Climbdown!

vanity | August 31, 2013 | Nathan Bedford

[nathanbedford]

We have just witnessed one of the most stunning and humiliating climb downs of any president in the history of the United States. Obama's humiliation is entirely of his own making.

He unilaterally threatened to wage war, however limited he said it would be, for no clear purpose, with no clear strategy and with no clear outcome. He did so thoughtlessly by proclaiming a "red line" and thus backing himself through inadvertence and, more important, his country into an untenable position. He pushed the country out onto a limb only to find he was alone, without allies, without Congress, even without his own party. He bumbled and dithered away is friends and allies and in the process squandered the prestige of the United States of America.

His humiliation is not, alas, his alone but it is the mile marker for a journey of fecklessness and incoherence in American foreign policy which has resulted in an Islamicist threat running from China to the North African shores. He has made our country look weak in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya, and in Egypt. Most important, he has made us look impotent with respect to Iran and it is Iran, not Egypt, which is the fulcrum of the Middle East. Who can now believe that the United States under President Barack Obama will actually "do what it takes" to stop Iran getting the bomb? No conservative has believed that for years but now the nations of the Middle East which line the Persian Gulf and the Arab Peninsula must be afraid, very afraid. Iran will, of course, be emboldened. The Russians and the Chinese are smirking. Our allies in Europe are beginning to wonder if they should cut their own deals with the threat of Islam because they cannot rely on the United States.

So before we conservatives rejoice over the personal humiliation of Barack Obama, let us consider as patriots the harm to our country. The irony is that no one will now hear us say, "we told you so;" it is human nature not to want to hear that kind of truth. We conservatives are always being shot as messengers.

Short-term it is obvious that the entire campaign to sting Syria for the use of weapons of mass destruction will now be allowed to simply wither away. By the time Congress returns many new headlines will have diverted the attention of the nation. The Congress will not sustain a strike. Obama will somehow change the subject.

Our leaders in the House and the Senate are paid not to let Obama off his own petard.

The question for conservatives is how to use this situation for domestic political advantage. We have an objective to prevent any kind of immigration bill being passed by the House and sent to conference committee where conservatives will be sabotaged and outvoted by Rinos and Democrats when the bill is returned. The result will be amnesty and it is therefore vital that no bill at all be passed by the House. This is Boehner's chance to wiggle out of his dilemma and use the breathtaking mismanagement of the president to consume Congress and prevent the house from taking up immigration. That, of course, assumes that Boehner is smart enough to take that way out instead of rupturing the party by passing amnesty, as seems to be his plan.

Boehner has also got to handle both the campaign to defund Obamacare and the overall extension of the debt. Boehner should recognize that the president has been weakened as well as humiliated, but one would have to recklessly rely on hope rather than experience in nurturing that kind of optimism.

If we had decent Republican leaders in the House or the Senate, we could see this as a real turning point. I am not holding my breath.

[smokingfrog]

..

[Real Cynic No More]

So all the billions he’s spent on NSA surveillance didn’t help to find the truth?

Maybe if it had been focused there instead of on U.S. citizens he may have learned something.

[nathanbedford]

I don't believe Obama is naïve, sophisticated or Machiavellian. I believe he is a radical leftist who operates out of his ideology. But that does not necessarily mean he is clever about it or "sophisticated."

Please take a look at my other posts on this thread concerning is foreign policy.

I think the same ideology motivates him concerning domestic policy. His victories on the budget and with Obamacare have come by virtue of his dominant majorities in the House and the Senate for the first two years, the shining incompetence (or Rino-ism) of the Republican leaders and their abject fear of the race card.

By way of example, if one looks at the sequester, which was Obama's idea which he now denies, it fits his ideology perfectly. It did not substantially cut the budget, indeed it did not cut it at all, but only very slightly the rate of growth but it did massively cut in real terms the defense establishment which is repugnant to his ideology.

I would not put this down to deviousness or sophistication but merely slavish devotion to ideology. All of this is masked from the public which sees him, as you observe, to be moderate. Because of his race the media has carried his water and made him look good but I don't credit Obama himself for political acumen.

[campaignPete R-CT]

yet a victory for the American people. If regular folks out in flyover country had not SPOKEN UP, they were ready to go through with this.

[Yosemitest]

BoneHead is too gutless to get us out of this mess, and the quicker we throw him overboard, the better.
The only was out of this is through a purging of the gutless.
The Tea Party has the right answers, and so does Mark Levin.
But to dream or fool ourselves to think that we can get rid of these Fabian Fascists that have taken over our country by"any means necessary" and who have NO RESPECT for rules or the law, without a blood letting is naive.
When our government and especially our Department of Justice has been filled with criminals and Muslim Extremists, how do you possibly expect to get justice without a civil war?

You stated earlier:

" The question for conservatives is how to use this situation for domestic political advantage.
We have an objective to prevent any kind of immigration bill being passed by the House and sent to conference committee
where conservatives will be sabotaged and outvoted by Rinos and Democrats when the bill is returned.
The result will be amnesty
and it is therefore vital that no bill at all be passed by the House.
This is Boehner's chance to wiggle out of his dilemma
and use the breathtaking mismanagement of the president to consume Congress
and prevent the house from taking up immigration.
That, of course, assumes
that Boehner is smart enough
to take that way out
instead of rupturing the party by passing amnesty,
as seems to be his plan. "

BoneHead isn't going to fight this.
He's too weak, and too worn out.
He's got to be replaced with a more powerful, and less compassionate leader.
We need a leader that will go after the throats of these Communists that call themselves Democrats.
We need one vindictive leader that will get the economy rolling, jail the Democrats with all their corruption, and nuke the first country that even thinks to terrorize us.

We need a real leader.

[nathanbedford]

I would agree that our foreign policy has been a muddle since January of 1989.

I agree but I am ashamed to admit that I have come to that conclusion late as one who was in support of the Iraq war and now realize that it was strategically impossible to bring democracy to a culture which is not ready for it. Ditto Afghanistan.

I agree with your views about Israel and have posted to that effect for years. I am unaware of the demographic difficulties-do you mean that they are simply admitting to many Palestinians?

I share your overall pessimism but I also believe in white as well as black swans.

[HomeAtLast]

Lest anyone doubt the gravity of the problem, there’s Putin, sneeringly referring to obama as “Nobel Peace Prize laureate;” a very rare display of fangs from one world leader to another.

[dfwgator]

I agree but I am ashamed to admit that I have come to that conclusion late as one who was in support of the Iraq war and now realize that it was strategically impossible to bring democracy to a culture which is not ready for it. Ditto Afghanistan.

I am right there with you....my eyes have been opened.

[Yosemitest]

I got to ask.

What does RKBA stand for?

[RKBA Democrat]

“I agree with your views about Israel and have posted to that effect for years. I am unaware of the demographic difficulties-do you mean that they are simply admitting to many Palestinians?”

No. Israel has a large population of indigenous Arabs. The Palestinians are the descendants of the Arabs who left during the wars in the 1940’s. Some Arabs chose to stay and stick it out within Israel and are Israeli citizens today. Although they are currently a minority of the population, their birthrates are much higher than those of the Jewish population.

[tumblindice]

Why would you wade through the DU latrine?

[okie01]

"If the Republican House votes not to approve an attack, our President can then, should he choose to do so, cancel his decision and announce he is bowing to the will of the people as represented by their elected representatives."

The DU member who wrote this is naïve.

Fact is, the Democrat Senate won't approve an attack, either. The 'Rats job now is to give the President a line to crawl back in off that limb.

As we speak, Harry and Nancy are crafting a "save face" resolution...

[bgill]

He’ll make us pay for his humiliation. Just wait.

[RKBA Democrat]

Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

I’m a gunny.

[nathanbedford]

We have the same demographic birthrates here in Germany but the flow of asylum seekers and other refugees seems to be increasing with every little village in my area taking in people from Romania to Afghanistan.

[RKBA Democrat]

PS I want to go into the issue of Iraq a little more, but am time limited right now, but will try to remember to come back to it later.

I agreed with the second gulf war, up until Saddam was hanged.

[GSP.FAN]

I find it very amusing,it’s like hanging out with 3 yr olds.

[sport]

I think: Right to Keep and Bear Arms. But I could be wrong.

[tumblindice]

I gave it up. Too depressing to think that I’m sharing air with those `tards.

[okie01]

I have a vanity going back some years arguing that it is a mistake to conceive of Obama as another Jimmy Carter. Obama is a radical ideologue who sees foreign policy myopically through that filter. History shows that leftists from Trotsky to Pol Pot have been bloodthirsty in the extreme when it comes to advancing or protecting their ideological agenda.

Moreover, it is a mistake to view Obama's foreign policy as simply "pro-Islamist" -- as has been demonstrated in every dealing with a Muslim country.

In fact, his preferences extend somewhat more broadly. He is remarkably "pro-authoritarian". Shimmer dissolve to the Honduras crisis in June of 2009 -- when Obama and the entire American foreign policy establishment demanded that Hondurans abandon their constitution and accept usurpation by Manuel Zelaya, who was nothing more than a puppet of Hugo Chavez.

Had Barack Obama been President of the USA in 1940 he would've told Winston Churchill to take a hike and cozied up to Adolf Hitler. And that is not a hyperbolic statement...