September 14, 2012

The Unwitting Obama, Terrorism’s “Ace in the Hole”

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?

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