A little of this and a little of that

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I’ve been cleaning out my email box, a process that always involves my apologizing to lots of people for appearing to have ignored their emails to me.  I haven’t ignored them, which implies a deliberate effort to pretend they’re not there.  Instead, I have done what I so often do:  fallen behind.

The cool thing about going through the email box is finding all these gems.  Some of them go back in time a while, but they’re still good opinion pieces or news stories, so I offer them to you now.

Back in August, Sultan Knish imagined what Obama’s obituary would be like were he to die in the year 2038.  My only quibble is that, to the extent that Obama is exactly my age, I don’t like seeing him die at a mere 77 years.  Our generation was meant to live to be older.  Of course, what with Obamacare and all, maybe in 2038, a man of 77 will be freakishly old.

Rich people can be nice too:  Helen Rosburg, a Wrigley Heiress, paid for a Marine’s dogs to be flown across country in a private charter when a commercial airline said the dogs were too big to fly to the Marine’s new base.

Plastic comes from oil, so it makes sense that a good way to recycle is to turn it back to oil.  My only problem with this is that, because it comes from “United Nations University,” I’m assuming that it takes more electricity (i.e., coal- or oil-derived energy) to convert than each bottle actually yields.  (Yes, I am cynical.)

As Americans are being pushed onto Obamacare will-she-nil-she, Congress is busy exempting its own people from the law’s increasingly onerous burdens.  Maybe we ought to have a clean-slate election:  everybody in Congress is automatically booted all at once, and we start from scratch.

Now that there’s no recourse, the Obama cheer-leading rats are scrambling off the ship.  This time it’s David Ignatius looking at Obama’s abysmal foreign policy failures.  Of course, all these people are still rats, because they knowingly deceived us, the were complicit in massive fraud (unless they were dumb as turnips when it came to the manifest failures driving Obama’s foreign and domestic policies), and the gosh-darned ship of state is still sinking.  They’re running for high ground, while the rest of us are drowning . . . thanks to them.

Isn’t it good to know that a Homeland Security adviser thinks America is a Muslim county?  Moreover, the Constitution is “Islamically compliant.”  Well, that’s quite a trick considering that the Constitution is about small government and individual freedom, including freedom from state interference with religion, while Islam is predicated upon complete submission to the religious state.

Morning roundup — and Open Thread

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My very strong sense is that the shutdown will reveal how much of our federal government is inessential.  I’m not the only one who feels this way.  And no wonder, because the shutdown reveals waste everywhere.  This shouldn’t be a surprise.  Monopolies are invariably poorly managed and unchecked bureaucracies invariably grow.

PowerLine takes on a disgusting piece of revisionist history.  (I’d seen the underlying grotesque revisionism myself, but hadn’t had the time to challenge it.)

When it comes to Obamacare, is the government shutdown both a means and an end?  Buzzfeed thinks that the shutdown on its own, without any specific defunding measures, will damage Obamacare quite badly.  Considering Obamacare’s disastrous first few hours, Buzzfeed may be right.

Even in my most atheist days, I recognized that religion, whether or not there really was a God, is a moral necessity.  Dennis Prager’s challenge to Richard Dawkins hones in on that fact.

Britain’s NHS continues to show us just  how coercive government-run healthcare is.  I’m no fan of smoking, but this type of bullying is sickening.

As we already saw in the Balkans, when it comes to Islam, the call to jihad always trumps all other loyalties.

Obama’s foreign policy in a nutshell — sort of.  I actually think there’s a malevolent consistency running through it, which sees Obama’s hierarchy:  Most favored are Muslim tyrannies; second place to Muslim nations; third place to Leftist tyrannies; fourth place to socialist nations; fifth place to free countries and traditional American allies.

Did I mention bullying somewhere above?  Why, yes I did, in connection with Britain’s NHS.  The fact is, though, that leftists are always bullies, as Christian troops in the American military are discovering to their cost.  The First Amendment promises religious freedom.  America hasn’t always been true to that, as with her attack on Mormon polygamy.  (I hold no brief for polygamy, but it was a core Mormon doctrine.)  There are certainly practices one can quarrel with.  For example, I don’t think the First Amendment should extend to human sacrifice.  To the extent, though, that heterosexual marriage is one of the core doctrinal concepts in all of the world’s religions, and that it reflects biological and reproductive reality, the bullying and coercion from the left is unconscionable.

Arthur Laffer (the repeatedly proven Laffer Curve) and Stephen Moore write Obamanomic’s epitaph.  (And one should add that Obamanomics, which is simply Marxist economics has already been repeatedly proven . . . as a failure.)

This is an open thread, so please add anything you’ve found that’s interesting.

Obama says that he would like to see more Americans die in terrorist attacks

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That headline is not a lie.  The greatest orator since Abraham Lincoln had a serious policy discussion with . . . wait for it . . . Jay Leno.  During that serious, I mean really serious, talk, Obama explicitly stated that it was unfortunate that Americans were less likely to die in a terrorist attack than in a car accident.  Really:

POTUS said the U.S. was not overreacting.

POTUS said people can still take vacation, just do so in a “prudent way” by checking on the State Department Websites for up-to-day information before making plans.

“The odds of dying in a terrorist attack are a lot lower than they are of dying in a car accident, unfortunately.”  (Emphasis added.)

You and I both know that President Silvertongue was trying to say something along the lines of this:  “The odds of dying in a terrorist attack are a lot lower than they are of dying in a car accident.  While we’d like to see both types of statistics drop, it’s useful to put terrorism’s risk into perspective.”

But that’s not what Obama said.  What he said is that it’s unfortunate that the average American faces a lower risk of dying at a terrorist’s hands than he does of dying in a car accident.

What’s really funny about all this is that Obama’s disastrous foreign policies are such that it’s entirely possible that he’ll ensure that, without the number of fatal car accidents decreasing, Americans really will end up dying in ever greater numbers at terrorist hands.  Perhaps President Malaprop speaks the truth after all.

Hollywood may inform Obama’s Washington more than we realize — all theater, no substance

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Sometimes one reads something and thinks “That’s it!  That explains what’s been going on.”

I do believe that Elliott Abrams is on to something when he discusses the administration’s approach to Syria, and his point is much larger than the already ugly fact that the president may have misspoken American right into a war.  (Which kind of makes Bush’s gaffes, malapropisms, and linguistic mangles seem a whole lot less significant, right?)

Abrams points out that the New York Times report revealing that Obama’s red line was an ad lib, and a dangerous one at that, also reveals that the White House never actually had a plan.  Here’s what the Times reports:

Mr. Obama’s advisers also raised legal issues. “How can we attack another country unless it’s in self-defense and with no Security Council resolution?” another official said, referring to United Nations authorization. “If he drops sarin on his own people, what’s that got to do with us?”

But they concluded that drawing a firm line might deter Mr. Assad. In addition to secret messages relayed through Russia, Iran and other governments, they decided that the president would publicly address the matter.

After a detour to note how ironic it is that the same President who established an “Atrocities Prevention Board” a few months ago (“‘never again’ is a challenge to nations”) now has people saying “What do we care?”, Abrams gets down to the nitty-gritty of Obama’s approach to foreign policy — it’s all theater:

Second, the issue of bluffing. It is noteworthy in the Times story that the administration officials were dealing with words, with lines, with messages—never it seems with tougher decisions about actions. This is of course a huge mistake, as just about everyone now acknowledges, though how it comes to be made in year five of an administration is more mysterious.

Abrams contrasts this superficiality — figuring out how to sell an attitude, without having an actual attitude — with what went on under Reagan when the Soviet Union wanted to send advanced fighter planes to Nicaragua.  Abrams was the assistant secretary of state for Latin America, so it was up to him to read formally to his Soviet counterpart the administration’s stand:  “there was a unanimous view that we would not permit Russia to put advanced combat jets into Nicaragua and change the power balance that had existed in the region since the Cuban missile crisis. Everyone agreed.”

That’s what played out in the world.  But what Abrams remembers is that this is also what played out behind closed doors:

But what preceded such talking points was the NSC meeting. There, after everyone said yes, let’s deliver that message, James Baker spoke up. As I recall it, Baker said something like this: Look, we are not agreeing here on sending a message. We are agreeing now that if they act, we will act. We’re not going to come back here in a month or three months or six months and say, gee, now what do we do? If you are agreeing on taking this line and sending this message to the Soviets, you are agreeing now, today, that if they put those jets in, we will take them out. That’s what we are agreeing. Today.

Although Abrams says he wasn’t then and isn’t now a Baker fan, he was then and is now a fan of that type of sober, realistic thinking.  Abrams’ conclusion about the administration’s hollow, theatrical approach to the rapidly unfolding disaster in Syria applies with equal force to every single foreign policy situation Obama has faced.  As you read the words below, think not only about Syria, but about Libya, the Arab Spring, the Israeli/Palestinian debacles, etc.:

It seems there was no one at these Obama administration meetings wise or experienced enough to say “Hold on, what do we do when they call the bluff?” My boss back in the Reagan years, Secretary of State Shultz, was, like Baker, an ex-Marine and a serious guy. At these White House meetings on Syria this year and last, was there one serious guy? Seems not, and seems that that problem has not been solved.

Of course Obama will take the low road; he has no high road

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Karl Rove has written a WSJ op-ed, the title of which is “Obama’s Campaign Will Take the Low Road.”  I haven’t even read Rove’s piece — which I’m sure is good — but I already know he’s right.  Obama’s campaign will take the low road because there is no high road.  After almost three and a half years in office, he doesn’t have a record on which to run.  Wait.  That’s untrue.  He does have a record on which to run.  It’s a record pitched to a narrow demographic that would take pleasure if Obama gave the following speech:

My fellow Americans, I’m proud to come here before you and to tell you what I’ve done so far as President and what I plan to do if you elect me again.  On the economic front, I’ve increased America’s debt more than any other president in history.  I’m proud of that, and I hope to beat my own record in my second term. Working with a compliant Congress, I’ve also put into place policies, including ObamaCare, that ensure frightened employers who will not hire, a stagnant economy, and a shrinking labor force.

If the Supreme Court upholds ObamaCare, you can be sure that I will continue to attack religious institutions, to drive private doctors and hospital out of business, and to work hard to make sure that Americans enjoy the same glorious health care that our Cuban friends now rejoice in.  If the Supreme Court strikes down ObamaCare, I promise two things:  court packing and renewed efforts to socialize America’s health care system in a way that will pass muster from my new 14-justice Supreme Court (10 of whom are guaranteed to be bona fide Progressives).  I have been assured that a properly constituted Court will be able to reconcile ObamaCare with the “accommodations” that religious organizations must necessarily make to ensure free health care for all Americans, including free and full contraception, abortion, and euthanasia.

On the energy front, I’ve worked hard to ensure that ordinary Americans will pay $5.00 per gallon of gas, and I promise to double that amount if you reelect me.  I’ll also ensure that more and more taxpayer funds are diverted to subsidize cars and solar panels that only rich people can afford, to provide loans to windmill and solar companies that I guarantee will stay in business for at least three months after spending these monies, and to help countries such as Brazil engage in massive oil drilling activities, creating a reserve that Americans can import at great expense at some later date.  I also promise that America will never be tainted by cost-effective Canadian oil.  I’m sure that the Chinese, when they purchase that oil, will not use it in a way deleterious to American interests.  In my second term I will also continue my current policy of barring any drilling and exploration whatsoever on federal lands.  I also will work to make fracking illegal.

I’m especially proud of my record on race relations.  During my presidency, I’m happy to report that I’ve finally corrected the pendulum swing that started in the Jim Crow south, with the government persecuting blacks; that then hovered in a meaningless middle where the government tried to treat races equally; and that is now heading to its correct position, one that sees African Americans as a permanently protected government class, with a secondary protected class of some Hispanics (not Cuban-Americans), and a tertiary class of remaining non-white people who are not conservatives.  I promise you that, in my second term, with my new 14-justice Progressive Supreme Court, the Constitution will be correctly interpreted to mean, as the Founders undoubtedly intended, that all Americans are equal, but some Americans of color are more equal than others.  The current hostility between races is merely a necessary by-product of this constitutional correction.

We’ll also see even more foreign policy successes in my second term.  I will not flag in my efforts to realign American foreign policy around a Turkish-American alliance.  The Arab Spring is currently progressing as I had hoped, with the Muslim Brotherhood making significant political strikes throughout the Muslim world, especially in Egypt.  I optimistically predict that, in my second term, Israel, should she still exist, will be prevailed upon to return to her 1947 borders and to hand Jerusalem over to combined UN-Egyptian control.  This move should effectively neutralize the nuclear threat that Iran poses to Israel (should she still exist).  I have assured European leaders that this realignment, along with Israel’s retrenchment within her original borders, will placate Iran, making any concerns about Iran’s long-range nuclear weapons unnecessary.

I’m happy to report that European leaders are fully supportive of my efforts regarding Israel (should she still exist).  Iran has also assured me that, with Israel disabled or gone, and with the world increasingly independent on Middle Eastern oil, Iran and other Muslim countries will subsidize the European economy in exchange for some small religious and civil concessions.  My dear friend Vladimir Putin has also promised that, in return for America’s agreeing to give him a free hand when it comes to the Eastern European countries, he will not attempt to repeat the Soviet takeovers of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, or other Eastern Bloc, er, democratic nations.

I also promise that, in my second term, I will keep America’s southern borders open.  I know, and you know, that there is no such thing as an illegal immigrant.  There are only future Progressive voters, and we’ll work hard to make America an inviting place for these new non-legal, voting citizens.  To that end, I will continue to send hand guns over our Southern borders to the drug cartels and to ignore the rising tide of Communism in certain Latin American countries.  Doing so will ensure that Latin America continues to be an impoverished, unstable continent that, rather than keeping its citizens at home, provides America with a steady supply of exploitable cheap labor and assured Democrat votes.

To those of you who have been disappointed with my performance during my first term, I can promise you that, if you give me a second term, you ain’t seen nothing yet.  Thank you, and Allah, er, Marx, er God Bless America.

 

Obama’s foreign policy in no more than two or three sentences

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Rush let ‘er rip against the media this morning regarding its utter failure to investigate any aspect of Obama’s life, even as it subjects Republican candidates to the most invasive investigations and demeaning tactics imaginable.   It’s a long riff, but every bit of it is interesting, and you’ll probably be nodding your head and saying “amen” as you read it.

From there, Rush went on to the usual double standard, which is that Republican candidates have to have “think tank” level knowledge of every subject, including foreign policy, whereas Obama got, and continues to get, a free pass.  It was with regard to that free pass that Rush posed this question:

Can somebody tell me in one or two sentences what Obama’s foreign policy doctrine is?  I’m serious.  Can anybody call this program at 800-282-2882 and tell me what Obama’s foreign policy is?  What is the guiding principle of Obama’s foreign policy?  What are our nation’s objectives in Obama’s foreign policy?  Does anybody have the slightest clue?

Rush, I’m not going to call, but I am willing to take a stab at the guiding principle behind Obama’s foreign policy, and I’ll do so in two sentences:  Obama’s foreign policy principle is to weaken and demean America, while overtly and covertly supporting both Leftist and Islamic regimes.  Because ordinary Americans would be repulsed by this policy, he hides it behind an amalgam of passivity, on the one hand, and ambition, distraction, uglification and derision, on the other hand.

That was fun.  Do you guys want to give it a try?

The view from the Gulf

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One of the things we frequently bemoan here is the fact that American foreign policy tends to be naive.  Perhaps because our culture is a fluid melting pot in which citizens, until quite recently, willingly changed themselves to assimilate into the broader culture, we’re very poor at understanding that other cultures not only have different behaviors, which is a superficial thing, but different mores and values, many of which run almost intractably deep.

The Obama administration has added to that already dangerous naiveté a definitely anti-American bent.  First, Obama seems to care very little for foreign policies that, no matter how misguided, are at least intended to advance American interests abroad.  Second, Obama has abandoned an American foreign policy goal that goes back almost one hundred years, which is to advance individual freedom abroad.  Advancing individual freedom rests upon two prongs, the first of which has an airy-fairy, elementary school sweetness, and the second of which is grounded in hard common sense.  On the sweet side, valuing our own freedom, we like to share it with others.  More pragmatically, nations that rank high on the individual liberty scale seldom go to war with other, similarly situated nations.

The Bush administration perfectly exemplified both America’s traditional goal of pushing freedom and her naiveté.  The Bush crowd understood that free nations are stable nations, and they truly wanted to see the Iraqi and Afghani people freed from tyranny.  As history shows, however, the Bushies had absolutely no idea how very different Middle Eastern culture and values are from those in the West.  They assumed that, if we gave Middle Eastern Muslims freedom, they’d act like free people.  Boy were they wrong.  It turns out that, while people may value freedom, older, more firmly entrenched behaviors (tribalism, misogyny, religious fervor) will trump nascent democracies just about every time.  Change, if it comes, is gradual, often at a glacial pace.  Nor did the Bushies seem to understand that we were able to rush the freedom process in Germany and Japan only because we reduced them to rubble, rebuilt them from the ground up, and then stuck around for 60 years to keep an eye on things.

All of which gets me to a fascinating article from Bahrain’s Gulf Daily News, which a friend sent me.  Although most decided a Muslim country, Bahrain is also moderate by Muslim standards, and it prides itself on that fact.  I doubt I’d be comfortable living there, but it’s no Saudi Arabia or Iran.  Iran, however, would like it to be an Iran.  The article focuses on Bahraini fears that Iran is attempting to control it, and to bringing it in line with Iran’s fanatic, medieval Shia practice of Islam:

BAHRAIN is a victim of Iran’s expansionist policies, which will not be allowed to succeed, it was declared last night. It has been the ideology of Iran over the last many centuries to interfere in the affairs of its neighbours and pursue its policies of suppression, said Akhbar Al Khaleej Editor-in-Chief Anwar Abdulrahman.

He said 65 per cent of the people in Bahrain were the “moderate silent majority” who did not speak while 35pc were the “vocal anti-government” people who shouted and their voices were heard.

“We are one people and we are moderates. There is no way we can be violent and there is no way we can be like Iran,” said Mr Abdulrahman.

The article goes on to complaint in greater length about the risk an expansionist Iran poses for the Gulf states, and I urge you to read it.  Two things in the article really jumped out at me, one about the nature of Iran, and the other about the nature of America:

“These policies have been with the Iranians since 600BC, even though the regimes and rulers have changed,” said Mr Abdulrahman.

“There were all kinds of rulers, but they have always been dictators who have repeatedly suppressed their own people.

[snip]

He also spoke about the US role in the region and about its double standards.

“They have a policy to play a role in every part of the world, regardless of how disastrous it might be,” said Mr Abdulrahman.

“Whether it was Vietnam in the 60s or in the modern-day Iraq and Afghanistan, they have never won. It is only a matter of time they will withdraw from Afghanistan as well.

“Wherever they go, it turns into a disaster. Their policies are like fast food – they change every day.”

Mr. Abdulrahman is right on both counts.  Unlike America, which is a new nation, old nations have deeply entrenched behaviors.  Iran, whenever it’s had strength, has sought regional domination, whether the ruler was Darius, Xerxes or the Mullahs.  (In the same way, Russia, the Soviet Union and now Russia again, have always sought warm water ports.  It’s just what the rulers of that land do.)

As for Abdulrahman’s complaints about America, he’s right on that too.  America has always had a tug of war between isolationists and those who seek to advance freedom and democracy.  World War II put us firmly on a democracy seeking path right through 1968.  It was then that the McGovern/Obama wing of the Democratic party denounced America as a country too evil to offer salvation to other nations.  Since then, we’ve see-sawed back and forth between government powers that have viewed America alternately as a Lightbringer and as Satan incarnate — all with a good deal of naiveté thrown in to keep things interesting.

Mark Steyn at his inimitable best on Obama at his inimitable worst

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Much as been written by many great writers in the past few days about Obama’s extraordinary foreign policy, one that sees him crudely alienating old allies, while pandering to every totalitarian leader who comes along.  Mark Steyn sees Obama’s approach as part of a larger Leftist syndrome, inflated by Obama’s cold, self-centered personality:

As to Canadian funding of Third World abortion, the secretary of state was simply defaulting to her own tropes: If she sounds more like the chair of Planned Parenthood than the principal spokesman for American foreign policy, well, hasn’t she always? In a 2003 autobiography almost as long and as unreadable as the health-care bill, she offered little on world affairs other than the following insights: France’s Bernadette Chirac is “an elegant, cultured woman.” Nicaragua’s Violeta Chamorro is “an elegant, striking woman.” Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto is “a brilliant and striking woman.” Canada’s Aline Chrétien is “intelligent, sharply observant and elegant.” But Russia’s Naina Yeltsin is merely “personable and articulate.” Alas, since taking office, the Obama administration hasn’t found Gordon Brown, Stephen Harper, Binyamin Netanyahu, Nicolas Sarkozy, Václav Klaus, or Manmohan Singh the least bit elegant, cultured, striking, elegant, brilliant, elegant, striking, elegant, sharply observant, elegant, or even personable and articulate.

One of the oddest features of the scene is attributed to the president’s “cool,” which seems to be the euphemism of choice for what, in less stellar executives, would be regarded as an unappealing combination of coldness and self-absorption. I forget which long-ago foreign minister responded to an invitation to lunch with an adversary by saying “I’m not hungry,” but Obama seems to reserve the line for his “friends.” Visiting France, he declined to dine with the Sarkozys. Visiting Norway, he declined to dine with the king at a banquet thrown explicitly in Obama’s honor. The other day, the president declined to dine with Netanyahu even though the Israeli prime minister was his guest in the White House at the time. The British prime minister, five times rebuffed in his attempt to book a date, had to make do with a perfunctory walk ’n’ talk through the kitchens of the U.N. Obama’s shtick as a candidate was that he was the guy who’d talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere. Instead, he recoils from all but the most minimal contact with the world.

Treat yourself well today and read the rest here.

Bret Stephens writes an unusually elegant takedown of Obama’s foreign policy

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I always like the way Bret Stephens thinks, but I’ve seldom even noticed how he writes.  He’s a great writer — clear and concise — but he’s never struck me as a particular luminous writer.  I think he must have been inspired when he wrote about the rebirth of the neocon movement, in large part because the bad guys are still here, but Obama is remarkably feckless when it comes to dealing with them.  How else to account for the lovely prose and imagery I quote below:

My answer [to a French journalist asking about the rebirth of neoconservatism] was that the neocons are back because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il and Vladimir Putin never went away. A star may have shone in the east the day Barack Obama became president. But these three kings, at least, have yet to proffer the usual gifts of gold and incense and myrrh.

[snip]

As for Russia, its ambassador to the U.N. last week bellyached that the U.S. “continues to be a rather difficult negotiating partner”—and that was after Mr. Obama cancelled the missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. Thus does the politics of concession meet with the logic of contempt.

All this must, at some level, come as a surprise to an administration so deeply in love with itself. “I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world,” Mr. Obama told the U.N.’s General Assembly last week with his usual modesty. He added that those expectations were “rooted in hope—the hope that real change is possible, and the hope that America will be a leader in bringing about such change.”

Yet what sounds like “hope” in, say, Toronto or Barcelona tends to come across as fecklessness in Warsaw and Jerusalem. In Moscow and Tehran, it reads like credulity—and an opportunity to exploit the U.S. at a moment of economic weakness and political self-infatuation.

[snip]

Where neocons do put their faith is in American power, not just military or economic power but also as an instrument of moral and political suasion. Disarmament? The last dictator to relinquish his nuclear program voluntarily was Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, who did so immediately following Saddam Hussein’s capture. Democratization? Contrary to current conventional wisdom, democracy is often imposed, or at least facilitated, by U.S. pressure—in the Philippines, in the Balkans and, yes, in Iraq. Human rights? Anwar Ibrahim, the beleaguered Malaysian opposition leader, told me last week that “the only country that can stand up” to abusive regimes is the United States. “If they know the administration is taking a soft stance [on human rights], they will go on a rampage.”

Treat yourself well and read the whole thing.

This week’s National Journal poll

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One of the things I’ve been meaning to tell all of you about for ages is the weekly National Journal poll that asks bloggers from the Left and the Right to comment on current affairs.  I know about it because I’m a participant.  My views, therefore, won’t surprise you.

What’s fascinating, though, week after week after week, is the sometimes staggering divide between Left and Right.  Seldom has this been more apparent than in this week’s poll, which asks the participants to grade Obama’s foreign policy.  I know that, with the UN speech and the revelation about Iran’s enhanced nuclear program, the conservative bloggers would return the same response as before.  I wonder, though, whether the new information would make any change whatsoever to the liberal bloggers’ take.

Charles Krauthammer lays out Obama’s warped priorities re American wars & foreign policy

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My belief, getting stronger by the minute, is that Obama’s sole Afghanistan policy was to be the un-Bush.  Bush’s critics claimed Iraq was the bad war and Afghanistan the good war.  So Obama immediately stated that he’d focus on Afghanistan.  Obama, though, true Leftist that he is, and with his deep affinity for totalitarian rulers and Islamism, never had his heart in Afghanistan.  So, as Bush’s presidency recedes into the past, Obama abandons Afghanistan — and our troops too.  What a despicable man.

Keeping it alive

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The MSM has been remarkably cavalier about Joe Biden’s bizarre statement regarding the “fact” that America will be attacked six months into a Barack Obama presidency and that people will be shocked and disappointed by Obama’s response (meaning that he’ll either collapse in a sobbing heap, thereby horrifying most Americans, or launch a nuclear missile strike, which will alienate his base).

In the interests of keeping the story alive, I’ll try to run Biden’s statement here periodically, just so we don’t forget what the wanna-be VP (and current chair of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee) had to say about the future and about his running mate:

“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. “And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

Feel free to email the above quotation to your friends.  You don’t need to include partisan comment.  The words speak for themselves.  People simply need to know they’re out there, that’s all.

Why you shouldn’t cut off your nose to spite your face

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I’ve been finding very disturbing the intense hostility that conservatives direct against John McCain. So much so that I wrote a very long rant on the subject, which American Thinker was kind enough to publish and which I reprint below:

Perhaps because I’m a neocon, and not a dyed-in-the-wool, native-born conservative, I look at John McCain, with all his flaws, and still think that he’s a pretty darn good candidate for our time. More importantly, I think that Obama is a very dangerous candidate precisely because of the time in which we live. I therefore find disturbing the number of conservative purists who insist that they’re going to teach John McCain — and everyone else, dammit! — a lesson, either by sitting out the election or by throwing their vote away on a third party candidate. This is a kind of political game that may be fun to play in uninteresting eras, but I think it’s suicidal given the pivotal existential issues we now face.

It’s easy to target John McCain’s flaws. Most recently, he’s managed to buy into the whole green machine just as it’s becoming clear that the greenies probably rushed their fences, and leapt into hysteria well in advance of their facts. Still, whether because you view the world through green colored glasses, or because you really hate funding totalitarian governments that are hostile to America, there is a lot to be said for exploring energy alternatives. McCain’s free market approach should help that effort. Also, by the time he becomes President, there should be a sufficient aggregation of rationally based information about the climate to allow McCain a graceful retreat from a foolish campaign promise.

McCain also seems to be unresponsive to the feeling ordinary Americans have that illegal immigration is a big problem. This feeling arises, not because we’re all xenophobic nutcases, but because we recognize a few fundamental truths: (a) American law starts at American borders, and it is deeply destructive to society’s fabric to have an immigrant’s first act in this country be an illegal one; (b) a country’s fundamental sovereign right is the ability to control its own borders; (c) unchecked immigration provides a perfect pathway, not merely for the field worker, but for the bomb-maker; and (d) immigrants who come here should be committed to this country and its values, and shouldn’t just by moseying over to grab some illegal bucks to send to the folks back home.

Nevertheless, while illegal immigrants are irritating, they’re not an existential threat that can bring America to its knees within the next four years. They are a problem, but not an imminent one.

McCain may also never be absolved of the sin he committed with the McCain-Feingold Act, a legislative bit of bungling that has George Soros singing daily Hosannas. However, that’s done. There is no doubt that it reflects badly on McCain’s judgment, but I think it’s a sin that needs to be ignored, if not forgiven, in light of the person facing McCain on the other side of the ballot box.

You see, from my point of view, this election isn’t really about John McCain at all. It’s about Barack Obama. Of course, it shouldn’t be about Barack Obama. During a time of war and economic insecurity, one of the two presidential candidates should not be a man who has no life history, beyond a remarkable ability at self-aggrandizement, and no legislative history, despite a few years paddling about in the Illinois State Legislature and three years (count ‘em, three) doing absolutely nothing in the United States Senate.

That Obama is a man of no accomplishments or experience, though, doesn’t mean that he hasn’t managed to acquire some bad friends and bad ideas. The friends are easy to identify: Comrade . . . I mean Rev. Wright; Michelle “the Termagant” Obama; the explosive Ayers and Dohrn duo; Samantha “Hillary is a Monster” Power; Robert “Hamas” Malley; Zbigniew “the Jews are out to get me” Brzezinski; etc. Over the years, he’s sought out, paid homage to, and been advised by a chilling collection of people who dislike America and are ready to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone who talks the Marxist talk and walks the Marxist walk.

Obama’s ideas are as unnerving as his friends. To my mind, the Jihad that Islamists have declared against us is the fundamental issue of our time. Thanks to the nature of modern asymmetrical warfare, the fact that these Jihadists number in the tens of thousands, rather than the millions, and that they’re often free operators, not formal armies, does nothing to lessen the serious threat they pose to American freedoms. We’ve seen with our own eyes the fact that, using our own instruments of civilization, 19 determined men can kill almost 3,000 people in a matter of hours.

Nor was 9/11 an aberration, committed by the only 19 Islamic zealots on planet Earth. Whether they’re using the hard sell of bloody deaths, or the soft sell of co-opting a nation’s institutions and preying on its well-meant deference to other cultures and its own self-loathing, the Jihadists have a clearly defined goal — an Islamic world – and they’re very committed to effectuating that goal. And while it’s true that, of the world’s one billion Muslims, most are not Jihadists, the fanatic minority can still constitute a critical mass when the passive majority either cheers on the proposed revolution from the sidelines or does nothing at all. As Norman Podhoretz has already explained, this is World War IV.

I understand this. You understand this. McCain understands this. Obama, however, does not understand this. He envisions cozy chit-chats with Ahmadinejad and loving hand-holding with Hamas. There’s every indication that, given his world view, he’ll take Clinton’s “Ah feel your pain” approach one step further, and engage in a self-abasing “I — or, rather, America — caused your pain.” That approach failed when Carter tried it, and it’s only going to fare worse the second time around.

Obama is also bound and determined to withdraw instantly from Iraq, even though the momentum has shifted completely to the American side. Even though another famous Illinois politician spoke scathingly of General McClellan for “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” at Appomattox, Obama has not learned from that painful lesson. He is adamant that he will repeat McClellan’s errors and enshrine the snatching method as national policy. Every five year old understands that you don’t leave the fight when it’s going your way; Obama, however, does not. That is scary in and of itself.

There is one thing, though, that Obama understands with perfect clarity: the role of Supreme Court judges. He knows that they should apply compassion and empathy, without the restrictive hindrance of the outdated United States Constitution. I’m not making this up. He’s said so: “I want people on the bench who have enough empathy, enough feeling, for what ordinary people are going through.”

As someone unfortunate enough to litigate in a jurisdiction filled to overflowing with these empathic judicial actors, I can tell you that this approach is disastrous. First, it’s unfair within the confines of a single case when the judge can ignore the law and, instead, decide a case based on the color of his underpants on any given day. Second, and more importantly, judicial activism (for that is what Obama describes) also destroys the stability necessary for a safe, strong society. It becomes impossible for people and entities to make reasoned calculations about future behavior, since they cannot rely on cases or statutes as guides. They simply have to hope that, if things go wrong, the judge before whom they appear likes them better than he likes the other guy. This is no way to run a courtroom, let alone a country.

What should concern all of us is the power a President Obama will have to effect an almost permanent change on the Supreme Court, one that will last far beyond his presidency. Those with gambling instincts point to the fact that, if anyone leaves the Court during an Obama presidency, it will be the existing liberal justices. In other words, they say, Obama, by replacing the departing liberal justices with equally liberal incoming justices, will simply be maintaining the status quo. I’m not so sanguine.

Although I preface the thought with a “God forbid,” it is possible that conservative justices might leave the Court too, whether through death, illness, incapacity, or personal choice. If that’s the case, Obama, backed by a compliant Democratic Congress, will be able to appoint anyone he pleases to the Court. With a solid activist majority, you can bet that, in your lifetime (as well as your children’s and grandchildren’s lifetimes), the Supreme Court will become the second Legislative branch, with the sole difference being that it will be completely unhindered by having to woo or be answerable to any pesky voters back home.

It’s these last two points — the War and the judiciary — that make me feel very strongly that we have to accept John McCain as president, warts and all. While he is far from perfect, he is rock solid on the two issues that can’t just be massaged away in four years. He will continue to wage war, both on the field and in the realm of ideas, against the Jihadists, and he will appoint conservative Supreme Court justices.

He is, therefore, a much better bet than the scenario in which the gamblers among us have placed their faith; namely, a replay of 1976 and 1980. These risk-takers believe that, as happened before, we’ll elect a horrible, horrible ultra-liberal President who will expose to the world how hollow Democratic ideologies really are. Then, after a mere four years, a sadder but wiser American public will elect the next Ronald Reagan who will magically make everything right again.

I have my doubts. First, I think there’s a great deal of conservative hubris in believing that we can just wish for and get the Second Coming of Ronald Reagan. Not only was he a pretty unique man, he’d been kicking around the political arena for decades. Do you look out in that same arena right now and see anyone remotely like him who will be ready to serve and acceptable to the American public in the next four years? Second, Reagan came in facing two primary problems: a stagnant Cold War and a moribund economy. Both of these situations were remediable. Reenergizing a stagnant war game America the dominant position; and rejiggering a damaged, but fundamentally strong economy was difficult, but do-able.

Here, however, we have two situations that are not so easily repaired should Obama bungle them (as I confidently expect he will). We are not fighting a Cold War, we are fighting a hot war. To walk away now inevitably places the momentum in the hands of our enemies, enemies who have done what the Soviets never did: entered our borders and killed our people in the thousands. Further, unlike the Soviets who had replaced their revolution with a cold, calculating political machine, one that could yield to rational self-interest, we now find ourselves facing fanatics in the blind grip of an ideology completely antithetical to any rational negotiation. To lose the high ground now – and we certainly have that high ground in Iraq – may mean to lose it forever. Even the best case scenario would only echo the changes between the late 1930s and early 1940s, when the Allies, having lost the high ground, were eventually able to win it back at the cost of more than twenty million lives.

Likewise, the Supreme Court situation, if Obama is able to switch the balance from strict constructionist to activist, cannot magically be remedied. Even Reagan was unable to make that change. It’s been thirty-five years, and American is still riven by Roe v. Wade, the most famous activist decision of them all (and that is true whether you are pro-Choice or pro-Life). One can only imagine how many decades of damage an activist Obama Supreme Court can do.

It is very tempting to those who care deeply about their country and their politics to “punish” an ostensibly conservative politician who has, too often and too visibly, wandered from the fold. Sometimes, however, teaching someone a lesson can be infinitely more painful for the punisher than for the punishee. That’s what I fear will happen now, if conservative voters decide that McCain has failed to pass the purity test and then gamble that Obama can’t really be that bad. I’m here to tell you that Obama can be that bad, and that we owe it to ourselves and our fellow citizens to keep him out of office.

Today’s must-read

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Eschewing all domestic issues, Joe Lieberman carefully explains the decline and fall of the Democratic party’s foreign policy:

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that “it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”

And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom.”

[snip]

Then, beginning in the 1980s, a new effort began on the part of some of us in the Democratic Party to reverse these developments, and reclaim our party’s lost tradition of principle and strength in the world. Our band of so-called New Democrats was successful sooner than we imagined possible when, in 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected. In the Balkans, for example, as President Clinton and his advisers slowly but surely came to recognize that American intervention, and only American intervention, could stop Slobodan Milosevic and his campaign of ethnic slaughter, Democratic attitudes about the use of military force in pursuit of our values and our security began to change.

This happy development continued into the 2000 campaign, when the Democratic candidate – Vice President Gore – championed a freedom-focused foreign policy, confident of America’s moral responsibilities in the world, and unafraid to use our military power. He pledged to increase the defense budget by $50 billion more than his Republican opponent – and, to the dismay of the Democratic left, made sure that the party’s platform endorsed a national missile defense.

By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a “humble foreign policy” and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.

Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.

Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.

Read the whole thing here and you will understand why Lieberman is voting for McCain — and why you should too, even if you have to hold your nose as you do so.

More Obama stupidity *UPDATED*

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Not that they were ever really on, but when it comes to Obama, my gloves are off. I’ve concluded that the man is not just a liar and an ideologue, he’s stupid. With regard to the situation in Lebanon (where Hezbollah is using terror to topple the power of the democratically elected government), Obama has once again revealed that he is too dumb too live: except that, of course, he will live; it’s innocents in the Middle East (and the rest of the world, frankly) who will die. Richard Landes, at Augean Stables, has a great round-up of the various comments about Obama’s latest stupid foray in foreign policy.

UPDATE:  Not just stupid, but both actively corrupt and complicit in corruption, Chicago-style.  (H/t:  American Thinker)

Liberals and Iraq

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While I worked on an appellate brief last night, Mr. Bookworm watched Frontline’s Bush’s War. I was not surprised to learn that it characterized the Bush administration as not only profoundly stupid, but also deviously Machiavellian, with Bush in charge, except that he’s so stupid that he is actually manipulated by the evil Cheney.  At least, that’s what Mr. Bookworm told me.  The bottom line, as my very upset husband said, was that the “worst presidency in history” used all its fatal flaws to get us into Iraq.

I didn’t feel like debating the merits. First, I hadn’t watched the show. Second, it was impossible for me to amass all the necessary facts. I would have also gotten stuck in the morass of conceding that the Bush administration definitely made mistakes.  This concession would have led into an extended discussion about the fact that, in all wars, the good, winning side makes devastatingly bad mistakes because in war you use the information you have, not the information you will have when the dust clears.

Instead, I put the matter differently: “Accepting everything as true, what would you do now? For good or bad, we’re in Iraq now.” Interestingly, Mr. Bookworm refused to engage, falling back on harping on the evils of the Bush administration and its bad decision making. “Yes,” I said. “But that’s the past. We’re in Iraq now. Bush and his whole team are leaving office in January 2009. What would you do?” The only answer I got back was “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Mr. Bookworm’s preference for wallowing in the past and his unwillingness to deal with present realities is hardly surprising. In his world — the New York Times, the New Yorker, NPR, PBS — only the past gets discussed. To the extent that there is an Iraq plan, it can be summarized in one phrase: “Get out.” Of course, smart liberals, and my husband is very smart, know that “Get out” is neither an operational plan, nor a good one.

Equally unsurprising is the fact that Barack Obama, a man who is rather strikingly uninformed about foreign affairs given the fact that he has voluntarily plunged into the center of political life during time of war, has exactly the same attitude. He too never looks beyond the liberal media world and, while perfectly ready to spell out the Bush administration’s past failures, is incapable of dealing with the current reality, which is that we’re in war in Iraq. The best he can do is misrepresent John McCain’s statement that American interests are best protected by a continuing American presence in Iraq, just as we have a continuing American presence in former hot spots such as Germany, Japan and Korea.

John Fund highlights only the most recent example of Obama’s almost frightening lack of vision and knowledge when it comes to foreign policy:

This week, Mr. Obama stumbled again after he declared he wants to withdraw from Iraq but “leave enough troops in Iraq to guard our embassy and diplomats, and a counter-terrorism force to strike al Qaeda if it forms a base that the Iraqis cannot destroy.”

John McCain quickly leaped on the notion of keeping a “strike force” in Iraq and noted it was in direct contradiction to previous Obama statements that he would fully withdraw almost all troops. Mr. McCain had a series of questions: “I think it might be appropriate to describe exactly what that means. Does that mean 100,000 troops? Where are they based? What is their mission?”

Given that the Progressives seem irrevocably tied to the past, whether it’s endlessly rehashing the Vietnam War or Bush’s mistakes in this War, this is not going to be the only time that Obama stumbles and tumbles into a debate with McCain that he can’t win. McCain may be the Old Dude, so old that he actually served in Vietnam, but when it comes to this War McCain resolutely faces the future. He’s actually thought about what’s going on now, and what America needs to do to best protect her troops and her national interests. As Fund says:

Look for an ongoing debate between the two men over just what presence in Iraq Mr. Obama envisions should he win the White House. Present evidence would indicate that both men see a substantial U.S. role in the country, but that Mr. McCain’s stated goal is to achieve victory and Mr. Obama has a far more muddled outcome in mind.

The Presidential campaign is going to prove that, when it comes to the Iraq War, you can run to the past, but you can’t hide there.  Unless Obama comes up with a real plan, recognizing the actual on-the-ground realities in Iraq, I suspect significant numbers of Americans are going to worry that, not only are the Democrats obsessed with the Vietnam War, they’re planning on repeating all of its worst mistakes.