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SPECIAL TO THE DAILY NEWS

Saturday, January 28, 2017, 9:59 PM

Barack Obama needs to come back from his vacation. Michelle, too. We need a voice for the majority of Americans who did not vote for Donald Trump.

Democrats and progressives are frantic about Trump's steady stream of executive orders violating the human and civil rights of people firmly established by law and the U.S. Constitution.

Arrogantly some pundits are asking people expressing their outrage "why are you surprised?" "He's doing what he said he would do."

No one is surprised that he is doing what he said he would do. We are surprised he is getting away with it so easily. The checks and balances we've read about since middle school need to kick in and kick in fast. Thankfully, the much-maligned ACLU convinced a federal judge to block Trump's immigration executive orderfor now anyway.

BAN BLOCKED: Federal judge grants emergency stay to thwart Trump's refugee ban, halts deportations

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Normally people hesitate to compare any violator of human and civil rights on a grand scale to Hitler for fear of minimizing what Hitler did.

And, while most Americans can never know what it was like to be Jewish in the time of Hitler, perhaps weafter 10 days of Trumpcan start to imagine, especially if we recall what we know about Germany in Hitler's adolescent days.

In Forward magazine, Andrew Nagorski, who wrote "Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power," described Jews and non-Jews' slow wake-up call to the Nazi danger:

"In the very early 1920s, when Adolf Hitler was still only a local rabble rouser in Munich, two men from Munich's American consulate made a point of observing his rallies: Robert Murphy, the young acting consul, and Paul Drey, a German employee who was a member of a distinguished Bavarian Jewish family.

Day one of Trump refugee ban sparks chaos at U.S. airports

"Do you think these agitators will ever get far?" Murphy asked his colleague. "Of course not!" Drey replied. "The German people are much too intelligent to be taken in by such scamps."

Nagorski wrote German Jews and many Americans in Germany thought Hitler would "never act on his most extreme rhetoric, and besides, the donations would keep him reasonable."

Almost 100 years later, we are hearing similar remarks from smart and politically-seasoned Americans. "It's all going to calm down." "He needs to placate his base." "The Republicans won't let him destroy the party."

Meanwhile, Trump's actions could very well result in refugees being murdered when they return to their homelands. Their lives should matter to the President and to all Americans.

Trump, I suppose, argues American lives matter more, but the truth is Americans do not live in daily fear of violence the way some Muslims, Latinos and other people from ethnic groups do in war-torn countries under dictatorial governments. That doesn't mean we don't have economic and societal problems that need solving. We do. But, nothing Trump is doing gets at the real pocketbook issues facing the white middle class Americans who put him in office nor does it protect us from a terrorist attack. Time will prove this true.

Until then, somebody with authority and presence needs to go toe-to-toe with Trump.

Someone who isn't delusional about possibly having a relationship with this man after he "calms down." Someone who isn't using Trump to get elected or re-elected. Someone who isn't participating in Democratic Party in-fighting. Someone who will give voice to the millions of Americans watching cable news, as I write this, thinking what can I do, what can I say, so I don't feel so helpless, so afraid. I am one of those Americans.

Is that someone Obama? I don't know. I can't think, though, of anyone else who could synthesize the energy of the Women's March on Washington and bring Democrats, moderate Republicans, progressives, whites and people of color together.

He has a legacy to protect. We have the very soul of our country.

Karen Hinton is Chief Strategy Officer at Fenton and is the former press secretary for NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio.

See more here:
Obama, you need to come home - New York Daily News

During an interview on ABCs This Week, White House press secretary Sean Spicer tried to blame the Obama administration for the seven Muslim-majority countries that were listed in Trumps Muslim ban.

Video:

ABC Breaking News | Latest News Videos

Spicer was asked what this executive order says to Muslims in other countries.

The White House press secretary answered, What this says is we are going to protect our country and our people. There are forty-six other countries that are not part of this, and I think thats an important thing to note. Whether youre talking about Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, or the UAE. Theres forty-six Muslim-majority countries that are not in this set. These seven countries were identified by the Obama administration as needing further travel scrutiny.

Nine days into the Trump administration and the nation has been given its first blame Obama excuse from the White House. There is a big policy difference between suggesting nations needing more scrutiny and imposing a ban that is causing chaos across the country. President Trump made the decision to have this executive order drafted. Trump signed the executive order with pride in front of national television cameras.

There is no blame Obama here. This is all on Trump.

The Muslim ban has backfired on Trump, and the argument that it isnt so bad because all the Muslims arent banned revealed the weak footing that the administration is on with this issue.

Obama isnt occupying the White House anymore, so when bad decisions lead to bad policies, the responsibility belongs to President Trump.

As it relates to the Muslim ban, Trump signed it, so he owns it.

Note: If you are an international student or legal immigrant who has been impacted by Trumps executive order, please use the Contact Us form to share your story.

ABC This Week, Muslim ban, sean spicer, Trump blames Obama for Muslim ban, trump muslim ban

Read more:
White House Blames President Obama After Muslim Ban Backfires On Trump - PoliticusUSA

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Barack Obama | The Huffington Post

About That Obama 'Boom' Wall Street Journal So much for that economic boom that President Obama was supposed to have left his successor. That has been the spin among Democrats and progressive economists, but Friday's GDP report for the fourth quarter provided another in eight years of reality ...

View original post here:
About That Obama 'Boom' - Wall Street Journal

One of former President Barack Obama's last acts as military commander-in-chief was ordering bomber strikes in Libya that killed as many as 90 ISIS fighters last week.

The strike was captured in graphic video, and when the bodies were counted this week the initial estimate of 85 killed was revised upward. The missiles took out a remnant of an ISIS force that once controlled much of central and eastern Libya and that the U.S. had feared would establish a second Caliphate like the one in Syria and Iraq.

Does that mean the Obama administration achieved its goal of saving Libya from ISIS, and preventing the creation of a new safe haven for ISIS jihadis driven from their shrinking kingdom in Syria?

"This was the largest remaining ISIS presence in Libya," a U.S. defense official said of the two jihadi encampments taken out in the airstrikes. "They have been largely marginalized but I am hesitant to say they've been completely eliminated in Libya."

In mid-2014, three years after the collapse of the Qaddafi regime, ISIS had about 1,000 fighters in Libya. Taking advantage of a power vacuum in the center of the country, far from the major cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, ISIS expanded rapidly over the next 18 months. Local militants were joined by jihadis from the rest of North Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the Caucasus. The force absorbed or defeated other Islamist groups inside Libya, and the central ISIS leadership in Raqqa, Syria, battered by coalition airstrikes, began urging foreign recruits to head for Libya instead of Syria.

ISIS seized control of the coastal city of Sirte, Qaddafi's hometown, in early 2015, and then began to expand to the east and south. By the beginning of 2016, it had effective control of 120 to 150 miles of coastline and portions of the interior, and had reached Eastern Libya's major population center, Benghazi.

In spring 2016, the U.S. Africa Command estimated that ISIS had about 5,000 fighters in its stronghold of Sirte. (French estimates of total ISIS forces in Libya at the time were as high as 10,000.)

Then the indigenous rebel groups who had staked their own claims to Libya turned their weapons on ISIS with the help of airstrikes from Western forces, including U.S. drones. The Libyan population resented the outsiders who wanted to establish a fundamentalist regime on their soil.

"The Libyans don't like outsiders. That was one of the biggest assets in fighting ISIS there," the defense official said.

Militias loyal to the new Libyan unity government, plus a separate and rival force loyal to a former officer in the Qaddafi regime, launched an assault on ISIS outposts in Sirte and the surrounding areas that lasted for months. According to U.S. military estimates, ISIS ranks shrank to somewhere between a few hundred and 2,000 fighters.

Last August, the U.S. military began airstrikes that, along with continued pressure on the ground from the Libyan militias, pushed the remaining ISIS fighters back into Sirte, eventually relegating them to a few blocks of the city. In all, U.S. drones and planes hit ISIS nearly 590 times.

Throughout the fall, the Libyan militias cleared building after building, finally reclaiming the city in mid-December.

A senior U.S. counterterrorism official cautioned that recent successes should not be oversold. He said that while the strikes that killed 90 "squirters" were a serious blow to ISIS in Libya, the group had not been "decimated."

"We had success in killing a lot of people, but we are seeing camps in other ungoverned areas of Libya and they have a record of fading into the hinterlands and then reassembling.

"That's not to say they aren't on the downswing, but they can take a hit. Don't count them out."

A U.S. intelligence official agreed, saying "knocking out a terrorist group is never done with a single strike."

Defense and intelligence officials also worry that ISIS may soon be given an opportunity to recover. With the terror group temporarily on its heels, the country's indigenous militias may set their sights on each other.

A map showing location of Sirte, Libya, formerly an ISIS stronghold. Google Maps

Two rival governments, one in the east and one in the west, are contending for control of Libya.

The UN-backed unity government, known as the Government of National Accord and based in the western city of Tripoli, took power in March 2016. The U.S. recognizes the GNA as the legitimate government.

The GNA does not have an official military, but is backed by a collection of militias. The most important is the Misratan militia, which took the lead in the fight against ISIS in Sirte.

A rival, anti-Islamist government opposed to the GNA and called the House of Representatives is based in the eastern town of Tobruk, near the Egyptian border. It is backed by its own group of militias, with the largest calling itself the Libyan National Army.

Led by a Qaddafi sidekick-turned-foe, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the LNA is supported by Russia, Egypt and the UAE. The LNA drove Ansar al-Sharia, an al Qaeda affiliate, out of Benghazi, but it has also taken over oil fields held by militias allied with the GNA.

Without ISIS to keep both sides busy, U.S. defense officials and experts are concerned the rival armed groups will intensify their efforts against each other.

It is also unknown what the new administration plans to do about Libya. According to officials, the Trump team is likely to authorize a greater number of manned and unmanned airstrikes around the world than the Obama administration, but it is not known yet where that will be.

See the article here:
Did Obama Defeat ISIS in Libya? - NBCNews.com