The current state of "Blame Bush-Foreign Policy Dept."

"As the antithesis of Bush is learning, foreign dictators are likely to bite the hand that strokes them."

VDH:

"But suddenly Barack Obama’s brief tenure has reminded us that, in fact, almost all the world’s crises arose before the Bush presidency and continued during and after it.

Examine current American foreign policy toward every region, and one of three general patterns emerges: Either things are no better since the end of 2008, or they are much worse, or the Obama administration has reverted to the Bush way of doing things — despite constant assurances to the world that Bush was at fault, American foreign policy was now reset, and global animosity arose out of past misunderstanding, insensitivity, and American hubris."

Imagine that!

We are less secure as a nation with Obama as President, enabled by partisan fools both inside and outside of Congress and the tank media.

A new "Progressive" meme: Muslim Outrage, 24-7

Never mind the hypocrisy, never mind the fabrications, the Muslim right to be offended is now permanently enshrined into the "progressive" agenda talking points.

Noteworthy:

"Shhhhhhh, we’re told. Don’t protest the Ground Zero mosque. Don’t burn a Koran. It’ll imperil the troops. It’ll inflame tensions. The 'Muslim world' will 'explode' if it does not get its way, warns sharia-peddling imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Pardon my national-security-threatening impudence, but when is the 'Muslim world' not ready to 'explode'?

.....When everything from sneakers to stuffed animals to comics to frescos to beauty queens to fast-food packaging to undies serves as dry tinder for Allah’s avengers, it’s a grand farce to feign concern about the recruitment effect of a few burnt Korans in the hands of a two-bit attention-seeker in Florida. The eternal flame of Muslim outrage was lit a long, long time ago."

Did Obama say anything of note last night?

Apparently not. And no one is really surprised.

Charles Krauthammer:

"I thought the speech was both flat and odd."

Jennifer Rubins:

"Obama is still candidate Obama, never tiring of reminding us that he kept his campaign pledge and ever eager to push aside foreign policy challenges so he can get on with the business of remaking America. All in all, it was what we were promised it would not be — self-serving, disingenuous, ungracious, and unreassuring."

NRO:

"If we still don’t know how the Iraq war is going to end, an engaged, strategically far-sighted commander-in-chief is essential."

...which we most certainly do not currently have by ANY stretch of the imagination, in ANY area of national concern foreign or domestic.

We won't even begin to talk about the hypocrisy of candidate-turned President Obama on the entire Iraq issue.

Obama's "new and improved" nuclear policy: More endangerment for America

(HT: Dr. Sanity)

Linda Chavez:

"While anti-nuclear fanatics warned of an apocalypse
if the U.S. continued to expand and improve its nuclear arsenal during the Cold
War, the reality was that our superiority over our enemy and our unwillingness
to foreswear the use of nuclear weapons prevented the conflagration many feared.
Now, President Barack Obama is determined to abandon six decades of proven
nuclear deterrent policy in favor of a fantasy that he can rid the world of
these dangerous weapons by tying America's hands behind our
backs."

What's next?

Providing actual nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, the Palestinians, and Al Qaeda, based on their agreement to abide by a "Don't Be Evil" policy?

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Obama on Passover

Jennifer Rubin:

"Obama, as presidents have traditionally done, released a Passover message. It is typical Obama — off-key, hyper-political, and condescending. The core of the message is this:

'The enduring story of the Exodus teaches us that, wherever
we live, there is oppression to be fought and freedom to be won. In retelling this story from generation to generation, we are reminded of our ongoing responsibility to fight against all forms of suffering and discrimination, and we reaffirm the ties that bind us all.'

No, he didn’t have the nerve to recite the emphatic exhortation 'Next year in Jerusalem.' And frankly, it sounds like Eric Holder and his civil rights lawyers drafted it. Is Passover really about discrimination? Or is it about the deliverance of God’s Chosen People by God from bondage to the land of Israel? Hmm. Obama notes the 'rich symbols, rituals, and traditions' but skips the God part. What is missing from Obama’s secularized spiel is the unique, historic, and, indeed, religious message of the Jewish holiday.

....As Rachel Abrams noted then: 'This religion without God thing is a tricky business.' And indeed a Passover message without Jerusalem is not only off-putting but it also reveals Obama’s mindset and lack of sympatico with the Jewish state and its centrality in the history and religious memory of the Jewish people. After all, the president who delivered the Cairo speech suggesting that Israel’s legitimacy rests on Holocaust guilt is really not the sort to get the Passover message right."

Obama is clearly saving the "Next year in Jerusalem" part for his Palestinian pals.

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The Ft. Hood terrorist: Did he act alone, or was he a Sleeper?

"He was a typical fundamentalist Muslim":

"Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a 'spiritual adviser' to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001."

More:

" 'So many time I talked with him,' said Akhter, a community leader who is sort of like a mosque gadfly, challenging congregants to reject literal, rigid interpretations of Islam. 'I was trying to modernize him. I tried my best. He used to hate America as a whole. He was more anti-American than American.'

Despite all the conversations, Akther said, 'I couldn’t get through to him. He was a typical fundamentalist Muslim.' "

...and this:

"Throughout the Muslim community, there is a battle over legitimacy, authority and identity. Back in Silver Spring, on the day of the debate between the engineer and the doctor over the meaning of jihad, Akhter said that Hasan told him that if he didn’t believe in jihad as warfare, 'Then you are not a Muslim.'

....finally:

"In the midst of the many conversations he had with Hasan, Akhter stood outside the Muslim Community Center, distributing photocopies of a Washington Post article about an Afghan mother who tried to stop her radicalized son from carrying out a suicide bombing; the bomb exploded in the family’s home, killing the mother, her son and her three other children. In a later email to mosque members, he urged them, 'Let us wake up, and take note of who are potential terrorists, who are fanatics, who are fundamentalists' in the community.' "

The Ft Hood mayhem and the rise of grassroots jihadism

Was the call to action heeded?

Noteworthy:

"Whether Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan acted out of insanity or some bizarre moral dilemma, he conducted an attack on U.S. soil of a terrorist nature. Americans need to become more vigilant since we are more vulnerable to attack from jihadists now than ever.

....Terror cells will be even harder to prevent as new grassroots jihadists do not need to communicate directly with a central authority. They now get their information from websites and take cues to from leadership messages published on them. There will be less chatter to monitor because these groups will find each other locally and keep their operations small and low-key.

My prediction on the matter is that the issue will be resolved only as 'a U.S. soldier carried out the Fort Hood attack' and let the assumptions about a violent soldier fall where they may. For this Administration and their cronies, it's a lot more convenient than fulfilling one of the only stated responsibilities of our federal government."

Obama's foreign policy failures laid bare

Charles Krauthammer discusses one of the failures: Russia.

"Henry Kissinger once said that the main job of Anatoly Dobrynin, the perennial Soviet ambassador to Washington, was to tell the Kremlin leadership that whenever they received a proposal from the United States that appeared disadvantageous to the United States, not to assume it was a trick.

No need for a Dobrynin today. The Russian leadership, hardly believing its luck, needs no interpreter to understand that when the Obama team clownishly rushes in bearing gifts and 'reset' buttons, there is nothing ulterior, diabolical, clever or even serious behind it. It is amateurishness, wrapped in naivete, inside credulity. In short, the very stuff of Nobels."

It's also pretty obvious that Obama can't even understand the lessons history teaches about the United States in world affairs, let alone domestic matters:

"These mistakes are important because they point to a serious underlying problem: no historical memory. This president does not have a clue about recent history let alone ancient history. He has no grounding on what works and what does not. His only guide is his philosophy or the ideology of his 'advisors.'

When a president has a philosophy, he must know that there will be a price for implementing it. Ronald Reagan knew that winning the Cold War meant budget deficits and all the problems that they bring. He also knew that implementing Reaganomics would bring long-term gains but also some very strong short-term pain. By knowing history he could craft effective long-term policy and gird his administration against the slings and arrows from his opponents for the downside that those policies bring.

This president has no idea what will work in either the domestic or international sphere. He does not realize that the country can ill afford expensive new social programs while we run a budget deficit that amounts to 10% of GDP. Obama does not understand that if you commit yourself to win a war in Afghanistan, you have to make a reasonable effort to do so and not be hemmed in by left-wing captives of ideology.

Furthermore, the lesson of Herbert Hoover is that a president does not raise taxes when the economy is in the tank. It is not smart economics. Full stop."

What has this increasingly failed President done right to this point in his presidency?

Someone?

ANYONE?

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The Obama rhetoric versus the Obama reality

We've talked a lot about how badly Obama has failed on the economy and other major domestic issues, but we also need to keep focused on how he's endangered our national security.

In only nine months, The Obama administration is shaping up to be the most calamitous mistake the American public has ever had to endure.

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Obama and the Nobel prize: "The end of American e:xceptionalism"

WSJ:

"......(T)he Nobel citation declares that Mr. Obama's 'diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.'

Now, the world is a big place, much of it run by despots and crooks, each of whom gets the same vote in the U.N. General Assembly as America. The Europeans are applauding that at long last there is an American President willing to let himself and his country mingle as equals with this amorphous global 'majority.'

The Norwegians are on to something. In a mere nine months, the President has promulgated a vision for the U.S. role in the world that breaks with both Republican and Democratic predecessors. Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton's Secretary of State, called America the 'indispensable nation' a decade ago. Ronald Reagan called it a 'city on the Hill,' an example to the world.

Mr. Obama sees the U.S. differently, as weaker than it was and the rest of the planet as stronger, and so he calls for a humbler America, at best a first among equals, working primarily through the U.N. The world's challenges, he emphasized yesterday, 'can't be met by any one leader or any one nation.' What this suggests to us—and to the Norwegians—is the end of what has been called 'American exceptionalism.' This is the view that U.S. values have universal application and should be promoted without apology, and defended with military force when necessary."

Obama's pursuit of "peace": All fluff, no substance

But it DOES make American and European lefties "feel better" about America, doesn't it?

Wow, what a deal!

Let's go a little deeper than the incessant babble and drool of the Cheerleaders goes:

"The committee said today that he had 'captured the world’s attention'. It is certainly true that his energy and aspirations have dazzled many of his supporters. Sadly, it seems they have so bedazzled the Norwegians that they can no longer separate hopes from achievement. The achievements of all previous winners have been diminished."

"Signs of an Already Failed Presidency"

Just like his boss, Eric Holder is a posturing agenda-driven political operative, and a pompous arrogant ass.

Dr. Sanity has a great overview of this most recent outrage the Teleprompter-in-Chief and his Grand Inquisitor have concocted.

Quoting the Belmont Club's Wretched, regarding the jihadists:

" 'The brilliance of the new barbarism is that you cannot fight it without destroying your own value system into the bargain.

Traditionally the solution has been to consider wartime a discontinuity, when civilization's rules are suspended. It becomes possible, for example, to lay waste to the Monte Cassino Abbey. Berlin was bombed without regard for its buildings, churches or people.

The alternative is to create methods of fighting so discriminating that we can literally shoot between the raindrops. But that creates a different problem, for we will need an intelligence system so comprehensive that it will become intrusive.

Either way, the war cannot be won without cost. And the fundamental fraud foisted on the public is to claim we can have war without horror, conduct an intelligence war without dishonesty and cunning and obtain victory without sacrifice.'

His two points are particularly relevant in the discussion of torture. To the extent that we can, we have tried to maintain "civilization's rules" as much as possible, while at the same time suspending them when the situation demands--i.e., adherence to a life-affirming value system that requires you to protect innocents who might be harmed by evil. Indeed, when it comes to the issue of torture, one might even say from an historical perspective that the administration went overboard to try and find techniques that were sufficiently uncomfortable and even unbearable; and which would elicit the necessary information without inflicting lasting harm on the recipient.

In this, they were obviously successful.

In fact, I would say that the Bush Administration used an ethical system that appropriately put the value of innocent life higher than that of the dubious, or so-called 'rights' of a terrorist, who happens not to value life at all. Not only that, but the previous administration also managed to identify and use techniques that effectively 'shoot between the raindrops' of the multiple definitions and conceptualizations of torture. True, they identified techniques that were harsh; but they were also techniques which did not truly endanger the life of the terrorist (who himself does not value life in the least and would consider such scruples about it 'weak').

To say that the use of such techniques is unethical seems to me to entirely miss the purpose of ethics.

If you consider the purpose of ethics--to codify and act on one's values--then the Bush Administration behaved in an exquisitely ethical manner. They codified the most important of American values and acted on them; and in doing so managed to keep America safe from a terrorist attack for more than eight years."

"Obama is turning out to be a massive disappointment to even his most slavishly devoted and myopic followers; but this latest cynical and immoral manipulation of our national security to provide political cover for his incompetent leadership shows him to be seriously irresponsible and irresponsibly unserious as POTUS, both in national and foreign policy. He is a postmodern pied piper, leading the gullible of this country down a path of economic ruin and international impotence. As for his and his Administration's moral compass, it is spinning wildly trying to find a direction that pulls him up in the polls.

Obama was never ready for prime time; and is turning out to be a bad joke perpetrated on all Americans."

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"Obama vs the CIA"

"The agency's interrogation practices were lawful—and effective."

Key point:

"The bottom line: The CIA's interrogation practices were lawful, they were necessary, and they were effective. Reading this report, the real crime that comes to light is the Obama administration's decision to eliminate this capability and prosecute those who stopped the next attack."

It's just another "regressive" agenda item fulfillment, the result of which makes our nation and people less safe. Coming from the Obamanation, that's no big surprise.

The fact of that has been clear for quite some time to those of us who have been paying attention.

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Mark Levin, on "progressive" statism

Excerpts:

"You know, Ronald Reagan built a pretty darn good foundation with conservative principles. Was it perfect? No. But it was the most perfect in my lifetime. And you would expect the next Republican president and Republican presidents subsequent to them to build on that foundation.

They didn’t. They lurched back to FDR New Dealism and Great Society. And for some reason, Republicans seem to think they don’t have the ability to slowly explain things to the American people and reverse course. They do, but they won’t because it’s hard work. It’s easier to go along.

Of course you can’t abolish Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid even though they will be abolished one day by their own weight. There’s no question about it in my mind. But what you can do is introduce some real reforms that slowly unravel them in the sense that people who really don’t need them shouldn’t get them. There should be limits on them. There should be private aspects to them.

Look, the statist knows exactly what he’s doing. I explain in the book why Social Security was created the way it was created. As opposed to a welfare program for poor people, FDR wanted to imprison everybody in the system. Lyndon Johnson wanted to use that trust fund for general obligations. This is all intended to build a political base, so if anybody dares to question these entitlements, they’ll be defeated. What we have to do is explain to the next generation: Do you understand that these programs are broke? Do you understand that you owe all this money? And explain it in a way that’s understandable."



"The liberal vision is, to be even more precise, that the individual needs to be controlled, that his aspirations need to be limited, that he has to learn to get along and go along. And that if that means dispiriting the individual, if that means economic or other forms or repression, then so be it for the good of the general society. And that a handful of individuals, self-appointed, who assume power one way or another, they will make the decisions for all the rest of us. In one form or another, that’s what the statist believes."


" You and I know that at every level we’re under attack. We know the next shoe to drop is to create citizenship for illegal aliens and to open the borders to more because they want to change the demography and they want to change the electorate. We know this.

We know what they want to do with national health care. It’s not about making sure people have health care. You know, just because you have a health care policy, doesn’t mean you actually get health care, timely and in quality. No, it’s to secure as many drone-like citizens as you possibly can.

We know what they’re up to, and at bottom, what I’m saying is, we have to reacquaint ourselves with why we are a great nation, with who we are, with our founding, with our history, and what it is that makes humanity prosper and flourish. Everything Obama does counteracts that. Everything that this Congress is doing counteracts that."

Transcript here.

No wonder Levin is so high up on the Dem/Lefty/"Progressive" Looney Tooner hate list.

He makes them look like the slobbering mental midgets they actually are.

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Obama releases terrorists who murdered HUNDREDS of American troops

And yet the Iranian regime who spawned these murdering thugs continues to facilitate terrorist operations in Iraq:

"....Obama’s decision to release the five terror-masters comes while the Iranian regime (a) is still conducting operations against Americans in Iraq, even as we are in the process of withdrawing, and (b) is clearly working to replicate its Lebanon model in Iraq: establishing a Shiite terror network, loyal to Iran, as added pressure on the pliant Maliki to understand who is boss once the Americans leave. As the New York Times reports, Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, put it this way less than two weeks ago:

'Iran is still supporting, funding, training surrogates who operate inside of Iraq — flat out. . . . They have not stopped. And I don’t think they will stop. I think they will continue to do that because they are also concerned, in my opinion, [about] where Iraq is headed. They want to try to gain influence here, and they will continue to do that. I think many of the attacks in Baghdad are from individuals that have been, in fact, funded or trained by the Iranians.' "

Conclusion:

"So Obama is pouring it on while his trusty media idles. When they are not looking the other way from the carnage in Iran’s streets, they are dutifully reporting — as the AP did — that the Irbil Five are mere 'diplomats.'

Obama frees a terrorist with the blood of American troops on his hands, and the press yawns. Senators Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl press for answers about the release of the terrorist and Obama’s abandonment of a decades-old American policy against trading terrorists for hostages, and the silence is deafening

Except in Tehran, where the mullahs are hearing exactly what they’ve banked on hearing."

Just business as usual, just another day in the Obamanation.

WHEN will we put a stop to this?

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Protecting Pelosi

So now the partisan Dem House hacks have circled the wagons around their fearless leader, Palooka Pelosi, and have proclaimed that the CIA "lied" to Congress about it's activities after 9-11.

It is, of course, an attempt to cover Pelosi's lies regarding the fact she was briefed on the aggressive interrogation methods being used to gather information. And now, these jerks want to limit future accountability by preventing the executive branch's ability to protect sensitive information.

Noteworthy:

"House Democrats have set out to hobble the CIA and further handcuff the executive branch. Republicans, naturally, were frozen out. At Speaker Pelosi's insistence, gone would be the right of the President to limit disclosure of sensitive information to the so-called Gang of Eight -- the House Speaker and Minority Leader, Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, and the Chairmen and ranking Members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. This authority would pass to Congress. The bill would also expand disclosure requirements for all sorts of intelligence activities.

This is a recipe for more leaks and more compromised CIA operations. Congress claims it needs to better monitor Presidential intelligence decisions. But the real lesson of the last few years is that Congress wants to know about, and often second-guess, intelligence decisions without being responsible for the result. Mrs. Pelosi could have objected to waterboarding but didn't at the time, becoming a critic only when it became a political uproar. Senator Jay Rockefeller could have resisted warrantless wiretaps of al Qaeda but instead wrote a letter and stuck it in a drawer.

....House Members who are willing to put the politics of protecting their Speaker above national security can't be trusted with adult decisions on intelligence and war-fighting."

Krauthammer:

"There's a truth issue, and there's a politics issue. On the truth, we need to hear from the head of the CIA, what he said.

He's not going to tell us in detail, obviously, what he said in a closed session, what was it, [but he can give] the general area, where in the world, what time, was something concealed or lied about? And he is the one who would know.

In the meantime, the politics of this are puzzling. The only advantage I can see that Democrats are gaining is to blacken the name of the Bush administration, which is, of course, an exercise in redundancy. There is no advantage in that. It's been done.

On the other hand, it hurts the Democrats in two ways. First of all, as Mara indicated, it puts the Democrats, who are in charge of the Congress and the executive, at war with their own CIA in wartime. It's insane. And it's going to undermine Panetta in the CIA he is supposed to actually lead.

And secondly, if it was an attempt—and it looks as if it was an attempt—to cover for Pelosi and her accusations of lying—(a) it doesn't work, because, as we heard earlier in the show, this lapse [in CIA disclosure], if it occurred, was not about interrogation, and her issue was interrogation.

So, (a) it will not help her in substance. And (b) it raises the issue of her veracity, her changing stories, which had hurt her a few months ago, and had been dormant. Now it's revived. It's on the table again."

These cretins deserve all the damage they bring upon themselves.

Our national security doesn't.

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Obama's foreign policy naivete

Putin knows how to deal with a foolish novice punk when he encounters one.

"By contrast, Obama on Tuesday called Russia, a country that's falling apart, a 'great power' and reassured the nondemocratic Putin he'll keep Russia's interests in mind while crafting U.S. policy.

'As I said in Cairo,' the president said, 'given our interdependence, any world order that tries to elevate one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. That is why I have called for a 'reset' in relations between the United States and Russia.'

This implies an equivalency between Russia and the U.S. that simply doesn't exist. Russia comes up short on any measure of civilizational success you might want to use. Indeed, we have elevated a country that has invaded a neighbor, uses energy as a weapon against our democratic allies and refuses to help in our effort to halt Iran's dangerous nuclear program.

Russia is not a 'great' power. It's a Third World nation with First World nuclear weapons. It's in a downward spiral due to its collapsing population, shortening life-spans and shrinking economy. It might not even survive this century as a nation."

Can Obama do ANYTHING competently that the presidential role requires?

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'A Thug's Primer: How to win liberal friends and oppress your people'

Professor Hanson has helped the international thug community out by compiling this Thug Primer for getting fawning behavior and attention from the Obamanation and the Imperator Obamaugustus himself.

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Want things to change in Iran?

Forget the bloody confrontations in the streets. Here is where it will REALLY come from.

Noteworthy:

“ 'The significance is that even within the clergy, there are many who refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the election results as announced by the supreme leader,' said an Iranian political analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.While the government could continue vilifying the three opposition leaders, analysts say it was highly unlikely that the leadership would use the same tactic against the clerical establishment in Qum."

Will the idiots we elected to run our nation's foreign policy further screw up in regard to the Iranian situation?

Is the Pope Catholic?

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The Obamanation diddles with useless things like Obamacare and Cap 'n Trade

Meanwhile, the world is turning increasingly dangerous all around us, particularly as The Bear gets ready to feast on America's foolish and irresponsible Incompetent-in-Chief once again.

Noteworthy:

"These are the facts about the European sites, but the Obama administration appears to be caving in the face of Russian rhetoric. With the Obama administration desperate for an arms control deal, the Russians have made their intentions clear: no START agreement unless U.S. missile defenses are also limited.

The Russians are savvy negotiators. The same cannot be said of Team Obama.

President Obama has responded to Russian bluster about missile defense by announcing his intention to cut the missile defense budget by 15 percent in FY2010, slashing funding for construction of the European sites in Poland and the Czech Republic by 80 percent, and appointing a leading Congressional skeptic of the European sites, Rep. Ellen Tauscher, who has accused her opponents of 'running around with their hair on fire about a long range threat from Iran that does not exist,' as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, the top State Department official tasked with advancing missile defense discussions with Russia and our European allies.

These actions, combined with the administration's seeming lack of interest in confronting Russia on human rights and other 'uncomfortable' topics do not leave the Obama administration with a good negotiating hand.

If he abandons the European missile defense sites, President Obama will have succeeded in empowering the ayatollahs in Tehran and the autocrats in Moscow, and will concomitantly put our allies in central and Eastern Europe on notice that they are merely bargaining chips to be discarded when it is convenient.

A long range threat from Iran that "doesn't exist?" She probably thinks the same thing about North Korea.

Since it "doesn't exist" now means it can be safely ignored for the longer term in these feeble minds.

How typical of this Obamanation. And how dangerous for our country.

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