The Bookworm Beat 4-6-15 — “the Obama doctrine” edition and open thread

Woman writingI haven’t had the time, nor do I have the inclination, to sit through Thomas Friedman’s loving interview with the president about “the Obama doctrine.” I’ve read quotations from it, including the bit about Obama justifying his engagement with Iran in part on a fatwa from the Iranian leader condemning nuclear weapons — something Obama, our own Supreme Leader, seems unaware is a hoax. Does it worry you, as it does me, that Obama’s foreign policy is based, in significant part, on fantasy?

What really terrified me about Obama’s justification for his actions is how utterly cold-blooded he is:

“We are powerful enough to be able to test these propositions without putting ourselves at risk. And that’s the thing … people don’t seem to understand,” the president said. “You take a country like Cuba. For us to test the possibility that engagement leads to a better outcome for the Cuban people, there aren’t that many risks for us. It’s a tiny little country. It’s not one that threatens our core security interests, and so [there’s no reason not] to test the proposition. And if it turns out that it doesn’t lead to better outcomes, we can adjust our policies. The same is true with respect to Iran, a larger country, a dangerous country, one that has engaged in activities that resulted in the death of U.S. citizens, but the truth of the matter is: Iran’s defense budget is $30 billion. Our defense budget is closer to $600 billion. Iran understands that they cannot fight us. … You asked about an Obama doctrine. The doctrine is: We will engage, but we preserve all our capabilities.”

That’s a lovely argument to make in the halls of the Ivy League, where instructors traffic in hypotheticals without having to deal with the real-world consequences that flow from putting their theories into effect. Here, though, Obama is using his vast power to put his theories into play because he thinks we can deflect any risk. Really? He’s ready to handle the very real risk of an Iranian nuclear missile exploded off our coast, knocking out the Eastern Seaboard’s entire power grid, thereby turning the clock back to Colonial America for at least a year?

What’s worse is that Obama’s already seen how his theories play out and the results have been uniformly ugly. Thanks to his hostility to Israel and passion for Palestinians, there was a bloody war between Israel and Hamas (which is Iran’s proxy) last summer. Thanks to his imaginary red line with Syria, people are dying in the hundreds of thousands, and Iran is moving its troops in, threatening not just Israel, but anything near it. Thanks to his sudden decision to wage war in Libya, Libya has become an anarchic terrorist state with ties to . . . Iran. Thanks to his principled (I’ll give him that), but utterly stupid, decision to withdraw from Iraq, Iraq is being sundered, with ISIS and Iran assaulting the poor Iraqi people like jackals on a holiday. Thanks to his feckless “anti-terrorism” policy, Yemen has fallen to Iran, and it’s going to become another Libya.  (And yes, it’s quite an amazing coincidence, isn’t it, that every feckless decision Obama makes benefits Iran.)

In Africa, Obama’s manifest disinterest in black lives (which are supposed to matter to him), his hostility to and disinterest in Christian martyrs, and his seemingly endless support for Islamic terrorists has seen a series of slaughters that should make every one of us ashamed to be Americans. Although everyone keeps saying “America can’t be the world’s policeman,” the fact is that, when we tried to be just that, while we didn’t succeed all the time, we succeeded most of the time. Just knowing that America might turn her gimlet eye on bad actors was enough to keep many of them pacified. With the cop having voluntarily withdrawn from the beat, it’s open season on ordinary citizens throughout the world.

So yeah, assuming we don’t have a devastating EMP attack or a dirty bomb going off in a major American city, maybe we in America are powerful enough to weather the fallout (pun intended) from Obama’s academic experiment. But someone, anyone, should have some sympathy for the Africans, and the Middle Easterners, and the Jews, and possibly the Europeans, and God alone knows whoever else ends up in the direct path of the marauders whom Obama, in his overweening arrogance, has unchained.

One other point: What seems to underlie Obama’s approach to all this is his belief that, once Iran gets nuclear respect, whether now or in ten years, it will calm down. He seems to view Iran like the childless woman who, when desperately trying to get pregnant, makes everyone’s life a living Hell because she’s so angry about her situation and then, once she’s pregnant, becomes a completely dove, cooing agreeably at everyone. What Obama ignores is that Iran isn’t driven by rage or frustration; it’s driven by a clearly drawn ideology that dead-ends with an eschatological apocalypse that Iran believes it is responsible for bringing into being. Giving Iran nuclear power doesn’t assuage its rage; it instead is a sign from Allah of the righteousness of its goals.

Deal or No Deal?

Here’s another thing that’s really scary about the whole Iran deal Obama is selling us. There is no deal. Neo-neocon thinks nothing will happen at all. There will never be a deal.

Emily Landau points out a different weakness, even if there is a deal: What if Iran, having got relief from sanctions, just walks away from it? There’s nothing to stop it and Obama’s made sure to leave its entire nuclear infrastructure in tact.

Student Loans and Administrative costs drive college tuition inflation

With two kids coming up on college soon, and a Progressive husband who’s determined that they get access to the best Progressive institutions that will accept them, I am not pleased about skyrocketing college tuition. I’m even less pleased when I consider that they’re artificially inflated by the essentially free money the government hands out and by burgeoning administrative costs that have nothing to do with education and everything to do with political correctness. In other words, government interference in education is driving prices up and quality down.

The Housing Crisis revisited

The one thing you can say about Big Government ideologues is that they never give up. No matter the failures their policies suffer, they always come back again promising, “This time we’ll get it right. There’s nothing wrong with the theory; we just implemented it wrong.”

For those of you who remember the disastrous implementation of the last government intervention in America’s housing market, which led to the 2008 Recession that, thanks to Obama, still bedevils us, you won’t be happy to know that the political class is at it again.

No, hoop skirts are not racist

The Mycenaen women, who lived 3,500 years ago, wore modified versions of big skirts and corsets:

goddess (1)

In Europe, beginning in the 16th century, all women were belled-out skirts, made out of horsehair fabrics, or starched fabrics, or voluminous petticoats, or something hoop-like:

Queen Elizabeth 1, approx. 1570s
Queen Elizabeth 1, approx. 1570s
Madame Pompadour, circa 1750s
Madame Pompadour, circa 1750s
Elizabeth of Austria, 1860s
Elizabeth of Austria, 1860s

American women initially weren’t so fancy, but by the 19th century, they were wearing pretty much the same thing. Indeed, one of the more famous “fashion icons” of 19th century American hoop skirts didn’t even come into existence until 1936, and first appeared on film in 1939:

Scarlett O'Hara
Scarlett O’Hara

The thing is, hoop skirts are not racist. They’re just clothes. But try telling that to academic ignorami.

Life calls.  More later.