Posted on 04/09/2014 12:10:47 PM PDT by DanMiller
What, if anything, do "we" now stand for and why?
An article published on April 9th by the Gatestone Institute International Policy Council is titled U.S.: The Great Problem that Needs to be Solved. Written by Elliot Abrams, it contends that the problem has at its center the world view of President Obama. His world view is based primarily on ideology rather than reality; its bases are evident in all that He and His minions do and fail to do.
The problem also impacts domestic policy, implemented by Executive Decree when He "won't wait." If the Democrats control neither house of the Congress following the November elections, there will likely be increasing numbers of Executive Decrees. There will also probably be more Executive refusals to enforce Federal laws the Obama Administration does not like. Attorney General Holder testified before the House Judiciary Committee on April 8th that
There is a vast amount of discretion that a president has — and, more specifically, that an attorney general has . . . . But that discretion has to be used in an appropriate way so that your acting consistent with the aims of the statute but at the same time making sure that you are acting in a way that is consistent with our values, consistent with the Constitution and protecting the American people. [Emphasis added.]
Whose values are "our values?" Which "American people" are to be protected from what and whom?
Executive Decrees and the increasing dominance of Executive "values" over those on which our laws are based are among the consequences of elections, about which President Obama once bragged but now complains. When weak, He has to appear to His followers to be strong in asserting their values. Our RINOs frequently oblige by cowering before Him.
This article, however, is about foreign policy -- an area in which He evidently considers American weakness more effective than American strength in bringing and keeping peace. It is not.
According to the Gatestone article,
When the Iranians started building a nuclear weapons program, it was the United States that said -- three presidents have said -- "You are not permitted to do that." There was at least someone saying, "No, this is not a Hobbesian 'war of all against all': there are certain rules here that everyone will live by, and we, the United States, will enforce them."
This started a long time ago -- certainly after World War II, when the U.S. effected these rules against the Soviet Union. Obviously that is not the way the current U.S. Administration views the Middle East or its role there.
. . . . You hear this from the president over and over again. "Global citizen;" "new era of engagement." He used that line in about 10 different speeches starting with his first State of the Union "reset."
In the Administration's analysis of the world situation, there seems to be a great problem that needs to be solved; and the problem is the United States. It needs to break and overcome these old habits. Some of you might think instead that we have a great problem with Islamic extremism. That is not the president's view. The president made this really quite remarkable statement in his Cairo speech: "I consider it as part of my responsibility as president of the United States is to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear." [Emphasis added.]
Think about that. It's really quite astonishing. I would say that if a president made that comment about Judaism or Christianity most of us would say, "That's really quite bizarre. It is actually not his job." [Emphasis added.]
To pick out and isolate Islam as the one religion, criticisms of which he has the responsibility to correct, is actually amazing. [Emphasis added.]
You look at the Administration's policy: what is the goal here? What is he trying to achieve? It is certainly not a human rights policy; he seems remarkably indifferent to human rights everywhere.
Start with June 2009 in Iran: completely indifferent to the uprising that could conceivably have overthrown the Ayatollahs. Maybe it could not, but we shall never know. Or China: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's first trip there. When she was asked, "Why don't you say more about human rights?" she said, "We know what they'll say in response." So much for human rights in China, for human rights in Russia.
. . . .One of the things that have changed in this administration is that people who are fighting for democracy in places such as Turkey, Russia or China, do not feel that they have any moral or political support coming from Washington, in a way that they have over the years. [Emphasis added.]
They are just not interested. On the humanitarian side, also not interested. When the president visited Africa, there were a fairly good number of articles in the newspapers talking about how disappointed Africans were. After all, they had gotten a lot of attention from President Bush. Now they had an African American president. Surely the amount of attention would be doubled, tripled. Instead, of course, it had largely disappeared. [Emphasis added.]
The key job for humanitarian activities in Africa is the Africa desk at USAID, the Assistant Administrator for Africa. It has been vacant for over a year and a half. The president did not even bother to fill the job.
What is he interested in doing? Military strength? Clearly not.
The Gatestone article is long but well worth reading and considering.
The Israel - Palestinian "peace process."
Peace has to be out there somewhere. I'll find it using my magic Process!
On April 3rd, in an article titled Secretary Kerry and his Israel - Palestinian "peace process," I argued that the process has become more important than peace, which will not in any event be among its results. Secretary Kerry, evidently backed by President Obama, consistently maintains that any failure of the process will be mainly the fault of Israel -- not of the Palestinians and certainly not of the process.
During hearings on April 8th before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary Kerry
performed a post-mortem on the recent collapse of the Middle East peace talks. According to Kerry, the Palestinian refusal to keep negotiating past April and their decision to flout their treaty commitments by returning to efforts to gain recognition for their non-existent state from the United Nations was all the fault of one decision made by Israel. [Emphasis added.]
That "fatal" decision was to announce seven hundred new apartments for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem. “Poof, that was the moment,” Mr. Kerry said.
[T]o blame the collapse on the decision to build apartments in Gilo—a 40-year-old Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem that would not change hands even in the event a peace treaty were ever signed and where Israel has never promised to stop building—is, to put it mildly, a mendacious effort to shift blame away from the side that seized the first pretext to flee talks onto the one that has made concessions in order to get the Palestinians to sit at the table. But why would Kerry utter such a blatant falsehood about the process he has championed? [Emphasis added.]
The answer is simple. Kerry doesn’t want to blame the Palestinians for walking out because to do so would be a tacit admission that his critics were right when they suggested last year that he was embarking on a fool’s errand. The division between the Fatah-run West Bank and Hamas-ruled Gaza has created a dynamic which makes it almost impossible for Abbas to negotiate a deal that would recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders were drawn even if he wanted to.
Or perhaps it's necessary because Kerry sees the making of increasing demands as the proper function of the Palestinians and bowing to those demands, with her destruction to follow, as the proper functions of Israel. That is the view which the Palestinian Authority demands as its price for pursuing the process. At some point, however, Israel cannot continue to yield to increasing demands and the process fails. That appears to be where things now stand.
Or perhaps the underlying delusion is necessary due to President Obama's Cairo promise, one of the very few that He meant and has kept:
I consider it as part of my responsibility as president of the United States is to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.
"Negative stereotypes" or reality?
The P5+1 nuke farce
The Iran Scam continues and is likely to get worse. During the testimony of Secretary Kerry before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 8th, Chairman Menendez (D-N.J.)
panned a recent Wall Street Journal headline: “Obama Administration Shows Optimism on Iran Nuclear Talks.”
“I’m trying to glean where that’s from,” he said. “…With no sanctions regime in place, and understanding that every sanctions that we have pursued have needed at least a six-month lead time to become enforceable, and then a greater amount of time to actually enforce, that the only option left to the United States to this or any other president, and to the West, would be either to accept a nuclear-armed Iran or to have a military option.”
Kerry dismissed breakout as “just having one bomb’s worth, conceivably, of material, but without any necessary capacity to put it in anything, to deliver it, to have any mechanism to do so, and otherwise.”
He then admitted that “our goal” is not eliminating nuclear capability as much as “proving that this is a peaceful program.” [Emphasis added.]
He said WHAT?
Did he really say that? Was it a Freudian slip? What ever it was, it appears to reflect Obama Administration policy: start with assumptions that with "moderate" Iranian President Rouhani now in charge (he isn't; to the extent that anyone is, it's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei) and that his charm offensive was and is sincere (it wasn't and isn't). Those assumptions easily evolve into sufficient "proof" for the P5+1 process that Iran has and wants only a "peaceful program." Is the P5+1 farce, like the Israel - Palestinian "peace process," all about the process? It seems to have little to do with keeping Iran from having, getting or using nuclear weapons.
Conclusions
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7kSlkU4wKU]
Foreign policy under President Obama and Secretary Kerry is a mess. The policy is to negotiate regardless of the costs, and to require the only reasonably free and democratic nation in the region, Israel, to negotiate with Palestinians who "merely" desire to eliminate her. Israel does not even have a recognized part to play in the P5+1 farce. If something -- anything -- works, good; Obama - Kerry will claim the credit. If negotiations fail, if there is another Intifada and/or if Iran gets (or keeps) and uses nuclear weapons resulting in many thousands or millions of deaths? Oh well, Obama - Kerry tried real hard so it couldn't be their fault. Perhaps they will get Nobel Peace consolation prizes
The "peace process" and the P5+1 scam are only two of many available examples of the implosion of the United States of Obama as a principal force for international good --stability and democracy with freedom. As she continues to implode and to create a vacuum, something(s) will take her place. Stability may eventually come, but with neither democracy nor freedom. That seems to be the direction in which the United States of Obama are themselves headed.
Gay rights.
its the primaries where you get to be all up in arms, but the general elections, we MUST NOT ELECT RATS no matter what....
bump
No, Obama is not the Messiah. He just thinks He is, so the least I can do is to humor Him.
Atheists and Muslims also have rights. But that’s about it.
Well, the fags, too.
Giving Muslims their civil rights is like giving them the rope to hang us with.
Seen any Muslim country where non-Muslims have civil rights?
What do you expect the US to look like after they have taken over and established sharia? You think you will have any civil rights? Ha!
Read up on the history of the Middle East and Turkey where Christianity was once firmly established before its eradication by Islam.
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