Tom Toles for May 01, 2014

In the meantime, Obama is distracting the liberal base from his foreign policy failures by releasing felons from prison.

I only have one question: When was the U.S. designated by the U.N., NATO, or even the Vatican as the world’s policeman, or Dictator?

Surprise surprise, Kerry cannot clean up Hillary’s mess.

“Try something simple for a change”?#I guess passing yet another bill (what is the number of times now, 1000?) in the House to defund, dismantle, and essentially kill the Affordable Care Act will be simple enough. Let’s keep that going and ignore all those “jobs, jobs, jobs “the Republicans promised some time ago: and keep going and going and going…

Nice summary.Multi-tasking presidents address more than one issue concurrently. Apparently this is a problem for single-issue commenters. In which case, every second issue is a distraction from their primary focus – Benghazi!

Assuming that is Uncle Sam, not the Secretary of State, Lurch Kerry, my advice is to check out the source of all the violence in the Mideast, in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, shown in the cartoon. In fact, the source is creating violence all around this earth…and it is not America and it is not Israel that is the armed aggressor.-Lurch and our president are trying to force Israel to give more land away (free, no strings attached), to their dedicated exterminators, who falsely call themselves “Palestinians”….but who really are Arab/Muslims who came to God’s Promised Land (promised to Jews) very late in history. US policy is wrong to side with Arab “occupiers” (Jordan kept Israel’s lands from 1948 to 1967). God will punish all who try to divide His land to benefit enemies of God’s Chosen Nation….especially whoever tries to divide Jerusalem, God’s earthly Capitol, and give it to Haters of Jews. No wonder violence grows, it feeds on Hate of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

This whole mess should have, and would have been solved 100 years ago when the Ottoman Empire broke up if it had not been for the British and French. Best thing we can do is stay out of the religous and tribal wars and let them settle it themselves. Might not hurt to stop supporting the Saudi’s and their religion which teaches America is the great satan and to destroy them wherever they find us.

disgustedamerican: Strange Bible you have there! My copy of Genesis clearly states that the region was given by God “to the children of Abraham.” Abraham had at least two sons, Ishmael and Isaac (maybe more not recorded in either the Bible or Qur’an). Despite Sarah’s meddling, both sons remained friends and together conducted Abraham’s funeral. The land is given, by God, to both Muslims and Jews. The solution is history and religion, not the imperial blasphemy of al Qaida or the Likud. Read your Bible.

And where does that money go? To the prison industry, who’d like to see even more people behind bars — so their lobbyists keep up the pressure to continue the War on Some Drugs.

I agree that the Middle East has been in conflict for at least 2 millennia. External parties (like the US), cannot broker something (peace), that frankly, it seams that no one in the region really wants.

I appreciate that there are those who"spew partisan tripe and hatred." Yet you use the term, reTHUGlicans. Please consider that this is perceived by many to be a double-standard, and thus reduces the validity of other points you make in their view. I also agree that the Ukraine and Syria are not the current President’s mess. How he deals with them as time goes on will determine how people look at his legacy. Finally, there is plenty of blame to go around for Iraq and Afghanistan. I certainly blame the previous administration for creating our involvement in these places, but one cannot escape the fact that the curren administration has been in place for 5 years and has yet to extricate us from it – a campaign promise long in tooth and short in completion.

Finally, I agree with your last sentence, wholeheartedly. Diplomacy in the Middle East is folly.

Agreed!

Agreed. I’ld like to add that I have my doubts about how many of our Congressmen, Secretaries and Chief Executives know about WORLD history, let alone U.S. history.

hippogriff, there WERE NO MUSLIMS in the time of Abraham, it was Arab and Jews, and they, among others, were all members of he SAME TRIBE, Semite is NOT EXCLUSIVE TO JEWS!

That is just one fact that rarely, if ever, gets raised in the media, or dogma.

dtroutma: Actually, it can be argued that there were no Jews until the Exile, as before, Israelites were henothists and after were monothists. I was referring to the Abrahamic history as recorded in the much later Bible and Qur’an, which are the bases of Jewish and Muslim religions, but, as you state, come from a common ethnos. But today both of these religions are throughout the world. (The largest population of Muslims are Malays and Jews are Askenazi as to ethnos.)

Again, I do not see TheTrustedMechanic’s post. Why not?