Too Many Vested Interests Against Peace With Russia

Conclusion: True

Peace comes only when the balance of power is found or one side in a conflict defeats the other. It is obvious that neither Russia nor the West is going to defeat the other, so a solution in Ukraine and other conflicts must be found.

Currently we are in the middle of a real reset, not one of the Hillary Clinton variety, but a reset of expectations after the disastrous weakness, appeasement and outright deception of the Obama years, an example of the floundering Jimmy Carter presidency on steroids and anti-Americanism at its finest.

Russia, and China and Iran for that matter, took full advantage, as any self-respecting totalitarian state naturally would.


So the balance of power has to be found. The issues of Ukraine, of Syria, of cybercrime and of interference in the internal politics of others must be solved. In addition, Russia has to be worried about the consequences of any further malign behavior against the West.

We are not there yet.

We need to find the equilibrium; then maybe we can have peace.

How will we find this nirvana? By talking, of course. Unfortunately, we have to talk softly and carry a big stick.

Our president is prevented from doing so by the rabid, power-hungry cabal of the legacy media and the Deep State. President Trump will not have the respect of other nations while he is still vulnerable to domestic enemies. Therefore, he will not be in a position to negotiate peace until his presidency is accepted and legitimized by our political process.

We aren’t there yet either.

Here is my suggested path to peace with Russia; it won’t be easy.

First, POTUS has to defeat the attempted coup against him. Only then will he be in a position of power to deal with his counterpart in Moscow on the basis of mutual respect. The Kremlin won’t respect a vulnerable president.

Second, unfortunately, we have to continue our military buildup. The peace dividend is gone. We have to keep our economy roaring as the Trump agenda has delivered. We then can deal with our fiscal problems and fund the modernization of our armed forces. Fiscal weakness is just as bad as military weakness. America must once again achieve overwhelming military superiority. Only then will there be peace.

Third, we have to confront Russian behavior that is at odds with our national security and with those of our allies. NATO must continue down the path of increased defense spending. Only when Moscow comes to understand that it will not gain from further annexations or bullying will the balance of power be found. We are not there yet either.

However, just because we have a lot of work to do does not mean that we should not be talking to Russia. We should. There is no downside to dialogue. Small victories can be achieved to slowly increase trust on both sides, or if not trust, then learning how to work together again. Finding a way to facilitate the return of Syrian migrants would be a start. That is a worthy goal that would help all sides, and the only way we will get there is through discussion.

China Showing It’s Real Communist Evil With Threats Against Canada

In addition, we have to be careful not to allow ourselves to be drawn into a conflict with Russia by third parties. The collapse of the Soviet Union is not over. It is still in its death throes. The “frozen conflicts” in Russia’s near abroad need to be resolved. Somewhere in this calculation needs to be an acknowledgment by the West that NATO’s encroachment to the very borders of Russia is obviously seen as a threat by Moscow, bringing up genetically branded memories of Hitler and Napoleon.

So, let’s talk to find that equilibrium.

Although the process I outlined will be extremely difficult, it is a necessity. For although Russia is a major problem and rightly a major focus of our defense establishment, it is not the existential threat to the United States.

China is.

China is steadily carrying out its long-term plan to dominate the West, if not the world. The quicker we realize where the primary threat lies, the quicker we can get to work to ensure peace for the next generations of Americans.

The Ukraine Was a Test Case of American Foreign Policy Moralism Vs. American Foreign Policy Realism, and Realism Won in a Rout

It's not moral or ethical to encourage people to go to war, that you have their back, and then sit by while they get killed.  Long, but worth reading the whole thing.

America has a limited appetite for war. Americans will go to war, but they do reach a point of exhaustion with war after some number of years.

It is silly to pretend this fact away in order to count oneself as "idealistic." People who ignore reality are not "idealistic;" they're just cowards afraid to face reality.

The fact is that Americans are tired of war and it is dangerous to write checks on America's war-fighting account that it might not be willing to cover.

The fact is that one of America's two main political parties is always willing to be part of a war at the Fun Part of the war -- the declaration of war part, the first-easy-victories part -- but which abandons every war it votes for when it sees any small political advantage in doing so.

Joe Biden, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and many other Democrat Senators voted for the War in Iraq. Within three years, they were screaming that Bush "lied us into war" and that we must withdraw immediately.

It is insane to pretend this away. If you know Democrats will give you initial support for a war they'll happily vote you into, when doing so grants them political advantage, and then savagely turn on that war the moment they get political advantage from that, it is lunacy to even count them as allies in war.

By the way: The NeverTrumpers who sometimes claim "At least Hillary Clinton would have been better on foreign policy?" Yes, of course. The same Hillary Clinton who voted for the War in Iraq to show how tough she would be as a president, and then agitated to abandon troops in the field when she realized that opposing the war would boost her chances of becoming president.

Yeah, we need that kind of patriot as President, rather than the unamerican, immoral Trump.

And this ...

In 2008, Obama campaigned on the idea that he would somehow both withdraw from Iraq and yet also "win" Iraq by withdrawing.

I was incensed by this; it was so obviously, transparently a lie and a dodge. He wasn't planning to "win" anything; he just wanted to bug out. I was angry at the media for never challenging his "Win by Withdrawing" claims and pissed off at Americans for believing this bullshit.

But they voted him into office anyway, and by decent margins. I realized that Americans weren't really tricked by Obama; rather, Obama told them a lie that they knew was a lie but they wanted some "out" to pretend they were honoring the sacrifice of the already-dead while also bugging out of Iraq.

So Obama pretended he would "win" the war in Iraq, and the American public pretended to believe him.

Syrian suspicions

Forgive me if I allow my suspictions of what we know and when we know it to interfere with the good feeling that most of us have about Trump's decision to bomb the Syrian air base in response to a chemical attack.

As I said in a comment recently:

If Assad is responsible, this will change his mind. But ...

And here is Scott Adams, who has been more right than anyone I know about Trump back to when he first announced his candidacy. He points out that Trump exaggerates. Even his supporters - and I am one - do not take him literally.  We know when he exaggerates for effect.  But we take him seriously.  (When he said he was "wiretapped" and he was called  a bald faced liar by the press it was the press that was wrong.)  His detractors say that he's a serial liar. But he's believed in this instance, because people want this to be true.

Scott Adams:

The odd exception to our universal understanding of President Trump’s mode of operation is his claim that he is totally certain Assad was responsible for the chemical attack on his own people last week. The President’s critics and most of his supporters believe President Trump when he suggests that our military can track any plane in Syria and know what that plane did to whom.

Do you believe that?

I have it on good authority that the United States can track and identify aircraft in Syria. But does that mean we are watching (or recording) every plane at every minute, and we also know what ordinance they dropped?

Do you believe, for example, that our military can identify Syrian jets doing a normal bombing run at the same time as a hobby-sized ISIS drone drops some sarin gas in the blast zone? Can our satellites see that?

Or suppose rebels lobbed an artillery shell with sarin into a village that was being bombed at the same time. Would our satellites and drones and AWACS pick up the incoming round?

Maybe.

But my experience of life is that literally nothing works that well.

Or to put it another way, if we could do shit like that, the war would be over in a week. We’d know who every player on the ground was, and what they were doing, at all times. Heck, if we can detect a hobby-sized drone with a gas canister strapped to its belly from outer space, we don’t need boots-on-the-ground to beat ISIS. We can kill everyone who needs killing from the sky.

Like Adams, I question whether Assad actually is responsible. The events look staged and remind me of the theatrical productions that the Palestinians produced to make them look like the victims of the Israelis. This is too much like "suicide by cop" on the part of Assad who was winning without chemical weapons.

I also suspect that Trump knows this but is willing to play along by bombing a single airbase. As a result, Assad has lost little. The American people get a new respect for a powerful leader. The Democrats and the press (but I repeat myself) are rallying to his actions and the Loony-Left-Resistance is pulling up its shorts. Putin is shown to be running a second rate power. China wonders what will happen if they don't rein in North Korea. And the "Trump-Conspired-With-Putin-to-steal-the-election" look foolish. And Obama is neutered.  Better yet, they are admitting that they lied about their "success" in removing WMDs from Syria.  

All in all a big win. It's like clearing the table with one shot.

Moderate Massacres

Recounting the stupidity that caused the Mullahs to take over Iran is enough to make grown men weep.

This is the pattern of American interventionism. Our leaders get it into their heads that an industrialized and secular but repressive country in the Middle East doesn’t sufficiently resemble Burlington, Vermont. They seek out the nearest AK-toting, kaffiyeh-clad street tough who speaks enough English to say, “The Islamic republic will be like the French republic.” Elated to have found an enlightened (not to mention hunky!) young upstart amid all these drab handlebar mustaches, they chuck fistfuls of cash and munitions at him until he deposes the old regime, ideally with bayonets. And when, in a cruel and truly inexplicable twist of fate, our friend Muhammad al-Guevara turns out to be a bloodthirsty terrorist, we just scratch our heads and go home. When he starts massacring Christians, Jews, and gays, we do our best not to think about it. When his sympathizers kill our Christians, Jews, and gays, we quietly remind ourselves that anyone who reads too much into it is an Islamophobe.

Islamophobia is a myth, and the “backlash” against moderate Muslims after terrorist attacks has never come to pass. But that doesn’t mean the West doesn’t treat moderates poorly. It does. It kills them whenever they gain power in the Middle East and replaces them with genocidal fanatics. We make life unbearable for any Arab or Persian whose idea of a hot date night doesn’t include sipping lemon water at the beheading of a woman who exposed her eyebrows in public. Much as our elites might feel for moderate Muslims in the West, they’ve done everything in their power to make them unwelcome in their homeland.

Read the whole thing.

Richard Fernandez on the Age of Obama

The Era of Hope and Change has been one prolonged act of suicide. If anyone had said that Obama would manage to alienate Israel and the Philippines, lose Turkey, pay Iran a hundred billion dollars, preside over the loss of a won war in Afghanistan, lose billions of dollars in military equipment to ISIS, watch a consulate burn, restart the Cold War with Russia, cause Japan to re-arm and go the knife's edge with China would you have believed it? If someone had told you in 2008 millions of refugees would be heading for Europe and that the UK would leave the EU after Obama went there to campaign for them to remain would you not have laughed?

He promised "smart diplomacy" and the restoration of American prestige in the world. How did it come to this?

State of the Union and Obama's disastrous foreign policy

It looks like the president is going to spend part of his State of the Union address trumpeting his foreign policy “leadership.” I find this baffling. Does he really believe the world has become safer and more secure since he took office?

Has he turned a blind eye to the Islamic State-inspired attacks in Philadelphia, San Bernardino, Paris and more? The continued existence of ISIL in Syria and Iraq despite his limited military effort to “defeat” them? The resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda and the rise of ISIL in Afghanistan? Iran’s repeated violations of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions and its continued efforts to incite instability throughout the Middle East? China’s provocative island reclamation efforts? North Korea’s alleged testing of an even more powerful nuclear weapon? Russia’s continued occupation of Ukraine and their growing presence in the Middle East? Cuba’s refusal to end its human rights violations? Or our fraying relationships with key allies like Israel and moderate Arab Gulf states?

If he truly thinks we have a winning foreign policy, the president’s machinations are ignorant, bordering on delusional. America’s voice and more importantly, actions, are largely dismissed abroad. Foreign aggressors have taken this era of American weakness to do as they please, which has resulted in a more dangerous and anarchic international system.

Read the whole thing.

The Washington Post Endorses Obama

Here is what the Washington Post wrote when they endorsed Obama:

But Mr. Obama, as anyone who reads his books can tell, also has a sophisticated understanding of the world and America’s place in it. He, too, is committed to maintaining U.S. leadership and sticking up for democratic values, as his recent defense of tiny Georgia makes clear. We hope he would navigate between the amoral realism of some in his party and the counterproductive cocksureness of the current administration, especially in its first term. On most policies, such as the need to go after al-Qaeda, check Iran’s nuclear ambitions and fight HIV/AIDS abroad, he differs little from Mr. Bush or Mr. McCain. But he promises defter diplomacy and greater commitment to allies. His team overstates the likelihood that either of those can produce dramatically better results, but both are certainly worth trying.

I do not see a single thing here that has been proven correct.

Why was this written now? Why am I posting it now? I don't know, but it's like watching the innumerable accounts of Nazi defeat on the Hitler channels; we know how it ends but it's just too sweet to stop. Even as we watch it happening again.

Posted by Rodger the Real King of France

From Legal Insurrection, commenting on the total failure of Obama's policies in the Middle East leading ever closer to a war between Iran and Saudi Arabia:

This failure wouldn’t have been possible without a complicit media, creating a myth instead of a candidate. Will the editors of The Washington Post take a critical look at their 2008 endorsement and learn from their mistake before 2016? I wouldn’t count on it.

The '80s are calling and want their foreign policy back.

Bud Norman recalls that famous line from the Romney Obama debates

The same Greece that was once the Cradle of Democracy is about to go bust, American troops are moving into eastern Europe as if the ’80s were calling and they wanted their foreign policy back, and the Republicans seem intent on entrusting President Barack Obama with the power to negotiate a top-secret trade deal with Asia that will allow all sorts of environmental and immigration shenanigans

The Obama Foreign policy. Connecting the dots.

If someone’s words do not correspond to his actions, believe his actions. I have asked for a while: “What would Obama do differently if he did not like America?” So far there’s no good answer.

Obama’s actions in this country are the subject for another essay. Let’s just say that Congress has checkmated itself. The Left is in control of academia and the communications media. The Justice department and the rest of the government apparatus is firmly in control of Obama loyalists. Races, cultures and sexes are at each other’s throats. Domestically, it’s all proceeding as planned.

But for a moment let’s see what’s happening in the rest of the world.

In Europe Obama allows free rein to a resurgent Putin who saw the fall of the Soviet Union as a tragedy and is busy rebuilding a greater Russia. The “sanctions” are eyewash, designed to mollify the American people into believing that we are actually doing something effective. Russia will not be stopped by sanctions and Putin will not be toppled by sanctions. In fact, Putin is a popular Russian leader, admired for rebuilding Russian pride after the USSR as dismantled. Hitler took the same route, energizing the German people who were beaten and dispirited after WW1, appealing to their patriotism and restoring their wounded pride. It’s an effective strategy and it works every time it’s tried.

Obama’s sanctions are a magician’s trick; a distraction to make you look “here” while the real action is going on “there.” And the “there” is the fact that Russia is slowly swallowing Ukraine which is losing a war of territorial aggression because it’s outgunned. Obama is shipping them blankets when they need weapons, knowing that Putin won’t mind. Putin understands that Obama needs to appear to do something without doing anything effective. It’s that famous flexibility that Obama promised Putin after the election.

In the Middle East the same magic trick is being played. The drone campaign is the distraction. Wars are never won from the air, even when massive air power is applied. Drone strikes are pinpricks that kill the occasional Jihadist du-jour but do nothing to change the balance of power. It’s clear that the centerpiece of the Obama’s Middle East policy is an American alignment with Iran. That is the goal of the nuclear talks. The Obama administration wants to use an agreement, any agreement, to end international sanctions on Iran. With the end of sanctions a resurgent Iranian economy armed with nukes will become the hegemon in the Middle East, controlling the flow of oil and the wealth of the region. In this scenario, the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and other former American allies will be forced to make their peace with their new rulers.

Grand plans do not always go without a hitch. In a surprise move, and without consulting with the US, the Saudis and Egypt actually took military action to counter Iranian actions aimed at taking military control of Yemen and several other small nations. That could blow up into an Arab – Persian war, something that does not appear to be part of the Obama plan for fundamentally transforming the Middle East.

What about Israel? Obama tried mightily to oust Netanyahu and replace him with someone who would take Obama’s orders. That did not work. So Israel remains a stumbling block to the Obama plan for the Middle East. 

Egypt remains another unresolved issue. Things were going so well for Obama when the Muslim Brotherhood took power, but its overthrow is causing complications. You can be sure that Obama will work to undermine the current Egyptian government, perhaps even foment a revolution. If he can get the Brotherhood back in power an alliance of Egypt and Iran is not out of the question.

Is it possible for all this to be accomplished before the next presidential election cycle? That’s unknown.  Obama is playing a dangerous game with the potential for a genuine WW3.  There is also the possibility that things will get so far out of hand that Congress will actually try to regain it's historic constitutional role. Not all Democrats in congress are blindly loyal to their leader.  But if that is avoided there is there the problem of continuing the "fundamental transformation" that Obama is working on.  We like to think that there will be another presidential election and that someone who believes in America, who likes America, will be elected. Their job will be anything but easy.  Let us pray.

“You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”

Recalling the words of Winston Churchill to Neville Chamberlain.

The difference between then and now?  Say what you will about him, Chamberlain loved his country.

As the Saudis and Egyptians saddle up to invade Yemen and confront Iran,  we have to ask if this is what "Smart Diplomacy" is all about. 

Glenn Reynolds comments:  Before you can dub it [Obama's foreign policy] a failure, you have to know what Obama is trying to accomplish.

You don't cross Obama and stay out of jail.

NJ Dem Top Critic of Obama Iran Deal...
FLASHBACK: President's Talking Points 'Straight Out of Tehran'...
Blasted deal with Cuba...
Obama's actions have vindicated 'brutal behavior'...
White House's least favorite Dem...
MENENDEZ: 'I'm not going anywhere'...




FEDS TO CHARGE SEN. MENENDEZ WITH CORRUPTION

Chinese General Says U.S. Foreign Policy Has ‘Erectile Dysfunction’ Problems

How's that "Smart Diplomacy" working for you?

“we can see from the situation in Ukraine this kind of ED” –which he explained in Chinese was a military abbreviation for something that may have meant “extended deployment” – “has become the male type of ED problem – erectile dysfunction.”

Obama and the Deus ex Machina

Richard Fernandez discusses the Obama plan for the world; but "plan" is too strong a word.  It's more of a faith that - left to itself - the world will turn out the way Obama imagines it. 

The administration appears to believe there is some kind of natural international legal order which will enforce itself. Hillary Clinton, asked to comment on Russia’s dismemberment of the Ukraine ventured that Moscow would be punished by a kind of Karma. “I think the outcome for him and Russia will not be good, which is deeply unfortunate,” she said. “Russia should be a much more dynamic and much more successful country and could be if Putin weren't trying to turn the clock back to the Soviet Union days.”

Senior administration officials make all these curious reference to the “clock” or the “21st century behavior”. Obama once reviled Romney by saying the “80′s wanted their foreign policy back” as if the decades could be reified. When he wants to be more precise Obama invokes the hand of “international community” to explain whose chastisement will descend on the international malefactor.

But it is always some unspecified mystical force — never Washington itself — who will square the account. For example, you have the administration’s assurances that Putin will be punished for invading the Ukraine by some ineffable force, just as long as you remember that force won’t be the administration.

For a town that doesn't believe much in God, Washington is more full of ghostly invocations than a whiskey preacher; as if the god of history were a palpable presence, standing at their right hand, waiting to clean up after them. They say this even though in Ukraine, for instance, Moscow said “that it would immediately start military maneuvers along the border with Ukraine”. That sounds like a threat to which Kerry could only retort by saying “the window to change course is closing.”

So now it’s the window what’s going to punish Putin.

For spokesmen for this administration, that airy, hard to pin down. mystical force, a Deus ex Machina who put things right.  Team Obama's role will be to cheer that force on, to hold its coat while the inevitable "march of history" does the job.

You wonder where they get these ideas. The faith of religious snake handlers can’t compare to the firm belief of the Obama cultists that the world will magically come to the same conclusions they have.

I doubt if Obama believes in the God of the Bible, but he appears to believe that there is some kind of historical force - perhaps gained from reading the Marxist theory of historical evolution - that will result in the end that he imagines.  It could explain his administration's use of these strange clock or date references.

And if it doesn't, that's his successor's problem.  He'll be a wealthy divorcee after he leaves office.

Obama's Greatest Achievement - Re-Establishing the Soviet Union

People who see the world through the lens of domestic politics label ObamaCare as Barack Obama’s signature achievement. They are wrong. Obama has had a much greater, and more ominous achievement in the geopolitical arena.  What did Obama really have in mind when he told Medvedev that after his re-election he would have greater flexibility?  

As he assumed office, the world was uni-polar and the US was the sole superpower. Five years into his Presidency, Iraq is reverting to sectarian warfare and becoming an Iranian client state. Afghanistan is slipping away as fast as American troops are leaving. Egypt was taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood and is now a military dictatorship making eyes at Moscow. Libya is a movie set in which it’s dictator is overthrown, Americans are murdered, armed al Qaida bands rule the streets and there is no a functioning government. Iran is developing nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Al Qaida has a mass meeting in Yemen and has to release a video to let the CIA know. Israel, having decided that American guarantees under Obama are worse than worthless, has decided to go its own way, exhibiting a healthy example of clear-sightedness.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is as busy as a boy with Legos, reassembling the Soviet Union to the cheers of his fellow countrymen who felt humiliated by the dissolution of the Evil Empire under Reagan and Bush.

From the Financial Times:

But Moscow’s annexation of Crimea has set off rapid and drastic changes that threaten to submerge such outposts of dissent. In a speech marking the consummation of Russia’s union with the Black Sea peninsula on March 18, Mr Putin lashed out against a “fifth column” of “national traitors” enlisted by the west to subvert Russia. He vowed to respond forcefully.

His warning – especially his choice of phrases widely used by nationalist dictatorships as well as Russia’s own former Communist regime – has resonated strongly with Russians. They have been taken as a rallying cry among those aggrieved by Russia’s diminished power to build a prouder, stronger and more authoritarian state. For Mr Putin’s liberal critics, it is a worrying sign that the rest of the country’s imperfect democratic institutions are under severe threat.

In a column that set the tone for both commentaries and blogposts, the conservative journalist Ulyana Skoibeda raved two weeks ago that after the return of Crimea “I no longer live in a conquered country”. In a long lament that reflects the feelings frequently expressed by ordinary Russians, she described the past 23 years as humiliating. Ms Skoibeda said her life had been dominated by western norms, and she had had to suffer through the chaos and deprivation unleashed by the democratic and economic experiments of the 1990s.

Standing proudly against the entire world had revived the essence of the Soviet Union, she wrote. “It is not Crimea that has returned. We have returned. Home. To the USSR.”

Since the Crimea annexation, there have been frequent moves that symbolise a Soviet revival.

The American health care system can be fixed and improved as soon as the ideologues who demand that the government run everything are removed from office. The real problem, one that may have mass death and war as one of its possible outcomes, is the deliberate destruction of the Pax Americana that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Whether that is by accident or design is uncertain, but the fact is indisputable.

That is Obama’s real legacy.

Who’s the enigma?

Churchill famously said of Russia "I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." 

History has unwrapped the riddle.

Fast forward to today.

Putin and Obama. 

Putin believes that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe. And he’s in charge of Russia. He believes in Russian greatness and has been telling his people that their problems, economic and geopolitical are the fault of the United States. He invades and annexes Crimea and threatens Ukraine (and other other parts of Europe that were once part of the USSR.) Putin is an open book.

The second part of this face-off is Obama. He doesn’t believe in American greatness – certainly not in American exceptionalism. He has some fundamental problems with America since he wants to fundamentally transform it. His appointees are not American cheerleaders. His Secretary of State famously accused the American military of acting like Genghis Khan.

We know what Putin wants to do in the world: recreate the Soviet Union. The real question that foreign chancelleries are asking themselves today is what Obama wants America’s role in the world to be.

As an American, that's a very uncomfortable position and not one that should be asked by people living in a democratic Republic.

The Stupid Party

You have to give credit where credit is due: Obama lies like a champ and can change the subject like the best of them.  Note his insistence that there is not one bit of scandal surrounding the IRS harassment of conservative groups. 

When the Democrats in and out of the media gin up their propaganda campaign and manage to turn a traffic jam in Ft. Lee into a national scandal, Republicans and the conservative talking heads rub their chins, feign concern and join in.  The response should be "f**k you."

The Diplomad has it right.

In a criminal effort to deny Americans their second amendment right to bear arms, our government has deliberately and illegally exported arms to ruthless Mexican and Central American drug cartels, which have used them to kill hundreds of people including two US federal agents. That same government then sought to blame those weapon exports on law-abiding American gun stores and gun shows. Once neutral agencies of government, such as the IRS, the FBI, the EPA, and hordes of prosecutors target and suppress dissent and discredit opponents.

Wherever one looks in the world, our foreign policy and intelligence operations are in tatters. We have alienated life-long friends such as the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, and Israel, and have reduced the scope, reach and credibility of American power, e.g., note the disasters underway in Latin America, Libya, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. Our intelligence agencies are used more to spy on Americans than to counter the real threats we face from Muslim jihadis, and resurgent Chinese and Russian nationalisms. Our President lies about it all.

The political environment for the opposition is a target-rich one. The Republicans should be rejoicing at the prospect of a clean sweep in November's mid-term elections and the Presidential ones in 2016. Instead GOP leaders engage in attacks on Tea Party activists--who have been consistently right on policy issues, by the way--and let the Democrats set the agenda and tell us what is and is not open for discussion. Bengahzi, IRS, EPA Solyndra, Fast and Furious, those are all phony scandals; what we must discuss is whether Governor Christie knew about, allowed, or ordered the closing of two lanes of traffic on the George Washington Bridge to punish a political opponent in Ft. Lee, New Jersey.

The Dems have learned how to create phony scandals and the Stupid Party goes along.

 

Israel in the Age of Obama

A thought provoking editorial by Hebrew Makor Rishon's Editor-in-Chief, Amnon Lord

Now that the best and brightest have finished their comparisons with Munich and Chamberlain, I wish to provide another, somewhat more shocking, comparison, one that in the past, resulted in people calling for smelling salts.

In March 2010, I attempted to explain the American president’s seemingly incomprehensible behavior in simple terms, making use of the name Charles Lindbergh. The legendary pro-Nazi pilot surfaced again in Philip Roth’s novel “The Plot Against America”, published in 2004. Roth penned a novel based on speculative history (“what would have happened if…”)- in this case, what would have happened had Charles Lindbergh won the 1940 elections rather than FDR, the incumbent against whom he ran for president.

The great United States of America and the great land of Germany – the land that was, coincidentally, ruled at the time by that Chancellor named Adolf Hitler – would have developed ties of friendship and mutual accord. Roth waxed eloquent on the effects this would have had on American Jewry and on the resulting cooperation that would have developed between American Jewish leadership and the new anti-Jewish American government.

For nearly four years now, it has been clear that the then-new American president sees the world in a fashion that is diametrically opposed to what we expect from an American government. He disposed of the bust of Churchill that stood in the White House. All the historical narrative that contains the struggle of democracies against totalitarian regimes, the Munich agreement, appeasement, giving in, Chamberlain – all those are one story in his history book. Even the Spanish Civil War is irrelevant. In his book there are imperialism, colonialism, Zionist aggression and peoples that awaken and rebel. That is how, in 2010, this Lindbergh-style president supported Argentina in the renewed hostilities that developed between that country and Great Britain over the Falkland Islands.

By the beginning of 2010, when Obama began a political siege on Israel for building in Jerusalem while evincing goodwill gestures such as stretching out a hand towards Ahmadinejad’s Iran, shaking hands with and hugging Chavez as well as offering US friendship to the then president of Brazil, Lula de Silva, it seemed clear that the American president felt that the world was ready for the Chavesian, Ahmadinejadian and Bashar-Assadian style of leadership.

Obama simply prefers Iran over Israel.

I put this up because it's entirely plausible, in fact likely, that Obama does not share the American belief in the historical struggle of America for freedom and democracy against totalitarian and oppressive regimes. In America's book this nation has stood for freedom, for giving everyone his God given right to follow his dreams.  "In his [Obama's] book there are imperialism, colonialism, Zionist aggression and peoples that awaken and rebel."  

Why is this plausible?  Because it is the reigning orthodoxy on American college campuses and among Obama's friends and allies like Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright.  It was what his mother, father and grandparents believed.  It explains his foreign policy even better than ineptness.  And it makes sense if we take him at his word that he wants to "fundamentally change" America; you want to fundamentally change something that is fundamentally flawed, not something that's basically right and good. 

Which brings us back to the question: is Obama a person who's busy wrecking American society and foreign policy because he's in way over his head, because he's inept and never actually ran anything - even a lemonade stand?  Or is he doing it because he means to do so?  The answer may just be "yes." 

Mark Steyn: According to the Media, “Allahu akbar” is Arabic for “Nothing to see here,”

It has taken the American military longer to bring Major Hasan to trial than it took to defeat Imperial Japan. I don't think this military and this government is going to defeat the Islam that is trying to defeat us. If you notice, it is America that is in retreat despite the attacks by drones, weapons somewhat reminiscent of the "buzz bombs" and V-1 rockets that the Nazi's sent to England in the last days of that war.

But back to the Alice in Wonderland trial of Major Hasan, in which the defendant is trying to get convicted while the court that's trying him is working hard to acquit, the Obama administrationis calling it "workplace violence" and the MSM swears they don't know if he's guilty even after he admits it.

Major Hasan is a Virginia-born army psychiatrist and a recipient of the Pentagon’s Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, which seems fair enough, since he certainly served in it, albeit for the other side. Most Americans think he’s nuts. He thinks Americans are nuts. It’s a closer call than you’d think. In the immediate aftermath of his attack, the U.S. media, following their iron-clad rule that “Allahu akbar” is Arabic for “Nothing to see here,” did their best to pass off Major Hasan as the first known victim of pre-Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. “It comes at a time when the stress of combat has affected so many soldiers,” fretted Andrew Bast in a report the now defunct Newsweek headlined, “A Symptom of a Military on the Brink.”

Major Hasan has never been in combat. He is not, in fact, a soldier. He is a shrink. The soldiers in this story are the victims, some 45 of them. And the only reason a doctor can gun down nearly four dozen trained warriors (he was eventually interrupted by a civilian police officer, Sergeant Kimberly Munley, with a 9mm Beretta) is that soldiers on base are forbidden from carrying weapons. That’s to say, under a 1993 directive a U.S. military base is effectively a gun-free zone, just like a Connecticut grade school. ...

Major Hasan says he’s a soldier for the Taliban. Maybe if the Pentagon were to reclassify the entire Afghan theater as an unusually prolonged outburst of “workplace violence,” we wouldn’t have to worry about obsolescent concepts such as “victory” and “defeat.” The important thing is that the U.S. Army’s “workplace violence” is diverse. After Major Hasan’s pre-post-traumatic workplace wobbly, General George W. Casey Jr., the Army’s chief of staff, was at pains to assure us that it could have been a whole lot worse: “What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty.” And you can’t get much more diverse than letting your military personnel pick which side of the war they want to be on.

I hate to be pessimistic and I have hope for the future, but that will require the replacement of the current regime, a re-awakening of the American people, and a change in our military leadership. We have some brave, resourceful and skilled members of the military, but wars are won by strategy, logistics and leadership and based on the best evidence the Obama administration is really not on our side.  While he has not jumped on a table yelling Allahu Akbar and begun shooting people, Barack Obama has done far more damage than Major Hasan.   While Major Hasan's hatred of Americans is clearer, I wonder what motivates the hatred Obama feels for his country? 

The Legion of Doom

Via Belmont Club

The second-ranking CIA official calls now Syria the greatest threat to American national security today. “WASHINGTON—The Central Intelligence Agency’s second-in-command warned that Syria’s volatile mix of al Qaeda extremism and civil war now poses the greatest threat to U.S. national security. Michael Morell says the risk is that the Syrian government, which possesses chemical and other advanced weapons, collapses and the country becomes al Qaeda’s new haven, supplanting Pakistan.”

Shouldn’t he ask, “who armed the Syrian rebels”? And might not he say “in addition to Pakistan”?

Arming the Syrian rebels is the "smartest" political move since we armed the Soviets against the Nazis.

Obama's follies are aided and abetted by a media that tells us to believe stupid things.  Things like this NY Times story that Obama's cancellation of a summit with Putin will hurt Putin.

How could he get it so wrong? The New York Times’s coverage of President Obama’s canceled summit with Putin illustrates one reason why. This time NYT argues that Putin would regret not meeting Obama.

In a statement, the White House said the president had decided to postpone the summit meeting between the two leaders after concluding that there had not been enough progress made on the “bilateral agenda” to make a meeting worthwhile. …

Mr. Obama’s decision to forgo the summit meeting with Mr. Putin, which was first reported by The Associated Press, is a blow to Mr. Putin that will deprive him of a high-profile moment on the worldwide stage. It also threatens to add to the already chilly relationship between the two countries.

Just think of it! Putin is missing out on the honor of meeting Obama. Now Putin won’t be invited to Leno. He’ll miss out on the chance to come out on Oprah. He must be crazy.

This is another case of the “wish being the father of the deed”. It is yet another instance of the Narrative being taken for reality. The NYT thinks Putin reasons like them. In the Narrative universe — the one which the NYT inhabits — Barack Obama is at the center of Washington and Washington is a center of the universe. If President Obama declares al Qaeda to be dead then al Qaeda must in fact be deceased. If President Obama supports the Syrian rebels, the Syrian rebels must be worthy of support. If President Obama decides not to meet the President of Russia then Putin is losing out.

It’s like Versailles in the days of Louis the XIV. The inmates cannot conceive that an external universe exists. One in which another sun shines more brightly than the Sun King.

Yet as as Bret Stephens points out, the Emperor has no clothes. He is manifestly capable of getting things fundamentally, spectacularly and catastrophically wrong. And the media elites are pathologically incapable of acknowledging this.

If I were Putin I would look for further opportunities to tweak President Snark.  It has to be driving him crazy. 

Egyptian Belly Dancer to Obama: “we are the Alpha”

Via Instapundit



How's that "Smart Diplomacy" working out for ya?