Points For Americans To Consider

[Annie]

going into year 2:

Fouad Ajami: A Cold-Blooded Foreign Policy - WSJ.com

A Cold-Blooded Foreign Policy
No despot fears the president, and no demonstrator in Tehran expects him to ride to the rescue.
By FOUAD AJAMI

With year one drawing to a close, the truth of the Obama presidency is laid bare: retrenchment abroad, and redistribution and the intrusive regulatory state at home. This is the genuine calling of Barack Obama, and of the "progressives" holding him to account. The false dichotomy has taken hold—either we care for our own, or we go abroad in search of monsters to destroy or of broken nations to build. The decision to withdraw missile defense for Poland and the Czech Republic was of a piece with that retreat in American power.

In the absence of an overriding commitment to the defense of American primacy in the world, the Obama administration "cheats." It will not quit the war in Afghanistan but doesn't fully embrace it as its cause. It prosecutes the war but with Republican support—the diehards in liberal ranks and the isolationists are in no mood for bonding with Afghans. (Harry Reid's last major foreign policy pronouncement was his assertion, three years ago, that the war in Iraq was lost.)

As revolution simmers on the streets of Iran, the will was summoned in the White House to offer condolences over the passing of Grand Ayatollah Hussein Montazeri, an iconic figure to the Iranian opposition. But the word was also put out that the administration was keen on the prospect of John Kerry making his way to Tehran. No one is fooled. In the time of Barack Obama, "engagement" with Iran's theocrats and thugs trumps the cause of Iranian democracy....

...We hadn't ridden to the rescue of Rwanda and Burundi in the 1990s, but we had saved the Bosnians and the Kosovars. We didn't have the power to undo the colossus of Chinese tyranny when the tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square, but the brave dissidents knew that we were on their side, that we were appalled by the cruelty of official power.

It is different today, there is a cold-bloodedness to American foreign policy. "Ideology is so yesterday," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaimed not long ago, giving voice to the new sentiment.

History and its furies have their logic, and they have not bent to Mr. Obama's will. He had declared a unilateral end to the "war on terror," but the jihadists and their mentors are yet to call their war to a halt. From Yemen to Fort Hood and Detroit, the terror continues.

But to go by the utterances of the Obama administration and its devotees, one would have thought that our enemies were Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, not the preachers and masterminds of terror. The president and his lieutenants spent more time denigrating "rendition" and the Patriot Act than they did tracking down the terror trail and the latest front it had opened at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen. Our own leaders spoke poorly of our prerogatives and ways, and they were heard the world over.

Under Mr. Obama, we have pulled back from the foreign world. We're smaller for accepting that false choice between burdens at home and burdens abroad, and the world beyond our shores is more hazardous and cynical for our retrenchment and our self-flagellation.

Mr. Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is the author of "The Foreigner's Gift" (Free Press, 2007).

 

[PatekPhilippe]

going into year 2:

Fouad Ajami: A Cold-Blooded Foreign Policy - WSJ.com

A Cold-Blooded Foreign Policy
No despot fears the president, and no demonstrator in Tehran expects him to ride to the rescue.
By FOUAD AJAMI

With year one drawing to a close, the truth of the Obama presidency is laid bare: retrenchment abroad, and redistribution and the intrusive regulatory state at home. This is the genuine calling of Barack Obama, and of the "progressives" holding him to account. The false dichotomy has taken hold—either we care for our own, or we go abroad in search of monsters to destroy or of broken nations to build. The decision to withdraw missile defense for Poland and the Czech Republic was of a piece with that retreat in American power.

In the absence of an overriding commitment to the defense of American primacy in the world, the Obama administration "cheats." It will not quit the war in Afghanistan but doesn't fully embrace it as its cause. It prosecutes the war but with Republican support—the diehards in liberal ranks and the isolationists are in no mood for bonding with Afghans. (Harry Reid's last major foreign policy pronouncement was his assertion, three years ago, that the war in Iraq was lost.)

As revolution simmers on the streets of Iran, the will was summoned in the White House to offer condolences over the passing of Grand Ayatollah Hussein Montazeri, an iconic figure to the Iranian opposition. But the word was also put out that the administration was keen on the prospect of John Kerry making his way to Tehran. No one is fooled. In the time of Barack Obama, "engagement" with Iran's theocrats and thugs trumps the cause of Iranian democracy....

...We hadn't ridden to the rescue of Rwanda and Burundi in the 1990s, but we had saved the Bosnians and the Kosovars. We didn't have the power to undo the colossus of Chinese tyranny when the tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square, but the brave dissidents knew that we were on their side, that we were appalled by the cruelty of official power.

It is different today, there is a cold-bloodedness to American foreign policy. "Ideology is so yesterday," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaimed not long ago, giving voice to the new sentiment.

History and its furies have their logic, and they have not bent to Mr. Obama's will. He had declared a unilateral end to the "war on terror," but the jihadists and their mentors are yet to call their war to a halt. From Yemen to Fort Hood and Detroit, the terror continues.

But to go by the utterances of the Obama administration and its devotees, one would have thought that our enemies were Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, not the preachers and masterminds of terror. The president and his lieutenants spent more time denigrating "rendition" and the Patriot Act than they did tracking down the terror trail and the latest front it had opened at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen. Our own leaders spoke poorly of our prerogatives and ways, and they were heard the world over.

Under Mr. Obama, we have pulled back from the foreign world. We're smaller for accepting that false choice between burdens at home and burdens abroad, and the world beyond our shores is more hazardous and cynical for our retrenchment and our self-flagellation.

Mr. Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is the author of "The Foreigner's Gift" (Free Press, 2007).

Obama and his mnions have their priorites all messed up...let's hope they come to their senses before Al Qaeda vaporizes a city...or 2.

 

[Bfgrn]

What a pile of right wing dog shit...

Hey, maybe Obama needs to emulate Bush & Cheney and act like the terrorist

 

[Annie]

What a pile of right wing dog shit...

Hey, maybe Obama needs to emulate Bush & Cheney and act like the terrorist

That was enlightening. Not.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

What a pile of right wing dog shit...

Hey, maybe Obama needs to emulate Bush & Cheney and act like the terrorist

Who called for a civilian force to rival the military at the beck and call of the President, with arrest powers, separate from any current police or law enforcement agency?

 

[PatekPhilippe]

What a pile of right wing dog shit...

Hey, maybe Obama needs to emulate Bush & Cheney and act like the terrorist

Who called for a civilian force to rival the military at the beck and call of the President, with arrest powers, separate from any current police or law enforcement agency?

That's different. bfgrn hopes they will be used on U.S. citizens and leave the poor defenseless terrorists alone.

bfgrn says "Leave Al Qaeda ALONE!!!!!"

 

[asaratis]

What a pile of right wing dog shit...

Hey, maybe Obama needs to emulate Bush & Cheney and act like the terrorist

Typical liberal gibberish.

What a pile of right wing dog shit...

Hey, maybe Obama needs to emulate Bush & Cheney and act like the terrorist

Who called for a civilian force to rival the military at the beck and call of the President, with arrest powers, separate from any current police or law enforcement agency?

You couldn't get through to that numbskull in the other thread...what makes you think it will happen here. Bfgrn is a brainwashed, liberal, Obama-worshiping lamebrain that unfortunately knows how to type.

 

[Bfgrn]

What a pile of right wing dog shit...

Hey, maybe Obama needs to emulate Bush & Cheney and act like the terrorist

That was enlightening. Not.

Oh, you need enlightening...

Matthew Alexander

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.

Matthew Alexander led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006.

I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq - washingtonpost.com

 

[Bfgrn]

What a pile of right wing dog shit...

Hey, maybe Obama needs to emulate Bush & Cheney and act like the terrorist

Typical liberal gibberish.

What a pile of right wing dog shit...

Hey, maybe Obama needs to emulate Bush & Cheney and act like the terrorist

Who called for a civilian force to rival the military at the beck and call of the President, with arrest powers, separate from any current police or law enforcement agency?

You couldn't get through to that numbskull in the other thread...what makes you think it will happen here. Bfgrn is a brainwashed, liberal, Obama-worshiping lamebrain that unfortunately knows how to type.

I'm sure you pea brains pray no one actually looks at 'the other thread'

SO... I'll help you...

http://www.usmessageboard.com/current-events/99711-this-is-your-police-state-thanks-the-rs-ds-and-those-who-think-cops-can-do-no-wrong.html

FactCheck.org: Is Obama planning a Gestapo-like "civilian national security force"?

 

[kyzr]

What a pile of right wing dog shit...

Hey, maybe Obama needs to emulate Bush & Cheney and act like the terrorist

They're playing Obama for the CHUMP that he is. Wow, change one letter and you get the old Bush nickname. Ever call Bush Chimp??

 

[Screaming Eagle]

What a pile of right wing dog shit...

Hey, maybe Obama needs to emulate Bush & Cheney and act like the terrorist

That was enlightening. Not.

Oh, you need enlightening...

Matthew Alexander

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.

Matthew Alexander led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006.

I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq - washingtonpost.com

If that's true then the liberal media is to blame. How on Earth any seemingly sane person could ever construe making someone wear underwear on their head as torture I will never understand.

 

[midcan5]

We need to name this sort of bizarre thought 'chimpanzee thinking.' Imagine if LBJ hadn't escalated the war in Vietnam, imagine the fathers, the children, the parents who would have had normal lives. Today their products are sold in our stores and the names of the death appear in granite only. Seeing friends names on that black stone demonstrates how tragically stupid man still is.

Imagine if we had not invaded Iraq over gut fear and trumped up lies of WMDs. How many children would today wait at the window, happy, dad or mom were coming up the block - both here and in Iraq.

Sure we need to fight those who attack us, but bluster and hubris and a war machine with nothing else to do, but kill only consigns us to the level of irrational animals who kill because that is all they know. We need too to leave Muslim nations develop on their own so the disenfranchised youth's enemy is home and not here.

Bring back the draft with no exemptions and we will see a bit more reason.

 

[Bfgrn]

That was enlightening. Not.

Oh, you need enlightening...

Matthew Alexander

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.

Matthew Alexander led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006.

I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq - washingtonpost.com

If that's true then the liberal media is to blame. How on Earth any seemingly sane person could ever construe making someone wear underwear on their head as torture I will never understand.

It's doesn't matter what YOU think. You can't understand how anyone would be angered over having their people and religion trashed and disrespected? I'd love to hear your reaction if Iraqis treated American prisoners the same way...

 

[kyzr]

It's doesn't matter what YOU think. You can't understand how anyone would be angered over having their people and religion trashed and disrespected? I'd love to hear your reaction if Iraqis treated American prisoners the same way...

American prisoners were beheaded. You were saying...

 

[Bfgrn]

It's doesn't matter what YOU think. You can't understand how anyone would be angered over having their people and religion trashed and disrespected? I'd love to hear your reaction if Iraqis treated American prisoners the same way...

American prisoners were beheaded. You were saying...

Then we are justified to go after the perpetrators, not just human beings that RESEMBLE the perpetrators...

Guest Post by Lawrence Wilkerson: Some Truths About Guantanamo Bay - The Washington Note

Lawrence B. Wilkerson was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell and is chairman of the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative.

 

[Xenophon]

If Barry had real balls he would end those stupid wars and close all thos e'bases' around teh world.

 

[Bfgrn]

If Barry had real balls he would end those stupid wars and close all thos e'bases' around teh world.

He'd end up like JFK...

 

[code1211]

What a pile of right wing dog shit...

Hey, maybe Obama needs to emulate Bush & Cheney and act like the terrorist

A tree is not a rose bush. Everything is what it is. Obama demonstrated his default positions by his knee jerk reactions to things he knew nothing about.

A friend is a beligerant ass who cusses out police and The Big 0 immediately charges police brutality.

Iranian students rally for freedom and get killed in the streets and The Big 0 offers condolences for the death of an Iranian religious zealot against whom the students were rallying who was previously wishing death to America.

The Honduran President who aspires to be a dictator is ousted by his population and supported by Castro, Chavez and The Big 0. What's wrong with this picture?

The defining event of this Presidency is the collapse of the economy. Besides blaming the previous administration, the Big 0 has done NOTHING about it. He is consumed with the Health Insurance Reform, political hackery and with Climate change. One will have no impact on anything, one will serve to continue to fragment the population and the other will not have an impact on anything for 4 years and, by then, it might have been repealed.

He is out of touch with our place as a nation in the world and in history, with the reality of the problems in the country, with the nature of our enemies, the obvious fact that we are at war, the needs of his people and the pathways to building a bipartisan, unified country to address the very real problems that he has inherited and that have blossomed as a result of his neglect.

If he was a do nothing leader, that would be preferable. As is, he is literally attacking the country he leads and seems committed to destroying it from the top down.

He hated not only GWB, but the office of the presidency and any office of power and any power projection which he now symbolizes, like it or not. A delicate place to be; almost Shakespearean in its twists and turns upon itself. As the President, he is the man he hates.

He is what he is: A man who hates the powerful and is bent upon bringing them down. As the most powerful man in the world, his agenda is to undermine the country that he leads and he is going about it as quickly as can be done.

He cannot be blamed for this because he can only be what he is. We will suffer the regrets for what he is and do so for the remainder of our lives.

Well, at least he recieved the Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe it will somehow foster peace in the Middle East. The Arabs probably see no need to fight anymore. Another couple weeks and the Big 0 will just give them Isreal. He'll move all the Jews to Illinois.

 

[Old Rocks]

What a pile of right wing dog shit...

Hey, maybe Obama needs to emulate Bush & Cheney and act like the terrorist

They're playing Obama for the CHUMP that he is. Wow, change one letter and you get the old Bush nickname. Ever call Bush Chimp??

No. I called him a fucking dumbass incompetant. I was far too complimentary toward him.

 

[Old Rocks]

Code 1211;
Iranian students rally for freedom and get killed in the streets and The Big 0 offers condolences for the death of an Iranian religious zealot against whom the students were rallying who was previously wishing death to America

My, my, Code, out of imaginative spinning and into outright wingnut lies now? The cleric was a supporter of the reform movement!



Cleric's funeral breathes life into Iran's protest movement - Middle East, World - The Independent

The funeral of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the eminent cleric and champion of reform, turned into a mass protest in Iran yesterday as the vast crowd chanted slogans against the government and clashed on the streets with security forces.


The mourners, who reportedly numbered up to a million, had come out to observe a "national day of sorrow". They were on the streets of Qom at the urging of defeated presidential candidates Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who lost to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in highly contentious elections earlier this year. Despite the authorities' efforts to limit attendance, reformist website Jaras reported mourners beating their chests and shouting: "Innocent Montazeri, your path will be continued even if the dictator should rain bullets on our heads." Reuters reported that tear gas had been released and shots fired near the city's main shrine.