! How could it be wrong to avail ourselves of what modern medicine can do?

Because God has ordained marital intercourse as the method and means of procreation. It should be evident by now that bad things result when we separate sex from babies. When we believe we have the right and authority to decide when a child is conceived, how a child is conceived, and even whether or not that conceived child gets to keep living, we have grievously sinned.

We are no longer seeing the child as a human person; a gift from God. Rather, we have turned the child into a thing we can manipulate according to our own desires. We take the child as our right to have or not have as we wish. We demand new life, and destroy new life, when it pleases us.

Where’s the Humanity?

This couple in Australia said that donating those embryos “was not an option.” Why not? Why was life not an option? Seven human beings were denied the chance to live, after having been manufactured at their parents’ request, and are now mummified and encapsulated in a crystal heart on a chain. They’ve been turned into an ornament. An adornment. A thing.

See what I mean? What you manufacture, you own. You control. By that thinking, those babies had no inherent, inviolable right to live if their parents did not wish to have them.

The article also says the couple felt “the annual storage fee was an added financial strain, and disposing of them unimaginable.” We’ve made them, but now it’s just too expensive to keep them. So the babies must go away.

I am glad that “disposing of them” was unimaginable. Just typing the phrase “disposing of them” makes me want to vomit. But really, are those seven babies any less dead and disposed of now, hanging around their mother’s neck as an accessory? No, they weren’t rinsed down the drain. But their humanity was not respected.

Babies are Not a Commodity

We cannot afford to be lulled by sentimentalism. This is not honoring of human life. But this sort of thing will become more and more popular, and more people will celebrate this as a beautiful memorial, a truly special way to “keep” those precious babies you just couldn’t let live but didn’t want to “dispose of.”

I’m sorry, but it isn’t beautiful at all. It’s macabre. And I’ll say it — it’s depraved.

We simply must find the courage to recognize how wrong we are to treat human life this way. We may believe our intentions are good and right, but our actions are not justified. We keep pushing the envelope farther and farther, awarding to ourselves more and more power, more and more “rights,” yet we fail to recognize how we dehumanize our children. Pride is urging us to make ourselves like gods, and modern medicine cheers us on.

Just because we can do something, it does not follow that we ought to do it, or that we have any right to do it. Nowhere is this truth more immovable than as it applies to human life. Babies are not a commodity, and we have no right to manufacture them at will. No one — absolutely no one — has any right to a child.

The very same reasoning that approves of IVF condones abortion. They are two sides of the same coin. That will be a bitter pill for many to swallow, and I don’t say that viciously. But we must honestly confront the mess we’ve made.

There should never be any such thing as an “extra” embryo. (For more from the author of “Turning ‘Extra’ Embryos Into Jewelry: We Must Stop Manufacturing Children” please click HERE)

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New Strategy Needed to Confront Islamist Threats in War of Ideas

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Coming into office, President Donald Trump declared defeating and destroying ISIS to be his foreign policy top priority.

In contrast with the Obama administration, he had no hesitation defining precisely the root of the threat: Islamist terrorism — not vaguely phrased “violent extremism,” “workplace violence” or “manmade contingencies.”

This definition of the threat also needs to come with a far more concise strategy to combat it. The shorthand for the Obama strategy was “CVE,” or “Countering Violent Extremism.”

Like the evasive title, this program failed. The United States continues to face terror attacks from radicalized individuals, such as last year’s Orlando nightclub massacre.

In a recent article for The National Interest, “Top 10 Ways to Make the War on the ‘War of Ideas,’” The Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano writes that “the new team in Washington needs to right-size the effort, making it complimentary with effective counterterrorism measures and U.S. strategy overseas.”

Carafano’s 10 points are:

Helping Americans understand the changing nature of the war. This could potentially occur through the creation of a 9/11-style commission to define the threat for this new era.

Do not allow efforts to be captured by ulterior motives. This happens when the perpetrators of violence are excused as victims, and therefore not to blame.

Focus on Islamist threats. The Islamist threat is a very specific and anti-democratic threat that cannot be countered with a generic counterterrorism approach.

Limit domestic programs and keep them modest in character. Overly broad programs to counter radicalization have failed in the past. For instance, one FBI anti-terror program in 2012 identified the real terror threat as right-wing terrorism, not Islamism.

Focus domestic programs on counterterrorism. Identify and hone in on individuals that pose potential threats, and prevent those individuals from successfully striking. Most domestic terrorists have been on law enforcement’s radar screen prior to attacking.

Make domestic programs bottom-up. Equip local communities and law enforcement to confront terrorism, instead of hoping that the federal government can handle the terror threat all by itself.

Emphasize support to the field in overseas programs. Again, local officials and political leaders will be far better equipped than central authorities to deal with radicalization on the ground in trouble spots.

End handouts that don’t deliver. No more government-funded conferences and meetings for ineffective NGOs, such as George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

Avoid obsessing over social media. Social media is not itself the root cause of terror attacks. Social media is a contributing factor in radicalization that is most effective where there is already a local network to carry out attacks.

Drop the label. The Obama administration’s “Countering Violent Extremism” label is too vague. Islamist extremism represents a well-defined threat that we need to fight in the name of all that human decency and liberal democracy stand for.

An 11th point that should be added is the importance of information and communication in defeating the enemy.

For that, the United States government has powerful tools — in particular, the civilian entities of U.S. International Broadcasting under the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

These broadcasters are legitimate and important tools of U.S. foreign policy, and have been ever since they were created in World War II.

The U.S. government has devoted millions of dollars over the last 15 years toward expanding these broadcast services to the Middle East and Afghanistan, with varying degrees of success.

Networks that came from these efforts include the Middle East Broadcasting Network (which consists of Radio Sawa and Al Hurra Television), Voice of America’s Persian News Network, Radio Free Afghanistan and Radio Farda (for Iran) produced by Radio Liberty in Munich.

The Trump team must now create a comprehensive broadcasting strategy to reach and inform audiences who are trapped behind enemy lines, often by autocratic Islamist regimes. This should become part of a clear, focused and revitalized counterterrorism strategy. (For more from the author of “New Strategy Needed to Confront Islamist Threats in War of Ideas” please click HERE)

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Catholic School Hit for Canceling LGBT Play for 5-Year-Olds

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LGBT Canadians are furious after a Catholic school district canceled performances of a play about gender identity — meant for children as young as 5 years old.

“I fear these cancellations may be based on misinformation, grown out of fear, intolerance, transphobia, homophobia and misogyny,” wrote Jessica Carmichael, the artistic director of the Carousel Playhouse.

The playhouse had been scheduled to perform a play called, Boys, Girls and Other Mythological Creatures. The show had already been booked in five elementary schools in the Niagara Catholic School District.

The play features an 8-year-old boy who dresses as a girl and questions his gender, The Globe and Mail reports . . .

It turns out the Canadian government believes it’s appropriate to discuss transgenderism with small children — without their parents being present. I’m surprised the actors didn’t try to give the kids condoms. (Read more from “Catholic School Hit for Canceling LGBT Play for 5-Year-Olds” HERE)

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Confirmed: FBI Is Conducting Even More Interviews Over Alleged Jane Sanders Bank Fraud

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Federal investigators are conducting interviews in Florida regarding accusations Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ wife, Jane Sanders, defrauded a bank while serving as president of the now-defunct Burlington College.

Allegations Jane Sanders falsified loan documents to expand the campus of Burlington College, which collapsed into bankruptcy in May 2016, have swirled more than a year. The Daily Caller News Foundation first broke the news of the allegations against Mrs. Sanders in March 2015. The Department of Justice and the FBI will not confirm the existence of an investigation, but recent interviews conducted by officials from the FBI and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), independently confirmed to TheDCNF, suggest an investigation is ongoing.

Sanders wrote on a 2010 loan application that 83-year-old Corinne Bove Maietta, the daughter of the founders of Bove Restaurants in Burlington, pledged $1 million to Burlington College over five years. Maietta, who has a property in West Palm Beach, says it was not a pledge but an unspecified bequest to be paid to the school upon her death. Maietta’s accountant confirmed to The Daily Caller News Foundation the FBI contacted him seeking an interview with Maietta.

“It was sometime back in March or April, during tax season,” Richard Moss, Maietta’s accountant, told TheDCNF. “It was in regards to Corine Maietta’s current address and where they could contact her for questions related to Burlington College. If she was in Vermont, the FBI was going to interview her, and if she was down in Florida, a person with the FDIC working with the FBI was going to interview her.”

The FBI also recently interviewed Ron Leavitt, an orthopedic surgeon who moved to Naples, Fla., after leaving Burlington. The agents asked him about a $30,000 donation he made, according to Seven Days, an alternative weekly publication covering local issues in Vermont. Former Burlington College board member Sara Adsit-McCuin confirmed to Seven Days April 28 that two FBI agents interviewed her in person “a couple of weeks ago” regarding the loans. (Read more from “Confirmed: FBI Is Conducting Even More Interviews Over Alleged Jane Sanders Bank Fraud” HERE)

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Europe’s Childless Leaders Sleepwalking the West to Disaster

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There have never been so many childless politicians leading Europe as today. They are modern, open minded and multicultural. They know that “everything finishes with them.” In the short term, being childless is a relief since it means no spending for families, no sacrifices and that no one complains about the future consequences. As in a research report financed by the European Union: “No kids, no problem!”

Being a mother or a father, however, means that you have a very real stake in the future of the country you lead. Europe’s most important leaders leave no children behind.

Europe’s most important leaders are all childless: German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and the French presidential hopeful Emmanuel Macron. The list continues with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

Europe Is Committing Suicide

As Europe’s leaders have no children, they seem have no reason to worry about the future of their continent. German philosopher Rüdiger Safranski wrote:

[F]or the childless, thinking in terms of the generations to come loses relevance. Therefore, they behave more and more as if they were the last and see themselves as standing at the end of the chain.

(For more from the author of “Europe’s Childless Leaders Sleepwalking the West to Disaster” please click HERE)

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Will Trump and Putin Bring Peace to Syria? Not if Turkey Attacks American Troops.

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A recent headline from The Hill offers a rare piece of good news about Syria: The U.S. and Russia are talking. They’ve agreed on a basic first step toward resolving this bloody and ruthless conflict: “Safe zones” should be established where civilians can live in peace, apart from the forces in combat. This is crucial for saving lives in the short run. So bravo, presidents Trump and Putin! Please make sure this happens yesterday. Thousands of lives of helpless old men, women, and children are at stake.

What the two superpowers need to do next is to build on this foundation. They must do so with an intelligible goal in sight: a decentralized Syria that allows ethnic and religious minorities to live in peace. The Stream laid out the broad sketch of such a plan last month. In fact, there’s a plan like this languishing on the negotiating table: the Astana talks, which looked toward devolving power to Syrian regions.

The alternatives are too ugly and futile to contemplate:

Let Assad’s vicious but anti-Islamist regime try a bloody reconquest of the country, with Russian help.

Allow al Qaeda allies and other Islamists backed by the Saudis and Turks to ethnically cleanse all the Christians, Alawites and Yazidis from the country.

Let Turkey use its massive, American-armed NATO military to obliterate the Kurdish/Christian alliance that the U.S. has backed so far in its war against ISIS and resistance to Assad. This would expel all American influence from the country and make it a Turkish colony.

There is no happy fourth option, where “moderate rebels” steeped in the U.S. Constitution install a liberal democracy in Syria via New England town meetings. At the urging of neoconservatives like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, we tried that in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trillions of dollars and thousands of dead or disabled U.S. soldiers later, we learned: You can’t grow that orchid in the desert.

A Decent Outcome in Syria Is Possible

But there is a non-horrible option — which isn’t always true in the Middle East. Thanks to the courage and hard work of Christians and Kurds, moderate Sunni Arabs and brave Yazidis, there already is a potential safe zone in Syria. In fact, it’s larger than Lebanon. It’s called the Federation of Northern Syria, and The Stream has reported on it extensively. Its soldiers work with American advisors, and it already gets some (not enough) U.S. military aid.

It’s organized in Swiss-style cantons, with decentralized power and complete religious freedom. Women serve in its parliament. Its leaders have pleaded with President Trump to designate it the first “safe zone” in Syria. It deserves the title, since within its borders Sunni Arabs, Kurds, Christians and Yazidis live side-by-side in peace. They cooperate. Nowhere in that tortured country, or in most of the Middle East, can you say the same.

This mini-state should be the model for a Syria reborn. The Russians can pressure Assad to step aside and go into exile, allowing another Alawite to take control of the region now held by Syria’s government. The Islamist rebels would probably keep the region they already run. The regions reconquered from ISIS should be divided along religious and ethnic lines, and granted local governance. Slowly, in fits and starts, a Swiss-style decentralized Syria could emerge from the smoking rubble.

Turkey Threatens American Troops With Missile Attacks

Who threatens such a solution? The Turks. Tayyip Erdogan, their president, has just managed a massive constitutional putsch, granting himself sweeping new powers. He has imprisoned thousands of journalists. Erdogan blackmails the European Union for concessions with the threat of dumping two million more Syrian migrants across its border. He bullies European governments like Holland’s, trying to exert control over Turkish émigrés living there. Most recently he has called on all Turks in Europe to have five or more children per family, to outbreed the Christian natives.

And Erdogan is obsessed with crushing any hope of Kurdish autonomy, even in Syria. He fears it will stoke the hopes of the Kurds he represses in Turkey. Last week he even attacked the U.S.-allied Federation of Northern Syria. It took the U.S. moving its troops to the border to protect the Syrian Christians and Kurds whom Turkey was threatening.

What’s Turkey’s response? To threaten America. Erdogan’s close aide İlnur Çevik has warned the U.S. that Turkey might fire missiles at U.S. troops. So Turkey is contemplating an act of war against the United States of America. A civil war within NATO. That’s what we’re dealing with in this regime.

Turkey Is the Spoiler in Syria

The U.S. must see that Turkey, not Russia, is the spoiler in Syria. It is Turkish hunger for conquest and control of Kurds in Syria that is the biggest obstacle to peace. The Trump administration, along with Russia, should rebuke Turkey’s threats. It should designate the Federation of Northern Syria as the first “safe zone” where civilians will be protected. A no-fly zone that keeps out both Erdogan’s and Assad’s air force would be an excellent start.

But it can’t end there. The tortured people of Syria deserve an alternative to failed socialist nationalism and totalitarian Islamist regimes. Localism and liberty saved Switzerland from tearing itself apart, and allowed the fledgling United States to grow and thrive. They could do the same in Syria. Let’s pray that the U.S. and Russia give peace a chance. (For more from the author of “Will Trump and Putin Bring Peace to Syria? Not If Turkey Attacks American Troops.” please click HERE)

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Trump Pushes School Choice, Making Good on Campaign Promise

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President Donald Trump on Wednesday asked Congress to work with him on extending school choice programs nationwide to benefit millions of students, including low-income African-American and Hispanic children.

While Trump gave no specifics on what legislation he is proposing, the statement was the clearest indication yet that he intends to follow through on his campaign promise to fund a $20 billion school choice program . . .

Speaking at a White House event attended by about two dozen children, including some participating in a federally funded voucher program in the nation’s capital, Trump said, “Every child has the right to fulfill their potential, and, if we do our jobs, then we will never have to tell young, striving Americans to defer their dreams for another day or for another decade.” (Read more from “Trump Pushes School Choice, Making Good on Campaign Promise” HERE)

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