Posts Tagged ‘Victor Davis Hanson’

Obama Promises To Have Israel’s Back: Expiration Date On Said Promise? A Day And A Half.

by Flyovercountry ( 63 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Iran, Islamists, Israel, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Politics, Syria at March 8th, 2012 - 11:30 am

(combined threads – see Speranza’s VDH thread at the bottom)

On Sunday, March 4, our President gave a speech to AIPAC that would have made anybody who did not know any better believe that he was a staunch a supporter of Israel as has ever graced the streets of these United States of America. No kidding, you can read his speech here, and believe me, it is red meat for those of us who are ardent supporters of our only true ally in the Middle East. You would in fact not be wrong in the least to ask me personally, why is it that his speech made me want to throw a heavy object, once again, through my telly. The answer is simple enough. I can not remember who said this first, nor where I read it originally, but it is as true a statement as has ever been made, throughout all of human history.

“All of Barack Obama’s promises come with an expiration date.”

As he made this speech to AIPAC that made the Likudniks seem like the Israeli version of Bolsheviks, I knew that it was simply another one of his empty platitudes wrapped in lies with a promise that would soon be walked back. How long did this promise last you might ask? It lasted until noon on Tuesday. Here is the transcript of the President’s press conference from Tuesday, March 6, 2012. Some people that I have read over the last couple of hours have been picking the pepper from fly feces so to speak over the meaning of the phrase, “I’ve got your back.” Read it here, another here, and another here. I see something much more cynical in all of this however. That is not to say the the analyses offered by Messirs Morrisey, Sowell, and Blackwell were not well thought out or even 100% correct. I agreed with all of them. I just want to add one little bit for extra consideration.

Barack Obama was obviously lying in one of his two distinct and indeed opposite positions on this one very polarizing issue. He either lied to AIPAC on Sunday or he lied at his Presser on Tuesday. As for determining which speech carried the lie, I believe his actions should speak loudly. Israel has known no greater adversary in the White House than this man. The same one who publicly proclaimed that any process for peace in the Middle East must start with the pre 1967 borders, and be negotiated from there. His UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, is a known Anti-Semite. She has joined in numerous U.N. condemnations of Israel, a Presidential first for our nation. Even today, in his weekly remarks to NPR as reported by others, he framed his statements to suggest that Israel is pushing for military action and that it is in Israel’s best interests to seek a diplomatic solution. Stating it this way of course removes any culpability from Iran, which in the real world inhabited by people who are not brain dead, is the aggressor nation in all of this. Any person who so overtly ignores the Iranian Sabre Rattling with such incendiary comments as we will wipe the Zionist Entity from the map is certainly no friend of Israel. When that same person is able to twist the circumstances and use moral equivalence to place Israel as the aggressor is the worst kind of evil. That person is Barack Hussein Obama.

For the life of me, I will not ever fully understand why politicians place such importance on the Jewish vote. Don’t get me wrong, as a person of the Jewish faith, I am flattered by the attention. To be clear though, we make up less than half a percent of the American Population. Despite the stereo types, we control less than half a percent of the Nation’s wealth. While it is true that our median incomes are slightly higher than the national average, that is also true of other ethnic groups as well, and within those groups, we don’t really stand out in that regard either. While it is true that I enjoy the special attention, who wouldn’t, I still do not wish to be lied to. I realize that all politicians are capable of telling whoppers, but most of them are at least truthful about their core principles. Either Barack Obama has no core principles, or he is fully aware that the ones he does have are in direct contradiction to the majority of Americans. What ever the case is, he is in no way worthy of being President of These United State of America.

Cross Posted at Musings of a Mad Conservative.

Posted by Speranza

My feelings on the current fighting in Syria is that I wish it goes on forever and that Obama continues to make a fool of himself in front of the entire world. I also wish that John McCain and his lapdog Miss Lindsey Graham would learn to keep their dumb mouths closed.

by Victor Davis Hanson

The more Bashar Assad butchers Syrian dissidents, the more the world community expresses outrage — while it does little to stop the bloodletting. Why?

Ironies on top of ironies

1. The politics of intervention. Republicans might seem the most likely to push for an American bombing campaign against Bashar Assad. Some conservatives, in fact, are doing so. But most are silent — and for understandable reasons. Between 2005 and 2009, most liberals made the case that American intervention against an Arab dictator in the Middle East was intrinsically unwise. This liberal chorus included the likes of Hillary Clinton, who as senator had voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein. Barack Obama in 2007 started his presidential bid to the left of Senator Clinton, outlining a plan for near-immediate withdrawal from Iraq, while continuing his concerted attack on almost all the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols.

[…]

All the old left-wing anti-war charges — e.g., that neocons were getting us into a proxy war on Israel’s behalf, or that oil was always a catalyst for any U.S. action in the Middle East — might now equally apply to Syria — a regime that has killed far fewer than the million butchered by Saddam Hussein. In other words, many of those pondering preemptive action against Syria seem to be doing so on the basis that Nobel Peace Laureate Obama, and not George Bush, would be carrying it out. If Bush were calling for tough action against Bashar Assad, we would hear accusations of everything from Halliburton conspiracies to Wag the Dog politics.

2. Bad, worse, or the worst? Other than Iran, Syria has been America’s most vehement enemy over the last decade. It sent jihadists into Iraq to kill Americans, and harbored al-Qaeda terrorists on its own soil. It tried to obtain a nuclear weapon until Israel bombed its nascent enrichment facilities. It was a partner with Hezbollah and Iran in destroying Lebanon and murdering former prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

Nonetheless, in January 2009 the Obama administration loudly announced a Syrian reset policy, as if the previous estrangement were due more to George Bush than to Bashar Assad. Indeed, during the 2008 campaign, informal Obama advisers traveled to Syria to talk of a new relationship, and the Assad regime was openly banking on an Obama victory. John Kerry frequented Damascus and assured us that his talks with Bashar Assad would lead to an Obama–Assad breakthrough (e.g., “Our latest conversation gave me a much greater sense that Assad is willing to do the things that he needs to do in order to change his relationship with the United States”).

Soon after Obama’s inauguration, he appointed a new ambassador to Syria, the first since President Bush withdrew our ambassador in 2005. Secretary of State Clinton dubbed Assad a “reformer.” Mrs. Assad suddenly morphed into a chic Westernized first lady, a Middle Eastern Jackie Kennedy. Obama’s special envoy George Mitchell was the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Damascus in a decade. Bashar Assad warmed to the Obama outreach (“We have the impression that this administration will be different, and we have seen the signals”). Assad expressed his thanks for Obama’s initial pressure on Israel and invited the U.S. to his Damascus “summit” on the Middle East, where there might be grand talk of a new American thaw with Iran, daylight between the United States and Israel, and closer ties to Damascus.

[…]

3. Libya is no model. The Obama administration took out Moammar Qaddafi without the loss of a single American life. Why, then, is Libya not a model for Syria?

We established a new “lead from behind” strategy against Libya, showcasing the French and British while downplaying our own role. But what happens if there is no one now willing to be led from behind — as is apparently true with regard to Syria, where there would predictably be some losses on the allied side, unlike during the air war in Libya? What locomotives are there that we, the caboose, are to push ahead?

Obama bragged of obtaining U.N. resolutions against Libya — but he almost immediately exceeded their authorizations to enforce a no-fly zone and offer humanitarian aid, by ordering bombing in support of the Libyan insurrectionists. Libya, then, offers no U.N. multilateral model, but unfortunately just the opposite: China and Russia now do not trust any American-sponsored U.N. resolutions and therefore oppose them against Syria (and Iran), warning that they are not going to be had again. Nor is the U.S. Congress on board. Consulting the U.N. but not Congress when contemplating bombing Libya was not a paradigm that will win congressional support against Syria.

It is almost impossible to think of anything worse than the Qaddafi regime. But if the postbellum killing and torture — much of it racially inspired, as we see from videos of black Africans put into zoo-like cages by our erstwhile allies — continues, Libya may get there yet. British graves in Benghazi had survived 70 years of monarchs, tyrants, and Moammar Qaddafi, but they could not withstand a few months of the Arab Spring.

[…]

The final irony?

The Obama State Department is quietly briefing U.S. officials and foreign governments that Syria not only has sizable stores of biological and chemical weapons, but also may be likely in fact to use both in extremis — an apparent attempt to help justify the possibility of some sort of aerial intervention or other preemptive attack. This is the liberal mirror image of the Bush administration’s 2002–03 worries about Saddam’s Iraq.

Actually, there is a final, final irony. If that intelligence is true, and if the Assad regime in fact has such enormous WMD stores, where might at least some of these weapons have come from?

Read the rest – Syrian ironies

Tags: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted in Barack Obama, Iran, Islamists, Israel, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Politics, Syria | 63 Comments »

Obama foreign policy perils

by Mojambo ( 113 Comments › )
Filed under Ahmadinejad, Barack Obama, China, Cuba, Iran, Israel, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Syria, Turkey, UK, Venezuela at January 26th, 2012 - 3:00 pm

It is too bad that Americans do not pay much attention to foreign policy issues (unless we are at war) because if that were the case – Obama would have no chance whatsoever of being reelected. It is hard to fathom that as rotten a domestic POTUS he has been, he has been far worse in leading the Free World. He has a special affinity for Islamic tyrannies be they Turkey, Pock-ee-stahn, Syria and Iran, while a disdain for Canada, Britain, Israel, and the former Iron Curtain nations that are now part of NATO. When he referred to France as our “staunchest ally” is when he needed to be brought into the asylum.

by Victor Davis Hanson

The mystery remaining about the Obama administration’s foreign policy is not whether it has worked, but whether its failures will matter all that much. That is no rhetorical question, given that it is hard to permanently damage, in just three years, the position abroad of the United States, given its vast military power and enormous economy.

The Obama administration’s policy was predicated on three assumptions. First, world tensions and widespread dislike of the United States were due to George Bush’s wars and his cowboyish style. Therefore, outreach and reset would correct the Bush mistakes — given that unrest did not really antedate, and would not postdate, the strutting Bush. The unique personal narrative and heritage of Obama and his tripartite name, of course, would earn America fides in inverse proportion to Bush’s twang and evangelical way of speaking about God.

[……]

Putin has as much contempt for Obama as he did for Bush. Our policies remain the same: trying to encourage Russian reform without causing a war or neo-Soviet adventurism.

The decision to reach out to Assad with recognition and an embassy failed; Syria became more unhinged and violent, not less. The verdict is still out on the Arab Spring; the Obama administration stopped taking credit for it once the illiberal Muslim Brotherhood began its ascendance. The Palestinians are now talking of a third intifada, and they hope that, when the shooting starts, their new friend the United States will hector Israel in a way it did not under Bush.

Outreach to Iran was a disaster; the serial face-to-face talks and the quiet neglect of the Iranian dissidents did not work. Now we are reduced to the sort of catch-up sanctions that would have earned Bush the charge of warmongering from the Left. Unofficial U.S policy seems to be a silent hope that tiny Israel does the unthinkable that a huge United States would not, while Saudi Arabia expands its pipelines to nullify the value of the Strait of Hormuz in a way we are refusing to do at home with Keystone.

Obama likes Prime Minister Erdogan even more than he hates Prime Minister Netanyahu. But what he thinks the Israelis have done to the Palestinians pales in comparison to what he must know the Turks have done to the Kurds, Greeks, and Armenians. It is open to question whether Erdogan will be calmed by such affability or will find it useful should he wish to settle old scores with the Kurds, on Cyprus, or in the Aegean.

Lecturing China while borrowing ever more money from it does not work.

I don’t think Japan and South Korea feel any safer with Obama in office — despite claims of a new focus on Asia at the expense of old Europe. The more Obama talks of eliminating nuclear weapons, the more both these neighbors of North Korea will probably consider acquiring them.

There is no need to review the reset flip side of estrangement from the Czech Republic, Britain, Israel, and now Canada — allies who believe in staid things like democracy, human rights, and alliances in times of peril. It is hard to calibrate U.S. policy toward the EU, since the entire enterprise is unraveling, and the Europeans seem puzzled that we are emulating the very failure they are learning from. Mexico is more violent and unstable than ever before, and more emboldened to sue U.S. states in American courts of law. Fast and Furious, promises not to deport any more illegal aliens, and the administration’s lawsuit against the state of Arizona did not have a warming effect on our relationship.

The second Obama idea was the dream of reenergizing the United Nations and working to eliminate all nuclear weapons. But the likelihood is that the atomic club will be larger, not smaller, when Obama leaves office. The madness of North Korea transcends the U.S. presidency, although for now it is playing out in ridiculous matters of succession.

[…..]

Third, Obama promised to win the good war in Afghanistan, and to end the bad war in Iraq, in addition to junking or amending the supposedly unconstitutional and counterproductive war on terror. Here there is some confusion. He got out of Iraq, but on the Bush-Petraeus timetable long ago negotiated with the Iraqi government. In Afghanistan no one believes the situation is better — four commanders and three years after Bush left office. Obama tweaked the war on terror in cynical fashion, mixing euphemism and realpolitik. Rhetorically, we learned of overseas contingency operations and man-caused disasters, while mention of Islamic terrorism became taboo.

Yet Obama, in fact, embraced or expanded all of the Bush-Cheney protocols — from Guantanamo and tribunals to renditions and Predator drones — on the apparent tripartite and correct assumption that (1) these measures were both lawful and vital to the security of the United States; (2) opposition to them had been entirely partisan and would evaporate once he put his own brand upon them; and (3) the Republicans would be flummoxed, unsure whether to damn Obama for his blatant hypocrisy and the damage he had done through his earlier opportunistic attacks on the very policies he would come to expand — or to be relieved that a liberal Democrat was continuing the Bush war on terror and employed its tools, which brought such dividends as the end of bin Laden and the Predatorization of top Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders.

Did the Obama setbacks matter all that much? So far, in the very short term, perhaps not.

[…..]

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., fracking and horizontal drilling redefined our oil and gas outlook, despite, not because of, the Obama administration. The insolvency of Mediterranean Europe has taken attention from the near insolvency of the U.S. Treasury. The EU pact, and styles of governance in China, Russia, and the Arab world, remind us that the U.S. Constitution remains exceptional. And the stagnant American economy has muffled domestic objections to vast cutbacks in defense and our new follow-rather-than-lead foreign policy.

In other words, we are back to the deceptive quiet of a 1913, 1938, or 2000, consumed by internal problems, suspicious of the world abroad, assuming that foreigners’ challenges are worse than ours, and convinced that no one would be so stupid as to start a stupid war.

Let us hope no one does. But if someone should be so crazy, others might follow. Then we would learn that our old allies are now neutrals; our new friends are enemies; and the old deterrence will be as hard to regain as it was once to acquire.

Read the rest – The Peril’s of Obama’s Foreign Policy

Tags: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted in Ahmadinejad, Barack Obama, China, Cuba, Iran, Israel, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Syria, Turkey, UK, Venezuela | 113 Comments »

Our small friends matter

by Mojambo ( 82 Comments › )
Filed under China, Greece, Iran, Israel, Turkey at November 18th, 2011 - 11:30 am

VDH examines the reasons as to why Obama jettisons and betrays our smaller friends to the tender mercies of bloodthirsty tyrannies.

by Victor Davis Hanson

Recently, an open mike caught French president Nicolas Sarkozy and American president Barack Obama jointly trashing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Sarkozy scoffed, “I cannot stand him. He’s a liar.” Obama trumped that with, “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day.”

Two days later, in one of the most bizarre op-eds published by the New York Timesin recent memory, Paul Kane suggested that the United States could literally sell out its support for democratic Taiwan for about $1 trillion. He argued that the Chinese might be so thankful to us for letting them get their hands on the island that they might forgive much of what we owe them.

So why does the United States take risks in guaranteeing the security of countries such as Israel and Taiwan? Surely the smart money — and most of the world — bets on their richer enemies. The Arab Middle East has oil, hundreds of millions of people, and lots of dangerous radical-Islamic terrorists. China is more than one billion strong, with the fastest-growing economy in the world.

But President Obama should remember that America does not think solely in terms of national advantage. In fact, only the United States seems to have an affinity for protecting tiny, vulnerable nations. In two wars, and more than twelve years of no-fly zones in Iraq, America saved the Kurds from a genocidal Saddam Hussein.

Greece today has few friends. Its northern-European creditors are furious with its profligacy and duplicity. Nearby, an ascendant Turkey is flexing its muscles over occupied Cyprus and new finds of gas and oil in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. In short, a bankrupt Greece of only 11 million people, residing in one of history’s most dangerous neighborhoods, has few strong friends other than the United States. The same is true of Christian Armenia, which likewise is relatively small and near to historical enemies in Turkey and Russia.

[…]

We should remember that in the late 1940s Greece and Taiwan would have disappeared as free, independent countries without American military support and guarantees. Armenia did not exist as a free nation until America helped to force the collapse of the Soviet Union. Kurdistan emerged as an autonomous province only when America deposed Saddam Hussein. Israel might have vanished during the 1973 Yom Kippur War without massive American military aid.

Of course, these historically persecuted peoples can at times be testy allies, and they can even sound anti-American. Their national characters — reflecting centuries of oppression — understandably can seem prone to collective paranoia and conspiracy theories. Yet Israel, Taiwan, Kurdistan, Greece, and Armenia are democratic states, with rich histories, and have survived against all odds.

In the next few years, as never before, our small friends will be tested. Iran has promised to wipe out Israel and may soon get the bomb to do it. We are withdrawing all troops at the end of the year from Iraq, and Kurdistan will then be entirely on its own. Russia often talks about reconstituting its former Soviet states into some sort of new imperial federation. China thinks it is only a matter of time before Taiwan can be absorbed. The new Turkey is beginning to look a lot like the old imperial Ottoman sultanate.

Yet if protecting these small states is risky, our concern also reflects positively upon the singular values of the United States. The United Nations has neither the will nor the capability to ensure the security of these countries. The eroding European Union talks grandly of international values but rarely risks its blood or treasure to defend them.

Only America is moral enough and strong enough to protect the world’s historically vulnerable but culturally unique peoples. It would be a shame if we forgot that — either out of desire for profit or because we became fed up with the bother.

Read the rest: Why does America defend the weak and small?

Tags: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted in China, Greece, Iran, Israel, Turkey | 82 Comments »

Obama Unchained

by Mojambo ( 52 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Elections 2012, George W. Bush, Iran, Politics at November 13th, 2011 - 4:00 pm

VDH points out the hypocrisy of both the Right and Left when it comes to political rhetoric and action. Reagan gave us illegal immigration amnesty, W. gave us massive debt, Wilson, FDR and Earl Warren violated the constitution, Obama (the Nobel Peace Prize winner lol) continued the predator (actually expanded) drone strikes. Look for Obama to have a “wag the dog” moment overseas.

by Victor Davis Hanson

Richard Nixon went to Red China with political impunity. Had a Democrat tried that, he would have been branded a Commie appeaser. To this day, liberals cannot conceive that during the two world wars, progressives like Woodrow Wilson, Earl Warren, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt trampled on civil liberties in a way unimagined by Dick Cheney.

Ronald Reagan signed the most liberal illegal-immigration-amnesty bill in history, and ran larger yearly deficits than Jimmy Carter had. “Read my lips” George H. W. Bush agreed to huge tax increases. And George W. Bush ran up the largest debt of any eight-year president, outspending Bill Clinton more than fivefold. The latter, remember, bombed Belgrade without either congressional or United Nations approval — and without anti-war protests. Without an opposition, almost anything goes.

In other words, right-wing presidents can sometimes act left-wing, and left-wing presidents can act right-wing — to the embarrassed silence of their respective bases, but to the private delight of their greenlighting opponents.

We have no better examples of that irony than our two most recent presidents. George W. Bush was still damned as an uncaring reactionary by the Left even as he pushed for big-government programs such as No Child Left Behind and unfunded entitlements such as Medicare prescription-drug coverage. Barack Obama was alleged to be squishy about hunting down terrorists, even as he increased targeted assassinations tenfold and found plenty of opportunistic former legal critics of Bush’s national-security protocols to write justifications for them.

In terms of the Obama presidency, there is now no anti-war movement. It simply vanished in January 2009. Former outrages like Guantanamo, renditions, and Predator-drone assassinations almost magically became A-okay. The left-wing base dared not continue its old Bush slurs, given its support for Obama’s liberal domestic agenda. Quiet conservatives were perplexed over whether to be outraged that Predator-in-Chief Obama proved to be such an abject hypocrite, or relieved that, better late than never, he had morphed into a Bush-Cheney national-security disciple.

The result is that for the next year or so, Obama can more or less do whatever he wishes abroad. If he chooses to bomb a country that poses no direct threat to the U.S. without congressional authority, like Libya, or to assassinate a U.S. citizen-terrorist, like Anwar al-Awlaki, the Left will keep mum. And the Right, for different reasons, probably will, too.

What, then, should we expect abroad in the waning months of Obama’s four-year term, with continuing economic bad news at home?

Suddenly, intelligence agencies at the U.N., and in the U.S. and Europe — after once denying, during the supposedly trigger-happy Bush administration, that Iran was close to getting a bomb — now warn us that Tehran may actually test a nuclear weapon after all. Iran poses an existential threat not only to Israel, but to the entire notion of nuclear nonproliferation in the key oil-exporting Gulf. Its missiles could reach southern Europe.

If we get to the scary point of Iran’s going nuclear in 2012, expect the Obama administration — up for reelection and without much of a domestic record to run on in these hard times — to consider a preemptive strike. Be assured that if it does, there will be no outrage in the Democrat-controlled Senate, no campuses on fire, no ad hominem Moveon.org ads in the New York Times— all the sorts of anti-war hysteria that once sought to turn a moderate like George W. Bush into a caricature of some trigger-happy yokel from shoot-’em-up Texas.

And conservatives? Again, they would mumble that an Obama “wag the dog” strike would cynically be all about the president’s reelection. Or they would at least note the irony, given the Nobel Laureate–in–Chief’s prior demonization of Bush’s use of military force. Nonetheless, Republicans would largely grow silent if — a big if — a strike were successful and ended Iran’s nuclear threat.

[…..]