Andrew J. Bacevich (Columbia University ) writes, “Does the Persian Gulf require policing from the outside? Maybe. But if so, let’s volunteer China for the job. It will keep them out of mischief.” Bacevich notes that the U.S is today the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas, and concludes: “Access to Gulf oil remains critically important to some countries, but surely not to the U.S.”

Bacevich writes:

Although U.S. interests in the Gulf may once have qualified as vital, the changing global energy picture has rendered that view obsolete. What’s probably bad news for the environment is good news in terms of creating strategic options for the United States.  New technologies have once again made the United States the world’s largest producer of oil. The U.S. is also the world’s largest producer of natural gas. It turns out that the lunatics chanting “drill, baby, drill” were right after all. Or perhaps it’s “frack, baby, frack.” Regardless, the assumed energy dependence and “vital interests” that inspired Jimmy Carter to declare back in 1980 that the Gulf is worth fighting for no longer pertain.

Access to Gulf oil remains critically important to some countries, but surely not to the United States.  When it comes to propping up the wasteful and profligate American way of life, Texas and North Dakota outrank Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in terms of importance. Rather than worrying about Iraqi oil production, Washington would be better served ensuring the safety and well-being of Canada, with its bountiful supplies of shale oil. And if militarists ever find the itch to increase U.S. oil reserves becoming irresistible, they would be better advised to invade Venezuela than to pick a fight with Iran.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali—known for her critical views of Islam—is a Somali-born writer, activist and founder of the AHA Foundation, which works to defend women around the world from religious and cultural oppression. You may recall that, last spring, Brandeis University revoked its invitation to award Ms. Hirsi Ali an honorary degree at its commencement ceremonies after protests by students and faculty. Ms. Hirsi Ali’s greatest cause is women’s liberation, especially Muslim women, but protesters at Brandeis accused her of being “Islamophobic.”

Read here from the WSJ’s Notable & Quotable Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s view of living in America.

From remarks by Somali-born writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the Independent Women’s Forum’s Women of Valor Dinner, Nov. 19:

It is a hard fight. It’s extremely difficult, day after day, when you face people and say, “If Sharia law is taken to its logic this is what things are going to look like” and you come across people who say, “you got it all wrong.”

I had a Q&A in a setting like this one with the vice president of our country. He said, “ISIS had nothing to do with Islam.” I said, “I beg to differ.” He said, “Let me tell you one or two things about Islam.” I politely left the conversation at that. I wasn’t used to arguing with vice presidents. . . .

I come from a culture and background, and I spent my youth, in an environment where everything and absolutely everything reminded me of being a woman, being female, and being inferior.

And I didn’t realize until I came to the West that we actually are first and foremost not collectives. We are individuals. We are individual girls with our different characters, with our likes and dislikes. And before you assume the collective, assume the individual. That is the greatest thing about the idea of America.

This exhaustive expose is a report of Team B II at The Center for Security Policy. In the spirit of due diligence, I would tell readers that most often I am not on the same foreign policy page as is the publisher and associate author of Shariah the Threat to America . Frank Gaffney Jr., a highly visible leader in the neoconservative fraternity, was also a signatory to The Project for a New Century’s statement of principles. PNAC’s goal was to promote American hegemony and full spectrum dominance by the United States. PNAC played a significant role in prodding the administration of George W. Bush into the failed Iraq war effort, the negative effects of which carry on to this day. With such disclosure in mind, I do share Gaffney and Team B II’s concern regarding the threat to America posed generally by shariah and more specifically by The Muslim Brotherhood.

Shariah-Compliant Finance (SCF) is a wake-up call for Americans. SCF may be a term new to you.

One of the two-team leaders for this report of “Team B II” is Lieutenant General William G. “Jerry” Boykin, U.S. Army (Ret.). Jerry served primarily in Delta Force and Special Forces assignments during his 36-year career, which culminated with appointment as Deputy Undersecretary for Defense in the Pentagon. The following is from his book Shariah, the Threat to America.

Sariah-Compliant Finance is a category of financial transactions that is conducted or structured in such a way as to be considered by Islamist authorities to be “legal, authorized or pure” (halal) pursuant to shariah.

The shariah-compliant finance industry provides multiple benefits to the stealth jihadists. For starters, it has created a new instrument for forcing non-shariah-adherent Muslims to conform to their program.

For some time now, despite the aforementioned, serious problems, Wall Street has been marketing SCF as little more than a kind of “hot” new product for American pension funds, insurance companies and corporations. Investment banks and other financial institutions have been hiring Muslim religious authorities to sit on corporate advisory boards that directly influence the investment of billions of U.S. dollars.

By so doing Wall Street has welcomed Islamic Law into the American financial sector.( such firms as Goldman Sachs,Citicorp and AIG)

What is even worse, the U.S Department of the Treasury also has been officially promoting SCF throughout the U.S. banking and financial system. For example in 2008,Treasury featured a training class for U.S. government employees in association with the Islamic Finance Project at Harvard Law School.

See any problems for our constitutional Federal Republic here?

Does your member of the House in Washington know about and approve SCF? How about your Senators and for that matter your Governor. In the coming presidential campaign, shouldn’t presidential candidates be grilled hard on their views of SCF?

For more graphic evidence of the effects of shariah law on western society see these videos: Savage Muslims destroy Paris and ‘Islamization’ of Paris a Warning to the West.

Americans recently voted resoundingly against Policy Obama. And what does this washed-up president do? Slaps Americans in the face with a vote-buying, unilateral executive action on immigration. And now Obama throws defense chief Chuck Hagel under the bus. The man who is responsible for the foreign policy mess we are in today resides in the White House, not at the Pentagon. Obama has not a clue as to what to do next. But what should the American voter expect from an ill-equipped president whose thin resume would certainly not have qualified him for a mid-management job at Tyson Chicken. Americans are getting what they deserve: chaos.

Chuck Hagel is being blamed for not having the skill set to deal with ISIS. Hard to imagine just what skill set is required to extricate America from the Muslim world and allow these criminal monarchies and/or dictatorships to fend for themselves. American ground forces have no place in a centuries-old Sunni/Shia religious war. Nothing in the Muslim world is threatening our homeland. The more we insist on butting our collective nose into the Muslim world, the bigger the backlash will be toward Americans. The French, as Debbie and I have learned first hand, are ahead of America in understanding the radical Muslim threat. For evidence see:  Savage Muslims destroy Paris and ‘Islamization’ of Paris a Warning to the West.

Having McCain head Armed Services is a little akin to inviting Freddy Krueger to run your kids’ Halloween party. Here the WSJ champions the neocon course that wrongly put the U.S. into the Middle East quagmire we are in in the first place.

Mr. Obama could likewise adapt with the help of a GOP Senate. John McCain will soon chair the Armed Services Committee, and Mr. Obama and a new defense chief could work with him to reverse the freefall in U.S. defense spending. They could end the defense sequester, fortify NATO’s eastern front, and pursue a more aggressive military campaign against Islamic State.

Joe Lieberman, the hawkish former Democratic Senator, would be an inspired choice, if he could be cajoled to accept. Michèle Flournoy, who has written for these pages, has Pentagon experience and seems to have enough gumption to challenge the White House. Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed has military experience but has never stood out on Armed Services.

Whoever the choice, it won’t matter unless Mr. Obama recognizes the growing disorder and reverses course himself.

“Unfortunately, Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them. We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem: health-care reform.” — U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer

Read more here from the WSJ on why Chuck Schumer—a leading Democratic ideologist—is now admitting that instead of jamming the O’Care fiasco down voters throats, Democrats should have been listening to voters who “were crying out for the end to the recession, for better wages and more jobs.”

Speaking at the National Press Club, the influential Senate leader identified the decline of middle-class incomes as the defining challenge of the age. Democrats can only win elections, Mr. Schumer said, as “the pro-government party”—and ObamaCare is undermining that larger political project.

The Senator called the law a distraction from the “middle-class-oriented programs” his party should have pursued after 2008: “Unfortunately, Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them. We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem: health-care reform.”

Mr. Schumer said he still supported the entitlement’s goals, but “it wasn’t the change we were hired to make. Americans were crying out for the end to the recession, for better wages and more jobs.” We’re glad he’s finally taking our advice from 2009-2010.

This mea culpa is especially notable because it suggests the wall of implacable liberal opposition to reopening the health-care debate is starting to crack. Democrats have heretofore refused to acknowledge any failing in the law beyond the website rollout fiasco. Endangered Democratic incumbents tried to hold that line this year, and five of them will soon be unemployed.

Mr. Schumer’s response is to tell his colleagues to compose “a symphony” that includes liberal themes other than ObamaCare. Maybe this means that even the law’s media horn section will start to play different notes.

Ever the politico, Mr. Schumer put the problem to Democrats in terms crass enough for them to understand—“only a third of the uninsured are even registered to vote,” he said, and only “about 5% of the electorate” benefits from the entitlement. “To aim a huge change in mandate at such a small percentage of the electorate made no political sense.”