As we see the results of Obama’s incompetent foreign policy, we are reminded that there were people out there in 2008 who warned the voting public that Obama had a very left-wing view of the world and that his inexperience would come back to haunt us down the road. Obama stands for appeasement and retreat in the face of tyranny. I cannot help but think of Winston Churchill’s comment in in the House of Commons regarding the sell out of the Czechs in 1938:
“We have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat…you will find that in a period of time which may be measured by years, but may be measured by months, Czechoslovakia will be engulfed in the Nazi régime. We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude…we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road…we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies: “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting”. And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”
by Caroline Glick
In the midst of the political turmoil engulfing Egypt and much of the Arab world, last month’s revelation that Pakistan has doubled the size of its nuclear arsenal over the past four years has been largely ignored.
Nuclear proliferation analysts from the Federation of American Scientists and the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) assess that since 2006, Pakistan has increased the size of its nuclear arsenal from 30-60 atomic bombs to approximately 110. That makes Pakistan the world’s fifth largest nuclear power ahead of Britain and France.
As for delivery systems, according to The Washington Post, Pakistan has developed nuclear-capable land- and air-launched cruise missiles. Its Shaheen II missile, with a range of 2,400 kilometers, is about to go into operational deployment.
On Wednesday, Pakistan test-fired its new Hatf- VII nuclear-capable cruise missile with a 600-kilometer range.
The Obama administration has been silent on Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation activities. As ISIS President David Albright said to the Washington Post, “The administration is always trying to keep people from talking about this knowledgeably.
They’re always trying to downplay the numbers [of Pakistan’s nuclear warheads] and insisting that ‘it’s smaller than you think.’” Pakistan’s nuclear growth goes on as its economy is in shambles, its government is falling apart and a large portion of the country’s territory is controlled by the Taliban.
Pakistan is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. In 2009 Congress approved a five-year $7.5 billion civilian aid package. Last October, the Obama administration proposed supplementing the aid with $2b. for Pakistan’s military.
The administration requested the supplemental aid despite criticism that economic assistance to Pakistan indirectly funds its nuclear project, since Pakistan is in an effective state of bankruptcy.
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Pakistan is a textbook example of a disaster of biblical proportions in the making. Its hyperactive nuclear expansion, weak central government, impoverished, radicalized population, and pro- Islamist military and intelligence arms are sources for major concern. That concern becomes all-out alarm in light of the Taliban/al-Qaida’s control over anywhere from a quarter to a third of Pakistani territory and the widespread public support for them throughout the country.
Since taking office, the Obama administration has failed to conceive of a strategy for contending with the situation. One of the main obstacles to the formation of a coherent US strategy is the Obama administration’s move to outlaw any discussion of the basic threats to US interests. Shortly after entering office, President Barack Obama banned the use of the term “War against terror,” substituting it with the opaque term “overseas contingency operation.”
Last April, Obama banned use of the terms “jihad,” “Islamic terrorism” and “radical Islam” in US government documents.
Given that US officials are barred from using all the terms that are relevant for describing reality in places like Pakistan, it is obvious why the US cannot put together a strategy for contending with the challenges it faces there. Imagine an intelligence officer in Peshawar trying to report on what he sees. Imagine a defense attaché in Lahore trying to explain the problems with the jihad-infested Pakistani military to his superiors in Washington.
Imagine a USAID officer trying to explain why the jihadist-mosque attending public refuses to work at US-funded highway programs.
The Obama administration’s decision to ban relevant language from the official US policy discourse was ideologically motivated. And in choosing ideology over reality, the Obama administration has induced a situation where rather than construct policies to deal with reality, at all levels, US officials have been charged with constructing policies to deny and ignore reality.
AGAINST THIS backdrop it becomes fairly clear why the Obama administration’s handling of the political turmoil in Egypt has been so incompetent.
Upon entering office, Obama made a determined effort to ignore the political instability percolating under the surface throughout the authoritarian Arab world. US government officials were instructed to curtail programs aimed at developing liberal alternatives to authoritarianism and the Muslim Brotherhood. The justification for this behavior was again ideological.
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Once the dutifully ignored long-repressed popular discontent boiled over into the popular revolts we have seen over the past month in Tunisia and Egypt as well as Yemen, Jordan, Algeria and beyond, the Obama administration rushed to get on the “right side” of the issue. To avoid criticism for refusing to contend with the problems bred by Arab authoritarianism, Obama went to the other extreme. He became the most outspoken champion of unfettered popular democracy in Egypt.
Of course, to occupy this other side of the spectrum, Obama has had to ignore the danger constituted by the most powerful opposition movement in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood’s hostility towards the US’s most fundamental strategic interests in the Middle East has been swept under the rug by the Obama administration and its supporters in the US media.
But then, in light of the prohibition of all discussion of the reasons the Muslim Brotherhood constitutes a threat to the US – its jihadist ideology of Islamic conquest, its genocidal Islamic-based Jewhatred and hatred of America, its support for Islamic terrorism against non-jihadist regimes throughout the Muslim world and against the West – it is not surprising that the Obama administration is embracing the inclusion of the movement in a post-Mubarak Egyptian regime.
How could the administration object to something it has chosen to ignore? The Obama administration’s ideologically driven strategic ineptitude is evident everywhere.
From its slavish devotion to appeasing Iran, its single-minded insistence on withdrawing from Iraq, its announced commitment to withdrawing from Afghanistan, to its tolerance of Hugo Chavez, and its infantile reset button diplomacy towards Russia, the Obama administration’s foreign policy is on a collision course with reality.
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CONFRONTING THE Obama administration’s assault on reason in the interest of ideological faithfulness, Israel is faced with very few good options. The threats Israel faces stem largely from the rising forces of jihad, Islamic terrorism and religiously justified nuclear adventurism embraced by Islamist politicians and religious leaders. That is, the threats facing Israel stem largely from the forces the Obama administration has elected to ignore and deny.
Moreover, the Obama administration’s singular obsession with coercing Israel to surrender still more land to the Palestinian Authority means that America’s central Middle East policy involves demanding that Israel further strengthen the unmentionable forces of jihad at its own expense. This fact was underlined this week with The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh’s revelation that most senior PA leaders have recently applied for Jordanian citizenship. Clearly the likes of Mahmoud Abbas believe they will not be the winners if their repressive regime in Judea and Samaria is seriously challenged by their popular jihadist rivals in Hamas.
Our leaders are doubtlessly tempted to simply take the path of least resistance and join Obama and his merry band of blind men as they move from lie to lie to defend their ideology from reality.
But doing so will not protect us when the dangers sown by the US’s strategic dementia provoke the next conflagration.
Israel’s best option is to simply tell the truth as loudly and forcefully as it can and base our policies on it. While doing so will win Israel no friends in the Obama administration or in Europe, it will prepare us for the day when the wall of lies they are building from Islamabad to Cairo to Ramallah come crashing down.
Read the rest: As the lies come crashing down
