I can't believe
that the Americans, the leaders of the free world,
have chosen a
left-wing defeatist as President.
If the Americans become like the Europeans,
who will be left to defend the West against its enemies?
I am by nature an optimist.
Maybe Obama will grow in office, and abandon the stupid ideas he grew up with.
If not, this is going to be a very long and dangerous four years for the world.
Obama: Old Wine, New Bottle, Mona Charen, February 15, 2008.
"He is clearly the most gifted speaker to grace American politics since Ronald Reagan. And as with Reagan, there is a basic decency to Obama that blunts dislike.
...
But when you get past the music and really focus on the lyrics, Obama emerges as an utterly conventional, down-the-line liberal Democrat. He claims to be all about the future, but his policy ideas are about as modern as disco and the leisure suit.
...
The war on terror scarcely exists in the world Obama traces for his audiences.
Instead, he focuses relentlessly on what he regards as the misguided war in Iraq. "We need to do more than end the war," he intones, "we need to end the mindset that got us into war." We know which mindset Sen. Obama will bring to foreign policy -- the "diplomacy only" style last employed to such great effect by Jimmy Carter."
The Next Great Awakening: Obama 2008's messianic fervor won't last, Charles Krauthammer, February 15, 2008:
"Obama has an astonishingly empty paper trail. He's going around issuing promissory notes on the future that he can't possibly redeem. Promises to heal the world with negotiations with the likes of Iran's Ahmadinejad.
...
My guess is that he can maintain the spell just past Inauguration Day. After which will come the awakening. It will be rude."
Obama is a far left-winger who claims to be able to "unite" the country:
As Mark Steyn puts it:
"He wants to waft us upward on a great uniting bipartisan marshmallow of "hope" and "change" so he can implement down-the-line by-the-book highly partisan hopeless unchanged liberal policies."
Or
as
Rich Lowry
says, it is hard to ignore
"the central contradiction of Obama's campaign - an orthodox liberal politician who rose to prominence in a left-wing milieu in Chicago and has never broken with his party on anything of consequence is campaigning on unifying the country. There is nothing particularly unifying about Obama's past and his voting record."
Thomas Sowell, April 15, 2008:
"Senator Obama's election year image is that of a man who can bring the country together, overcoming differences of party or race
...
There is, of course, not a speck of evidence that Obama has ever transcended party differences in the United States Senate. Voting records analyzed by the National Journal show him to be the farthest left of anyone in the Senate. Nor has he sponsored any significant bipartisan legislation"
Our Top Anti-Terrorism Advisor Must Go, by Victor Davis Hanson, February 9, 2010.
The Obama administration complains about
"partisan" criticism of its handling of the war.
The complaints come from the same people who spent years
endlessly attacking the Bush administration on the war.
"One of the stranger behaviors of the ever-stranger Obama administration is its sudden adoption of the "wounded fawn" posture.
No opposition was more stridently critical of a sitting president than was the anti-Bush Left.
Barack Obama, as candidate and president, could not start a speech without saying "Bush did it.""
Aggressive partisan President fails to unite country!
American leftie
Michael Crowley, 16 August 2009, can't figure out how a partisan leftist could have divided the country.
He swoons that:
"On that heady evening last August when Barack Obama claimed the Democratic presidential nomination before an adoring throng in Denver, it seemed possible he could change the very nature of American politics. ... It seemed entirely plausible, as Andrew Sullivan had argued .. [that] "If you are an American who yearns to finally get beyond the symbolic battles of the boomer generation and face today's actual problems, Obama may be your man," ... Obama, he argued, could usher in a new era of post-baby boomer politics, one that would transcend the culture wars that had dogged America since Vietnam and the rise of Richard Nixon."
And yet somehow electing an aggressive partisan leftist did not end the divide in America.
How strange!
And of course to this writer,
all of the partisan opposition to the great Obama is irrational,
and probably racist too.
Gallup poll, Jan 2010. Obama is the most polarizing first-year president since Gallup started polling.
Obama fails to unite the country.
He is the most partisan first-year president in history (since Gallup started polling).
From Gallup.
Obama: Student Radical, Andy McCarthy, 6 July 2009.
Obama never understood the Cold War when it was on, in the 1980s.
But the worrying thing is that he doesn't seem to understand it much today either.
Obama said:
"People of the world - look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one."
As Mark Steyn
points out:
"No, sorry. History proved no such thing. In the Cold War, the world did not stand as one. One half of Europe was a prison, and in the other half far too many people - the Barack Obamas of the day - were happy to go along with that division in perpetuity. And the wall came down not because "the world stood as one" but because a few courageous people stood against the conventional wisdom of the day. Had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan been like Helmut Schmidt and Francois Mitterand and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy Carter, the Soviet empire .. would have survived and the wall would still be standing."
John Fay is embarrassed by President Obama not turning up for the 20th anniversary Berlin Wall celebrations in Nov 2009.
"nothing President Bush did was as stupidly embarrassing as what President Obama did this week. His failure to turn up in Berlin was a calculated snub of an ally - Germany - and really all of eastern Europe.
...
It was also a snub to America's own past and the efforts of the country over 45 years to confront the threat from the Soviet Union. ... His failure to show wasn't just saying to Germany, "We don't really care that much about your reunited country" or to eastern Europe, "Your struggles weren't all that important," although those were two messages from his absence. No, it was also saying, "I don't care much for that piece of American history" (our stand against Communism).
...
It was cringe-making watching President Sarkozy take the podium as the lead speaker knowing that the President of the United States should have been there. If in 1989 you'd asked anyone in E. Europe what country more than any other was responsible for the collapse of the Soviet system they'd have said the United States. If you had asked any Berliner in 1989 what foreign leader should speak first at the 20th anniversary celebrations they'd have said the President of the United States."
But they would have meant Reagan, not Obama.
Thuggery 101 by Victor Davis Hanson, June 29, 2009, on Obama's stupid world view:
"President Barack Obama came into office apparently believing that his non-traditional background, charisma and good intentions could placate dictators hostile to America and ease global tensions."
Hanson gives great advice, that Obama will probably ignore:
"So, Mr. President, do not talk to a thug unless you absolutely have to. Do not apologize to - or put our trust in - one. And whenever people rise up against a thug, speak out immediately and forcefully on their behalf - and let the thug, not America, worry about the consequences of the spread of freedom."
He sums up the Cold War:
"At that time, the American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose.
And then, within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Now, make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful."
That's it.
He sums up the Cold War
without summing it up as a struggle between
democracy and tyranny.
Without summing it up as a struggle between
European freedom and brutal Russian imperialism.
Without summing it up as a struggle
that America and Europe won, largely thanks to Ronald Reagan.
With that pathetic start, the odds of him challenging Russia's current return to
dictatorship seem slim.
Obama Rewrites the Cold War, Liz Cheney, 13 July 2009:
"There are two different versions of the story of the end of the Cold War: the Russian version, and the truth. President Barack Obama endorsed the Russian version in Moscow last week.
...
One wonders whether this was just an attempt to push "reset" - or maybe to curry favor. Perhaps, most concerning of all, Mr. Obama believes what he said."
Victor Davis Hanson, August 10, 2009, on Obama's naive, undergraduate view of world affairs.
On how Obama's government insults America's allies like
Britain
and
Israel,
and does not insult America's enemies:
"(1) In general, for a variety of complicated reasons, Obama sees those who dislike the United States - an Ahmadinejad, Assad, Castro, Chavez, Ortega, etc. - as somehow more authentic and representative of their own "people." ...
But the Iranian democrats in the street, the Honduran Supreme Court, a Uribe, a Maliki government, or the Israelis, all these pro-American friends for some strange reason like the United States, and, most likely, like us for what Obama would call reactionary reasons; so there is nothing sexy about them for Obama really.
(2) Israel - democratic, capitalist, Western, pro-American - is emblematic of all the things that Obama in the past has been skeptical about, since Israel appreciates our values, history, and what we stand for. Again, this is passé for Obama - as if one in a Columbia University seminar on post-imperialism were to raise his hand and declare, "Isn't it great that Israel is a beacon of democracy and Western values in the region?"
Imagine the reaction of the professor and students to that poor fellow, and, presto, there is what bothers Obama about Israel."
On Obama's failure to support freedom in Iran:
"Obama sees himself, by schooling, lineage, and temperament, as postnational. He's a post-Western envoy to the oppressed, whose unique talents "bridge" the once insurmountable gaps, and so delivers "peace" - due to his transcendence of supposedly obsolescent paradigms such as the theocracy in Iran is thuggish, illegitimate, scary, and, well, mostly nuts. So when a genuinely authentic and democratic resistance arises, Obama's paradigm cannot account for it. For the Iranians who are risking their lives for freedom, Obama's third-world fides is irrelevant. All they seek are hearts and minds; they seek support from democratic peoples confident in the West - and so, of course find no such empathy from Obama."
Obama himself is pretty terrifying.
But his staff and advisers are worse.
Let's hope America is strong enough to survive this bunch,
and smart enough to get rid of them in 2012.
Brennan said:
"They are not jihadists, for jihad is a holy struggle, an effort to purify for a legitimate purpose, and there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- holy or pure or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children."
Such pee-cee drivel.
It's like claiming during the Cold War that the enemy were not communists
because "communism" was some noble struggle
that had nothing to do with the Soviet Union.
How one longs for the moral clarity of a Reagan.
Not that Bush had much clarity either.
He called it a "War on Terror".
Obama's foreign policy adviser
Zbigniew Brzezinski
(National Security Advisor under Carter)
Brzezinski
visited the enemy state of Syria in Feb 2008 and
idiotically said that
Syria shared with America
"a common desire to achieve stability in the region".
Brezinski Calls for Obama to Shoot Down Israeli Jets, September 19, 2009.
Brzezinski says America should deny Iraqi airspace to any Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear weapons program.
He even implies America should attack its ally to protect its enemy.
That's the Obama Administration in a nutshell.
Brzezinski: "They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?"
Q: "What if they fly over anyway?"
Brzezinski: "Well, we have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren't just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a
Liberty
in reverse."
Samantha Power
is representative of the
dangerous, orthodox liberal-left
advice
Obama will be getting
on
foreign policy.
Here she refuses to stand unconditionally with the democracy of Israel
as it defends itself against genocidal non-democracies.
Instead she sees moral equivalence.
Her husband is the disturbing Obama official
Cass Sunstein.
Mark Lloyd
was appointed Chief "Diversity Officer" at the Federal Communications Commission by President Obama in August 2009.
Here he praises South American thug
Hugo Chavez
for shutting down the free press in Venezuela.
And search.
Radical
Van Jones
was appointed
White House Special Advisor for "Green Jobs" by Obama in Mar 2009.
He resigned after controversy when Americans learned about his
communist and anti-police past.
Anita Dunn
(White House Communications Director)
admires Mao, June 2009,
and praises the butcher during his rise to power in 1947.
Imagine a Bush staffer praising the rise to power of Hitler this way,
saying that in prison he never gave up, and so on.
Shame on her.
Shame on her ignorance.
Unbelievably, she praised this satanic butcher of clergy and Christians in
a speech given in
Washington National Cathedral.
Search for more
and more video:
The piously politically-correct
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
(2008)
portrays US soldiers at Guantanamo as male rapists.
It also portrays US security chiefs as fanatical racists.
In Obama's worldview, this is all cool.
Kal Penn
(Kalpen Modi),
who plays Kumar,
was appointed by President Obama
as Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement
in Apr 2009.
It seems that any slander of the troops is OK with this
Commander in Chief.
A White House - NEA conference call
is accused of trying to get the taxpayer-funded NEA
to promote the Obama political agenda.
What Did Kumar Know, and When Did He Know It?,
Alexander Marlow, 8 Sept 2009, says Kal Penn was the White House representative to the conference call.
More here
and
search
and
search.
"Meet the face of Obama's Ministry of Propaganda: Kal Penn.
...
A historical trend exists in totalitarian states where art lionizes its leadership, while in free states art holds power accountable. ...
Color me a narc, but let's bring him in for questioning."
Obama's pathetic reaction to 9/11, printed 19 Sept 2001:
"We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers
...
It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.
...
we will have to devote far more attention to the monumental task of raising the hopes and prospects of embittered children across the globe - children not just in the Middle East, but also in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and within our own shores."
Of course, this is all nonsense.
The 9/11 attackers were driven by oil wealth, Islamism and hope,
not by poverty and despair.
And they are not "children" or animals who cannot help what they do.
They are adults - moral agents responsible for their own evil actions.
In 2001, Bush understood 9/11 far better than Obama did.
Some funny comments on Obama's theories
here,
including:
"I guess we should just kill the poor."
Dick Cheney, Feb 2009, already worries that Obama will make a terror WMD attack more likely.
"Protecting the country's security is "a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business.
These are evil people. And we're not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek."
Sarah Palin, Tea Party Convention, 6 Feb 2010, on President Obama's 1990s attitude to Islamic terrorism:
"Americans deserve to know the truth about the threats that we face and what the administration is or isn't doing about them. So let's talk about them. New terms used like "overseas contingency operation" instead of the word "war." That reflects a world view that is out of touch with the enemy that we face.
...
on Christmas day, the system did not work.
Abdulmutallab
passed through airport security with a bomb. And he boarded a flight ... On Christmas day, the only thing that stopped this terrorist is blind luck and brave passengers.
...
What followed was equally disturbing after he was captured. He was questioned for only 50 minutes
.. and then read his Miranda rights. The administration says then there are no downsides or upsides to treating terrorists like civilian criminal defendants. But a lot of us would beg to differ. .. there are questions we would have liked this foreign terrorist to answer before he lawyered up and invoked our U.S. constitutional right to remain silent.
...
The events surrounding the Christmas day plot
reflect the kind of thinking that led to September 11th. The threat then, as the "USS Cole" was attacked, our embassies were attacked, it was treated like an international crime spree not like an act of war.
...
Treating this as a mere law enforcement matter places our country at great risks because that is not how radical Islamic extremists look at this. They know we are at war. To win that war, we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern."
Melanie Phillips replies:
"Really? And what might they be? Their grievances are:
a) the existence of Israel,
b) its support by America,
c) the absence of salafist Islam in the world.
Does Obama think these 'grievances' are legitimate?"
In 2008-09, as Bush's Presidency ended and Obama's began,
the jihad in Afghanistan seemed to get
new spirit and momentum.
Victor Davis Hanson, September 4, 2009, wonders if Obama caused this:
"Consider casualties: Years after the removal of the Taliban, Afghanistan was still relatively quiet, and a year's fatalities there often were exceeded by a single month's deaths in Iraq (e.g. cf. 48 American dead in Afghanistan in 2003, 52 in 2004, 99 in 2005; 98 in 2006; etc. Yet more have been killed already in the first part of 2009 (183) than in all of last year combined (155). So why is Afghanistan heating up precisely as Iraq cooled off? ...
No one really knows, but there may well be reasons other than either we are escalating, stirring up hornets, and offering more targets, or suffering the wages of George Bush's supposed past neglect (when 48 or 52 Americans were killed in an entire year).
All the talk of leaving Afghanistan, the constant trashing of the war on terror, the serial presidential proclamations to the Muslim world that America has been in the past culpable for a variety of sins and has underappreciated Muslim genius, the vows to investigate and even try members of the CIA, the overseas apology tour, etc. may well have emboldened a once dejected and battered Taliban and al Qaeda into thinking that the U.S., not themselves, is tired".
Afghan Mythologies, by Victor Davis Hanson, November 9, 2009 - The Afghan War is winnable, if Obama only wanted to.
"We have experienced soldiers and military leadership, a just cause and Western unity. In other words,
we have everything we need to defeat the Taliban — except a commander-in-chief as confident about fighting and winning as he once was as a candidate."
For a supposed "important" speech,
he does not really address the fundamental issue in the Islamic world
- the lack of democracy, human rights and religious freedom.
Sure, he praises democracy and so on,
but he never openly criticises the Islamic world
for its lack of democracy and freedom.
He never explains that it, not the West, needs to change.
He never criticises sharia.
He talks as if the tens of thousands killed by
Islamist jihad across the world
are the fault of the West
(he names "colonialism", the "Cold War", "modernity" and "globalization")
rather than a sick ideology within Islam with its own logic and momentum.
He praises Islam's medieval inventions
but fails to address the reasons for its decline in the last 500 years,
when it has invented nothing.
He praises Islam's (probably imaginary) medieval religious tolerance,
but fails to criticise its lack of religious freedom today.
He never criticises
Egypt for its persecution of Christians and gays,
or its lack of democracy.
He talks about "the daily humiliations" of Palestinians under Israeli occupation
without mentioning that its sole cause is Islamic violence.
If the Palestinians would stop using violence,
life under Israeli "occupation" would be very pleasant.
Criticism of the Cairo speech:
"Platitudes and naivete: Obama's Cairo speech".
Robert Spencer's fisking of Obama's useless speech, 4 June 2009.
As Spencer points out, Obama has no real plan for defeating the jihad
(or for peace in Israel).
His ideas are naive and will not work.
Obama actually
quoted from a violent section of the Koran
without even noticing it.
"Had Obama or his Mideast advisors and speechwriters simply bothered to read this verse in context — verse 9:111, a jihadi all-time favorite, looms just above, promising believers paradise in exchange for their killing and being killed".
Victor Davis Hanson, December 5, 2009, says the Middle East is not like the self-critical West. They will be largely unimpressed by Obama's apologies:
"In general, the Arab world is suspicious of those who trash their own. Its leaders interpret Obama’s apologies for his own country as being as much a character defect as proof of any new accommodation."
"At three different points in the speech, Obama defended a woman's right to wear the hijab, apparently as against the restrictions in French public schools or Turkish government offices or perhaps in the U.S. military, which insists on uniform headgear. But he said not a word about the right not to wear head covering, although the number of women forced to wear religious garments must be tens of thousands of times greater than the number deprived of that opportunity."
Muravchik also notes Obama's refusal to criticise his hosts:
"One of the two institutions co-hosting his speech was
Al-Azhar University,
which Obama saluted in his opening paragraph as “a beacon of Islamic learning.” This may be so, but Al-Azhar admits only Muslims. ... Egyptian Christians are excluded. Perhaps this could be understood if it were only a school of Islamic learning .. but today Al-Azhar offers degrees in medicine, engineering, and a panoply of subjects. Its tens of thousands of students are subsidized by state funds provided by Egyptian taxpayers, ten percent of whom are Copts".
Fort Hood massacre, Nov 2009
- The worst Islamist terror homeland attack in 7 years happens months into Obama's watch
Fort Hood massacre, Nov 2009. The jihad kills 13 in America. First big homeland attack in 7 years.
Apparently the worst mass murder spree at a US military base in history.
Obama wrecks Bush's record already:
Is it a coincidence that there were no major jihad attacks in the homeland USA
between the
Beltway sniper attacks of 2002
and the end of Bush's term in Jan 2009?
And that the first big jihad attack in 7 years came soon into Obama's term?
It may be a coincidence,
but the jihad sure isn't cooperating in making Obama's new approach look good.
There have been many smaller attacks, and foiled attacks, in the US since 9/11.
Victor Davis Hanson
(and here)
estimates over 20 small "lone wolf" attacks from Sept 2001 to Nov 2009, and over 20 foiled plots,
making an attack or foiled plot every 3 or 4 months since 9/11.
"the facts since 9/11 reveal an undeniable reality. Every few months either an Islamic-inspired terrorist plot will be foiled, or a young Muslim male will shoot, run down or stab someone while invoking anger at non-Muslims. In other words, the attack on Fort Hood happened on schedule. ... And something like it will occur again — soon."
The denial that this was jihad:
Hmm. Can't imagine what Major Malik Nadal Hasan's motivation could have been, James Delingpole, 6 Nov 2009:
"I was watching BBC’s Newsnight when the story broke of a killing spree at a Texas military base and instantly wondered – as I’m sure did 99.99 per cent of its other viewers – whether this had anything to do with the Religion of Peace."
Jihad at Fort Hood, by Robert Spencer, Nov 6th, 2009.
"Investigators are scratching their heads and expressing puzzlement about why he did it. According to NPR, “the motive behind the shootings was not immediately clear, officials said.” The Washington Post agreed: “The motive remains unclear ..”"
As Spencer says:
"Hasan’s motive was perfectly clear — but it was one that the forces of political correctness .. have been working for years to obscure. So it is that now that another major jihad terror attack has taken place on American soil, authorities and the mainstream media are at a loss to explain why it happened
– and the abundant evidence that it was a jihad attack is ignored.
...
The effect of ignoring or downplaying the role that Islamic beliefs and assumptions may have played in his murders only ensures that – once again – nothing will be done to prevent the eventual advent of the next Nidal Hasan."
Chris Matthews: We may never know if religion was a factor at Fort Hood.
Allahpundit replies:
"Well … yes, that’s true, if you think anything short of Hasan sitting up in his hospital bed and declaring “why, indeed, religion was a factor at Fort Hood” amounts to irresponsible speculation."
Daniel Pipes
(and here
and here)
has a disturbing roundup of all the historical attempts to blame jihad attacks on something other than jihad.
Excuses given for jihad attacks include:
1990: “A prescription drug for … depression” (assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane)
1991: “A robbery gone wrong” (assassination of
outspoken critic of the oppression of Copts in Egypt, Makin Morcos)
1994: “Road rage” (the killing of a Jew on the Brooklyn Bridge)
1997: “Many, many enemies in his mind” (shooting at the Empire State Building)
2000: A traffic incident (attack on a bus of Jewish schoolchildren near Paris)
2002: “A work dispute” (double murder at LAX)
2002: A “stormy [family] relationship” (Beltway snipers)
2003: An “attitude problem” (Hasan Akbar’s attack on fellow soldiers, killing two)
2003: Mental illness (the mutilation murder of Sebastian Sellam)
2004: “Loneliness and depression” (explosion in Italy outside a McDonald’s restaurant)
2005: “A disagreement between the suspect and another staff member”
(a rampage at a retirement center in Virginia)
2006: “An animus toward women” (a murderous rampage at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle)
2006: “His recent, arranged marriage may have made him stressed”
(killing with an SUV in California)
As Pipes says:
"As a charter member of the jihad school of interpretation, I reject these explanations as weak, obfuscatory, and apologetic. The jihadi school, still in the minority, perceives Hasan’s attack as one of many Muslim efforts to vanquish infidels and impose Islamic law. ...
We are not mystified by Hasan but see overwhelming evidence of his jihadi intentions.
...
If the jihad explanation is overwhelmingly more persuasive than the victim one, it’s also far more awkward to articulate. Everyone finds blaming road rage, Accutane, or an arranged marriage easier than discussing Islamic doctrines. And so, a prediction: what Ralph Peters calls the army’s “unforgivable political correctness” will officially ascribe Hasan’s assault to his victimization and will leave jihad unmentioned.
And thus will the army blind itself and not prepare for its next jihadi attack."
The Root Cause Fallacy
by Ibn Warraq:
"From CNN to the New York Times, NPR to the Washington Post, the killings were presented as a result of racism. They were attributed to fear of deployment in Afghanistan and harassment from other soldiers. Cited were Major Hasan’s supposed maladjustment to his life and his sense of not belonging, pre-traumatic stress disorder, and various personal and mental problems. All these explanations are variations on what I have called “the Root Cause Fallacy,” which has been committed time and again since the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001. The Root Cause Fallacy was designed to deflect attention away from Islam, in effect to exonerate Islam, which, we are told, is never to blame for acts of violence. On this view we must not hold a great world religion of peace responsible when individuals of that faith resort to force. We must dig deeper: the real cause is poverty, U.S. foreign policy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Western colonialism and exploitation, marital problems of individuals, and so on. The present “psychological” interpretations in the case of Major Hasan are just the latest example of the Root Cause Fallacy at work."
The immediate attempt to change the subject to "fears" of an anti-Muslim "backlash":
Shooting Raises Fears for Sanity of Entire Western World, Mark Steyn, 6 Nov 2009,
on the immediate expression of "fears" of an anti-Muslim "backlash":
"it is, to put it at its mildest, the grossest bad taste to default every single time within minutes to the position that what's of most interest about an actual atrocity with real victims is that it may provoke an entirely hypothetical atrocity with entirely hypothetical victims."
The Phantom Backlash by Robert Spencer, 11 Nov 2009,
points out that the US government and military seem more concerned about "anti-Muslim" sentiment
than about the possibility of more jihad attacks.
"Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared: “We object to, and do not believe, that anti-Muslim sentiment should emanate from this. This was an individual who does not represent the Muslim faith.” She said that DHS was taking steps to “prevent everybody being painted with a broad brush.” Not “taking steps to prevent another jihad terror attack.”
...
The U.S. Army Chief of Staff, George Casey [said]: “I’m concerned that this increased speculation could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And I’ve asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that.” Not “I’m concerned that there could be another jihadist among our Muslim soldiers. And I’ve asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that.”"
The big question - Why did the US military employ an Islamist fanatic?
Our Brain Dead Country, David Horowitz, 6 Nov 2009.
"A Muslim fanatic with an Internet site praising Islamic suicide bombers as defenders of their comrades is a Major in the U.S. Army with access to military intelligence and lethal weaponry. ...
But despite his identification with America’s enemies, the army kept him in its officer corps. How in God’s name was this possible? But it was. ... Is everybody out of their mind?
The Ft. Hood killings are the chickens of the left coming home to roost."
Fort Hood's 9/11, Ralph Peters, 6 Nov 2009:
"The US Army’s unforgivable political correctness is also to blame for the casualties at Ft. Hood.
Given the myriad warning signs, it’s appalling that no action was taken against a man apparently known to praise suicide bombers and openly damn US policy. But no officer in his chain of command .. had the guts to take meaningful action against a dysfunctional soldier and an incompetent doctor.
... How could the Army allow an obviously incompetent and dysfunctional psychiatrist to treat our troubled soldiers returning from war? An Islamist whacko is counseled for arguing with veterans who’ve been assigned to his care? And he’s not removed from duty? What planet does the Army live on?
For the first time since I joined the Army in 1976, I’m ashamed of its dereliction of duty."
Incredible:
Fort Hood killer
"once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats."
And he was let stay in the military!
Mark Steyn
on the Army's chief of staff
General Casey
saying it would be a tragedy if the army lost its diversity:
"An army that lets you check either the "home team" or "enemy" box according to taste is certainly diverse."
Tim Dunkin
describes the killer as
"a Muslim terrorist masquerading as a U.S. Army Major".
Great comment:
"Amazing that there are people who consider themselves far left, cutting this guy such slack, talking about the ’stresses’ of being in the army, and racism towards non-white people. I don’t remember such tolerance being shown towards the white prison guards at Abu Ghraib or the Jenin Massacre soldiers or at Fallujah. Is that not inconsistent?
...
At the end of the day, this is about betrayal. The one place in the world where you should be able to rely on your workmates is in the Army, your life is in their hands quite literally. It is a complete denial of that code of honour. This man had no honour, and I’m glad a woman’s bullet felled him."
Gates of Vienna
extracts a "word cloud" from
the text of Fort Hood news stories in the media.
Note the prominence of "backlash", "snapped" and "speculation",
indicating the spin the media are putting on this.
More relevant terms like "jihad" and "terrorism" seem to be absent.
Obama opposed the Iraq War from the start.
He constantly opposed the "surge" that is bringing
an incredible victory.
Everything in his past tells us that in office
Obama will lose the Iraq War.
Americans are taking an appalling risk electing this man
during a war.
Australian Prime Minister
John Howard,
Feb 2007,
on Obama's plan to quit Iraq by Mar 2008:
"I think that will just encourage those who want to completely destabilize and destroy Iraq,
and create chaos and a victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for an Obama victory.
If I were running al Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008
and be praying as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama
but also for the Democrats."
Obama responds
by ridiculing Australia - one of America's only allies in the world.
Like John Kerry, he only has contempt for countries that are fool enough
to support America and fight with it.
Comment:
"You gotta love the Democrats. 'We should have more friends! We need allies!'
'Except the ones we have now -- they can fuck off!'"
Obama, Sept 2007, wants to surrender to the jihad in Iraq immediately.
"There is no military solution in Iraq, and there never was. The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq's leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year -- now."
Starting in Jan 2009, President Obama will begin the surrender in Iraq:
"He plans to begin drawing down our forces at a rate as brisk as two brigades a month
...
Notwithstanding the success of the surge, Obama's plan has not changed
...
The retreat presumably begins on Day One.
...
As America retreats, remnant al-Qaeda in Iraq elements will have the opportunity to surge, as will those forces backed by the ayatollahs in Iran and others supported by Sunni Arab neighbors. The strategic advantages we have won in the heart of the Middle East - purchased at a terrible price - will be tossed away. The military that could not be defeated by al-Qaeda will be defeated by its own commander-in-chief's folly."
Obama speech, February 24th, 2009:
"We are now carefully reviewing our policies in both wars, and I will soon announce a way forward in Iraq that leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war."
Not "wins" this war.
Just "ends" it.
Obama's plan for Iraq defeat, announced Feb 2009.
His plan for slow withdrawal
is all about "ending" the war, not "winning" it.
The war may already be won, in which case it won't matter.
But what will he do if Al-Qaeda in Iraq fights back?
It may be a terrible thing for Iraq that Obama became President.
Full round-up of Obama's shallow, changeable, poorly thought out,
and endlessly shifting
positions on Iraq.
Do Americans really want this weak, naive, inexperienced young man in charge of the war?
From the McCain campaign.
"I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse"
-
Barack Obama, Jan 2007,
on
the surge.
"this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything"
- Harry Reid,
leader of the Democrats in the Senate, April 19, 2007,
expressing how the Democratic party basically gave up on the war.
"We don't need more spin about how the surge is succeeding"
- Obama,
31 May 2008.
Question to Obama, July 2008:
"If you had to do it over again, knowing what you know now, would you support the surge?" Obama:
"No", followed by lots of waffling justification [click on the link to see].
"Let's look at just one example at a lifetime of principled stands that John McCain's brought about: his support for the troop surge in Iraq. The Democratic Party had given up on Iraq.
And I believe, ladies and gentlemen, when they gave up on Iraq, they had given up on America.
...
In the single biggest policy decision of this election, John McCain got it right, and Barack Obama got it wrong."
-
Rudy Giuliani, 3 Sept 2008,
on history's judgement on Obama and the Democratic party.
"Now, we know the surge has worked. Our men and women in uniform know it has worked.
And I promise you, above all others, Al Qaeda knows it has worked.
The only people who deny it are Barack Obama and his buddies at MoveOn.org.
Why won't they admit it? Because Barack Obama's campaign is built around us losing in Iraq.
...
Last summer, we came within two votes - two votes - of a congressionally mandated surrender. One Democrat, one Democrat broke with his party to support the surge. Ladies and gentlemen, thank God for Joe Lieberman.
It was John McCain's voice and credibility that stopped the Democratic Congress from losing this war.
Gen. Petraeus' plan will be a model for generations to come, and our troops will be heroes for the ages. Those who predicted failure, voted to cut off funding for our troops, and played politics with our national security will be
footnotes in history.
...
While Barack Obama expresses appreciation for our troops' service, he refuses to acknowledge their success. They have worked too hard, they have sacrificed too much for a patronizing pat on the back.
...
Not once - not once was Barack Obama's eloquent voice ever raised in support of victory in Iraq.
Not once was it used to rally our troops in battle. Instead, he inspired those who supported retreat and would have accepted our defeat.
We should all be grateful, ladies and gentlemen, that Barack Obama was unable to defeat the surge."
-
Lindsey Graham, 4 Sept 2008.
"Years of debate over Iraq and terrorism have left our unity on national security issues in tatters, and created a highly polarized and partisan backdrop for this effort."
-
President Obama's hypocritical speech on his Afghan surge, 1 Dec 2009.
Um yes, wasn't it you, and people like you,
that caused this lack of unity and partisan division?
It was people like you who attacked Bush for 8 long years over Iraq, Afghanistan and national security.
And even today, the Republicans will support your Afghan surge.
It's your own party that will oppose it.
"I am very optimistic about - about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of
the great achievements of
this administration. You're going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government."
Vice-President
Joe Biden, Feb 2010, tries to claim credit for Bush's success in Iraq.
The "birthers" are wrong. Obama was born in Hawaii, as he says.
The newspaper birth notices
are proof of that,
as is the
abstract
of the
original birth cert.
Having said that, the birthers do have a point.
An original birth cert exists,
but we are not allowed see it,
only an abstract.
If this was Bush, the media would be screaming for its release.
But because it is Obama, the media ridicules anyone who wants to see it,
and calls them racists.
Maybe the real story is not what is on the original birth cert (probably nothing interesting),
but rather the arrogance of Obama, and the failure of the
Obama-loving media to do their job.
Tony Allwright, August 12, 2009:
"Mr Obama resolutely refuses to release his original birth certificate, which is the one thing that would permanently shut the birthers up. Why will Mr Obama not release it? There has to be a reason."
In Defense of the Birthers, Jeremy D. Boreing, 11 Aug 2009.
Boreing, like me, has no time for the birthers' theories,
but he is disturbed at how they are being treated.
"I am not a Birther. Which is not to say that I think the question of Barack Obama's US citizenship has in anyway been adequately answered, it has scarcely even been addressed other than through sneers and accusations of racism ...
Rather, I just don't believe it in anyway likely that Mr. Obama wasn't born in the country when two Hawaiian newspapers reported at the time that he was.
That said, I find the way that people who do believe that is a possibility are being treated by everyone - from the White House, to the media, to many even in the conservative blogosphere - to be completely unfair.
...
my question for the Birthers-haters is - When did it become incumbent on citizens asking reasonable questions about their president's life, experiences, and even his eligibility to be president, to simply accept the president at his word? Is it not reasonable to expect an elected official, especially one who has promised unprecedented transparency, to simply reveal the documents relevant to answering the biggest questions about his life? Are we supposed to take all of our government officials at face value now, or just this one?"
Heard the one about the internet rumours?, Irish Times, November 21, 2009,
is an annoying article laughing at Internet "rumours" about Obama.
Again, the real story is not that the rumours are true,
but rather the bias of the media.
The article quotes the disturbing Obama official
Cass Sunstein
giving out about Internet rumours:
"For example, during the 2008 US election, Sunstein notes, "many Americans believed Barrack Obama was a Muslim, that he was not born in the US, and that he 'pals around with terrorists'.""
The Irish Times joins in the laughing at this, but let's look at these 3 "rumours":
I'm sure he was born in Hawaii, as he says,
but isn't it odd that
he refuses to release his birth cert?
Isn't that something Irish Times journalists ought to be on about?
They would if it was Bush.
Gag The Internet!, Kyle Smith, July 11, 2009, on Cass Sunstein's disturbing ideas for the Internet.
The Irish Times is quoting an Obama official
who wants to clamp down on Internet "rumours".
His examples of Internet "rumours" are basically criticism of Obama.
And the Irish Times sees nothing wrong with this.
They would if it was Bush.
WND "birther" billboard.
I am sure Obama was born in Hawaii, as he says.
But WND still has a point.
Can anything be written in defence of Obama?
Yes.
Despite his awful rhetoric,
Obama's actions have been more cautious.
He has continued the use of violence against the global jihad.
He could be a lot worse.
Greg Gutfeld, 4 Feb 2010, on the bizarre silence of the left about Obama's war crimes.
Under Bush, he says:
"I witnessed a fully realized anti-American lynch mob, who would rather win an election than a war – and that made me more of a conservative than 9/11, my life at Berkeley, or all those head injuries combined.
Wanna see proof of my point? Ask yourself, where the feverish anti-war movement is, now that Obama is in power?"
Jeffrey Jena, 22 Feb 2010, points out another example. Obama announces funding for a
"new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country".
Silence from the once anti-nuclear left.
Victor Davis Hanson, February 21, 2010, says Obama's actions may speak louder than words.
Like vocal greens who live in mansions and fly jets,
Obama is a vocal "anti-war" critic who
also is quietly killing jihadis from the air without trial.
"Bottom line?
... Obama really does (privately) believe that radical Islamists wish to kill us, and apparently has decided the only effective means of combating them is to copy the Bush strategy but drop the "smoke 'em out" rhetoric and substitute hope-and-change therapeutic banalities as we blow up suspected killers."
Hanson also points out that
the left does not really care about the rights of terrorists.
All it cared about was attacking Bush.
Air strikes in Pakistan have escalated under Obama.
He's not all bad.
From The Long War Journal. Image as at start-Mar 2010.
(i.e. 2010 is on target to have about 100 airstrikes.)
MQ-1 Predator drone,
of the type that President Obama is using to kill jihadis without trial.
Image from here.
More images here.
was appointed
White House Special Advisor for "Green Jobs" by Obama in Mar 2009.
"Investigators are scratching their heads and expressing puzzlement about why he did it. According to NPR, “the motive behind the shootings was not immediately clear, officials said.” The Washington Post agreed: “The motive remains unclear ..”"
As Spencer says:
"Hasan’s motive was perfectly clear — but it was one that the forces of political correctness .. have been working for years to obscure. So it is that now that another major jihad terror attack has taken place on American soil, authorities and the mainstream media are at a loss to explain why it happened
– and the abundant evidence that it was a jihad attack is ignored.
...
The effect of ignoring or downplaying the role that Islamic beliefs and assumptions may have played in his murders only ensures that – once again – nothing will be done to prevent the eventual advent of the next Nidal Hasan."
Since 1995.
