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

Category: Foreign Policy

  • Foreign Policy is not for Amateurs

    Senator Barack Obama is still seething over the “Appeasement” issue.

    Today in a stump speech from Montana he defended his position of holding direct “talks” with the terror supporting regime in Iran by citing other events where, in his view, direct talks saved the day.

    To illustrate his point, he cited the successful “diplomacy” that averted a nuclear showdown with Russia during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

    Time for another history lesson for the junior senator.

    President Kennedy’s first public statement on the crisis occurred on October 22, 1962. This was a statement to the world, nationally broadcast. There was no direct communication between he and Russia.

    “It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

    That’s not negotiation Senator, that’s called “Cross this line and I’ll kick your ass!”

    In the same statement Kennedy said:

    “To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation and port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers.”

    A “quarantine” is a blockade senator. A blockade is not a negotiation, it is a military operation. And don’t go “lawyer” on me; a “quarantine” IS a “blockade” and a blockade IS a military action and an overt act of war.

    This is not new doctrine either. It traces back further than the Spartan blockade of Athens following the Battle of Aegospotami in 404 BC or more recently during the Egyptian blockades of the Straits of Tiran prior to the 1956 Suez War and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. All of these resulted in wars.

    Kennedy then immediately increased air surveillance and established complete air superiority over the sovereign nation of Cuba. That too, senator was a military operation and an act of war.

    In that same statement, Kennedy also “directed the Armed Forces to prepare for any eventualities”.

    This was Kennedy’s flavor of “negotiating” in a situation where, as threatening as it was, not one American had been killed.

    Iran has directly caused the deaths of hundreds of Americans and is without a doubt the most threatening regime in the Middle East and like Cuba has raised the stakes internationally on the nuclear issue.

    So senator, when are you going to issue a Kennedy-esque “Cross this line and I’ll kick your ass!” message?

  • UN to investigate US racism

    Yeah, we need to keep funding this POS organization (REUTERS Link);

    A special U.N. human rights investigator will visit the United States this month to probe racism, an issue that has forced its way into the race to secure the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

    Visit? From where? New York City isn’t in the US?

    “The special rapporteur will…gather first-hand information on issues related to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance,” a U.N. statement said on Friday.

    His three-week visit, at U.S. government invitation, will cover eight cities — Washington D.C., New York, Chicago, Omaha, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

    Race has become a central issue in the U.S. election cycle because Sen. Barack Obama, the frontrunner in the battle for the Democratic nomination battle, stands to become the country’s first African American president.

    There isn’t somewhere else in the world where there’s a little more racism to investigate? Like Africa where tribes murder each other by hundreds of thousands. How about Thailand – almost every week there’s a story about the ROP beheading some priest or monk there. But no, this “special rapporteur” has already made a name for himself;

    In a report last year he said Islamophobia had grown worldwide since the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States, carried out by al-Qaeda militants.

    I wonder if there was an uptick in Islamophobia after the Madrid bombings, the London bombings, the Bali bombings….

    Little Green Footballs knows him, too;

    Doudou Diène was last seen at LGF when he was denouncing Denmark for racism—for publishing the dreaded cartoons of Mohammed: UN on Wrong Side of Cartoon Jihad.

    So, I wonder how this investigation will turn out (No, not really).

  • Obama and McCain trade jabs

    President Bush’s speech to the Israeli Knesset on Thursday has drawn battle lines between the Republican and Democrat presumptive nominees. What the President said that started this exchange was;

    “Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.”

    “We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history,” Bush added.

    At first, Barak Obama, who wasn’t mentioned by name, but because he’s embarrassed that he’s an appeaser at heart, took offense and shot back at the President;

    Barack Obama accused President Bush of “a false political attack” Thursday after Bush warned in Israel against appeasing terrorists — early salvos in a general election campaign that’s already blazing even as the Democratic front-runner tries to sew up his party’s nomination.

    John McCain took up the fight yesterday according to the Wall Street Journal;

    Sen. McCain picked up the ball and, at every opportunity since then, the likely Republican presidential nominee has raised the issue, saying he cannot understand what Sen. Obama and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would talk about, given Iran’s vow to destroy Israel, its support for militants in Iraq, and its past efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.

    On Thursday, he declined to directly label the Illinois senator an appeaser, but said he would pursue the president’s line of reasoning.

    “It does bring up an issue we’ll be discussing with the American people,” he told reporters. “Why does Sen. Obama want to sit down with a state sponsor of terrorism?”

    Of course, Obama fell back on the standard Democrat line every time they find their collective ass hanging out when it comes to foreign policy (Washington Times link)

    Mr. Obama, using his dust-up with the White House to rally Democrats, linked Mr. McCain to the unpopular President Bush, accusing them of “bluster,” and told South Dakota voters, “They are trying to scare you.”

    The prohibitive frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination said the Republican campaign line that he would negotiate with terrorist groups is false.

    “I have been adamant about not negotiating with Hamas, a terrorist organization that has vowed to destroy Israel and won’t recognize them,” Mr. Obama said, adding: “They are not telling the truth.”

    Yeah, Republicans are always trying to scare voters. Iran’s not trying to scare voters. Hugo Chavez isn’t trying to scare voters, but Republicans are.

    The Washington Post, while gushing embarrassingly over Obama, reports he continued on telling fans he’s “happy” to debate over foreign policy, while, charateristically avoiding any substantial debate over foreign policy;

    An animated Obama, cheered on by a crowd gathered on the floor of a livestock arena, said he would be delighted if the presidential race turned into a conversation about which party is better suited to guide the nation’s foreign policy.

    “If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America, that is a debate that I’m happy to have anytime, anyplace, and that is a debate I will win because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for,” the Democratic front-runner said.

    Yeah, while Obama himself only asks questions without providing us with details of his plan to stop terrorism – oh, except sending out minions who hint that just because Obama’s face is brown, terrorists will stop attacking us. John McCain shot back (Washington Times);

    “Senator Obama claimed all I had to offer was the ‘naive and irresponsible belief’ that tough talk would cause Iran to give up its nuclear program,” the Arizona Republican said. “I have some news for Senator Obama: Talking, not even with soaring rhetoric, in unconditional meetings with the man who calls Israel a ‘stinking corpse’ and arms terrorist who kill Americans will not convince Iran to give up its nuclear program. It is reckless to suggest that unconditional meetings will advance our interests.”

    He continued, “It would be a wonderful thing if we lived in a world where we don’t have enemies. But that is not the world we live in, and until Senator Obama understands that reality, the American people have every reason to doubt whether he has the strength, judgment, and determination to keep us safe.”

    Sensing Obama weakness on the national security issue Joe Hairplugs Biden weighed in to defend Obama;

    He brushed back on Mr. Gillespie’s assertion, saying the White House “long ago perfected the art of the political misrepresentation and innuendo masquerading as policy and stringing together sentences that seem unobjectionable when read in isolation, but send a very different message when read together.”

    The old Democrat “well, you voters aren’t smart enough to understand like we Democrats understand”. That’s the difference between Democrats and Republicans on Foreign Policy and National Security – Republicans actually do stuff about our enemies while Democrats think talk is enough to keep us safe. I think Democrats intentionally do nothing hoping Republicans will fix their mistakes when they get in office.

  • Obama changes his name to “Some”

    This is fairly ridiculous. Barak Obama took offense today at something the President said while speaking to the Israeli Knesset today according to the Associated Press.

    Barack Obama accused President Bush of “a false political attack” Thursday after Bush warned in Israel against appeasing terrorists — early salvos in a general election campaign that’s already blazing even as the Democratic front-runner tries to sew up his party’s nomination.

    The White House denied Bush had targeted Obama, who said the Republican commander in chief’s intent was obvious.

    So what’s got Obama’s knickers twisted? This;

    “Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.”

    “We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history,” Bush added.

    Unless Obama changed his name to “Some” or Obama thinks we should appease terrorists and radicals, the President wasn’t necessarily talking about him. Or we could chalk it up to the hit dog yelping.

  • “Hope” for “Change”

    So Barak Obama pulled his snotty little kid act because John McCain, in a conference call with bloggers last month, hinted at the fact that Obama is endorsed by Hamas (USAToday link);

     “I think it’s very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president,” the Republican nominee-in-waiting said. “If Senator Obama is favored by Hamas, I think people can make judgments accordingly.”

    So what does Barak say? (Yahoo/Politico link)

    Obama responded with the same sort of high-road message that seems to have worked fairly well against the gas tax holiday: The suggestion, he said, was “offensive,” and furthermore a mark that McCain is “losing his bearings” as he pursues the presidency.

    “My policy toward Hamas is no different than his,” said Obama, who called McCain’s comment a “smear.”

    So a smear is actually the truth now? Because what Hamas spokesman Ahmed Josef actually said was (Powerline link);

     “We like Mr. Obama and we hope he will win the election.” Why? “He has a vision to change America.”

    It’s kinda hard to misinterpret that, isn’t it? Why shouldn’t John McCain take advantage of Hamas’ support for Obama?

    Clearly there is no “change” nor any “hope”. Obama is campaigning the same way Al Gore campaigned and the same way John Kerry campaigned. Whining little pussies who can’t take a punch.

    Obama hopes to control the debate by trying to shame John McCain into avoiding questions regarding Obama’s judgement and ability to lead. If Obama can’t take a couple of jabs involving actual facts, how can he lead this country in a world full of rogues? Is he going to call Ahmadinejad a racist everytime he threatens the US? Is he going to try to shame Hugo Chavez into ending his anti-American rhetoric?

    I’ve said it a thousand times – Obama is no leader, he’s just another drama queen who’ll be more fun to watch lose than either Gore or Kerry were.

  • Democrats, oil and guns

    In 1979, Jimmy Carter gave his famous “Malaise Speech” in which he announced that the US had an oil crisis and he outlined his plan to correct it. Gasoline had gone from about $.30/gallon to nearly a dollar in the space of about six years and it was mainly because of the OPEC nations and their delight at holding the US economy hostage. Carter promised that America would never be dependent on foreign oil;

    Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 — never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980s, for I am tonight setting the further goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade — a saving of over 4-1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day.

    Carter went on to promise;

    We will protect our environment. But when this nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.

    With that, Carter formed the Energy Department and it’s all been downhill since. The Democrats have blocked every proposal to build refineries, to drill oil in Alaska or off our coastlines. We’ve been so dependent on foreign oil that this week, the Democrat Senate has demanded that the President threaten the end of Middle East military aid until those nations increase production, according to the Wall Street Journal;

    Speaking of energy, we can’t help but give more attention to a recent press release from some of the Senate’s leading liberals. Charles Schumer, Byron Dorgan, Bernie Sanders, Bob Casey and Mary Landrieu are demanding that President Bush tell OPEC nations to increase their oil supplies or risk losing arms deals with the United States. The Senators say U.S. consumers need the price relief that only increased oil production can bring.

    Yes, that Senator Schumer and that Senator Dorgan, both of whom voted against increasing U.S. oil production because they couldn’t abide drilling across 1% of Alaska’s wilderness. Yes, that Senator Casey, who has called for mandatory reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide. At least Senator Landrieu of Louisiana has fought to allow more offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

    All of these Senate Democrats are willing to accept greater carbon emissions, as long as we can also outsource jobs in the petroleum industry to Middle Eastern dictatorships.

    Quite a contrast between what Democrats say and what Democrats do. Jimmy Carter formed the Energy Department to wean us off of foreign oil, and the current Senate wants us increase our dependence on foreign oil. It seems to me that the best way to lower prices of gas would have been to follow the Bush energy proposals seven years ago instead of playing keep-away with investigations into the participants of the Vice President’s advisers.

    The Democrats can’t see past the ends of their collective nose; they want “alternate fuels” but they fail to see the reality of our current energy needs. They’re all about intentions without a thought to the results of their intentions in the interim.

    Just for the record, I’m all for cutting military aid to the Middle East, but it’s been my experience that people who want to buy guns and can’t buy them from us will just go somewhere elese.

  • Islamic Republic on borrowed time?

    2008_05_03t095455_450x245_us_iraq_iran_usa.jpg

    A woman walks past an anti-American mural on a wall of the former U.S. embassy in central Tehran May 1, 2008. A senior Iranian official said on Saturday Tehran saw no need for more talks with the United States about Iraqi security until what he described as U.S. attacks on Iraqis stopped, Iran’s Fars News Agency reported.
    Just this week an Iraqi delegation went to Tehran to present evidence to the Iranians that the whole world knows the Iranians are supporting whatever anti-democratic fighters they can in Iraq (Reuters link);

    Members of the United Iraqi Alliance had said the delegation was sent to Tehran to tell Iran to stop backing Shi’ite militias fighting U.S. and Iraqi security forces, underscoring Iraq’s unease over the influence of its powerful neighbor.

    But Attiya made no mention of the accusations.

    “The delegation saw a positive stance from the brothers in Iran to support the government’s efforts in extending the sovereignty of the state and to fight the outlaws,” Attiya said.

    “The delegation hopes this visit is the basis for strengthening relations between the two neighboring states.”

    CNN reports that the Iraqi delegation told the press that they’d hurt the Iranian’s feelings;

    The Iranian side was hurt” by these allegations, Haidar al-Abadi said.

    Al-Abadi is a parliament member from the ruling United Iraqi Alliance and a member of al-Maliki’s Dawa party.

    He said Saturday that the five-member delegation presented the Iranians with evidence of “weapon and explosive device smuggling, and the existence of training camps for Iraqi militants in Iran.”

    The Iraqis also supplied “proof that most of the Basra outlaw leadership had fled into Iran” after a military operation that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki launched this year against Shiite militias in the southern city, al-Abadi said.

    Al-Abadi did not explain what the “evidence” was.

    The Iranian officials “completely denied … training, financing and arming” militant groups in Iraq, al-Abadi said.

    In another Reuters story, Iranians have cut off relations with US negotiators;

    “Should the Americans’ attacks against civilians and the defenseless Iraqi people come to an end, Iran will consider their request for the fourth round of negotiations,” Fars quoted the official as saying.

    It said the official was a senior member of the negotiating team with U.S. officials but did not give his name.

    “Under the current conditions, with the Americans’ massive attacks on the Iraqi people in various cities, no need is felt for holding negotiations with that country about Iraq’s security,” the official said.

    But, after reading Cuffy Meigs, (h/t Ace of Spades) that may just be Iran whistling past the graveyard;

    Getting ready to strike the Iranian frontier:

    The US military is drawing up plans for a “surgical strike” against an insurgent training camp inside Iran if Republican Guards continue with attempts to destabilise Iraq, western intelligence sources said last week. One source said the Americans were growing increasingly angry at the involvement of the Guards’ special-operations Quds force inside Iraq, training Shi’ite militias and smuggling weapons into the country.

    […]

    Meanwhile, Iranian state news is in panic mode — the Sword of Damocles hangs over their head:

    On April 29, a second American aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, arrived in the Persian Gulf in what observers see as a tacit declaration of war on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

    Of course, the Iranians are counting on the Democrats to pull their fat from the fire – just like Hussein expected them to do. It’s their tough luck that the Cowboy is still running things. A couple of well-placed air strikes could end this war before the November election.

  • Diplomacy worked so well with Vietnam

    One of this last week’s commenters made the completely intellectually vacant point (while defending Ron Paul’s contention that we should withdraw inside our borders and depend on diplomacy instead of projecting our military power) that we’ve done so much better with our relationship with Vietnam using diplomacy than we did with the force of arms. Well, I picked up this story at Democracy Project;

    The other day, Vietnam voted along with China, Russia, Libya, Burkina Faso, and Costa Rica on the UN Security Council, against the US, Britain and France for a U.N. special envoy and a voluntary arms embargo of Zimbabwe. Even UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it was “just unacceptable” that the election results had not been released a month after the vote. “We know who is the winner,” he added.

    This was just another of Vietnam’s many international positions opposed to both the West and to human rights around the world. (I wrote about what to expect from Vietnam being allowed to sit on the UN’s Security Council here.)

    They joined with China and Russia (shock!) to oppose a voluntary arms embargo of Zimbabwe. Why, other than the fact that they stand to make money shipping arms into Mugabe’s Zimbabwe would anyone vote against a voluntary arms embargo? Oh, maybe the fact that China, Russia and Vietnam are ideological allies of Mugabe who is trying to maintain control of his country using the Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist/Minhist tactic of starving the people into submission.