Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Obama's Bizarre Foreign Policy / Mistreatment of Allies Explored

I suspect this will be a topic that we return to often.

Thoughts on Allies Gone By [Victor Davis Hanson]

Whatever the protestations of the Obama administration, many in both Britain and Israel feel that 2009–10 marked a watershed, the beginning of an era in which America was no longer a special friend to either whether gauged by serial symbolic snubs or real policy differences on things like Jerusalem and the Falklands.

Why does this matter, other than that it is stupid for a country to treat old friends like belligerents and old belligerents like friends?

In the case of Britain, history resonates. Over the last century it was Britain that, sometimes alone, defended liberal constitutional government, whether from Prussian militarism or the hydra of fascism, Nazism, and Japanese militarism. It was always a reliable partner in the Cold War, and aside from normal periodic spats was a loyal ally in most of America’s postwar fights. We forget sometimes the courageous record of the British in Korea, or their lonely alliance with us in Iraq. Note that this is all apart from the British role in general in the shaping of Western liberal political history, and in particular the protocols and values that underlie so much of the American experiment, from a common language to a rich heritage of literature and thought. For an American president to be woefully ignorant of all that, and why it should count, is nothing short of unbelievable.

Obama is equally clueless about why, for a half-century at least, both Republican and Democratic presidents have forged a second special relationship, this one with Israel. There certainly were not always strategic advantages in doing so, given the Arab world’s vast petroleum reserves, its huge size and population in comparison to tiny Israel, and the global fear, first, of rampant Soviet-inspired Palestinian terrorism, and, subsequently, its radical Islamic epigone.

Instead, the United States again, keen to both history and values took on the special defense of the Jewish state for a variety of principled considerations that went well beyond the concerns of Jewish Americans. We understood the long history of anti-Semitism and how, when freely expressed and practiced without objection, it devolves into pogroms and its ultimate nightmare in the Holocaust. We acknowledged the role of Judaism in the foundation of the Western Judaeo-Christian religious experience. And the American public was impressed that a tiny country without natural resources was able not only to survive in a sea of hostility, but to do so under the aegis of consensual government and an open society.

Last, such special consideration for Israel was predicated on some ugly realities. Most of the autocratic world, and some of the contemporary West, simply mask personal prejudice and realpolitik with a postmodern veneer of fashionable multicultural sympathy for the “other” despite the illiberal and often fascistic tendencies of both radical Islam and Arab dictatorship that so galvanize most of Israel’s Middle Eastern enemies. But when the U.S stood by Israel, there was a sort of equilibrium established.

The United Nations knew that nearly half of its resolutions aimed at Israel would come under fire from the United States. We would bite back in New York at the fiery speeches of an extremist like Arafat or Qaddafi. The Arab summits accepted that yet another pan-Arabic resolution damning the Jewish state would go nowhere in convincing the West to drop its alliance. And European triangulators accepted that their flagrant dislike of Israel would always encounter American resistance.

The net result, again, was that Israel’s front-line enemies, whether terrorists or state autocracies, accepted that it was futile to try to destroy Israel, and difficult to galvanize world opinion to turn it into a global pariah.

Now, however, the Obama administration through its symbolic snubs and choice of personnel, and through real policies concerning Jerusalem has sent a message to Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iran, the United Nations, and the European Left that America is no longer particularly interested in playing its traditional role in defending Israel either intellectually or politically and thus perhaps soon not through military assistance either. That will only encourage new adventurism, as a mostly opportunistic world rushes to pile on, at first rhetorically, but soon through material action and global indifference to Israel’s fate.

The origins of Obama’s apparent distaste for both Britain and Israel have been explored, but why the party of Truman and JFK abetted his transformation of American foreign policy is a more complex, but equally disheartening, matter.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Natan Sharansky ... this man is a true hero

the type that embodies courage, moral clarity, hope and change ...

A good read for Passover ...

http://www.jpost.com/Features/InThespotlight/Article.aspx?id=172404

.... Sharansky has faced worse obstacles. Sitting across from the him, it’s easy to forget that the mild-mannered, plainly dressed, stocky figure endured severe hardships in a Soviet prison on trumped-up charges of treason and espionage for eight years, until an international campaign waged by his wife, Avital, culminated in his 1986 release. He arrived in Israel that same night.

In his final statement to the court in 1978 before his imprisonment, Sharansky concluded his appeal with the words: “For more that two thousand years the Jewish people, my people, have been dispersed. But wherever they are, wherever Jews are found, every year they have repeated, ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’ Now, when I am farther than ever from my people, from Avital, facing many arduous years of imprisonment, I say, turning to my people, my Avital, ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’”

Who better – on this holiday of freedom – to put into perspective the concepts of peoplehood and identity than the person who, in our generation, was able to say “This year we are slaves, next year may we be free men” and have it come true?


Was there something from the Pessah Seder that helped sustain you in prison?

I remember my first Seder in my life, when I was 25. It was in Moscow with Avital, who in a few months became my wife.

We were a big group of students studying Hebrew. We had three teachers who brought their pupils there. None of the teachers could read the whole Haggada, so each of them read a third.T

here were a few songs that we learned, like “Dayenu.” And I remember that the phrase in the Seder, “This year we are slaves, next year may we be free men” was very moving to us.

Some years later, I was in a punishment cell on Seder night, and I was lonely. I decided that with bread, salt and hot water, I would have my own Seder. There was nothing else – salt was my maror [bitter herbs] and hot water was my haroset.

I tried to repeat the Haggada, but I couldn’t remember most of it. But that one phrase – “This year we are slaves, next year may we be free men” – was enough for me.

And I recalled the line, “In every generation, each individual should feel as if he or she had actually gone out from Egypt.” It was so easy to feel that’s true – that I am one of those in this generation that is keeping this torch of freedom. It was easy to feel yourself as part of this great, historical struggle, and that gave me a lot of strength.

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I highly recommend reading his book "Fear No Evil".

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What a contrast to Obama ...

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=172317

Obama To Sellout Israel at the UN to placate the Chinese ?

Debka says so ....

Obama, Hu weigh sanctions tradeoff against Iran, Israel
DEBKAfile Special Report April 3, 2010,

http://www.debka.com/article/8697/

Chinese president Hu Jintao indicated a willingness to consider abstaining on a UN Security Council vote imposing sanctions against Iran - if the United States reciprocated by withholding its vote on sanctions against Israel over its construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. debkafile's sources report that US president Barack Obama did not reject the idea out of hand when it was raised in his hour-long telephone conversation with President Hu Thursday, April 1.

They decided to talk again about a coordinated, tit-for-tat US-Chinese sanctions deal with regard to Israel and Iran when they meet at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on April 12-13. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was invited to the conference; Iranian leaders were not.

After the Obama-Hu phone conversation, the foreign ministry in Beijing delivered the Chinese president's consent to attend the summit. His reply was delayed to signal displeasure over US arms sales to Taiwan and Obama's White House welcome for the Dalai Lama. It would be the first time a US president has come close to considering withholding his veto from an anti-Israel resolution at the Security Council. This implied willingness may have been partly responsible for breaking the ice in Sino-US relations.

According to our Middle East sources, White House officials dealing with Arab governments were quick to pass the word around of the evolving Obama approach. They tied it in with the US president's special envoy George Mitchell's new plan to push for a negotiated Israel-Palestinian deal on the borders of a Palestinian state to be struck within four months. Mitchell arrives in Jerusalem on April 12 - shortly before the Israeli prime minister is due to take off for Washington.

The two combined US steps add up to a further widening of the Obama administration's distance from Jerusalem, a rift which may even lead at some point to his facilitating parallel condemnatory sanctions against Israel and Iran. He is determined to force the Netanyahu government to bow to Washington's say-so on issues vital to Israel's security, namely the Iranian nuclear threat and its claim to secure borders.

Beijing's turnabout on sanctions against Iran brought Saeed Jalili, the director of Iran's National Security Council, running to Beijing Thursday to demand explanations. The US president's openness to Beijing's proposed sanctions trade belies the outreach his aide Dan Shapiro, National Security Council Middle East Senior Director, sought to achieve in a call to Jewish community representatives Friday. He tried denying relations were in crisis after Netanyahu's chilly welcome at the White House last month and insisted that there had been more agreement than disagreement between the two leaders.

debkafile's Washington sources report that the American-Jewish leaders addressed by Shapiro received his message with extreme skepticism.

Amnesty International Sinks To New Lows

if that's even possible .... endorses "Defensive Jihad". Nice.


Amnesty International Comes Out of the Closet — Endorses "Defensive" Jihad [Andy McCarthy]

Former Gitmo detainee Moazzam Begg is a committed jihadist and unabashed supporter of the Taliban. (See this Weekly Standard essay by Tom Joscelyn, which collects other Begg links.) In the fashion of CAIR — a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood formed to support its causes, such as Hamas, in the camouflage of a "civil rights" organization — Begg shrewdly realized he could win fawning admirers and allies on the Left by posing as a human rights activist. So he formed a group in Britain, Cageprisoners, which claims to be a civil rights organization whle promoting the Islamist agenda — and aligning with such other anti-American jihadist terrorists as would-be Christmas bomber Umar Abdulmutallab and Anwar al-Awlaki (an imam to some of the 9/11 hijackers and an inspiration to both Abdulmutallab and Fort Hood mass-murderer Nidal Hasan).

As Tom details, the disconnect between terror- and sharia-promotion, on the one hand, and civil rights, on the other, has weighed heavily on some authentic civil rights activists. After complaining for a couple of years to no avail about Amnesty International's support for Begg, Gita Sahgal (head of AI's "gender unit") finally went public, pointing out that “to be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.” For her trouble, Sahgal was reprimanded by AI and ultimately suspended. AI's treatment of Sahgal prompted a "Global Petition" by some international human rights supporters, protesting AI's action (in conjunction with all the usual grousing about the evils of the United States).

In response to the petition, AI Secretary-General Claudio Cordone has issued a letter in vigorous defense of AI's collaboration with Begg and Cageprisoners. Steve Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism has the story, here. In the letter, Cordone states AI's position outright: advocacy of "jihad in self defence" is not antithetical to human rights. That Islamists reserve unto themselves the right to determine when Islam is, as they put it, "under siege," and when, therefore, forcible jihad is justified, is plainly of no concern — only actions America's self-defense are worthy of condemnation.

This has long been obvious when it comes to such Leftist bastions as AI and Human Rights Watch. AI has now made the obvious explicit.
04/03 06:54 AM

On Regime Change

Chris Matthews is such an idiot ....

The American Regime [Jonah Goldberg]

While researching a piece I'm doing on tyranny and taxation, I found this little diatribe by Chris Matthews:

Well, we`ve got the response to that. Here`s — here`s — you know, this guy is no frail flower, if you will. He doesn`t hide. Here`s what Rush Limbaugh said to "The D.C. Examiner" today. Quote, "Never in my life have I seen a regime like this, governing against the will of the people purposely — purposely. I have never seen the media so supportive of a regime amassing so much power, and I`ve never known so many people who literally fear for the future."

This is to me — I`ll just give you a little editorial (INAUDIBLE) I`ve never seen language like this in the American press, referring to an elected representative government, elected in a totally fair, democratic, American election — we will have another one in November, we`ll have another one for president in a couple years — fair, free, and wonderful democracy we have in this country. And this guy, this walrus under water, makes fun of this administration, calling it a "regime." We know that word, "regime." It was used by recent presidents (INAUDIBLE) by George Bush, "regime change." You go to war with regimes. Regimes are tyrannies. They`re juntas. They`re military coups. The use of the word "regime" in American political parlance is unacceptable, and someone should tell the walrus to stop using it.

Me: Let me say up front, I partially agree with Matthews. I don't like this "regime" talk. He's wrong when he says that regime only refers tyrannical juntas and the like. A regime is a larger concept that means not just an administration or "government" in the parliamentary sense, but a system of government itself. That's why the "First Things" controversy was such a big deal. A number of conservatives raised the question of whether the American regime was losing legitimacy. I don't want to revisit that old argument. But the point is I don't think we should use "regime" as interchangeable with "administration" or anything like that. Administrations come and go, the American regime has endured.

But Matthews is entirely and typically full of it when he suggests that Rush Limbaugh is the first or even a particularly egregious abuser of the term. It's clear that Rush is (mis)using the term to simply refer to the Obama-Pelosi administration, as it were. And his larger point is entirely valid.

But here's the thing: the Democratic Party, almost in toto, used this "regime" formulation for most of the Bush presidency. I don't have time to go look, but I would be shocked if Matthews himself didn't use "regime change" more than once in precisely the way he's now condemning. As the Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry talked about "regime change" starting at home (which I objected to at the time on similar grounds). If Matthews missed this, and countless other examples, he should be officially disqualified as a serious political observer.

Update: A few readers object that I'm unfair to Rush because he was merely being satirical. A lot of readers meanwhile, think I'm being unfair to reality by suggesting that Chris Matthews was ever a serious political observer.
04/03 01:17 PM


Matthews And "Regime Change" Cont'd [Jonah Goldberg]

Byron's got the goods:

Matthews didn't stop there. "I never heard the word 'regime,' before, have you?" he said to NBC's Chuck Todd. "I don't even think Joe McCarthy ever called this government a 'regime.'"
It appears that Matthews has suffered a major memory loss. I don't have the facilities to search for every utterance of Joe McCarthy, but a look at more recent times reveals many, many, many examples of the phrase "Bush regime." In fact, a search of the Nexis database for "Bush regime" yields 6,769 examples from January 20, 2001 to the present.

It was used 16 times in the New York Times, beginning with an April 4, 2001 column by Maureen Dowd — who wrote, "Seventy-five days into the Bush regime and I'm a wreck" — and ending with a March 6, 2009 editorial denouncing the "frightening legal claim advanced by the Bush regime to justify holding [accused terrorist Ali al-Marri]."

"Bush regime" was used 24 times in the Washington Post, beginning with a January 22, 2001 profile of Marshall Wittmann by Howard Kurtz — who noted that Wittmann served as "a Health and Human Services deputy assistant secretary in the first Bush regime" — and ending with an October 6, 2009 column by Dana Milbank which quoted far-left antiwar protester Medea Benjamin questioning whether the Obama administration "looks very different from the Bush regime."

Perhaps Matthews missed all of those references. If he did, he still might have heard the phrase the many times it was uttered on his own network, MSNBC. For example, on January 8 of this year, Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak said that, "In George Bush's regime, only one million jobs had been created…" On August 21, 2009, MSNBC's Ed Schultz referred to something that happened in 2006, when "the Bush regime was still in power." On October 8, 2007, Democratic strategist Steve McMahon said that "the middle class has not fared quite as well under Bush regime as…" On August 10, 2007, MSNBC played a clip of anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan referring to "the people of Iraq and Afghanistan that have been tragically harmed by the Bush regime." On September 21, 2006, a guest referred to liberals "expressing their dissatisfaction with the Bush regime." On July 7, 2004, Ralph Nader — appearing with Matthews on "Hardball" — discussed how he would "take apart the Bush regime." On May 26, 2003, Joe Scarborough noted a left-wing website that "has published a deck of Bush regime playing cards." A September 26, 2002 program featured a viewer email that said, "The Bush regime rhetoric gets goofier and more desperate every day."

Finally — you knew this was coming — on June 14, 2002, Chris Matthews himself introduced a panel discussion about a letter signed by many prominent leftists condemning the Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror. "Let's go to the Reverend Al Sharpton," Matthews said. "Reverend Sharpton, what do you make of this letter and this panoply of the left condemning the Bush regime?"

Oops. Perhaps Joe McCarthy never called the U.S. government a regime, but Chris Matthews did.

And a lot of other people did, too. So now we are supposed to believe him when he expresses disgust at Rush Limbaugh doing the same?

04/04 09:31 AM

Crying Wolf: Democrats & the Fake Racial Hate Crime Remarks



The Democrats' Fake Hate Crime [Mark Steyn]

Jonah mentioned this the other day in his column, but the tireless Andrew Breitbart returns to the theme, to devastating effect.

On March 20th, something truly extraordinary happened. On the eve of the health care vote, a group of black Democrat Congressmen (eschewing the private tunnels they usually use to cross from their offices to the Capitol) chose to walk en masse through a crowd of protesters, confident that the knuckledragging Tea Party goons they and their media pals have reviled for a year now would respond with racial epithets.

And then, when the crowd didn't, the black Congressmen made it up anyway. Representative Andre Carson (Democrat, Indiana) insisted he heard the N-word 15 times. He's either suffering from the same condition as that Guam-flipper from Georgia, or he's a liar. At a scene packed not only with crews from the Dem poodle media but with a gazillion cellphone cameras, not one single N-word has been caught on audio. (By contrast, see my post yesterday for how easy it is to get it on tape when real epithets are flying.)

I disagree with John Lewis (Democrat, Georgia) politically but I have always respected him as a genuine civil rights warrior. And I feel slightly queasy at the thought that he would dishonor both the movement and his own part in it for the cheapest of partisan points - in the same way I would be disgusted by a Holocaust survivor painting a swastika on his own door and blaming it on his next-door neighbor over a boundary dispute.

But that's what the Democratic Party has been reduced to - faking hate crimes as pathetically as any lonely, mentally ill college student. Congressmen Carson, Lewis, Cleaver and the rest have turned themselves into the Congressional equivalent of the Duke University stripper. Except that they're not some penniless loser but a group of important, influential lifetime legislators enjoying all the privileges and perquisites of power, and in all probability acting at the behest of the Democrat leadership.

Isn't that what societies with functioning media used to call "a story"?

Apparently not. As they did at Duke, the brain-dead press went along with it - and so, predictably enough, did much of the Republican leadership.

04/03 01:50 PM