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

Category: Foreign Policy

  • Oh, goody, the Germans like us again

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    No, I didn’t bother watching Obama’s speech yesterday, just like I haven’t watched any of his speeches. Too much hyperbole for my tastes, and as I suspected, the Germans, who are historically easily swayed by empty, populist oratory seemed to gobble up the staged show (Washington Times Christine Bellantoni);

    Just like crowds at his American rallies, these fans erupted in chants of “Obama, Obama,” and “Yes, we can.” One person led the crowd in a chorus of the “Obamagirl” song, getting dozens to sing along that “I’ve got a crush on Obama.”

    Of course, the Left in the US all peed themselves a little when the Germans accepted Obama. That’s what the Left needs, someone from Europe, especially one of the more socialistic countries like Germany, to validate their candidate. The rest of the United States, not so much.

    John Kornblum wrote in the Washington Post;

    I was standing on a raised platform about 25 yards from Obama yesterday. Most of the audience — a sea of young people shouting “Obamaaa!” and “Yes, we can!” — were not native speakers of English, and some perhaps didn’t understand English at all, but they didn’t seem to care. The young people seemed to feel that he was speaking to them.

    I get the same feeling sometimes, only different – I am a native speaker of English and I’ve never felt as if he was speaking to me.

    Half of my antecedents left Germany around the end of the 19th century, I don’t know why exactly, but I’m sure they had their reasons. They certainly didn’t care what the “left behinds” thought of them, so I guess I shouldn’t either. Most of us come from European ancestry, people who left the chains of serfdom and constant war to build a new nation on this side of the Atlantic. The United States has rescued Europe from itself on more than one occasion. Why would we seek approval from the world that we call “the developed countries” (but they’re really not developed like we are at all – most are racist, sniffing backwards snobs)?

    Ask any American GI who spent any time in Germany if the Germans are really as smart as the Left likes to portray them – or anyone who spent time in any part of Europe. Any GI who longed to return to the “Land of the Round Doorknobs”.

    So why would Europe embrace the likes of Obama? Because they long for the days of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter when we were a laughing stock. When our presidents showed up with bags of money and on their knees to pay tribute to the sons of kings of Europe. The same reasons that Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, al Qaeda, FARC and all the rest of the world’s thugs support Obama – for what they anticipate they can hornswaggle out of the US taxpayers.

    Who cares what Europe thinks? Only the people who’ve forgot why this country was founded in the first place care…that’s who.

    Personally, I’m most trusting of the Europeans when they fear us and respect us.

  • The Quotable Blinky Pelosi

    In today’s Wall Street Journal’s “Notable and Quotable” section the WSJ reproduces a conversation between Wolf Blitzer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi;

    BLITZER: John Boehner, who’s the Republican leader in the House, he says you have to let this come up for a vote. He says that you’re walking your blue dogs, who are the moderate and conservative Democrats, and other vulnerable Democrats off a cliff by not allowing this to come up for a vote, the offshore oil drilling legislation.

    (more…)

  • Obama threatens Pakistan…again

    Suddenly finding his cowboy side, Obama has decided that Pakistan is a bigger threat than Iran. TimesOnline reports that he has once again threatened to invade Pakistan;

    “We cannot tolerate a terrorist sanctuary, and as president, I won’t,” Mr Obama said. “We must make it clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights.”

    He’s so tough with our allies, isn’t he? Yet he trembles at thought of Ahmadinejad or talking tough to the Islamic Republic – the real source of the threat to this nation.

    Disregarding the fact that thousands of al Qaeda operatives have given up the ghost in Iraq, Obama continued to deride the operation in Iraq;

    Insisting that Iraq is not now and never was the “central front in the war on terror”, the White House hopeful dismissed John McCain’s contention that his withdrawal plan amounted to surrender. His Republican rival had focused exclusively on a country which had no involvement in the September 11 attacks at the expense of wider strategic aims crucial to America’s security, he said.

    McCain’s campaign was quick to counter Obama’s tough talk;

    “Senator Obama is departing soon on a trip abroad that will include a fact-finding mission to Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said in remarks released by his campaign.

    “I note that he is speaking today about his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan before he has even left, before he has talked to General Petraeus, before he has seen the progress in Iraq, and before he has set foot in Afghanistan for the first time.

    “In my experience, fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around: first you assess the facts on the ground, then you present a new strategy.”

    Since when has Obama presented a coherent policy on anything. That evil McCain campaign expects him to start now?

    Added: In related news, someone (forgive for not remembering who) emailed me this morning about Obama scrubbing his website of his policy statements against the surge. This writer asked me if I could chase down cached copies like I did on Kokesh last month. Before I could get my hands free today, Gateway Pundit and Wizbang beat me to it.

    Meanwhile, The Jawa Report writes that Michael Yon has declared the war in Iraq won. So Obama missed cleaning up the record of his policy by a coupla days. The thing is, when you’re President, you don’t get any Mulligans when it comes to policy. Ask Jimmy Carter. Bush and McCain have been right all along – cleaning up the whiney BS from your website and acting like a cowboy after the tough part doesn’t count.

  • Losing our 1st Amendment rights in foreign courts

    Senators Arlen Specter and Joe Lieberman write in the Wall Street Journal about foreign courts eroding our own rights to free speech with specious judgments against Americans;

     Under American law, a libel plaintiff must prove that defamatory material is false. In England, the burden is reversed. Disputed statements are presumed to be false unless proven otherwise. And the loser in the case must pay the winner’s legal fees.

    Consequently, English courts have become a popular destination for libel suits against American authors. In 2003, U.S. scholar Rachel Ehrenfeld asserted in her book, “Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It,” that Saudi banker Khalid Bin Mahfouz helped fund Osama bin Laden. The book was published in the U.S. by a U.S. company. But 23 copies were bought online by English residents, so English courts permitted the Saudi to file a libel suit there.

    Ms. Ehrenfeld did not appear in court, so Mr. Bin Mahfouz won a $250,000 default judgment against her. He has filed or threatened to file at least 30 other suits in England

    It also has stunted the spread of the Left’s writers as well as the Right;

    Fear of a similar lawsuit forced Random House U.K. in 2004 to cancel publication of “House of Bush, House of Saud,” a best seller in the U.S. that was written by an American author.

    So what do the Senators propose to remedy the problem?

    To counter this lawsuit trend, we have introduced the Free Speech Protection Act of 2008, a Senate companion to a House bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Pete King (R., N.Y.) and co-sponsored by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D., N.Y.). This legislation builds on New York State’s “Libel Terrorism Protection Act,” signed into law by Gov. David Paterson on May 1.

    Our bill bars U.S. courts from enforcing libel judgments issued in foreign courts against U.S. residents, if the speech would not be libelous under American law. The bill also permits American authors and publishers to countersue if the material is protected by the First Amendment. If a jury finds that the foreign suit is part of a scheme to suppress free speech rights, it may award treble damages.

    For decades, our enemies, from Nazis to Communists to jihadists, have found ways to circumvent our laws by using our own Constitution against us. This looks like a good commonsense solution to plugging one hole in the dike. My senators will hear from me this morning, bright and early although I can’t imagine even a pair of partisans like Carden and Mikulski being against  this common sense protection of Americans’ rights.

  • Stroking Obama

    The Washington Post calls Obama’s sudden softening of his stance on the Iraq War “sensible” this morning;

    BARACK OBAMA has taken a small but important step toward adjusting his outdated position on Iraq to the military and strategic realities of the war he may inherit. Sadly, he seems to be finding that the strident and rigid posture he struck during the primary campaign — during which he promised to withdraw all combat forces in 16 months — is inhibiting what looks like a worthy, necessary attempt to create the room for maneuver he will need to capably manage the war if he becomes president.

    Mr. Obama’s shift came when he was asked last week about his withdrawal plan, which he first proposed in late 2006, a time when Iraq appeared to be sliding into a sectarian civil war. Since then, a new U.S. counterinsurgency strategy has helped bring about a dramatic drop in violence, and the Iraqi government has gained control over most of the country. Among other things, Mr. Obama said “the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability” — an apparent acknowledgment that the hard-won gains of the last year should not be squandered. He also said that “when I go to Iraq, and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies.”

    What the Post doesn’t bother to say is that if Obama had been on the right side in the first-damn-place, he wouldn’t have to “soften”. It was pandering for the votes of the radical Left that has made him “soften”, not any enlightenment, nor any changes on the ground in Iraq. Doesn’t the Washington Post find it strange that the Administration has been touting success for nine months but Obama doesn’t come around to admitting reality until Clinton conceded?

    The Post goes on to praise Obama for his political savvy when instead, they should be criticizing him for contributing to the deaths of US troops by demeaning their mission and pushing a timetable withdrawal, despite the fact that the reality on the ground is diametrically opposed to Obama’s rhetoric. The troops had to overcome an enemy who was convinced that he only had to continue to fight in order to win because Obama and the voters he was trying to attract gave our enemy hope.

    If Barack Obama was really a candidate for “change”, a different kind of politician running a different kind of campaign, he wouldn’t run an “anybody but Bush” campaign like John Kerry on nebulous promises like Jimmy Carter and be a sniffing snob like Al Gore. He’d strop running on leftist pie-in-the-sky rhetoric and tell the anti-war-at-any-cost crowd they were wrong. And he should admit that his anti-war yapping was wrong. And the Washington Post should call a shovel a shovel instead of praising Obama for being the same old politician with whom they’re most comfortable.

  • US ties Chavez to Hezbollah

    Chavez Ahmadinejad hug

    Well, Jungle Mom has been warning readers of this blog about this for years (here and here), but today the Washington Times writes that the US has announced that it’s discovered ties between Hezbollah and Chavez;

    An investigation by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) names Venezuelan diplomat Ghazi Nasr al Din and Venezuelan-Arab businessman Fawzi Kanan as key links between the two.

    “It is extremely troubling to see the government of Venezuela employing and providing safe harbor for Hezbollah facilitators and fundraisers,” said Adam Szubin, political affairs director of OFAC.

    Mr. al Din has served as charge d’affaires at the Venezuelan Embassy in Syria and as director of political affairs at the embassy in Lebanon.

    The Treasury Department made the accusations in a June 18 statement, which summarized an investigation of Venezuelan-registered businesses that are thought to be laundering money for Hezbollah.

    Yuh, it’s troubling, but since most of our own Christian missionaries in Venezuela have been removed and replaced by Shi’ite clerics for more than a year, who is surprised? Which news agency will summon the intestinal fortitude to ask Obama what he intends to do about this?

  • Political news from Iraq is good

    So seein’s how all of the news coming out of Iraq is good, what can the Democrats use in November. What news well, how about the United Arab Emerates forgiving a coupla billion bucks worth of Iraq’s pre-war debt (Reuters link);

    The United Arab Emirates has cancelled almost $7 billion of debt including interest and arrears payments owed by Baghdad, becoming the first Gulf Arab country to forgive all of Iraq’s debt.

    The United States has pressed Arab governments to support Iraq’s recovery by joining Western nations in forgiving their share of Iraqi foreign debts that total up to $80 billion.

    In the 2004 election, John Kerry said that should be one of the measurements of the success of the war. Wonder what where he’ll move the goal posts next. The Gulf States don’t do much without consulting with each other – can the others be far behind?

    Prime Minister Maliki declared yesterday that the terrorists have been beaten in Iraq (AFP link);

    Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Saturday that the country’s security forces have managed to save Baghdad from a “siege by terrorists” backed by foreign nations.

    “When we took over Baghdad it was under siege, with all roads leading to neighboring provinces controlled by terrorists. They had surrounded Baghdad from all sides, backed by the bad intentions of other countries,” Maliki told a gathering of top Iraqi and US officials including Washington’s envoy to Baghdad Ryan Crocker.

    “We wanted these nations to support and assist us in stabilizing the country but they were thinking of finishing Baghdad,” he said, without naming the countries.

    Is it more peaceful than Midwest US states? Obviously not, but there’s been enough progress to take it off the table as far as a campaign issue for the Democrats and it’s a huge win for the US…and for the Republicans. of course we can be sure that the media will downplay it and compare it to Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” banner.

    Bill Roggio reports in the Long War Journal that Iraqis are still pursuing Sadrists in Baghdad;

     Iraqi soldiers and police cordoned several neighborhoods in the Mahdi Army stronghold to contain the fighting that occurred after security forces detained Abbas Abdul Aal, who is a “senior Sadrist leader,” Voices of Iraq reported. Aal’s nephew was also detailed. “Security forces closed all of the city’s outlets and prevented the movement of traffic and pedestrians,” an eyewitness told the Iraqi newspaper.

    The move in Sadr comes one day after Iraqi soldiers closed the Sadrist office in the neighborhood of Shula, where the Sadrist maintain a strong presence. This is the second Sadrist office to be closed in Shula since May.

    As soon as the Sadrists realize that their war is over, it will be over. Well, it’ll be over except the whining from the Left that we did it all wrong and that it was “needless”.  We’ll get to hear their professors and read their books about the unnecessary loss of life on both sides. Until some Iraqi, like Sadr, admits that the only reason he continued the fight in Iraq is because he was encouraged by the morally bankrupt and politically inept anti-peace Left.

  • Colombia gets de-FARC’d (UPDATED)

    Of course, by now everyone’s heard of the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt from FARC guerillas along with the US citizens Farc has been holding for more than five years. Venezuela’s El Universal has the background on the rescue;

    The Colombian Army rescued safe and sound ex presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, three US citizens and 11 military officers held as hostages by the rebel Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), on Wednesday announced Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos.

    “They were rescued in an operation aimed at infiltrating the FARC first squad, the same that has held a large number of hostages for years. Through several procedures, we also could infiltrate the FARC Secretariat. Since hostages were divided into three groups, we managed to have them gathered at one single place and then moved to the south of the country, where they would supposed to report to (new FARC top leader) Alfonso Cano,” said Santos.

    The minister added that arrangements were made so that the hostages were picked up in pre-established place by a helicopter belonging to a ghost organization and that a FARC leader known as César and another member of FARC Secretariat traveled together with the hostages to hand them over to Cano.

    Santos said the freed hostages are flying in choppers to San José del Guaviare, capital city of the Guaviare region.

    “This operation, called ‘Check,’ is unprecedented and a proof of Colombian military forces’ quality and professionalism,” pointed out Santos.

    Actually, there must’ve been a mistranslation. According to their Spanish language article it was operation “Jack”

    “Esta operación que se denominó ‘Jaque’, no tiene precedentes y pasará a la historia por su audacia y efectividad, dejando muy en alto la calidad y el profesionalismo de las Fuerzas Armadas colombianas”, señaló Santos.

    McClatchy reports that John McCain had just finished a visit to Colombia moments before the rescue;

    McCain, Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Sen. Lindsey Graham took turns praising Uribe, who’s raised a ruckus within Colombia’s political establishment during the past week by asking the country’s Congress to let him run for president an unprecedented third time.

    Leftist critics of Uribe have said he’s trying to perpetuate himself in office like a “dictator.” Human rights groups have been saying for months that the president hasn’t placed enough priority on reducing atrocities against peasants committed by the military.

    However, Colombians overall have given Uribe extraordinarily high ratings, with 70 percent saying they view him favorably.

    Under Uribe, guerrillas in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia are on the brink of defeat, major cities have become mostly safe for the first time in years and the economy has grown steadily.

    The news just keeps getting better for Colombians.

    Here’s Spanish-language video of the homecoming (h/t to my buddy Kate at A Colombo-Americana’s Perspective) ;

    [youtube LpEVf2MEsj0 nolink]

    I’m betting there are some angry screams coming from the Miraflores Palace in Caracas.

    More links at Venezuela news and Views.

    Of course, the Left thinks there’s some kind of conspiracy going on because McCain just happened to be in the same country. And suddenly Think Progress believes Fox News.

    Next they’ll be saying McCain freed Betancourt and the Americans himself in a Chuck Norris/John Rambo style raid.

    El Universal listed the former hostages names;

    Ingrid Betancourt, Thomas Howes, Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, lieutenant Juan Carlos Bermeo, second lieutenant Raimundo Malagón, sergeant José Ricardo Marulanda, corporal William Pérez, sergeant Erasmo Romero, corporal José Miguel Arteaga, corporal Armando Florez, corporal Julio Buitrago (police), assistant superintendent Armando Castellanos (police), lieutenant Vainey Rodríguez and corporal John Jairo Durán (police).

    UPDATED: 30 minutes ago Colombia’s El Tiempo posted this Spanish Language video of Betancourt’s first press conference;

    [youtube 4AkU6mesU6A nolink]

    “El helicóptero casi se cae porque saltamos, gritamos, lloramos nos abrazamos, no lo podiamos creer. Dios hizo este milagro. Esto es un milagro”

    My Calle J translation;

    The helicopter almost fell from the sky because we jumped, we screamed, we cried, we hugged, we couldn’t believe it. God made this miracle. It’s a miracle.

    UPDATED AGAIN: More news and links at Fausta’s Blog.