Why Fighting For Our Country Under Obama Is Different Than Any Other Time – Except Maybe Vietnam

Fighting a war under the command of Barack Obama is very different than fighting under the command of any president who has ever come before.  Up until president #44, commanders-in-chief actually had some degree of trust in the soldiers under their command.  They put them into battle for one reason, summed up by President Ronald Reagan’s statement: “We win, they lose.”  They sent them with commonsensical rules for civilized warfare, and then they gave them the mandate to go out and win.  Today we have a commander-in-chief who would prefer not to talk about actually winning:

“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.”

In order to avoid the potential for some kind of awkward “victory,” our soldiers and Marines are literally unable to shoot when every element of common sense and the entire history of warfare tell them to shoot:

Troops: Strict war rules slow Marjah offensive
By Alfred de Montesquiou and Deb Riechmann – The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Feb 15, 2010 15:08:51 EST

MARJAH, Afghanistan — Some American and Afghan troops say they’re fighting the latest offensive in Afghanistan with a handicap — strict rules that routinely force them to hold their fire.

Although details of the new guidelines are classified to keep insurgents from reading them, U.S. troops say the Taliban are keenly aware of the restrictions.

“I understand the reason behind it, but it’s so hard to fight a war like this,” said Marine Lance Cpl. Travis Anderson, 20, of Altoona, Iowa. “They’re using our rules of engagement against us,” he said, adding that his platoon had repeatedly seen men drop their guns into ditches and walk away to blend in with civilians.

If a man emerges from a Taliban hideout after shooting erupts, U.S. troops say they cannot fire at him if he is not seen carrying a weapon — or if they did not personally watch him drop one.

What this means, some contend, is that a militant can fire at them, then set aside his weapon and walk freely out of a compound, possibly toward a weapons cache in another location. It was unclear how often this has happened. In another example, Marines pinned down by a barrage of insurgent bullets say they can’t count on quick air support because it takes time to positively identify shooters.

“This is difficult,” Lance Cpl. Michael Andrejczuk, 20, of Knoxville, Tenn., said Monday. “We are trained like when we see something, we obliterate it. But here, we have to see them and when we do, they don’t have guns.”

That mindset doesn’t just apply to our fighting men on the ground, who are put in a position in which they can’t defend themselves if their enemy flouts Obama’s miserable rules of engagement.  The pilots flying overhead and the artillerymen on surrounding positions are prevented from supporting our soldiers if they get pinned down, too:

Family calls U.S. military goals ‘fuzzy’
Parents of soldier killed last week criticize firepower restrictions
By DENNIS YUSKO, Staff writer
First published in print: Thursday, June 24, 2010

QUEENSBURY — The parents of a Lake George soldier killed in Afghanistan attacked the Obama administration Wednesday for “flower children leadership,” and said they would work to change U.S. rules of military engagement in the nine-year conflict.

Hours before holding a wake for their 27-year-old son in Glens Falls, Bill and Beverly Osborn heavily criticized a military policy implemented last year that places some restrictions on when American troops can use firepower in Afghanistan. The new rules were set when Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal assumed command of the Afghanistan effort, and have reportedly made it harder for troops to call in for or initiate air power, artillery and mortars against the Taliban.

The counterinsurgency policy is intended to reduce civilian casualties and win the allegiance of Afghans, McChrystal had said. But echoing criticisms from the Vietnam era, Bill Osborn said Wednesday that it’s tied the hands of service members on the ground.

“We send our young men and women to spill their blood and we won’t let them do their job,” he said from his Queensbury home. “Winning hearts and minds is wonderful, but first we have to defeat the enemy.”

And then we wonder why Obama doubled the American body count from Bush in 2009, and is now on pace to double his own total (which means four times the Bush 2008 Americans KIA).

We just suffered the highest number of American causalities for a single month in the history of the war.  Mind you, EVERY month becomes the new “deadliest month” under Obama.

From icasualties.org:

For those who are historically ignorant, America firebombed Tokyo and Dresden in World War II.  We didn’t make sure that every single person who could possibly get killed during an attack was a 100%-confirmed “militant” before we sent a wave of death at our enemies.  If we’d resorted to that form of liberal moral stupidity, we would have lost – and the only question would have been how many of us would have ended up speaking German, and how many of us would have ended up speaking Japanese.

Thank God we didn’t have Obama leading us back then.

But our rules of engagement still weren’t getting enough American soldiers killed, so Team Obama came up with a better idea: how about ordering soldiers to go into battle with unloaded weapons? That’s right. Soldiers are now told to wait until they actually start falling down on the ground dead before they can actually be allowed to fumble a round into the chamber.

Fighting a War without Bullets?
by  Chris Carter
05/25/2010

Commanders have ordered a U.S. military unit in Afghanistan to patrol with unloaded weapons, according to a source in Afghanistan.

American soldiers in at least one unit have been ordered to conduct patrols without a round chambered in their weapons, an anonymous source stationed at a forward operating base in Afghanistan said in an interview. The source was unsure where the order originated or how many other units were affected.

When a weapon has a loaded magazine, but the safety is on and no round is chambered, the military refers to this condition as “amber status.” Weapons on “red status” are ready to fire—they have a round in the chamber and the safety is off.

The source stated that he had been stationed at the base for only a month, but the amber weapons order was in place since before he arrived. A NATO spokesman could not confirm the information, stating that levels of force are classified.

In other words, our guys can’t prepare their weapons to actually fire until they are already under attack.

Imagine sending our police into a building filled with armed gang members like that.

And you want to know how to win a medal in Obama’s army? Don’t do anything. Certainly don’t actually shoot at the enemy.

Hold fire, earn a medal
By William H. McMichael – Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday May 12, 2010 15:51:31 EDT

U.S. troops in Afghanistan could soon be awarded a medal for not doing something, a precedent-setting award that would be given for “courageous restraint” for holding fire to save civilian lives.

The proposal is now circulating in the Kabul headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force, a command spokesman confirmed Tuesday.

“The idea is consistent with our approach,” explained Air Force Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis. “Our young men and women display remarkable courage every day, including situations where they refrain from using lethal force, even at risk to themselves, in order to prevent possible harm to civilians. In some situations our forces face in Afghanistan, that restraint is an act of discipline and courage not much different than those seen in combat actions.”

Soldiers are often recognized for non-combat achievement with decorations such as their service’s commendation medal. But most of the highest U.S. military decorations are for valor in combat. A medal to recognize a conscious effort to avoid a combat action would be unique.

It used to be that the hero was the guy who took on the enemy. Now it’s the guy who crawls into the fetal position and walks away from a battle with an unfired weapon.

We can only wonder what Obama’s version of Audie Murphy will look like.

And Iran sure doesn’t have to worry about Obama shooting at them as they develop their nuclear arsenal so they can cause Armageddon.

About the only thing regarding the military Obama is actually determined to fight for is gay rights. You can bet that the same political weasels who won’t let our soldiers actually shoot at the enemy will fight tooth and nail for the right of homosexual soldiers to be able to buttrape their buddies. Because we don’t have nearly enough gay rape in the military. That’s going to be the new meaning to “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Don’t tell, because that homosexual is the new protected class.

And if all of the above doesn’t beat all, you probably don’t want to hear about the fact that Obama’s timetable for a cut-and-run had nothing whatsoever about satisfying military issues and everything about satisfying political ones within Obama’s radical leftwing base.  The military wasn’t even consulted, according to General David Petraeus:

McCain: “General, at any time during the deliberations that the military shared with the President when he went through the decision-making process, was there a recommendation from you or anyone in the military that we set a date of July 2011?”

Petraeus: “Uh, there was not.”

McCain: “There was not – by any military person that you know of?”

Petraeus: “Not that I’m aware of.”

Nobody knows what the hell is going on over there.  Are we going to stay and fight?  Or cut and run?  Most of the Obama administration is saying that we are most definitely going to cut and run in July 2011.  Take Vice President Biden, who says, “In July of 2011 you’re going to see a whole lot of people moving out. Bet on it.”  All Obama will say is that “We didn’t say we’d be switching off the lights and closing the door behind us.” which isn’t really saying anything.

All the money is on a pullout, as Obama cuts and runs.  The Afghan people know that, know that the Taliban will soon be their landlords, and aren’t about to risk any kind of meaningful alliance with America that would be necessary to actually winning over there.

Do you remember FDR telling Churchill, “I’ll give you a year, and then we’re running with our tail between our legs where it belongs”???

If it’s a war worth fighting, it is a war worth sticking around to fight.

We will win when we allow our fighting men to fight.  And not until then.

If you wonder whether Afghanistan is going to become like Vietnam, stop wondering: it already has.  Because we’re fighting Afghanistan the same way we fought Vietnam – with the mindset of putting our troops in danger while simultaneously preventing them from securing victory.

Obama Boasts Of ‘Reset’ In Relations With Russia – AGAIN

Obama is boasting about a “reset” in the United States’ relationship with Russia:

President Barack Obama welcomed Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to the White House on Thursday, boasting that the two men have reset their countries’ relationship in a way unthinkable when Obama took office.

But didn’t the Obama administration already do a reset with Russia last year?

Russian media has been poking fun at US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after she gave her Russian counterpart a “reset” button with an ironic misspelling.Clinton’s gift to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at their meeting in Geneva on Friday evening was meant to underscore the Obama administration’s readiness to “to press the reset button” in ties with Moscow.

But instead of the Russian word for “reset” (perezagruzka) it featured a slightly different word meaning “overload” or “overcharged” (peregruzka).

Daily newspaper Kommersant put a prominent picture of the fake red button on its front page and declared: “Sergei Lavrov and Hillary Clinton pushed the wrong button.”

Well, yeah, but it was a really crappy one.

Newsweek sure isn’t very impressed with Obama’s “reset.”  They point out that it’s cost us a whole bunch while delivering virtually nothing beyond Obama being able to boast vacuously about a “reset”:

The problem, though, is that all this good will has been bought almost exclusively at Obama’s expense. The United States disappointed allies in Eastern Europe by scrapping plans to station missile-defense batteries in Poland and the Czech Republic, all in order to please Moscow. The Russian occupation of Georgia, America’s best friend in the former Soviet Union, has effectively been acknowledged as a fait accompli by Washington, again to please the Kremlin. At the same time, Washington has remained silent about increasing crackdowns on freedom of assembly inside Russia and the ongoing second trial of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

And what has Obama bought with all these diplomatic sacrifices? The list is pretty short.

Ooops.

Obama’s “reset” is just another empty exercise that allows Obama to pretend that he did something wonderful when in reality he merely failed – again.

Ronald Reagan – now widely recognized by the American people to have been our greatest president – had a far different concept of negotiating with a hostile power than Obama does.

Obama’s is to bow down.  I don’t even know what the “bow” count is now.

Ronald Reagan spoke of “victory” regarding Russia.

Reagan summed up his foreign policy dealing with hostile nations in a very few words:

“We win, they lose.”

For Barack Hussein, “victory” – especially AMERICAN victory – is a four-letter word:

“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.”

One can understand why Obama does not want victory.  Losing is far more politically correct than winning, because the loser gets to plead that oh-so-special-to-liberals status of victimhood.

And isn’t that worth losing to get?

Obama’s misguided mindset is not based on history, as is itself evidenced by the fact that Obama gets his history wrong here when he says Hirohito surrendered to MacArthur.

It was the Japanese Foreign Minister who surrendered to MacArthur.  Hirohito was nowhere to be seen on the deck of the USS Missouri.

Maybe Obama should have asked the toes of the current Japanese emperor about that while he was grovelling before him:

The left mocked George Bush for saying he had looked into Putin’s eyes and found someone he could work with.

Now they’re proving they are even more naive than Bush was on his most naive day.

Obama is now seeing through Joseph Stalin’s eyes (after bowing, of course) and finding the Great Patriotic War.  It’s just so neat that Obama agrees with Russia’s historically revisionist view that allying itself with Nazi Germany, plundering Poland and Finland and agreeing to turn the rest of Eastern Europe into slave states, and then fighting the Nazis only after being double crossed was so, so, well, “great” and “patriotic”.

Do you think that Ronald Reagan would have gone to Russia and honored Stalin’s “Great Patriotic War”?

That is part of the reason why Barack Obama isn’t worth one of Ronald Reagan’s toilet leavings.

What is hilarious in its sheer ironic patheticness is that just a day after Obama announces his “reset,” we find this report coming just minutes ago (as of Monday, June 28):

WASHINGTON — Ten Russian intelligence officers have been arrested in the U.S. for allegedly serving as illegal agents tasked with recruiting political sources and gathering information to send back to Moscow, the Justice Department said Monday.

Eight of 10 were arrested Sunday for allegedly carrying out long-term, “deep cover” assignments on behalf of Russia. Two others were arrested for allegedly participating in the same Russian intelligence program within the United States.

Ooops.  Looks like Obama’s going to need yet a third “reset” with his former KGB buddy Vladimir Putin.

Obama Massively Failing In Afghanistan

This is nothing more than an effort to hold Obama accountable to the very same standards he used to demonize George Bush in Iraq:

Afghanistan violence is soaring, U.N. says
Afghanistan is increasingly dangerous for troops and civilians alike, a report says, citing an ‘alarming’ 94% increase in bomb attacks in the first four months of 2010, compared with last year.

By Laura King, Los Angeles Times
June 20, 2010
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan

Afghanistan has become a far more dangerous place for Western troops and Afghan civilians alike, with an increase in suicide attacks, roadside bombings and political assassinations in the first four months of 2010, the United Nations said in a report released Saturday.

The gloomy assessment comes on the heels of congressional testimony last week by senior U.S. military officials who acknowledged that efforts to stabilize Afghanistan’s volatile south are proving more complex and time-consuming than anticipated.

With the U.S. troop numbers in the country approaching the 100,000 mark, the Western military toll has been rising sharply as the summer “fighting season” unfolds. More than 1,000 U.S. service members have died in the nearly 9-year-old conflict.

“There has been a great deal of ‘kinetic activity'” as Western and Afghan forces confront insurgents in the south, German army Brig. Gen. Josef Blotz, a spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s International Security Assistance Force, told reporters Saturday in Kabul, the capital. That is the term the military uses to describe battlefield clashes.

The U.N. report, submitted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the Security Council and released by the world body’s mission in Afghanistan, notes a near-doubling in the number of attacks involving roadside bombs.

It describes an “alarming” 94% increase in bomb attacks from the same January-April period a year earlier. Roadside bombs planted by the Taliban and other insurgents are generally aimed at foreign troops, but because they are planted on routes used by everyone, they kill and maim many civilians as well.

The report also cites an average of three suicide bombings a week across Afghanistan, a growing number of them attacks involving more than one assailant, sometimes in combination with use of rockets, mortars and gunfire.

Targeted killings of Afghan officials had increased by 45%, the report says, with most taking place in the south, where the insurgency is strongest. The killings tend to target locally influential figures, such as tribal elders and other dignitaries who might be able to rally villagers and townspeople to resist the Taliban.

In one recent example, the district governor in Arghandab, a strategic gateway to the city of Kandahar, was killed in an insurgent bombing. NATO had touted the district as an area in which headway was being made in winning over the populace and improving security

Western officials have been describing their own campaign in the south as a combined political and military effort, and systematic assassinations appear aimed at sapping the will of local officials and others seen as cooperating with foreign forces or the Afghan government.

The U.N. report takes a more hopeful tone about some recent political developments, including nascent efforts by the government of President Hamid Karzai to woo Taliban foot soldiers away from the fight.

It notes, though, that “in general, the Taliban have reacted negatively to peace and reconciliation.”

Let’s reflect on this disastrous report, in light of Obama’s demonization and demagoguery of George Bush’s successful attempt to prevail in Iraq.

Obama attacked and undermined Bush’s incredibly successful troop surge:

“I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he told MSNBC. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

And then recently tried to take credit for it’s magnificent success via his Vice President:

On Larry King Live last night, Vice President Joe Biden said Iraq “could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.”

Obama is the consummate demagogue who demonized Bush in Afghanistan by claiming:

“We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.”

Condemn him as a failure and a disgrace according to his own demagogic standard.  He demonized Bush, when Bush succeeded.  How much more should we demonize Obama, as he’s utterly failing???

But this is worse than merely a failure of leadership.  Far worse.

Charles Krauthammer pointed 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.

Afghanistan was just a way to demagogue Bush in Iraq by describing Afghanistan – where Obama is failing so badly – as “the good war” and Iraq – where Bush won so triumphantly – as “the bad war.”  It was beyond cynical; it was flat-out treasonous.

George Bush selected Iraq as his central front for sound strategic reason.  Iraq had a despotic tyrant who supported terrorism.  Saddam Hussein needed to be removed to mount any kind of successful peace effort in the Middle East.  Iraq is located in the heart of the Arab/Islamic world.  It has an educated population relative to the rest of the region.  It also offered precisely the type of terrain that would allow American forces to implement their massive military superiority in a way that mountainous, cave-ridden Afghanistan would not.

Bush was determined to fight a war where he could win.  Obama foolishly trapped us in a war that would bleed us.  Why?  For no other reason than pure political demagoguery.  And he needs to be held accountable.

And where are we now under Obama’s failed leadership???

An 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.”

See my piece from last year predicting this failure.  Read that article and explain to me where I was wrong, liberals.  I dare you.

American casualties under Obama in 2009 more than doubled compared to the total in 2008 when Bush was commander-in-chief.  And they are set to more than double this year compared to 2009.

From iCasualties, accessed June 21, 2010:

We’re paying attention to Obama’s massive, massive failure of leadership in the Gulf Coast.  That’s all well and good.  But don’t forget Obama’s massive failure of leadership in Afghanistan.

And just as we should rightly condemn Barack Obama for his demonization and demagoguery of Bush in Katrina, we should likewise condemn him for his demonization and demagoguery of Bush in Afghanistan.  We should hold Barack Hussein accountable to his own hypocritical, two-faced standards, and demand his resignation as a failure and a fraud.

Update, June 22: Heck, I wrote this yesterday, and hadn’t even published it yet when I discovered I needed to update.  Because now we now that Stanley McChrystal, commanding general in Afghanistan, thinks that Obama – and virtually every single man Obama has appointed in Afghanistan – are a bunch of clueless clowns.

McChrystal sided with his troops against his Failure-in-Chief once before.  I think he did it again to let his troops know that he understands the real problem facing them.

MSNBC has some of the highlights:

• McChrystal has seized control of the war “by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House.”
• One aide called White House National Security Adviser Jim Jones, a retired four star general, a “clown” who was “stuck in 1985.”
• Obama agreed to dispatch an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan only after months of study that many in the military found frustrating. And the White House’s troop commitment was coupled with a pledge to begin bringing them home in July 2011, in what counterinsurgency strategists advising McChrystal regarded as an arbitrary deadline.
• The article portrayed McChrystal’s team as disapproving of the Obama administration, with the exception of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who backed McCrystal’s request for additional troops in Afghanistan.
• It quotes a member of McChrystal’s team making jokes about Biden, who was seen as critical of the general’s efforts to escalate the conflict and who had favored a more limited counter-terrorism approach. “Biden?” the aide was quoted as saying. “Did you say: Bite me?” Biden initially opposed McChrystal’s proposal for additional forces last year. He favored a narrower focus on hunting terrorists.

This, too, is another example of liberal hypocrisy.  What happened when Bush was depicted as not listening to his generals?  From the Washington Post, after Bush decided to pursue the (in hindsight) magnificently successful surge strategy:

This impulse may well expose Bush to more criticism from Democrats on Capitol Hill, who have sharply condemned him for not listening to Shinseki’s counsel in the beginning.

What’s it like to have your own fingers of demonization now pointing back at you?

Like I said, Obama is massively failing in Afghanistan.  Just like he’s massively failing everywhere else.

Update, June 26, 2010: Oh, by the way, get ready for what might be Obama’s “Abu Ghraib moment,” as videos of a mass slaughter of Afghani civilians makes its way to the public.

Obama Reducing Afghanistan Into ‘Echoes Of Vietnam’

History has an unsavory way of repeating itself.  And that is especially dangerous when Democrats are running things.

From the Wall Street Journal:

APRIL 7, 2010
The Karzai Fiasco
Echoes of Vietnam in a spat that only helps the Taliban.

President Obama isn’t faring too well at converting enemies to friends, but he does seem to have a talent for turning friends into enemies. The latest spectacle is the all-too-public and counterproductive war of words between the White House and our putative ally, Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The only winner so far in this spat is the Taliban.

The Obama Administration seems to have had it out for Mr. Karzai from the day it took office, amid multiple reports based on obvious U.S. leaks that Vice President Joe Biden or some other official had told the Afghan leader to shape up. The tension escalated after Mr. Karzai’s tainted but ultimately recognized re-election victory last year, and it reached the name-calling stage late last month when President Obama met Mr. Karzai on a trip to Kabul and the White House let the world know that the American had lectured the Afghan about his governing obligations.

The public rebuke was a major loss of face for Mr. Karzai, who later returned fire at the U.S., reportedly even saying at a private meeting that if the Americans kept it up, he might join the Taliban. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs kept up the schoolyard taunts yesterday by suggesting that Mr. Obama might not meet with Mr. Karzai as scheduled in Washington on May 12.

“We certainly would evaluate whatever continued or further remarks President Karzai makes, as to whether it is constructive to have that meeting,” said Mr. Gibbs, in a show of disdain he typically reserves for House Republicans.

The kindest word for all of this is fiasco. American troops are risking their lives to implement a counterinsurgency strategy that requires winning popular support in Afghanistan, and the main message from America’s Commander in Chief to the Afghan people is that their government can’t be trusted. That ought to make it easier to win hearts and minds.

Mr. Karzai has been disappointing as a nation-builder, has tolerated corrupt officials and family members, and can be arrogant and crudely nationalistic. Presumably, however, Mr. Obama was well aware of these defects last year when he recognized the Afghan election results and then committed 20,000 more U.S. troops to the theater.

You go to war with the allies you have, and it’s contrary to any diplomatic principle to believe that continuing public humiliation will make Mr. Karzai more likely to cooperate. On the evidence of the last week, such treatment has only given the Afghan leader more incentive to make a show of his political independence from the Americans.

All the more so given that Mr. Karzai has already heard Mr. Obama promise that U.S. troops will begin leaving Afghanistan as early as July 2011. This shouting spectacle will also embolden the Taliban, who after being run out of Marjah have every reason to tell the citizens of Kandahar that even the Americans don’t like the Afghan government and are short-timers in any case.

This treatment of an ally eerily echoes the way the Kennedy Administration treated Ngo Dinh Diem, the President of South Vietnam in the early 1960s. On JFK’s orders, U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge refused to meet with Diem, and when U.S. officials got word of a coup against Diem they let it be known they would not interfere. Diem was executed, and South Vietnam never again had a stable government.

By contrast, President George W. Bush decided to support and work closely with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki during the 2007 U.S. military surge in Iraq. The Maliki government was sectarian and sometimes incompetent, and some of its officials were no doubt corrupt, but Mr. Bush understood that the larger goal was to defeat al Qaeda and to stabilize the country. From FDR to Reagan, Presidents of both parties have had to tolerate allied leaders of varying talents and unsavory qualities in the wartime pursuit of more important foreign-policy goals.

Coming on the heels of the U.S. public chastisement of Israel’s government, the larger concern over the Karzai episode is what it reveals about Mr. Obama’s diplomatic frame of mind. With adversaries, he is willing to show inordinate patience, to the point of muffling his objections when opposition blood ran in the streets of Tehran. With allies, on the other hand, the President is unforgiving and insists they follow his lead or face his public wrath. The result will be that our foes fear us less, and that we have fewer friends.

I wrote an article yesterday which came out today that recognized this same (quite obvious) point: Obama commits tens of thousands of troops and spends hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan, and then refuses to call the Afghani government an ally?  How is that not insane?

We won’t lose the war in Afghanistan because of our troops.  Our troops are the greatest warriors in the history of the world, and they truly deserve the word “heroes.”  If we lose, we will lose because of our failure-in-chief.

Turning Afghanistan into the next Vietnam by poisoning the national government is inherently stupid.  It is tantamount to refusing to recognize that we are fighting a war against Islamic jihadism.   The Bush Doctrine of preventative war stated, “The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.”  Obama is now fundamentally altering that strategy into one that incredibly refuses to recognize that Islamic jihadism has anything whatsoever to do with terrorism.  Obama first refused to use the phrase “war on terror” favoring the neutered (as in “having no testicles”) phrase, “Overseas contingency operation,” and now he is leaving that “overseas contingency operation” with its feet dangling in midair.

Just who or what in the hell are we supposed to be fighting???  Every single attack we have faced – be it on foreign battlefields or right here at home – was the result of a radical Islamic worldview.  And we’re supposed to pretend that we’re too morally stupid to realize that???

The recent past is a canvass full of examples.  Following a long list of Muslim terrorists attempts to create “man-caused disasters” in the US under Obama’s watch, we had a Muslim Army psychologist with “Soldier of Allah” business cards murder a dozen soldiers at a military base while screaming “Allahu Akbar!”.  Then we had a Muslim terrorist try to explode a passenger jet on Christmas day.

So, yesterday, we had another “incident” on a passenger jet plane.  A man from the Qatari embassy named Mohammed Al-Madadi was on his way to visit a convicted al-Qaeda terrorist minion named Ali Al-Marri imprisoned in Denver when he created an international incident by mocking American security authorities by “joking” that he was attempting to light his shoe bomb.

But we’re responding by increasingly assuming that Islam has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.  Your grandma is a bigger security risk than Osama bin Laden as far as Obama is concerned.

Obama once said he didn’t like to think in terms of “victory,” in very direct opposition to every president before him (including Ronald Reagan, who summed up his Cold War goals in four words: “We win, they lose.”).  I suppose it’s good that Obama doesn’t want victory, because he will never secure one given his America-despising policies.

Obama wanted to relabel terrorism as a “man-caused disaster“; but the only “man-caused disaster” is the Obama administration.

What’s Happened To Obama’s Chicago-Way Thug-Style ‘Hope And Change’?

One of the things that was truly amazing during the 2008 campaign is that the mainstream media were hyper-eager to gather in droves over Sarah Palin’s and then Joe the Plumber’s trash cans for any dirt they could find, but utterly refused to examine Barack Obama’s record in the most politically corrupt city in America.

This is why Obama was able to say, “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”  He could be whatever he wanted to depict himself, because the mainstream media wasn’t going to challenge anything he said.

Americans are finally beginning to understand who Mr. “blank screen” really is – and they are rejecting him in droves.  The pity is that they should have had an opportunity to learn who he was before they elected him.  But the dishonest ideologically-biased mainstream propagandists were not about to tell us anything they thought we might not want to hear.

The mainstream media have long held a “gatekeeper” mentality to the news, which is to say that they only told you what they wanted you to know, while holding back what they didn’t want you to know.

And they didn’t want you to know how Obama’s Chicago past would influence or even dictate his presidency: what happens in Chicago stays in Chicago.

But, inevitably, the American people were going to see the “Chicago side” of Barry Hussein.

From the Los Angeles Times blog:

President Obama Day 386: What’s happened to him?
February 9, 2010A favorite story about Chicago politics involves Roman Pucinski, who served six long terms of political apprenticeship in the Washington minor leagues of the U.S. House of Representatives before the Windy City’s vaunted Democratic political machine allowed him to step up and serve on the City Council.

The late Pucinski then served for 18 years as a loyal operative assigned to the 41st Ward (of 50).

It’s always useful for Chicago pols to have White House connections if, say, they’d like to dispatch someone famous to fly off to Copenhagen to lobby the International Olympic Committee for their city’s 2016 summer games bid.

But the Chicago Daley machine, which is actually a ruthless coalition of urban Democratic factions united by the steel reinforcing rods of self-interest, didn’t much care about this Barack Obama fellow before, as long as he was quiet, obedient and headed on a track out of town. How he acquired a reform label coming out of that one-party place is anyone’s guess.

But now that the sun has risen on the 386th day of the Obama White House, many political observers are coming to see that the ex-state senator from the South Side is running his federal administration in Washington much the way they run things back home: with a small….

…claque of clout-laden people from the same school who learned their political trade back in the nation’s No. 3 city, named for an Indian word for a smelly wild onion.

That style is tough, focused, immune to any distractions but cosmetic niceties. And did we mention tough. A portly, veteran Chicago alderman once confided only about 40% jokingly, that he had taken up jogging to lose weight but quickly gave it up as boring because “you can’t knock anyone down.” That’s politics the Chicago way.

For instance, remember how much we heard all last year about the need for healthcare legislation before early August, before October, before Thanksgiving, before Christmas, before the State of the Union? And how spanked the White House was by the Massachusetts Senate upset that Obama said his laser-vision for 2010 was on jobs and the economy?

So, what did he announce during a Super Bowl interview? More healthcare meetings, designed to politically box Republicans into the No-Nothing corner.

In the last few days at least three major outlets have published well-informed evaluations of Obama’s first year in office.  All are well worth reading.  The dominant themes: disappointment and disillusionment with the Chicago way.

In one respect it’s not surprising that a capitol city with its own style of take-no-prisoners politics should find a professed outsider’s style of smoother-spoken take-no-prisoners discomforting.

But now, no less than the Huffington Post headlined its Obama evaluation by Steve Clemons: “Core Chicago Team Sinking Obama presidency.”

The devastating Financial Times report by Edward Luce: “A fearsome foursome.”

And the Washington Post story by Ann Gerhart: “A year later, where did the hopes for Obama go?“

The Post story focuses on a handful of Obama supporters, so fiercely motivated and hopeful in 2008 and through the inauguration, now largely drifting back to normal lives lacking fulfillment of so many promises.

The other two fascinating accounts examine Obama’s close-knit team of Chicagoans: confidante Valerie Jarrett, who’s so intelligent she once hired Michelle Obama; Rahm Emanuel, the diminutive, acid-tongued chief of staff with overwhelmAxelrod and Obamaing energy and ambition; David Axelrod, the ex-Chicago Tribune politics reporter-turned-consultant who’s been coaching Obama forever; and Robert Gibbs, who isn’t from Chicago but that’s OK because he’s only the mouthpiece and the others keep a close eye on him.

Clemons focuses on how dead-on the Luce piece is and how the FT Washington bureau chief had to assiduously hide his sources as everyone was properly so fearful of retribution from the quartet around the mayor, er, president.

And Clemons attributes the lack of online link love to the Luce item Monday to the same fears among D.C. journalists dodging disfavor from the same four.

Quoting “administration insiders,” Luce says “the famously irascible Mr Emanuel treats cabinet principals like minions. ‘I am not sure the president realises how much he is humiliating some of the big figures he spent so much trouble recruiting into his cabinet,’ says the head of a presidential advisory board who visits the Oval Office frequently.”

And both articles note, accurately, how savvy cabinet secretaries like Kathleen Sebelius at Health and Human Services and Ken Salazar at Interior have been marginalized because putting a media face on the Obama Oval Office can only be entrusted to the likes of Gibbs and Axelrod.

Another Luce source talks about the difference between campaigning, which is easier, and governing, which is the ultimate goal but takes a more refined skill-set:

‘There is this sense after you have won such an amazing victory, when you have proved conventional wisdom wrong again and again, that you can simply do the same thing in government,’ says one. ‘Of course, they are different skills. To be successful, presidents need to separate the stream of advice they get on policy from the stream of advice they get on politics. That still isn’t happening.’

Also noted, how most everything coming out of the executive office is filtered through a political prism above all. i.e. the Afghanistan troop surge speech that touched all the political bases in 4,582 words without once saying “victory.”

Warning that Obama needs to take action quickly, Clemons adds that needed advice from a broader range of advisers “is getting twisted either in the rough-and-tumble of a a team of rivals operation that is not working, or is being distorted by the Chicago political gang’s tactical advice that is seducing Obama towards a course that has not only violated deals he made with those who voted him into office but which is failing to hit any of the major strategic targets by which the administration will be historically measured.”

David Gergen, who helped guide Bill Clinton out of not dissimilar troubled waters, tells Luce: “There is an old joke. How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one. But the lightbulb must want to change. I don’t think President Obama wants to make any changes.”

— Andrew Malcolm

Mark Steyn reminded viewers of Obama’s horribly botched pronunciation of the Navy Corpsmen who save the lives of wounded Marines, and then referred to “the four corpse men of the Obamaclypse.”  That’s quite accurate, as it turns out.  and these four corpse men are riding America into apocalypse right along with Barack Obama’s and the Democrat Party’s political future.

It’s scary to think that we have a preening peacock campaigning and campaigning with absolutely no idea how to actually govern.

Since the FT article is hard to obtain, and since I am all about preserving a record of the facts, here is the Luce article:

A Fearsome Foursome
By Edward Luce

At a crucial stage in the Democratic primaries in late 2007, Barack Obama rejuvenated his campaign with a barnstorming speech, in which he ended on a promise of what his victory would produce: “A nation healed. A world repaired. An America that believes again.”

Just over a year into his tenure, America’s 44th president governs a bitterly divided nation, a world increasingly hard to manage and an America that seems more disillusioned than ever with Washington’s ways. What went wrong?

Pundits, Democratic lawmakers and opinion pollsters offer a smorgasbord of reasons – from Mr Obama’s decision to devote his first year in office to healthcare reform, to the president’s inability to convince voters he can “feel their [economic] pain”, to the apparent ungovernability of today’s Washington. All may indeed have contributed to the quandary in which Mr Obama finds himself. But those around him have a more specific diagnosis – and one that is striking in its uniformity. The Obama White House is geared for campaigning rather than governing, they say.

In dozens of interviews with his closest allies and friends in Washington – most of them given unattributably in order to protect their access to the Oval Office – each observes that the president draws on the advice of a very tight circle. The inner core consists of just four people – Rahm Emanuel, the pugnacious chief of staff; David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, his senior advisers; and Robert Gibbs, his communications chief.

Two, Mr Emanuel and Mr Axelrod, have box-like offices within spitting distance of the Oval Office. The president, who is the first to keep a BlackBerry, rarely holds a meeting, including on national security, without some or all of them present.

With the exception of Mr Emanuel, who was a senior Democrat in the House of Representatives, all were an integral part of Mr Obama’s brilliantly managed campaign. Apart from Mr Gibbs, who is from Alabama, all are Chicagoans – like the president. And barring Richard Nixon’s White House, few can think of an administration that has been so dominated by such a small inner circle.

“It is a very tightly knit group,” says a prominent Obama backer who has visited the White House more than 40 times in the past year. “This is a kind of ‘we few’ group … that achieved the improbable in the most unlikely election victory anyone can remember and, unsurprisingly, their bond is very deep.”

John Podesta, a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton and founder of the Center for American Progress, the most influential think-tank in Mr Obama’s Washington, says that while he believes Mr Obama does hear a range of views, including dissenting advice, problems can arise from the narrow composition of the group itself.

Among the broader circle that Mr Obama also consults are the self-effacing Peter Rouse, who was chief of staff to Tom Daschle in his time as Senate majority leader; Jim Messina, deputy chief of staff; the economics team led by Lawrence Summers and including Peter Orszag, budget director; Joe Biden, the vice-president; and Denis McDonough, deputy national security adviser. But none is part of the inner circle.

“Clearly this kind of core management approach worked for the election campaign and President Obama has extended it to the White House,” says Mr Podesta, who managed Mr Obama’s widely praised post-election transition. “It is a very tight inner circle and that has its advantages. But I would like to see the president make more use of other people in his administration, particularly his cabinet.”

This White House-centric structure has generated one overriding – and unexpected – failure. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Mr Emanuel managed the legislative aspect of the healthcare bill quite skilfully, say observers. The weak link was the failure to carry public opinion – not Capitol Hill. But for the setback in Massachusetts, which deprived the Democrats of their 60-seat supermajority in the Senate, Mr Obama would by now almost certainly have signed healthcare into law – and with it would have become a historic president.

But the normally liberal voters of Massachusetts wished otherwise. The Democrats lost the seat to a candidate, Scott Brown, who promised voters he would be the “41st [Republican] vote” in the Senate – the one that would tip the balance against healthcare. Subsequent polling bears out the view that a decisive number of Democrats switched their votes with precisely that motivation in mind.

“Historians will puzzle over the fact that Barack Obama, the best communicator of his generation, totally lost control of the narrative in his first year in office and allowed people to view something they had voted for as something they suddenly didn’t want,” says Jim Morone, America’s leading political scientist on healthcare reform. “Communication was the one thing everyone thought Obama would be able to master.”

Whatever issue arises, whether it is a failed terrorist plot in Detroit, the healthcare bill, economic doldrums or the 30,000-troop surge to Afghanistan, the White House instinctively fields Mr Axelrod or Mr Gibbs on television to explain the administration’s position. “Every event is treated like a twist in an election campaign and no one except the inner circle can be trusted to defend the president,” says an exasperated outside adviser.

Perhaps the biggest losers are the cabinet members. Kathleen Sebelius, Mr Obama’s health secretary and formerly governor of Kansas, almost never appears on television and has been largely excluded both from devising and selling the healthcare bill. Others such as Ken Salazar, the interior secretary who is a former senator for Colorado, and Janet Napolitano, head of the Department for Homeland Security and former governor of Arizona, have virtually disappeared from view.

Administration insiders say the famously irascible Mr Emanuel treats cabinet principals like minions. “I am not sure the president realises how much he is humiliating some of the big figures he spent so much trouble recruiting into his cabinet,” says the head of a presidential advisory board who visits the Oval Office frequently. “If you want people to trust you, you must first place trust in them.”

In addition to hurling frequent profanities at people within the administration, Mr Emanuel has alienated many of Mr Obama’s closest outside supporters. At a meeting of Democratic groups last August, Mr Emanuel described liberals as “f***ing retards” after one suggested they mobilise resources on healthcare reform.

“We are treated as though we are children,” says the head of a large organisation that raised millions of dollars for Mr Obama’s campaign. “Our advice is never sought. We are only told: ‘This is the message, please get it out.’ I am not sure whether the president fully realises that when the chief of staff speaks, people assume he is speaking for the president.”

The same can be observed in foreign policy. On Mr Obama’s November trip to China, members of the cabinet such as the Nobel prizewinning Stephen Chu, energy secretary, were left cooling their heels while Mr Gibbs, Mr Axelrod and Ms Jarrett were constantly at the president’s side.

The White House complained bitterly about what it saw as unfairly negative media coverage of a trip dubbed Mr Obama’s “G2” visit to China. But, as journalists were keenly aware, none of Mr Obama’s inner circle had any background in China. “We were about 40 vans down in the motorcade and got barely any time with the president,” says a senior official with extensive knowledge of the region. “It was like the Obama campaign was visiting China.”

Then there are the president’s big strategic decisions. Of these, devoting the first year to healthcare is well known and remains a source of heated contention. Less understood is the collateral damage it caused to unrelated initiatives. “The whole Rahm Emanuel approach is that victory begets victory – the success of healthcare would create the momentum for cap-and-trade [on carbon emissions] and then financial sector reform,” says one close ally of Mr Obama. “But what happens if the first in the sequence is defeat?”

Insiders attribute Mr Obama’s waning enthusiasm for the Arab-Israeli peace initiative to a desire to avoid antagonising sceptical lawmakers whose support was needed on healthcare. The steam went out of his Arab-Israeli push in mid-summer, just when the healthcare bill was running into serious difficulties.

The same applies to reforming the legal apparatus in the “war on terror” – not least his pledge to close the Guantánamo Bay detention centre within a year of taking office. That promise has been abandoned.

“Rahm said: ‘We’ve got these two Boeing 747s circling that we are trying to bring down to the tarmac [healthcare and the decision on the Afghanistan troop surge] and we can’t risk a flock of f***ing Canadian geese causing them to crash,’ ” says an official who attended an Oval Office strategy meeting. The geese stood for the closure of Guantánamo.

An outside adviser adds: “I don’t understand how the president could launch healthcare reform and an Arab-Israeli peace process – two goals that have eluded US presidents for generations – without having done better scenario planning. Either would be historic. But to launch them at the same time?”

Again, close allies of the president attribute the problem to the campaign-like nucleus around Mr Obama in which all things are possible. “There is this sense after you have won such an amazing victory, when you have proved conventional wisdom wrong again and again, that you can simply do the same thing in government,” says one. “Of course, they are different skills. To be successful, presidents need to separate the stream of advice they get on policy from the stream of advice they get on politics. That still isn’t happening.”

The White House declined to answer questions on whether Mr Obama needed to broaden his circle of advisers. But some supporters say he should find a new chief of staff. Mr Emanuel has hinted that he might not stay in the job very long and is thought to have an eye on running for mayor of Chicago. Others say Mr Obama should bring in fresh blood. They point to Mr Clinton’s decision to recruit David Gergen, a veteran of previous White Houses, when the last Democratic president ran into trouble in 1993. That is credited with helping to steady the Clinton ship, after he too began with an inner circle largely carried over from his campaign.

But Mr Gergen himself disagrees. Now teaching at Harvard and commenting for CNN, Mr Gergen says members of the inner circle meet two key tests. First, they are all talented. Second, Mr Obama trusts them. “These are important attributes,” Mr Gergen says. His biggest doubt is whether Mr Obama sees any problem with the existing set-up.

So you learn that Obama is all fluff and no substance (i.e., all campaign mode and no actual governing mode), and that Obama has to rely on his “Chicago fearsome foursome” the way he relies on his teleprompter: ubiquitously (as in even in sixth grade classrooms!!!).

And you should think long and hard about the profound comparison of Nixon’s tight (and tightly wound) inner circle and Obama’s same same.  A tight, insular circle that answers to no one and keeps its counsel secret is a frightening thing in any republic.

Here’s another comparison between Obama and his alter ego.  And realize that for a CHICAGO POLITICIAN to say, “I am not a crook,” is pretty much like a Chicago politician saying, “I am not a Chicago politician.”

Everything is politics for Obama.  Political posturing, political preening, political hatchet jobs.  Nothing else matters.

It is frankly amazing to me that such a hypocritical and cynical man as Barack Obama was ever elected president.  He constantly lectures Republicans (and even Democrats when it suits him) to “rise above petty politics” when the very construction of his administration is completely about politics.

I have on several occasions compared Barack Obama to Neville Chamberlain.  Both men were utterly ruthless (there’s your ‘Chicago Way’) in pounding head after head to achieve their signature domestic issues, and both men became utter failures as they attempted to have their personal domestic agenda at the expense of everything else.

People are starting to learn that the “blank slate” may well be blank because the man behind the grand facade has no soul.

Democrats React To Republican Victory In Massachusetts With Spin, Total Incomprehension

A few lines from a Politico article from January 15:

While few have said so publicly, there is widespread recognition that a Brown victory in one of the most Democratic of states will go a long way for all Republican candidates, offering the clearest signal yet that voters are rejecting the ambitious Democratic agenda.

“Rising tides lift all boats,” said veteran GOP pollster David Winston, explaining the surge of interest in Brown’s campaign. “No matter where they are, it will be of help.”

“A lot of people would see this as a national race. If Democrats aren’t safe here, they aren’t safe anywhere,” explained Alex Castellanos, a veteran GOP media consultant who advises the Republican National Committee. “You want to surf that wave that’s out there, and I’m sure that’s what Republicans are doing.”

How did victorious Scott Brown frame his opposition to ObamaCare?

When there’s trouble in Massachusetts, rest assured , there’s trouble everywhere, and they know it. One thing is very, very clear as I traveled across this state. People do not want the trillion dollar health care plan that is being forced on the American people, and this bill is not being debated openly and fairly. It will raise taxes, it will hurt Medicare, it will destroy jobs and run our nation deeper in to debt.

But the same Democrats who couldn’t understand that Republican Scott Brown was winning in the bluest of blue states of Massachusetts can’t understand what the true ramifications of the stunning Republican victory are.

Instead, they are reacting with spin and vowing to redouble their efforts to do the very things that turned the American people against them in the first place.

I turned on MSNBC, and it was amazing.

According to the evening’s propaganda equivalent to a news broadcast: the race had nothing to do with national issues; Martha Coakley was entirely to blame for running a terrible campaign; Barack Obama is still incredibly popular and powerful, and he brought Coakley up by a great deal – but couldn’t make up for Coakley’s terrible campaign; even though the most liberal state in the union didn’t want ObamaCare, the rest of the nation still did; the Brown “forty-one” seat wouldn’t really hurt the Democrats all that much if they rededicate themselves to their agenda; etc.

I have a background in philosophy of religion, and I began to hear what was clearly a liberal theodicy: why does Obama allow evil in the world?

The gist of the evening is that Obama is greater than the divine Messiah, and his will and his agenda are perfect, and cannot be questioned.

From that starting point, the leftist network began to explain the event of how a candidate running against Obama’s agenda could win a seat held by Democrats since 1952 in the most Democrat state in the country.

After Obama spent his last 2 cents’ worth of credibility campaigning for Martha Coakley, he didn’t fail – HE CANNOT FAIL!!! The fact that he is now something like ZERO for 5 (Olympics, Jon Corzine, Creigh Deeds, Copenhagen/Climate Change, and now Martha Coakley) is nothing more than a coincidence.  Clearly, there had to be some other explanation.  It couldn’t be that even people in Massachusetts now recognize that Barack Obama is a failure, and that his agenda is a gigantic boondoggle.

It’s not that Obama has shorter coattails than a naked midget; Obama can lower the oceans!

It’s not that people are no longer paying attention to a president who has demonstrated that he is an incompetent loser; Obama could call fire down from heaven if he wanted to destroy his opposition.

It’s not that Obama’s agenda should now clearly be treated by Democrats like kryptonite is treated by Superman; Obama’s agenda is perfect in every way!  And if the people hate Obama’s plan for his world, it is only because they are ignorant and depraved in their sinfulness.

Democrats appear to be utterly failing to understand that Scott Brown’s victory demonstrated a referendum on Obama and his agenda – and the people voted a loud “NO!”

They have failed to understand all along.

They repeatedly and continually mocked Tea Party conservatives.  They demonized the people who voiced their protests and concerns of ObamaCare last August.  They trivialized and demagogued any and all opposition to their agenda, as if all those people were some kind of minor nuisance, rather than the voice of the American people.

And they just got knocked out with one good punch by “Mister 41,” Scott Brown.

For the last 365 days, Democrats have demonstrated that they are like the proverbial lemmings leaping off of the cliff to their political doom.  It’s a terrible plan, and everyone pretty much realizes it’s a terrible plan.  But, like that poorly-conceived migration route that leads off the steepest cliff in the region, Democrats have to keep pushing and pushing for it.

“Let’s remove all doubt,” said Nancy Pelosi. “We will have health care one way or another.”

The problem is, that single-minded determination to ruin the country against the clearly-expressed will of the people has come home to roost like [Obama’s Marxist, anti-American, racist reverend] Jeremiah Wright’s chickens.

“If Democrats aren’t safe here, they aren’t safe anywhere,” says Alex Castellanos.

And now Democrats are suddenly looking every bit like cockroaches with nowhere to run when the light gets turned on.

Democrats will either turn and run from ObamaCare, cap-and-trade, climate change, card check, and all the other loathsome elements of the Obama agenda, or else they will get squished.

Moral Coward Obama Refuses To Support Decision To A-Bomb Japan

The decision to drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – as much as the Japanese might disagree – is one of the great no-brainers of history.

Here’s a couple of quick reasons why:

TOKYO – Japanese Second World War leader Hideki Tojo wanted to keep fighting even after U.S. atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, accusing surrender proponents of being “frightened,” a newly released diary reveals.  Excerpts from the approximately 20 pages written by Tojo in the final days of the war and held by the National Archives of Japan were published for the first time in several newspapers Tuesday.

“The notes show Tojo kept his died-in-the-wool militarist mentality until the very end,” said Kazufumi Takayama, the archives curator, who confirmed the accuracy of the published excerpts. “They are extremely valuable.”

Tojo, executed in 1948 after being convicted of war crimes by the Allies, was prime minister during much of the war. The notes buttress other evidence that Tojo was fiercely opposed to surrender despite the hopelessness of Japan’s war effort.

An invasion of Japan would have consumed the lives of as many as 4 million American causalities.

Japan refused to surrender even after the first bomb was dropped, thereby welcoming the second.

Students of World War II history also know that Japan was only a couple of weeks away from launching their own nuclear attack against the United States by means of German uranium sent via U-boat.

Of course, when I say the decision was a “no-brainer,” I exclude moral cowards, who will always find a way to dither, to question, to hide, to demagogue.  What is obvious to anyone else becomes an endless quagmire of indecision to such as these.

The Pentagon was fed up with Obama’s dithering moral cowardice regarding Afghanistan 2 full months ago, for what it’s worth.

Obama Declines To Defend U.S. Bombing Of Hiroshima, Nagasaki

Defending the decision of the United States to drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII is not a comfortable thing to do when you’re in Japan.  But if you’re President of the United States, you must do it. Diplomatically, yes.  With sympathy for the civilian victims, yes.  But you must do it.

But when it came time today for Barack Obama to fulfill that fundamental duty, he failed. The very first reporter [from Fuji TV] called on at the joint press conference with PBO and Japanese PM Hatoyama in Tokyo today put the question to Pres. Obama in blunt and explicit terms:

JAPANESE REPORTER: What is your understanding of the historical meaning of the A-bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?  Do you think it was the right decision?

Obama took a deep breath, paused . . . and punted.

PBO gave a halting response that utterly failed to answer the question.  The closest he came was to observe that Japan “has a unique perspective on the issue of nuclear weapons as a consequence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I’m sure it helps to motivate the Prime Minister’s deep interest in this issue.”

The reporter tried again: “do you believe the US dropping of nuclear weapons on –“

Obama cut him off, choosing to answer an unrelated question on the situation in North Korea.

President Reagan – who famously shared his vision regarding the Cold War as “We win, they lose” – was very different indeed from a dithering and morally weak President who recently said:

OBAMA: 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.

And, of course, Obama is doing everything he can to ensure that the United States doesn’t have to bear the burden of a “victory” in Afghanistan, or suffer the indignity of a “victory” against an Iran that is determined to develop nuclear weapons of their own on Obama’s watch.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Iran rejected nuclear deal, Obama postponing announcement

Iran has completely rejected a UN-brokered nuclear deal, but US President Barack Obama has postponed the official announcement on Teheran’s refusal due to internal political reasons, Israel Radio quoted a senior western official as saying Saturday.

The deal would see most of the Islamic Republic’s uranium shipped to Russia and France for further processing.

The official reportedly told journalists in Paris that Iran has also refused to resume nuclear talks with the six world powers.

What we desperately need is a president who actually has the courage and common sense to prefer victory over chaos, and to recognize obvious historical facts supporting the use of American force with clarity, rather than with postmodern, blame-America-first political correctness.

Obama To Gen. McChrystal: ‘Talk To The Hand’

Here’s the story, in short-and-sweet format:

Gen. Stanley McChrystal says he’s talked to President Obama only once since taking command of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan over the summer, a revelation that drew swift criticism from some who are concerned that the president is putting off McChrystal’s request for more troops.

“It’s startling,” Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., told FOX News.

McChrystal talked about his interaction with the president in an interview with CBS News.

“I’ve talked to the president since I’ve been here once on a (video teleconference),” he said.

“You talked to him once in 70 days?” CBS’ David Martin asked.

“That’s correct,” McChrystal said.

McChrystal, who warned in a recent assessment of the war in Afghanistan that the United States risks failure without more troops, submitted a request for more resources on Friday.

But the White House says it will review the overall strategy in Afghanistan before addressing troop levels.

The disclosure that the president and his top Afghanistan commander have spoken just once added to concerns that the administration is waiting too long to deal with the troop level issue.

Gregg said that former President George W. Bush spoke with his then-top Iraq commander, Gen. David Petraeus, on a regular basis. He said that while Obama may be speaking regularly with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Petraeus, who is now head of Central Command, the president should still keep in regular contact with McChrystal.

“I would think you’d want to hear one-on-one from your field commander more than once in six months,” he said.

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, with the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, said he found it “extraordinarily surprising” that McChrystal, once in regular contact with former Vice President Dick Cheney, has talked to Obama only once since taking command.

“It’s not really a good sign,” he said.

To put it bluntly, Talk to the hand, Gen. McChrystal.

You almost wish Reagan could come back – to the  White House rather than the Brandenburg Gate – and say:

“Mr. Obama, send those troops.  Mr. Obama, pay attention to Afghanistan!”

Of course, when President Ronald Reagan spoke to the Soviets, he stood for the greatest and most powerful ideals of American freedom and liberty and confronted the Soviets with their evil and their crushing of the human spirit.  When President Barack Obama addressed America’s enemies, he offered his humblest apologies for everything we’ve done wrong to offend them.

Of course, President Reagan – who famously shared his vision regarding the Cold War as “We win, they lose” – was very different indeed from a President who recently said:

OBAMA: 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.

That Barack Obama will make his decision regarding commitment to Afghanistan without even bothering to speak to the general he himself selected to lead the war there is an insult not only to General Stanley McChrystal and to our troops under his command, but to basic common sense itself.

Mr. Obama, SEND THE TROOPS.  Mr. Obama, PAY ATTENTION TO AFGHANISTAN!!!

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.

Bush, Obama, the Mainstream Media and the Iranian Election Demonstrations

Watching the mainstream media coverage of the demonstrations in Iran following their elections, you would think that the protests have been all about Obama and his Cairo speech delivered on June 4.

Barack Obama appeared to take great credit for whatever would happen when he delivered a rambling answer to a press question about what was happening in Iran prior to the election results being released (and Ahmadinejad being declared the winner):

“Uh, we are excited, uh, to see, uh, what appears to be a robust debate taking place in Iran. And obviously after the speech, uh, that I made in Cairo, uh, we tried to send a clear message that, uh, we think there is the possibility of change, uhhh, aaaand — ehhh, yuh– oh – Ultimately the election is for the Iranians to decide, but just a-as has been true in Lebanon, uh, what’s, uh — can be true in Iran as well is that you’re seeing, uh, people looking at new, uh, possibilities. And, uh, whoever ends up winning, uh, the election in Iran, the fact that there’s been a robust debate hopefully will help, uh, advance, uh, our ability to engage them in new ways.”

But there are some major problems with the “Obama’s speech changed the world” thesis:

For one thing, Obama’s speech failed to offer any new changes in American policy. As an example, even PBS’ positive article on the speech confessed:

While President Obama’s speech contained no new policy proposals on the Middle East, he called upon Israelis and Palestinians alike to live up to their international obligations and to work towards a two-state solution.

And with all due respects, it’s not like Obama’s devoid of actual policy change “call” ignited the Islamic world.

Any many Muslims rightly said, “Nice speech, but let’s wait and see what Obama actually does.”

One late night comedic take on the speech a group of terrorists wearing masks and bandoleers of weapons and ammunition listening to Obama’s speech in front of a television. When Obama seemed to say something about offering peace, they got up, “high-fived” one another, and began to take off their weapons. But then, even as they were in the process of taking off their weapons, Obama seemed to say something that went against the grain of his immediately previous statement, so the terrorists shrugged and started putting on their weapons again.

Bottom line: the comedic take ended up with the terrorists still armed with all of their weapons, just as they had been prior to the speech.

Fausta’s blog dealt with some of what was missing from the speech:

1. The word TERRORIST. “Violent extremism” doesn’t happen on its own. It’s done by terrorists.

2. Details on closing Gitmo “by early next year.” Surely Pres. Obama realizes that it’s not enough to say “I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.” Where will those terrorists be sent? What will be the international reaction?

3. A firm position on women’s rights. As Peter Ladou said regarding the tepid language on this issue:

Is that a joke?With women being stoned, raped, abused, battered, mutilated, and slaughtered on a daily basis across the globe, violence that is so often perpetrated in the name of religion, the most our president can speak about is protecting their right to wear the hijab? I would have been much more heartened if the preponderance of the speech had been about how in the 21st century, we CANNOT tolerate the pervasive abuse of our mothers and sisters and daughters.

Most troubling of all, the speech lacked
4. An unequivocal, firm stance on democracy: A “commitment to governments that reflect the will of the people” is not enough. Tyrants since the dawn of history have been summoning the masses to demonstrate their regimes “reflect the will of the people.”

Additionally, the statement, “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone” is equivocating on a moral point. America, from its birth, has been a champion of democracy, and should remain stalwart in its position.

Did Obama truly think there was little or no difference between the so-called “glass ceiling” women might find in America with the stonings and mutilations of women all-too common in the Islamic world?

As to this last point, Charles Krauthammer – after citing specific examples of just such moral equivalency from Obama’s speech – says this:

Obama undoubtedly thinks he is demonstrating historical magnanimity with all these moral equivalencies and self-flagellating apologetics. On the contrary. He’s showing cheap condescension, an unseemly hunger for applause and a willingness to distort history for political effect.

Distorting history is not truth-telling, but the telling of soft lies. Creating false equivalencies is not moral leadership, but moral abdication. And hovering above it all, above country and history, is a sign not of transcendence but of a disturbing ambivalence toward one’s own country.

Let me offer a rival explanation as to why Iranians are revolting against the results of the elections, even after the Ayatollah “sanctified” the results by claiming the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reflected a “divine assessment.”

How about the hard-fought-for result of an actual democracy in Iraq right next to Iran?

How about the fact that Iranians had the chance to see not one, but now several, freely-held elections with Iraqi people being able to victoriously hold up purple-ink-smudged fingers as proof that they had been able to freely vote for the candidates of their choice?

Just how is it that Obama’s speech is somehow more important than that?

Let’s not forget the fact that neither Barack Obama nor the mainstream media wanted the Iraqi people to be able to freely vote for the candidates of their choice. They opposed the toppling of dictator and tyrant butcher Saddam Hussein – who had murdered at a minimum 400,000 of his own people and buried them in mass graves – having the opportunity to vote that George Bush and the magnificent American military courageously won for them.

And these same people who opposed the establishment of an Iraqi democracy in the heart of the Arab world are now telling you that a damn SPEECH filled with meaningless moral equivalencies and devoid of substance or policy accomplished a change in the heart of the Iranian people?

Seriously?

The mainstream media gleefully covered every death and every failure in Iraq and continued to cover it – until President Bush and the American military began to turn things around. And then the coverage dried up. These dishonest peddlers of propaganda were unwilling to represent the effort in Iraq as successful.

You can go back and find the left predicting in 2003 that “Bush’s declared attempt to introduce democracy in Iraq by force seems set to fail.” In 2005 the naysayers who called hope for democracy in Iraq “the province of fools” abounded. Then you can find media elites in 2006 suggesting that the elections in Iraq are good news, but still not as good as it should have been. Now we have a full-fledged stable democracy in the heart of the Arab world, and it is seemingly irrelevant to whatever positive pro-democracy changes that might be taking place immediately around Iraq.

The mainstream media allowed the Democrat Party to literally cut-and-run from its earlier positions on Iraq without coverage or analysis. Democrats were allowed to be for the deposing of Saddam Hussein before they were against it. Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were allowed to claim “I believe that this war is lost“ while our troops were still fighting on foreign soil to secure victory.

Articles still condemning Bush for Iraq by the mainstream media continue to go for about a dime a dozen, but the Wall Street Journal on January 31st, 2009 offered this far more accurate and honest conclusion:

Say what you want to say about the administrative debacle the situation became after Saddam was ousted, but Saturday’s endeavor is a sign of a better Iraq in a region infested with despots and tightly-gripped political systems, where elections, if allowed, are not that different from those held under Saddam – sham, corrupt and pointless. Arab regimes across the Middle East and Arab people around the world who bristled when they saw Saddam toppled, and later executed — and who may still easily shrug off Iraq’s elections as unconstitutional for being held under U.S. military occupation — have a right to know what it means to have a sense of hope. True, Iraq was safe under the Baath regime and walking in Baghdad at any time of the day felt to me even safer than walking in some parts of New York now, but give me any police state in that region or elsewhere that doesn’t enjoy a relative sense of protection.

The left got to take credit for the good times, and blame Bush for the bad ones. On December 15, 2003, Hillary Clinton crowed upon the capture of Saddam Hussein:

“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.”

Hillary Clinton was for that war before she was against it. And the mainstream media – dishonest, deceitful, and disingenuous itself – allowed Hillary Clinton to be dishonest, deceitful, and disingenuous.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, prior to his declaration of defeat in Iraq, had justified the war in 2002 when “being tough” was politically in vogue. On October 9, 2002 he was on the record saying:

“We stopped the fighting [in 1991] on an agreement that Iraq would take steps to assure the world that it would not engage in further aggression and that it would destroy its weapons of mass destruction. It has refused to take those steps. That refusal constitutes a breach of the armistice which renders it void and justifies resumption of the armed conflict.”

He was not only allowed to be for that war before he was against it by the media, he was allowed to utter outright treason by declaring a war our troops were still fighting “lost.”

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, said on October 10, 2002:

“I come to this debate, Mr. Speaker, as one at the end of 10 years in office on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was one of my top priorities. I applaud the President on focusing on this issue and on taking the lead to disarm Saddam Hussein. … Others have talked about this threat that is posed by Saddam Hussein. Yes, he has chemical weapons, he has biological weapons, he is trying to get nuclear weapons.”

But the mainstream media allowed Nancy Pelosi to get away with the outright moral depravity of attacking President George Bush as a liar when she had publicly held the very same positions herself.

And now we have these same deceitful, dishonest demagogues ignoring the hard-fought accomplishments won under George Bush, and crediting an empty speech as the driving force behind any changes in the Islamic world.

Following the beginnings of the Iranian public demonstrations, even in the aftermath of public statements of condemnation by European leaders, Barack Obama had failed to take a public stand. EVEN FRANCE HAD DISPLAYED MORE COURAGE IN STANDING BEHIND THE IRANIAN PEOPLE THAN OBAMA.

Obama finally provided a weak statement of support for the Iranian people. But it was criticized as being not nearly enough. Finally, he offered a somewhat stronger statement, but only after both the House and the Senate passed strongly-worded resolutions:

Congress voted resoundingly Friday to condemn the Iranian government’s crackdown on protesters, sending a strong bipartisan signal to the White House that it wants less caution and more outrage.

Obama hasn’t been at the forefront of democracy for Iran; he has in fact been the Western and American leader most behind on the issue of supporting true democracy in Iran.

But we’re supposed to believe that it was an empty-worded speech from an empty suit on foreign policy that is rocking the Iranian world?

Don’t believe it for a nanosecond.