Undermining Allies

[philunderwood]

Undermining Allies

By Thomas Sowell

www.JewishWorldReview.com |

While everyone's attention seems to be focused on the crisis in Egypt, a bombshell revelation about the administration's foreign policy in Europe has largely gone unnoticed.

The British newspaper The Telegraph has reported that part of the price which President Obama paid to get Russia to sign the START treaty, limiting nuclear arms, was revealing to the Russians the hitherto secret size of the British nuclear arsenal. This information came from the latest WikiLeaks documents.

To betray vital military secrets of this country's oldest, most steadfast and most powerful ally, behind the back of the British government, is something that should set off alarm bells. Following in the wake of earlier betrayals of prior American commitments to put a nuclear shield in Eastern Europe, and the undermining of Israel and calculated insults to its prime minister, this pattern raises serious, and perhaps almost unthinkable, questions about the Obama administration's foreign policy.

One of Barack Obama's first acts as President of the United States was to fly to Russia and try to get a deal with the Russian government by welshing on an existing American commitment to put a nuclear shield in Eastern Europe.

Obama's glib rhetoric about how he was pressing "the reset button" on American foreign policy treated the ongoing international commitments of the American government as something that each new administration is free to disregard.

Nations that ally themselves with the United States, and who cooperate in many ways to oppose the threat of international terrorism, do so at the risk of their own national safety and even survival. To make America's reciprocal commitments to them contingent on the whims of each new administration is to make other nations have to think twice about allying themselves with the U.S.

Since the fight against international terrorism requires not only information about terrorist activities and networks from other countries' intelligence services, but also cooperation from other countries' financial institutions, in order to block terrorists' transfers of money to finance their deadly activities.

This is in addition to other nations' direct military involvement in the fight against terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places, current and prospective-- not to mention providing military access through their lands when needed.

But doing such things invites retaliation from the terrorists and from the leading international sponsor of terrorism, Iran, which may in a very few years have nuclear weapons.

Glib talk about setting the reset button on American foreign policy raises the question whether any alliance with the United States can be relied on beyond the term of a particular administration. To nations that have to think in terms of their own national survival, four years is a very short time.

It is also a very short time in the life of the United States of America. To alienate our allies and embolden our enemies because of one administration is a dangerous gamble in an international jungle where nuclear bombs may soon be in the hands of some of the most reckless nations on the planet.

The Obama administration's response to the current crisis in Egypt likewise threatens to make being an ally of the United States less attractive.

Whatever the merits or demerits of the advice that Barack Obama has been giving Hosni Mubarak, for the President of the United States to be publicly lecturing the president of another sovereign nation on almost a daily basis insults that nation, not just its leader.

Even in the worst days of the dictatorship in the Soviet Union, neither Stalin nor his successors publicly told the leaders of the satellite nations in Eastern Europe what to do. There is no question that Eastern European leaders were puppets of the Soviet Union, but Soviet leaders had the good sense not to say so to the whole world. Yet Obama makes allies look like they are puppets.

Countries like Egypt, that have once lived under colonial rule, are especially resentful of being publicly lectured by Western nations. Nor will the Obama administration's lecturing of Egypt endear us to other nations contemplating the down side of being an ally of the United States.

[relenemiller]

Maybe BO could give Hosni Mubarak a copy of his speeches like he did another ally of ours, the Queen of England?

[philunderwood]

Dr. Sanity
Shining a psychological spotlight on a few of the insanities of life


Tuesday, February 22, 2011

CURIOSITY KILLED THE....?

James Lewis sees the President of the US retreating as the President of Iran advances:

[Obama] is now stopping the United States from being the good cop to keep the peace in the Middle East. Pax Americana is in retreat, step by step, and truly barbaric regimes are rearing their ugly heads all the way from Myanmar to the tip of South America. This administration is either grossly incompetent in foreign affairs, or it is genuinely self-destructive; it doesn't matter which. In the case of the mob-staged coup d'etat against Mubarak, Obama seemed more malevolent than ignorant, but the result is still the same. Egypt's reactionary Muslim Brotherhood is even now picking up all the chips Obama has lost in the latest farce. In Tahrir Square the new Ayatollah Khomeini of Egypt just came back from exile and addressed a million shouting supporters. Google's little twitter mobber Ghonim was kept off the stage. Only the US press was assaulted. The next time will be worse.

We are witnessing an exact copy of Jimmy Carter's abandonment of a pro-Western and fairly enlightened Iran in 1979. Carter allowed the first radical Islamist power to consolidate in the Middle East; more than a million people died in the war that followed. Jimmy still maintains his innocence, just as he's telling us now there's nothing to fear from the Muslim Bros, in spite of their famous five Rules for Islamic Radicals. They make Alinsky look like a guppy next to a Great White shark.

Obama has now pushing our thirty-year ally Hosni Mubarak out of power, letting the biggest country in the Middle East be radicalized. Meanwhile Turkey has fallen to another offshoot the Muslim Brotherhood. Gaza is under the thumb of Hamas after Israel gave in to US pressure to retreat, Lebanon is now run by Hezbollah, and Syria is allied with Ahmadinejad. No wonder all the bad guys are celebrating.

Every time Obama retreats, Ahmadinejad advances, step by step, like a chess master playing against a panicked rookie. You can see checkmate coming way ahead of time.

The upshot of all this appeasement, in Lewis' says, is "...the biggest Western gamble since the Hitler appeasement policy of the 1930s. I don't know where the first major aggression will explode, but we are inviting attack on multiple fronts."

Meanwhile, two Iranian warships are today making their way through the Suez, with the express permission of the new regime in Egypt. The ships are purportedly making their way to Syria for a "training mission."

Conveniently (for Iran anyway), they will be passing by the shores of Israel on their voyage. The U.S. is going to follow the situation, "...with some curiosity."

Curiosity?

Amazingly, after two years of Obama touting America's weakness and moral inferiority, the thugs of the world think they can get away with just about anything.

Meanwhile, Obama's attention is focused like a laser on the unions in Wisconsin.

Yes, indeed. We are in the best of hands.

- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity

[philunderwood]

What Obama did to Israel

By Charles Krauthammer

www.JewishWorldReview.com |

Every Arab-Israeli negotiation contains a fundamental asymmetry: Israel gives up land, which is tangible; the Arabs make promises, which are ephemeral. The long-standing American solution has been to nonetheless urge Israel to take risks for peace while America balances things by giving assurances of U.S. support for Israel's security and diplomatic needs.

It's on the basis of such solemn assurances that Israel undertook, for example, the Gaza withdrawal. In order to mitigate this risk, President George W.Bush gave a written commitment that America supported Israel absorbing major settlement blocs in any peace agreement, opposed any return to the 1967 lines and stood firm against the so-called Palestinian right of return to Israel.

For 21 / 2 years, the Obama administration has refused to recognize and reaffirm these assurances. Then last week in his State Department speech, President Obama definitively trashed them. He declared that the Arab-Israeli conflict should indeed be resolved along "the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps."

Nothing new here, said Obama three days later. "By definition, it means that the parties themselves — Israelis and Palestinians — will negotiate a border that is different" from 1967.

It means nothing of the sort. "Mutually" means both parties have to agree. And if one side doesn't? Then, by definition, you're back to the 1967 lines.

Nor is this merely a theoretical proposition. Three times the Palestinians have been offered exactly that formula, 1967 plus swaps — at Camp David 2000, Taba 2001, and the 2008 Olmert-Abbas negotiations. Every time, the Palestinians said no and walked away.

And that remains their position today: The 1967 lines. Period. Indeed, in September the Palestinians are going to the United Nations to get the world to ratify precisely that — a Palestinian state on the '67 lines. No swaps.

Note how Obama has undermined Israel's negotiating position. He is demanding that Israel go into peace talks having already forfeited its claim to the territory won in the '67 war — its only bargaining chip. Remember: That '67 line runs right through Jerusalem. Thus the starting point of negotiations would be that the Western Wall and even Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter are Palestinian — alien territory for which Israel must now bargain.

The very idea that Judaism's holiest shrine is alien or that Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter is rightfully or historically or demographically Arab is an absurdity. And the idea that, in order to retain them, Israel has to give up parts of itself is a travesty.

Obama didn't just move the goal posts on borders. He also did so on the so-called right of return. Flooding Israel with millions of Arabs would destroy the world's only Jewish state while creating a 23rd Arab state and a second Palestinian state — not exactly what we mean when we speak of a "two-state solution." That's why it has been the policy of the United States to adamantly oppose this "right."

Yet in his State Department speech, Obama refused to simply restate this position — and refused again in a supposedly corrective speech three days later. Instead, he told Israel it must negotiate the right of return with the Palestinians after having given every inch of territory. Bargaining with what, pray tell?

No matter. "The status quo is unsustainable," declared Obama, "and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace."

Israel too ? Exactly what bold steps for peace have the Palestinians taken? Israel made three radically conciliatory offers to establish a Palestinian state, withdrew from Gaza and has been trying to renew negotiations for more than two years. Meanwhile, the Gaza Palestinians have been firing rockets at Israeli towns and villages. And on the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas turns down then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's offer, walks out of negotiations with Binyamin Netanyahu and now defies the United States by seeking not peace talks but instant statehood — without peace, without recognizing Israel — at the United Nations. And to make unmistakable this spurning of any peace process, Abbas agrees to join the openly genocidal Hamas in a unity government, which even Obama acknowledges makes negotiations impossible.

Obama's response to this relentless Palestinian intransigence? To reward it — by abandoning the Bush assurances, legitimizing the '67 borders and refusing to reaffirm America's rejection of the right of return.

The only remaining question is whether this perverse and ultimately self-defeating policy is born of genuine antipathy toward Israel or of the arrogance of a blundering amateur who refuses to see that he is undermining not just peace but the very possibility of negotiations.

[philunderwood]

Seductive Beliefs: Part II

By Thomas Sowell

www.JewishWorldReview.com |

The only thing surprising about Barack Obama's latest blow against Israel is that there are people who are surprised. As for a Palestinian homeland, that was never a big issue when the Arabs controlled that land, up to 1967.

Obama's declaration that Israel must give up the land it acquired, after neighboring countries threatened its survival in 1967, is completely consistent with both his ideology of many years and his previous actions as President of the United States.

Whether as a radical student, a community organizer or a far left politician, Barack Obama's ideology has been based on a vision of the Haves versus the Have Nots. However complex the ramifications of this ideology, and however clever the means by which Obama has camouflaged it, that is what it has amounted to.

No wonder he was moved to tears when the Reverend Jeremiah Wright summarized that ideology in a thundering phrase— "white folks' greed runs a world in need."

Israel is one of the Haves. Its neighbors remain among the Have Nots, despite their oil. No wonder that Barack Obama has bent over backward, in addition to bowing low forward, to support the side that his ideology favors.

Whether at home or abroad, Obama's ideology is an ideology of envy, resentment and payback.

Israel is not simply to have its interests sacrificed and its security undermined. It is to be brought down a peg and— to the extent politically possible— insulted. Obama has already done all these things. His latest pronouncement is just more of the same.

One of the first acts of Barack Obama as president was to send money to the Palestinians, money that can be used to buy rockets to fire into Israel, irrespective of the rationale for the money.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. A photograph that should tell us a lot about Barack Obama shows him on the phone, talking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Obama was seated, leaning back in his chair, with his feet up on the desk, and the soles of his feet pointed directly at the camera. In the Middle East, showing the soles of your feet is an insult, as Obama undoubtedly knows.

This photograph was no accident. Photographers cannot roam around White House, willy-nilly, taking snapshots of the President of the United States as he talks to leaders of foreign nations.

It was a photograph with a message. No one would have known who was on the other end of the line, unless Obama wanted them to know — and wanted to demonstrate his disdain.

Prime Minister Netanyahu's visits to the White House have been unlike previous Israeli leaders' visits to the White House, and certainly unlike the pomp and circumstance accompanying other nations' leaders' visits to the White House over the years.

After one of his meetings with Netanyahu, Barack Obama simply told the prime minister that he was going upstairs to have dinner. You wouldn't say that to an ordinary neighbor visiting in your home, without inviting him to join you.

Obama knew that. Netanyahu knew that. It was a calculated insult. And the American public would have heard about it, if so much of the media didn't have such a hear-no-evil, see-no-evil and speak-no-evil attitude in its coverage of Barack Obama.

Visits to the White House by prime ministers of Britain— our oldest and staunchest ally— have likewise been downplayed and Obama's visit to the Queen of England was likewise conducted without the respect normally shown to a monarch. One of Obama's first acts upon reaching the White House was to return to the British embassy a bust of Winston Churchill, the most eminent statesman in Britain's history.

All of this is consistent with Obama's general approach to foreign policy— selling out our allies to curry favor with our adversaries. He flew to Moscow, shortly after taking office, to renege on the American commitment to put a missile shield in Eastern Europe, in hopes of getting a deal with the Russians.

Obama is politically savvy enough to know how to get his point across without blowing his cover.

The fate of the United States of America may depend on how savvy we the people are in seeing what he is doing— and how soon, before the situation becomes irretrievable.

[philunderwood]

www.qando.net/?tag=canada

How good is Obama’s foreign relations record really?

Published April 5, 2012 | By Bruce McQuain

One of the supposed areas in which President Obama has done well is in the area of foreign relations. And, of course, the press has dutifully helped create the myth of success.

But have foreign relations really been a success for him?

Don’t forget, this is the man who thinks he was responsible for “Arab Spring”. In both Egypt and Libya, radical islamists have begun to take charge. And this morning, a rocket launched from Egypt hit Israel.

Of course relations with our staunchest ally in the region – Israel – are terrible.

Then there is Russia. They way they’ve treated the US Ambassador to Russia is indicative of their belief that Obama is weak:


The Kremlin sees the Obama administration as weak and indecisive, making it a perfect, nonthreatening partner that can be bullied and provoked using the same tools Moscow routinely employs against opposition leaders and civil and human rights activists at home. This was the approach that the Kremlin used against the Estonian ambassador to protest the relocation of a monument to Soviet soldiers from downtown Tallinn. By Moscow’s reasoning, if such tactics are permissible when dealing with "weak" Estonia, why not use the same methods against a "weak" United States? Why should Putin and his cohorts show respect for the U.S. ambassador? On the contrary, it is better to put him in his place.

And they have used a “Kremlin-sponsored media campaign aimed at discrediting, pressuring, provoking and defaming him.”

Nice reset.

Of course in the anarchy of world politics, weakness is something to be exploited, and Russia sees the opportunity to do exactly that.

You’d think, in the midst of all this failure, he could at least maintain good relationships with his allies. But Israel would beg to differ. And, surprisingly, so would Canada and Mexico. But you won’t read about it in the US press.

Investors.com reports:


Obama’s neglect of our nearest neighbors and biggest trade partners has created deteriorating relations, a sign of a president who’s out of touch with reality. Problems are emerging that aren’t being reported.

Fortunately, the Canadian and Mexican press told the real story. Canada’s National Post quoted former Canadian diplomat Colin Robertson as saying the North American Free Trade Agreement and the three-nation alliance it has fostered since 1994 have been so neglected they’re "on life support."

Energy has become a searing rift between the U.S. and Canada and threatens to leave the U.S. without its top energy supplier.

The Winnipeg Free Press reported that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned Obama the U.S. will have to pay market prices for its Canadian oil after Obama’s de facto veto of the Keystone XL pipeline. Canada is preparing to sell its oil to China.

Until now, NAFTA had shielded the U.S. from having to pay global prices for Canadian oil. That’s about to change.

I talked about that yesterday when I noted the ultimate cost of Obama’s fit of pique that led to him disapproving the Keystone XL pipeline.

And Mexico? Is it as bad as Canada?


Things were even worse, if you read the Mexican press accounts of the meeting.

Excelsior of Mexico City reported that President Felipe Calderon bitterly brought up Operation Fast and Furious, a U.S. government operation that permitted Mexican drug cartels to smuggle thousands of weapons into drug-war-torn Mexico. This blunder has wrought mayhem on Mexico and cost thousands of lives.

The mainstream U.S. press has kept those questions out of the official press conferences, while Obama has feigned ignorance to the Mexicans and hasn’t even apologized.

As usual, we’re poorly served by our media which somehow seems to have managed to miss all the points the Canadian and Mexican press have noted.

Yes, this president has a record he has to run on finally and it seems his foreign relations record isn’t, in reality, much better than his domestic one.

Of course it will be up to the GOP to point that out since obviously, the US press isn’t going too.

Bottom line for the Obama record?

#FAIL

~McQ