Foreign Policy

There Is No Military Solution

[image via Pat Dollard]

There are so many troubling aspects to this story that picking the right place to start is terribly difficult. On the one hand, having to confront the very real possibility that the Obama Administration is now prepared to negotiate with the Taliban (and it’s of little consequence whether there will be direct or indirect talks), Americans are being asked to let go years of policy that has insisted we never negotiate with terrorists.

On the other hand, the Afghan people have a fairly long history of waiting out their aggressors. Hiding in caves we can’t find and popping out every so often to set off a bomb or pull the cord on a suicide vest has been a proven strategy for success. Our chances of winning this thing at all now, let alone doing so on an arbitrary timetable more conducive to garnering votes than establishing sound military strategy, are proving to be all but impossible. And the Administration is now admitting as much [emphasis mine]:

“There is a change of mindset in DC,” a senior official in Washington said. “There is no military solution. That means you have to find something else. There was something missing.” The missing element is talks with the Taliban leadership, the official added.

The US rethink comes in the aftermath of the departure in June of General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan Barack Obama, apparently frustrated at the way the war is going, reminded his national security advisers that while he was on the election campaign trail in 2008, he had advocated talking to America’s enemies.

I am long on record as having been in favor of invading Afghanistan and taking the Taliban down from it’s control of the country. I have also continued pushing the Administration – Bush’s AND Obama’s – to fight to WIN, not just look for an impasse that pacifies the anti-war nuts and the Congress that feeds them. I’m in the minority now, and have to deal with that on my own. But, once Obama took over and deliberated through hundreds of unnecessary American casualties to finally GET to his Afghanistan strategy, what some of us prayed for…and all the Soldiers fighting there demanded from their chain of command…appears to be getting cast aside in favor of political expedience.

He “appears” to be holding firm to his 2011 timetable, this despite growing concerns cited in the BBC article as to whether Karzai can even handle the Taliban once the US and NATO forces are gone. Apparently, however, the progress on our effort to put down (and keep down) the Taliban by Obama’s timetable no longer seems to matter to him. Forgive me if I suggest this is because he’s going to need every one of the votes our surrender and withdrawal will send his way.

Especially troubling (and getting no press) is this passage:

A US review of Afghanistan policy is under way, and is due for completion in December, but officials in Washington, Kabul and Islamabad with knowledge of internal discussions said feelers have already been put out. Negotiations would be conducted largely in secret, through a web of contacts, involving governments such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, or organisations with back-channel links to the Taliban.

“It will be messy and could take years,” said a diplomatic source.

“A US review of Afghanistan policy is under way, and is due for completion in December.” Really? Another one? How many times does this President need to review his own policy? I’m almost speechless…almost. This is, I believe, his third review. Of course, with all those tee times, no wonder he has to keep re-looking at this issue; until the approval polls go up, or Congress holds its Liberal Majority in both Houses, Obama is going to have no choice but to waffle and wane and keep shopping around for a strategy he can get re-elected with. And Soldiers will continue to die, and the Afghanistan people will continue to suffer in Obama’s tug of war with the Taliban.

My pessimism only grows with each passing strategy review; I’m old enough to remember the Paris Peace Accords and I’m well aware that we sat back and watched as the North overran the South once they were sure our Democrat-controlled Congress wasn’t going to lift a finger (or spend another dime) to help the South defend itself. The Paris accord, and the general cease fire it was designed to establish, were ignored with impunity and the country we spent 50,000 lives trying to protect was completely destroyed in fairly short order.

Yes, I know…Afghanistan is not Vietnam, and I’m not suggesting it is. I am, however, suggesting that our long and storied past of not learning from history might just come back to haunt us once again. A hasty exit from Afghanistan, coupled with an inspired insurgency just biding their time and building their stockpiles of arms, sounds eerily familiar. Consider this, from Rupee News:

Bharat (aka India) is pushing for the partition of Afghanistan, so that in a post-US Afghanistan, it can use its proxies to fight the Pakhtuns in Afghanistan and continue to destabilize Pakistan. Bharat’s aim to create a Pakhtun state in Afghanistan that would then push for a united Pakhtunistan.

The US has also toyed with the same idea, but it wil take too much effort to create countries in the area and it would surely not be liked by any of the neighbors. The world is sick and tired of solutions like the ones proposed for Iraq. The US just wants to get out, and will probably allow the chips to fall where they may.

The upcoming civil war in Afghanistan will be a bloody one, with Bharat fully supporting the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, and Pakistan behind the Pakhtuns. Iran has promised to back Pakistan and the Pan-Afghan solution. Russia is playing neutral, because a Tajik and Uzbek instrability would create problems for Tajiksitan and Uzbekistan. Bharat has stashed arms for the post-US scenario, and the Pakhtuns and the Pakistanis know this. Continued supply lines to the Northern Alliance will be difficult to maintain for Delhi, but it will surely try. All Tajiks and Uzbeks cannot be counted upon to back Abdullah Abdullah’s aspirations for a partitioned Afghanistan. The Afghan National Resistance has tentacles right up to the Uzbek border, and they claim Uzbeks and Tajiks as part of their coalition. Warlords like Dostum may chart an independent course and may not support Bharati proxies in Afghanistan.

This suggests to me, at least, that everyone is just calmly waiting us out over there…waiting until our backs are no longer visible on the horizon…so that the Taliban can just come back in and pick up where they left off. AND, they’ll be staring down the barrels of a new war… a civil war with surrounding factions all looking to settle a few scores amongst themselves and a long list of Afghanistan’s neighbors.

I’m no Foreign diplomacy expert but I can’t find any upside to staying in Afghanistan given the complete lack of will on the part of a Congress already at risk of losing its majority. And I can’t see how the Afghan people are going to benefit whether we stay or whether we go, since all indications are that there will be just a new war with new faces and new enemies that will commence in earnest once we’re gone. I still want to see our Soldiers get the support they need, and be given the clear objective to fight and win a war. If they can’t have that, then they need to come home safely and without further injury or death.

Hell, at this point we should just let the Politicians clean up the mess they’ve made of a war that was once just but has since been abandoned as an inconvenience. These days our Political heroes have bigger fish to fry and they’re looking for dollars to spend to appease potential voters.

Let them do it…at least we won’t lose any more Soldiers.

[Note: This post originates at 73Wire]

Congo – The Middle East without Israel

“North of five million people have been slaughtered in the Congo this past twelve years, and nobody much (no, not me—how about you?) has lost a wink of sleep over it.” – John Derbyshire, TakiMag.com

Let’s say WWII happened all over again, and nobody basically cared. Let’s say better than 5 million people took a premature dirt nap, and the only reaction that ensued was a cynical shrug. We don’t have to pretend or even deem, any of this. It has happened in the Congo. From 1998 to today, more than 5 million people have been killed, at a fairly consistent rate of 45,000 per month.

This happens for three tragic reasons. First, the place is far from any major power’s sphere of influence. Nobody would run for POTUS on the slogan “We must save the Congo.” Imagine waging two significant wars in Iraq without the presence of oil. Also, as John Derbyshire points out with brutal honesty, most of the rest of the world shares no cultural affinity with these people. The average citizen of Canada, Saudi Arabia, Japan or the United States looks at them with an unconcerned antipathy.

Secondly, all of the Congo’s neighbors are there to “help” them. Each bordering country has some interest worth militarily defending in the Congo. These interests have no compatibility with the internal peace and stability of any government that the Congolese would care to install. When you have neighbors like Robert Mugabe, Mobutu Sese Seko and Muammar Al-Ghaddafi, you’d almost voluntarily move to Detroit. What the Congolese haven’t done to purge their own people has been gleefully done to them by the meddlesome and malignant neighbors who could re-enact the Star Wars Cantina Scene without much Hollywood make-up.

Finally, this is what people in The Congo are familiar with. It’s the Devil they know. It’s what their Pappy and Grand-pappy done did, and it’s what many of the adult males in the average Congolese village have done since they were nine. They are not going to stop. As John Lennon famously sang, “War is over, if you want it.” I don’t think the former Beatle actually contrived of that lyric being a controversial conditional statement. Jeffrey Gettleman describes the type of person that the hapless hippie Rocker could never have imagined.

“I’ve witnessed up close — often way too close — how combat has morphed from soldier vs. soldier (now a rarity in Africa) to soldier vs. civilian. Most of today’s African fighters are not rebels with a cause; they’re predators. That’s why we see stunning atrocities like eastern Congo’s rape epidemic, where armed groups in recent years have sexually assaulted hundreds of thousands of women, often so sadistically that the victims are left incontinent for life. What is the military or political objective of ramming an assault rifle inside a woman and pulling the trigger? Terror has become an end, not just a means.” (HT: Foreign Policy)

General Sherman once opined that at least 300,000 southern men had to die before the Confederate States of America were fit to rejoin the United States. The tragic history suggests that General Sherman, like Sir Mordred and Benedict Arnold, actually had a pretty valid point to his iniquity. He was simply stating the contra positive to John Lennon’s philosophical conditional. “The war isn’t done, if anyone still fighting doesn’t want it to be.”

From the Battle of Gettysburg through Appomattox, about 250,000 Confederate Soldiers died. Then, General Lee’s soldiers grudgingly agreed to throw in the towel to Ulysses S. Grant. Then, the war could be over.

The international community, African Nations in particular, had seen enough of what Hell looked like with the lid ripped off by 2003. They attempted to enforce peace. The Transitional Government was installed and Joseph Kabila was the lucky, new CEO.

Like getting to run Enron right after Ken Lay left town, Kabila’s job was thankless and impossible. In 2008, the New York Times reported on the tragedy.

Five years after Congo’s catastrophic war officially ended, the rate at which people are dying in the country remains virtually unchanged, according to a new survey, despite the efforts of the world’s largest peacekeeping force, billions of dollars in international aid and a historic election that revived democracy after decades of violence and despotism. (HT: Lydia Polgreen)

Quite simply put, The Congo will never know peace until the people that hate peace have assumed room temperature. Bored individuals in the Congo literally put loaded firearms inside the genital organs of females and then pull the trigger just to see what happens next. According to the published reports on the mayhem, this isn’t just one or two Ted Kaczynskis. Rape, in The Congo, is a routine weapon of war and form of relaxation.

If you would be bothered in the slightest by having that sort of person teach your bright and inquisitive child Algebra II Trig, than you probably can’t live in any sort of a peaceful, civil society with them either. There appear to be thousands of Congolese mercenaries who have been professionally trained to accept unimaginable sadism as a way of life. For the foreseeable future, The Congo, quite sadly is hopeless.

Which brings us to the question of just what would the Middle East become like if Israel were left to the tender mercies of Iran, Turkey and Syria. In answering this question, it helps to keep in mind how well the Palestinians got along with the Jordanians and Hafez Assad. Remember well also that the Sunnis and Shiites have shed innumerable gallons of Islamic blood in a futile attempt to stem their intractable theological differences.

Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey have all attempted to dominate the Muslim world. Turks have fought Arabs have fought Persians who have attempted to exterminate both Armenians and Kurds. Take Israel out of the equation, and no unifying Great Satan stands between the wolves and one another’s throats. Take Israel out of the Middle East and you get The Congo. Invent a car that runs on pig manure, and the great majority of American would probably no longer care.

Iran to Send Aid to Gaza–Prepare for #Flotilla Disaster No. 2

Grab a helmet and get your popcorn ready:

Iranian Aid Ships to Set Sail for Gaza

Summer would be SO BORING without this whole #flotilla scandal. I don’t know what I’d do without it, honestly. If it weren’t for the TOTALLY UNCALLED FOR and/or TOTALLY HATEFUL AND SO RACIST Israeli strike on the so-called “Freedom Flotilla,” all we’d have to look forward to is the inevitable rumor about an Elena Kagan sex tape. (If John Edwards has a sex tape, anything is possible.) Helen Thomas would still have a job, the starving children of Gaza would have their allotment of grenades, and I wouldn’t be getting 10,784 tweets about how much I hate Palestinians. (As opposed to the mere 5,692 tweets I receive about how much I hate black people/immigrants/Blackhawks fans/people who drink Labatt Light as opposed to regular Labatt…)

In all seriousness, it’s about to get real over there. Up until now, the blowback from Israel’s enforcement of its blockade has been pretty standard—just more screaming about how those damn Jews are oppressing our innocent terrorist friends, it’s all a plot to take over the banks, blah blah blah, something about racism, etc. etc. Par for the course, nothing to worry about. But when I read that short news blip about Iran sending aid to Gaza, I got a tiny little “warning” chill down my spine.

I’m not the kind of person that tends to have that sort of reaction to things that cause me concern. A year in law school has trained me to look at things objectively, tease out important facts, and reason through a solution to whatever problems may be presented. So far this summer, I have answered handwritten pleas of murderers, rapists, and drug pushers, and come into contact with people so foul and dangerous the officers at the courthouse are required to shackle them to the wall, rather than risk their escape. I’m fine with that. It’s real life, and I deal with it, warning chill-less.

This, however, is different. This is Iran, and we all know we can trust Iran about as far as Obama can throw a baseball. As I read the article, I couldn’t help but wonder what Iran expects to gain by ruffling Israel’s feathers on this one. Then I realized, that’s all Iran hopes to do—ruffle feathers. Provoke. Threaten. (Because let’s face it, anything coming towards Israel from Iran could be seen as a threat.) If this is really what Iran is thinking, it’s brilliant, because it puts Iran in some big humanitarian limelight, makes Israel look like the bad guy, and helps Iran gain points with the rest of the world–including bleeding heart idiots in the US—by proving that, deep down, Ahmadinejad is all lollipops and pixie dust.

Politicians, pundits, and other supporters of the “Freedom Flotilla” gained major traction by ignoring damning footage of weapons on board that boat, and emphasizing the “humanitarian crisis” that resulted from the loss of the supplies on board. They ignored the fact that Hamas refuses to distribute aid to the people it claims to protect so jealously, and pushed the idea that because of Israel, thousands of Palestinians will die of hunger and disease. These are, of course, all lies, but don’t confuse me with the facts—people were shot! The people of Gaza are dying, and it’s Israel’s fault! If the same dishonest word vomit is allowed to dominate the discussion regarding the Iranian aid ship, the results could be ten times more harmful and dangerous to Israel and her allies. Our current president has already gone to great lengths to bow down and lick the palms of Iranian leaders, all the while distancing himself from the people of Israel, denying Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers even the appearance of having an ally in the United States. Any sort of incident with this aid ship will give the enemies of Israel a perfect excuse to take the tension surrounding the Gaza conflict to the next level.

This country has a choice to make. As for me, I stand with Israel, because I am not the kind of person who allows herself to be manipulated by en vogue social movements in order to avoid screams of protest from borderline-genocidal “peace activists.” As for Obama and his administration, however…I am simply not sure. Time and again, our President and his merry band of thugs have spoken out against Israel, and allied themselves with leaders of countries who would love nothing more than to turn Israel into the world’s largest bazaar.

Israel is strong, and will defend herself to the last man. I fear, however, that even that great amount of heart will not be enough if her allies turn their backs on years of friendship for the chance to kiss the rings of men who would not hesitate if offered the chance to blow an entire nation of people right off the map.

Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.
~Deuteronomy 31:6

al Qaeda rolls Obama in Turkey

I speak of the Islamic fundamentalists that inspire al Qaeda-like terrorist jihad and not the former shell of itself hiding in Pakistan, in President George W. Bush-commanded US Armed Forces’ wake.

Why “they” hate us

The gravity of the decision of (soon to be former?, one hopes…) NATO ally Turkey to openly harbor and sponsor Hamas and other terrorists on a propaganda flotilla mocking the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza cannot be overstated.

The fundamental answer to the Liberals’ question of “why they hate us” lies at the heart of the confluence of events that have brought Turkey full bore  into the Palestinian issue. The problem has been that too many liberals, democrats, and media have not wanted to hear the truth about the particular “they” or the “why”, preferring instead a narrative that the terrorists are a result of generalized and legitimate complaints against our energy policies in the Arab world and support for Israel.

The leaders of al Qaeda, and especially their top two, i.e. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, have made clear that they trace their Sunni Muslim complaints, especially as articulated by Sayyid Qutb in Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower, to Mustafa Ataturk’s (pictured) secularization of Turkey and end of the Caliphate after WWII and Qtub’s loathing of the West and recognition of the United States as the main obstacle to the achievement of the restoration of the Caliphate and winning the world for Allah.

Kahlid Sheik Mohammed (mastermind of 911), the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel-Rahman and Ramzi Yousef all trace their inspirations to Qutb as well, and all well before even their 1993 collaboration in the first attack on the World Trade Towers in 1993, and not to the “Palestinian cause”.

Iraq War snub

It is true that Turkey did, at the last moment (probably inspired by the feckless United Nations and France), refuse to allow US Forces a third front in the initial invasion of Iraq which did hurt the cause.

But Turkey later had its mind concentrated by Bush staying the course and removing two Islamist, terrorist-harboring regimes and behaved itself like a good ally until 2010.

Turkey seems to have learned new lessons from President of the United States, Barack Obama’s apology tours and Obama’s treatment of Iran’s freedom fighters and his ostensible ally, Israel. Last week Obama was silent after Turkey and Brazil raised arms with Iran’s President in support of a nuclear Shiite Muslim state.

Weakness invites aggression

Turkey has never been a champion of the Palestinians, even in words. Quite frankly, given the dearth of Muslim or Arab  ships trying to port in Gaza offering them a state on their vast territories, one wonders if any nation really “supports” them as “brothers”, but I digress.

For an ally like Turkey to openly and brazenly champion the obviously subversive flotilla to Gaza and deny Hamas is a terrorist organization shows its total lack of fear and respect for our Commander-in-Chief.

And given the response of the Obama Administration, it appears Turkey has rolled Obama.

The Reverse Democracy Movement

In the wake of our removal of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, liberty-seekers in Iraq, Lebanon and Iran have been inspired. Pakistan’s elected government is fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban within their borders with vigor aided by Obama.

But it seems that Obama’s troop withdrawal deadlines in Iraq and Afghanistan; bungling intelligence in airline safety; apology tours; appeasement of Iran, North Korea and Russia; and shift against Israel have empowered the Islamists in Turkey just as that ideology had been on the run in much of the Middle East and Asia generally.

It will be a shame if Liberty loses its momentum because of our naive, liberal boy one-term President. I pray for the innocent that are put in peril for their very lives by this man.

It adds insult to injury that a probably dead or at least cave-dwelling impotent, gets a victory of sorts that strikes right at the heart of their perverted reasons for hating us.

Mike “gamecock ” DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Examiner columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

www.devinelawvista.com

Feel Safer? Counterterror Adviser Defends Jihad as ‘Legitimate Tenet of Islam’

Another item to add to the “Unfreakinbelievable Files” counterterror adviser, John Brennan,  said violent extremists were victims of “political, economic and social forces,” and that jihad was a “legitimate tenet of Islam”

The president’s top counterterrorism adviser on Wednesday called jihad a “legitimate tenet of Islam,” arguing that the term “jihadists” should not be used to describe America’s enemies.

During a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, John Brennan described violent extremists as victims of “political, economic and social forces,” but said that those plotting attacks on the United States should not be described in “religious terms.”

Continuing our seemingly never ending vacation in the Bizarro World we all woke-up in starting on Nov. 5 2008 common sense is out the window and PC, capitulating to our enemies is the new way… and these people in charge are almost as dangerous!

We are so friggen screwed!!!  

The Paradox of The 38th Parallel

South Korea, aided by American and other international forensic investigators, issued an exhaustive report last week, establishing the North Korea culpability. But no one expects war.
(HT: The New York Post.)

For years we have tried negotiations and sanctions to get North Korean Dictator Kim Jung Il to behave rationally. In the words of US UN Ambassador Susan Rice, last year’s resolution against North Korea was the toughest set of sanctions ever passed against another nation state. It was worse than the sanctions that the UN ignored against Saddam “Oil for Food” Hussein. Given the recent torpedo-sinking of a S. Korean naval vessel by the North Koreans, we have indisputable proof that sanctions predictably fail.

The South Korean President Lee Myung-bak says that it’s going to be different this time. He made the following statement.

We have always tolerated North Korea’s brutality, time and again,” Lee said. “We did so because we have always had a genuine longing for peace on the Korean peninsula. “But now things are different. North Korea will pay a price corresponding to its provocative acts. (HT: Guardian.UK)

Taken at face-value, President Lee has thrown down the gauntlet. If I were a parent whose child had joined South Korea’s navy and had been killed in this unprovoked torpedo attack, it would be time for the hellfire and brimstone. A commensurate price would involve Shylock’s infamous pound of flesh. But President Lee doesn’t have the support or the assets to do this himself.

The US has issued a series of statements designed to sound “tough”, “committed” and “supportive” of S. Korea in its time of travails. We’re there for our East Asian allies until all this unpleasantness on the Korean Peninsula urinates on tomorrow’s DJIA futures. Secretary of State Clinton evades below.

”We are working hard to avoid an escalation of belligerence and provocation,” Clinton said. “This is a highly precarious situation that the North Koreans have caused in the region. “We must work together … to address this challenge and advance our shared objectives of peace and stability on the Korean peninsula.”

For North Korea, this is not precarious. They can kill as many S. Koreans as they want and not suffer consequences. Kim Jung Il is laughing at The Untied States of America. He has done so for decades. He sees no reason to respect us. His disrespect is completely logical and rational.

He has walked right up to the border and gakked people. We’ve regretted the precarious situation he has created. Making him behave for another six months could require a really expensive bribe this time. That’s really rough when the economy isn’t doing well.

Kim Jung Il makes his money off of the logical fears, decency and restraint of S. Korea. Seoul would become a charnel-house if the Korean Peninsula were enveloped again in war. Short of a second Chinese intervention on N. Korea’s behalf, S. Korea would utterly destroy the North. Civilization in that part of world could easily get set back at least five centuries.

The North Koreans can’t even feed their people in what passes for times of peace in their isolated, bellicose land. As N. Korea was smashed and S. Korea’s ability and willingness to rescue them burned down as well, a famine and an epidemic of sickness would envelop the Korean Peninsula as the biblical plagues laid waste to Ancient Egypt. All of this assumes that the US, China and Russia minimize their participation and that everyone’s thermonuclear Sword of Damocles remains peace-tied.

This situation works for Kim Jung Il and his malignant cronies who leverage it. The short-term needs of state always favor appeasement of this vile and despicable rodent. It gives him a pocket veto of how S. Korea, Japan and even China organize their daily affairs. As long as we can just be hunky-dorey with a couple of hundred dead victims, a few hundred tons of heroin smuggled, a paltry sum of counterfeit US Dollars, and a mere couple of test tubes of Uranium Hexaflouride given to the committed enemies of all countries in the Modern West, Kim is a fly-bite on the arse of modernity. From the detached and academic standpoint of diplomatic process control, the Korean Peninsula represents a manageable failure for the Pax Americana.

Yet too much remains capable of going wrong. Kim Jung Il likes to play around with this the way a passel of Boy-Physicists decided to joy-ride the Chernobyl Reactor. China and Russia view the American roll in their backyard with justifiable antipathy. Brezhnev was to Russian foreign policy what The Monroe Doctrine was to ours. Nothing would bolster Vladamir Putin’s self-delusions of omnipotence quite the way chasing the 2nd ID off the Korean Peninsula would. He could call it The Rodina’s Revenge for the humiliations involved with The Cuban Missile Crisis.

China remains silent on the affair. They await Secretary of State Clinton’s visit. Their cooperation will be fickle, insipid and come at a price. For now, they have resumed purchases of our Treasury Bonds. Asking China for heavy-lifting will enable them to remind us of just how implicitly we have come to depend on their continued financing of feckless and stupid current account deficits. They actually could ask Hillary Rodham Clinton how committed the US is to continuing with Obama Care and a 12 Division Army both.

Eventually, Kim Jung Il really could push the South Koreans too far – not the South Korean government, the South Koreans. The error of Louis XVI will not be repeated if enough angry mothers call for blood to avenge their fallen sons and kidnapped relatives. If too many young women are found dead in a whorehouse with N. Korean junk in their veins, if a dirty bomb ever does go off spewing uranium tied to a North Korean process, this decision could go right out of the hands of the “rational and educated” people who “scientifically manage the precarious diplomatic situation” in the Koreas.

This is the paradox of the 38th Parallel. Détente has been successful and slaughter has been averted. Yet the pressures put on by The Tyrant of the North have grown in synonymy with the desperate dysfunction of his nation. Nobody wants to be the guy that says “You know what I think would be fun? Let’s start a honking game of war with all 500 of Kim Jung Il’s Motorized Rifle Battalions. The economy would recover like WWII.” On the other hand, who really has a good contingency plan for that increasingly likely day in the future when someone on the 38th Parallel snaps and goes Quake III?

North Korea, Iran issue Biden-predicted Axis of Evil tests as Obama recruits terrorists with KSM “OJ trial” promise

Weakness invited aggression and aggression accepted

Other than, so far, staying the courses in Afghanistan and Iraq (albeit with enemy-friendly timetables for withdrawal) and continuing drone attacks in Pakistan, what has President Barack Obama done in foreign policy but exude weakness to allies and enemies since his Inauguration?

So why would anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of history, human nature and experience with bullies as a school child expect anything but tests from Detroit underwear bombers, Times Square car bombers and even jihad Muslim Army doctors in Texas?

Obama appeases Iran’s mullahs even as they mow down freedom-seekers in streets. So why wouldn’t our Brazillian and Turkish allies deem us unreliable and settle for Iran’s nuclear bucks, especially after our disgraceful abandonment of Honduras on the rule of law and Georgia, Ukraine and Poland’s SDI umbrella.

Then comes Kim Jung Il. Would he have committed an act of war against the United States if the evil regime-remover Cowboy were still the Commander-in-Chief?:

A new American intelligence analysis of a deadly torpedo attack on a South Korean warship concludes that Kim Jong-il, the ailing leader of North Korea, must have authorized the torpedo assault, according to senior American officials who cautioned that the assessment was based on their sense of the political dynamics there rather than hard evidence.

The officials said they were increasingly convinced that Mr. Kim ordered the sinking of the ship, the Cheonan, to help secure the succession of his youngest son.

The United States is obliged to defend South Korea under treaty. North Korea knows this. They also have seen the Obama apology tours that seem to blame America first for the grievances of others against his own country (that would be the U.S., not Kenya or Indonesia, as he was born in Hawaii, a district that went Republican for the first time since his birth, but I digress…).

But then why would any enemy of the United States fear any Democrat since JFK was assassinated, given their abandonment of South Vietnam, Laotians, Hmong, and many other allies? Why would anyone trust a man that routinely throws lifelong mentor-pastors and typical white grandmothers under the bus?

KSM OJ trial a recruiting tool worse than “dead or alive”, Abu Ghraib or “Bring it on”

Republicans and conservatives were lectured to after 911 by no less that former President Bill Clinton to consider “why they hate us”. Pat Buchanan routinely said “they” (bin Laden et al) were over here because we were “over there.” We were told that Gitmo and Abu Graihb terrorist-prisoner abuses were “recruiting tools.’

Never mind that 911 happened before Abu Ghaib and Iraq. Never mind that we have been “over there” teaching them how to extract oil wealth and maintaining free trade lanes with our Navy for over a century. Never mind that its a terrorist group that has come “over here”, and not legitimate forces of nations whose people oppose us. Never mind that the people of Iraq lost over 100,000 political opposers of Sadaam in Abu Graib wood-chippers when the prison was under non-American management.

President George W. Bush stayed the course in Afghanistan and Iraq for seven years, killed tens of thousands of terrorists trying to protect their home turf that otherwise would have been available for operations across the Fruited Plain, and kept the homeland safe after 911 until Obama took office.

Upon taking office, the Obama Administration appeased Iran (the greatest sponsor of terror in the world); made clear that no more terrorists would have to endure nose-swabbings; and would be Mirandized and given free legal counsel and “OJ” civilian trials as Gitmo prisoners were transferred to a local jail near you.

Think a would-be terrorist that eschews martyrdom might not be more easily recruited if he can star in his own jihad teach-in in the Big Apple? Think all terrorists might feel like Osama bin Laden did in the 90s and before Bush’s spine smacked him out of Kabul when he called Clinton’s America a paper tiger and weak horse and be made more confident that they could fell the Great Satan again?

I think so.

Russia rolled Obama over nuclear weapons reductions and SDI development. France laughs at the boy. Obama treats Britain like an unwelcome guest.

The world is starting to understand that Obama considers his First Citizen of the “International Community” duties trump his Oath as the 44th President of the United States.

Prepare for more tests at Home and pray for the innocent lovers of Liberty abroad, for if a President of the United States won’t defend us and won’t be the leader of the Free World, then we won’t be defended and the free world is imperiled.

Even if a Democratic Party-controlled Congress wanted to defend us they couldn’t. Only a Commander-in-Chief can order military action, and B. Hussein Obama is no JFK and his party is not he party of FDR or HST.

During the 2009 campaign, then Vice-Presidential nominee Joe Biden predicted that the young President would be tested.

So far he is no JFK. In fact he isn’t even Jimmy Carter.

I fear for my country, the free people of the world and those that yearn to breathe free. But Obama is too busy destroying freedom at home to care a whit about anything but Obama’s radical agenda to fundamentally change a flawed America, as he sees it.

The fundamental change, after 5000 years of darkness, of liberty here and abroad that came to the world thanks to the America he loathes, was pretty good, I thought.

God save us from this reckless man and his kind.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Atlanta Journal-Constitutionand Examiner.com columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Blair Takes a Powder: National Intelligence Director to Resign

Obama’s Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, who was among the first of Obama’s officials to call the terrorist attack at Fort Hood “an act of homegrown extremism”,  announced today that he is resigning from his post.

National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said Thursday he is resigning, ending a tumultuous 16-month tenure marked by intelligence failures and turf wars among the country’s spy agencies.Blair, a retired Navy admiral, is the third director of national intelligence, a position created in response public outrage over the failure to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In a message to his work force, Blair said his last day would be May 28.

Two government officials said several candidates have been interviewed for the national intelligence director’s job, which is to oversee the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not yet been made.

His term in office was marked by turf battles with the CIA director and controversial public comments in the wake of the abortive Christmas Day jetliner bombing.

Obama Insults and Apologizes for America – Again!!

One has to wonder what is going through the President’s mind when he is developing his policies. Certainly he has given the course he is charting for the nation some thought. The question is, what result is the process intended to produce? The direction he has taken with Health Care, Cap and Trade and a host of fiscal issues is not merely different from what the majority of Americans think is the right course – it is a direction clearly demonstrated to be vastly more expensive than he promised while economically damaging the nation in ways it may take decades to fix.

Yet his social meddling may be the place that costs him the most in the short term. His administration’s refusal to deal with the challenges of Islamic extremism, along with its denial of the connection between attacks and terrorism has resulted in more low level attacks on our nation than at any other era I can remember. The underwear bomber, the Fort Hood massacre, the Times Square bombing and more are evidence of terrorist’s boldness in the face of American vacillation and weakness. His Party’s willingness to engage in Immigration Policy as a tool to acquire political power is well documented in the recent discussion of Puerto Rican statehood.

It is impossible to contain such disastrous policies to our own nation’s internal workings. What we do at home cannot help but creep into foreign policy and exert influence on America’s international reputation. Indeed, that remains a foundational element in President Obama’s litany of the things that were wrong with the Bush Administration. To correct what he alleged was a poor representation of America’s character around the world, Obama has taken small, but significant, steps abroad; apologizing for America to the world while insulting our allies in the next breath.

The examples here are merely low hanging fruit from Google searches on the President’s performance since taking office less than 2 years ago. The closer one looks at the empty suit in the Oval Office the more one comes to the conclusion that, despite the early predictions of a new era of adulation for America from her citizens and the world, history will record quite a different tale. The latest gaffe, and with each new one it gets more difficult to argue that these are just passing comments or misquotes, is reported by Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air.

During the Administration’s recent visit to China, in the context of discussing ” freedom of religion and expression, labor rights and rule of law, officials also discussed Chinese complaints about problems with U.S. human rights, which have included crime, poverty, homelessness and racial discrimination,” America was thrown under the bus yet again by this administration. Specifically concerning Arizona’s recent immigration law, the administration brought up the subject to the Chinese as an example of our bad behavior.

He said U.S. officials did not whitewash the American record and in fact raised on its own a new immigration law in Arizona that requires police to ask about a person’s immigration status if there is suspicion the person is in the country illegally.

…

QUESTION: Did the recently passed Arizona immigration law come up? And, if so, did they bring it up or did you bring it up?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: We brought it up early and often. It was mentioned in the first session, and as a troubling trend in our society and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination, and that these are issues very much being debated in our own society.

At what point does one begin to ask, regardless of how one feels about the War on Terror, “If defending our nation against an unprovoked attack results in a reduction of prestige and respect for America around the world, what result might we expect if we openly trash our own nation and are, ourselves, the ones mounting an unprovoked attack against ourselves?”