The NYT apparently couldn’t go on ignoring one of their usual “ignore this because it casts a liberal administration in a bad light” stories, so…

From Political Outcast:

New York Times Wakes Up, Admits U.S. Weapons Went to Islamists

It’s hard for most people to deny what’s right in front of them.

That hasn’t kept the New York Times from trying.

Months after all us “wingnut conservatives” realized the Obama Administration was arming Islamists in North Africa and the Middle East, the New York Times has finally run a story about U.S. weapons being sent to Libyan fighters and winding up in Islamist hands.

Don’t get too excited, though. It doesn’t mean the NYT has finally returned to the old-fashioned notion of journalism, asking questions and being the public’s government watchdog.

The NYT only goes so far as to admit that the Administration “secretly” approved giving arms to Libyans in Qatar and then became “worried” that some weapons were being put in Islamist hands by the Qataris.

The article blames the Qataris and a lack of CIA personnel overseeing the program for the “wrong” people being armed.

It also insists there’s no evidence that any of the U.S. weapons were involved in the murders of the ambassador and other U.S. personnel in Benghazi, Libya.

SNIP!

The money and weapons from Qatar, which we gave them. … First, it was a video’s fault, then it was Hillary Clinton’s fault, then it was everyone in the D.C. food chain’s fault, now it’s some unnamed Qataris’ fault. The buck certainly does not stop anywhere near this Oval Office, does it?

LOL!!!!

The entire piece is here.

I recall our president’s elation at the outset of the so-called Arab Spring, when he was outspoken in his desire to see the likes of Mubarak being replaced by an Egyptian statesman who would promote democracy in the land of the pyramids and the Sphinx.

Now that an Islamist has taken over and declared himself dictator — the first step in establishing a fanatical, hardcore, Talibanic fundamentalist Islamic state whose dogmas and general output would be good for neither the west nor Israel — there doesn’t appear to be much comment emerging from the same White House.

From The Foundry

Morsi has set Egypt on a troubling new foreign policy course since coming to power in June. His government has distanced itself from Washington while cozying up to China, improving relations with Iran, and violating its peace treaty with Israel.

He has escalated Egypt’s cooperation with Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood that controls Gaza and remains adamantly committed to Israel’s destruction. Morsi’s Islamist-dominated government has cracked down on Egypt’s media and has announced that Egyptian journalists will be put on trial for “insults” to the president. Morsi’s government is systematically clamping down on Egyptians’ political, social, and cultural freedoms. Yet the Obama Administration naively continues to court it as a partner.

Morsi may calculate that his help in administering Band-Aids to the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict will make the United States and others who give aid to Egypt think twice before trying to reverse his power grab.

The Obama Administration was working on an aid package to Egypt that includes forgiving approximately $1 billion of Egypt’s debt to the United States. This is in addition to about $1.5 billion in annual U.S. foreign aid.

When protesters tore down the American flag at the U.S. embassy in Cairo on September 11, Morsi’s public reaction was nonchalant. Instead of immediately denouncing the attack and taking action to upgrade security around the embassy—as Libyan and Yemeni leaders have done after similar events—Morsi waited a day before casually issuing a mild rebuke to the rioters via Facebook.

The Obama Administration should leverage U.S. aid to pressure the Egyptian leader to respect the rule of law, abide by the decisions of Egypt’s courts, and abandon his drive for absolute power. Morsi has exploited external crises in the past to advance his own ambitions. In August, he used a Sinai terrorist attack that killed Egyptian soldiers as a pretext to purge the Egyptian army of its top Mubarak-era holdovers. Now he has done the same with the judiciary….

Barack Hussein Obama, where are you? Hiding under the what???? Oh, you’re not hiding, you’re down on your knees, derrier in the air on your prayer rug, thanking Allah for another Islamist victory?

It figures….

It’s difficult to know where to begin here, perhaps the following should comprise more than one post, but we’ll put it all together since it basically sums out to the relationship between “our” president, the Muslim Brotherhood and their associates and the threat so-called “radical” Islam poses to both the United States and the rest of the civilized world.

From the Investigative Project on Terrorism, a brief interview with Steven Emerson:

From the lips of Barack Obama to YouTube video:

From Freedom Outpost:

As world leaders gather at the United Nations building in New York, one can expect the… expected. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a turn at the podium on Monday and wasted no time blasting Israel and saying the country would be “eliminated.” Israeli representatives walked out of the speech, but what about the Americans?

As reported by Reuters, “Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday Israel has no roots in the Middle East and would be ‘eliminated,’ ignoring a U.N. warning to avoid incendiary rhetoric ahead of the annual General Assembly session.”

Ahmadinejad also said he did not take seriously the threat that Israel could launch a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, denied sending arms to Syria, and alluded to Iran’s threats to the life of British author Salman Rushdie.

The United States quickly dismissed the Iranian president’s comments as “disgusting, offensive and outrageous.”

Isn’t that what Barack Obama and his administration said about the Internet video that they blamed for initially causing the death of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens while doing little else to protect him?

Just how outraged were U.S. representatives? Not enough to walk out of the speech in protest. As reported by Breitbart.com, as Israeli envoy Ron Prosor left Ahmadinejad’s speech in protest, the U.S. delegation hung around to listen.

Emphasis mine.

Of course the U.S. Delegation, part of Obama’s State Department
hung around to listen. After all, they have to be polite to kindred spirits.

too bad Barack Obama thought it was more important to be on The View than to be in New York with other world leaders. There are real issues going on around the world, Mr. President. Maybe you should be involved.

Of course he should.

Also of course, there’s this…

It seems that even if there were no other reason Barack Hussein Obama is so pro-Islamist, his indebtedness to one Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal might have tipped the scales, though we doubt it: Being as he is so anti-U.S. Constitution, he might also have sought out Islam because, even more than communism, it is the direct antithesis to the freedoms made available through the tenets of that great document.

The boost from the weed Al-Waleed bin Talal was probably just icing on the cake.

I suppose Obama & Co. believe that dhimmi dollars are tax money well spent.

Obama Pays For Apology Ads In Pakistan With Taxpayer Dollars

The Obama administration is now running “apology” ads in Pakistan. The ads include both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama apologizing for an obscure YouTube video that is blocked in Pakistan.

Fox News reports,

The television ads in Pakistan feature clips of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during press appearances in Washington in which they condemned the video. Their words were subtitled in Urdu.

“We absolutely reject its content and message,” said Clinton in the advertisement.

A caption on the ad reads: “Paid Content.”

The advertisements end with the seal of the American Embassy in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

Knowing as we do that all this plays right into the hands of the Islamists who seek to dim down non-Muslim aawareness of their goals for a global caliphate, complete with the death or subjugation of all us infidels, we have to wonder how it is that the president and his merry lefties, all of whom are supposedly intelligent people who are well briefed on goings-on in the world, can be so ignorant.

There’s no other explanation than ignorance, at least none that could define their actions as anything other than wilful treason.

At our expense, even…

Yes, taxpayers pick up the bill for an otherwise useless waste of money.

.Read the rest of the article

Nothing like having a President who is completely unqualified to protect and defend us against our enemies. No, nothing like it.

…Bargisi isn’t sure yet what, if any, relationship the revolutionary toughs have with the Islamists. “It was organized by the jihadis, like Zawahiri’s brother. But that’s not who’s dominating the crowd right now. This Salafi guy I know comes over to fix stuff in my house. He’s a carpenter. He says, ‘Why care about this movie anyway? Have these people watched every movie ever made? I am quite sure this happens often. What’s new? America sucks, nothing new.’”

But to hear the media talk, it’s all Romney’s fault for talking out of turn. Melanie Phillips though, has another idea: what people are witnessing is a policy failure.

The Arab Winter has not brought forth democracy but unleashed anarchy and religious fanaticism, with Islamic mobs hitherto kept under control by Gaddafi and Mubarak now empowered, strengthened and rampaging out of control throughout the region.

We know who are the real guilty men here. Even now, Obama is stroking the enemies of the west while kicking its allies in the crutch. “Too busy” to see Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu when he comes to Washington later this month to beg for American help in preventing Iran from obtaining the nuclear weapons which it will use to achieve its declared aim of wiping Israel from the face of the earth, Obama will nevertheless meet Morsi, who has so far issued only qualified regret for the storming of the US embassy in Cairo, demanded that the US government take action against the maker of the anti-Islamic film — and who last spring released from an Egyptian prison Mohammed Zawahiri, brother of al Qaeda’s current leader and who led the mob who stormed the Cairo embassy this week.

SNIP!

…But even NBC’s foreign correspondent in Egypt is scratching his head over an Obama pronouncement that Egypt is “not an ally or an enemy.”

I almost had to sit down when I heard that. For the last forty years, the United States has had two main allies in the Middle East — Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the other ally in the Middle East being Israel. For the President to come out and say, well, he’s not exactly sure if Egypt is an ally any more but it’s not an enemy, that is a significant change in the perspective of Washington toward this country, the biggest country in the Arab world. It makes one wonder, well, was it worth it? Was it worth supporting the Arab Spring, supporting the demonstrations here in Tahrir Square, when now in Tahrir Square there are clashes going on behind me right in front of the US embassy?

That’s because Romney “shoots first and asks questions later.” But the NBC correspondent left out the best part. President Obama may not know who his allies are in the region at all. He’s pulled out of Iraq and refused to stand up to Iran. And the way things are going, it is increasingly unclear whether he’s sure that Israel — that other main ally in the region — is an “ally or enemy” either. The president has achieved the remarkable (possibly the historic) attainment of getting both the Islamic world and Israel mad at his policies. James Lewis at American Thinker tries to make sense of it.

In Egypt, Coptic Christian churches have been burned, and priests killed. Egyptian tanks — US-made main battle tanks — have been sent into the Sinai Desert near the Israeli border. Turkey is now run by a neo-Ottoman gang of thugs. Insanity is running amok again, and the New York Times can’t see anything wrong. But that’s the New York Times for you.

Obama has just publicly refused to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu while he is in our country attending the UN General Assembly. Too busy, says our hero. It’s too hard to schedule.

The Democratic Convention surrendered to American Muslims with an elaborate prayer meeting, while dropping God and Jerusalem from their official platform. American Jews are fast losing power and influence, and radical Muslims are bringing Shari’a to America. You can see it happening.

Most American Jews are still brain-locked, because they are liberals. Half of American Jews will still vote for Obama rather than admit they were wrong — disastrously wrong — about liberalism ever since the radicals took over in 1968.

Obama’s surrender signals are understood all over the world, except at home.

“Obama’s surrender signals are understood all over the world, except at home.” That is where Lewis gets it wrong. The surrender signals aren’t understood abroad either because the president is surrendering to everybody so indiscriminately that he’s got everyone confused. The very same chief executive who sends letters of condolence to the families of deceased SEALs with a form letter and an electric pen is engaged in the same promiscuous white-flag waving everywhere he goes. The message is: “To whom it may concern: I give up. I confess to Romney’s guilt and express regret for everything he has done in advance. Yours, the once-in-a-generation president.”

It’s not like such a “brilliant” scholar as himself, our president, isn’t aware that we’ve been at war with Islam since Jefferson’s time.

In March 1785, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to London to negotiate with Tripoli’s envoy, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman (or Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja). Upon inquiring “concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury”, the ambassador replied:

It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise.

On the other hand, President Barack Hussein doesn’t seem to care much, one way or the other, if his lack of attendance at those pesky intelligence briefings POTUSes are expected to have daily is any indication.

How long had it been since President Obama attended his daily intelligence meeting in the lead-up to the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Egypt and Libya? After all, our adversaries are known to use the anniversary of 9/11 to target the United States. According to the public schedule of the president, the last time the Obama attended his daily intelligence meeting was Sept. 5 — a week before Islamist radicals stormed our embassy in Cairo and terrorists killed our ambassador to Tripoli. The president was scheduled to hold the intelligence meeting at 10:50 a.m. Wednesday, the day after the attacks, but it was canceled so that he could comfort grieving employees at the State Department — as well he should. But instead of rescheduling the intelligence briefing for later in the day, Obama apparently chose to skip it altogether and attend a Las Vegas fundraiser for his re-election campaign. One day after a terrorist attack.

Oh, wait a minute, that’s right! Campaigning to get reelected is definitely more important than some piddling duty like keeping the country and Americans abroad, including those serving U.S. (we, the people’s) interests overseas safe?

This is not to say, of course, that Misseur Obama doesn’t have his priorities straight in some areas.

The filmmaker of the anti-Islam film lives in the United States. If this is true, then why is our government tracking down any filmmaker for any reason? Let’s rehearse the First Amendment for our government officials:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

In addition to protecting “the free exercise of religion,” even if it’s one religion criticizing another religion, the First Amendment also prohibits our national government from interfering with speech and the press.

Every day in America people attack worldviews they don’t agree with. Some do it with factual statements and reasoned argumentation, and others try to make their case with satire and ridicule. The First Amendment was put into place to protect people from tyrants who would use their power to prohibit speech that was critical of the way the governed.

SNIP!

There is nothing criminal in producing a film critical of Islam. The real criminals are the ones who killed four United States citizens on United States soil. Our embassies are an extension of the United States. If people attack an embassy, they attack the United States.

Not only has our government attacked the filmmaker but the media, who are protected by the First Amendment have also gotten into the act. For example,

“ABC journalist Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday compared the rioting and murder that followed Middle Eastern anger over an anti-Islamic movie to yelling ‘fire in a crowded theater.’ Regarding filmmaker Sam Bacile and the killing of U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens in Libya, Amanpour derided, ‘So, now, one has to, really, try to figure out the extremists in this country and the extremists out there who are using this and whipping up hatred.’”

Crying “fire” in a crowded theater is not about inciting people to violence and rioting. No one’s going to shoot up the place if someone shouts “fire.” It’s the trampling that might take place as people race for the exits. The analogy is false.

Moving on, what about a general rehashment of the incumbent administration’s Middle East policy in general?

Obama’s Mideast Policy? What policy?

From Heritage’s The Foundry:

The breaking news keeps breaking when it comes to revelations surrounding the attacks and protests aimed at U.S. embassies going on throughout the Islamic world. Protests have spread to at least eight countries. Reports indicate that four people have been arrested relating to the killing of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff there. That offers at least the promise of getting more information about the deliberate attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., government authorities identified the man behind the controversial film purported as the cause for the protests as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Californian with a shadowy past including many aliases and a criminal record.

Unlike a Brad Thor novel, however, we can’t just jump to the end of the story to find out what this all means for American policy in this troubled part of the world.

But (again, unlike a Brad Thor novel) without cheating we can predict how the story is going to end—because the result of the President’s Middle East policies was predictable from the start.

Obama’s strategy for this part of the world started out much the way Jimmy Carter’s did—with acts of conciliation and accommodation. The President narrowly focused his priorities on three objectives: 1) withdrawing from Iraq as quickly as possible; 2) engaging with Syria and Iran; and 3) transforming the U.S. into a neutral party—to negotiate peace between Palestine and Israel.

For starters, we know that all three of those objectives have met with abject failure.

Iraq was not only left a shaky state; it has become a shaky friend—defying U.S. requests to block Iranian flights that are rearming the Syrian military so they can kill more Syrian civilians.

After wasting three years of trying to find common ground with the totalitarian regimes in Syria and Iran, even the White House has acknowledged failure, calling for the government in Damascus to step down and asking for more sanctions on Tehran.

Finally, the peace process has collapsed—a blessing in disguise, because if Obama succeeded in creating a Palestinian state today, it would look an awful lot like the Syrian regime the rest of the region is trying to bring down—a corrupt state that oppresses its own people, a state sponsor of terrorism, and a tool of Iran.

The President’s policy, however, has been more than unsuccessful—the “Obama doctrine” has taken the cause of protecting U.S. interests in the region backward—because it relied on a self-imposed agenda of self-weakening. It included distancing the U.S. from Israel and playing politics with the U.S. defense budget—where even his own officials acknowledge that if the automatic cuts required under the Budget Control Act of 2011 go into effect, they will undermine the readiness and reduce the capabilities of the armed forces.

SNIP!

The breaking news keeps breaking when it comes to revelations surrounding the attacks and protests aimed at U.S. embassies going on throughout the Islamic world. Protests have spread to at least eight countries. Reports indicate that four people have been arrested relating to the killing of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff there. That offers at least the promise of getting more information about the deliberate attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., government authorities identified the man behind the controversial film purported as the cause for the protests as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Californian with a shadowy past including many aliases and a criminal record.

Unlike a Brad Thor novel, however, we can’t just jump to the end of the story to find out what this all means for American policy in this troubled part of the world.

But (again, unlike a Brad Thor novel) without cheating we can predict how the story is going to end—because the result of the President’s Middle East policies was predictable from the start.

Obama’s strategy for this part of the world started out much the way Jimmy Carter’s did—with acts of conciliation and accommodation. The President narrowly focused his priorities on three objectives: 1) withdrawing from Iraq as quickly as possible; 2) engaging with Syria and Iran; and 3) transforming the U.S. into a neutral party—to negotiate peace between Palestine and Israel.

For starters, we know that all three of those objectives have met with abject failure.

Iraq was not only left a shaky state; it has become a shaky friend—defying U.S. requests to block Iranian flights that are rearming the Syrian military so they can kill more Syrian civilians.

After wasting three years of trying to find common ground with the totalitarian regimes in Syria and Iran, even the White House has acknowledged failure, calling for the government in Damascus to step down and asking for more sanctions on Tehran.

Finally, the peace process has collapsed—a blessing in disguise, because if Obama succeeded in creating a Palestinian state today, it would look an awful lot like the Syrian regime the rest of the region is trying to bring down—a corrupt state that oppresses its own people, a state sponsor of terrorism, and a tool of Iran.

The President’s policy, however, has been more than unsuccessful—the “Obama doctrine” has taken the cause of protecting U.S. interests in the region backward—because it relied on a self-imposed agenda of self-weakening. It included distancing the U.S. from Israel and playing politics with the U.S. defense budget—where even his own officials acknowledge that if the automatic cuts required under the Budget Control Act of 2011 go into effect, they will undermine the readiness and reduce the capabilities of the armed forces.

It’s time for a different course.

Read On…

Obama, our enemies’ best friend…

*********UPDATE***********

In the “Chickens Coming Home To Roost” Department, Obama’s Chamberlainian policies toward the Islamofascists seem to getting him/us exactly where such kow-towing always gets one when done with such people, as the Muslims show their true colors.

When, if ever, will this president learn?

At least, that’s what it sounds like.

From The Israel Project:

Jerusalem, April 20 — A top Hamas official said the terrorist group is willing to consider a lasting ceasefire with Israel but still rejects a peace deal with the Jewish state. The ceasefire, or hudna, according to Iran-backed Hamas’ No. 2 leader, Mousa Abu Marzouk, would be similar to arrangements between Israel and Syria and Israel and Lebanon.

“Let’s establish a relationship between the two states in the historic Palestinian land as a hudna between both sides,” Marzouk said during a wide-ranging, two-day interview with The Forward newspaper. “It’s better than war and better than the continuous resistance against the occupation.”
But that doesn’t mean Hamas plans to soften its stance on its position toward Israel.

“We will not recognize Israel as a state,” he said emphatically. “It will be like the relationship between Lebanon and Israel or Syria and Israel.” Neither, according to the interview, did Marzouk say Hamas planned to renounce terrorism or live by previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements – principles set forth by the Middle East Quartet. The Quartet comprises the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia.

Neither, Marzouk said, would he be willing to negotiate with Israel for the ceasefire. And any changes in Hamas’ stance toward Israel, Marzouk said, would have to be approved in a referendum that includes votes by Palestinian refugees worldwide.

In other words, “we may stop the terrorism, or we may not, and if we do, it’ll only be until such time as we decide to start doing so again.”

How Palestinian of them!

Today’s Morning Bell from Heritage opines spotly on (spot-on-ly? On spotly? Whatever! :-)) regarding Obama’s foreign policy ala Middle East, aptly titling the piece Middle east Crumbles Around Obama’s Foreign Policy.

Thousands are dead in Syria, with more blood spilled each day. Iran is within arm’s reach of a nuclear weapon, threatening Israel’s very existence. And in Egypt, 19 Americans are banned from leaving the country, making them veritable hostages in an unfriendly land [1]. All indications are that the Middle East is crumbling, and President Barack Obama’s foreign policy is collapsing right along with it.

First look toward Homs, Syria — ground zero in the 11-month-old uprising against the brutal government of Bashar al-Assad, which is unleashing death upon its people minute by minute and hour by hour. The United Nations estimates that Assad’s regime has killed more than 5,000 anti-government protesters in the last 11 months, with 200 killed [2] on Friday night alone. The Arab League has stationed observers in country, whose mission was to oversee compliance with a peace plan. That failed.

The Obama Administration rushed to the United Nations Security Council and attempted to pass a resolution calling for Assad to step aside. Predictably, China and Russia laid down a veto. On Monday, the United States finally closed the doors to its embassy [3] in Damascus and withdrew the diplomatic staff over continuing security concerns. Meanwhile, intelligence experts are examining the risk of terrorists [4]gaining control of Syria’s weapons stockpiles should the Assad regime fall.

To the east in Iran, the regime’s full-steam-ahead pursuit of nuclear weapons is reaching a crescendo, with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently remarking [5] that the country could build a bomb within one year and have the means for delivering it one or two years later.

Finally, in Egypt, officials there published a list [6] of 43 people, including 19 Americans, accused of interfering in Egypt’s internal politics. They are not allowed to leave the country and could soon be brought to trial on claims that they illegally funded political groups in Egypt’s parliamentary elections. Heritage’s James Phillips explains [1] that “they have become hostages in a much larger struggle: the struggle for freedom in Egypt against an unholy alliance between Egypt’s transitional military government and the Islamist political parties who will soon assume power.”

President Obama and members of his Cabinet tried to reach Egyptian leaders on the matter [7], but in the words of Lorne Craner, head of the pro-democracy organization IRI, “things are getting worse . . . We are all scratching our heads over here. I did two tours at State and one at the [National Security Council]. If the president called someone, something gets worked out.” But as was the case under President Jimmy Carter, the White House appears helpless while Americans are held captive.

None of these crises occurs in a vacuum — except for the vacuum of a cogent U.S. strategy for dealing with these ever-worsening conditions. Since President Obama took office, he has pursued a diplomatic strategy of charm and restraint: attempting to broker peace between Israel and Palestine, engaging with Syria and Iran, and withdrawing from Iraq. Now we are seeing the results.

One gets the impression that our extremely left leaning, “all politics, all the time” president has completely lost control, like any non manager with no experience to that end who has been promoted to a multi-faceted managerial post: He may hold on for awhile, but eventually the job runs away from him and he finds himself way out of his depth.

Now we have all hell breaking loose all over the Middle East with half these so-called “Arab Spring” states almost surely on their ways into a very HOT Extremist Summer as the fanatics take over. Give it a couple more years for those people to get situated over there, then perhaps the liberals that spawned Obama will come to the realization that the whole “democracy” concept is a farce, that those taking over those countries will largely be anti-U.S. and well disposed toward doing some unpleasant things about it.

But I suppose I’m straying a bit.

Read the entire Heritage Foundation article.

From Caroline Glick:

In recent months, a curious argument has surfaced in favor of US President Barack Obama. His supporters argue that Obama’s foreign policy has been a massive success. If he had as much freedom of action on domestic affairs as he has on foreign affairs, they argue, his achievements in all areas would be without peer.

Expressing this view, Karen Finney a former Democratic spokeswoman who often defends the party in the US media told the Huffington Post, “Look at the progress the president can make when he doesn’t have Republicans obstructing him.”

Yeah, sure…

{SNIP!}

The failure of Obama’s foreign policies to date has been nowhere more evident than in the Middle East.

Take Iraq for instance. Obama and his supporters claim that the withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq is one of his great accomplishments. By pulling out, Obama kept his promise to voters to end the war in “a responsible manner.” And as the polling data indicate, most Americans are willing to give him credit for the move.

But the situation on the ground is dangerous and getting worse every day. Earlier this month, just ahead of the departure of the last US forces from Iraq, Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki visited with Obama at the White House. Immediately after he returned home, the Shiite premier began a ruthless campaign against his Sunni coalition partners in a no-holds barred bid to transform the Iraqi government and armed forces into partisan institutions controlled by his Dawa Party.

Forces commanded by Maliki’s son arrested and allegedly tortured several of the Sunni Vice President Tariq al Hashimi’s bodyguards. They forced the guards to implicate Hashimi in terror plots. Maliki subsequently issued an arrest warrant for Hashimi. So too, he issued an arrest warrant for the Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh Mutlaq and fired him without permission from the Iraqi parliament.

Hashimi and Mutlaq are now in hiding in Erbil. Maliki is demanding that the Kurdish regional government extradite them to Baghdad for trial.

Maliki’s actions have driven Sunni leaders in the Sunni provinces of Diyala, Anbar and Salahadin to demand autonomy under Iraq’s federal system. He has responded by deploying loyal forces to the provinces to fight the local militias.

The situation is so explosive that three prominent Sunni leaders, former prime minister Ayad Allawi, who heads the Iraqiya party, Parliament Speaker Osama Nujaifi, and Finance Minister Rafe al-Essawi published an op-ed in the New York Times on Tuesday begging Obama to rein in Maliki in order to prevent Iraq from plunging into civil war.

No doubt these “pleas” will fall on deaf ears as Obama continues to define our troops’ withdrawal from Iraq a master stroke or whatever on his part.

Then there is Egypt. Obama’s decision in February to abandon then president Hosni Mubarak, the US’s most dependable ally in the Arab world in favor of the protesters in Tahrir Square was hailed by his supporters as a victory for democracy and freedom against tyranny. By supporting the protesters against the US ally, Obama argued that he was advancing US interests by showing the Muslim world the US favored the people over their leaders.

Ten months later, the Egyptian people have responded to this populist policy by giving jihadist parties a two-thirds majority in Egypt’s parliamentary elections. For the first time in thirty years, the strategic anchor of US power in the Arab world — the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty — is in danger. Indeed, there is no reason to believe it will survive.

Continuing,

As to Iran, Obama’s policies have brought about a situation where the regime in Teheran does not fear a US military strike on its nuclear installations. Obama’s open opposition to the prospect of an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear installations has similarly convinced the regime that it can proceed without fear in its nuclear project.

Iran’s threat this week to close the Straits of Hormuz in the event that the US imposes an embargo on Iranian oil exports is being widely characterized by the US media as a sign of desperation on the part of the regime. But it is hard to see how this characterization aligns with reality. It is far more appropriate to view Iran’s easy threats as a sign of contempt for Obama and for US power projection under his leadership.

If Iran’s ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons are thwarted, it will be despite Obama, not because of him.

Then there is the so-called peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Due to Obama’s unbridled hostility towards Israel, there is no chance whatsoever that Israel and the PLO will reach a peace deal for the foreseeable future. Instead, Fatah and Hamas have agreed to unify their forces. The only thing standing in the way of a Hamas takeover of the PLO is the US Congress’s threat to cut off US aid to the Palestinian Authority. For his part, Obama has gone out of his way to discredit the Congressional threat by serving as an indefatigable lobbyist for maintaining US financial support for the PA.

Still more…

Of course, the Middle East is not the only region where the deleterious consequences of Obama’s foreign policy are being felt. From Europe, to Africa, to Asia, to Latin America, Obama’s determination to embrace US adversaries like Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez has weakened pro-US forces and strengthened US foes.

Barack Hussein Obama, chimpion of foreign policy.

Read the rest of the column.

From Wesley Pruden today,

Celebrating Easter and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the most important holy day for Christians of all denominations, can be deadly in the Middle East. Reciting a Scripture or humming a hymn could cost your head in Saudi Arabia, and you could risk other highly valued body parts in the similarly benighted ninth-century neighborhoods abounding in the lands of caliphs, imams and ayatollahs.

Beheading is something of the national sport of Saudi Arabia, where the government has scheduled for Friday the gruesome ritual for a man, the father of five, accused of sorcery for “making predictions” in his native Lebanon. (Punditry can be risky there, too.)

Better to take your celebration to Israel, where the government will assist your visit. It’s the difference between Middle East and the cultural West, between the 8th and 21st centuries, between civilized and not-so-civilized. The Israeli guarantee of religious freedom, taken for granted in the nations of the West, is part of what invites hostility and belligerence from Israel’s neighbors.

Ah, yes. The sweet, sweet freedoms found in the Muslim world versus the liberty smothering, murderous, despotic aparthied of Israel. Right, Barack, Joe & Hillary?

Pilgrims proceed under protection today along the Via Dolorosa, believed to be the path that Christ took with His cross to the crucifixion at Calvary, and on to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Many Christians, particularly Roman Catholics, believe Christ was buried on the site three days before the Resurrection. Christians and everyone else are welcome to join the procession. Unless a suicide bomber or other evil-doer slips through security, no one will be harmed. The Israeli government guarantees it.

The Israeli Declaration of Independence, adopted in 1948, declares Israel to be a Jewish state, but further declares that the nation “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants, irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions.” It’s a promise bereft of Jeffersonian eloquence, but it’s plain and to the point.

My emphasis there. Try and find anything like that on the “Arab street.”

Moshe Dayan, the defense minister who led the Israelis to victory in the Six-Day War, was clear about religious tolerance and protection in a radio broadcast the morning Jerusalem was captured. “This morning,” he said, “the Israel Defense Force liberated Jerusalem. We have united Jerusalem, the divided capital of Israel. We have returned the holiest of our holy places, never to part from it again. To our Arab neighbors we extend, also at this hour - and with added emphasis ‘at this hour’ - our hand in peace. And to our Christian and Muslim fellow citizens, we solemnly promise full religious freedom and rights.”

And in a column today from Carolyn Glick that is, as always, right to the point:

There is an element of irony in the current crisis of relations between the Obama administration and Israel. On the one hand, although US President Barack Obama and his advisors deny there is anything wrong with US-Israel relations today, it is easy to understand why no one believes them.

On the other hand on most issues, there is substantive continuity between Obama’s Middle East policies and those his immediate predecessor George W. Bush adopted during his second term in office.

Yet, whereas Israelis viewed Bush as Israel’s greatest friend in the White House, they view Obama as the most anti-Israel US president ever. This contradiction requires us to consider two issues. First, why are relations with the US now steeped in crisis? And second, taking a page out of Obama’s White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel’s playbook, how can Israel make sure not to let this crisis go to waste?

The reason relations are so bad of course is because Obama has opted to attack Israel and its supporters. In the space of the past ten days alone, Israel has been subject to three malicious blows courtesy of Obama and his advisors. First, during his visit to the White House last Tuesday, Obama treated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu like a two-bit potentate. Rather than respectfully disagree with the elected leader of a key US ally, Obama walked out in the middle of their meeting to dine with his family and left the unfed Netanyahu to meditate on his grave offense of not agreeing to give up Israel’s capital city as a precondition for indirect, US-orchestrated negotiations with an unelected, unpopular Palestinian leadership that supports terrorism and denies Israel’s right to exist. Next, there was the somewhat anodyne — if substantively incorrect — written testimony by US Army General David Petreaus to the Senate about the impact of the Arab world’s refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist on US-Arab relations. In the event, the administration deliberately distorted Petreaus’s testimony to lend the impression that the most respected serving US military commander blames Israel for the deaths of US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. After Petreaus rejected that impression, his boss Defense Secretary Robert Gates repeated the false and insulting allegation against Israel in his own name.

Finally there is was the report this week in Politico in which nameless administration sources accused National Security Council member Denis Ross of “dual loyalties.” Ross of course has won fame for his career of pressuring successive Israeli governments into giving unreciprocated concessions to Palestinian terrorists. Still, in the view of his indignant opponents in the Obama White House, due to his insufficient hostility to the Israeli government, Ross is a traitor. If Ross wants to be treated like a real American, he needs to join Obama in his open bid to overthrow the elected government of Israel.

Read the rest here.

The differences between Islam’s definition of “civilized” and the western interpretation of same are 180 degrees apart, and when you examine these differences from the point of view of even one iota of decency, the Muslims come out looking pretty evil while the rest of us emerge looking good.

Despite the glaring obviousness of this concept, Barack Hussein and his White House junta choose to attack Israel while all but worshipping the terrorist spawning fascism of Islam. No matter how they attempt to justify it, Obama, Biden and Clinton are profoundly transparent where the reality of their positions are concerned: They are wrongly supporting our enemies against our only true ally in the Middle East because they perceive Arab dictatorships and terrorism as being more in line with their own mindsets.

After all, the submission without quarter expected of a good Muslim is the same attitude they secretly wish they could provoke towards themselves among the American people, good facists that they are.

I’m not going to say much here, I’ll just let this speak for itself.

On Tuesday (Oct. 27), Iran-backed Hezbollah based in southern Lebanon fired a Katyusha rocket into Israel. Lebanese and United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) discovered four more rockets close to the launch site, three of which were ready in launching position. The rocket launched on Oct. 27 was the ninth one launched into Israel since its defensive war again Hezbollah in 2006.[1]

Iran is Hezbollah’s primary source for arms, funding and training.[2] It procures advanced anti-tank missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, artillery rockets and other weapons on behalf of Hezbollah and provides the terrorist group with approximately $200 million annually. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has also taken a leading role in training Hezbollah operatives and approximately 3,000 Hezbollah terrorists trained in Iranian military camps.[3]

Ambassador Gabriela Shalev, Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations, on Oct. 14 delivered remarks to the UN Security Council underscoring the threat of Hezbollah. Her comments came two days after the explosion in Lebanon of a Hezbollah operative’s home, believed to have been serving as an arms storage facility.

“The Hizbullah terrorist organization continues to receive deadly weapons from its sponsors, members of this organization. At the same time, Hizbullah builds a military infrastructure in the midst of the civilian population south of the Litani River. Its operatives and affiliated civilians openly threaten UNIFIL, obstructing it from discharging its mandate,” Shalev said. “Hizbullah’s violations are the greatest obstacle to the implementation of resolution 1701…Southern Lebanon…is occupied by terrorism. Hizbullah terrorism.”

Hezbollah re-armed itself in southern Lebanon after the 2006 war, building bunkers, creating weapons caches and conducting paramilitary exercises south of the Litani River. The terrorist group also stockpiled more than 40,000 artillery rockets. These activities are in clear violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which called for Hezbollah’s disarmament.[4]

UN Security Council resolution 1701 states:[5]
• That there be no armed groups in Lebanon apart from the Lebanese army. This includes Hezbollah.

• That no arms be supplied to any Lebanese militia or armed group other than the Lebanese army. This is to be enforced by UNIFIL.

• That Hezbollah withdraw all personnel, weapons and other assets from the territory between the Israel-Lebanon border (Blue Line) up to the Litani River.

Timeline: Hezbollah’s Recent Violations of UN Security Council Resolution 1701

2009
• Oct. 27-28: A Katyusha rocket is fired from southern Lebanon and lands close to the Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona. The next day, UNIFIL and Lebanese forces go to the site from where the rocket are fired and find four more rockets, three of which were ready to be fired.[6]

• Oct. 12: An explosion occurs at the house of Hezbollah operative Sayid Issa, in the village of Tair Filsay in southern Lebanon. The house served as a weapons cache and the explosion injured several Lebanese civilians as well as the owner of the house. This arm cache was located in a civilian area south of the Litani River, a clear violation of resolution 1701.[7]

• Sept. 11: 122mm rockets are fired from near the town of Qulaylah in southern Lebanon and land in an open field in northern Israel. The organization Ziad al-Jarrah of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades claims responsibility for the attack.[8]

• July 14: An explosion occurs in an abandoned building in Khirbet Silim, a village in southern Lebanon. The size of the explosion indicates that the building was being used as an arms depot. Following the explosion, Hezbollah operatives surrounded the building and refused to let UNIFIL forces enter, while trucks cleared away the remaining weapons and debris. Only after Hezbollah cleared most of the weapons was UNIFIL allowed to enter, and was still able to discover weapons remains.[9]

• April 13: Suspects tied to a Hezbollah cell plotting attacks on Egyptian soil admitted to weapons smuggling across the border to Hamas militants. Several of the suspects smuggled weapons from Lebanese intermediaries to terrorists in the Gaza Strip.[10]

• Feb. 21: A Katyusha rocket is fired from Lebanon landed next to a house in northern Israel, injuring three civilians.[11]

• Jan. 14: Hezbollah uses proxy Palestinian militant groups to launch two Katyusha rockets from southern Lebanon into northern Israel.[12]

In view of the above, only a profound knucklehead or a liar with an anti-Israel politcal agenda could accuse the Israeli Defense Force of being “disproportionate” or using “overkill” when they respond to this type of aggression.

Nuff said.