Category Archives: Military
Flexible Cold War Chess Board
President Obama whispered in Dmitri Medvedev’s ear that, after the 2012 election, he could be flexible.
In the final 2012 presidential debate Mitt Romney called Russia our greatest geopolitical threat. Obama mocked him by saying “the 1980’s is calling for its foreign policy back because, you know, the cold war’s been over for 20 years”. Looks like the 1800’s are on line 2. John Kerry’s response to Putin’s invasion of Crimea was that it was a “19th century act in the 21st century”. Light Brigade, report for duty.
The president still insists this isn’t about some “cold war chessboard“. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers thinks it is, “Putin’s playing chess and we’re playing marbles”.
The Washington Post editorial page thinks President Obama has lost his marbles. It says his “foreign policy is based on fantasy”:
FOR FIVE YEARS, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality. It was a world in which “the tide of war is receding” and the United States could, without much risk, radically reduce the size of its armed forces.
Speaking of how he thinks the world should operate, Obama commended the Ukrainian government for its “restraint” during the current unpleasantness. To which Bret Stephens responded in the WSJ:
The Ukrainian government isn’t showing restraint; it is merely tragically impotent in the face of blunt aggression.. It used to be that defiance, not restraint, was considered the appropriate response to a foreign invasion”.
Stephens thinks Obama invited Putin’s behavior by not seeing a connection to his capitulation to Putin on Syria. Then there’s also the failed Reset and abandoned missile defense for Poland and the Czech Republic.
Flexible Critics
This is all a little much for Dana Milbank, also in the Post. He wants to know how Obama can be such a power grabbing, constitution shredding tyrant at home and a flexible weakling on the international stage.
I think he has a point. I should have drawn the Flexible One wearing his crown.
JV Terrorism
Ever since he killed Osama bin Laden President Obama has insisted Al Qaeda is beaten and on the run. Except that al Qaeda affiliated terrorists are now instituting islamist rule in Fallujah and Ramadi, two cities liberated by the American military in 2004. In Syria al Qaeda beheads Muslims and infidels alike. And then there was the matter involving Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi.
JV Terrorism
In his New Yorker interview Obama dismissed all this as JV team terrorism.
The hunt goes on to protect the Winter Olympics from Black Widow terrorism.
Update:
Here’s a link to Stanford Professor Victor Davis Hanson’s essay “Obama’s Recessional” in which he identifies the Obama Doctrine as American withdrawal from the world:
Summed up, the Obama Doctrine is a gradual retreat of the American presence worldwide — on the theory that our absence will lead to a vacuum better occupied by regional powers that know how to manage their neighborhood’s affairs and have greater legitimacy in their own spheres of influence…
For Obama, America abroad is analogous to the 1 percent at home. We need not squabble over the reasons why the wealthiest Americans enjoy unequal access to the things money can buy, or why America, of all nations, finds itself with unmatched global clout and influence. The concern is only that such privilege exists; that it is unfair; that it has led to injustice for the majority; and that it must be changed…
Just as the United States would be a lot better place if a few million were not so rich, so too the world would be better off if the United States — and to a lesser extent Europe — were not so powerful and interventionist.
Benghazi: Bad Movie Review or Act of Terror?
David Kirkpatrick wrote a long piece in the NYT December 28 that said the attack on Benghazi was the act of a bunch of locals very pissed off about a movie. The Washington Post later reported that a former GITMO detainee who had trained under Osama bin Laden and fought with the Taliban played a role in the attack.
As they say, “what difference does it make?” Well, President Obama did say that al Qaeda was on the run and headed for defeat. After the attack Susan Rice went on five Sunday news shows to say it was caused by the internet video. And Hillary promised the father of murdered Navy Seal, Tyrone Woods, that they would prosecute the movie maker.
Was Benghazi a Bad Movie Review or Act of Terror?
The fact is the mystery of Benghazi can easily be solved by the man himself. In the second 2012 presidential debate Obama insisted that it is was an act of terror.
Here’s Andrew Wilson’s review in The American Spectator.
Iran Sucker’s Deal
The U.S. negotiated a deal with Iran that would have eased sanctions without requiring them to stop moving toward an atomic bomb. Netanyahu freaked out and hit Kerry on the nose with a rolled up newspaper calling it a “very very bad deal“. The French went a step further calling it a sucker’s deal and killed it.
Bystander President
The NYT has called President Obama the bystander president because he’s deluged by events that seem to have nothing to do with him – unless they’re good. Like the U.S. oil boom which he fought against tooth and nail and now takes credit for.
Here’s a Dana Milbank Washington Post column pondering the problem.
Bystander Protector
Obama is fond of Czars. Could Valerie Jarrett be his protective Rasputin? John Fund thinks so. He quotes her appraisal of the president:
“I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. . . . He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. . . . So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. . . . He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”
Says Fund, “As a court flatterer of that caliber it’s no surprise that Jarrett has outlasted almost everyone who was in Obama’s original White House team”
