Monday, February 03, 2014
Twilight of a failing presidency
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Obama plays both sides of the Benghazi issue, and loses
The terrorists in Benghazi, Libya who attacked our consulate last month on the anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks and killed four American Foreign Service personnel have highlighted in tragic detail how deeply naïve President Barack Obama’s idea of foreign policy is.
His manic effort to deny the existence of Muslim terrorism to avoid offending Muslims confounds those of us grounded in reality. He put an end to the “war on terror,” and in its place we now have “Overseas Contingency Operations.” When a Muslim U.S. Army doctor screamed “Allahu Akbar” as he mowed down 13 of his fellow soldiers, Mr. Obama’s administration prefers to call it “workplace violence.”
With that background it is no wonder that Mr. Obama and his disciples inside and outside of the administration twisted themselves into illogical knots to avoid admitting what was obvious to most people: that it was a planned terrorist attack.
However, Mr. Obama tried desperately to claim the opposite during the second presidential debate, declaring that he identified the attack as a terrorist act the next day in a Rose Garden statement, and moderator Candy Crowley inappropriately backed him up on it. But the facts do not support Ms. Crowley or Mr. Obama.
The President made a five and one-half minute statement consisting of 801 words. Several times he used descriptive language, such as:
- “… four of these extraordinary Americans were killed in an attack on our diplomatic post in Benghazi.”
- “The United States condemns in the strongest terms this outrageous and shocking attack.”
- “ … we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people”
- “The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts.”
About three and one-half minutes into the statement Mr. Obama referenced the 9-11-2001 attacks: “Of course, yesterday was already a painful day for our nation as we marked the solemn memory of the 9/11 attacks.” Still, there was no reference to terrorism.
And then, four minutes and 15 seconds into the five and one-half-minute statement, and 618 words into the 801 words of the text, he spoke the words “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation …” That oblique reference – plural, not singular – was the only time the concept of terrorism entered into Mr. Obama’s text. Right after that he said: “We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act.” “Terrible,” but not “terrorist.”
If he truly wanted the nation to understand that he thought terrorists killed those four Americans, he deftly disguised the message.
As if to prove the assertion that he didn’t “really” call the attack an act of terror, for the next two weeks members of the administration – including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, Press Secretary Jay Carney and President Obama himself (who mentioned it again and again at a speech to the United Nations on September 25th) – repeatedly blamed the attack on a violent protest in reaction to an anti-Islam video produced by an American. Yes, an American; that “shadowy character” who created a video about Islam was the cause of the Benghazi attack.
The administration offered the video as the only cause of the violence for days on end, despite the common sense reaction that people don’t show up with RPGs and mortars at a spontaneous protest, even in places occupied by radical Muslims.
Was there a protest prior to the terrorist attack, or wasn’t there? It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that the security provided to our people in Libya was dismally inadequate. There were eight attacks in Libya in a 6-month period, one on a British convoy and another on the Red Cross facility, causing both the Brits and the Red Cross to leave Libya because of the growing level of violence. And in June, there was an attack on the American Embassy in Tripoli.
U.S. personnel in Libya knew danger was mounting and practically begged for increased security measures. But Mr. Obama is fond of boasting that “Al Qaeda is on the run and Osama bin Laden is dead,” and mounting violence in Libya really doesn’t fit into that narrative. Al Qaeda is still alive and well, and Barack Obama’s dream of a “New Dawn in the Middle East” has proved to be a nightmare. Putting the “Dream” ahead of protecting Americans at home and abroad, the administration declined those requests for help, and now four brave Americans are dead.
Extremists in the Middle East may make it impossible for that long-troubled region to ever become a peaceful place, and perhaps no president can change that. But a position of strength on the part of the United States best serves the interests of peace and stability. We don’t have that in President Obama’s America, where foreign policy focuses on offering apology and appeasement. Leading from behind just doesn’t cut it.
Cross-posted from Observations
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Obama administration denies mother answers about her son’s murder
Why is my son dead?
That is all Pat Smith wants to know. Her son, computer specialist Sean Smith, was one of the four Americans killed on September 11th in the terror attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. A month after she buried her son, a month after everyone all the way up to the president of the United States promised her answers, she says she is still awaiting those answers.
“That's a funny subject,” Mrs. Smith said. “I begged them to tell me what was -- what happened. I said I want to know all the details, all of the details no matter what it is, and I'll make up my own mind on it. And every one of them, all the big shots over there told me that -- they promised me, they promised me that they would tell me what happened. As soon as they figure it out.”
“No one, not one person has ever, ever gotten back to me other than media people and the gaming people,” she said. “Hillary promised me. Joe Biden -- Joe Biden -- they all told me that -- they promised me. And I told them please, tell me what happened. Just tell me what happened.”
The attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was a made-in-Washington disaster, a result of naive foreign policy consisting of apology and appeasement – projecting weakness surpassing even that of Jimmy Carter.
Every other world leader defends and promotes his country, but Barack Obama agrees with our critics and apologizes for America. His pusillanimous posture sent a message to our enemies, and they have acted on our well-advertised weakness.
And now in the face of that inglorious policy failure in Libya, Mr. Obama has retreated to doing what he does best: passing the blame. “We didn’t do that; it was that video.”
Suggesting that an anti-Muslim video that hardly anyone on Earth had seen was responsible for that attack was ridiculous on its face, and was almost immediately discredited. Still, the administration continued to blame the video for about two weeks, before finally admitting what everybody else already knew: it was a planned terrorist attack. It then shifted blame to intelligence agencies for providing the administration bad information.
But, as time passed, the tawdry details emerged, showing that the State Department under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stubbornly refused to provide additional security forces for Libya as repeatedly requested.
The leader of the military security team in Tripoli, Lt. Col. Andrew Wood of the Utah National Guard, told various TV outlets that he and other embassy officials unsuccessfully attempted to extend his team’s tour of duty in Libya because of mounting security concerns. “The security in Benghazi was a struggle and remained a struggle throughout my time there,” Colonel Wood said. “Diplomatic security remained weak.”
A former security officer, Eric Nordstrom, said he was told in a phone call in July that the deployment of a 16-member American military site security team based in Tripoli could not be prolonged, according to a report by The New York Times. Although the Africa Command that oversaw the unit was willing to extend the deployment, the State Department said “no.”
Mr. Nordstrom told a Congressional committee recently he tried to improve security by asking for 12 agents, only to be told by a State Department official that he was asking for the “sun, moon and the stars.” “It was abundantly clear: we were not going to get resources until the aftermath of an incident,” Mr. Nordstrom said. “And the question that we would ask is, again, how thin does the ice have to get before someone falls through?” We now know the answer.
Although he is still a State Department employee, Mr. Nordstrom expressed strong frustration in trying to work with the Department. “It’s not the hardships,” he said. “It’s dealing and fighting against the people, programs and personnel who are supposed to be supporting me.” And he made this revealing comment: “For me, the Taliban is on the inside of the building.”
There is no way the administration can fix this colossal, deadly screw-up, but it could at least keep its word by honoring Mrs. Smith’s loss and help give her peace in her hour of grief.
Mr. Obama should drop the cover-up and come clean with the American people. That means admitting the dramatic failure of his foreign policy, and admitting to playing petty politics to distract the public. However, accepting responsibility isn’t in the Obama Playbook, especially this close to the election.
Cross-posted from Observations
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Bye-bye Vice President Biden?
That is the speculation and prediction of Liz Peek.
Joe Biden has been a liability to the Obama
Ms. Peek predicts that Obama will cut loose Joe Biden in favor of Hillary Clinton.
Here’s a prediction: the Obama administration will bounce Joe Biden off the 2012 ticket, and invite Hillary Clinton to run in his stead.Up until President Eisenhower, the position of Vice President on a political ticket was easily changed. FDR had 3 different VPs (John Nance Garner, Henry A. Wallace, and Harry S. Truman.). So it isn't out of the question or against historical precedent.
The move will aim to bolster Obama’s standing and provide some excitement among core Democrats – something that Biden fails to provide. Hillary will agree, because just four years later she will be superbly positioned to run for president – ever the rainbow on her personal horizon.
At present, her polls are high, with 58% of voters viewing her at least somewhat favorably.
Wistful Dems who wonder these days what could have been will tout her hard work and pragmatic diplomacy as she chases one impossible Obama pipe dream after another to all corners of the globe.
Certain wishful Dems are hoping she will challenge Obama in a primary. I don’t think so. As Ted Kennedy found when he tried to pick off Jimmy Carter in 1980, even an unpopular incumbent is still an incumbent.
If the White House political team brings Clinton on board over the next year, they can remove whatever threat exists from that quarter. Meanwhile, Hillary can bide her time and husband her resources, eventually running against Obama’s legacy.
She will have better answers on health care, a subject she has studiously avoided discussing, and could adopt her husband’s centrist approach to trade and taxes to win over independents.
Joe Biden was originally chosen for his experience in foreign affairs. A skill it seems, judging from the last 2 years of this regime, neither Joe Biden or Barack Hussein Obama have or ever has aquired.
Nor has Hillary Clinton showed her great skill in foreign policy and foreign affairs in her tenure as Secretary of State.
In fact the trio remind on of the bumbling antics of the 3 Stooges. It would be funny, but the price to our security is too high for such jokes or jokers.
I have always wondered why Joe Biden was brought onto the ticket. He brought no electoral votes, no region of the nation to swing towards Obama, he is a bumbler, a fool at times, yet he and not Hillary was chosen to be the VP. Could it be that the idea of President Biden is so horrible to the nation that the Congress will allow Obama to do anything to prevent that from happening? Does Joe Biden make Obama safe from impeachment? If so, why the change of heart?
This is all speculation and will not matter if Obama's polls continue to drop. Who is going to vote for a President with a 20% or less approval rating? Pretty much no one. So regardless of who is on the ticket in 2012, as things look right now, Obama is a one-term President and should be considered a lame duck.
Friday, April 03, 2009
Transnationalism: What it Means for America
Barack Obama Bows to Transnationalism
Transnationalism = Globalization (see photo above)
I've heard word "transnationalism" used on television several times this week, and it reminded me that Obama's legislation, The Global Poverty Act, Senate Bill 2433, should be brought up for a vote, probably in the dead of night, before long.
The key to making transnationalism the rule of the world, rather than a choice by a Nation, is a document known as the U.N. Millenium Development Goal (read text here), known as the MDG. Senate Bill 2433 ties our President, whomever he may be, and surprise, surprise, "he" is Barack Obama, to accomplishing the Millennium Goal. Obama wrote this Bill while a Senator. Now he will implement this Bill with the U.N. - something that President Bush would have never considered.
In short, the U.N. defines transnationalism as a type of globalization that is, this minute, turning the world into a "global village." That "global village" will give back control of "peace, equity, social justice, democracy and human rights," to the people. The U.N.'s vision of globalization is one that makes all industry, throughout the world "work for the benefit of everyone to eradicate poverty and hunger globally..."
The U.N. MDG says this:
This can happen only if global corporations, international financial and trade institutions and Governments are subject to effective democratic control by the people..."You get the picture. The U.N. wants world-wide socialism - no surprise there.
I urge everyone to keep a close watch on The Global Poverty Act, s.2433. It will rear it's ugly head sometime soon, and it's sponsors will attempt to get this innocuous-seeming Bill through without a lot of noise. Here's some information on how fossil fuels, currency, and land are to be taxed throught the MDG, as well as plans for globalized militaries.
Frank Gaffney, Jr. has a column this week on transnationalism. It's something we should all familiarize ourselves with because it is galloping at us at a very high speed. Here is Mr. Gaffney's article. Pay close attention to what is happening to former Bush U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others:
Looming specter of transnationalism
U.S. needs a State Department defender of its sovereign rights
by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
Washington Times
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
COMMENTARY:
What is wrong with this picture? We learned this weekend that a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon, is preparing to prosecute six Americans who worked as senior legal and policy advisers to former President George W. Bush - including former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith. The purported crime? The opinions they provided Mr. Bush supported the use of torture against enemy combatants.
Most Americans would find this assertion of what has come to be called “transnational law” to be troubling on several grounds. Its application is an affront to due process and the rule of law in this country. It would criminalize internal U.S. policymaking deliberations, with profound implications for U.S. sovereignty. If allowed to run its course, this prosecution would have a profoundly chilling effect on the willingness of subordinates to provide a president with advice or perhaps even to serve in government.
One would hope President Obama would recognize that this use of legal mechanisms as a form of warfare against the United States - increasingly known as “lawfare” - holds serious dangers not just for the country and those who ran it for the past eight years, but for his administration as well. That would appear not to be the case, however, in light of his choice of Harold Koh to be the State Department's top lawyer.
In fact, as dean of Yale's law school, Mr. Koh has been an unalloyed enthusiast for transnational law. For example, in a 2006 article in the Penn State Law Review, he extolled the “transnationalist faction” on the Supreme Court and the wisdom shown by four, and sometimes five, of its justices in rejecting the impulses of what he disdainfully calls “the nationalist faction”:
“Generally speaking the transnationalists tend to emphasize the interdependence between the United States and the rest of the world, while the nationalists tend instead to focus more on preserving American autonomyThe transnationalists believe in and promote the blending of international and domestic law, while nationalists continue to maintain a rigid separation of domestic from foreign law. The transnationalists view domestic courts as having a critical role to play in domesticating international law into U.S. law, while nationalists argue instead that only the political branches can internalize international law.
“The transnationalists believe that U.S. courts can and should use their interpretive powers to promote the development of a global legal system, while the nationalists tend to claim that U.S. courts should limit their attention to the development of a national system. Finally, the transnationalists urge that the power of the executive branch should be constrained by judicial review and the concept of international comity, while the nationalists tend to believe that federal courts should give extraordinarily broad deference to executive power in foreign affairs.”
How many Americans are aware that some, let alone an actual majority, of the Supreme Court's justices think this country should be ruled by something other than the Constitution of the United States, laws made pursuant thereto and treaties clearly consistent with it? Assuredly, few of us know such an assault on our sovereignty is afoot; in all likelihood, fewer still would support it.
The same likely would apply to Mr. Koh's embrace of myriad other controversial transnationalist initiatives. He favors U.S. submission to the International Criminal Court, enabling that tribunal to have the right tomorrow to take up the sort of foreign prosecutions of Americans contemplated by Spain's Judge Garzon today.
Mr. Koh goes even further than Sen. John Kerry, who argued that American uses of force must meet what he euphemistically called a “global test.” Mr. Koh says the United States must obtain pre-authorization by the U.N. Security Council. In keeping with this view, he condemned the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which lacked such a mandate, as “illegal.”
The State Department legal adviser-designate has also actively opposed virtually every instrument the previous administration deemed necessary to wage and win the war against terror-wielding adversaries. Mr. Koh insisted that Guantanamo Bay be closed, coercive interrogation techniques be halted and trials in civilian U.S. courts be afforded to captured enemy combatants. To be sure, these positions largely track with those of Mr. Obama, although the latter has left himself some latitude in their implementation. Mr. Koh's critique of the government's terrorist surveillance, though, is even more extreme than that of Mr. Obama, who as a senator voted to allow the program to continue.
It is absolutely predictable that the United States will find itself under ever greater assault in the form of lawfare as notions of the supremacy of transnational law take hold among elites, both here (notably in the Supreme Court) and abroad. Mr. Obama can spare himself and the country considerable grief when he meets this week in Europe and Turkey with some of the leading practitioners of lawfare by repudiating Judge Garzon's extraterritorial overreach, rejecting the application of transnational law more generally and selecting a State Department legal adviser who is an avowed nationalist, not a committed transnationalist”
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for The Washington Times.
Barack Obama Bows to Transnationalism
Transnationalism = Globalization (see photo above)
I've heard word "transnationalism" used on television several times this week, and it reminded me that Obama's legislation, The Global Poverty Act, Senate Bill 2433, should be brought up for a vote, probably in the dead of night, before long.
The key to making transnationalism the rule of the world, rather than a choice by a Nation, is a document known as the U.N. Millenium Development Goal (read text here), known as the MDG. Senate Bill 2433 ties our President, whomever he may be, and surprise, surprise, "he" is Barack Obama, to accomplishing the Millennium Goal. Obama wrote this Bill while a Senator. Now he will implement this Bill with the U.N. - something that President Bush would have never considered.
In short, the U.N. defines transnationalism as a type of globalization that is, this minute, turning the world into a "global village." That "global village" will give back control of "peace, equity, social justice, democracy and human rights," to the people. The U.N.'s vision of globalization is one that makes all industry, throughout the world "work for the benefit of everyone to eradicate poverty and hunger globally..."
The U.N. MDG says this:
This can happen only if global corporations, international financial and trade institutions and Governments are subject to effective democratic control by the people..."You get the picture. The U.N. wants world-wide socialism - no surprise there.
I urge everyone to keep a close watch on The Global Poverty Act, s.2433. It will rear it's ugly head sometime soon, and it's sponsors will attempt to get this innocuous-seeming Bill through without a lot of noise. Here's some information on how fossil fuels, currency, and land are to be taxed throught the MDG, as well as plans for globalized militaries.
Frank Gaffney, Jr. has a column this week on transnationalism. It's something we should all familiarize ourselves with because it is galloping at us at a very high speed. Here is Mr. Gaffney's article. Pay close attention to what is happening to former Bush U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others:
Looming specter of transnationalism
U.S. needs a State Department defender of its sovereign rights
by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
Washington Times
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
COMMENTARY:
What is wrong with this picture? We learned this weekend that a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon, is preparing to prosecute six Americans who worked as senior legal and policy advisers to former President George W. Bush - including former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith. The purported crime? The opinions they provided Mr. Bush supported the use of torture against enemy combatants.
Most Americans would find this assertion of what has come to be called “transnational law” to be troubling on several grounds. Its application is an affront to due process and the rule of law in this country. It would criminalize internal U.S. policymaking deliberations, with profound implications for U.S. sovereignty. If allowed to run its course, this prosecution would have a profoundly chilling effect on the willingness of subordinates to provide a president with advice or perhaps even to serve in government.
One would hope President Obama would recognize that this use of legal mechanisms as a form of warfare against the United States - increasingly known as “lawfare” - holds serious dangers not just for the country and those who ran it for the past eight years, but for his administration as well. That would appear not to be the case, however, in light of his choice of Harold Koh to be the State Department's top lawyer.
In fact, as dean of Yale's law school, Mr. Koh has been an unalloyed enthusiast for transnational law. For example, in a 2006 article in the Penn State Law Review, he extolled the “transnationalist faction” on the Supreme Court and the wisdom shown by four, and sometimes five, of its justices in rejecting the impulses of what he disdainfully calls “the nationalist faction”:
“Generally speaking the transnationalists tend to emphasize the interdependence between the United States and the rest of the world, while the nationalists tend instead to focus more on preserving American autonomyThe transnationalists believe in and promote the blending of international and domestic law, while nationalists continue to maintain a rigid separation of domestic from foreign law. The transnationalists view domestic courts as having a critical role to play in domesticating international law into U.S. law, while nationalists argue instead that only the political branches can internalize international law.
“The transnationalists believe that U.S. courts can and should use their interpretive powers to promote the development of a global legal system, while the nationalists tend to claim that U.S. courts should limit their attention to the development of a national system. Finally, the transnationalists urge that the power of the executive branch should be constrained by judicial review and the concept of international comity, while the nationalists tend to believe that federal courts should give extraordinarily broad deference to executive power in foreign affairs.”
How many Americans are aware that some, let alone an actual majority, of the Supreme Court's justices think this country should be ruled by something other than the Constitution of the United States, laws made pursuant thereto and treaties clearly consistent with it? Assuredly, few of us know such an assault on our sovereignty is afoot; in all likelihood, fewer still would support it.
The same likely would apply to Mr. Koh's embrace of myriad other controversial transnationalist initiatives. He favors U.S. submission to the International Criminal Court, enabling that tribunal to have the right tomorrow to take up the sort of foreign prosecutions of Americans contemplated by Spain's Judge Garzon today.
Mr. Koh goes even further than Sen. John Kerry, who argued that American uses of force must meet what he euphemistically called a “global test.” Mr. Koh says the United States must obtain pre-authorization by the U.N. Security Council. In keeping with this view, he condemned the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which lacked such a mandate, as “illegal.”
The State Department legal adviser-designate has also actively opposed virtually every instrument the previous administration deemed necessary to wage and win the war against terror-wielding adversaries. Mr. Koh insisted that Guantanamo Bay be closed, coercive interrogation techniques be halted and trials in civilian U.S. courts be afforded to captured enemy combatants. To be sure, these positions largely track with those of Mr. Obama, although the latter has left himself some latitude in their implementation. Mr. Koh's critique of the government's terrorist surveillance, though, is even more extreme than that of Mr. Obama, who as a senator voted to allow the program to continue.
It is absolutely predictable that the United States will find itself under ever greater assault in the form of lawfare as notions of the supremacy of transnational law take hold among elites, both here (notably in the Supreme Court) and abroad. Mr. Obama can spare himself and the country considerable grief when he meets this week in Europe and Turkey with some of the leading practitioners of lawfare by repudiating Judge Garzon's extraterritorial overreach, rejecting the application of transnational law more generally and selecting a State Department legal adviser who is an avowed nationalist, not a committed transnationalist”
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for The Washington Times.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Obama: Change a Bush Just Might Believe In
The antiwar left is not too happy about Obama’s national security choices. A speech Obama made six years ago indicates that Obama’s approach to foreign policy is much like that of George H.W. Bush. Obama may prove to be less an idealist than a realist.
A Washington Post article by E.J. Dionne Jr. entitled “Obama’s Bush Doctrine” explains that the meaning behind Obama’s “apparent” decision to keep Robert Gates on as defense secretary and to select Hillary Clinton as secretary of state can be discovered in understanding Obama’s words and his George H.W. Bush approach to foreign policy.
In electing Barack Obama, the country traded the foreign policy of the second President Bush for the foreign policy of the first President Bush.
According to the article, Obama’s has been “relying heavily on foreign policy specialists” that are closely associated with Clinton. His choice of Clinton will enhance his image of strength because Clinton has “strong ties to the military” and she has a “carefully cultivated image of tough-mindedness.”
And the article notes that Gates can help Obama organize the withdrawal from Iraq and “bless it.”
The article also reports that Obama has had conversations with Bush senior’s “closest foreign policy adviser, Brent Scowcroft”.
Obama has drawn counsel from many in Scowcroft's circle, and Gates himself was deputy national security adviser under Scowcroft.
The article goes on at some length to analyze a famous speech Obama gave in 2002.
Antiwar Democrats cheered Obama for addressing a rally against the Iraq war in Chicago's Federal Plaza on Oct. 2, 2002. His opposition to the war was a major asset in his nomination struggle with Clinton. . .
Obama did indeed denounce the impending war as "dumb," "rash" and "based not on reason but on passion." But in retrospect, the speech may be most notable for other things Obama said that separated him from some in his antiwar audience.
Not only did Obama state five times that he didn’t oppose all wars, and that he would willingly “take up arms myself” to prevent another 9/11 from happening, it appears that Obama was echoing Brent Scowcroft’s “widely noted 2002 op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, published six weeks before Obama gave his speech.”
Trackposted to Political Byline The World According to Carl, Rosemary's News and Ideas, Leaning Straight Up, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Democrat=Socialist, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Monday, November 10, 2008
UK’s Gordon Brown Calls for the Creation of a Global Society
Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown will give his annual foreign policy speech today at the Lord Mayor's Banquet. He will be calling for the reform of international financial institutions and the forging of a new world order.
Via London (Reuters) from an excerpt from his speech, Brown calls on the alliance between Britain and the U.S. and “more broadly between Europe and the U.S” to lead global efforts to build a “stronger and more just international order.”
Brown will meet with other world leaders in Washington next week for an economic summit to discuss long-term economic solutions to the current financial crisis. According to a summary of the speech Brown will say:
"Uniquely in this global age, it is now in our power to come together so that 2008 is remembered not just for the failure of a financial crash that engulfed the world but for the resilience and optimism with which we faced the storm, endured it and prevailed, . . . "...And if we learn from our experience of turning unity of purpose into unity of action, we can together seize this moment of change in our world to create a truly global society."
Brown will set out five great challenges the world faces and he will identify five stages for tackling the economy. Brown wants immediate action to stop the spread of the financial crisis to middle-income countries, a new facility for the International Monetary Fund, an agreement on a global trade deal, and reform of the global financial system.
Trackposted to Rosemary's Thoughts, A Newt One- Hysterians masquerading as historians, Political Byline, and Democrat=Socialist, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
National Security: The Lost Political Issue
By guest columnist, Charles E. Sowell
As we close in on the presidential election of 2008, it is becoming more and more evident to many Americans, particularly those who truly understand history, that the fate of America and western civilization may literally hang in the balance. At this point in time Americans have a lot to be concerned with, but it should be apparent that the two most critical concerns facing this country are national security and the economy. Most recently, as a result of the current economic crisis, we have heard very little about national security, despite the fact that we are still engaged in a fierce war with the same group of extremists that attacked us more than 7 years ago. It is time for America to reawaken to the fact that if we do not have national security, we will not have an economy to worry about!
I will leave it to the historians to conclude whether the invasion of Iraq at that unique point in time was the right or wrong decision for America, but from that point forward, it is hard for me to understand the logic of Senator Obama on many foreign policy/national security issues. I am constantly amazed at what appears to be his naiveté on many of these issues. As part of his very elite educational training, did he not study history? Even more amazing to me is that it appears that the majority of the American public has also bought into his guile and glib style over his negligible substance. Past electoral concerns of malaise and apathy seem to pale in comparison to the current naivety of so many Americans, particularly the young, many of whom have not yet had enough life experience, much less understanding of history, to keep from falling under the spell of the first snake oil salesman that comes along.
Senator Obama is a very eloquent orator, and his affable manner and good looks give him the ability to be very persuasive. But when you break down his foreign policy into simple logic, it just doesn’t fly. If Senator Obama’s prior opposition to the surge in Iraq had been successful, America might now be out of that country, but we would have left in defeat and either Al Qaeda or Iran would have quickly moved into the vacuum, providing another base for extremists ready to resume further atrocities against America and the rest of the world. Had we allowed that to happen, we would have also been looked upon by the rest of the world as an unreliable paper tiger for decades to come. Russia, China, and any other strong adversary would be taking advantage of us at every opportunity. Like it or not, defeat in Iraq is not an option.
Senator Obama’s current insistence on establishing a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq is also nothing short of pure folly. A smart and determined enemy only has to await the withdrawal of our troops before resuming the fight with an all out effort, with a realistic hope by then that the American public will no longer have the will to rejoin the fight. If you want to win a football game, you don’t broadcast to your opponent the timing of the snap of the ball.
Perhaps the most illustrative example of Senator Obama’s naivety is his self expressed willingness to sit down and negotiate with any adversary without any preconditions. Anyone who knows anything about the art of negotiation understands, first and foremost, that you negotiate only with an adversary that has the authority to negotiate (someone who has the ability to execute the results of that negotiation). Sitting down with someone like Ahmadinejad would not only be a waste of time, but would be foolhardy at best. Any good negotiator also knows that every negotiating session is always preceded by posturing, position measuring (preconditions), and having in mind specific objectives for outcome. Just “sitting down to talk” for the novice negotiator could be a recipe for disaster.
At this critical time it is important for Americans to recognize that proven experience and seasoned knowledge are what we need to lead America out of our current difficulties, not an idealistic member of the intellectually elite. As it has been said by many others before me, this is not a time for on the job training.
Trackposted to third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, The Pink Flamingo, Democrat=Socialist, and Conservative Cat, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

