Posted on 06/25/2009 6:12:16 AM PDT by Tolik
Pres. Barack Obama came into office apparently believing that his non-traditional background, charisma, and good intentions could placate dictators hostile to America and ease global tensions.
In these first six months, the new administration has made clear to Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and other strongmen like them that Barack Obama is not a mean-talking George Bush. A kinder, gentler United States has promised to push the “reset” button. In the interest of peace, an American president will finally be listening rather than lecturing, and willing to talk to authoritarian bullies without preconditions.
But so far the world’s thugs do not seem to appreciate that new goodwill. Intelligence reports indicate that North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il is planning to launch a ballistic test missile in the direction of Hawaii between July 4 and July 8. Russia’s Vladimir Putin would like his country’s money to replace the dollar as the global currency.
Most recently, Obama kept relatively silent for a week after the fraudulent Iranian election and the ensuing government crackdown against protestors. He was apparently worried about offending Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs above him who truly run the country — and thereby making it more difficult to negotiate once the resistance was put down.
Obama’s confusion about the world’s bad actors suggests that he needs a general refresher course in the world of thugs.
Lesson One: Thugs only want America, the world’s most powerful democracy — not others — to apologize. Iran’s Ahmadinejad does not care whether his friends the Russians slaughtered Muslims recently in Afghanistan and Chechnya, or have meddled in Iranian affairs for over two centuries. Iranian mullahs only want Russian nuclear expertise, not Russian apologies.
When President Obama says he is sorry to Iran about American involvement in a coup 66 years ago, it may make us feel better. But thugs like Ahmadinejad more likely interpret our apologies as signs of our own confusion — and so a green light for more troublemaking.
Lesson Two: Being anti-American and mouthing tired charges about imperialism, colonialism, or capitalism do not make a thug authentic or populist. By definition, thugs acquire power illegitimately. They keep it unlawfully. And they exercise it illegally — regardless of their professed concern for the “people” or their gripes against America.
Thugs are thugs, and they come in all ideologies, colors and religions — from Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe to North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il to the late Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia.
Theocratic Ahmadinejad may scream constantly about Western oppression, but that does not mean any of his grievances are legitimate, or that his own people see him as a romantic popular leader. Communist Fidel Castro may scream anti-American slurs, but he still spent a half-century jailing or executing anyone he pleased.
Lesson Three. The more we speak out about the harsh rule of thugs, the more oppressed people will come to respect us. Our past resistance to Ahmadinejad may help explain why the Iranian people seem to admire us more than do many in the Arab street, whose dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and Egypt we so fawningly have praised.
Lesson Four. Thugs can never be trusted — whether an Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin of the past or the rogue’s gallery of today. Ahmadinejad is lying about his peaceful plans for nuclear technology. Kim Jong-Il continued his nuclear program when he promised that he would not. Syria’s Bashar Assad hid his nuclear reactor under construction.
Lesson Five. Most of the world’s problems are caused by a handful of thugs. Any time one can be isolated and replaced by a consensual government, the world gets just a bit safer.
If Iran were to embrace a free and fairly elected government, it would likely not be threatening to wipe out Israel or funding terrorists in Lebanon and Palestine. Once Saddam disappeared, so did $25,000 payments to the families of suicide bombers on the West Bank and Iraq’s plan to conquer the Persian Gulf. With the Taliban out of power, Afghanistan is less likely to be used by terrorists to take down an American skyscraper.
So, Mr. President, do not talk to a thug unless you absolutely have to. Do not apologize to — or put our trust in — one. And whenever people rise up against a thug, speak out immediately and forcefully on their behalf — and let the thug, not America, worry about the consequences of the spread of freedom.
Just a partial list. More at the link: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index
he never learned that you have to bully a bully
Let me know if you want in or out.
Links: FR Index of his articles: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson
His website: http://victorhanson.com/
NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp
Pajamasmedia: http://victordavishanson.pajamasmedia.com/
Barry is a thug himself. He’s perfectly comfortable talking to other thugs.
An Inadequate Response to an Illegitimate Regime [Victor Davis Hanson]
Obama's Iran policy has been an ethical and practical embarrassment from the beginning.
Moral equivalence? The president put Mousavi — and, by extension, the crowds in the street — and Ahmadinejad on the same moral plain.
Naïveté? For the first few days the administration and its flaks in the media issued pompous "in the know" suggestions to the effect that Ahmadinejad may have "really" won the election.
Straw men? We were supposed to think that those who from the beginning saw the issues at stake and supported the reformers with strong words of encouragement were some sort of interventionist neocons who wanted to do another Iraq-like invasion, or would egg on reluctant demonstrators only to betray them in Hungary-like fashion.
Naked realpolitik? We openly stated that we were unsure who would win, with the obvious inference that we are hedging our bets at the expense of values and principles. Our moral outrage, in the words of the president himself, hinges on the outcome of the struggle at hand.
Hesitancy? Over some ten days, we've seen split-the-difference, 50/50, "debate going on" fluff, as if risking one's life to promote freedom is just a narrative that competes with another from thugs who wish to crush them.
Diplomatic confusion? No one apparently appreciates the stakes at hand, that there was an outside chance that many of the key issues of our time — from lunatic nuclear proliferation to terrorist subsidies to undermine neighboring democracies — are in play, and worth the risk of strong moral condemnation of the Iranian theocracy. It is almost as if this administration assumes a nuclear Iran is a done deal, and is now more worried about scrambling to come up with plans B and C.
Dissimulation? We are to believe that outreach to the Iranian mullahs and Islam in general, in the al-Arabiya interview, the Cairo speech, and the video sent to Ahmadinejad explain the popular uprising against a theocratic radical Islamist dictatorship — rather than the intrinsic desire for freedom among millions deprived of freedom by a 7th-century ruling Islamist clique, not to mention the presence of a still vibrant Shiite-majority democracy next-door in Iraq? What logic— speaking out in praise of Islam appealed to those opposing radical Islam to such an extent that then going silent in their hour of need helped them even more.
From my another favorite thinker:
Krauthammer’s Take [NRO Staff]
From last night’s “All-Stars.”
On Obama’s latest statements on Iran:
It had two parts. The use of the emotive words "appalled," "outraged" was new and right. But the policy of engagement remains unchanged.
Major asked him about hotdog diplomacy, meaning the administration weeks ago had said U.S. embassies around the world will be open on the Fourth of July welcoming for the first time in decades Iranian diplomats as a way to symbolizing opening and negotiation.
To do that at a time when the regime is shooting people from rooftops is bizarre. I mean, remember, even the senior Bush, the president who was the most hyperrealist and unsentimental, sent his national security advisor Brent Scowcroft to China after Tiananmen, after the massacre, but at least they waited six months.
This would be the welcoming of Iranians into American embassies to celebrate U.S. independence ten days after the shooting on the streets. That, I think, is disturbing in and of itself.
But secondly, the president speaks about all of these events in an odd way. He says there is a debate happening in Iran about its future. You know, when one senator yields to another in the Congress, that's a debate. Even, if you like, when you're having dueling demonstrations in Tehran, you could call that a debate.
But when you have demonstrators out in the street being shot from rooftops, that is not a debate. That's a massacre or a revolution. And the president refuses to understand or to acknowledge that what's at stake here is the legitimacy of the regime and not just elections.
Barry is going to walk down his path and there is little people will or can do about it. I think he wants to be remembered and as a “uniter” sound familiar. By then the landscape will have changed so drastically that people won’t be thinking of Barry and his books and his perks and the hundred and one things that the fawning media likes to gush over... people will be thinking about there next meal, next food-line wait, next relief check. Yes, they will also be thinking, “I voted for this,” between reruns of American Idol and the Lifestyles of Rich and Famous. That and saying, “Can you spare some change.”
Obamarx’s extreme naiveté is going to get thousands of people killed...
Victor Davis Hanson is right on every point in the article - but he's missing the fact that Obama comes from a tradition of thuggery - from ACORN to Alinsky.
How can Obama come out against strong men stealing an election when his own "team" winks and nods at ACORN?
The best Obama could muster at the beginning was "ImANutJob" thugs shouldn't be killing their own citizens.
Obama feels the Mullahs should do "thuggy soft" - set up an Iranian version of Janet Napolitano - stick her on the citizens to make them all look like criminals. Maybe hire some low level thugs to write fake letters to the editor to make it look like everyone objects to the protesters. Or better - contact some shills in the Iranian state run media ( their version of our MSM) and hold up the opposition to mockery.
So the Dem's problem with people objecting to crooked elections - is that Dems are on the side of the Mullahs...they vote the dead - laugh about cheating as if it's "just a game" and "everyone does it". But in fact, it's the corrupt who "do it". Iranian corruption or Chicago corruption. Stealing a "supreme leader" spot - or a presidency for Kennedy. Same thuggery.
No wonder Obama doesn't "get it".
Victor Davis Hanson is right on every point in the article - but he's missing the fact that Obama comes from a tradition of thuggery - from ACORN to Alinsky.
How can Obama come out against strong men stealing an election when his own "team" winks and nods at ACORN?
The best Obama could muster at the beginning was "ImANutJob" thugs shouldn't be killing their own citizens.
Obama feels the Mullahs should do "thuggy soft" - set up an Iranian version of Janet Napolitano - stick her on the citizens to make them all look like criminals. Maybe hire some low level thugs to write fake letters to the editor to make it look like everyone objects to the protesters. Or better - contact some shills in the Iranian state run media ( their version of our MSM) and hold up the opposition to mockery.
So the Dem's problem with people objecting to crooked elections - is that Dems are on the side of the Mullahs...they vote the dead - laugh about cheating as if it's "just a game" and "everyone does it". But in fact, it's the corrupt who "do it". Iranian corruption or Chicago corruption. Stealing a "supreme leader" spot - or a presidency for Kennedy. Same thuggery.
No wonder Obama doesn't "get it".
Truth and facts may be grossly out numbered by the fawning mainstream media and its blind devotion to 0bama, but many clear thinking people are starting to see how poorly 0bama handles criticism.
He’s an amateur, and easily flustered—politicians and pundits on the right need to take that ball and run with it—daily.
Victor, my future husband, should run for president.
bttt
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.