November 23, 2015--Why Belgium?

I have been wondering why, when learning more about terroristic activity in France and other incidents in Europe, all roads appear to lead to Belgium.

From my two or three visits, I remember Belgians to be peaceful and civilized, to naive me best known for excellent cooking, Leffe beer, memorable art towns including Bruges and Ghent, and of course their silky Neuhaus chocolates.

But a haven for terrorists? The place from which barbaric attacks on Paris and other European targets are planned and organized?

Clearly my interest in Hieronymus Bosch's horrific triptych, the brilliant Last Judgement in the Groeninge Museum in Bruges and litres of Leffe, have blocked my understanding of what is going on there beyond the surface of what visitors experience.

But then toward the end of last week a piece online from the Associated Press, "Paris Attacks Rooted in Brussels," helped explain things--

To quote the director of the Centre for Terrorism and Counterterrorism, "Terrorists do shop around for locations where it's easier to be unnoticed." And for that Belgium qualifies.

It shares a long border with France, a favorite venue for terrorists, with few if any controls and the population pretty much speaks French as its first language.

Laws controlling weapons are by European standards lax and largely unenforced so it is "easy," says a professor of criminology at Ghent University, "to get your hands on heavy arms in Brussels."

Austerity measures have led to severe cutbacks in funding for police and the justice system and this has contributed to disarray in government bureaucracies, law enforcement agencies, and the ability to keep track of potential terrorists.

Making matters worse, much worse, is the fact that central Belgium, where planning for terrorist acts thrive, with a population of about 1.0 million, is divided into 19 separate municipalities and six uncoordinated policing zones. Therefore, police in one zone are not allowed to track suspects into neighboring ones much less across the border into France.

New York City, in contrast, with a population of 8.4 million has one police force and one integrated court system.

Thus, to quote the AP, in Belgium, "extremist ideology has been allowed to thrive due to police neglect."

And then further compounding the enforcement challenge, with a total population of 11.2 million, living in Belgium there are 650,000 unintegrated Muslins.

What a deadly mess.

October 24, 2013--"You're Fired!"

As The Donald likes to say, "You're fired!" But in Washington, in this White House, those words are rarely spoken.

No one was fired for the killings at our consulate in Benghazi. No one was terminated for the Wikileaks leaks. No one for the Edward Snowdon N.S.A. disclosures. And no one from the Justice Department for likely illegally obtaining private telephone records for Associate Press reporters.

Basically, no one is ever fired for anything.

This, by-the-way, has been true for all recent presidents--who did Ronald Reagan fire? George H.W. Bush? Bill Clinton? George W. Bush? Pretty much no one.

A few were asked to resign, which is very different than being fired for good cause, and those who did invariably claimed it was so that they could spend more time with their families.

General Stanley McChrystal is the only Obama person I can think of who was out-and-out fired. For indiscreetly criticizing President Obama to a Rolling Stone writer. Compare that to President Truman very publicly firing General Douglas MacArthur in the middle of the Korean War.

But now we have another who was fired by the Obama White House. According to the Daily Beast, a national security official was fired last week for issuing two-year's worth of tweets in which he made insulting comments about Obama administration officials.

He is Jofi Joseph, who has been secretly tweeting under the moniker @natsewonk. Up until last week he was part of the team working on negotiations with Iran.

For the past two years he posted insults about the intelligence and appearance of top White House and State Department officials.

"I'm a fan of Obama," he tweeted, "but his continued reliance and dependence upon a vacuous cipher like Valerie Jarrett concerns me."

On another occasion, he wrote, "Was Huma Abedin wearing beer goggles the night she met Anthony Weiner? Almost as bad a pairing as Samantha Powers [U.S. Ambassador to the UN] and Cass Sunstein [Power's husband and former Obama aide]."

General McChrystal and Jofi Joseph. A short and not very impressive list.

Americans understandable frustrated with our government would like to see officials held accountable. And fired if they foul up in big ways.

Case in point--while Jofi Joseph is looking for a new job (which I assume he is unlikely ever to secure), Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius still has hers.

Considering the importance of the rollout of Obamcare and the political capital Obama has expended to get it approved, funded, and defended, considering the software disaster that is making it almost impossible for people seeking to purchase healthcare insurance on line to do so, shouldn't the person in charge be held accountable? And be dismissed?

Hundreds of millions were spent on the design of the Obamacare website and it is virtually useless. Shouldn't Sebelius have been monitoring the situation daily while it was being constructed? And since she obviously didn't, shouldn't Obama do what The Donald would do?