Remember How Liberals Said Every Aggressive Move Against Terrorists Was ‘A Provocation’? Why Is It A Good Thing Now?

I remember how Obama and the rest of the left decried every agressive move President George W. Bush made as being a provocation that would only result in more violence and make the new wave of terrorism being waged against America even worse.

The war on terror was a provocation.  The Iraq War was a provocation.  The terrorist prison facility at Guantanamo Bay was a provocation.  The surge strategy was a provocation.  And “provoking” the terrorists was the worst possible way to react, we were constantly told.

On the surge strategy that won the Iraq War, Obama had 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 will do the reverse.”

Sending more troops to win the fight will increase the violence.  And that is a bad, bad thing. 

On the Iraq War as provocation (and therefore a bad thing), a critique of Obama’s apology in his Cairo Speech says it all:

On “violent extremism” Obama clung to the meme of “Afghanistan War good/Iraq War bad.” Obama said, “Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world. Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible.”

This does not make sense. Iraq was not a “war of choice.” Saddam Hussein, for a variety of reasons (not just on WMDs, which everyone believed Hussein had and which he was certainly pursuing) had made himself intolerable. And Saddam was certainly not responding to diplomacy; that was the main reason the coalition forces marched.

Obama also made his first cringing apology. “The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our ideals.” Well, no we did not. That is a flat out lie and a pander not only to liberal opponents of the war on terror but to the Muslim extremists Obama says he abhors.

It doesn’t matter that because of the very surge strategy that Obama personally demonized that Obama’s vice president was able to actually say the following about the Iraq War that Obama also demonized:

“I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration.”

I would point out that George Bush won his “war of choice” that “provoked strong differences.”  And Obama – even after eventually abandoning his own demqgoguery on the “surge” to implement a surge of his own in Afghanistan, and even after using Bush’s own general which the left demonized to implement that surge – is floundering badly in “the good war” of Afghanistan.  Which is why Afghanistan sure won’t be “one of the great achievements of the Obama administration.”

George Bush “stupidly’ chose to fight a war against a tyrant in a terrain that the United States could actually win.  The vastly more brilliant Obama chose to put all his marbles in an Afghanistan that has been the graveyard of empires for a thousand years.  Afghanistan also happens to feature a terrain that almost entirely nullifies our vast tactical and strategic advantages.  But that’s what you do when you think you’re too damn smart for your own good, I guess.

On Guantanamo Bay as a provocation, Obama said:

“Guantanamo is probably the No. 1 recruitment tool that is used by these jihadist organizations,” Obama said. “And we see it in the websites that they put up. We see it in the messages that they’re delivering.”

It didn’t matter that Guantanamo Bay was absolutely necessary, no matter how much it provoked people who were determined to be provoked.  That is just a fact, and facts don’t matter to demagogues.  It’s just an “inconvenient truth” that Gitmo is still open, and WILL REMAIN OPEN as long as Obama is president.

Then there was that nasty rhetorical phrase “war on terror” that was clearly too provocative, so Obama rebranded it as an “overseas contingency operation.”

The one thing that couldn’t be more clear: don’t you dare provoke these people.  It’s bad to provoke.  The mainstream media would crawl all over you if you dared to provoke.

So I’m left sitting here wondering how provocation suddenly went from a bad thing to a good thing just because the guy doing all the provoking was a Democrat.

Obama’s Middle East policies have resulted in dramatically escalated increases in violence throughout the Arab world.  Which would have been terrible if Bush had had anything to do with it, but which is okay because a liberal did it.  So the mainstream media has refused to harangue Obama on that unintended consequence of his budding Utopia.

In Libya, you’ve got a lot more of this “untended consequence” regarding Obama’s nearlty forgotten little third war he started in Libya:

TRIPOLI, Libya – Libyans shouting for revenge buried Moammar Gadhafi’s second youngest son to the thundering sound of anti-aircraft fire Monday, as South Africa warned that the NATO bombing that killed him would only bring more violence.

Libya’s leader did not attend the tumultuous funeral of 29-year-old Seif al-Arab, but older brothers Seif al-Islam and Mohammed paid their respects, thronged by a crowd of several thousand. Jostling to get closer to the coffin, draped with a green Libyan flag, mourners flashed victory signs and chanted “Revenge, revenge for you, Libya.”

Three of Gadhafi’s grandchildren, an infant and two toddlers, also died in Saturday’s attack, which NATO says targeted one of the regime’s command and control centers. Gadhafi and his wife were in the compound at the time, but escaped unharmed, Libyan officials said, accusing the alliance of trying to assassinate the Libyan leader.

NATO officials have denied they are hunting Gadhafi to break the battlefield stalemate between Gadhafi’s troops and rebels trying for the past 10 weeks to depose him. Rebels largely control eastern Libya, while Gadhafi has clung to much of the west, including the capital, Tripoli.

But of course NATO is denying that we’re hunting Gadafi in violation of United Nations policies against targeting political leaders.  After all, we’ve even denied we’re at war at all, preferring the nicer-sounding euphamism of “kinetic military action.”  “War” sounds so mean, and hardly something a brilliant liberal would do, after all.  The far more erudite liberals launch wave after wave of “kinetic military actions” instead.  And no matter how many of Gaddafi’s compounds somehow accidentally get targeted and blown up, that’s clearly all it is.

Now we’ve got Obama (almost as though Obama were himself one of the machine-gun toting SEALs) killing Osama bin Laden.  That clearly won’t provoke anybody.

America’s relationship with Pakistan was already at an all-time low due to Obama incessantly flying Predators over their country and launching rocket attacks on them.  But so what?  Provocation is a good thing now, because Obama is doing it instead of George Bush.  And if you’re brilliant, you don’t have to kowtow to such trivialities as consistency.

And so what if Obama ordered American troops to launch a military attack on Pakistani soil without bothering to even inform the Pakistanis?  No harm, no foul.  So what if we violated their sovereignty?  Obama is the leader of the world, and the sooner the world recognized that he is an imperial president, the better.  If you don’t like Obama pursuing “cowboy” tactics, or engaging in “you’re either with us or you’re against us” policies, well, you’re just not very enlightened.  Because it’s not fascist unless Republicans do it.

And al Qaeda, whom the left was so worried about provoking when George Bush was the guy doing the provoking?  They’ll get over it.  So we can ignore the little threat they just made less than a week ago about unleashing a “nuclear hellstorm” upon America if we killed or captured Osama bin Laden.

You think of Gitmo, the surge strategy, rendition, domestic eavesdropping, the Patriot Act, indefinite detentions, military tribunals and a host of other things Obama demonized George Bush and Dick Cheney over, and not only are they doing the same things, but they’re doing even worse.  But the same mainstream media that tore into George Bush like pitbulls going after raw bloody meat don’t seem to have time to dwell on Obama’s blatant hypocrisies.

Nor does Bush get any credit for having been right when Obama and the Democrats were so completely wrong by their own massive reversals to the Bush policies now.

We are watching a level of propaganda and fundamental hypocrisy overtake the United States of America by both the media and the White House that ought to simply stun you.

On How Obama Will Damage America For Decades To Come

Obama is a disaster in every possible sphere of leadership.

But the question then becomes, “In which particular sphere does Obama’s disastrous failure of leadership represent the greatest danger to America?”

Thomas Sowell answers the question:

September 28, 2010
A Warning from Thomas Sowell
Anthony Kang

Frankly, there aren’t enough words or superlatives in the English dictionary to describe the great Thomas Sowell. With an unparalleled gift to explain even the most complicated subjects in simple and easily understandable terms, few can match the pedigree and contributions of the Hoover Institute senior fellow. Author of the new book, “Dismantling America,” Sowell recently sat down for an interview with Investors Business Daily’s David Hogberg. And along with a few priceless jabs at Michelle Obama, sociology, Newsweek, and the public education system, Dr. Sowell discussed why he (like Niall Ferguson) believes America may be entering a prolonged period of decline.

“The only analogy I can think of from history is when the Norman conquerors of England published their laws in French for an English-speaking nation,” Sowell says about the Obama administration’s governing style, a style he characterizes as unconstitutional.

As someone who, if forced to, would label himself as more libertarian than conservative — though he has irked many with his support of American combat missions in Iraq — most noteworthy (and a bit shocking) about the interview is what Sowell believes the greatest threat is — terrorism, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the international scene. Questioned as to what some of the current markers of national decline are, it isn’t “huge bills that fundamentally change the way the economy operates,” reckless government spending, social engineering programs and the national debt which worry the economist the most, it is national security and President Obama’s foreign policy.

And Sowell makes a few not-so-subtle Neville Chamberlain analogies that are almost impossible to ignore:

Of course, the one that trumps them all is on the international scene. That’s where Iran is moving toward nuclear weapons. I’m just staggered at how little attention is being paid to that compared to frivolous things. If a nation with a record of sponsoring international terrorism gets nuclear weapons, that changes everything and it changes it forever.

Someday historians may wonder what were we thinking about when you look at the imbalance of power between the U.S. and Iran, and we sat there with folded hands and watched this happen, going through just enough motions at the United Nations to lull the public to sleep. That, I think, is the biggest threat.

Sowell also condemns the president for affronting our allies (in particular, the British and Israelis) in “clever” yet unmistakable ways the general public may not notice, further hastening America’s decline:

His first foreign policy gambit was to fly to Russia and offer to renege on the American commitment to put a missile shield in Eastern Europe…All he really got out of that was a demonstration of his amateurishness and of his willingness to sell out allies in hopes of winning over enemies. That ploy was tried in the 1930s and didn’t work all that well.

These are no ordinary times, with no ordinary president. Leading up to the historic “Hope and Change” election, commentators on the Right could not possibly have attacked Obama and his intentions to fundamentally change the identity and economy of America more than they already had. Even so, not only has President Obama fulfilled every single “fear-mongering” indictment down to a tee, he’s exceeded them — making even some his most extreme opponents look clairvoyant. So with keeping that in mind, and considering all the new challenges we face domestically, that one of the greatest economic minds of our time would still elevate national security and terrorism to such a level truly speaks volumes about the reality and situation of Iran.

Also citing the lack of expertise and national discussion in international issues, former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton confirmed to Greg Gutfeld that he was seriously considering a presidential run on Red Eye last week. Bolton-Sowell 2012? One can only dream. But hey, if a community organizer can get elected, why not someone with ten times the accomplishments and wisdom?

I’ve said many of the same things, myself.  Just not as well, and not as succinctly.  For example, I said:

If Iran gets its nukes, it will be able to do a number of things: 1) attack Israel, assuring Israel that if it uses its nukes against Iran, Iran will use its nukes against Israel; 2) shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which would immediately drive up the price of oil.  The cost of gasoline in the U.S. would soar above $15 a gallon; 3) dramatically increase Iranian-sponsored terrorism worldwide.

If you don’t believe that a nuclear-armed Iran would pick a minimum of one of these options, you’re just nuts.

Just as I also pointed out that Obama was enraging our enemies even as he alienated our allies.

It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Iran is employing a lot of rocket scientists to create a ballistic nuclear missile capable of striking the United States and Israel.  But when Democrats are in charge, even the most trivial aspects of common sense are akin to the most sophisticated form of theoretical mathematics.

It is a fact – a FACT – that George Bush tried to deal with the threat of Iran when it was possible to avert their nuclear ambitions; but that Democrats did everything they could to prevent him from succeeding against the insane jihadist regime.  I quoted an LA Times article from just three years ago in which every single Democrat presidential candidate stated that Iran was not a meaningful threat, and in which they denounced Bush’s efforts to draw attention to the danger posed by Iran:

“DES MOINES — Democratic presidential candidates teamed up during a National Public Radio debate here Tuesday to blast the Bush administration over its policy toward Iran, arguing that a new intelligence assessment proves that the administration has needlessly ratcheted up military rhetoric.

While the candidates differed somewhat over the level of threat Iran poses in the Mideast, most of them sought to liken the administration’s approach to Iran with its buildup to the war in Iraq.”

But the fact that the failure to deal with Iran rests ENTIRELY in Democrats’ hands won’t stop them from blaming Bush when Iran rears its vicious head against the world.  Any more than it stopped them from blaming Bush for the 2008 economic collapse in spite of the fact that they had had total control of Congress for the previous two years, and even though they had repeatedly prevented Bush from regulating and reforming GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – which were at the epicenter of the disaster.

It’s just what cowards do.  And the Democrat Party is the party of moral cowardice going back to at least the Carter years, if not dating back to the waning days of the LBJ administration.

You can go back and review the record.  Nearly 60% of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate (29 out of 50) voted to authorize the Iraq War Resolution.  Furthermore, virtually every single top Democrat was on the factual record agreeing with George Bush and supporting his reasoning to attack Saddam Hussein –

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/b/bushlied.htm
http://www.freedomagenda.com/iraq/wmd_quotes.html
http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp

– and yet Democrats en masse cowardly, despicably, and I would argue treasonously, turned on Bush and turned on our troops in time of war.  For no other reason than to treacherously obtain a cheap political advantage aided and abetted by a mainstream media propaganda apparatus that could have come right out of the vile brain of Joseph Goebbels.

In addition to their opposition to the Iraq War (which again 60% of Senate Democrats voted for, only to repudiate and claim Bush deceived them), Democrats opposed the Patriot Act; opposed Domestic Surveillance which allowed the US to track calls from international terrorists into the United States; opposed Gitmo, even though it is the clearly the ONLY reasonable place to hold incredibly dangerous terrorists that no country wants; opposed allowing terrorists to be tried in military tribunals to safeguard intelligence techniques and personnel, and to prevent the court system from being hijacked by enemies of freedom; opposed  even the most reasonable use of profiling to weed out terrorists intent upon murdering Americans; and even declared surrender in the vile “I believe that … this war is lost” statement of Harry Reid, the Democrat Senate Majority Leader.  I could go on.  It boils down to the fact that the left despise anything that help us win the war on terror or protect us from terrorism.

"RUN AWAY!!!"

To the extent that Barack Obama has done anything – ANYTHING – right at all in the war on terror, it has only been because he repudiated himself and demonstrated that he was either an incompetent fool or a lying hypocrite.  Obama – after publicly denouncing, undermining and alienating the CIA – has continued the policy of “torture” by continuing the policy of “rendition” in which terror suspects are sent to other countries that use torture.  Obama – after continually denouncing Bush over Gitmo – has STILL not closed the facility down two full years after usurping the office of the presidency with lies.  Obama is using a surge strategy in Afghanistan after denouncing Bush’s successful surge strategy in Iraq and blatantly predicting it would fail.  And Obama is now continuing the Bush policy of using predator drones to attack terrorist positions inside Pakistan that US Special Operations forces cannot reach.

That said, Obama – in denouncing Iraq (the war we could and did win) while demanding we massively build-up in Afghanistan (our second Vietnam) may well prove to be the most disastrous military quagmire since the LAST time Democrats led us into the actual Vietnam.

Iran WILL get the nuclear bomb.  Democrats guaranteed that Iran would be able to do so.

Iran will become a plague upon global peace and security unlike anything the world has ever seen at least since the rise of the Nazis and the abject failure of FDR and Neville Chamberlain to deal with the clear and present danger.

And when that day comes, America will be unable to meaningfully deal with it because Barack Obama and the Democrat Party made us economically incapable of rising to any significant occasion.

From Shock And Awe To Shock And Flaw

From an interview with former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman in the National Review:

Lehman: Clueless Obama [Robert Costa]

After watching President Obama’s remarks on national security this afternoon, John Lehman, the secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration and a member of the 9/11 Commission, tells National Review Online that, “frankly, I’m pissed off.”

“President Obama just doesn’t get it,” says Lehman. “I don’t think he has a clue. It’s all pure spin. He’s ignoring key issues and taking respectable professionals like John Brennan and turning them into hacks and shills. It’s beyond contempt.”

“The president has ignored the 9/11 Commission’s report,” says Lehman. “This whole idea that we can fix things by jumping higher and faster is ridiculous. The fact is that the system worked just like we said it would work if the president failed to give the Director of National Intelligence the tools he needs: it’s bloated, bureaucratic, layered, and stultified.”

“President Obama continues to totally ignore one of the important thrusts of our 9/11 recommendations, which is that you have to approach counterterrorism as a multiagency intelligence issue, and not as a law-enforcement issue. He’s made a lot of commission’s members angry for dismissing our report and ignoring key recommendations.” Obama, he adds, has taken a “lawyer-like, politically-correct approach” to national security issues like terrorist watchlists and no-fly lists. “You got to blame the president for enforcing the politically-correct and legalistic policies that led to these failures.”

I myself didn’t bother to watch the latest Obama press conference.  I have long-since come to the realization that Obama may not like waterboarding very much, but he doesn’t mind torturing truth.  But I did look over a couple of articles reporting on it.  I didn’t see anything new, other than that Obama is saying his old garbage in a slightly different way.  A good leader has to pay attention to what his spin doctors draw from focus group studies, after all.

Charles Krauthammer has done an excellent job describing how “Obama just doesn’t get it.”

From an article he wrote that came out January 2nd:

The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration’s response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism “man-caused disasters.” Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York — a trifecta of political correctness and image management.

And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term “war on terror.” It’s over — that is, if it ever existed.

Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately al-Qaeda has not. Which gives new meaning to the term “asymmetric warfare.”

And one of the chief ways Obama just doesn’t get it is Gitmo.  Rather than re-declaring war on terror (which his administration early on abandoned), Obama has made his central front the war on Gitmo.  Why?  Because he believed that it was our actions, rather than the hatred of the terrorists, that was causing the war.  And by allowing our enemy to dictate what we do or don’t do, Obama thought that we could pacify the enemy.

Charles Krauthammer stated how utterly asinine that thesis truly is while on the Fox News Special Report Panel:

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: When you hear Gibbs talk about Guantanamo as a recruiting tool, this is what we hear over and over again. I mean, it’s as if he knows no history at all. The list of grievances that Al Qaeda has is endless and replenishing.

When Usama bin Laden declared war on the United States officially in a fatwa 1996 and 1998, the two top reasons were, a, the occupation of the holy places, Mecca and Medina, and, second, the suffering of the Iraqi people under anti-Saddam sanctions.

Well, there are no soldiers, American soldiers in Saudi Arabia anymore, and there are no sanctions obviously on Iraq. But the war continues. These excuses are endless.

Bin Laden sometimes starts the speech by saying in the name of Andalusia. Andalusia is Spain and Portugal, which was Muslim until it fell to Ferdinand and Isabel in 1492. Guantanamo Bay isn’t going to undo that.

The idea that we ought to send people when we have a rate of recidivism of 20 percent over all, but probably extremely high, much higher than that, for Yemen and Saudi Arabia who will rejoin the fight as a way to eliminate excuses, which are all that these are, these are not — these are excuses and not at all grievances, is absurd.

The reason the way is on is because Al Qaeda hates our way of life, our independence, our tolerance, our respect of women, and the threat it poses to the fanatical kind of Islam that they are advocating.

That’s right.  The Pentagon says that 1 in 5 released Gitmo detainees is returning to rejoin the militants.  But Obama is still fixated on emptying the place that keeps them from hurting anyone.

A few minutes later Krauthammer finished his thought:

In the end the issue isn’t Guantanamo. That’s a question of location. You can ultimately have it in the U.S., an abandoned air base in Alaska — who cares? It’s the question of defending the idea of detention without trial.

You do that in all wars, all countries do. You hold an enemy combatant until the war is over. And you have to argue that that is legitimate.

When Obama denies that this is a War on Terror, he takes away the legitimacy of that stand, and thus he has to end up releasing people.

Obama should be focused on trying to fill Gitmo to overflowing.  But he just wants to close it down out of an uncomprehending philosophy.

Gitmo didn’t even EXIST when the Jihadists launched the massive 9/11 attack against us.  The war in Iraq didn’t exist.  The war in Afghanistan didn’t exist.

To use any of these things as somehow causing the terrorists to hate us is beyond self-delusion.  But that has been precisely what Obama has done.

Regarding security, Obama again perpetuates the fundamental flaw of the left: focusing on protecting terrorists’ rights rather than focusing on protecting Americans’ lives.  Focusing on high-tech gadgets and budgets rather than on focusing on proven solutions that have worked for decades.  Focusing on your fingernail clippers and shampoo rather than focusing on the terrorists through profiling.

Obama is using Predator drones to massacre “alleged” terrorists in foreign countries without reading them their rights or filing charges against them in court.  Which I’m all in favor of.  Because we’re at war, and that’s what a country that is at war does.  The people attacking us are committing acts of war against the United States.  But then Obama irrationally and hypocritically files criminal charges against terrorists caught in the act of committing terrorism.

Obama is reading terrorists captured on foreign soil their Miranda rights.  Which is the quintessence of not having a clue.