Copenhagen: Apparently The Only Way Obama Will Be Able To Lower The Oceans Is By Shutting Up

When someone said that no occupant of the White House had ever been able to walk on water, liberals rushed in to correct us: no previous occupant of the White House has been able to walk on water.

Barack Obama was going to be different.  He was going to be the Messiah who replaced God with Government, and would be anointed as the Savior of the world.

Obama told us:

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal… This was the moment — this was the time — when we came together to remake this great nation …”

I mean, wow.  It’s not like he didn’t promise the world, well, the world or anything.

Statements like that help you understand why liberals like Spike Lee went just a little bit beyond absolutely insane:

“It means that this is a whole new world. I think…I’ve been saying this before. You can divide history. BB Before Barack. AB After Barack.”

And why people like Nation of Islam racist demagogue Louis Farrakhan proclaimed Obama as The Messiah:

“You are the instruments that God is gonna use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth. And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn’t care anything about. That’s a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking.”

But something happened to Captain Amazing after he actually took office: a fundamental inability to even begin to walk his talk.

We all remember Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for his two signature accomplishments of Jack and Squat.  And that Nobel Prize for Accomplishing Nothing may be the symbol of the Obama administration.

We tend to forget about how he promised his stimulus would prevent unemployment from reaching 8% (it’s now 10.2% and rising), or how pathologically pathetic his administration has since been in fabricating statistics to show his $3.27 trillion porkulus has been anything other than an abject failure.

Obama can’t even pretend his useless policies work without spectacularly screwing up.  As ABC puts it:

Here’s a stimulus success story: In Arizona’s 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that’s what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.

There’s one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.  And ABC News has found many more entries for projects like this in places that are incorrectly identified.

Oh, there’s more “there” there.  A lot more.  More dishonest butchery of employment statistics than you could ever hope to shake a stick at.

It turned out that not only was he basically not able to do anything to create jobs, but he couldn’t even do nothing right.  As Charles Krauthammer put it:

“When they speak seriously about this and how precise all of this is – 640,329 jobs saved –  comical precision.  And then it turns out a lot of these are fictional jobs in fictional districts, what happens is an administration that has already been satirized by Saturday Night Live as “do-nothing,” is now going to be seen as an administration that cannot even do nothing competently.”

Conservatives predicted his partisan stimulus slush fund would fail to deliver jobs.  And now liberals are finally recognizing it too:

NAACP, La Raza, AFL-CIO Tell Obama Stimulus Failed

With unemployment among blacks at more than 15 percent, the N.A.A.C.P. will join several other groups on Tuesday to call on President Obama to do more to create jobs.

The organizations — including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group— will make clear that they believe the president’s $787 billion stimulus program has not gone far enough to fight unemployment.

They will call for increased spending for schools and roads, billions of dollars in fiscal relief to state and local governments to forestall more layoffs and a direct government jobs program, “especially in distressed communities facing severe unemployment.”

Reminds me of an article title I had way back in May: “Obama Stimulus Robin Hood In Reverse: Poor Get Poorer.”

Obama passed off a pretty clever (though blatantly fallacious) load of hooey onto an equally dishonest and ideological lamestream media when he ginned up the bogus “created or saved jobs” statistic.  As Allan Meltzer, professor at Carnegie Mellon University put it, “One can search economic textbooks forever without finding a concept called ‘jobs saved’.”

But since then, his self-justifying  fabrications have been increasingly absurd and asinine.

To those brainwashed liberals who insist that the economy would have been worse if Obama hadn’t passed the stimulus, let me put it this way: the economy would have been worse if George W. Bush hadn’t done everything he did, too.  I mean, one load of baloney deserves another.

Obama has watched the American death toll in Afghanistan double from George Bush’s last year in office.  And his dithering over making the obvious decision to send the troops his own general requested has turned any momentum we may have been able to create into abject failure.  Both friend and foe alike should question Obama’s commitment, along with his competence.

Then we’ve had the mindboggling exhibition of incompetence in the Obama administration’s bungling of the H1N1 vaccine.  Lower the level of the oceans?  Obama can’t even raise the level of the flu doses!

And now even the liberals in Europe are turning on Obama as a colossal fraud and impostor.  As the German der Spiegel put it:

Barack Obama cast himself as a “citizen of the world” when he delivered his well-received campaign speech in Berlin in the summer of 2008. But the US president has now betrayed this claim. In his Berlin speech, he was dishonest with Europe. Since then, Obama has neglected the single most important issue for an American president who likes to imagine himself as a world citizen, namely, his country’s addiction to fossil fuels and the risks of unchecked climate change. Health-care reform and other domestic issues were more important to him than global environmental threats. He was either unwilling or unable to convince skeptics in his own ranks and potential defectors from the ranks of the Republicans to support him, for example, by promising alternative investments as a compensation for states with large coal reserves.

The Democrat-controlled Senate put off Obama’s cap-growth-and-tax-prosperity climate agenda until Spring (and good luck passing that economy killing monstrosity then!); and world leaders just said, “Better luck next time” with their climate change treaty.

Personally I cannot for the life of me understand why Obama’s plan –

“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

– failed.  I mean, who wouldn’t want shockingly high energy prices? Who doesn’t want to freeze in the dark?

Sorry, Barry Hussein.  If you want to live up to your promise to lower the oceans and heal the planet, I guess you’ll just have to start doing a lot more shutting the hell up and saving the planet from all your useless hot air.  Because other than that, you did squat.

Obama Furious McChrystal Supporting His Troops Instead Of Obama

The general whom Barack Obama handpicked only months ago is trying to stand up for his soldiers.  And Obama is furious at him for it.

Here’s the gist: Obama wants to put off a troop increase which would anger his liberal base because he knows he needs his base to ram his unpopular health care through.  He didn’t want to anger and dishearten his base until he got his health care agenda through Congress.  So he ordered that the report be shelved until – well, who knows how long?

What does Gen. McChrystal want?  He wants a commitment from the commander-in-chief that this isn’t going to be just another throw-away cut-and-run Democrat war.  And so far the Pentagon is legitimately deeply concerned about a lack of commitment from Obama.    McChrystal wants a decision so he can know how many troops he can expect – and when they will arrive – so that he can plan his operations.  If he knew what to expect in the future, it would help him plan for the present.  In short, he wants what ANY good commander wants: he wants to know what the hell is going on.

It’s just such a shocker that Gen. McChrystal isn’t willing to send his soldiers home in coffins so Obama can win his health care “victory.”

So Obama is playing politics, and McChrystal is dead-serious about matters life and death.

Suggestion: perhaps Obama should fire McChrystal and appoint a weak, pandering ditherer like himself?

White House angry at General Stanley McChrystal speech on Afghanistan
The relationship between President Barack Obama and the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan has been put under severe strain by Gen Stanley McChrystal’s comments on strategy for the war.

By Alex Spillius in Washington
Published: 7:00AM BST 05 Oct 2009

According to sources close to the administration, Gen McChrystal shocked and angered presidential advisers with the bluntness of a speech given in London last week.  [Because God forbid that a general should ever be blunt.  A general who has no clue what he wants to do is always much better].

The next day he was summoned to an awkward 25-minute face-to-face meeting on board Air Force One on the tarmac in Copenhagen, where the president had arrived to tout Chicago’s unsuccessful Olympic bid.  [Because 25 minutes – and speaking twice to your most significant combat commander in 100 days is MORE than enough to know exactly what’s going on in such a CLEARLY simple situation as Afghanistan].

In an apparent rebuke to the commander, Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary, said: “It is imperative that all of us taking part in these deliberations, civilians and military alike, provide our best advice to the president, candidly but privately.”  [In other words, BUTT OUT, Stanley!!!  The fact that you’re the commander of the effort in Afghanistan doesn’t mean SQUAT to us Chairborne Rangers!].

When asked on CNN about the commander’s public lobbying for more troops, Gen Jim Jones, national security adviser, said:

“Ideally, it’s better for military advice to come up through the chain of command.”  [Just submit your paperwork to the bureaucracy so it can sit on Gate’s desk for six weeks and counting.  Please stand in line and shut the hell up until we call your number].

Asked if the president had told the general to tone down his remarks, he told CBS: “I wasn’t there so I can’t answer that question. But it was an opportunity for them to get to know each other a little bit better. I am sure they exchanged direct views.”  [Actually, Barack Obama probably gave McChrystal a 25 minute speech on why he was so wonderful, and McChrystal never got a single word in edgewise].

An adviser to the administration said: “People aren’t sure whether McChrystal is being naïve or an upstart. To my mind he doesn’t seem ready for this Washington hard-ball and is just speaking his mind too plainly.”  [Mind you, people also aren’t sure whether Obama is being naive or a pathetic weakling.  And if you want to talk about someone not being ready for their damn job, maybe you should take a good long look at your boss].

In London, Gen McChrystal, who heads the 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan as well as the 100,000 Nato forces, flatly rejected proposals to switch to a strategy more reliant on drone missile strikes and special forces operations against al-Qaeda.

He told the Institute of International and Strategic Studies that the formula, which is favoured by Vice-President Joe Biden, would lead to “Chaos-istan”.  [But hey, who wouldn’t go with Biden?  I mean, it’s not as if he’s ever had any truly stupid ideas (and see here for how that brilliant stratagem worked out) before, or anything.  I mean, if I were running a war against insurgent terrorists, the first thing I’d do would be to fire my country’s foremost counter-insurgency expert and put Joe Biden in charge].

When asked whether he would support it, he said: “The short answer is: No.”  [Another short answer would be, “So either start pissing or start getting your troops out of this pot, Obama”].

He went on to say: “Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support.” [In other words, PLEASE STOP DITHERING AROUND PLAYING POLITICS AND SEND ME THE TROOPS I NEED TO BE ABLE TO ACTUALLY WIN OVER HERE].

The remarks have been seen by some in the Obama administration as a barbed reference to the slow pace of debate within the White House. [BECAUSE IT IS, YOU MORONS!!!].

Gen McChrystal delivered a report on Afghanistan requested by the president on Aug 31, but Mr Obama held only his second “principals meeting” on the issue last week.  [And guess who didn’t get his engraved invitation to the “principals meeting”?  You guessed it, the general whose assessment should matter the most].

He will hold at least one more this week, but a decision on how far to follow Gen McChrystal’s recommendation to send 40,000 more US troops will not be made for several weeks.  [I.e., until after Obama passes ObamaCare so he can stop ignoring Afghanistan and start ignoring the liberals he had just counted on for health care].

A military expert said: “They still have working relationship but all in all it’s not great for now.” [I’ve seen enough action movies to know that every time you set a pathetic selfish bureaucrat up against a hero, the pathetic selfish bureaucrat goes into a tizzy.  It’s pretty much an established plot device of the whole action genre].

Some commentators regarded the general’s London comments as verging on insubordination.  [You know, the mainstream media commentators who got thrills up their legs when they heard Obama give speeches].

Bruce Ackerman, an expert on constitutional law at Yale University, said in the Washington Post: “As commanding general, McChrystal has no business making such public pronouncements.”  [And as commander-in-chief, Barack Obama has no business allowing his most important field commander to twist in the wind ad nauseum.  That in addition to the fact that an expert would know that the Constitution doesn’t put a muzzle on anyone, let alone generals].

He added that it was highly unusual for a senior military officer to “pressure the president in public to adopt his strategy”.  [Because it’s highly unusual for a president to dither around after being confronted with such an urgent military need in time of war].

Relations between the general and the White House began to sour when his report, which painted a grim picture of the allied mission in Afghanistan, was leaked. White House aides have since briefed against the general’s recommendations.  [And the general had the gall to say something rather than throw himself on a landmine?  The nerve!].

The general has responded with a series of candid interviews as well as the speech. He told Newsweek he was firmly against half measures in Afghanistan: “You can’t hope to contain the fire by letting just half the building burn.”  [If Democrats truly think “half-measures” are a good thing, maybe they could start with their health care plans].

As a divide opened up between the military and the White House, senior military figures began criticising the White House for failing to tackle the issue more quickly.  [Having a clue what to do and actually bothering to talk with your senior field commander would go a long way, Barry].

They made no secret of their view that without the vast ground force recommended by Gen McChrystal, the Afghan mission could end in failure and a return to power of the Taliban.  [Mind you, we basically voted for failure and the return to power of the Taliban when we voted for Obama in the first place].

“They want to make sure people know what they asked for if things go wrong,” said Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defence.  [And they might even want – and this is a shocker – to prevent things from going horribly wrong in the first place].

Critics also pointed out that before their Copenhagen encounter Mr Obama had only met Gen McChrystal once since his appointment in June.  [And if that isn’t pathetic, then nothing is].

Here’s a chart for those of you keeping score of the war at home:

We are shaping up to have easily twice as many American casualties in Afghanistan this year as we had last year.  We’ve had another 20 soldiers killed just five days into October, plus two more long months to go.

My theory: the Taliban smell weakness, indecision, and lack of commitment – and Barack Obama is utterly reeking with all three qualities.  And the mullahs in Iran smell the same thing that the Taliban in Afghanistan smell.

Either send Gen. McChrystal his troops – and do it fast – or just cut-and-run and pull them out so we can have another massive terrorist attack on our soil in a few years.

I’ll tell you what: maybe Obama is outraged at McChrystal for speaking out.  Maybe the White House is furious.  Maybe Democrats are angry.  But if I were a solder hunkering down in a foxhole in Afghanistan, I’d be glad my commanding general stood up for me and demanded the resources we need to succeed.

Afghanistan and Iran: Weakling President Obama Confronted By ‘Strong’ Candidate Obama

Anne Bayefsky yesterday characterized Obama’s foreign policy as “the mouse who roared.”

Words don’t mean anything unless a leader has the character, integrity, courage, and resolve to stand behind them.

In July 15, 2008, candidate Obama roared regarding Afghanistan:

“I have argued for years that we lack the resources to finish the job because of our commitment to Iraq. That’s what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said earlier this month,” Obama proclaimed in a major foreign policy address on July 15, 2008. “And that’s why, as president, I will make the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be. This is a war that we have to win.”

In March 27, 2009, President Obama roared:

So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future. That’s the goal that must be achieved. That is a cause that could not be more just.

But now, just six months later, Obama is hiding from his generals and refusing to even LOOK AT his own General’s (Gen. Stanley McChrystal) troop request which will be necessary to carry out Obama’s own strategy.  Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Obama doesn’t even want to look at it yet.

Here’s the current situation:

Within 24 hours of the leak of the Afghanistan assessment to The Washington Post, General Stanley McChrystal’s team fired its second shot across the bow of the Obama administration. According to McClatchy, military officers close to General McChrystal said he is prepared to resign if he isn’t given sufficient resources (read “troops”) to implement a change of direction in Afghanistan:

“Adding to the frustration, according to officials in Kabul and Washington, are White House and Pentagon directives made over the last six weeks that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, not submit his request for as many as 45,000 additional troops because the administration isn’t ready for it.”

Here’s the current situation:

In interviews with McClatchy last week, military officials and other advocates of escalation expressed their frustration at what they consider “dithering” from the White House. Then, while Obama indicated in television interviews Sunday he isn’t ready to consider whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, someone gave The Washington Post a classified Pentagon report arguing more troops are necessary to prevent defeat.

Here’s the current situation:

Those officials said that taking time could be costly because the U.S. risked losing the Afghans’ support. “Dithering is just as destructive as 10 car bombs,” the senior official in Kabul said. “They have seen us leave before. They are really good at picking the right side to ally with.”

The roaring mouse has been replaced by a timid, weak, pandering, patronizing, appeasing – and most certainly DITHERING – president.

Bush used to talk to his troop commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq every week; Obama has spoken JUST ONCE with Gen. McChrystal in the last seventy days.

Obama has spent more time talking with David Letterman than he has his key general in Afghanistan!!!

Clear implication to McChrystal: Talk to the hand.

A recent article entitled, “Pentagon worried about Obama’s commitment to Afghanistan” ended with this assessment from a senior Pentagon official:

“I think they (the Obama administration) thought this would be more popular and easier.  We are not getting a Bush-like commitment to this war.”

Which answers the question as to why our troops so overwhelmingly supported Bush, and sat on their hands when their new commander-in-chief addressed them.

Charles Krauthammer points out the sheer cynical depravity of Barack Obama and the Democrat Party as regards Iraq and Afghanistan by pointing to what the Democrats themselves said:

Bob Shrum, who was a high political operative who worked on the Kerry campaign in ’04, wrote a very interesting article in December of last year in which he talked about that campaign, and he said, at the time, the Democrats raised the issue of Afghanistan — and they made it into “the right war” and “the good war” as a way to attack Bush on Iraq.In retrospect, he writes, that it was, perhaps, he said, misleading. Certainly it was not very wise.

What he really meant to say — or at least I would interpret it — it was utterly cynical. In other words, he’s confessing, in a way, that the Democrats never really supported the Afghan war. It was simply a club with which to bash the [Bush] administration on the Iraq war and pretend that Democrats aren’t anti-war in general, just against the wrong war.

Well, now they are in power, and they are trapped in a box as a result of that, pretending [when] in opposition that Afghanistan is the good war, the war you have to win, the central war in the war on terror. And obviously [they are] now not terribly interested in it, but stuck.

And that’s why Obama has this dilemma. He said explicitly on ABC a few weeks ago that he wouldn’t even use the word “victory” in conjunction with Afghanistan.

And Democrats in Congress have said: If you don’t win this in one year, we’re out of here. He can’t win the war in a year. Everybody knows that, which means he [Obama] has no way out.

Reminds me of Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who said, “I believe myself that … this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything.”  Reminds me of Democrat House Majority Whip James Clyburn openly acknowledging the fact that good news for American troops in Iraq would actually be bad news for Democrats.

The party of cut-and-run is already preparing to cutand run.  On the war they said we needed to fight and win in their campaign rhetoric.

By the way, Obama’s refusal to use the word “victory” is right here.  Nearly a year to the day after Obama said “This is a war we need to win,” Obama said (you can go here for the interview):

I’m always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.

Well, first of all, Obama is factually wrong in his history: Hirohito didn’t sign the surrender to MacArthur.  Secondly, he is utterly morally wrong in his foreign policy.

Let’s compare Obama’s refusal to pursue victory with the strategic vision of a great president:

“Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose.” – Ronald Reagan

Reagan’s America: winner; Obama’s America: loser.

Let’s turn now to Obama’s abject failure in Iran.

In his April 16th, 2008 debate with Hillary Clinton, Obama roared:

“I have said I will do whatever is required to prevent the Iranians from obtaining nuclear weapons.”

But he did nothing.  NOTHING.  And now Iran already has them at their whim.

And  in The Jerusalem Post, we get a picture of the REAL Obama:

The Iranians have already called Obama’s bluff. An Iranian newspaper referred to the American agenda on July 26 this way: “[T]he Obama administration is prepared to accept the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran… They have no long-term plan for dealing with Iran… Their strategy consists of begging us to talk with them.”

Obama had a historic opportunity at the United Nations gathering: he was the first American president EVER to serve as the chair of the UN Security Council.  He had the power to shape the agenda, and confront Iran over its now overwhelmingly clear nuclear weapons program.

He pissed his opportunity away, and drove NOTHING.

Anne Bayefsky described how Obama utterly failed to force any kind of showdown with Iran – even when the opportunity was literally handed to him.  She concludes by saying, “There is only one possible answer: President Obama does not have the political will to do what it takes to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb.”

Remember that pandering, appeasing, pathetic weakness when Iran gets the bomb and the ballistic missile system to deliver it.  Remember that when they launch wave after wave of terror attack with impunity.  Remember that when they shut down the Strait of Hormuz and send the price of gasoline skyrocketing to $15 a gallon.

As for Israel?

Only a brain-dead and witless minority of 4% of Israelis believe Obama hasn’t sold them down the river; by contrast, 88% of Israelis believed Bush was pro-Israel.

Hearkening back to the Carter Administration which Obama’s frighteningly resembles, Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wants to make it clear to Israel that if they attempt to attack Iran’s nuclear weapons sites the U.S. Air Force will stop them.

Apparently, Saudi Arabia is a better friend of Israel than the United States.

I believe God will supernaturally protect Israel when they are attacked by an enemy that will be emboldened because of American abandonment of Israel and a perception of American weakness.

Alas, America won’t be so fortunate.

I had crystal clear clarity when I heard that Barack Obama’s pastor of 23 years shouted:

“No, no, no!  Not God bless America, God damn America!”

And Barack Obama’s incredibly weak and pandering response was that:

Rev. Wright “is like an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with.”

I believe that God WILL damn America under this President.  And I believe that that damnation has already began.

Neville Chamberlain Deux: Obama Betrays Allies To Appease Enemies

For the official record, I have compared Barack Obama to Neville Chamberlain sixteen times in separate articles (seventeen counting this one).  British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was ruthless in advancing his domestic policy agenda, but became one of history’s most infamous appeasing weaklings in bowing down to Hitler’s threats and demands.  In seeking to avoid war at any cost, he guaranteed the worst war in human history – at least until now.

Prime Minister Chamberlain went to Munich expressing his desire to discuss a peaceful settlement with Germany under terms that included reneging on the British pledge to defend Czechoslovakia.  Jan Masaryk, the Czech Minister in London, called on British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax on the eve of the Munich Conference and said, “If you are sacrificing my nation to preserve the peace of the world, I will be the first to applaud you. But if not, God help your souls!”

Britain had betrayed Czechoslovakia for an empty promise that Neville Chamberlain naively believed would bring “peace in our time.”  Edouard Daladier took a more realistic view: “The fools,” he said bitterly, acknowledging the cheers of the crowds who believed Chamberlain’s statement.  “If only they knew what they are cheering.”

In one of those twists of historic irony that seem so commonplace in accompanying the greatest tragedies in human history, Barack Obama announced his betrayal of the previous American administration’s commitment to Poland and Czechoslovakia on the 70th anniversary of the bitter fruit of the Munich Conference.  It was on September 17, 1939 that Stalin’s forces streamed into Poland as a direct result of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasing betrayal and demonstration of weakness.

A Reuters article underscores the highly ironic timing of the Obama betrayal:

For Poland, the timing of the announcement is particularly sensitive. Thursday marked the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland following a pact between Moscow and Nazi Germany, an event seen by Poles as “a stab in the back.”

Is Obama even aware of the historic irony?  Probably not.  As Jules Crittenden points out, “The Obama administration doesn’t study history. It reimagines it.”

As usual, Obama has altered the facts on the intent of the missile shield.  It was – contrary to Obama’s assertion – not merely intended to protect the United States from a ballistic missile attack, but to serve as a bulwark against Russian aggression of eastern European countries (remember the recent Russian invasion of Georgia?).

Mr. Bush had developed a special relationship with Eastern Europe as relations between Washington and Moscow deteriorated. The proposal to deploy parts of the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic were justified on the grounds that they would protect Europe and the eastern coast of the United States against any possible missile attacks from Iran.

But the Polish and Czech governments saw the presence of American military personnel based permanently in their countries as a protection against Russia.

Poland and Czechoslovakia took a big risk trusting the United States instead of coming to terms under the sphere of hostile Russia.  And now they are revealed to have been fools for trusting the Americans:

“We have been hearing such things for a while now via different papers, from some conferences and so on,” said Waszczykowski, deputy head of Poland’s National Security Bureau which advises President Lech Kaczynski.

“This would be very bad. Without the shield we would de facto be losing a strategic alliance with Washington,” he said.

Michael Wisniewski, the Poland director of the Europa 21 foundation, expressed how Obama hamstrung the pro-USA movement throughout the entire eastern European region:

After 9/11 Poles expressed solidarity with USA without any hesitation. Despite the fact that we were risking alienation from some of our European partners. And after we joined US-led coalition against terrorism, we were verbally attacked by Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Shroeder – leaders of two major European powers. But our position was clear and firm – we would stay with USA and fight against common enemies – enemies who attacked our ally and the whole free world. No other country had so special status in Poland – almost 80% Poles sympathized with US. Poland is not great military power – but have some influence on the eastern Europe and was a real stronghold of American interests in this region. Whatever Germans, French or other UE countries would do – Poland always stood arm to arm with US.

Now it belongs to the past. It’s not only about this incident, but it was something that created great outrage here. It’s impossible to remain so positive towards US now – people are reacting emotionally. Even most pro-US media and journalists comment, that our close relations with USA was mistake. That we were wrong and we should focus on our closer neighbours – like France or Germany.

The Obama administration announced its betrayal of Poland and Czechoslovakia – and the abandonment of the shared values that had framed their relationship with the United States – with a telephone call.  At least it wasn’t done via Twitter.

The Poles and the Czechs have the virtue of not being so stupid and naive as to fall for Obama’s beautiful lies.  They are not dancing in the streets over the announcement of their betrayal:

Poles, Czechs: US missile defense shift a betrayal

WARSAW, Poland — Poles and Czechs voiced deep concern Friday at President Barack Obama’s decision to scrap a Bush-era missile defense shield planned for their countries.

“Betrayal! The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back,” the Polish tabloid Fakt declared on its front page.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski said he was concerned that Obama’s new strategy leaves Poland in a dangerous “gray zone” between Western Europe and the old Soviet sphere.

Recent events have rattled nerves throughout central and eastern Europe, a region controlled by Moscow during the Cold War, including the war last summer between Russia and Georgia and ongoing efforts by Russia to regain influence in Ukraine. A Russian cutoff of gas to Ukraine last winter left many Europeans without heat.

The Bush administration’s missile defense plan would have been “a major step in preventing various disturbing trends in our region of the world,” Kaczynski said in a guest editorial in Fakt that also was carried on his presidential Web site.

Neighboring Lithuania, a small Baltic nation that broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991 and is now a NATO member, also expressed regret over Obama’s decision.

Defense Minister Rasa Jukneviciene said that the shield would have increased security for Lithuania and she hoped missile defense would not be excluded from future talks on NATO security.

“This NATO region cannot be an exception and its defense is not less important compared with others,” she said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he still sees a chance for Poles and Czechs to participate in the redesigned missile defense system. But that did not appear to calm nerves in Warsaw or Prague. […]

An editorial in Hospodarske Novine, a respected pro-business Czech newspaper, said: “an ally we rely on has betrayed us, and exchanged us for its own, better relations with Russia, of which we are rightly afraid.”

The move has raised fears in the two nations they are being marginalized by Washington even as a resurgent Russia leaves them longing for added American protection.

The Bush administration always said that the planned system — with a radar near Prague and interceptors in northern Poland — was meant as defense against Iran. But Poles and Czechs saw it as protection against Russia, and Moscow too considered a military installation in its backyard to be a threat.

“No Radar. Russia won,” the largest Czech daily, Mlada Fronta Dnes, declared in a front-page headline.

Any nation that has made any kind of a deal with the United States should seriously rethink the trustworthiness of their partner.  Because the American promise doesn’t mean a whole lot under this administration.

It appears highly likely that Obama is abandoning a U.S. commitment and betraying Poland and Czechoslovakia in order to get some kind of commitment from Russia to use its leverage to stop Iran’s nuclear program.  The only problem is that Russia is even less trustworthy than the new United States has become under Obama.

We’re not going to get squat from Russia that is anything other than a superficial and meaningless exercise.

Jennifer Rubin concludes her piece on Obama’s betryal of Poland and Czechoslovakia with this:

The administration that promised to restore our standing in the world is on quite a roll. Open hostility toward Israel. Bullying Honduras [link]. Reneging on promises to Eastern Europe. A strange policy indeed that dumps on our friends in the vain effort to incur the goodwill of our enemies. And if one is a “realist,” not a fabulist, it should be apparent that this is a losing proposition. We will lose our friends and gain nothing. Weakness and the betrayal of our allies do not ameliorate tensions with our adversaries. We had a Cold War topped off by the Carter administration to prove that. But Obama’s never been very good at history.

In April of last year I wrote this about Democrats and Iran near the end of the piece:

Allow me to guarantee you that a Democratic administration will see a nuclear Iran. Given their policy on Iraq, it becomes an implicit campaign promise. And it will see a nuclearized Middle East. Democrats have spent forty years proving that they are cowards who will not stand by their allies, and their actions will come home to roost.

And here we are: Iran can now make a bomb.

And neither Russia nor Obama are going to do a damn thing to stop it.

White House Blames Bush For Obama’s Failures In Afghanistan

Asked about the problems Obama is facing in Afghanistan, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs went to his tried and anything-but-true playbook of demagoguery, saying:

“You can’t under-resource the most important part of our War on Terror – you can’t under-resource that for five, or six, or seven years…..and hope to snap your fingers and have that turn around in a few months.”

It’s all Bush’s fault.  That’s pretty much all you have to know about the Obama administration’s political strategy, in a nutshell.

Gibb’s by now completely expected demagoguery doesn’t account for why Barack Obama has already lost more troops in Afghanistan so far this year than George Bush ever lost, as the following chart shows:

I would submit another couple of theories instead, such as:

1) The White House can’t possibly win the “war on terror” that Gibbs refers to when in point of fact they deny that such a war even exists in the first place.  If you pick up a copy of “The Complete Moron’s Guide To Winning A War,” you find out that the first step is to acknowledge that you are actually in a war.  Too bad, Obama didn’t read the book.

I don’t know, but maybe we would be better off with a president who called a war on terror something like, oh I don’t know, a “war on terror.”  Instead we have a president who was apparently appalled by such a barbaric term as ‘war’ or such a pejorative term as ‘terror’ and preferred the description, ‘Overseas Contingency Operation’ instead.

2) The president who boldly advanced and wildly succeeded in Iraq with his “Surge” deserves far more credibility than the president who campaigned demonizing the very strategy that brought us success in Iraq.  On January 10, 2007 Obama said, “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there; in fact, I think it’ll do the reverse.”  Obama demanded a timeline that would have had us crawling out of Iraq by March 2008 with our tails behind our legs rather than winning.

Maybe a big part of the problem is that Obama is every bit as incompetent in Afghanistan as he demonstrated himself to be in Iraq.

But you just keep demonizing the president who knew who to win even while you worked to undermine him, Mister Loser-in-Chief.

3) Maybe part of the problem is that you utterly failed to rally the world behind you as you claimed you could in your deluded “I’m your messiah!  Adore me!” tour. Obama claimed that he could “rally NATO members to contribute troops to collective security operations, urging them to invest more in reconstruction and stabilization operations, streamlining the decision-making processes, and giving NATO commanders in the field more flexibility.” Not only did Obama fail to deliver the eager European cooperation in Afghanistan now that that mean, nasty evilmonger Bush was gone, but he actually got even less of a commitment than Bush got.

Conservatives predicted that Europe would talk a good talk but refuse to fight a good fight.  Too bad we elected a president who lacked the wisdom and common sense to understand European cowardice and apathy.  Because we elected a fool, we will struggle mightily to live up to our fools’ grandiose promises.

4) Maybe part of the problem in Afghanistan is that you’re own troops don’t trust your commitment.

Barack Obama’s efforts to undermine President Bush’s war in Iraq are so lengthy that I can only direct you to the list of the times that he tried to screw our soldiers and cause them to lose in Iraq.  But it’s hard to read it and not come to the conclusion that Barack Obama has an awful lot of explaining to do about why he so unrelentingly worked against victory.  Tragically, the media – which shared Obama’s liberalism – failed to hold him accountable.  And now what is Obama to do when Obama’s liberal base does the same thing to Afghanistan that Obama himself did in Iraq?

And here we are, with the Pentagon doubting Obama’s commitment to Afghanistan.  Such a SHOCKER! Who would have ever figured?:

Pentagon worried about Obama’s commitment to Afghanistan

By Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers Nancy A. Youssef, Mcclatchy Newspapers   – Mon Aug 31, 7:29 pm ET

WASHINGTON — The prospect that U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal may ask for as many as 45,000 additional American troops in Afghanistan is fueling growing tension within President Barack Obama’s administration over the U.S. commitment to the war there.

On Monday, McChrystal sent his assessment of the situation in Afghanistan to the Pentagon , the U.S. Central Command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and NATO . Although the assessment didn’t include any request for more troops, senior military officials said they expect McChrystal later in September to seek between 21,000 and 45,000 more troops. There currently are 62,000 American troops in Afghanistan .

However, administration officials said that amid rising violence and casualties, polls that show a majority of Americans now think the war in Afghanistan isn’t worth fighting. With tough battles ahead on health care, the budget and other issues, Vice President Joe Biden and other officials are increasingly anxious about how the American public would respond to sending additional troops.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk to the media, said Biden has argued that without sustained support from the American people, the U.S. can’t make the long-term commitment that would be needed to stabilize Afghanistan and dismantle al Qaida.  Biden’s office declined to comment.

“I think they (the Obama administration) thought this would be more popular and easier,” a senior Pentagon official said. “We are not getting a Bush-like commitment to this war.”

Conservatives have been claiming for YEARS AND YEARS that Democrats lacked the courage or will to sustain a war through difficult times.  That’s because again and again, with a perfect track record over the past 40 years, Democrats have been the ones undermining America’s military efforts on foreign soil.  And why on earth should anyone doubt for a second that they’re going to break their streak now?

So beat me with an electric cattle prod, but I simply couldn’t be more shocked that we’re already proving to be right — AGAIN!!!

What we’re ultimately going to see in Afghanistan from Democrats is the same fair-weather friends that Bush saw in Iraq.  We wont go back to “The vile spectacle of Democrats rooting for bad news in Iraq and Afghanistan” only because a Democrat is now in the White House.  But the same spirit of cowardice, abandonment, and betrayal that drove the Democrats’ partisan agenda under Bush will resurface.  It’s just who these people are.

Hillary Clinton – now Obama’s Secretary of State – is the epitome of the liberal weasel.  After the announcement of Saddam Hussein’s capture in Iraq, we had the following moment among many other self-serving moments:

Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York that December, she declared, “I was one who supported giving President Bush the authority, if necessary, to use force against Saddam Hussein. I believe that that was the right vote” and was one that “I stand by.”

Of course her “stand” didn’t last one second longer than her partisan political self-interests.

Hillary Clinton is joined by Nany Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Kerry, John Edwards, John Kerry, and a whole host of Democrats who supported taking military action in Iraq before they were against it.

Some sites that list Democrats’ treachery:

Truth or Fiction
Freedom Agenda
Snopes

Nearly 60% of Democrat Senators actually voted for the Iraq War.  The 2003 Iraq War actually had better Congressional support than the 1990 Gulf War.  Democrats went from embracing every essential claim that President Bush made to justify the war – including supporting the war itself – only to deceitfully degenerate into “Bush lied, people died.”  But it wasn’t Bush who lied – it was Democrats.

Charles Krauthammer cites Democrat strategist and Kerry ’04 campaigner Bob Shrum’s describing Afghanistan as the “right war” as a tactic to attack Bush in Iraq while not being “anti-war.”  It was an incredibly cynical strategy from an incredibly cynical political party.  Frankly, anyone who thinks that the Democrat Party will do the right thing for the right reasons in Afghanistan is simply deluded.

No nation can get involved in a war because of public opinion, and then abandon that same war because of public opinion.  Such a policy would make any kind of sustained foreign policy completely unsustainable, and would make us utterly unworthy of any alliances whatsoever.  And that is precisely what makes what Democrats – and Barack Obama himself – so morally despicable for what they did in Iraq.  They were for the war when it served their interests to be for the war, and then they turned against the war the moment the opinion polls began to show fading support in order to politically demonize Republicans who continued to stay the course.  When the Senate Majority Leader of the United States of America – Democrat Harry Reid – literally declared defeat in Iraq even as our soldiers were in Iraq fighting to secure victory, it was a literal act of treason.

Frankly, given how Democrats demagogued changing American opinions about the war in Iraq, it is talionic justice that they now suffer due to the change in popular opinion over Afghanistan.  The true shame now, JUST AS IT WAS IN IRAQ, is that our warriors should not be exposed to the whims of the public.

5) Look back at the table above.  Barack Obama has already sustained 17.5% more American causalities in Afghanistan than George Bush did in 2008 – with a full third of the year remaining.  At this point, Obama is poised to sustain more U.S. casualties in Afghanistan than George Bush did in the first five years of the war combined.

There is clearly a resurgence in the ranks of our terrorist (yes, I actually said ‘terrorist’) enemy.

I would submit that it is more than possible that the forces of jihad have understood that – as a result of American weakness – we now have a weakling of a president who can be pushed around and who will cave in.  Given the fact that even Obama’s own LIBERAL BASE are increasingly worried that Obama lacks necessary courage and commitment, should the Taliban and al Qaeda not think the same thing?

They understand – even as our Pentagon fears – that America under Obama is losing its will to fight, and that America now has the kind of leadership that has already demonstrated a willingness to cut and run on a fight.  All they need to do is read Barack Obama’s own surrender-rhetoric regarding Iraq to understand their current enemy.  And that understanding is understandably energizing them to fight even harder.

6) I might also add that our current White House is literally “at war” with the CIA that contributes to the operational intelligence our military planners use.  The CIA is suffering from bad morale which is at at a thirty year low. While I do not have the background to assess whether the Obama White House’s undermining of the CIA is responsible for fewer intelligence breakthroughs in Afghanistan and subsequently fewer successful military operations, I believe I have a prima facia reason to believe that such is the case.

President Obama, how it George Bush’s fault that you decided to target the CIA as part of your political witch hunt?

Our Marines understand who their loyal friend and commander was, and what they have in his place now:

Youtube

At the present rate, Barack Obama is going to sustain more than 76% more American casualties in Afghanistan than did George Bush last year.  And he’s blaming what is clearly his failure on Bush?

The fact that Barack Obama has based so much of his “leadership” on demonizing and demagoguing his predecessor is actually evidence of the fact that he himself is no real leader at all.

And that failure in leadership may be the most significant reason of all for Obama’s failure in Afghanistan.  As he waffles around indecisively, his troops – who don’t trust him and can’t count on him –  are going to increasingly find themselves drifting helplessly along with the next approval poll.