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

Category: Foreign Policy

  • Maybe Obama’s not so moderate

    Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson comes to a revelation the rest of us  have known for quite some time; Obama is a “false moderate“. It took ABC correspondent  Jack Tapper to enlighten Gerson;

     “Have you ever worked across the aisle in such a way that entailed a political risk for yourself?” Obama’s response is worth quoting in full: “Well, look, when I was doing ethics reform legislation, for example, that wasn’t popular with Democrats or Republicans. So any time that you actually try to get something done in Washington, it entails some political risks. But I think the basic principle which you pointed out is that I have consistently said, when it comes to solving problems, like nuclear proliferation or reducing the influence of lobbyists in Washington, that I don’t approach this from a partisan or ideological perspective.”

    For a candidate running as a centrist reformer, this is pretty weak tea. Ethics reform and nuclear proliferation are important issues, but they have hardly put Obama in the liberal doghouse. When I recently asked two U.S. senators who are personally favorable to Obama to name a legislative issue on which Obama has vocally bucked his own party, neither could cite a single instance.

    I guess the fact that we’ve been saying all along that Obama votes with his party leadership 100% of the time didn’t sink in. He has the highest leftist rating of any Senator – now I suppose he’s a “maverick” in the sense that he votes further Left than anyone else. is that what maverick means these days – just voting further Left than anyone in your own party – that’s what earned the moniker for McCain.

    As I’ve been pointing out the last few days, Obama has proposed nothing but failed policies of the past – that’s hardly consistent with his “reformer” image. He wants to continue blocking our usage of domestic energy sources, he refuses to accept our progress in the war against terror, he clings to 60s radicals of all stripes and all national persuasions. He’s just a younger version of every Democrat President of the last 40 years (luckily there’s only been two).

    I guess the Democrats, with Obama in the lead, are becoming the reactionary conservative party, since reactionary and conservative are terms that refer to policies that return us to the past.  That makes John McCain the forward-looking man in this race. Funny how that works.

  • WaPo calls Obama’s Iraq plan outdated

    The lead editorial in the Washington Post this morning characterizes Barack Obama’s position on the war in Iraq as “badly outdated”;

    SEN. BARACK OBAMA told Iraq’s foreign minister this week that he plans to visit the country between now and the presidential election. We think that’s a good thing, not because Sen. John McCain has been prodding the candidate to do it but because it will give Mr. Obama an opportunity to refresh his badly outdated plan for Iraq. To do that, the Democrat needs to listen more to dedicated Iraqi leaders like Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister — who, it seems, didn’t hold back during their telephone conversation.

    Mr. Obama laid out his current strategy for Iraq in November 2006, shortly before announcing his candidacy for president. At the time, Iraq appeared to be on the verge of a sectarian civilian war, and Mr. Obama was trying to distinguish himself in the Democratic primary race by offering a timetable for withdrawal. Nineteen months later, the situation in Iraq has changed dramatically, with violence down 75 percent from its peak and the Iraqi government and army in control of most of the country. But Mr. Obama has not altered his position:

    Not only is it outdated, it’s been wrong since he formulated his intellectually shallow “plan”. If Obama had the opportunity to enact this “plan”, Iraqis would be suffering the consequences of that wrong-headed and ill-conceived shot at pandering to his anti-war base. Of course, we wouldn’t know about it, just like many Americans are surprised when they discover that Somalia and Haiti are still embroiled in violence a decade after they stopped being newsworthy here in the US.

    Just as a few new commenters here haven’t updated their arguments on the legality of our involvement in Iraq, Obama’s current policy needs to be updated considering recent successes there. But I wouldn’t hold my breath awaiting any coherent thoughts coming from either our resident commenters or Obama and his acolytes. They seem to have super powers that make them impervious to facts.

    Earlier this week, Obama said that he hasn’t “seen any evidence” that tax cuts help the economy, nor has hr seen any evidence that we’re safer because of Iraq just yesterday. As long as the left fails to “see any evidence” that’s contrary to the party line, they’ll find themselves at odds with the truth and the actual facts. And in the minority in Congress…and not in the White House.

    They repeat the false McCain quote about staying in Iraq for a hundred years and the retarded mischaracterization of opposition to the Senator Webb version of the GI Bill because they won’t look at facts – and they don’t see any reason that Obama should look at the facts either. They’re comfortable finding easy and non-intellectual reasons for supporting Obama because it makes them feel good about themselves. To Hell with what damage they do to the country.

  • Iran holding out for Obama

    The EU sent an emissary to Iran with a sweet deal mix of education, economic, technological and political rewards if they’d just stop enriching uranium. Of course, we all know how it turned out don’t we? (ABC News link)

    “If suspension is included in the package, it won’t be considered at all,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Iran’s government spokesman, Gholam Hossein Elham, as saying Saturday. “The position of the Islamic Republic of Iran is clear. Preconditions can’t be raised for any halt or suspension.”

    Bush and Sarkozy were informed of this as as they went into morning meetings. Their session capped warm talks that began over an elegant palace dinner Friday night. When the U.S. and French leaders appeared together before reporters in a grand palace hall around lunchtime, they presented a single front — contrasting with the tension shown between Bush and Jacques Chirac, Sarkozy’s predecessor.

    Um, I wonder where they learned that word “preconditions”. I guess they figure that Obama is going to win the election, so why should they give up anything since he’s going to hand them the world on a silver platter.

    It should tell people what they’re in for under an Obama presidency when our sworn enemies, who call us the Great Satan every-damn-day, are putting the world on hold waiting for him…oh, and developing nuclear weapons in the process. It’s a cryin’-ass-shame we have to learn these lessons over-and-over just because of the political ambitions of a few.

  • Iraqis unsure about US’ future role

    The Washington Post writes this morning, under the headline “Iraqis Condemn American Demands” in regards to negotiations with the Iraq government for our security plans in Iraq. Since the Washington Post has a habit of changing their headlines after I write about them, I took a screen cap;

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    The article doesn’t really support the headline (which I learned in my journalism class the first day is one of three places a journalist tells the story). The headline implies that all Iraqis are of that mind. In fact, the article only names a few;

    “The Americans are making demands that would lead to the colonization of Iraq,” said Sami al-Askari, a senior Shiite politician on parliament’s foreign relations committee who is close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “If we can’t reach a fair agreement, many people think we should say, ‘Goodbye, U.S. troops. We don’t need you here anymore.’ “

    Most Iraqis realize that we don’t want a colony – most of the world knows that our history doesn’t support that contention, but that doesn’t stop the Post from injecting a single quote from a single Iraqi.

    The use of the term “American Demands” doesn’t fit either;

    President Bush has spoken directly to Maliki about the issue in recent days and instructed his negotiating team to show greater flexibility, Iraqi politicians said. U.S. officials circulated a draft of the status of forces agreement over the weekend without many of the most controversial demands, buoying hopes that a deal could be reached, according to Iraq lawmakers.

    “Greater flexibility” doesn’t sound like the US is making “demands” on the Iraqis at all. Further along in the article is this quote:

    “Now the American position is much more positive and more flexible than before,” said Mohammed Hamoud, an Iraqi deputy foreign minister who is a lead negotiator in the talks.

    Yeah, why wasn’t that in the headline? I’m pretty sure I’ll get to hear or read some nit-witted Leftist screaming that the Iraqis don’t want us there anymore. All they seem to read are the headlines. Like this commenter at the WaPo story;

    irae wrote:
    “Let Freedom reign!” Unless, of course, it leads the Iraqis to assert independent control of their “sovereign” nation. This fiasco will appear on the historic list of our national embarassments, like the Native American genocide and the internment of U.S. citizens during WW II. Thanks, Republicants!

    Or this bubblehead at Counterpunch;

    A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the U.S. presidential election in November.

    The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to this reporter, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq.

    If you want to talk about demands, maybe the Post was thinking about this paragraph;

    In Washington, the White House hastily organized a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday after Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.), the chairman and ranking minority member of the Armed Services Committee, respectively, demanded Monday that the administration “be more transparent with Congress, with greater consultation, about the progress and content of these deliberations.”

    Yes, the Democrats who’ve sabotaged every move the administration has made in Iraq wonder why no one will let them take part in the discussion. Maybe we can have Leaky Leahy make daily reports through the WaPo of the closed door meetings – that should make the Iraqis more trustful of the process.

    If the Iraqis truly want us leave, I’d be the first to say we should go, but this article focuses on the same Shi’ites who’ve been calling us an occupying force since al Sadr formed the Mahdi Army to drive us out. They’ve been beat politically and militarily, so they turn to their only ally – the American media.

    I’d like to see fewer troops in Iraq, but I already predicted we’d be back in Iraq at the end of the Gulf War when Iraqi bullets were still ricocheting off of my Bradley turret when the ceasefire took effect and ending our presence there again might force a future generation back – depending on who we elect in the interim. And the Iraqis should take that into consideration, too. The next President might abandon them like we abandoned the South Vietnamese when they needed us most in 1975.

    UPDATE: Gateway Pundit reports that President Bush says we don’t permanent bases in Iraq. Quoting the President;

    And as I said clearly in past speeches, this will not involve permanent bases, nor will it bind any future President to troop levels. You know, as to — look, Eggen, you can find any voice you want in the Iraqi political scene and quote them, which is interesting, isn’t it, because in the past you could only find one voice, and now you can find a myriad of voices.

  • Chavez to FARC; guerilla war is over

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    In a surprising turn of events, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez called on FARC to lay down their weapons (Associated Press/Fox News link);

    Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday urged Colombian rebels to lay down their weapons, unilaterally free dozens of hostages and end a decades-long armed struggle.

    Chavez sent the uncharacteristic message to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, saying their ongoing efforts to overthrow Colombia’s democratically elected government were unjustified.

    “The guerrilla war is history,” Chavez said during his weekly television and radio program. “At this moment in Latin America, an armed guerrilla movement is out of place.”

    Why would Chavez make such an announcement? Well, if you read my other blog “Tall & Rich” you’d know that Saturday Colombia captured a couple of Venezuelans delivering ammunition to FARC terrorists. You’d also know that INTERPOL has substantiated ties between FARC and the governments of Ecuador and Venezuela. This is Chavez way of deflecting the impending criticism.

    But, FARC has no such intentions;

    Yet a FARC statement posted Sunday on a Web site sympathetic to its cause suggested the group is far from laying down its arms.

    Written by rebel leader Luciano Marin Arango, alias “Ivan Marquez,” and dated June 5, the statement demands that new elections be called to oust Colombia’s government and Congress. The FARC’s “strategic objective is the taking of power for the people,” the statement said.

    It also claimed that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has backed plans to kill Chavez and leftist Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa.

    Seems to me, at the rate leaders of FARC are giving up the ghost, it’d be hard to find someone to call themselves a FARC commander these days.

    Crossposted at Tall & Rich.

  • Jews to be tried for war crimes against Nazis

    This is just too bizarre to not be true (The Jewish Chronicles link);

    Elderly Jews say they are outraged that Lithuania is pursuing them over their wartime role as anti-Nazi partisans

    Fania Branstovsky was just 20 when she joined the Jewish partisan movement fighting the Nazis in her home country of Lithuania. In the Vilnius ghetto, she and her fellow partisans carried out attacks against the occupying German forces. By the end of the war, almost her entire family — more than 50 people –— had perished at the hands of the Nazis. Yet now, over 60 years later, she is the one being branded unpatriotic, and is reportedly under investigation by Lithuanian authorities for alleged war crimes.

    National and local newspapers and television stations are referring to the 86-year-old Holocaust survivor, who now works as a librarian at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, as a murderer and a terrorist. Earlier this year, the Vilnius-based newspaper Lietuvos Aidas called for her to be put on trial. The allegation levelled against her is that during her time as a partisan, she committed crimes against Lithuanians. But she strongly denies that she and her partisan colleagues ever targeted groups of local people.

    More of that Leftist moral relativism – when they muddy the debate between terrorism and freedom fighters, when they rewrite their history to equate fighting a real occupation army to any foreign force on sovereign soil.

    H/t LGF’s Link Viewer.

  • Saturday arrests in Iraq

    Friday, two Shi’ite extremists surrendered to American troops, one of whom turned out to be a Hezbollah operative working for Iran to train the anti-government Mahdi Army according to the Associated Press;

    Two Shiite militia leaders surrendered to American soldiers Friday, while tens of thousands of supporters of hard-line Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr streamed out of mosques to protest against an agreement which could keep U.S. troops here for years.

    The arrests and demonstrations occurred on the eve of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s trip to Shiite-dominated Iran, his second visit there in a year.

    U.S. officials allege that Iran is arming and training Shiite militiamen and encouraging a public campaign in Iraq against the proposed U.S.-Iraq security agreement, which the Iranians oppose.

    Today, according to another Associated Press article in the Wall Street Journal, US troops arrested yet another pair of Iran-linked terrorists yesterday;

    U.S. soldiers in Baghdad captured an Iraqi arms dealer and “assassination squad” leader responsible for trafficking Shiite extremists in and out of neighboring Iran for training, the military said Sunday.

    The arrest reinforced long-standing U.S. allegations that Iran arms, trains and funds Shiite Muslim militiamen inside Iraq — charges that Tehran denies. It also coincided with a two-day visit to Iran by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, his second such trip in a year.

    The Iraqi prime minister, himself a Shiite, is struggling to keep Washington happy while reassuring Iran, the largest Shiite nation, that a proposed U.S.-Iraqi security agreement would not make his country an American launching pad for attacks on Iran.

    The U.S. arrest campaign against Shiite militiamen with alleged ties to Iran was likely to be on the agenda for Mr. Maliki’s talks with Iranian officials.

    U.S. soldiers, acting on intelligence from other Shiite militiamen already in custody, captured the Basra-based “special groups” leader late Saturday at a hideout in eastern Baghdad, according to a military statement. “The wanted man is alleged to be a commander of an assassination squad in Basra, an arms dealer with connections to Iran and a document counterfeiter,” the statement said. He also arranges transportation of criminals into Iran for training, and then back into Iraq, it said. One of the leader’s aides was also arrested without incident.

    More of these connections to Iran will be found as long as the US and Shi’te Iraqi President Maliki remain reticent about confronting the Islamic Republic over these incursions into the sovereign state of Iraq.

    The AP also reported that six al Qaeda folks were rounded up yesterday;

    Meanwhile, the military said in another statement that it captured six more suspected Sunni extremists Sunday in the northern city of Mosul, including an alleged al Qaeda in Iraq leader and another man who is a wiring expert in charge of a bombing cell there.

    It’s clear that Iraq will not be a safe democracy as long as Iran is allowed to operate with impunity. With elections in the US this year, we can expect these Iranian incursions to result in a big drive to influence the results.

  • Hegseth: Obama must go to Iraq

    Pete Hegseth, Chairman of Vets for Freedom writes in the Wall Street Journal this morning that Barack Obama’s refusal to go to Iraq only undermines Obama’s credibility on the war against terror and more specifically the war in Iraq;

    Mr. Obama continues to insist that “Iraq’s political leaders have made no progress in resolving the political differences at the heart of their civil war” – despite the passage of numerous pieces of benchmark legislation by the Iraqi Parliament and unequivocal evidence of grassroots reconciliation across the country.

    Mr. Obama also continues to claim that America has “simply thrown U.S. troops at the problem, and it has not worked” – despite the dramatic reduction in violence in precisely those areas of Iraq where American forces have surged, and since handed over to Iraqi Security Forces.

    And of course, Mr. Obama persists in his pledge to withdraw all combat forces from Iraq, on a fixed timeline, beginning the moment he enters office – regardless of the recommendations of our commanders on the ground, regardless of conditions on the ground, and regardless, in short, of reality.

    America is longing for an informed and principled debate about the future of Iraq. However, such a debate seems unlikely if the Democratic nominee for president won’t take the time to truly understand the dynamics on the ground, let alone meet with commanders.

    The time for talking points is over. Too much is at stake. When will Mr. Obama finally return to Iraq and see the situation for himself?

    Well, I’ll explain it to you, Pete; If Obama were to go to Iraq, he’d be without teleprompters and handlers – he’d be just another lanky, jug-eared bonehead without the adoring crowds waving signs and cheering. He’d look like the uncoordinated doofus he is. He’d be Barack Obama Unplugged.

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    If he went to Iraq, he’d either have to lie about what he would see with his own eyes, or he’d have to admit that he’s been wrong the last several months – and he’d have to reformulate his policy on Iraq to something the Code Pink and the MoveOn.org special interest groups couldn’t tolerate. Obama would have to admit that John McCain and George W. Bush were right all along – that wouldn’t sit well with anyone being funded by George Soros.

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    I mean, why should Obama mar his perfect record of plausible deniability? As long as he never goes to Iraq, he can say he was given bad information. Just like his stupid remarks that he never heard Jeremiah Wright’s hate speech in church, just like yesterday when he said that the Tony Rezko who was sentenced to prison isn’t the Tony Rezko Obama knew all of these years. Obama doesn’t want to know the truth, he just wants to parrot vacant platitudes that attract the empty-minded zombies.