Obama's Cairo Address - A Walkback From Democracy and Iraq

No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation by any other. That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, . . .

President Barack Obama, Cairo Address, June 4, 2009

Would it be possible for Obama to have made any clearer his repudiation of the democracy agenda - and by extension, his return to "real politik" whereby we will accept the tyrannical governments of the Middle East as we find them. Does Obama realize that doing precisely that is one of the central causes for anti-American sentiment in the Middle East. Perhaps he should listen to Michael Sheuer, who explains it in no undertain terms here. Or perhaps Condi Rice, who would tell him that:

For 60 years, . . . the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the [Middle East]. And we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of the people.

Indeed, to go one further, does Obama realize that it is the repressive regimes in the Middle East that provide the incubators for Islamic terrorists.

There are only two basic forms of government possible in this world, yet Obama disingenuously hides his retreat from promotion of democracy behind the canard that "each nation" gives expression to the will of the people in some unique way. That is utterly vacuous. Either you have an actual democracy with broad rights of sufferage or you have some form of tyranny. There are no other options. And history has taught us, if nothing else, that democracies, even rough and imperfect ones, have far greater long term stability and are far less aggressive than any form of tyranny.

What in fact we are seeing from Obama in his quotes above are multiculturalism and moral equivalence instead of discriminatory value judgments based on facts and history. According to Obama, all forms of government are apparently of equal value and, in "their own way," reflect the "will of the people." He is in dire need of a civics lesson it would seem. The history of the Middle East is not a history of "the will of the people" being manifest by their governments. To the contrary, its the history of tyrants and dictators, of brutal coups and blood in the streets. It is the history of a city in Syria leveled and its population erased. Its the history of chemical attacks on villages. It is the history of entire populations terrorized. It is anything but the "will of the people."

Indeed, there is only one country in the middle of the Middle East that truly reflects, today, the "will of the people." It is the nascent democracy in Iraq. And instead of talking that up and stoking the fires of freedom, Obama quite literally ignored Iraq during his speech, but to announce that, in accordance with his high moral standards, he would abandon Iraq by 2012. Iraq is a beacon of hope to many oppressed people, not the least of whom is numbered the people of Iran. Yet to Obama, for purely partisan reasons, it is an experiment better forgotten, and the sooner the better.

And unfortunately, Obama has decided to cease promoting democracy just when it seems to be taking hold over the repressive ideologies of the Islamic parties throughout the Middle East. That was the subject of a recent WSJ article, discussing not merely the gains of secular parties at the polls, but the gains of women in free and fair elections.

Only one nation in the Middle East must be truly happy with Obama's walkback of democracy and walk away from Iraq. That country is Iran. As I've point out many times before, Iraq, because of its democracy, because of its secular Shia government, and because of its adherence to the traditional Shia concept of quietism, poses a mortal threat to Iran. Yet now Obama has virtually declared open season on Iraq in a time certain. And indeed, given his stated unwillingness to "impose" a government on any country, that logic also dictates that Obama would not intervene to stop the morphing of any government from one form to another. Thus if Iran succeeds short of open warfare in changing Iraq's government to align with its own, they can have a reasonable expectation that it will elicit no response from President Obama.

And a final world must be said about one other country today in the Middle East that must have been incredibly sorry to hear Obama's speech. Lebanon - a country with an imperfect democracy, but a country on the verge of losing even that. Lebanon's Cedar Revolution brought a fragile democratic government to power. And Iran yet again stands by, looking to break that government and ensconce their proxy, Hezbollah, into power. They are spending masses of money in the upcoming election. And what hope has Obama given to the people of Lebanon? He ignored them. With Iran practically occupying the country and Obama ignoring it, they can have no hope.

Obama's faux moralizing, his reliance on multicultural ethos, and his failure to see the importance of promoting democracy in the Middle East virtually assures dark days ahead. Those days are dark both for the people living under tyrannical rule and for us.

Summary - Obama's Cairo Address: What We Needed, What We Got
Part 1 - Obama's Cairo Address: Hiding From The Existential Problems Of The Muslim World
Part 2 - Obama's Cairo Address: A Walk Back From Democracy & Iraq
Part 3 - Obama's Cairo Address: Obama Calls For Women's Rights While Glossing Over Discrimination & Violence
Part 4 - Obama's Cairo Address: Nukes, Iran & Weakness Writ Large
Part 5 - Obama's Cairo Address: Israel & Palestine – A Little Good, A Lot Of Outrageousness
Part 6 - Obama's Cairo Address: Islam's Tradition Of Religious Tolerance?
Part 7 - Obama's Cairo Address: The Dangerous Whitewashing Of History

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The Left Puts The CIA In A "Horrible Position"

The CIA is, rightly, worried about the future and the restrictions being placed upon them that render their job very difficult if not impossible. And they are rightly upset with:

(H/T Hot Air)
They are making their discontent public today - in the Washington Post.

This from the Washington Post:

Battered by recriminations over waterboarding and other harsh techniques . . ., the CIA is girding itself for more public scrutiny and is questioning whether agency personnel can conduct interrogations effectively under rules set out for the U.S. military, according to senior intelligence officials.

Harsh interrogations were only one part of its clandestine activities against al-Qaeda and other enemies, and agency members are worried that other operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan will come under review, the officials said.

CIA Director Leon Panetta said he has established a group at the agency to handle requests for documents by Congress, the prosecutors and any "truth commission." The agency is facing a dispute with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) over how much agency officials told congressional overseers about the harsh techniques.

The agency's defensiveness in part reflects a conviction that it is being forced to take the blame for actions approved by elected officials that have since fallen into disfavor. Former CIA director Michael V. Hayden said in an interview that CIA managers and operations officers have again been put "in a horrible position." Hayden recalled an officer asking, "Will I be in trouble five years from now for what I agree to do today?"

Although President Obama has said no CIA officers will be prosecuted for their roles in harsh interrogations if they remained within Justice Department guidelines in effect at the time, agency personnel still face subpoenas and testimony under oath before criminal, civil and congressional bodies.

As part of an ongoing criminal inquiry into the CIA's destruction of videotapes depicting waterboarding, CIA personnel will appear before a grand jury this week, according to two sources familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is continuing. The Senate intelligence committee is pursuing its investigation into whether harsh interrogations, including waterboarding, brought forward worthwhile intelligence, as agency and Bush administration officials have maintained. . . .

The Obama administration's decisions to close the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, make public Justice Department memos sanctioning harsh interrogation, and ban techniques authorized by the Bush administration are affecting the agency's operations.

Agency officials said they will carry out any future debriefings or interrogations under provisions of the 2006 version of the Army Field Manual. . . .

Under an executive order signed by Obama on Jan. 20, the Field Manual is "the law of the land. . . . There is nothing outside it now," one intelligence official said. But according to several past agency and military officials, the Field Manual is sometimes so broad as to be unclear.

Its section on interrogation bans "violence, threats, or impermissible or unlawful physical contact," without specifying what is sanctioned. The manual also says an interrogator cannot threaten "the removal of protections afforded by law."

. . . The Field Manual, which was published in 2006, says that "direct approach" interrogation operations in World War II had a 90 percent effectiveness, and those in Vietnam, Kuwait and Iraq had a success rate of 95 percent. Afghanistan since 2002 and Iraq since 2003 are still being studied. "However," it adds, "unofficial studies indicate that in these operations, the direct approach has been dramatically less successful."

Another intelligence official, who also asked not to be identified, said waterboarding and other harsh techniques "were meant to get hardened terrorists to a point where they were willing to answer questions." That capability, the official said, "is now gone." . . .

Read the entire article.

Its clear that the sum of the left's - and particularly Obama's and Pelosi's actions - have seriously undermined morale at the CIA and reduced their effectiveness. Of particular concern is the fact that we now have no tools reasonably expected to make captured terrorists willing to talk.

As Michael Sheuer wrote, Obama's decision to write into law his own "ideological beliefs" as regards coercive interrogation was a "breathtaking display of self-righteousness and intellectual arrogance." The U.S. Army Interrogation Manual's list of non-coercive measures now exclusively allowed by Obama are ineffective in interrogation of al Qaeda and radical Islamists. There is an excellent article on this from 2004 that you can find in City Journal.

Additionally, if you're in the CIA, you have to be effected by Obama and the left's silence in regards to charges that the CIA lied to Nancy Pelosi in 2002. It really is a travesty that Nancy Pelosi attacks the CIA while Obama and the left sit on the sidelines, doing nothing to protect the CIA or to insure that the truth is told, and either Pelosi or the CIA vindicated. If, as seems almost certain, the CIA has proof that Pelosi was briefed in 2002 that waterboarding had been used, Obama is doing a tremendous disservice to the CIA by keeping that from the public.

And a final thought. Does anyone doubt that the smartest man at the CIA is the guy who, two years ago, listening to the moralizing outrage of the left, had the foresight to destroy the tapes of the waterboarding. The fact that he did it speaks volumes about the lack of trust the CIA has for our political class - and the far left in particular. The fact that he, today, seems well advised to have done so speaks volumes about how politicized the CIA has already become under the Obama administration.

God help us if we need the CIA over the next decade or so.

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