'Realpolitik' is a 19th century term meaning to conduct a pragmatic foreign policy based on a cold calculation of reality. Criticized for its lack of lack of paramount concern for morality, democracy and other considerations, it long marked America's foreign policy and perhaps reached its zenith under President Nixon, with his trip to China and his negotiation of an end to the Vietnam War begun by the Democrats. So how would one describe Obama's foreign policy, which seems to be unconnected from reality and wholly lacking in pragmatism?
When Obama took office in 2009, Libya was neutral. Egypt and Yemen were both under the control of pro-Western dictators. Iraq had been won and was under U.S. influence. Syria was stable, if then an ally of Iran. Al-Qaeda had been defeated on the battlefield of their choice and was on its heels. Turkey was still a nominal ally. Iran was beginning to feel real pain from economic sanctions designed to punish that country for its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Afghanistan needed attention. And the role of Islam in promoting terrorism was very much at issue.
Today, Libya has been destabilized by a U.S. "led-from-behind" coup and is now a home base for ISIS radicals. Obama supported a coup against pro-Western Egyptian dictator Mubarak, only to see the nation fall under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood, the ideological parent of al Qaeda and virtually all other Sunni terrorist groups. Since then a second coup led to the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood regime and Obama has maintained very cool relations with the new, pro-Western government of al-Sisi, going so far as to suspend military aid at a time when that nation is increasingly coming under fire from radical Islamists. Obama squandered our hard won victory in Iraq, leaving that nation to fall under the ever greater influence of neighboring Iran. Syria, which fell into a revolt led by pro-Western rebels, was ignored by the Obama administration until, now, it is nothing more than a war for spoils between the ISIS and Iran. Turkey has become ever more a home to Islamists and less an ally.
If that were all, one would be forced to conclude that the Obama foreign policy has been one misstep after another based on mistaken but perhaps reasonable assessments of reality. But that is not all. When one adds in considerations of Yemen and Iran, it's apparent that the Obama administration is not merely mistaken in its assessments, it is completely disconnected from reality.
As to Iran, it is still the world's greatest sponsor of terrorism, still dedicated to the export of its Khomeinist Revolution, and still a mortal enemy of this nation and it has the blood of thousands of Americans on its hands. And yet, Obama has suspended sanctions, removed Iran from a list of terrorists, and now appears ready to make a deal with Iran that would allow them to keep their nuclear program active. Before 2009, I warned that Obama would be the second coming of Chamberlain, likely to try and appease Iran. I was wrong. As Bookworm Room points out, Obama has been infinitely worse, for he appears not merely reasonably mistaken in his assessments, but fully and knowingly willing to make a deal with the devil. The belief that giving a bloody, rogue regime carte blanche to continue developing a nuclear weapons capability will somehow be, in the words of Tom Friedman, transformational in any sort of positive sense for this nation, is pure insanity. It is a recipe for further destabilizing the Middle East.
And then there is Yemen. Within the past week, Iranian backed rebels have driven not merely the government of that country out of the capital, but U.S. diplomatic and military forces as well. It is a disaster. Six months ago, Obama was claiming that Yemen was not merely a counterterrorism success, but a blueprint for future operations. And today . . . his administration is still making that claim, calling Yemen a "template that has succeeded."
It that is success, then the word failure has no meaning. This is actually frightening in its lack of any grounding in reality.
The Obama administration is the anti-Nixon in the foreign policy arena. This is a foreign policy based on fantasy for which there is no word in our historic or political science lexicon. A new word must be created, and the most apt would seem to be "unrealpolitik." And the scariest part of it all is that Obama still has near two more years to do untold damage to our nation's national security.
Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents - Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. . . . There can be little doubt that their destabilizing foreign policies are a threat to the interests of the United States, to the interests of every country in the Middle East, and to the interests of all countries within the range of the ballistic missiles Iran is developing.
As bad as the news is today in the domestic arena (FCC, Illegal Immigration, IRS, HHS), the actions of the Obama regime in the international arena are orders of magnitude worse. For while all the destruction Obama has wrought in the domestic arena can, theoretically, be fixed, the same is not true of his duplicitous and suicidal dealings with Iran, where the stakes are so high and so time sensitive that to get it wrong is to court apocalyptic disaster.
Iran is the penultimate rogue state. I won't recount all the facts, you can read them here. Suffice it to say that Iran, a theocracy being run as a violent, crony capitalist police state, is as dangerous to the world as a rabid dog is to everyone within range of its fangs. Its leaders are every bit as irrational, triumphalist, expansionist and evil as was Hitler. To allow the mad mullahs to obtain a nuclear arsenal is beyond unthinkable. A nuclear armed Iran presents an immediate existential threat to Israel as well as to all of Western civilization. Moreover, Iran's drive for a nuclear aresenal is already setting off nuclear proliferation in other Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, the nation whose toxic brand of Islam, Wahhabism, is the core ideology at the heart of ISIS, al Qaeda and virtually all Sunni Islamic inspired terrorism of our era. Imagine if you will, nuclear weapons diffuse throughout the deeply unstable Middle East. The hands of the doomsday clock will soom be spinning at the speed of a fan, and death on a massive scale virtually inevitable.
None of this is new. It is why, for years, our nation has tried to end Iran's nuclear program, and do it short of war. It is why there have been six U.N. Security Council Resolutions demanding an end to Iran's nuclear enrichment program. One would think that Obama and the left, who worship at the altar of international law, would demand that Iran do just that, end the program. That is the only viable option.
But Obama has, with the surety of Neville Chamberlain vis a vis Hitler in 1937, believed from the start that Iran's theorcracy are rational actors, people with whom he can negotiate. He sees the mad mullahs as potential partners in Middle East peace. And to that end, he has dismantled the crushing regime of economic sanctions the Bush regime built, block by block, in an effort to stop Iran's enrichment program short of war. And now, Obama is negotiating a deal with Iran that will allow their enrichment program not merely to continue, but "will put Iran on a glide path to the acquisition of nuclear weapons over a period of years."
Charles Krauthammer sounds the warning bells today:
The news from the nuclear talks with Iran was already troubling. Iran was being granted the “right to enrich.” It would be allowed to retain and spin thousands of centrifuges. It could continue construction of the Arak plutonium reactor. Yet so thoroughly was Iran stonewalling International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors that just last Thursday the IAEA reported its concern “about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed . . . development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”
Bad enough. Then it got worse:
News leaked Monday of the “sunset clause.” President Obama had accepted the Iranian demand that any restrictions on its program be time-limited. After which, the mullahs can crank up their nuclear program at will and produce as much enriched uranium as they want. Sanctions lifted. Restrictions gone. Nuclear development legitimized. Iran would re-enter the international community, as Obama suggested in an interview last December, as “a very successful regional power.” A few years — probably around ten — of good behavior and Iran would be home free. The agreement thus would provide a predictable path to an Iranian bomb. Indeed, a flourishing path, with trade resumed, oil pumping, and foreign investment pouring into a restored economy.
Meanwhile, Iran’s intercontinental-ballistic-missile program is subject to no restrictions at all. It’s not even part of these negotiations. Why is Iran building them? You don’t build ICBMs in order to deliver sticks of dynamite. Their only purpose is to carry nuclear warheads. Nor does Iran need an ICBM to hit Riyadh or Tel Aviv. Intercontinental missiles are for reaching, well, other continents. North America, for example.
Such an agreement also means the end of nonproliferation. When a rogue state defies the world, continues illegal enrichment, and then gets the world to bless an eventual unrestricted industrial-level enrichment program, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is dead. And regional hyperproliferation becomes inevitable as Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and others seek shelter in going nuclear themselves.
Wasn’t Obama’s great international cause a nuclear-free world? . . .
The deal now on offer to the ayatollah would confer legitimacy on the nuclearization of the most rogue of rogue regimes: radically anti-American, deeply jihadist, purveyor of terrorism from Argentina to Bulgaria, puppeteer of a Syrian regime that specializes in dropping barrel bombs on civilians. . . .
Do read the entire article. Krauthammer goes on to prudently recommend we reimpose sanctions on the mad mullahs and demand they stop enrichment. If we do not, if we allow Obama to complete this madness, we sign the death warrant of Western Civilization.
Obama, in his Cairo speech of 2009, ignored all the hard truths that he should have told the Muslim world. If you want to know how his speech should have read, merely read the following essay from Saudi Abdulateef Al-Mulhim, a retired commodore of the Saudi Royal Navy, in the Arab News:
. . . On the anniversary of the 1973 War between the Arab and the Israelis, many people in the Arab world are beginning to ask many questions about the past, present and the future with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The questions now are: What was the real cost of these wars to the Arab world and its people. And the harder question that no Arab national wants to ask is: What was the real cost for not recognizing Israel in 1948 and why didn’t the Arab states spend their assets on education, health care and the infrastructures instead of wars? But, the hardest question that no Arab national wants to hear is whether Israel is the real enemy of the Arab world and the Arab people.
I decided to write this article after I saw photos and reports about a starving child in Yemen, a burned ancient Aleppo souk in Syria, the under developed Sinai in Egypt, car bombs in Iraq and the destroyed buildings in Libya. The photos and the reports were shown on the Al-Arabiya network, which is the most watched and respected news outlet in the Middle East.
The common thing among all what I saw is that the destruction and the atrocities are not done by an outside enemy. The starvation, the killings and the destruction in these Arab countries are done by the same hands that are supposed to protect and build the unity of these countries and safeguard the people of these countries. So, the question now is that who is the real enemy of the Arab world?
The Arab world wasted hundreds of billions of dollars and lost tens of thousands of innocent lives fighting Israel, which they considered is their sworn enemy, an enemy whose existence they never recognized. The Arab world has many enemies and Israel should have been at the bottom of the list. The real enemies of the Arab world are corruption, lack of good education, lack of good health care, lack of freedom, lack of respect for the human lives and finally, the Arab world had many dictators who used the Arab-Israeli conflict to suppress their own people.
These dictators’ atrocities against their own people are far worse than all the full-scale Arab-Israeli wars. . . .
In Syria, the atrocities are beyond anybody’s imaginations? And, isn’t the Iraqis are the ones who are destroying their own country? Wasn’t it Tunisia’s dictator who was able to steal 13 billion dollars from the poor Tunisians? And how can a child starve in Yemen if their land is the most fertile land in the world? Why would Iraqi brains leave Iraq in a country that makes 110 billion dollars from oil export? Why do the Lebanese fail to govern one of the tiniest countries in the world? And what made the Arab states start sinking into chaos? . . .
Finally, if many of the Arab states are in such disarray, then what happened to the Arabs’ sworn enemy (Israel)? Israel now has the most advanced research facilities, top universities and advanced infrastructure. Many Arabs don’t know that the life expectancy of the Palestinians living in Israel is far longer than many Arab states and they enjoy far better political and social freedom than many of their Arab brothers. Even the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip enjoy more political and social rights than some places in the Arab World. Wasn’t one of the judges who sent a former Israeli president to jail is an Israeli-Palestinian?
The Arab Spring showed the world that the Palestinians are happier and in better situation than their Arab brothers who fought to liberate them from the Israelis. Now, it is time to stop the hatred and wars and start to create better living conditions for the future Arab generations.
Here is the video followed by the transcript. It is a good speech. As Romney memorably notes:
I know the President hopes for a safer, freer, and a more prosperous Middle East allied with the United States. I share this hope. But hope is not a strategy.
Perhaps the only thing that I would have added is that Obama has not captured a single high value intelligence target, preferring to kill them from afar with drones. We are not getting human intelligence like we did in the years before Obama. Did we see the wages of this intelligence failure in Benghazi, where the Obama administration failed to see a growing al Qaeda threat, resulting in the catastrophic slaughter of our Ambassador and others?
[Opening remarks not included] General Marshall once said, “The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.” Those words were true in his time—and they still echo in ours.
Last month, our nation was attacked again. A U.S. Ambassador and three of our fellow Americans are dead—murdered in Benghazi, Libya. Among the dead were three veterans. All of them were fine men, on a mission of peace and friendship to a nation that dearly longs for both. President Obama has said that Ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues represented the best of America. And he is right. We all mourn their loss.
The attacks against us in Libya were not an isolated incident. They were accompanied by anti-American riots in nearly two dozen other countries,mostly in the Middle East, but also in Africa and Asia. Our embassies have been attacked. Our flag has been burned. Many of our citizens have been threatened and driven from their overseas homes by vicious mobs, shouting “Death to America.” These mobs hoisted the black banner of Islamic extremism over American embassies on the anniversary of the September 11th attacks.
As the dust settles, as the murdered are buried, Americans are asking how this happened, how the threats we face have grown so much worse, and what this calls on America to do. These are the right questions. And I have come here today to offer a larger perspective on these tragic recent events—and to share with you, and all Americans, my vision for a freer, more prosperous, and more peaceful world.
The attacks on America last month should not be seen as random acts. They are expressions of a larger struggle that is playing out across the broader Middle East—a region that is now in the midst of the most profound upheaval in a century. And the fault lines of this struggle can be seen clearly in Benghazi itself.
The attack on our Consulate in Benghazi on September 11th, 2012 was likely the work of forces affiliated with those that attacked our homeland on September 11th, 2001. This latest assault cannot be blamed on a reprehensible video insulting Islam, despite the Administration’s attempts to convince us of that for so long. No, as the Administration has finally conceded, these attacks were the deliberate work of terrorists who use violence to impose their dark ideology on others, especially women and girls; who are fighting to control much of the Middle East today; and who seek to wage perpetual war on the West.
We saw all of this in Benghazi last month—but we also saw something else, something hopeful. After the attack on our Consulate, tens of thousands of Libyans, most of them young people, held a massive protest in Benghazi against the very extremists who murdered our people. They waved signs that read, “The Ambassador was Libya’s friend” and “Libya is sorry.” They chanted “No to militias.” They marched, unarmed, to the terrorist compound. Then they burned it to the ground. As one Libyan woman said, “We are not going to go from darkness to darkness.”
This is the struggle that is now shaking the entire Middle East to its foundation. It is the struggle of millions and millions of people—men and women, young and old, Muslims, Christians and non-believers—all of whom have had enough of the darkness. It is a struggle for the dignity that comes with freedom, and opportunity, and the right to live under laws of our own making. It is a struggle that has unfolded under green banners in the streets of Iran, in the public squares of Tunisia and Egypt and Yemen, and in the fights for liberty in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Libya, and now Syria. In short, it is a struggle between liberty and tyranny, justice and oppression, hope and despair.
We have seen this struggle before. It would be familiar to George Marshall. In his time, in the ashes of world war, another critical part of the world was torn between democracy and despotism. Fortunately, we had leaders of courage and vision, both Republicans and Democrats, who knew that America had to support friends who shared our values, and prevent today’s crises from becoming tomorrow’s conflicts.
Statesmen like Marshall rallied our nation to rise to its responsibilities as the leader of the free world. We helped our friends to build and sustain free societies and free markets. We defended our friends, and ourselves, from our common enemies. We led. And though the path was long and uncertain, the thought of war in Europe is as inconceivable today as it seemed inevitable in the last century.
This is what makes America exceptional: It is not just the character of our country—it is the record of our accomplishments. America has a proud history of strong, confident, principled global leadership—a history that has been written by patriots of both parties. That is America at its best. And it is the standard by which we measure every President, as well as anyone who wishes to be President. Unfortunately, this President’s policies have not been equal to our best examples of world leadership. And nowhere is this more evident than in the Middle East.
I want to be very clear: The blame for the murder of our people in Libya, and the attacks on our embassies in so many other countries, lies solely with those who carried them out—no one else. But it is the responsibility of our President to use America’s great power to shape history—not to lead from behind, leaving our destiny at the mercy of events. Unfortunately, that is exactly where we find ourselves in the Middle East under President Obama.
The relationship between the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel, our closest ally in the region, has suffered great strains. The President explicitly stated that his goal was to put “daylight” between the United States and Israel. And he has succeeded. This is a dangerous situation that has set back the hope of peace in the Middle East and emboldened our mutual adversaries, especially Iran.
Iran today has never been closer to a nuclear weapons capability. It has never posed a greater danger to our friends, our allies, and to us. And it has never acted less deterred by America, as was made clear last year when Iranian agents plotted to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in our nation’s capital. And yet, when millions of Iranians took to the streets in June of 2009, when they demanded freedom from a cruel regime that threatens the world, when they cried out, “Are you with us, or are you with them?”—the American President was silent.
Across the greater Middle East, as the joy born from the downfall of dictators has given way to the painstaking work of building capable security forces, and growing economies, and developing democratic institutions, the President has failed to offer the tangible support that our partners want and need.
In Iraq, the costly gains made by our troops are being eroded by rising violence, a resurgent Al-Qaeda, the weakening of democracy in Baghdad, and the rising influence of Iran. And yet, America’s ability to influence events for the better in Iraq has been undermined by the abrupt withdrawal of our entire troop presence. The President tried—and failed—to secure a responsible and gradual drawdown that would have better secured our gains.
The President has failed to lead in Syria, where more than 30,000 men, women, and children have been massacred by the Assad regime over the past 20 months. Violent extremists are flowing into the fight. Our ally Turkey has been attacked. And the conflict threatens stability in the region.
America can take pride in the blows that our military and intelligence professionals have inflicted on Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, including the killing of Osama bin Laden. These are real achievements won at a high cost. But Al-Qaeda remains a strong force in Yemen and Somalia, in Libya and other parts of North Africa, in Iraq, and now in Syria. And other extremists have gained ground across the region. Drones and the modern instruments of war are important tools in our fight, but they are no substitute for a national security strategy for the Middle East.
The President is fond of saying that “The tide of war is receding.” And I want to believe him as much as anyone. But when we look at the Middle East today—with Iran closer than ever to nuclear weapons capability, with the conflict in Syria threating to destabilize the region, with violent extremists on the march, and with an American Ambassador and three others dead likely at the hands of Al-Qaeda affiliates— it is clear that the risk of conflict in the region is higher now than when the President took office.
I know the President hopes for a safer, freer, and a more prosperous Middle East allied with the United States. I share this hope. But hope is not a strategy. We cannot support our friends and defeat our enemies in the Middle East when our words are not backed up by deeds, when our defense spending is being arbitrarily and deeply cut, when we have no trade agenda to speak of, and the perception of our strategy is not one of partnership, but of passivity.
The greater tragedy of it all is that we are missing an historic opportunity to win new friends who share our values in the Middle East—friends who are fighting for their own futures against the very same violent extremists, and evil tyrants, and angry mobs who seek to harm us. Unfortunately, so many of these people who could be our friends feel that our President is indifferent to their quest for freedom and dignity. As one Syrian woman put it, “We will not forget that you forgot about us.”
It is time to change course in the Middle East. That course should be organized around these bedrock principles: America must have confidence in our cause, clarity in our purpose and resolve in our might. No friend of America will question our commitment to support them… no enemy that attacks America will question our resolve to defeat them… and no one anywhere, friend or foe, will doubt America’s capability to back up our words.
I will put the leaders of Iran on notice that the United States and our friends and allies will prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons capability. I will not hesitate to impose new sanctions on Iran, and will tighten the sanctions we currently have. I will restore the permanent presence of aircraft carrier task forces in both the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf region—and work with Israel to increase our military assistance and coordination. For the sake of peace, we must make clear to Iran through actions—not just words—that their nuclear pursuit will not be tolerated.
I will reaffirm our historic ties to Israel and our abiding commitment to its security—the world must never see any daylight between our two nations.
I will deepen our critical cooperation with our partners in the Gulf.
And I will roll back President Obama’s deep and arbitrary cuts to our national defense that would devastate our military. I will make the critical defense investments that we need to remain secure. The decisions we make today will determine our ability to protect America tomorrow. The first purpose of a strong military is to prevent war.
The size of our Navy is at levels not seen since 1916. I will restore our Navy to the size needed to fulfill our missions by building 15 ships per year, including three submarines. I will implement effective missile defenses to protect against threats. And on this, there will be no flexibility with Vladimir Putin. And I will call on our NATO allies to keep
the greatest military alliance in history strong by honoring their commitment to each devote 2 percent of their GDP to security spending. Today, only 3 of the 28 NATO nations meet this benchmark.
I will make further reforms to our foreign assistance to create incentives for good governance, free enterprise, and greater trade, in the Middle East and beyond. I will organize all assistance efforts in the greater Middle East under one official with responsibility and accountability to prioritize efforts and produce results. I will rally our friends and allies to match our generosity with theirs. And I will make it clear to the recipients of our aid that, in return for our material support, they must meet the responsibilities of every decent modern government—to respect the rights of all of their citizens, including women and minorities… to ensure space for civil society, a free media, political parties, and an independent judiciary… and to abide by their international commitments to protect our diplomats and our property.
I will champion free trade and restore it as a critical element of our strategy, both in the Middle East and across the world. The President has not signed one new free trade agreement in the past four years. I will reverse that failure. I will work with nations around the world that are committed to the principles of free enterprise, expanding existing relationships and establishing new ones.
I will support friends across the Middle East who share our values, but need help defending them and their sovereignty against our common enemies.
In Libya, I will support the Libyan people’s efforts to forge a lasting government that represents all of them, and I will vigorously pursue the terrorists who attacked our consulate in Benghazi and killed Americans.
In Egypt, I will use our influence—including clear conditions on our aid—to urge the new government to represent all Egyptians, to build democratic institutions, and to maintain its peace treaty with Israel. And we must persuade our friends and allies to place similar stipulations on their aid.
In Syria, I will work with our partners to identify and organize those members of the opposition who share our values and ensure they obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad’s tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets. Iran is sending arms to Assad because they know his downfall would be a strategic defeat for them. We should be working no less vigorously with our international partners to support the many Syrians who would deliver that defeat to Iran—rather than sitting on the sidelines. It is essential that we develop influence with those forces in Syria that will one day lead a country that sits at the heart of the Middle East.
And in Afghanistan, I will pursue a real and successful transition to Afghan security forces by the end of 2014. President Obama would have you believe that anyone who disagrees with his decisions in Afghanistan is arguing for endless war. But the route to more war – and to potential attacks here at home – is a politically timed retreat that abandons the Afghan people to the same extremists who ravaged their country and used it to launch the attacks of 9/11. I will evaluate conditions on the ground and weigh the best advice of our military commanders. And I will affirm that my duty is not to my political prospects, but to the security of the nation.
Finally, I will recommit America to the goal of a democratic, prosperous Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with the Jewish state of Israel. On this vital issue, the President has failed, and what should be a negotiation process has devolved into a series of heated disputes at the United Nations. In this old conflict, as in every challenge we face in the Middle East, only a new President will bring the chance to begin anew.
There is a longing for American leadership in the Middle East—and it is not unique to that region. It is broadly felt by America’s friends and allies in other parts of the world as well— in Europe, where Putin’s Russia casts a long shadow over young democracies, and where our oldest allies have been told we are “pivoting” away from them … in Asia and across the Pacific, where China’s recent assertiveness is sending chills through the region … and here in our own hemisphere, where our neighbors in Latin America want to resist the failed ideology of Hugo Chavez and the Castro brothers and deepen ties with the United States on trade, energy, and security. But in all of these places, just as in the Middle East, the question is asked: “Where does America stand?”
I know many Americans are asking a different question: “Why us?” I know many Americans are asking whether our country today—with our ailing economy, and our massive debt, and after 11 years at war—is still capable of leading.
I believe that if America does not lead, others will—others who do not share our interests and our values—and the world will grow darker, for our friends and for us. America’s security and the cause of freedom cannot afford four more years like the last four years. I am running for President because I believe the leader of the free world has a duty, to our citizens, and to our friends everywhere, to use America’s great influence—wisely, with solemnity and without false pride, but also firmly and actively—to shape events in ways that secure our interests, further our values, prevent conflict, and make the world better—not perfect, but better.
Our friends and allies across the globe do not want less American leadership. They want more—more of our moral support, more of our security cooperation, more of our trade, and more of our assistance in building free societies and thriving economies. So many people across the world still look to America as the best hope of humankind. So many people still have faith in America. We must show them that we still have faith in ourselves—that we have the will and the wisdom to revive our stagnant economy, to roll back our unsustainable debt, to reform our government, to reverse the catastrophic cuts now threatening our national defense, to renew the sources of our great power, and to lead the course of human events.
Sir Winston Churchill once said of George Marshall: “He … always fought victoriously against defeatism, discouragement, and disillusion.” That is the role our friends want America to play again. And it is the role we must play.
The 21st century can and must be an American century. It began with terror, war, and economic calamity. It is our duty to steer it onto the path of freedom, peace, and prosperity.
The torch America carries is one of decency and hope. It is not America’s torch alone. But it is America’s duty – and honor – to hold it high enough that all the world can see its light.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.
Long ago, a fine history prof. explained to me that it takes about 10% of a committed population to dominate the rest. I believe that to be the case in Iran, and I believe it to be the case in most nations of the Middle East where radical Islam dominates the government or is close to control. The 90% are sheep, some complicit, most fearful and ultimately ruled by the sword. I did not think that I would see the sheep strike back - but it is happening today in, of all places, Benghazi, Libya. This via Michael Totten's blog from a BBC report:
Hundreds of Libyan protesters have stormed the Benghazi headquarters of Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia in a backlash against last week's attack on the US consulate.
Witnesses say militiamen opened fire as the crowd overran the base, but it is not clear if there are casualties.
Buildings and a car were set alight and fighters evicted following a day of anti-militia protests in the city.
US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others died in the 11 September attack.
Earlier, some 30,000 protesters had marched through the eastern Libyan city calling for an end to the armed groups that have sprung up in the country since last year's ousting of Col Gaddafi.
Several thousand supporters of Ansar al-Sharia lined up outside its headquarters, in front of the crowd, waving black and white banners, AP news agency reported.
They fired into the air to try to disperse the protesters, but fled with their weapons after the base was surrounded by waves of people shouting "no to militias", the report added.
This is a glimmer of hope in what is now a blackhole of despair in the Islamic world. Amazing. Now let's see if this is the first step in a move to limit the power of the Salafists in the first permanent government of Libya. If that happens, then it really will be a major event.
Tony Blair has called on governments around the world to stand up to protesters engaged in violent attacks on western embassies in retaliation for an anti-Islamic film.
Compare and contrast Blair's response to most recent Middle East violence with that of the Obama administration, apologizing to the radicals for freedom of speech in the U.S. - see the ad below. Obama isn't standing up to radical Islam, he is prostrating America before it.
Tony Blair is, on the issue of the Middle East, the most eloquent and intellectually honest of all the major politicians in the world today. This short video from his appearance before the Iraq Inquiry commission from January of last year is as concise a summary of the situation, and as damning an implicit criticism of Obama's Middle East policy, as you will find.
H/T to reader Bill from across the pond for pointing out this video.
By the way, how is the Obama ad working in Pakistan to satisfy the radicals? This from Fox News:
Thousands angered by an anti-Muslim film ignored pleas for peaceful rallies and rampaged in several Pakistani cities Friday in battles with police that killed 19 people and touched off criticism of a government decision to declare a national holiday to proclaim devotion for the Prophet Muhammad.
Lots of posts and columns on the web today about the implosion of the Obama's "Cairo" doctrine, the Obama decision to use our tax dollars to fund an ad in Pakistan with Obama and Hillary attacking the "Innocence of Muslims" film trailer, and lastly, the implosion of the White House claims that the slaughter of our personnel in Benghazi was a spontaneous response to the film trailer.
Before addressing those points, let's note the elephant in the room. There is a huge scandal in this mix - the virtually non-existent security at our consulate in Benghazi on 9-11-12, site of previous attacks and a breeding ground for radicals. That lack of security was beyond negligent; it was criminally reckless. And that does not even begin to consider that no special precautions were taken on 9-11 to increase security there.
The person with the answers to this scandal is Hillary Clinton, which is I suspect why UN Ambassador Susan Rice, who would not even be in the loop on this issue, was offered up on all of the Sunday talk shows last Sunday to address it. She could prevaricate and obfuscate with at least some fall back claim to ignorance. Heads need to roll over this, and I strongly suspect that one of those heads is Hillary's.
The seminal critique of Obama's Middle East policy comes from Charles Krauthammer:
In the week following 9/11/12 something big happened: the collapse of the Cairo Doctrine, the centerpiece of President Obama’s foreign policy. It was to reset the very course of post-9/11 America, creating, after the (allegedly) brutal depredations of the Bush years, a profound rapprochement with the Islamic world.
On June 4, 2009, in Cairo, Obama promised “a new beginning” offering Muslims “mutual respect,” unsubtly implying previous disrespect. Curious, as over the previous 20 years, America had six times committed its military forces on behalf of oppressed Muslims, three times for reasons of pure humanitarianism (Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo), where no U.S. interests were at stake.
But no matter. Obama had come to remonstrate and restrain the hyperpower that, by his telling, had lost its way after 9/11, creating Guantanamo, practicing torture, imposing its will with arrogance and presumption.
. . . his policies of accommodation and concession would consolidate the gains: an outstretched hand to Iran’s mullahs, a first-time presidential admission of the U.S. role in a 1953 coup, a studied and stunning turning away from the Green Revolution; withdrawal from Iraq with no residual presence or influence; a fixed timetable for leaving Afghanistan; returning our ambassador to Damascus (with kind words for Bashar Assad — “a reformer,” suggested the secretary of state); deliberately creating distance between the U.S. and Israel.
These measures would raise our standing in the region, restore affection and respect for the United States, and elicit new cooperation from Muslim lands.
It’s now three years since the Cairo speech. Look around. The Islamic world is convulsed with an explosion of anti-Americanism. From Tunisia to Lebanon, American schools, businesses, and diplomatic facilities set ablaze. A U.S. ambassador and three others murdered in Benghazi. The black flag of Salafism, of which al-Qaeda is a prominent element, raised over our embassies in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Sudan.
The administration, staggered and confused, blames it all on a 14-minute trailer for a film no one has seen and which may not even exist. What else can it say? . . .
Islamists rise across North Africa from Mali to Egypt. Iran repeatedly defies U.S. demands on nuclear enrichment, then, as a measure of its contempt for what America thinks, openly admits that its Revolutionary Guards are deployed in Syria. Russia, after arming Assad, warns America to stay out, while the secretary of state delivers vapid lectures about Assad “meeting” his international “obligations.” The Gulf States beg America to act on Iran; Obama strains mightily to restrain . . . Israel.
Sovereign U.S. territory is breached and U.S. interests are burned. And what is the official response? One administration denunciation after another — of a movie trailer! A request to Google to “review” the trailer’s presence on YouTube. And sheriff’s deputies’ midnight “voluntary interview” with the suspected filmmaker. This in the land of the First Amendment.
What else can Obama do? At their convention, Democrats endlessly congratulated themselves on their one foreign-policy success: killing Osama bin Laden. A week later, the Salafist flag flies over four American embassies, even as the mob chants, “Obama, Obama, there are still a billion Osamas.”
Islam is a tool of politics and power in the Middle East - a tool that has not matured from its founding in the 7th century. I made the point here that what goes on in Muslim countries should not be countenanced in the civilized world, a point Rhymes with Right also makes in a very insightful post, Is Speech Against Islam A Crime Against Humanity -- Or Is Islam Itself?
The problem with Obama's Middle East policy is that it is wholly premised on fundamental conceits about the nature of Islam as practiced in the Middle East. Islam there is not rational, peaceful, or susceptible to compromise. It is not civilized. It is not benign. That Obama still bitterly clings to these conceits is the only way to explain why he would allow our State Dept. to spend $70,000 on an ad buy in Pakistan apologizing for and denouncing the "Innocence of Muslims." It is as damaging to America as it is pathetic.
The hypocrisy of Islamist's calls to respect the prophet, even as the Muslim religion is premised on the most fundamental of blasphemies against Christianity, is mind-boggling to me. But in any event, the last thing we should be doing is silencing the criticism of Islam, let alone apologizing for it as a nation.
Our government stance must always be that people have the right to peacefully practice whatever faith they choose inside of our borders free of government sanction. But our Constitutional responsibilities end there. It does not require us to refrain from criticizing a religion mired in the 7th century, that causes bloodshed on a grand scale, that maintains itself by the sword, and that wishes to conquer by the sword. I do not know if Obama actually does not understand that, or whether he is too afraid of kicking the hornets' nest, or whether this is simply the natural result of a drift into anti-semitism and pro-Arab sympathies by those on the left generally.
Lastly, hats off to CBS News for their superb reporting on what actually happened and is happening in Benghazi relating to the deaths of our Ambassador and three other Americans. This from CBS News:
Let's count the revelations embedded within this minute-and-a-half long clip:
(1) "The FBI still hasn't made it to the crime scene in Benghazi." More on this later, but the fact that the administration is treating our sacked consulate as a "crime" scene is telling. This was a terrorist attack. An act of war. . . . We've dispatched criminal investigators to look into it, but they still haven't even made it to ground zero yet? Nine days after the fact? Why?
(2) "Witnesses tell CBS News that there was never an anti-American protest outside of the consulate. Instead, they say it came under planned attack." As I wrote this morning, the administration is at last beginning to acknowledge the latter fact, but the former element is crucial, too. If there really were no protests outside the consulate before the ambush began -- as multiple news outlets are now reporting -- even the premise of the administration's fictional account is false. CBS says the facts on the ground are in "direct contradiction" to the White House's statements. The administration is still saying that the raid could have spun out from spontaneous protests that didn't even exist.
(3) "What's clear...is that the public won't get a detailed account of what happened until after the presidential election." This conclusion strongly reinforces several of my theories about the White House's foot-dragging and misdirection on the Benghazi raid. We have a murdered ambassador and sensitive intelligence missing, and the administration is in pure political CYA mode.
Nice Deb also has an excellent round-up on these topics.
Dr. Sanity has returned to the blogging world (thankfully) and has a particularly insightful post on the administrations decision to run an ad in Pakistan denouncing the "Innocence of Muslims" film trailer, The Obama Apology Tour Continues:
I regret to inform those that support the constant apologizing, that the increasingly violent Islamic response to appeasement, solicitation, and understanding has always been completely predictable from a psychological perspective. Bullies will always push the envelope of bad behavior when they think they can get away with it.
Here's a tip for the clueless Obama Administration and their supporters:
In 2007, Obama claimed that, if he was elected, Muslim hostility would ease. As the events of the past week have brought home, we are, today, in worse shape in the Middle East than we were four years ago - and indeed, than we were on 9-11-01 - with radical Salafists now in or near control in most Arab countries.
That is a reality that puts a stake in the heart of Obama's narrative that he has been a foreign policy success. To obfuscate, the administration on Sunday trotted out UN Ambassador Susan Rice to make the case that the 9-11-12 violence in Cairo and the murder of our Ambassador in Benghazi were nothing more than a spontaneous response - on 9-11 no less - to an anti Muslim film trailer that, incidentally, had been on the internet for months. As Conn Carol writes {h/t Instapundit):
[N]o one outside the White House believes a single video caused the violence. Liberal commentator and Tufts University international politics professor Dan Drezner has called Obama’s decision to blame the YouTube clip a “radically incomplete and dishonest answer.” As The New York Times Ross Douthat points out, the riots have far more to do with internal power politics.
And Rep. Alen West minced no words in responding to Rice's contentions:
(H/T Bluegrass Pundit)
As Charles Krauthammer pointed out a few days ago, what is happening is that the Obama administration is agreeing with the rioters, throwing our First Amendment under the bus rather than admit that the administration's Middle East policies of apology by the U.S., justification of Arab victimhood, and disengagement have borne a poisonous fruit.
Other pundits have reached similar conclusions, each worth a read. The best analysis comes from Victor Davis Hanson at PJM
:
The worst response to radical Islam has unfortunately become the present administration’s postmodern, so-cool policy. The Cairo fable, the al Arabiya “Bush did it” interview, the euphemisms (e.g., “man-caused disasters”), the insanity that Maj. Hasan’s murdering threatens our diversity programs, trying KSM in New York, reading Mutallab his Miranda rights, serial trashing of Guantanamo, James Clapper’s laughable assurance that the Muslim Brotherhood is “secular,” NASA’s all-important Muslim outreach, etc., at best remind the Islamists that Westerners would hardly be so self-abasing if there were not something to be ashamed about.
Barry Rubin, also writing at PJM, notes that the "causes of these demonstrations are not some act of Islamophobia, but the agitation of revolutionary Islamist groups that work systematically every day to build anti-Americanism, hatred of the West, and the loathing of Jews and Christians." That is also the conclusion Fouad Ajami, writing at the Washington Post.
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Update: Prof. Niall Ferguson also has an excellent article on the situation in the Middle East today, opining that "what is unfolding in the Middle East has the makings of the most perfect storm in American foreign policy since 1979."
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But deflecting attention from reality of the Middle East exposed by the 9-11-12 violence has not been the only rear guard action the Obama administration has been engaging in this past week. There is also the attempt to wholly gloss over the scandalous lack of security in Benghazi on 9-11-12 that led directly to the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
To this end, the State Dept. is stonewalling, outrageously refusing to answer any more questions on the murders in Benghazi. Further the administration used Ambassador Susan Rice's appearance on on all of the Sunday talk shows to provide a complete defense of the administration. Rice insisted that security in Benghazi, which, on 9-11-12 consisted of a locked door and two American and four Libyan security personnel, was "strong" and "significant." This despite the fact that "terror cells in Benghazi had carried out five attacks since April, including one at the same consulate, a bombing at the same consulate in June." And despite the fact there was forewarning of the attack. And despite the fact that 9-11 is a date even an idiot knows is a very likely to be a day of violence directed at U.S. targets by Osama-loving Salafis.
Rice is lying shamelessly. The security plan in Benghazi was not "significant" or "strong," it was criminally reckless. Now, hold your breath until the MSM holds the Obama administration to account for this any time before Nov. 7.
For me, the most striking part of Obama's speech (text here) was his adoption of the Bush Doctrine - ie., to push a democracy and freedom agenda in the Middle East. Well, that wasn't striking. To the contrary, that is what he should have been doing from day one. What was striking about it was that he pretended he had been pushing a democracy and freedom agenda all along while no President before him had. He is going to need buckets of white out and barrels of ink to rewrite that much history. What a disingenuous S.O.B.
No administration has been quite so on their heels on foreign policy as has been the Obama administration. Obama's first acts in office were to walk back the Bush administrations democracy / freedom agenda in the Middle East. Obama announced his intentions clearly in the Cairo speech, then followed word with deed, virtually zeroing out the budget for pushing democracy in Iran and cutting the budget in half for pushing democracy in Egypt. When the Green Revolution broke out in Iran, Obama was caught completely flat footed and, like a deer in the headlights, lifted not a finger in support of the Iranian people for months. Obama was similarly in a reactive mode as regards to the Arab Spring that has swept across the Middle East.
Yet in his speech today, in announcing his new democracy and freedom agenda for the region, he described the foreign policy of preceeding administrations as being narrowly limited to "countering terrorism and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons; securing the free flow of commerce, and safe-guarding the security of the region; standing up for Israel's security and pursuing Arab-Israeli peace." This was shameless. Obama gave no mention of the fact that pushing democracy in the Middle East was a Bush administration policy backed with significant funding. Shameless.
Other than that minor detail, there was Obama ignoring the single most important reality of the Middle East - that bin Laden was not an anamoly, but rather a true believer in the Wahhabi dogma, and thus, just the very tip of a massive radical Islamic ice berg. You wouldn't know that from Obama's speech, where he claimed al Qaeda an irrelevancy whose message has been rejected throughout the Islamic world. Hmmmm, maybe he should have checked with Egypt's Copts on that - or the Muslim Brotherhood. Bottom line, Obama's complete failure to engage in the war of ideas as part of the larger war against "radical Islam" insures that our grandchildren will still be fighting the war against Islamic extremists long after we have past into dust.
As to Obama's discussion that Israel-Palestine peace should be based on the 1967 border, subject to modifications necessary for Israel's self-protection, I didn't see anything new or otherwise objectionable in taking that position. My understanding was that Israel has taken the same position on a two-state issue for over a decade. Indeed, I note that Elder of Ziyon has given Obama's speech relatively good marks on his discussion of Palestinian issue. For his part, Charles Krauthammer is a bit more reserved in his judgment, parsing the speech for signs of new, potentially problematic changes in Obama's policy towards Israel. This from Krauthammer:
A lasting peace will involve . . . Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people.
Meant to reassure Israelis that the administration rejects the so-called right of return of Palestinian refugees. They would return to Palestine, not Israel — Palestine being their homeland, and Israel (which would cease to be Jewish if flooded with refugees) being a Jewish state. But why use code for an issue on which depends Israel’s existence?
The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.
A new formulation favorable to maximal Arab demands. True, that idea has been the working premise for negotiations since 2000. But no president had ever before publicly and explicitly endorsed the 1967 lines.
Even more alarming to Israel is Obama’s omission of previous American assurances to recognize “realities on the ground” in adjusting the 1967 border, meaning U.S. agreement that Israel would incorporate the thickly populated, close-in settlements in any land swap. By omitting this, Obama leaves the impression of indifference to the fate of these settlements. This would be a significant change in U.S. policy and a heavy blow to the Israeli national consensus.
The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves . . . in a sovereign and contiguous state.
Normal U.S. boilerplate except for one thing: Obama refers to Palestinian borders with Egypt, Jordan and Israel. But the only Palestinian territory bordering Egypt is Gaza. How do you get contiguity with Gaza? Does Obama’s map force Israel to give up a corridor of territory connecting the West Bank and Gaza? This is an old Palestinian demand that would cut Israel in two. Is this simply an oversight? Or a new slicing up of Israel?
Finally, in calling for both parties to “come back to the table,” the Palestinians have to explain “the recent announcement of an agreement between Fatah and Hamas. . . . How can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognize your right to exist?”
Not a strong statement about Washington rejecting any talks involving Hamas. A mere placeholder.
On the other hand, Obama made no mention here of Israeli settlements. A mere oversight? Or has Obama finally realized that his making a settlement freeze a precondition for negotiations — something never demanded before he took office — was a disastrous unforced error? One can only hope.
While neither I nor Elder of Zyion saw much objectionable in Obama's statements on the Palestinian issue, Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, went into minor nuclear melt down. It appears an overreaction to me, but given how Obama has treated Israel over the past two years, it is at least understandable. At any rate, we will see the real fall-out from this speech in the weeks that come, as Obama, Israel, and PLO/Hamas all try to put their own spin on it.
The single greatest threat to Western Civilization - including Israel - is a nuclear armed Iranian theocracy. Indeed, it is a synergistic threat, since not only is it inherently dangerous, but as long as it lasts, it is driving nuclear proliferation throughout the many highly unstable nations of the Middle East. On April 18, Saudi Arabia - the country responsible for the violent and triumphalist Wahhabi/Salafi dogma of alQaeda - announced the opening of the "King Abdullah City for Nuclear and Renewable Energy." According to the Financial Times:
Although all discussions have focused upon civilian uses of the technology, analysts note that Saudis and the other Arab Gulf states do not want to lag further behind Iran and Israel in developing nuclear technologies.
That ought to give you nightmares. Indeed, it is at least as threatening as the rabid theocrats in Iran having nuclear weapons. The same article notes that the UAE has already inked plans for building four nuclear reactors on their territory.
Despite the fact that the EU-3 had tried diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear program for seven fruitless years, Obama promised during the election campaign to sort out the Iranian problem by personally engaging the theocracy, as if the mere magic of his voice would turn aside the most imperialistic, amoral and bloodthirsty regime to plague this earth since the Nazis (and for the specifics to support that charge, see here and here). One could chalk up Obama's promise to woo Iran as mere cynical campaign rhetoric - but the fear was always that this man had no understanding of history, no grasp of the dangers at hand, a grossly overblown sense of his abilities, and no idea how to deal with the theocracy.
It was a few days ago that a top-secret memo from Sec. of Defense Gates, reported by the NYT, made clear that the Obama regime is completely out of its depth. Gates's complaint was that the Obama administration has no Plan B in the event htat the mellifluous tones of Obama and tepid sanctions do not work to stop Iran's march to a nuclear arsenal. That is just jaw-dropping in its ramifications. It means that all of our fears about Obama were true. This man has no grasp of reality, no understanding of history, and no plan to deal with Iran's existential threat to our nation and the world.
Moreover, tellingly, this is not Obama at the 11th hour telling his military to prepare, its his Sec. of Defense providing what one unnamed official described as a "wake up call" to Obama. And so it would seem that the many options short of overt force, such as assisting the rebellion inside Iran, or even measured use of force, such as a naval blockades of Iran, are not even on Obama's drawing board. And while Obama has his head neck deep in the sand, every day our options lessen and the costs to stop this regime grow higher. Indeed, it was only a few days ago that an Iranian IRGC member turned CIA spy urged Obama to do something before the effort to stop Iran's regimes costs the lives of countless Iranians.
Instead of dealing with Iran, Obama is pushing for a world without nuclear weapons, as if the genie can be put back in the bottle and then we will all live in a world of peace and harmony. As I have written many times before, most recently here, this is not merely the most ridiculous of fantasies, it is must rank as one of the most dangerous. Is there anyone that thinks that, but for our nuclear deterrent, we would not already have fought WWIII against either against Russia or China - or both? WWII involved the deaths of over 60 million people and destroyed whole economies for decades. How many lives would WWIII have cost? The reality is that nuclear weapons are so cataclysmic that they do provide an effective deterrence.
The Obama Administration has countered criticism on this issue by saying that Reagan sought nuclear disarmament. True, but there is a very substantive difference between Reagan the realist and Obama the fantasist. Reagan sought a reduction of arms, not a "world without" nuclear weapons. Reagan wanted to build a defense against nuclear weapons - Obama has reduced funding for such a defense and, indeed, negotiated a new START treaty with Russia contingent on our not pursuing further such a defense. Reagan strengthened our conventional arms - Obama is cutting them. As James Carafano pointed out a few days ago in the Washington Examiner:
Like Reagan, Obama believes America must lead the way to nuclear disarmament. Unlike Reagan, he believes this requires an assertion of “moral” leadership, to be demonstrated simply by reducing our nuclear stockpile and refusing to modernize the U.S. arsenal. It’s a false premise…
Reagan recognized that the ultimate goal of arms negotiations is to make the world safer, more stable and more free. To eliminate the need for large nuclear arsenals, he went about eliminating the dependence — both ours and others’ — on massive nuclear attack as the guarantor of security.
Thus, the first items on Reagan’s agenda were building up U.S. conventional forces and introducing missile defenses. That allowed his negotiators to approach arms control agreements from a position of strength.
Obama has it backward. He started with cutting back on defense — especially in acquisition programs. Bye-bye, F-22.
He also cut missile defense, starting with systems to protect the homeland. But even that wasn’t enough to make the Russians happy.
“The problem is our America partners are developing missile defenses,” objected Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last December. “Our partners may come to feel completely safe.” That sounds like a leader who still thinks that maintaining the threat of nuclear attack is a good idea. If not, why is it a “problem” for Americans to feel safe?
Reagan understood his adversaries. Obama does not.
Yet another example of Obama's foray into fantasy was his recent change to our decades old nuclear use doctrine as part of Obama'sNuclear Posture Review. In an utterly bizarre twist, Obama took the ambiguity out of our doctrine - thus allowing any country that meets the IAEA guidelines for their nuclear program to conduct a chemical or biological attack on the U.S. in the fullness of knowing that the U.S. will no longer retain the option of responding with nuclear weapons. Under what possible scenario does that make us or the world safer? In what alternate reality does this make of us a moral example? This was a decision the NYT reports that was made over the objection of Sec. of Def. Gates. And as Voldka Pundit says, in a more thorough examination of this changed policy, "[i]f you didn’t already question Obama’s judgement, now would be a good time to start."
And then we come to Obama's recent nuclear summit where he asked countries such as Canada and Mexico to provide more security for their nuclear materials and to consider switching over to light water reactors. It was a real "peace in our time" moment. While not worthless - efforts to provide for greater nuclear security are always welcome - it was, in the grand scheme of things, the practical equivalent of a person, seeing their house engulfed in flames, choosing to urinate on the house rather than get the fire department over to put out the four alarm fire. Hailing this as a major achievement while ignoring the truly existential problems of Iran and Middle East nuclear proliferation is a suicidal game of smoke and mirrors. This from Charles Krauthammer:
Ultimately, the only way to stop Iran's nuclear efforts - and to stop nuclear proliferation throughout the Middle East - is to make Iran pay too high a price for their continued efforts. Obama has never come to grips with the fact that the theocracy's goal number one is not to see Iran prosper, but to see the Khomeinist revolution exported as far as possible, regardless of the cost in blood. This is not a rational regime by Western standards. It is not a regime that will react to anything other than a threat to the regime's hold on power - and that is something the regime has demonstrated it will do ruthlessly and with extreme brutality against internal threats.
What all of this means is that the only possible way to achieve our goal of ending Iran's nuclear threat is to threaten or use sufficient force to end or endanger the regime. It is the only thing that has moved the theocracy each time we have threatened or used it in the past (see here), it is the only thing that will move them in the future. And the threat or use of force must be sufficiently strong and of such destructive potential that it similarly impresses the point on other regimes in the Middle East. That is the pure and simple reality that Obama finds difficult to grasp and is doing his best to ignore.
On a final note, I see that the Democrats can rest easy on the political spin - Allahpundit is apparently doing their job for them over at Hot Air.
No need to put all the blame on Obama here, though. Bush knew what it would mean to hand this issue off to a Democratic president and he went ahead and did it anyway. Invading Iraq necessarily left him with fewer military options against other threats; now the bill is coming due. As for Europe, Russia, and China, here’s the Times’s almost poignant description of the White House’s naivete: “Administration officials had hoped that the revelation by Mr. Obama in September that Iran was building a new uranium enrichment plant inside a mountain near Qum would galvanize other nations against Iran, but the reaction was muted.” The fact that western powers had been waltzing with Iran over its nuke program for fully seven years at that point might have given them a clue that no action would be taken, but that’s “smart power” for you.
So Bush is partly to blame because it was foreseeable that our progressive Democrats cannot be expected to act in defense of our country? That involves a rewrite of history and wholly inappropriately absolves the Democrats of personal responsibility. It ignores all of the efforts of Obama and others, including drafters of the 2007 NIE, to tie Bush's hands on the issue and insure that the problem of Iran would be handed over to the next President. This issue could have been dealt with in 2007 at a minimal cost in blood and gold. We are now in 2010, the hand off is complete, and Obama is at the helm. Yet as Obama engages in fantasy, we seem to be moving ever father away from a resolution and the situation grows ever more dire. Let's hope the "wake-up" call from Gates gets Obama's attention.
. . . [T]he Israeli government was stunned when every nuclear technician at Israel's Dimona reactor who had submitted visa requests to visit the United States for ongoing university education in Physics, Chemistry and Nuclear Engineering had their visa applications summarily rejected, specifically because of their association with the Dimona reactor.
This is a new policy decision of the Obama administration. Up until now, it was routine for Israeli nuclear scientists and technicians to receive such visas and to study at US universities. . . .
This is without doubt the most anti-Israel regime ever to inhabit the White House. And to what end? Does Obama think any of his acts are going to bring America closer to the corrupt Islamic regimes in the Middle East. The ground truth in the Middle East is that those regimes want one thing - the destruction of Israel. All else is smoke and mirrors. Nothing short of Obama delivering Israel's head on a platter will satisfy them - and even that will only satisfy them for a day, as their ultimate goals extend far beyond the destruction of Israel. Indeed, do you want to radical Islam go viral, allow Israel to fall. Like everything about this most incompetent of Presidents, Obama is either completely out of touch with reality or consciously following a policy that is wholly against the best interests of the U.S. and one of its closest allies.
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.
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