Barack Alone
Consider, moreover, who defeated Schröder, Chirac, and Co. Angela Merkel will now be able to form a stable “center-right” coalition government. Angela Merkel, who warned Schröder in front of the Bundestag that his “anti-war” offensive would make war “more likely, not less.” Angela Merkel, who on account on her statements of solidarity with the United States would be crudely caricatured in a famous carnival float showing her climbing into George Bush’s behind.
Nowadays, Nicolas Sarkozy insists that the Iraq war was a “mistake” and defies anyone to find statements of his supporting the war. But his leftist critics do not take such protestations seriously. In 2002-2003, Sarkozy was the French interior minister and in no position openly to criticize Chirac and de Villepin’s anti-Iraq war campaign. But French leftists recall his highly publicized visit to President Bush in Washington in September 2006 and they remember the words that he uttered while on that trip. Alluding to French “arrogance,” Sarkozy observed that “it is inappropriate to try to embarrass one’s allies or to give the impression that one takes pleasure in their troubles. I have always preferred modest efficiency to sterile grandiloquence” — a clear shot across the bows of Chirac and especially de Villepin. (The full speech is available here in French.)
Moreover, if Sarkozy himself never came out in support of the Iraq war, as president he has not hesitated to assign key foreign policy posts to some of the rare French politicians who did, including Bernard Kouchner, the current French foreign minister. Perhaps even more revealing is the recent appointment of Pierre Lellouche to the post of undersecretary for European affairs. In winter 2002-2003, Lellouche’s pleas for France to abandon its obstructionism vis-à-vis the Bush administration were so insistent that he would be described by the French daily Le Figaro as a “Bushiste” (February 25, 2003); and while doing an interview with Le Monde (February 28, 2003), a colleague in the French national assembly would jokingly address him as “George.”
When one considers, furthermore, that Silvio Berlusconi is back in power in Italy following his landslide electoral victory in April 2008, then one comes to a startling realization. Some six and a half years after the start of the Iraq war, continental Europe’s three largest and most powerful countries are all led by politicians who more or less openly supported the war and/or severely criticized the Franco-German efforts to prevent it.
By a bizarre historical irony, however, the politics of the “axis of peace” continue to lead a sort of shadow existence in Washington — in the person of Barack Obama. As is well known, Obama came to prominence almost exclusively on the strength of his opposition to the Iraq war and while employing a rhetoric that was virtually indistinguishable from that of Schröder, Chirac, and de Villepin. It is much the same rhetoric that he continues to employ today, while preaching the seemingly unlimited powers of “dialogue” in the conflict over the Iranian nuclear program.
Now, Obama has even won a Nobel Peace Prize. The astonishing honor can be regarded as a belated form of recognition for the “axis of peace.” For even if Obama himself has no particular accomplishments to show, the greatest accomplishment of the “axis of peace” was, in effect, the election of Obama. (On, in particular, Steinmeier’s support for Obama’s candidacy, see here.)
But notwithstanding the Nobel committee’s condescending pat on the back for their disciple, Obama’s European role models are all gone. He is on his own now and should his pursuit of “peaceful dialogue” give rise to a nuclear Iran and threats of greater and more terrible wars, this will be his responsibility.
Oh, look! The Surge worked! Victory in Iraq! All you guys who opposed it… You are sooo outta here! Victory in war has real prizes every time. We don’t pillage and plunder anymore (sigh), but the political prizes are yet ever so sweet.
It sure helps to back the winner!
So, now that the rest of the world can see that Obama is a hopeless loser are we supposed to feel sorry for him?
While the analysis of the fate that befell those who opposed the Iraq war is quite interesting, I think they’ve got what they deserved mostly because they’re all surrender-monkeys to mahoundianism than because of the opposition to the war itself. A war that, as events on the ground have shown, can’t be won, for A-rabs do not think like we Westerners do, and never will.
As Hugh Fitzgerald and Craig Winn have stated repeatedly, continued waste of money and materiel in both Iraq and Afghanistan can in no way bring any benefits to Western civilization at all. We would be much better off if there were in this world more political leaders like Geert Wilders and Benjamin Natanyahu, who truly understand mahoundianism and jihad (and have the guts to suggest that access to the West be denied to those inbred bedouin savages, while the use of force against their aggression should never be off the table), and who are also capable of seeing the threat posed to the West by that cult for what it truly is; unlike Bush, who, while publicly acknowledging how evil Saddam Hussein was, at the same time always referred to the Saudi Royals, the West’s most dangerous enemies, as “our allies”, when nothing could be further from the truth. And if we were tempted to think that Bush’s approach was about as bad as it could get, Buraq Hussein Obama has, on the other hand, extended Bush’s selective love of the West’s worst foes to absolutely every single one of them, from the UAE and Saudi Arabia to Porkistan and the Taliban.
The only good thing in all of this is that a deservedly weak and defeated Buraq Hussein will not be able to force Netanyahu to surrender Israel to Jordanian and Egyptian A-rab squatters illegally occupying Jewish land in the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria.
Of course, John, the Nobel Hatebush Prize was awarded by a committee of five Norwegians, four of whom are off on the Socialist International/Green kook Left. Not much resemblance or connection even to the old Eurobosses, except Zapatero and perhaps German ex-FM Fischer.
4. Bohemond:
“Of course, John, the Nobel Hatebush Prize was awarded by a committee of five Norwegians, four of whom are off on the Socialist International/Green kook Left.”
OK, let’s make a Nobel Prize committee with 5 red-blooded conservatives. Future recipients? Peacemakers Limbo, O’Reilly, Hannity, Beck and future GOP prez candidates. Happy now?
It is too early to come with a definitive description of the Iraq as a success or a failure – while the mixture of news coming from there is often exasperating, in the long term it might well happen that Bush’s decision will be praised.
As far as the European opposition at that date (I remember the troika Villepin, Ivanov and Schroeder marching on a UN hall, there to huff & puff & shake things), that came from various, and even mutually antagonistic causes, a rather opportunistic affair which was described in exagerated terms by the always available “usual idiots” of media, there and in America -
With no authentic necessity of opposing America in Iraq, after some fiery rhetoric and gesticulation, things have quietly returned to the prior configuration – everyone wants to do business in Washington, and the irony here is that in this configuration Obama is a man of the past, but of an “un-defining” past (gosh, Obama’s “defining” and “distraction” are contagious), world politics present & future being largely carried on the lines drawn by Bush and Cheney.
Heh! Transformational presidencies sure have a malicious life of their own – Obama’s compulsion for public grandstanding amputated by the next election (if not by his ilegitimacy problem that simply doesn’t go away), we’ll probably see him near Schroeder in the Gazprom board of directors or something similar.
RE #5/vivo: [..] 5. vivo: [...] OK, let’s make a Nobel Prize committee with 5 red-blooded conservatives. [...]
Wrong, mon pauvre Vivo – no conservative would go for such an unseemly and base job like a Nobel Prize committee member.
And as far as future Nobel recipients, relax, Limbo, O’Reilly, Hannity, Beck are nowhere on the Nobel list – the next years’ prizes will go to Mumia Jabal, then to Polansky, Bill Ayres, Rangel and other figures from liberals’ pantheon -
You ARE the happy man, vivo -
RE #7/5 vivo:
More great news for you, vivo, I just learnt that NAMBLA and Kevin Jennings have made the cut for future years’ Nobel Prize -
George Bush disturbed the falsely comfortable standards and practices in which you were supposed to accomodate the Arabs by the word instead of opposing their islamic proclivities by the sword.
Obama is an after-effect of the thusly toppled applecart, still brandishing the word and burying the sword, in a futile attempt to share attitudes which the Europeans have already abandoned in the meantime.
The nominal leader amuses himself by following the nominal followers, and they give him the lollipop! We are getting drunk with the dividends of poetic justice while the mullahs are sending money and hardware to their surrogates, and preparing to launch missiles of the ballistic variety.
Indulging in reaction in a situation asking for action is a delinquency of the presidential duties.
The Nobel Peace Prize
What a joke. This is not Teddy Roosevelt brokering a peace between Russia and Japan, this is Obama delivering speaches via teleprompter on the television.
If anyone didn’t realize what a joke Al Gore’s Peace prize was for making a propaganda video a few years ago they should surely realize what a farce the Nobel awards have become to date.
For crying out loud, why didn’t tax cheat Geithner get the award for economics?
The Nobel prize is nothing but professional wrestling with a suit on. What a joke!
wow! this is one of the most insightful and, in my opinion, accurate portrait of the international “axis of peace” (fools) political scene leading up to Obama.
Obama is a little too late at the table to matter to those who will step up to Iran on the international front. with Iran (sarcastically no doubt) calling him “brave” after dissing our eastern european allies in the name of “dialog” and with Chavez questioning his Nobel prize, he truly IS alone and due to his naivete…dangerous.
Obama’s Legacy: Worst President, replacing Carter, in US history.
#5 vivo – Here’s where you demonstrate that you really don’t understand Conservatives. For the Left, it’s all politics all the time. They are the revolutionaries. Conservatives represent the traditional. If Conservatives ran the committee, you would see reasonable selections being made, not political ones. In fact, you probably wouldn’t see the choices, as they wouldn’t make much splash for the media.
My choice would go to Columbia’s leader, when he snookered the cartels into giving up the hostages. He simply made a statement for freedom for the hostages and for their own country. No more corruption. No more extortion. It was a signal of Columbia’s blooming freedom. Good for him.
Why would any reasonably thinking person ever again elect a Democrat to a national office based upon their almost total lack of common sense and the almost complete lack responsible thinking? It appears as the people sitting in the chambers of government and walking the halls are almost totally devoid of insight.
They are bereft of rational thinking about their place in the national social upheaval and revolution taking place before their eyes. This revolution is national, not
dictated by zip code.
Many if not most of “US” have come to see the government not as servant of the public but as a “SERPENT” which has snaked its way into our lives to constrict our freedoms and remove opportunities for “US” to succeed. And yes it is ultimately “WE” or “US” who are responsible for this.
Blaming the media is not an answer. “WE” at our local precinct level must be involved. It is we the citizens who must VET the individual who seeks our vote. We can’t rely on the press, or either an any party(s) ringing endorsement of a given candidate
As I said in a previous post “The Democrat Party sits astride a great fault line in American politics. It is not listening to the country, it is however listening to its special interests. This will likely be their undoing on 11, 3, 2010. The GOP and libertarians are working their trap lines. However the GOP had better do its homework, zip code by zip code if it wants to insure victory in 2010.
We must not rely on the “O” mans action or lack there of, to help to insure victory. The message trumps the “O” mans personality and his message has been and continues to be rejected. “O” is in the process of crippling himself. But “O” posses the capability to turn swiftly and attack from an oblique angle.
The GOP and libertarians this time must carefully craft the message. Otherwise 2012 could bring for more years in the socialist wilderness and once again ring in Chicago style. I like Chicago Style, but for me its limited to hot dogs.
Check “6″