Politics

Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders had as good a Tuesday as could have been expected.

Nicholas Burns trots out the very tired “credibility” argument in a recent op-ed:

However much Mr Obama may believe the old rules do not apply, it is an ancient truth that a great power has to back up its threats if it wishes to be respected by its friends and feared by its adversaries.

If Mr Obama did not intend to honour his red-line threat, he should never have made it. The result was inevitable — American credibility is undeniably diminished in the Middle East while that of Vladimir Putin’s Russia has been enhanced.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey proposes that the UN Security Council be dismantled and reformed to reflect a more “democratic” institution – with more Islamic representatives. Erdogan wants Islam to be more representative in the council’s chambers, even though the permanent members of the UN Security Council have their own Muslim citizenry.

In what, if true, is the most incendiary allegation of the day, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reports that Belgian security services and other Western intelligence agencies had "advance and precise intelligence warnings" regarding Tuesday’s bombings. According to the paper, "the security services knew, with a high degree of certainty, that attacks were planned in the very near future for the airport and, apparently, for the underground railway as well."

Here is the full Haaretz report:

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a man who knows something about "terrorists." After all, he's surrounded by them. Kurds are terrorists. Opposition lawmakers are terrorists. Journalists are terrorists. Lawyers are terrorists. Hell, even teachers are terrorists in Turkey these days.

Fortunately, Erdogan knows how to deal with the "problem." Ideally you kill them, but if for whatever reason that's not possible (turns out some people get all hung up over the whole "human rights" thing), you throw them in jail or you deport them.