Obama has an almost uncanny ability to avoid answering tough questions. Of course, that may simply be because he doesn’t have any idea what an effective policy would look like.
At the G-20 meetings, President Obama is proving quite definitively before an international audience that he is tone deaf.
[H]is policies, contentious at home, have proved contentious overseas as well, and he faced stiff challenges during the Group of 20 gathering in Seoul, South Korea, from the leaders of China, Britain, Germany and Brazil over currency policy and his contention that the United States could pump money into its economy to stimulate growth before concentrating on reducing the deficit.
Of course these countries are upset. They own a lot of our debt, and Obama’s policies are devaluing their investment. They have every right to be contentious—it’s their money Obama is wasting.
”Part of the reason that sometimes it seems as if the United States is attracting some dissent is because we’re initiating ideas,” the president said
This would be funny if he didn’t truly believe it. Republicans—and conservatives in general—are frequently portrayed by liberals and the media (I know, often one and the same) as provincial rubes, ignorant of and uninterested in the “outside world.” With this one statement Obama gives the lie to that caricature. Other nations are criticizing his policies not because they’re somehow new or innovative, but because they have been tried elsewhere—and found lacking. Obama, by failing to acknowledge the recent history of western Europe, demonstrates that it is he who is willfully ignorant of reality. While other nations are backing away from the precipice of huge government deficit spending, he is rushing America headlong over the cliff.
When a reporter asked what kind of complaints he was hearing from fellow leaders, Mr. Obama laughed it off, asking, “What about compliments?” As to whether the elections at home have weakened him overseas, he served up a one-word answer: No.
His response was only natural, because in his hubris and utter narcissism he simply can’t acknowledge the true failures of his administration or the fact that the same Europeans who once feted him after his presidential campaign speech in Germany have now turned against him because of his policies. The truth is that America’s position in the world is much weaker under Obama—not because other nations are reluctant in principal to follow America’s lead, but because they are unwilling to follow where he is leading.
It was only six months ago that Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon, in an address to Congress, blamed the escalating drug war violence in his otherwise tranquil nation on lax American gun laws. He even called for reinstatement of the 1990s weapons ban—to thunderous applause from the leftists in the audience—even though the high-powered weaponry employed by the cartels doesn’t come from our shores and can’t be acquired here under current laws.
Now Arturo Sarukhan—Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S.—in an address to the Council on Foreign Relations, wants to tell a different story.
[Sarukhan] has criticised the international media for paying excessive attention to the drug-related violence in his country.
So which is it? Is the drug violence—rising murder rates, including beheadings and other gruesome and torturous executions—an impending disaster which can only be averted by undermining American sovereignty or is the reportage of the crisis overblown? You can’t have it both ways.
Two American companies have announced plans to create around 60 “high calibre” jobs in Ireland (approx. $50-60K/year). That’s not really the big story here, though, as 60 jobs is just a drop in the 9.6% unemployment bucket.
In recent weeks, there have been several jobs announcements from US companies investing in Northern Ireland.
Now why would American companies be interested in creating those jobs overseas instead of here? It’s simple, really. Our current administration and its lackeys in Congress are anti-business. Every time Republicans have suggested cutting the corporate tax rate in order to encourage business expansion on our shores, the left lobs accusations that Republicans: are in the pocket of the ueber-evil big business, favor Wall Street over Main Street, etc., ad nauseum. The truth is that Ireland has a corporate tax rate of 12.5% compared to our 39%. Sometimes economic reality is stunningly obvious.
Not content with the fact that Muslims do indeed enjoy religious freedom in America, expatriate Michael Goldfarb lectures us for not being tolerant of Islam. So much is wrong with this editorial. Let’s begin at the top.
The plan to build Park 51, a Muslim community centre a few blocks north of Ground Zero in New York City, has re-kindled resentment smoldering since 9/11 against the Muslim community in a significant portion of American society.
Consider that originally the building was to be called the “Cordoba House.” Anyone who knows anything about Muslim history knows the name was chosen deliberately. If you’re unaware of its significance, educate yourself. From the beginning, this project was an intentional poke in America’s eye.
Goldfarb notes that a New York Times poll showed that while 62% of New Yorkers believed backers of the center had the right to build it near Ground Zero, 67% said it should not be.
The question raised by the poll is, people have religious freedom but where did the toleration go?
The underlying problem here is that Goldfarb, like many on the left, confuses the freedom or legal right to perform an act with the wisdom or moral correctness of doing so. You may have the legal right to be an idiot, but I do you no great favor by tolerating your idiocy.
Picture a “Christian” group blowing up the Kingdom Centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, slaughtering thousands of innocent Saudis. Can you even imagine the outrage that would follow if any other group of Christians—even a legitimate and widely-accepted group—were to propose building a Christian community center on or near the site? That outrage would be justified…and so is ours. The issue is not one of “(legal) right to” but of “ought to.”
(Oh, wait. I forgot. Even having a Bible in your possession in Saudi Arabia is a crime punishable by imprisonment. Converting to Christianity—from, er, Islam—is a capital offense. Ah, yes…we certainly are the intolerant ones.‚
Regarding religious freedom and tolerance, Goldfarb then ponders,
Where do those values of religious tolerance come from? Are they uniquely American?
What follows is a couple paragraphs on John Locke followed by a brief explanation of how France has dealt with the issue. I’m not entirely sure why Goldfarb bothers with these, as they both point out exactly how good minority religions have it in America. Locke, taken in context, never suggested that society should tolerate all religions in the way Goldfarb and the modern left would have it—a full and approving embrace. I’m OK. You’re OK. Kumbayah, etc. (Read it. I’m not sure Goldfarb did. The bulk of the essay deals with how Christians of various sects treat each other, an issue deserving as much attention now as when he wrote, but irrelevant to the topic at hand.) Locke argued that the government itself should not play favorites and should view adherents of all religions equally—something America has done at least as well as any other nation on the planet.
And France? They’ve recently banned the full Muslim veil in public. To my knowledge (and a lengthy Google search) no serious American political leader has suggested we do the same. Yes, there have been a few legal cases involving Islam, e.g., requiring Muslim women to unveil in order to have drivers license photographs taken, but there is no great push in the U.S. to curtail Muslims’ religious freedom.
In the furor over Park 51, the more thinking members of the anti-mosque brigade have invoked French reasoning without using the word France, reminding the project’s prime mover, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, that tolerated minorities have reciprocal responsibilities not to tread to [sic] heavily on the feelings of the majority.
Where equality fits into their reasoning is not clear.
That is because the issue is not one of equality. It is completely and solely about the morality or “rightness” of the project.
Curiously Britain, which had no 18th Century revolution and which still bans a Catholic from taking the throne, has had in these times of tensions between Muslims and their fellow citizens, fewer problems.
Mr. Goldfarb must read an entirely different web site than the BBC (for which he writes) I visit daily. Browse their site and determine for yourself whether his assessment of the situation in England is warranted.
Disappointingly, Goldfarb then descends into the all-too-common ploy of simply denigrating America.
…America is on the verge of exploding with intolerance towards Muslims…
…most Americans…don’t know or think much about the world outside the US.
And so on. Ignorant, navel-gazing, intolerant, bigoted Americans. Yada, yada, yada.
The truth is, religious freedom as it is fiercely defended in America is uniquely American. There is no other country which so amicably plays host to the bewildering array of religions as is found here. It’s one of the many distinctive characteristics which make this the number one destination of immigrants from all over the world and, as Michael Medved is fond of saying, “The greatest nation on God’s green earth.”
How does a single mom, home alone with her infant child, protect herself from a knife-wielding attacker? Here in the U.S., she has the option of arming herself for her own protection. In the U.K., she just screams while the assailant stabs her and her child to death.
Remind me again how that gun ban’s working out for ya’.
Good news! Obama has announced his administration’s national security strategy. We’re in for a rough ride.
The Obama administration has unveiled a new national security strategy, saying armed conflict should be a last resort when diplomacy is exhausted.
Newsflash: this isn’t a new policy. America’s policy has always been “diplomacy first, war last.” The Democrats’ favorite whipping boy didn’t just decide one day to roll over Iraq. Saddam Hussein spent the decade after the end of the first Gulf War violating the very conditions that ended the war and refusing to comply with U.N. WMD inspections. I probably shouldn’t bother mentioning the latter, as the U.N. is a uselessly corrupt entity, but it only added to the justification of war prompted by the former. Years of diplomacy by the U.S. and other nations had zero effect. War was, in fact, the last and necessary resort.
The document also advocates innovation, economic stability and prosperity as essential to America’s wider security aims.
The left always comes back to economics as the cause of all evil. There is a massive failure to recognize that the leaders and planners—as well as most of the terrorists themselves—of the 9/11 were the product of Saudi Arabian wealth, not poverty. Osama Bin Laden himself is from a very wealthy royal family—the son of privilege, not hardship. The threat of radical Islamic terrorism, which the administration has a wee bit of a problem acknowledging, has nothing whatsoever to do with poverty. “Economic stability and prosperity” are not going to make al Qaeda go away.
“To succeed, we must face the world as it is,” says the document, in what is seen as a formal break from the go-it-alone Bush era.
“The world as it is” is endangered by violent, radical Islam, against which only America and a few of her closest and bravest allies have stood tall. Please face it.
As for “go-it-alone,” the left appears to forget the many nations which joined America in both the Afghan and Iraqi wars, among them some of the best friends and staunchest allies any country could be honored to have. A president who has consistently insulted and mistreated our friends while cozying up to our critics would do well to remember that.
The Obama administration’s new doctrine also reiterates the Obama’s determination to try to engage with countries like Iran and North Korea, but warns that they face deepening isolation if they do not respond to international pressure to come clean on their controversial nuclear programmes.
Translation: he’s going to do a lot of talking and precious little else, while Iran—the world’s largest exporter and supporter of terrorism—forges ahead with its nuclear program. Diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy…BOOM!
Other key initiatives outlined in Mr Obama’s strategy include the dismantling of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Not new.
The document describes the security of Israel and peaceful Israeli and Palestinian states living side by side as among the main interests of the US.
Not new, though largely contradicted by his shameful treatment of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
“We are shifting from mostly direct exercise and application of power to a more sophisticated and difficult mix of indirect power and influence,” America’s top diplomat [Secretary of State Hillary Clinton] said.
Translation: he’s going to do a lot of talking and precious little else, while Iran—the world’s largest exporter and supporter of terrorism—forges ahead with its nuclear program. Diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy…BOOM!
In her speech, Mrs Clinton also reiterated that democracy, human rights and development remained central to American foreign policy.
Yes, while we continue to prop up the U.N. with billions of our hard-earned tax dollars while they elect terrorist states and egregious human rights violators to the Human Rights Council.
Earlier, John Brennan, Mr Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser, said the new strategy also explicitly recognised the threat posed by “individuals radicalised here at home”.
“We’ve seen individuals, including US citizens, armed with their US passport, travel easily to terrorist safe havens and return to America, their deadly plans disrupted by co-ordinated intelligence and law enforcement,” Mr Brennan added.
First, anyone who travels to a “terrorist safe haven” for training and indoctrination is not “radicalised here at home.” This is not home-grown terrorism, but evil imported from the radical Islamic world. But you can’t acknowledge that, can you?
Second, the thwarted plans of the most recent terrorists was not “disrupted by co-ordinated intelligence and law enforcement” in any way, shape, or form. Fort Hood? Successful attack by a radical Muslim. The Fruit-of-Kaboom bomber? Couldn’t get his panties to light. Times Square? A fortunate case of incompetence.
Bill Clinton did not mention the domestic terrorism issue in his 1998 strategy, despite the Oklahoma City bombing three years earlier, while George W Bush made only passing reference to the issue in his 2006 document.
That would be because the bombing of the A.P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City was the act of a lone nutjob. It was a completely isolated event rather than an ongoing existential threat.
In May this year, New York City police defused a car bomb parked in Times Square, one of the city’s busiest tourist areas.
Yes, but only because Shahzad screwed up and bought the wrong ingredients for his bomb.
The truth is that over the past year we’ve been very, very lucky. Hope that luck holds, because Obama’s new strategy is a recipe for disaster.
The UK must be so proud of its ban on private ownership of handguns. How is an 89-year-old woman supposed to defend herself from an attack by a 28-year-old home invader? She can’t. She simply gets raped.
Repeat the leftist mantra: “Handguns are bad. They kill people.” Yeah, whatever. Just be honest about it. You hoplophobes would rather have society suffer atrocities than allow people to protect themselves from animals like this.
The Greek government is broke. No big news there, as it’s been a top international headline for months. Now there are major strikes planned for this week to protest the massive budget cuts required in order to right the sinking Greek ship of state. Who’s striking?
Government employees.
Clue: Government does not create wealth. Government siphons wealth off of its productive citizens and channels that money to people who don’t produce anything tangible. Some provide valuable services, e.g., the military, police, firemen, and (some) teachers. But none of the government’s employees actually produces anything that generates revenue. So, when the government is broke, there are only two options: increase taxes on the citizens who are productive, or cut pay for those who are not. In the case of Greece, there aren’t enough of the former to support the latter. Here in America we are moving all to quickly toward the same situation. There’s a lesson here somewhere.
The man who purchased the SUV used in the attempted bombing in New York’s Times Square this weekend was arrested at JFK Airport as he prepared to board a flight to Dubai. He is a naturalized U.S. citizen. His name is:
If you guessed 1-3 you’re a freaking idiot. There’s a very good reason to use racial/ethnic/national profiling for certain types of law enforcement work and for exercising extra scrutiny when granting immigrant visas. Can’t wait to see all the details on this cretin.