Bitter Harvests to Come [Victor Davis Hanson on 0bama UN speech + Bolton and Krauthammer]

NRO Corner ^ | 9/24/2009 | Hanson, Krauthammer; Bolton

[Tolik]

Bitter Harvests to Come   [Victor Davis Hanson]

If one were to sum up the Obama speech, it is the same old, same old formula: "I am a uniquely post-American fresh start; the era of Bush and our dreadful past is over; and because this is our moment, you, the world, owe me attention and support for my redefining America more to your tastes."

The problem with all this is endless:

(1) most existing problems predated Bush and transcended him, as Obama is discovering with Iran, radical Islam in America, North Korea, Russia, etc.; 

(2) By separating himself from the past, Obama sends the implicit message to allies (like Israel, India, Columbia, the Maliki government, eastern Europe, Sarkozy, Merkel, etc) that there must have been something wrong with them to have allied themselves with the U.S. during the Bush years — and to enemies and belligerents that their anti-Americanism is perhaps understandable given a shared antipathy for the Bush regime;

(3) By staking out the messianic, prophetic ground, and his strident anti-Bush credentials, observers are going to note his serial hypocrisies, such as keeping the Patriot Act, rendition, tribunals, Predator attacks, the Petraeus plan in Iraq, wiretaps, intercepts, etc., and in fact anything that smacks of a transnationalist protecting U.S. interests first, and global ones, second.  

(4) By throat-clearing every speech with "Bush did it" and his own historic ascension to the presidency, Obama has given hope to unsavory characters — as the likes of everyone from a supportive Chávez to Castro have enthusiastically noted — that the United States has now "flipped," moving away from a Britain or Israel and more closely aligning itself with revolutionary figures on the West Bank or the exiled Zelaya, and thereby giving the impression that the prior regional order was flawed, and necessary change either will not, or cannot, be stopped by the U.S. — and indeed may be silently encouraged by America. In hopes of sowing short-term good will to Obama himself, the president is sowing long-term problems ahead for his country, the United States. There are lots of areas — Iran and its environs, the free former Soviet Republics, Taiwan, the 38th Parallel, Venezuela/Colombia, the borders of Israel, Cyprus, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, etc. — where tensions are scarcely restrained, and major aggressive players could easily try to change the existing order, if any thought the United States either did not care to intervene, could not intervene, or supported their efforts.

The key question is at what point will the American people sense that the Obama feel-good magic comes at the expense of long-term American interests — and that making some unsavory characters like our president now, will mean only trouble ahead for the country itself and its friends abroad.

09/24 01:37 PM

---

Bolton: ‘A Post-American Speech By Our First Post-American President’   [Robert Costa]

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton tells NRO that President Obama’s address to the U.N. was “a post-American speech by our first post-American president. It was a speech high on the personality of Barack Obama and high on multilateralism, but very short in advocating American interests.”

“It was a very naïve, Wilsonian speech, and very revealing of Obama’s foreign policy,” says Bolton. “Overall, it was so apologetic for the actions of prior administrations, in an effort to distance Obama from them, that it became yet another symbol of American weakness in the wake of the president’s decision to abandon missile sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, and his recent manifest hesitation over what to do in Afghanistan.”

“The most significant point of the speech was how the president put Israel on the chopping block in a variety of references, from calling Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegitimate to talking about ending ‘the occupation that began in 1967.’ That implies that he supports going back to 1967 borders,” says Bolton. “Obama has a very tough road ahead. He is frequently taking the side of the Palestinians, who don’t have a competent leader who can make hard decisions and compromises in the future.”

Also noteworthy, Bolton says, was how Obama highlighted “just how much of American foreign policy that he wants to run through the U.N.”

“Usually presidential speeches at the U.N. are ‘state of the world’ addresses. Obama’s speech was filled with talk about U.N. bodies, U.N. treaties, and sending Secretary of State Clinton to a conference on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which would be an incredible waste of time for her. The president’s speech showed a fascination with U.N.-centric issues. Obama talked about getting past ‘balance of power’ politics. He talked about the interests that unite us rather than divide us.”

Bolton’s conclusion: “It was all extremely naïve. The president did everything he could to say: ‘Can’t we all just get along?’”

09/23 02:09 PM

---

Krauthammer's Take   [NRO Staff]

From last night's Fox News All-Stars:

 On President Obama’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly yesterday:

This speech hovered somewhere between embarrassing and dangerous. You had a president of the United States actually saying: “No [one] nation can or should try to dominate another.”

I will buy the "should try to" as kind of adolescent wishful thinking. But “no [one] nation can dominate another”? What planet is he living on? It is the story of man. What does he think Russia is doing to Georgia?

But the alarming part is what he said in the same paragraph where he said that it makes no sense anymore "the alignments of nations that are rooted in the cleavages of the Cold War."

Well, NATO is rooted in the cleavage of the Cold War. The European Union is rooted in the cleavage of the Cold War. Our alliances with Japan and Korea and the Philippines, our guarantees to Taiwan and Eastern Europe are all rooted in the cleavage of the Cold War. (Interesting noun, incidentally.)

So he is saying that is all now irrelevant. What does he think our allies are going to think who hear this?

Obama's speech is alarming because it says the United States has no more moral right to act or to influence world history than Bangladesh or Sierra Leone.

It diminishes the United States deliberately and wants to say that we should be one nation among others, and not defend the alliance of democracies that we have in NATO, for example, or to say — as [did] every president who goes before Obama — that we stand for something good and unique in the world.

And it [NATO] is not the equivalent, for example, of the alignment of Chavez with Ecuador and Bolivia and Nicaragua and Russia and Cuba and Iran….. 

This one was worse: When he [Obama] boasted about how he had reversed the course of America, and those who doubt our character should look at our actions, among the actions he cited was our joining the U.N. Human Rights Council, which is led by the worst human rights violators on the planet. It is an Orwellian, farcical organization. The idea that we should be on it is regrettable, but the idea that we should be boasting about it as an American achievement is a scandal.

On the war in Afghanistan:

I think the Obama administration announcing that it's trying to change its strategy because it has just discovered corruption in Afghanistan is almost comical. Everyone has known. It has been around all along. It is not a new fact.

What is happening here we have, on the one hand, advice from our commander on the ground who wants more troops and who sees a strategy which is the only strategy that he thinks will work.

On the other hand, the advice of the vice president, the sage of Wilmington, the man who proposed splitting Iraq into three, who wants a minimalist strategy of attacks by drones and a kind of hands-off warfare.

It's exactly the minimalist strategy that got us into the dire circumstance we now have in Afghanistan. It's the minimalist strategy that the Democrats attacked and demagogued for year after year and said it was inadequate. And it's a minimalist strategy that McChrystal, who is the world's expert on the kinds of hands-off drone attack, which he did in Iraq, has said has zero chance of succeeding in Afghanistan.

Who are you going to believe: our commander on the ground or Biden?

09/24 11:59 AM

[ClearCase_guy]

The community organizer from Chicago finds the world to be larger, more complex, and more challenging than he anticipated.

Who could have predicted that? [/s]

[Buckeye McFrog]

uhh....that’s why they call it Bush DERANGEMENT Syndrome!!!

[OpusatFR]

He’s not even zero anymore.

We have President Obozo.

Houston, we have a problem.

[Uncle Miltie]

See tagline.

0bummer is right on track.

[Ulysse]

Dangerous lunatic!
“I’ll make everything new” Jesus-Christ

Robespierre or Mao-tse-toung tried also with a lot of death...And they pathetically failed.

Its time to name the lunatic a lunatic

[BornToBeAmerican]

We need to zero and fast, before we lose everything

[RexBeach]

Wonderful post. Thank you.

Mr. Obama is either the dumbest president we’ve ever had; or he is the biggest megalomaniac I have ever witnessed. He has a fundamental misunderstanding of people, politics and history.

I can barely wait for the GOP to retake the House in 2010.

It would be superb to have the adults in charge of something again - instead of these whining children who think all time and history ended in 1968.

[Scythian]

Too bad the GOP aren’t the Adults ... I think folks need to examine the GOP and realize the team they’ve been for has been and will continue to lead them down the road. What did Bush do in his 8 years, honestly? Save us from an attack? That’s it?

[RexBeach]

I meant new GOP House members. :)

[SMARTY]

“It diminishes the United States deliberately and wants to say that we should be one nation among others, and not defend the alliance of democracies...”

If “O” was seen licking the toilet seats in the UN men’s room, he could not have more thoroughly diminished his own standing or dishonored and BETRAYED Americans…and his speech was in fact a perfect and entire betrayal of the United States of America.

[Tolik]

Combined ping to the Hanson's and Nailed It! ping lists

Nailed It!
Moral Clarity BUMP !

This ping list is not author-specific for articles I'd like to share. Some for the perfect moral clarity, some for provocative thoughts; or simply interesting articles I'd hate to miss myself. (I don't have to agree with the author all 100% to feel the need to share an article.)

I will try not to abuse the ping list and not to annoy you too much, but on some days there is more of the good stuff that is worthy of attention.

You are welcome to browse the list of truly exceptional articles I pinged to lately. Updated on September 15, 2009.  on  my page.
You are welcome in or out, just freepmail me (and note which PING list you are talking about).

Besides this one, I keep 2 separate PING lists for my favorite authors Victor Davis Hanson and Orson Scott Card.  

 

[SonOfDarkSkies]

One might expect that Obama would be ever so slightly matured by the weight of the office but his speeches show no sign of it.

The UN speech (from the accounts of Krauthammer, Bolton, and VDH) reveal his still overwhelming obsession with himself more than the office he holds.

It is one thing to be narcissistic--or even to suffer from malignant narcissism--but Obama seems to suffer from something that gives a whole new meaning to self worship.

I am beginning to wonder if he doesn't believe that he really is THE messiah and savior of the world. It is one thing to try to sell that bullsh!t to others...but to serious believe one is divine is a whole new order of delusion. Folks that deluded usually occupy a room in a sanitarium.

[La Lydia]

AWESOME post, Tolik.

[Tolik]

Speaking about adults:

Netanyahu Slams U.N. for Giving Ahmadinejad Forum: ‘Have You No Shame?’

[Texas resident]

Saw this crap coming. Remember his speech in Berlin?
Claimed to be a citizen of the world. Great.

[Tolik]

Thank you!

UN is un-democratic institution

To cozy-up to Chavez and such IS embarrassing and will achieve nothing good.

[N. Theknow]

0bama = The UN-citizen

[Tenacious 1]

He has a fundamental misunderstanding of people, politics and history.

He is not the only one, but you are absolutely correct. And it is simply explainable. At some point in his "young life" he decided to become a politician. This was, like many, a career goal for him. Since then, he has been pigeon holed in a bubble of liberal eletist acadamia. Since he was about 18, his existence has only known a small sliver of a minority of this population. Every bit of education and actual work experience he has was for the eventual cause of his career.

He has no real grasp on what life in America is like or all about for most Americans. It is common for the career politicians and upity coasal dwellers to regard the "flyover" states with either disdain or complete apathy. The middle of the country certainly does harbor a much different culture than the coasts.

[griswold3]

Remember his speech in Berlin?

That’s when my 88y.o. German mother called him ‘Dangerous’.
We are in for tough times, my FRiend.