Posted on 10/16/2009 8:03:48 AM PDT by rhema
About the only thing more comical than Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was the reaction of those who deemed the award "premature," as if the brilliance of Obama's foreign policy is so self-evident and its success so assured that if only the Norway Five had waited a few years, his Nobel worthiness would have been universally acknowledged.
To believe this, you have to be a dreamy adolescent (preferably Scandinavian and a member of the Socialist International) or an indiscriminate imbiber of White House talking points. After all, this was precisely the spin on the president's various apology tours through Europe and the Middle East: National self-denigration -- excuse me, outreach and understanding -- is not meant to yield immediate results; it simply plants the seeds of good feeling from which foreign policy successes shall come.
Chauncey Gardiner could not have said it better. Well, at nine months, let's review.
What's come from Obama holding his tongue while Iranian demonstrators were being shot and from his recognizing the legitimacy of a thug regime illegitimately returned to power in a fraudulent election? Iran cracks down even more mercilessly on the opposition and races ahead with its nuclear program.
What's come from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taking human rights off the table on a visit to China and from Obama's shameful refusal to see the Dalai Lama (a postponement, we are told)? China hasn't moved an inch on North Korea, Iran or human rights. Indeed, it's pushing with Russia to dethrone the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
What's come from the new-respect-for-Muslims Cairo speech and the unprecedented pressure on Israel for a total settlement freeze? "The settlement push backfired," reports The Post, and Arab-Israeli peace prospects have "arguably regressed."
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
This I heard from an Obama Kool-Aid drinker.
It gets worse. Having failed to get any movement from the Russians, Clinton herself moved -- to accommodate the Russian position! Sanctions? What sanctions? "We are not at that point yet," she averred. "That is not a conclusion we have reached . . . it is our preference that Iran work with the international community."
But wait a minute. Didn't Obama say in July that Iran had to show compliance by the G-20 summit in late September? And when that deadline passed, did he not then warn Iran that it would face "sanctions that have bite" and that it would have to take "a new course or face consequences"? Gone with the wind. It's the United States that's now retreating from its already flimsy position of just three weeks ago. We're not doing sanctions now, you see. We're back to engagement. Just as the Russians suggest.
I like the way Krauthammer writes.
Always a nice turn of phrase...
Seems to be more than a bit of both (amateurishness and ideology) on parade. I think you’re both right.
“I like the way Krauthammer writes.”
....me too...I like it when he’s on the FOX all-stars panel with Bret Baier....sometimes he seems to have more trouble breathing...he’s been in that wheel chair for many, many years....I hope it’s not catching up with him.
Krauthammer has been leading up to this smackdown for a while now. I think he's in the vanguard of a more general denigration of Obama's performance among the non-conservative media. It's already started on the SNL/Jon Stewart front....
Actually, it's both.
The ideology attracts and promotes amateur-like behavior. We see it time and time again. However, in their ability to be ruthless, they are not amateurs. We need to take that page out of their rule book, learn it and use it.
Yet I find such impenetrability on the part of very smart men occupying the highest offices of the United States scarcely to be credible and seek an explanation elsewhere. Gentlemen: Who but Jimmy Carter could believe that the overtures of the Obama administration would be anything but embarrassing failures? The answer, according to Kissinger, is other (Democrat) administrations.
Is the administration so amateurish that he could not predict that which a child would see? Or, is the administration so bound up with its ideology that it is blind? Or does it march to a different drummer so that these setbacks are not seen as setbacks but as milestones along the path to a different world order?
To the first two, I think the answer is a definite "yes." Remember: you'll almost always be correct if you base your predictions of Obama will do, predicated on trying predict what a naive and idealistic 19 year old sophomore would do.
To the last ... I think Obama doesn't think in those terms, except perhaps inasmuch as the "different world order" is based on a narcissistic assumption that the world will realize that he is worthy of worship and adulation.
What it really reminds me of, is this:
The Obama administration? Amateurish in its ability to implement what it wants to achieve, ideological in determining what it wants to achieve, and indifferent to the immediate impact of its actions since it thinks it’s working to a better future (gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet—and the eggs in this case are Americans/America). Yeah, there’s more than a bit of each in the Obama administration.
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