This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Foreign Policy

  • Secret torture memos not juicy enough for Left

    Since the torture stories contained in those secret Bush memos never materialized, the Left is twisting itself into knots to just make stuff up now. Like this “article” from Raw Story;

    Allow me to summarize;

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  • Terrorist Chavez meets the black ignoramus

    The ignoramus meets the terrorist
    The ignoramus meets the terrorist

    Look at these two buddies clasping hands as if they’re old friends. I guess Obama forgot already that Hugo called him an ignoramus and refers to him as “the black man”, something that would probably get me a Secret Service visit if I said it. It was less than a month ago that Chavez called President Obama an ignoramus for mentioning that Chavez exports terrorism;


    That’s how we treat tin pot dictators these days, though. It’s been proven that this sort of treatment never comes back to bite us in the ass, hasn’t it? Look at the time we helped Saddam…oh, never mind. And when we gave the Canal to Panama…forget I said that. OK, all the help we supplied Stalin during WWII…oh, wait. Well, we helped the Afghans boot the Soviets…damn. Hmmm, well there must be an incident that proves stroking our enemy paid off. Isn’t there?
    Well, I’m sure Chavez will rethink his support of regional terrorist groups after that dap with Obama. If he doesn’t, Obama can do what seems to be the popular solution in Latin America among it’s leaders these days; go on a hunger strike like Chavez’ acolyte Evo Morales, the cocaine farmer turned President of Bolivia;

    Or Obama could hold his breath and stomp his feet – Chavez understands that, too.

    I guess we’ve gone from “You’re either with or you’re with the terrorists” to “You’re either with us or whatever.”

  • Obama’s Bill Clinton moment

    Can you imagine George W. Bush allowing a US Navy destroyer to be held at bay by a few scrawny Somalians stranded in an unfueled lifeboat hundreds of miles from shore? No, me either. Only a Democrat Administration would think that they can negotiate with a bunch of superstitious stone-age terrorists who think they’re going to die the minute their hostage is released. After all, they reneged on their deal with the crew of the Maersk Alabama in the prisoner exchange that was supposed to take place before the Navy arrived. Why should they expect different treatment from our side?

    I flashed on a similar situation over 15 years ago when in the Fall of 1994, the Haitian generals held an entire nation hostage. At one point, President Clinton dispatched warships to Port-au-Prince. Shirtless and shoeless Haitian supporters of the generals stood on the docks shouted and waved their machetes at the hulking gray ships. Eventually, the Navy didn’t dock and left the port. The Haitians immediately celebrated a great victory over the United States military.

    Clinton became so frustrated that he sent Jimmy Carter to straighten things out – and the 82d Airborne Division orbited Pope Air Force Base waiting for the word to go. Instead of using his military, Clinton paid US taxpayer dollars to the generals to leave Haiti – and Haiti is a tropical paradise and tourist destination today because of it. Huh? It’s not? Nothing has changed? How could I have missed that?

    Halfway around the world, with their compadres streaming towards the tiny lifeboat with it’s single hostage, shirtless and shoeless pirates are holding off the US Navy. For three days now, the US has been negotiating and time is running short before more ships with more hostages arrive to complicate the whole situation.

    Why doesn’t Obama just drop Jimmy Carter into the lifeboat and exchange him for Captain Phillips? That’d solve two problems at once.

  • Iran agrees with Obama’s no-nukes policy

    On Sunday, President Obama announced plans to unilaterally disarm our nuclear arsenal. He’ll be pleased to know that his cohorts in Iran think we should disarm, too. (Reuters link)

    “We, like the rest of the world community, are awaiting a world free of nuclear arms,” [Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan] Qashqavi said.

    “Our expectation from the U.S. and others is to take serious and practical measures toward nuclear disarmament and dismantling of weapons of mass destruction,” he said.

    I guess they figure that Iran will finally get their nuclear arsenal at about the time we dismantle ours. Wouldn’t that be convenient for them? And they finally have an American president that can accommodate them. And of course, Eugene Robinson, Washington Post‘s resident Obama apostle, can’t understand why anyone would criticize Obama for being so naive;

    In 1968, the United States was one of the first nations to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — the landmark agreement that has been used, with great success, to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. When the NPT went into force, there were five nuclear powers — the U.S., Britain, France, China and the Soviet Union (now Russia). In the four decades since, the world has added four more — India, Pakistan, Israel (not officially, but that’s the consensus) and North Korea, although the Hermit Kingdom’s damp-squib test weapon and its wobbly ballistic missile make me think that Kim Jong-Il’s nuclear program is more of a threat to Pyongyang than to Portland.

    That’s typical of Robinson’s not-so-veiled racism. So what if North Korea can only blow up yellow people? As long as Obama rids this side of the world of nukes, that’s all that matters. That’s probably why Robinson isn’t too worried about Iran either – they’ll only blow up Jews.

    Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post takes the opposite tack on the same page;

    Which is all very nice — but as the central plank in an American president’s foreign policy, a call for universal nuclear disarmament seems rather beside the point. Apparently, Obama’s intention is to lead by example: If the United States cuts its own nuclear arsenal and bans testing, then, allegedly, others will follow.

    Yet there is no evidence that U.S. nuclear arms reductions have ever inspired others to do the same. All of the world’s more recent nuclear powers — Israel, India, Pakistan — acquired their weapons well after such talks began, more than 40 years ago.

    Using the same data and history two people arrive at different conclusions. That only leaves one factor – Robinson longs for the day that Barack Obama will fart in his general direction so Gene can partake in the olfactory joy of The One. And it doesn’t bother Robinson, or Obama, for that matter, that they agree with the Islamic Republic.

    Here’s the thing that Obama and Robinson don’t understand; as long as we’ve had the nuclear capability to retaliate against any nation which decides to use nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons haven’t been used. Why would we want to change that balance? It’s naive and demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of the history of nuclear deterrence.

  • The cold slap of reality

    After our president called for a strong response from the United Nations in reaction to North Korea’s missile launch yesterday, the UN ponders what it can possibly do to punish North Korea (The Washington Times link);

    North Korea’s rocket launch left the U.N. Security Council with few options for punishing the defiant nation at an emergency session Sunday, despite calls for a “strong” response by President Obama and others.

    The session ended after more than three hours with no immediate action other than an agreement to continue consultations.

    Yeah, I asked yesterday what they could possibly embargo besides dust and the wind. Today the UN has come to the same realization. Of course, our president wasn’t much helpful – he called for our unilateral disarmament. That’ll teach North Korea, won’t it? (Fox News);

    Declaring the future of mankind at stake, President Obama on Sunday said all nations must strive to rid the world of nuclear arms and that the U.S. had a “moral responsibility” to lead because no other country has used one.

    Again, it’s the US that’s the problem because we used a nuke twice 64 years ago. It’s our fault. Anyone alive that had anything to do with that decision? Nope – but it’s our fault. We should have let the Germans or Japanese get the bomb first and the president wouldn’t be burdened with that guilt. Maybe we ought to give North Korea one free shot at us to set the score right.

    Of course, that’s entirely possible (Another Fox News link);

    “This kind of action only further isolates the North and the fact that the Security Council is taking a shoe up demonstrates how important it is that we deal with this matter and the need for it to be dealt with and so I would reject any characterization that the North — that this is some kind of a win for the North — it’s not,” he said.

    The United States has so far decided to rely on the U.N. Security Council to dole out an appropriate response….

    Then, for good measure, we’re going to stop staying ahead of the rest of the world in combat technology (yet another Fox News link);

    Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday recommended a broad range of budgetary cuts to high-tech weapons programs, including production of the F-22 fighter jet.
    […]
    The Army’s $160 billion Future Combat Systems modernization program would lose its armored vehicles. Plans to build a shield to defend against missile attacks by rogue states would also be scaled back.

    George Bush tried to get China, Japan and South Korea to handle this problem and they’ve done a bang-up thus far. Just like he tried to let the European nations deal with iran. Isn’t that what everyone wanted? For the US to defer to the rest of the world? And what has the rest of the world accomplished? All Obama had to do to assert himself was shoot down the Nork’s missile – how could they possibly respond? But now he’s shown the world we’re scared of a starving, pushcart nation.

  • North Korea and the community of nations

    Of course, everyone knows that North Korea launched their missile over Japan this morning which has prompted a series of angry remarks (Washington Times);

    North Korea carried out its threatened launch of a long-range rocket over Japan on Sunday, defying international warnings and sparking an angry response from its Asian neighbors and the United States.

    Japan immediately called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, which said it would hold that meeting Sunday afternoon. South Korea decried the launch as a “reckless act.”

    Yeah, so what will the Security Council do? Probably something along the lines of President Obama’s response (Washington Post);

    In a speech grimly punctuated by current events, President Obama Sunday called for a world without nuclear weapons shortly after North Korea defied global warnings to fire a long-range rocket.

    Yeah, that’s the ticket – we’ll all disarm. That’ll embarrass the North Koreans into abandoning their nuclear objectives. Well, the UN has approved the emergency meeting (Fox News);

    Mexico’s mission to the United Nations set the meeting for 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT), spokesman Marco Morales said. Mexico holds the 15-nation council’s presidency this month.

    That approval came after Japan submitted a formal letter requesting an emergency session of the United Nations council that handles threats to international peace and security. “We received a letter and there will be a meeting,” Morales said.

    So what can they do? Sanctions? What’s left to sanction? The wind? Dust? That’s all they’ve got left. The North Koreans did it because they know how weak and ineffectual the world is with Obama at the helm of this country – like we were a paper tiger when Carter was president. Is this the test Biden warned us about? Well, it looks like there’s going to be a failing grade.

    Any want-wit knows that if someone on our side had shot the missile down as soon as it left Nork airspace, that would have been the strongest message we could send. Obama missed his opportunity, Japan missed their opportunity. Anything they do now is just farting in a hurricane.

  • US shoots down love-bearing drone from Iran

    Wired.com is reporting that a US fighter shot down an Iranian drone over Iraq last month;

    Details of the previously-unreported shoot-down, which occurred last month, are still sketchy. But we do know that American commanders have long accused Tehran of supplying weapons and training to all sorts of Iraqi militant groups. Shi’ite militias fired Iranian rockets at U.S. troops in Iraq, according to the American military; Sunni militias allegedly used Iranian armor-piercing bombs to reduce U.S. vehicles to ribbons.

    Fox News cautions that they can’t confirm the story. So I figure that the evil US war machine just shot down what Iran had intended to be a peaceful mission and now the Bush/Cheney Obama/Biden cabal is trying to cover it up.

    Here’s an artist’s concept of the drone before it was destroyed by the imperialist running dogs;

    Hat tip to the guy who sat next to me in our Bradley during our three-country tour in 1991.

  • Freeman: Jooos blocked his appoint

    The Washington Post in their editorial this morning, surprisingly, take up the issue of what a poor choice Charles Freeman was for the Obama Administration’s National Intelligence Council.

    A former envoy to Saudi Arabia and China, he suffered from an extreme case of clientitis on both accounts. In addition to chiding Beijing for not crushing the Tiananmen Square democracy protests sooner and offering sycophantic paeans to Saudi King “Abdullah the Great,” Mr. Freeman headed a Saudi-funded Middle East advocacy group in Washington and served on the advisory board of a state-owned Chinese oil company.

    They also point out that none of this was allowed into the light until Congress started asking questions and now suddenly, everyone thinks he’s a bit of a nutcase. From his emailed statement yesterday, according to Walter Pincus;

    “The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East,” Freeman wrote.

    Referring to what he called “the Israel Lobby,” he added: “The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views.” One result of this, he said, is “the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics.”

    Yeah, someone is keeping the Arabs from advancing their opinions. Like in the video I took earlier this year of the poor Palestinian supporters being oppressed by the Jew lobby known as Free Republic;

    And in this video I took earlier this year in which a Jewish counter-protester struck an Arab protester’s fist with his face;

    The Post editorial concludes;

    What’s striking about the charges by Mr. Freeman and like-minded conspiracy theorists is their blatant disregard for such established facts. Mr. Freeman darkly claims that “it is not permitted for anyone in the United States” to describe Israel’s nefarious influence…The real question is why an administration that says it aims to depoliticize U.S. intelligence estimates would have chosen such a man to oversee them.

    The same reason that the obama Administration said they were going to reduce earmarks and then didn’t – they’re still campaigning and they don’t figure that the rhetoric needs to match their actions.