That Damn Guantanamo!
Obama gave a rather incredible press conference about his review of security lapses. When he evoked Guantanamo, the president all at once (“make no mistake about it”) (a) promised to close it, (b) promised not to send any more detainees home to Yemen, and (c) claimed it was a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda (i.e., apparently Bush’s Gulag had prompted the likes of Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab to try to blow up an airliner).
This is nearly unhinged.
Mr. President consider:
1) Quit whining about closing Guantanamo, and close the damn thing. It either is useful or not. The American people are getting sick and tired of this sort of “Bush made me keep it open even though it is counter-productive” whining. If Guantanamo is a recruiting tool, then by all means stop the recruiting tool. Instead, we get the impression that these incredibly directionless people have discovered that Guantanamo has both utility and yet is a political liability among their more fervent supporters, and therefore they wish to continue its usefulness while blaming Bush for its unpopularity.
2) If you are not going to send back any more “alleged” terrorists to Yemen, then simply start trying them in your much preferred civilian courts. Why hold them any longer in the Gulag?
3) Let us get this straight: for a decade in the 1990s an ascendant al-Qaeda committed serial attacks against the U.S. and its interests. All that culminated in 9/11. In reaction to the mass murder, and as part of efforts to go after al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, Bush opened Guantanamo Bay — after which we have seen no successful major attacks on U.S. soil comparable to 9/11.
So consider the logic: before Guantanamo, al-Qaeda achieved its greatest success in damaging America; after it, it suffered some of its most grievous defeats, but somehow its existence is counter-productive and a recruiting tool? What, Pray God, was the recruiting tool on September 10, 2001?
All things being equal, the idea that a terrorist will spend a lot of time in a cell in Cuba if caught seems much less of a recruiting tool than hearing that your enemy has banned the use of “war against terror,” made up grand achievements of your civilization, apologized for his country’s sins, publicly bowed to prominent autocratic Muslims, promised a public trial in New York for your heroic mastermind of 9/11, and in general blamed the war on his predecessor. All that seems quite an encouragement to join al-Qaeda in comparison to the punishment of incarceration if caught.
4) Does Obama have any notion of what enemies say and do in war? That al-Qaeda claims this week that Guantanamo is a recruiting tool hardly makes it one. For years we heard that American troops in Saudi Arabia caused Bin Laden’s anger — and now that they are gone? If one were to collate all of Dr. Zawahiri’s constantly changing complaints — Jews supposedly in Mecca, lack of American campaign finance reform, Israel, etc. — the list would become endless. Thucydides invented a word prophasis precisely for the idea of belligerents inventing perceived grievances for their various aggressions. Would Obama really believe Hitler’s whine about Versailles as he went into the Rhineland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, the low countries, Yugoslavia, Greece, Russia, etc.? At what point would Obama, our modern-day Clement Attlee and Stanley Baldwin, have ceased trying to make Versailles “right,” and instead pondered that Hitler was an aggressive thug who cloaked his endless invasions in all sorts of whines that were designed to appeal to guilt-ridden Westerners?
Liberals wanted control and got it. I think that it will be a very long time before that happens again.
We are not dead – just dead in the water. Our best days are still ahead.
Thanks again VDH. This is the best thread going.
What have you done Obama?
Maybe if Bush had helped to give coherence to the war on terror it would have been easier to ignore obama or give him something to say. For instance, Obama likes to say that we should give civilian trials to terrorists like they are American citizens. That might be impossible since the constitution gave order to a basis of English common law and obviously did not include other nations. How can we say that the founders would give rights to foreigners when that would probably have been impossible? With that in mind, think about today when we say that foreigners come under our jursidiction but “somehow” we have no laws to cover such issues. Their just going to make up new legal issues now to cover everyone. I thought law was based on precedent. I know that American law is different form english common law, and more based on the constitution, but precedents mean something, and it would be much better to let military tribunals begin to understand these things if we are going to go that route. There should be different laws just like there are different laws for first and second degree murder.
I think Bush probably attacked Iraq because of terrorist problems around the region that could have exacerbated any problem that we or the middle east faced. Terrorism completely changes the dynamic of war. That is probably why you must be uniformed under the geneva conventions. If there were women terrorists sme army might justify killing women and children and there would be major problems in dealing with that. Nations must be sovereign and how can they be sovereign if countries impose their presence on them. If presence is imposed then people will not feel the security of their country.
Bush could have articulated the war better whether I am right or not. He could have shown how important democracy was to the middle east by showing Iran that Iraq would most likely not attack it again. I think Bush did a great job in the war, but there are things he could have done that would have minimized Obama’s influence.
Your work has been spot on. Keep it up.
Dear Professor,
How patient you’ve been with him. That you’ve given Obama the benefit of the doubt for so long is an understatement.
But the train has left the station and should a train wreck come, we only wish it be less rather than more for our nation’s sake.
This is the best blog.
It’s simple. The Islamists want to restore *their* religion to world domination. The Islamists want to restore the caliphate or the uma.
Bush always refused to characterize the war as a religous war or a clash of civilizations so that’s why we have the term “War on Terror.” I think it was actually a real smart choice.
So we have a two front war: terror attacks and demography.
We win only if we can change the young people and women. See Chris Buckley’s “Florence of Arabia” for a good method: an Oprah-like show in the Mideast. Barack and Michelle are great friends with Oprah so this would work out great.
LOL! My friend. Thou hast said it. The fool is doomed by his own hand.
We will recover. He NEVR will!
You Greek Hero has become a Shakespearean one, namely Hamlet.
Professor, once again amazing. It was my evaluation early in the campaign, that obama was neither black nor white, but simply transparent. I guess for me, the best literary analogy was Gynt’s onion.
To anybody who has studied history, government, or politics, the only conclusion is that the Administration is delusional. What next? When the ego starts to deflate, the first act is to find a suitable sacrifice for the gods. Right now the White House Staff is looking for another Iphigenia. As for the Democrats in Congress, they are unaware that the companions of all great heros generally don’t make it back from the voyage.
“In short, he can no more stop than could all-knowing Oedipus.”
He’s too stupid to stop. And too enamored of himself.
The real question is, can his masters figure it out, and if they can, is he a good enough actor to play a new script?
Nice commentary, but it omits Obama’s hatred of the USA and his desire to destroy our (mostly) capitalist republic and replace it with a sociofascist system ruled by the privileged (comprised of government workers, union members, and selected minorities). The real danger is that Obama may achieve his goals before being brought down by hubris or nemesis.
Of Stanley Baldwin Churchill “I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill,” Churchill said when declining to send 80th birthday greetings to the retired prime minister in 1947, “but it would have been much better had he never lived.” If Pres. B+ is half Stanley Baldwin, is it the Donkey half, or the Honkey half? Heh.
Good Doctor:
You are wasting your time and extensive talents. Obama is incompetent for the foreign policy tasks of a President, as well as for much else.
He has surrounded himself with image burnishers, of no particular competency for their assigned posts.
The next 6 months will look like the reshuffling of some European coalition administration.
A good friend of mine told me of a new teaching colleague that insists on the handle “Dr.” despite his PhD dissertation on “County fairs in Ontario”, which without looking further wipes out the title for those having valid doctorates and the ability to impart insights and nuance to those of us in the world outside that truly need the kind of expertise Mr. Hanson shares with us bi-weeky or more.
This piece turns up the dial on the sham of this “leadership” and extraordinarily expresses the absolute inner rage of how I and so many feel about the newspeak of this administration when lives are on the line in real time – in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other parts of the world as well as regular commercial flights!
We are sincerely grateful for you, Mr. Hanson.
Thank you!
Excellent commentary. It is a sad state of affairs that an intellect like Prof. Hanson is summarily ignored by and would be vilified by the empty suits and skirts in our gov’t.
“…and loathes all the things that might restore his effectiveness.”
Barack Obama lacks the education required to get his act together. It’s too late. We can only hope that the president does not try to punish the American people for “betraying” his vision. There should be more discussion regarding the handing off of power to Joe Biden. Obama could very well have some sort of mental breakdown in 2010.
I won’t have it!
I won’t be a nobody on an inconsequential star..
I tread the earth…
I am the center of the earth…
…the eye of the creator is upon me…
About me revolve…the lesser lights…!!
I detect a bit of anger in Dr. Hanson’s tone today. Understandable, Obama is a joke.
President SmartyPants has no street cred. He’s the guy who thinks he is smarter than everyone else and is obsessive about proving it.
Dr. Hanson:
Your conclusion is insightful indeed. A man descends from the heavens to assume a much lower office, the presidency of the United States, as a sort of favor to the mere mortals of a benighted planet adrift without the leadership of The One. The media actually drools, whines like rock star-addled schoolgirls, has tingles going up their legs, calls him a god (!?) and does anything and everything to damage his opponents and to exalt their new messiah. He is lauded as the greatest speaker in human history. He will not only stop the rising of the seas, he will heal the planet and never, ever let us go back to our old, uninformed, unchallenged pre-The One lives. He will transform politics, America, the world. There will be no more politics as usual. Iraq was an unnecessary war of choice, Afghanistan the good, necessary war neglected by the Bushites. He will establish absolute transparency and bridge the partisan gap. He is aware of the great expectations the entire world harbors for him. He will sweep away all the false choices being bandied about by the enemies of the goodness and harmony only The One can bestow. Where others, particularly the hated Bush and Cheney, have spoken lies, he will speak truth. He will not only give us our cake, but we’ll be able to eat as much of it as we want and it will cost less than ever before. He had unprecedentedly high approval ratings and the collective force of centuries of racial guilt propelling him. Everything he did was historic and he wasn’t the least ashamed about telling us just how historic everything he did was.
But hubris, driven by a narcissism and arrogance never before seen in an American president, have conspired to send him on the downward spiral you’ve so well expounded in comparison to timeless tales. His behavior has been so egregious that even a still fawning media has been forced to, upon occasion and very much against their will, actually cover a bit of the neophyte lunacy that is his administration. More and more of the little people are beginning to realize that he speaks much but says little and that much of that little is misleading or outright false. Not only are the seas not rising, virtually everything the environmentalist have said is a lie–the planet will heal, to whatever degree that’s necessary, quite nicely without bankrupting the world. They are coming to the next step: The realization that The One is urinating on their collective heads and telling them that it’s raining. There is no politics as usual; it’s much worse than usual, and has descended to outright bribery and bald faced lying so obvious, blatant and obscene that even some hard core leftists are beginning to blush. People are beginning to understand that the only false choices are those that The One himself presents whenever he opens his mouth. He has completed the trifecta, the hat trick of foreign policy: He has alienated our allies, embraced our allies, and convinced the entire world that he is a feckless twit who can be safely ignored and insulted. And he’s added one more foreign policy milestone: Everything he’s tried, particularly through personal diplomacy, has blown up in his face. Americans are waking up to economic realities and understand that the economics of everything Obama has done and everything he proposes is not only sheer lunacy, but that none of his initiatives–health care, cap and trade, immigration, you name it–not only will not improve those issues, but will plainly make them orders of magnitude worse.
As you suggest, he cannot and will not change. Men of good will, because they are men (and women, of course) of good will, try to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt, praising him whenever he actually says something rational, something one would normally think of as what any POTUS should say, yet there remains that nagging doubt that his words and actions do not and never will match. He and his spokespeople are like out of control children caught in misbehavior. They misdirect, blame others, claim that they’ll change, that they’re taking steps toward better behavior, but they are incapable of fundamental change because it’s just not in their nature. He makes an “I’m an angry tough guy” speech on terrorism, yet even that speech contains weaseling and hedges. He’s not going to send terrorists to Yemen–for now. Oh? Yemen is going to be an appropriate place for that, when, exactly? Yet he’s treating the worst terrorists as shoplifters, and one can only conclude that he actually thinks Guantanamo is a terrorist recruitment tool. And the next prison or multiple prisons won’t be? Or perhaps he really does intend to release them all?
Obama and his angry wife have benefited handsomely from the best America has to offer in ways that most Americans can only dream, yet their disdain, their hatred for America and Americans is plain for all to see. In making the presidency all about him, Obama has succeeded fabulously. When the office is reduced to a single man, when that man no longer represents the most powerful nation on the planet, the best, last hope for civilization, freedom and democracy on planet Earth, we are all facing destruction, and representatives of other governments make fun of him and avoid him in Copenhagen and elsewhere. Iran urinates on his head–repeatedly–and doesn’t bother to tell him it’s raining. The responsible governments of the world are indeed horrified at Obama and what he hopes to accomplish. The despots are delighted and are making plans.
Perhaps most telling, Obama has apparently actually considered sending John Kerry to do diplomacy. Thankfully the Iranians told him what do with that idea. So Obama has unleashed Kerry, just today, to criticize VP Cheney. That’s a sure sign of abject political tone deafness and desperation.
When Obama’s inevitable doom arrives, he’ll always have his Nobel Peace Prize, awarded for accomplishing absolutely nothing. What will we have? What will be left us?
About this business of an open and functioning Gitmo being a liability for America and a recruiting tool for AQ. I don’t buy for a heartbeat that AQ is motivated by Gitmo’s existence or what goes on there.
But even if AQ were so motivated by Gitmo, what, pray, will keep them from using the closure of Gitmo for their propaganda purposes?
If I were them, I’d spin that as a victory for jihad, proof that jihad is winning, and thereby use it as a recruiting tool.
The question is how much will he take down with him- just his fellow Democrats or the rest of the country? I want to believe we are a resilient nation but there is so much rot throughout. Without a positive force to replace The One things will continue to decay, perhaps in an accelerated rate. Faith in the founding ideals of the country must be restored.
One of the recruiting tools for the jihadists thanks to this administration:
If you get caught now, don’t worry. The infidels will just get you lawyered up and then you can spend a few years keeping your mouth shut without threat of intensive interrogation. And you’ll have better living quarters in Club Fed than you are currently experiencing. Besides that you may even get acquitted because it was, after all, Bush’s fault.
At each of his empty utterances—finally acquitted of the once ubiquitous um and uh—Potemkin villages rise up like zip codes and districts never before seen prior to the ample disbursement of just borrowed money (withdrawn from where? Places like Geneva, George Town, and Vanuatu?).
Look here, at Gitmo, it is the genesis of terrorists, misguided from the religion of peace, who were raised in poverty, or in wealth, or in the middle class, or in our own Med Schools, and never mind their predecessors’ 1,400 years of conflict with the West.
Don’t look there, at corpses in the streets, or at the considerable Persian oil fields. Let’s be perfectly clear, it’s for nuclear powered electricity that the mullahcrats subdue assembly, free speech and elections; it’s prophetic that they implore the Mediterranean to rise over the shores from Judea to the Dead Sea.
Look back, from Cairo, no mistake about it, no Renaissance in Europe was possible without the Ottoman Empire (though however trivial the contribution may have been, it was provided by the Dhimmi who worked as the conservators of the preeminent Greek and Latin texts).
In all of his mediocre conceit, there is no tragedy when the use of power to remake the worthy destitute is the intent of our historic first Islamic apostate president. When he fails, it is justice.
Of course his fellow Dems are onto him and know that if he gets his way, their Party will suffer massively. Aren’t any of them going to grab the brake-handle and pull?
2. wickerbasket:
Well said.
This stupid, “Gitmo is a recruiting tool” meme is the height of silliness. But even more stupid is the notion that the bad guys have elevated it to their list of top 10 grievances is evidence that it is a recruiting tool.
Do these “tools” on the left understand that our enemies read our news papers and watch our broadcasts? Do they have any kind of clue that the Jihadis parrot their own talking points simply because they know that they will resonate with the lefties who spouted them in the first place? Do they really think that hearing their own words spoken back to them verbatim as part of the other side’s propaganda is some kind of validation for their nonsense?
I think it’s more plausible that he’s a socialist. I don’t think he’s just stupid. He might underestimate the negative backlash, but I don’t think he’s unaware of it. I think he justifies it to himself as a necessary evil. A phase of adjustment, we have to go though on our way to social justice. The way, he sees it: Well people might become angry about his policies, but that comes second to the importance of creating social justice.
You can boil socialism down to a single word: “Equality”. Socialist want equality where as conservatives want quality. It perfectly explains all his seemingly odd decisions. Socialist doesn’t have any problems with chaos and anarchy, because chaos and anarchy strikes completely randomly and therefore equally. That’s why terrorism is not a major concern for socialists. It’s not nearly as important as treating terrorist equally to other types of lawbreakers.
- He’s against profiling in airports because it will mean that travelers wouldn’t be treated equally.
- Notice the dictatorships he’s cozying up to. They are all Countries that are either socialist internally or have a distinguished socialist past.
- Healthcare: Miserable treatment for all, but equally miserable for everybody. The “equal” part is the important one, not the “miserable” part. For socialists “Equal” trumps “miserable”.
- He famously told Joe the Plummer: “I just wan’t to make sure everybody has equal access to the same opportunities as you do”.
In my view, he is socialist to the core. And that is the primary explanation for his policies. Portraying himself as a moderate in the election was a ploy to get elected. You will not hear this in the media though. Because “socialist” is a dirty word. And if you call people out to be socialists, you will be perceived as rude and politically incorrect.
“All things being equal, the idea that a terrorist will spend a lot of time in a cell in Cuba if caught seems much less of a recruiting tool than hearing that your enemy has banned the use of “war against terror,””
And what effect would shoving innocent people in guantanamo have? The (admittedly laughable) evidence desperately leaked by the pentagon about detainees recaptured on the field suggests that it makes them MORE likely (if anything) to join the bad guys.
And this is the response coming from people who want to pin 9/11 on clinton!
The next president and conservative Congress are going to have a very hard job.
First, if it’s possible, to attempt to dismantle — not just this abominable health farce, but all the wasteful and destructive “programs” that have been set up — which would put many government workers out of work;
massive work on setting business free by de-regulation;
cleaning out the stealth Islamists who have infiltrated far within our government and military;
disempowering radical imams and others in mosques, universities, prisons and in the political arena;
re-constructing our defense and intelligence;
and
repairing the relationships with our allies — if it can be done.
And we’ll be broke too.
What, by that time, will be able to be done about China’s moves in the Far East, and Russia’s aggression?
And who knows what will be going on with Iran — and a wild, out of control Venezuela attempting to get its own nuclear program.
All this, plus whatever is unforseen, including a more and more Islamified europe.
It’s true. Obama has failed to mature into adulthood.
But what does it say about America when it stumbles so badly and elects an adolescent?
Spot on article and good comment by Brian @20. The Gitmo closure as well as the new interrogation rules are a huge victory for our enemy. Any leader that thinks they can fight a war like a police action is delusional. Obama can’t seem to figure it out. We are not fighting a conventional war where troop strength is the key, AQ knows they cannot match US forces in the field. This is a shadow war where intelligence gathering is the key to victory and Obama is reducing the effectiveness of his own forces. How can this be perceived by the enemy as anything other than a victory?
Furthermore with his decisions to use civilian courts for combatants in the US, while attacking and killing without trial in Pakistan is going to show the enemy that the US is the preferred battleground. Enemy agents found here are not subject to death or interrogation, while in Pakistan they are often victims of Predator attacks. Where do you think they are going to seek to take the war? Our leaky southern border proves entrance isnt a problem, soldiers on our bases are unarmed, they don’t need to blow up a plane, look at the chaos two gunman created in Virginia for 2 months…. imagine hundreds of such events!
Our President is emboldening our enemy and leading us down a very dangerous path and appears clueless as to what the logical results will be.
Re: “This is nearly unhinged.”
President Obama, it is nigh time for you to RESIGN. Your incompetence is clear, and your predilictions are troubling. Leave now before you bring real catastrophe down upon us.
The jihadi dogs have tasted blood and plenty of it and like any rabid creature they need to be put down for the Safety of all. Chronic indecisiveness, kowtowing and or bowing in their general direction only conveys immense weakness and humiliation. Obama either has a death wish for the USA or is an absolute fool (or both), his countless foreign policy missteps serve only to excite the enemy, embolden them and invite attack. As other commentators have already pointed out, he sees himself as infallible and sadly we will pay the price with our own blood for his hubris and lofty delusions. It appears the Presidency is all fun and games for this half-baked community organizer. 2012 can’t come soon enough and here’s praying without major calamity.
Take at look at this little gem,”America Rising,” a prime example of anti-Obama & Co. agitprop that deserves to get maximum circulation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiyqvuTxaEs
mmm mmm mmm Present! mmm mmm mmm Present! mmm mmm mmm Present! mmm mmm ……… Rats!, the Teleprompter is broken.
It is also Bush’s fault the government is secretly buying its own bonds now and it will be Bush’s fault when the Treasury defaults on the U.S. debt. This just shows how underestimated Texans are (they beat Oklahoma at the Cotton Bowl this year) and what a powerful man George is in retirement. No wonder Obama feels so small in comparison.
Maybe America shoulda elected the first Italian President instead of another British subject…But that woulda been racist..Right?…Capeche?.. The one thing I noticed in North Ireland was how the British could use, (with impunity) the IRA “terrorist” clause basically as a blank check to eliminate political opponents, cash in on economic policies and justify their own stripe of social engineering and deal making..If you wanted to keep certain competitors out of the running markets you could always blame the “terroists”…Pretty shifty stuff goin’ on there…I mean lookey here at the US…Say yer a mail clerk in some branch of a Fortune 500 Company that deals with certain Saudi affiliations who’s relatives trickle down into the Al Quedean ranks..Technically, I could say you support terrorism…You are a facilitator Mr. Joe Dakota, Mail Clerk…You are a complicit accomplice…an’ me, Mr. National Security Advisor has justification enough to implicate you an’ extend my agencies incentives to the privacy of even your life…Or maybe just f*k with you if I want to prove my p-magnet is in the good workin’ order it’s “supposed” to be..That’s what I mean by snotty. Lastly, what’s with all the constant Greek tragedy comparisons here?…Yeah, their great but it reinforces that sickenin’ psychology principle that Hollywood thrives off of…That “it’s just like in the movies!”…….Movies are planned in advance operations…..An these days it’s just about keepin’ the franchises bleed off workin’. Is that all the US of America aims to be? A strugglin’ franchise?
FGM #22
You forgot the reminder
“In US prison you will find many friends–and a rich field ofrecruits to train.
Release the 10 Gitmo thugs to Chicago and hire them to fix their school system then claim 10 new jobs.
Gitmo is no more a recruiting tool than Obama is a great orator. But the ADD MSM and entitlement mentality derangement syndrome creations of the progressive movement find it easier to repeat convenient lies than to do the work required to think anything through. Gods forbid anything take away the time they can stand there with their hands out to snatch that which they have not earned.
That America has to come to a point in her history where such as TOTUS and the Democrats lay such overt, bullying claim to the very souls of Her citizens is heartbreaking. Yet perhaps the hope lies in history, as the good Professor explains. I can only pray the average American will act on their current sense of danger and begin the thorough housecleaning so desperately needed and begin to teach their children the real meaning of what it means to live in the Republic of these United States.
Seriously, Obama is tearing our nation apart. There will be consequences for many years to come.
He and friends, appointees, need to go with him. Obama is not up to the job and has to have a scapegoat. The press allows this farce to continue…as do we. I was appaled to hear our panty bomber is in civilian court and “we” are providing an attorney.. What have we become..tolerance is one thing, stupidity is another.
If Ibana is “not” re-elected in 2012 I will be surprised. It’s who we are as a nation…until be are hit full in the face we don’t care, we don’t get out and vote as we should, then we complain.
Great read Dr. Hanson
All these Democrats turning against Obama jumping the party’s ship or retiring is so funny.
Just for you Dr. Hanson a little of history’s humor….
From the movie- ‘THE PRODUCERS’ 1968
Franz Liebkind:
“WHY DO YOU PERSECUTE ME?”
“MY PAPERS ARE IN ORDER!”
“I WAS NEVER A MEMBER OF THE (NAZI)-DEMOCRAT PARTY!”
“I LOVE MY COUNTRY”-
“O BEAUTIFUL, FOR SPACIOUS GAINS”-
WHY!
[holding a gun to his head]
Franz Liebkind: Soon, I shall be with mein Führer… and Himmler.
I’m coming to join you boys!
Right about Obama. Wrong about our future prospects.
This Othello/Oedipus/Whatever got lifted into office on the shoulders of 3/5 of the American public. It is THEY that believe the BS from TV and movies and their teachers since the 60s.
Ain’t gonna change.
Go Galt.
@ 23 Charles Gordon
“In all his mediocre conceit, there is no tragedy . . . When he [our historic first Islamic apostate president] fails, it is justice.”
I hope the snot-nose fails, too, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
IF he fails, it is justice.
Oedipus, while full of hubris, had concern for the welfare of his people and a desire to do right by them. His damning of himself came about as a result trying to help his people, in addition Oedipus’s sins were not intentional. The same can not be said of Obama, he is only concerned now and always with himself. Obama’s sins are calculated to diminish others for the aggrandizement of himself. And unlike Oedipus, Obama will never have a “I can see” moment in his life.
The current obama catastrophe was nearly matched by the misjudgement of Hoover-Rooseveldt (which did avoid a possible fscist/communist answer to the great depression) but in his case helps nothing but guarantees sharper recovery problems. the us will survive and thrive as world leader for social and economic liberty.
This is the saddest, and probably truest, summation of Obama’s potential: “In short, he can no more stop than could all-knowing Oedipus.” Life as a fairy tail hero with minimal effort expended has got to lead to the conclusion that it will always be that way. How could it be otherwise?
Will he awake one morn to think, “My God, what have I done? I have weakened the country politically, economically, and militarily. I am destroying the careers of my party members who have worked so hard at my request. I have surrounded myself with bumbling innocents and scoundrels for advisors. I have emboldened our enemies. History will regard me as a pathetic but dangerous aberration, an example of what damage a misguided majority can do in a democratic country. I must reverse all of it starting now, regardless of the political consequences.”
No, I am afraid Victor is right. This scene is possible only in a schmaltzy C movie.
Damn straight.
Remember that time he ‘threw’ the first pitch at the (all-star?) game…? Spoke volumes. I would have advised him against the display.
“in tragedy most recognition comes after, not before, the fall.” – VDH 2010
In light of the ruthless authoritarian leftists we have in charge now, I wish President Bush could come back and do it some more.
He DID do it.
Say, gNAT [aka But, etc], now don’t fixate on my use of tail instead of tale. Keep your beautiful mind on business.
My view is that the radical socialists, a set of Democrats, put Obama in as their Front Man Salesman for their agenda of inserting a radical socialist stucture into the US.
Obama is a malignant narcissist; his ‘skills’ are not ideological or intellectual, for he has no ideology and is intellectually shallow and ignorant and indifferent to exploring knowledge.
His skills have to do only with people not ideas or policies. His skills are an ability to personally manipulate, to misinform, and to control people around him to a state of passive fawning and obeiscance.
A key problem with such a psychological disability is that such a person can only operate in a limited environment; put him in a situation where he can’t reach and control a majority and he’ll feel threatened and collapse. Obama is uninterested in, for example, the Iranians who want democracy because they are outside his rhetorical reach..and they want democracy. Not Obama.
So, if you want something other than Obama, you don’t exist for him. Tht means he can’t be a leader of policies and programs.
The radical socialists chose Obama as their Front Man for this manipulative rhetoric, ran his campaign as both “not Bush’ and also ‘no terrorism exists’ and ‘no war exists’…and then, proceeded to put their infrastructure in place. But – Americans have shown they don’t want this socialism.
The problem for the Democrats is that Obama could put them in power but they are now realizing that Obama can’t sell their infrastructure; he is intellectually and emotionally committed only to Himself and needs a great deal of adulation..and can’t handle criticism.
This same BackRoom Gang who are running Obama are having to separate themselves from Obama. They now giggle over, as did Pelosi, Obama’s campaign promises (eg of openness) and tell us, with a wink, that ‘campaign promises are empty’ and we ought to know that…as the Demcrats fight to keep in control of their agenda.
I suspect they will marginalize Obama because of his inability to sell their agenda – and turn to their own strategy increased attacks against Americans who critique them; they’ll use racism, anti-Bush rhetoric…but not Obama.
And, they’ll have to find an outlet to get rid of Obama – the Sec. Gen of the UN?
Political Correctness and diversity will be the epitaph for our nation. We will be sacrificed to appease the elites and their sense of enlightenment. We will suffer because because the MSM see themselves as the arbiters of what we as a nation represent.
the closing of Guantanamo would be yet another victory for the enemy. it is as far from a recruiting tool as is possible.
it is a very visible high profile fact that the Americans are fighting the Islamic terrorists.
by closing it you lose the image of “there are consequences to attacking the USA”
Spot on Dr. Hanson.
51. But, But, But, But, But.
“He DID do it.”
Hey But, who is “He” and what is the do… do? Mmmmmmmmmmmm?
President Gas is proposing laughing gas for all terrorists as a way to get them to lighten up, and to cover up the fact that they are laughing at him. The Amerikan people, in his eyes, must breathe less, Mr. President and Congress excepted. Helium will be used as well so that it appears that things are being rapidly accomplished.
Oxygen consumption will be taxed.
All for the better. Let them eat cake
Clinton did it because he was complacent.
Bush did it because he was doing the best he could with a hostile Congress and Americans dieing at home.
Obama is doing it because he is making a tough situation 100 times worse than it needs to be for his own social engineering, to make this a socialist country and his profound ignorance of the world at large.
The attack on 9-11 was preceded by a decade of no response to Islamic terrorist attacks on US interests. Bill Clinton also treated those attacks as criminal activities, rather than terrorist actions. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? If Obambi treated terrorist attacks as seriously as did Bush, we would be better off now. In Swahili, the best description of Obambi is ‘hauna maana’.
Brilliant, Dr. H. You have provided the consummate reflection for Obummer, if he chose to look in your “mirror”. Hopefully he won’t, or won’t believe what he sees, which will only serve to accelerate his and his party’s downfall.
If only the fools who voted for this imposter chose to look up to heaven and acknowledge the true Messiah, rather than attempt to find one from amongst men.
Obama, quisling Holder et al. cling to their Guantanamo shtick like drowning people clinging to a log.
This administration is so lame, weak, inept and ideologically driven that all they can do is repeat some very stupid mantra like “Guantanamo is a recruiting tool for terrorists”
(no, Guantanamo and its remaining denizens are fish fodder for an entire cadre of ACLU type lawyers and an Attorney General who is trying various strategies to intimidate and embarrass, ideally, try in an international court, individuals in the previous administration. And possibly an injection of “jobs” for some Illini if and when our cash flush federal government buys Thomson prison. Really, there’s no end to the usefulness of those guys incarcerated at the Cuban country club.)
Thucydides invented a word prophasis precisely for the idea of belligerents inventing perceived grievances for their various aggressions.
Prophasis is evident in bin laden’s successive fatwas, Zawahiri’s metamorphosing litany of complaints, aka, excuses and reasons given for an unchanged agenda.
…the demi-god in the White House who has “deigned” to guide us.
Oh, that he would not have so deigned…
mikemcdaniel, love your post, makes me wonder if after every genius article by Dr . Hanson it can be followed by a Dr Mc Daniel commentary, well said , great summary, I intend to send both the article and your comments to fellow like minded friends.
I am Canadian, completely immersed in the unfolding scene south of the border. What’s really astonishing is the brazen, in your face outright lying of this administration. I love your analogy about the “rain” yes I have often thought if I stood there looking at the moon with Obama he could look me in the eye and believably say it’s square and not round.
#28 Matthew, I’m so glad you’re back, I’ve missed you sorely. “And what effect would shoving innocent people in guantanamo have?”
So all the folks at Gitmo are innocent. The CIA, Soldiers, and all the rest simply went into the streets and byways and picked out innocents for Gitmo. That’s you story and you’re stick, stick, sticking to it. Good for you.
You are also the fellow who claims there is nothing to fear from the Islamists and Sharia law and that all the conservatives are merely chikensxxts. Could you help me understand why the President is so concerned about those young guys just out to have a little laugh at our expense by pretending to blow people out of the sky? President Obama just said we were very lucky to have avoided a catastrophe and that the security breach was unacceptable. Why is Obama trying to pretend there is a serious threat, Matthew. Is he just a chickenxhix too in your opinion?
This is all silliness. At the risk of offendingsome of the faint hearted liberals who slink around this site, let me propose a rational solution to the problem. For openers, summarily execute the current residents at Gitmo. Worried about the ‘innocents’? I don’t think there are any, but if there are, well no plan is perfect. As for any future detainees…..find em, torture them, and kill them. That will send the appropriate message to our enemies, an permit our European allies the luxury of a sense of moral superiority.
I agree with #61 maryann: Put the two together, the brilliant analogy by VDH and the exemplification within current events by Mike McDaniel – and we read a perfect analysis of the current Democrat/Obama regime of dysfunctional ideology.
Professor Hanson left out a win-win scenario for President Obama. He could announce that Gitmo is closed, keep it open and deny that it remains open. No one believes him anyway.
You want to know what else is a propaganda tool for al Quaida? U.S. troops having weapons.
Has anyone considered that Obama may be a Muslin plant who will weaken, soften us so we are vulnerable to an attack. Maybe it’s been planned all along that he rule and then let something happen to us.
mikemcdaniel
When Obama’s inevitable doom arrives, he’ll always have his Nobel Peace Prize, awarded for accomplishing absolutely nothing. What will we have? What will be left us?
THIRD WORLD STATUS and un-repayable DEBT
Liberalism is all about the scapegoat. One reason they are dying right now is they don’t have someone to blame.
One is reminded of Goldstein in 1984–liberals haven’t changed the narrative much since 1948.
Hanson is an amazing writer. But what really stymies me is how people continue to think that Obama is a ‘socialist’. He’s not. Basically, he’s nothing.
Obama is a narcissistic sociopath. The only reason he seems like a socialist is because he spent his youth, adolescence, and early adulthood around them – mimicking their rhetoric was his easiest path to personal gain.
When he ran for President, he saw that the easiest path to personal gain was to mimic a Conservative. So he recited all the Conservative lines (“I will reduce federal spending … I will not expand the federal government … I will ‘reform’ health care … All options for energy are on the table … I will stop wasting American lives and resources on foreign wars … et cetera).
And when he got the job, when he finally had his new belt notch, his real character became obvious: he is nothing. He’s a nobody. He has no real goal except acquiring more things to boost his gigantic ego. He outsources all real work to lackeys (speech writers, Nancy Pelosi) and just makes appearances to bask in the warming glow of his fans’ warming glow.
Calling him a socialist gives him an escape hatch, because he can just switch persona and pretend he’s had a ‘revelation’ and win your support back. Which is all he wants. But make no mistake: Barack Obama cares about nothing except Barack Obama.
If Bush had transferred the detainees directly to say, Illinois instead of Guantanamo, where would Obama send them next? After all, “Close Illinois” would have been the rallying cry for Al Qaeda recruiters.
I’d like to file a Motion to Behoove An Inquisition…
How else can we stop the Antichrist?
What I see as the Genuine Paradox of Ovomit is that he dedicated his life to becoming president in order to fix the shortcomings he saw in America.
So he rose above the neighborhood in which he lived to attend Ivy League Schools.
He became a Community organizer and spring boarded into politics.
He became a member of the U.S. Senate.
He became President of the United States.
In short, his very life, and accomplishments, are a complete contradiction of his reason for achieving them.
What he cannot see is that if his core beliefs were true, he’d still be living in the neighborhood he left behind.
Like all tragedies, his life adds up to an Enigma.
jd
The center was wide open for Obama – but he only drives to his left.
Great piece, Dr. Hanson. Your, ‘allusions tired and transparently the work of twenty-something speechwriters..’ is something I’ve been saying for sometime as well.
It’s strange to hear a man read, err, ‘speak’ who’s nearing 50 to spout off such nonsensical ideologies and faux chest thumping speeches it’s truly bizarre..
Comment #18- Captain Liberty, you’d spoken of Obama’s ‘street cred’, he never possesses such a thing.
It has me think of Obama attempting to be hip to 70′s ‘Sanford & Son’ during 2008 campaign when he imitated Red Foxx’, ‘I’m coming Weezie’ bit.
Instead, ‘I’m coming Elizabeth’ is the correct line as Weezie was the character from ‘The Jefferson’s’.
The man is a concept, a construct of the ignorant masses who bought his snake oil shtick..
Though the alternative was a RINO. A lose-lose though in differing degrees, of course.
All President Obama needs is a diaper, a pacifier in the shape of a mirror with a teleprompter present, & plenty of Mother’s milk in the form of unions & endless, pointless government bureaucracy. Whiners don’t lead. And Obama certainly fills his days blaming President Bush for the problems he himself created. Therefore, President Obama is an apt reason to get rid of Affirmative Action.
MIKEMCDANIEL,
Sir, I congratulate you on a your most literate commentary. Well written and linear in thought. Additionally, you mirror my own feelings regarding the man and his abject failures. Thank you.
77/88
R.H.
Posting again due to typing my username incorrectly. I apologize if double posted.
Great piece, Dr. Hanson. Your, ‘..allusions tired and transparently the work of twenty-something speechwriters..’ is something I’ve been harboring a disgust now for sometime.
It’s strange to hear a man read, err, ‘speak’ who is nearing 50 to spout off such nonsensical ideologies and faux chest thumping speeches with complete earnestness is truly a bizarre spectacle..
Comment #18 – captain Liberty, you’d spoken of Obama’s, ..’street cred’, he never possessed such a thing.
Comment #18- Captain Liberty, you’d spoken of Obama’s ‘street cred’,
This had me think of Obama’s attepmpting to be hip with his “I’m coming Weezie’ bit when referring to the late red Foxx’ signature comment from 70′s comedy, ‘Sanford & Son’.
Instead, ‘Im coming Elizabeth’ is the correct line as ‘Weezie’ is from the other 70′s comedy, ‘The Jefferson’s’.
Sure, Obama speaks of his ‘humble beginnings’ and ‘coming from w different cultures..’. Though when attempting to speak off the cuff and ‘proving’ his ‘urbanese’ the man falls flat..
Obama is a concept, a construct of the ignorant masses who bought and embellished this straw man’s shtick..
Though admittedly the alternative last year was a RINO. a lose-lose though in differing degrees of course.
When he met the Queen of England and gave her an ipod full of his teleprompter speeches,
I knew then we were in deep Shiite.
Obama seems to be trying to restore his credibility (witness his “anger” at the most recent intelligence failure), but it’s too little too late. If there is such a thing as “first impressions”, America has already formed an opinion of Obama’s “first impression” as POTUS (as opposed to his campaign persona). I don’t think there’s anything that can save him now.
Even so, American rage and distrust is rightly focused more on Congress than on Obama. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are likely to go down as the most hated politicians of the 20th and 21st centuries.
In a BLT way of thinking, Bush did it really means evil white demons did it.
Right Rev. Wright?
Really though this commentary section proves one thing , that the conservative minded are really the coolest, funniest, brilliant people around, the writing in the commentary section is uplifting, look at the analogies, pop culture references.
Has anyone else noticed the trolls are few and far between in recent weeks. They are hiding under bridges, they have been relegated to commenting on like minded sites. They realize they can’t come here and bash Bush anymore, even to the sick liberal mind it doesn’t make sense anymore.
Before I discovered conservatism I believed the stigma that conservatives are rich, old, close minded, bible thumping types. Just look how far it has come, Breitbart, Klavan, Red Eye, Iowahawk….. And Hanson proves that age old wisdom is the only kind of wisdom, human nature is fixed and flawed. End of story.
VDH:
“What, Pray God, was the recruiting tool on September 10, 2001?”
While the logic of Obama’s policies falls prey to this argument, the real explanation is that Obama is viewing the US as an outsider would. He has almost exclusively assumed the same viewpoint that an “emerging” country would have of the US — i.e. a Venezuela, Greece, Palestine, Egypt…
This viewpoint apparently forces Obama to apply what he believes to be higher standards to the US; standards that one might argue are unwarranted, unachievable, and self-serving. This is why Obama’s rhetoric has been apologetic in international venues and why he must preempt others from forming opinions of him based on his actions. He believes that if he speaks about his policies before taking action, then there is no need to reconcile the speech with the action.
Emerging countries have formed their own opinions of Guantanamo, and many of them portray it in their media as an example of American injustice. However, few of these countries analyze Guantanamo in the context of War, and quite obviously have not walked in the US shoes. Obama’s apologies for Guantanamo are appeasements. The unfortunate problem is that many people agree with him, despite lessons of history.
A plain answer to your question is that Obama does not believe he is working against terrorism by closing Guantanamo, he believes that he is placating other countries. He is vainly attempting to convince others that he has superior intentions and morals, and therefore deserves their respect. No justice is served with this approach, but it is predictable, because Obama seems to derive greater satisfaction from being loved than from serving justice.
I have to say, I with all the big speeches, I hoped that someone, Dem or Republican would actually do something useful with our country, but it seems that we have more of the same. Lot’s of talk about what we’re going to do…then nothing done. I think all American’s are getting tired of being pandered to and just want to see this country get in gear.
Ryan
#70 Atheist conservative – I completely agree with you; Obama is not a socialist; he’s ideologically empty. I call him a malignant narcissist;your term is narcissistic sociopath – same thing.
His ‘skills’ are geared to his need to control people around him, which he does by misinformation – where he says whatever he thinks they want to hear; i.e., he’s a pathologial liar. And, he emotionally manipulates them using in particular, the emotions of hope and fear.
His basic third tactic is used if you dissent or do not immediately fall under his control; he’ll accuse your hesitation and questions as based on bias and racism.
That’s all there is to Obama. BUT, the radical socialists in the Democratic Party set him up as their Front Man to get them into power and enable them to move their socialist statist infrastructure in..behind the slick charms of Obama.
I think that they didn’t expect the disinterest of Obama in policies and programs, his inability to talk coherently and emotionally about them – and his focus only on himself.
Whose fault it’s to expect a kid to do a man’s job? It’s never the two years old’s fault.
Send them to Thompson…tomorrow….it’s 14 degrees right now with a -1 windchill.
Fred Beloit:
“So all the folks at Gitmo are innocent”
No, obviously not. But clearly MOST of them had no charges to answer. A fact which turns out to be consistent with the claims back in 2001+ that people were being rounded up off the streets of afghanistan and turned over to the US in return for bounties. A lot of grudges were sorted out, and the US got a lot of innocent prisoners. They knew that then, we know it now.
“The CIA, Soldiers, and all the rest simply went into the streets and byways and picked out innocents for Gitmo”
No, they didn’t go anywhere. At least not initially. They let locals bring the innocents to them.
“That’s you story and you’re stick, stick, sticking to it. Good for you.”
Pretty much, yes. Are there bad guys in gitmo? Absolutely. Were there innocent people in gitmo? Absolutely. Did some of those innocent people take up arms when they were dumped back in afghanistan? Absolutely – the pentagon has told us so.
“You are also the fellow who claims there is nothing to fear from the Islamists and Sharia law”
Rubbish. I’ve written things that included those words, but nothing like the way you’re using them.
“and that all the conservatives are merely chikensxxts.”
That part might be true.
“Could you help me understand why the President is so concerned about those young guys just out to have a little laugh at our expense by pretending to blow people out of the sky?”
Because it’s a violent criminal act that scares the bejeezes out of people and threatens the US (and, dare I say it, world) economy by dissuading people from using air travel. The actual direct threat to life and limb is tiny compared with the threat of airlines going out of business and lost economic confidence (which nobody needs, just now).
“President Obama just said we were very lucky to have avoided a catastrophe and that the security breach was unacceptable”
He’s right, too. But in the time it took me to write this post, more people have died in the US than would have gone down in that plane. Every one of those people is real – a member of somebody’s family. But you don’t care about them because it’s not big and flashy.
Here’s a thought. Now it’s Yemen. The latest breeding ground for al aqueda. Got it. I don’t think that pinpoint Predator attacks will have a big effect. Let’s not be picky. Nuke em.
Tom Holsinger:
Professor Hanson left out a win-win scenario for President Obama. He could announce that Gitmo is closed, keep it open and deny that it remains open. No one believes him anyway.
Tom, this is the perfect solution because the only true talent Obama has is being a great liar!
#85 ETAB: ‘malignant narcissist’ works well, too. There are many great examples of Obama saying what they want to hear while President. But I think a great example of him doing it while CAMPAIGNING for the Presidency is illustrative of how willingly blind his supporters were.
Remember the debate between McCain & Obama where McCain hammered on the ‘fine’ for businesses not providing the health insurance Obama deemed proper? McCain hammered on it and hammered on it, and Obama tried to evade the question, and then finally in this one debate McCain said directly “I’d like to know what that fine will be.” And Obama, abandoning all reason, all his previous statements, and all logic, saw a chance for a great lie-based zinger and replied “Zero. The fine will be zero.”
Anybody who had read his proposals knew this was a lie. Yet people bought it. The next day everyone was talking about how Obama “blew McCain out of the water”, rather than talking about the lie. And McCain didn’t help matters by getting thrown. He should have been right back in Obama’s face stating clearly how ridiculous an answer that was.
Obama’s a con man. Which is why I don’t place a lot of faith in the polls. I firmly believe we’ll have Obama for eight years, because most Americans – like most people everywhere – like the fairy tale. Most people don’t mind being conned. He’ll have to seriously screw something up to not get a second term, and even that’s a long shot because (as today’s presser revealed) all he has to do is the “Aw shucks put the responsibility on me” tap dance and his fans are sated.
Gird your loins, folks.
The television age, along with the modern leftist Democrat party, have given us a ‘leader’ who literally knows nothing, has no skills.. if he had been born a hundred years earlier, society would have held him down, to be sure.. and if he had been born a hundred years later, he would have gone unnoticed in a world of racial sameness and invisibility, the one liberals all claim to want.. but his age has coincided perfectly with the age he lives in, and he is a creature of the movement he lives for. Tall, light-skinned, articulate, having the appearance of education… a perfect physical presentation in which all could pour their own hopes, dreams, biases and racism.. but personally, he is nothing. Vain, amateurish, immature, a mirror-gazer and speech-practicer who tells others “I have a gift” and means it.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: The current occupant of the Oval Office is just as challenged, when it comes to credibility, as the Brezhnev-era apparatchik referred to by Daniel Hannan, in a 3 and a half minute rebuttal of British Prime Minister Brown at the European Parliament.
For old times sake, here is the dressing down:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs
#88 Matthew – I don’t get the point of your last paragraph where you seem to bemoan the fact that we don’t care about those people who have naturally died during the time you wrote your post.
Your attempt to suggest that we OUGHT to show equal concern towards a terrorist attack and a natural death is illogical. The first is an intentional act of murder; the second is not. Even if all your examples are homicides, it is still illogical to equate the two, for one cannot equate an agenda of mass murder for the sake of a fundamentalist ideology with an individual homicide.
#91 Atheist Conservative – I agree; Obama’s a con man. But what is important is the agenda of his lies and manipulation – and that is to subsume the listener into a state of adulation. There is no other agenda. However, I disagree that we’ll have him for 8 years.
Strange as it may seem, I’m predicting that he won’t run for a second term. Obama, as a malignant narcissist, requires a constant ‘feeding’ of adulation – and the criticism that he receives as president is not merely unwelcome but actually physically exasperates and enervates him.
Obama has, all his life, cocooned himself from accountability, from criticism and indeed, even from hard work. He’s got by on his smile and his emotional manipulation. This is not working in his current role.
We can even see an example of this in his speeches about the Xmas bomber. He’s moved from a three day deadtone speech about ‘an isolate extremist’…to an admission that it was an Al Qaeda attack..to today’s bravado where he as usual, focused on Himself. (The buck stops with me)..and now acknowledges that the WH knew about the bomber even when he was on the plane.
Wait – check out the lies and manipulation. If the WH KNEW that the bomber wss aligned with Al Qaeda then why did Obama at first tell us he was ‘an isolate extremist’? And if our ‘intelligence services need attention’..then why stop intelligence gathering dead by defining the bomber as a criminal with Miranda rights to silence?Hmm?
Instantly – these contradictions were picked up not merely by FOX but by CNN and others.
You have a WH with contradictory stories, a set of Democrats with conflicting agendas (terrorist or criminals?)…and Obama who hasn’t a clue but reads what he is given to read.
This is too much for a narcissist who requires adulation and a cocooned life. And his glow is fading; his poll numbers are dropping – and the Democrats will, I suggest, try to move him out to some international post where he can bask in his virtual reality far, far removed from the hard pokes of the real world.
It will take a great deal of time to finalize, but it is starting to occur. The American public is coming to realize that Barack Hussein Obama is actually on the side of the muslim Terrorists. His every action strengthens them and weakens us. He refuses to even call them terrorists, and one gets the distinct impression he thinks of them, indeed, as freedom fighters. This is leading to a developing revolution, first at the polls. But if that is abrogated by the likes of Acorn and SEIU election fraud, it will surely take to the streets with armed citizens DEMANDING a restoration of the Constitution and imprisonment of Political leaders. Perhaps with executions of top political criminals.
Advice to pajammers:
If you’re itching all over the place, complaining about Obama is not going to make it go away. Tell your maid to put less detergent on your clothes, they changed the formula and are now stronger . . .
#70-An Atheist is nothing, Obama is a closet communist. You are free to believe in nothing but there are consequences for everything. Perhaps you just hate mans religion and hypocrisy, if so you’re in good company, God hates mans religion and his hypocrisy too.
VDH: Obama still has plenty of others to blame so he can hide his real views from the public for a while longer. Obama is a liar; he lies because he knows he won’t get away with saying what he really thinks. As more and more of his minions get run over by the bus he throws them under the fewer there will be to blame for what he has them do and say. Someone will start squealing and soon.
Obama will have three possible paths in the end: He will come clean about his real intentions and put a gun to the heads of Americans who resist his will like his communist hero’s and current friends in Cuba and Venezuela (if all his plans are successful) or he will get himself impeached for violating his oath of office (if his plans fail) or he will pull a Clinton and say the Dem liberals made him do it and become a centrist until his term expires(if he loves just being the man at the top more than his ideology).
Most Americans are wising up to Obama and his rhetoric and paying much more attention to what he does rather than what he says. He’s got about a year before it all implodes. After that there will be polls taken and the majority will want him out right then and there. Then its decision time for the imposter in chief.
Thanks for the good work Mr. Hanson. Please keep it up. The truth is our only real weapon against this kind of evil.
Dear Mr. Hanson,
Please stop confusing the issue with the facts. You’ll upset the Administration. But, keep up the good work.
“BUT, the radical socialists in the Democratic Party set him up as their Front Man to get them into power and enable them to move their socialist statist infrastructure in..behind the slick charms of Obama.”
The radical socialist took advantage of America’s guilt tripped whites. They knew that Barack Obama would slip below the radar. Countless whites would vote for him to seek forgiveness for their past sins. They wouldn’t dare ask any hard questions. The leftists forgot one simple fact: most voters did not vote for a left-wing Obama! They perceived him to be perhaps no more liberal than Bill Clinton. The stuff is now hitting the proverbial fan.
Obama is not going to grow into the job. Both his narcissism and poor education make this a near impossibility. We are really screwed. At the very best, we can hope for a Republican landslide in the November elections. It won’t be enough—but Obama might be a bit more neutralized.
Bush did it…..for you Obama.
VIVI, is that a drone circling over your place?
As for Gitmo being a recruiting tool, it’s even more so now as a the jihadist has nothing to fear if captured and sent there. No waterboarding, no loud music, no discomfort, no “enhanced interogation”. They can just sit back and enjoy the weather and have many luxuries they’d never have at home.
#16 David…Obama could very well have some sort of mental breakdown in 2010.=========
How could we tell?
Thomson: “Republican landslide in the November elections”
Dreamer. The Country Clubbers of the GOP and their Bozo loser-leader still fiddle and fart over the Tea Party syndrome a year after the fact. They cavil with grass-roots personalities, even their own VP candidate, to the point they get destroyed before they get properly heard.
They won’t work, and a third party won’t work. The Dems own the unions and the radicals and their moneys. They can’t lose.
Welcome to the results of 50 years of teacher’s unions.
Absolutely agree with 99.
We are truly screwed. This nation has finally committed suicide by it’s own utterly stupid electorate.
For the last 25 years our schools have produced either rabid radicals or chronically ignorant people unable to think critically.
The Internet is great for these discussions, but as hopeful as we might be, the reality is we’re just a tiny pinhole in a sea of insidious apathy.
Any gains that might be made in 2010 will only be a small undercurrent quickly lost in the tidal wave of chaos created by the fascism put in place this year by the ultimate party of corruption — the Democrats. I’m not just referring to the leadership, I’m talking about the willing socialists all the way down to my idiot next door neighbors.
We’ll be just barely hanging on to our freedoms — like trying to hold on to a piece of driftwood before drowning.
Thank God for VDH and others like him for at least putting words to my outrage.
Agreed, David Thompson #99; Obama will not ‘grow into the job’. His narcissism, his poor education – and his lack of curiosity and any desire to do the hard work of acquiring knowledge, make this an impossibility.
It’s quite something to hear and read the excuses made by the MSM for Obama. When he finally, after several weeks and a slew of denials, actually admits that the Xmas bomber IS a terrorist; when Obama actually uses the ‘t’ word; when he actually acknowledges it’s a war…the MSM fall all over him in praise. Finally, the Great One is ‘on the side of reality’.
But the fact that his first acts upon becoming president were to reject terrorism, reject that it’s a war, dismantle the war intelligence, demoralize the CIA by going after them as war criminals..and then, reclassify terrorists as civilian criminals, set up the NYC circus trials…etc….All of this is forgiven by that one sentence.
The fact that the WH KNEW that the Xmas bomber was linked to terrorism, and wanted toquestion him on arrival – how does this jibe with Obama’s declaration that he was none of his but was an ‘isolate extremist’?
And treating him as a civilian with Miranda rights meant – no interrogation. How does this jibe with their now-stated desire to interrogate him?
Who is running the show? Who know what is going on? Why these contradictory statements and agendas?
Why vivo, that sounds an awful lot like pouting. As an ‘Independent’ your underwear shouldn’t be so tight in the caboose regarding Teleprompter Guy’s shortcomings..
Your incapability to have an adult discussion on the matter is glaringly obvious.
Stick to your UsWeekly magazines and reality t.v. Obviously more your mentality and capabilities, ‘adult-wise’.
‘None are so blind as those that will not see’.
OMG. Obama ran his campaign knowing these problems were there already and therefore his campaign was supposed to fix them not complain about them. But instead we hear about how much worse it was than thought.
It is easy to criticize when you are not in power. OK you got the job now do it. Quit going all over the world and taking all sorts of vacations and stay off television and the media in general. So far you are not doing better at handling this nations problems, and I would go far as to say that you are in fact making them worse.
What about being less interested in “passing out blame” and more from learning from mistakes. The problem here is that being the most powerful man on earth is not an on the job training event. So get to work or resign. Expect more criticism from all parties cause the honeymoon with your crappy administration is now over.
Essential vdh
A real Chicago ghetto kid, black, white or whatever would be more effective in office the the PC, AA, Harvard educated BHO.
Just a couple of years on the real world streets of Chicago would have blown away all of this POTUS’s smoke and mirrors that has been handed to him by the self anointed intellectuals at his institutions of “learning” who have done nothing but put bimbo’s out in the streets to wreck havoc in all areas of their involvement in American Business or Politics.
Totally Un American and all being done in the name of AA, PC and the raiding and use of your Taxpayer dollars that are payed out by the self promoting idiots, the current elected bimbo’s in Congress and local and state governments.
I know that the “Bimbo” word has here to for been used primarily for Women but I think now all can see that it is appropriate for all (male or female) where it applies.
#’s 63 & 89, Carla:
God, guns, guts, and brass balls. That’s what it’s gonna’ take. Until the rest of us realize you’re correct, we have a serious problem.
#88 Matty say: “A fact which turns out to be consistent with the claims back in 2001+ that people were being rounded up off the streets of afghanistan and turned over to the US in return for bounties. A lot of grudges were sorted out, and the US got a lot of innocent prisoners. They knew that then, we know it now.”
Matty, your rebuttals are so lame. You use accusations by librul writers as if they were historical facts. George Washington was the first POTUS is a historical fact. Gitmo is full of fine folks whose neighbors told U.S. soldiers, “Arrest Ali, I don’t like heem.” is an accusation not a fact. It is also MSM PC spin.
Matty, you say: “The actual direct threat to life and limb is tiny compared with the threat of airlines going out of business and lost economic confidence (which nobody needs, just now).” Matty, what was the probability of an attack, causing the death of thousands who would be killed by religious suicide bombers of the WTC, before it actually happened? Near zero, “tiny” as you might say, right?
Matty say: “But in the time it took me to write this post, more people have died in the US than would have gone down in that plane. Every one of those people is real – a member of somebody’s family. But you don’t care about them because it’s not big and flashy.”
First, you don’t have any knowledge of what I care or don’t care about.
Second, are you in favor of the government eliminating the automobile because it kills so many people?
Third, and I’m especially interested in your response to this,: Shouldn’t we be using pork and pork products in various ways to degrade the will of the enemy?
vivo, ESDMF
Attacking a civilian aircraft to bring it down is an act of war when committed by those avowing to wage war upon us. It may also be a civil crime as mass murder or destruction of property, but the destruction of an aircraft in pursuit of war is an act of war.
For all the ‘innocents held in Gitmo’ there is also the problem that we let one of the Mehsud brothers go: one of the prime leaders of terrorism in the Pakistan-Afghanistan area and leader of a 5,000 man Lashkar. They killed hundreds more after he was let loose at Mehsud’s behest. He and his brother are now dead and gone, but his brother would not have benefitted from that release from Gitmo and become a prime operative in the Shadow Army structure if he had been kept there. In other words al Qaeda would have had a much harder time without the more charismatic brother being sent back to build up his support to which the other brother put his organizing skills. And if you can tell for certain, 100% no doubt that, any individual IS not a part of a terror organization and is held at Gitmo, then your responsibility is to inform those in charge of your information. You do that person no justice at all by sitting and bitching about imperfect justice be it military or civilian if you can prove, slam-dunk, 100%, no question about it that an individual is just not part of an organization committing terrorist acts. Pointing to other people who infer such is not enough as it is inference – demonstrate the point by factual representation as you know them first hand to be.
Military justice is still justice, in case it is forgotten, with the laws of war over it. I am most sorry that terrorists don’t go by the laws of war and best fit into the ‘spies and saboteurs’ category of things, with summary justice involved… but we are too nice to actually carry that out as is given to us in the GC. Those who break with society, with civil law, and then attack societies and Nations threaten all mankind with their acts of Private War and earn military justice when caught. If they will submit to civilian justice, give themselves up to the judgment of those they have wronged and come forth willingly to do so then by all means do give them civil justice as they are seeking to re-affirm that they wish to become a part of society again. Getting civil rights means affirming that you are part of the civilized world and submit to civil law. When you take back all your rights and liberties to wage war on others with no Nation to back you, then you have returned to the Law of Nature and will be very lucky to merely get the laws of war applied to you as you are waging war on others.
That is the horror of those who reclaim their entire liberty and rights: we cannot mind read them to see that they have done so. Man the animal can masquerade as civilized man just long enough to kill again. Truly I do wish that those waging war on us would submit to civil law, but they do not do so and their intention is given by their actions or lack thereof. I am more than willing to see any terrorist who walks into a police station to give himself up and acquiesce to being a member of society get civil justice. He may have a hard time getting that far due to the acts of war being done, but that is not the fault of those who have been attacked, now, is it?
But that is the outcome of Private War which should be detested by all and given a quick, harsh end when found. But we are too civilized to apply the laws of war, and that points to decay in society, and such decadence is indicative of decline of our understanding of what civilization is built upon.
President Obama will be blaming President Bush for the next 3 years; afterwards, he will still be blaming Bush for his defeat in 2012. Bush, Bush, Bush…
Obama is obsessed with President Bush. Why? I think Obama knows Bush is everything Obama isn’t: a leader.
President Obama reminds me of Kraftwerk’s “The Hall of Mirrors”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYh3HlGY35g
The author would be more credible if he hadn’t been saying the same thing when it WAS ACTUALLY THE TIME TO STOP BUSH FROM DOING “iT”. Nothing is sleazier than a person who fought tooth and nail to maintain an establishment now saying look to the current administration again, its too late to prosecute the past. You idiots fall for it again and again. People like this are laughing at you.
http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson102407.html
But for now, Bush seems to have an orphaned presidency defended by very few. From the left, he is criticized for his tax cuts for the rich, his lack of concern for African-American victims of Katrina, his illiberal homeland-security measures — and always for Iraq, with shrill persistent choruses of “preemption” and “unilateralism.” Much of this anger against Bush is Pavlovian and superficial, deeply embedded within the president’s caricatured dead-or-alive, smoke-’em-out lingo.
As a result, the left gives the president no credit for policies that have irked his conservative base. In his first term, he increased federal spending at a faster rate than Bill Clinton. He extended the reach of federal education policy with his No Child Left Behind legislation, and he did not veto a single spending bill, instead sponsoring a major new prescription entitlement for Medicare recipients. His immigration bill, blasted by many conservatives, ultimately failed, but still won over Senator Ted Kennedy and infuriated red-state America.
So will Bush leave disgraced and confirm this prognosis of worst president? Probably not — and not merely because we have had far worse, from James Buchanan to Richard Nixon.
Start with the fountainhead of Bushophobia — the postwar reconstruction of Iraq. The surge that began in June seems to be working far better than anticipated. Should such tactical progress translate into strategic success — the verdict is still out — historians may conclude that George Bush removed the two worst regimes in the Middle East, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and then successfully battled al-Qaeda terrorists in both countries in his pursuit of democratic reform. History could further record that he accomplished all this at far less the cost than the stalemate in Korea in the 1950s or the defeat in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s.
[Incredible. Though he invaded Iraq under false pretenses and then for four years outdid anyone's projections of incompetence, he is praised for finally proceeding competently. Simply incredible]
We also forget that the abuse heaped on past presidents while in office sometimes fades with perspective. A once-reviled Calvin Coolidge is generally assessed as a far better president than Lyndon Johnson. Ronald Reagan has been recently canonized, so we forget that during the Iran-Contra scandal there was talk of his impeachment. George H. W. Bush blew a 90 percent approval rating after the Gulf War and was blamed all through the 1990s for cynically not removing Saddam; now he is seen as a sober realist and globalist. Lauded today, Bill Clinton ended his tenure in disgrace.
The current stridency of Democratic presidential candidates is also starting to show Americans that easy criticism of a sitting president is not quite the same as assuming the responsibility of governing. [particularly hilarious]
As the campaign wears on and exasperated Democrats continue to appeal to their base, the bystander president could be seen as a more sober and judicious statesman. And should a Republican candidate — all the frontrunners have more or less endorsed the president’s Middle East agenda — be elected, it will provide a lame-duck Bush with a type of national approval for yet a third time.
Similarly, few have offered alternatives to most of the Bush initiatives. Neoconservatism is slandered as messianic and dangerous in its advocacy of democratic reform. Are we then to revert to amoral realism that tolerated Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, or winked as the House of Saud funded madrassas that empowered global jihad? Or should we treat terrorism as a “criminal justice” matter? We did that serially in the 1990s, from the first World Trade Center bombing to the attack on the USS Cole — and earned 9/11 as the logical outcome of such appeasement.
In short, should we avoid another 9/11, see North Korea denuclearize, stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan, or perhaps catch Dr. Zawahiri and bin Laden, while the economy stays strong and our southern border with Mexico is closed — all possible in the next year and a quarter — George Bush could still leave office with a successful presidency.
Hanson was criticizing the next Democratic President even before any candidates had been announced, while making sure that Bush’s reign of incompetence and corruption is remembered with hagiographic lenses. Pathetic mendacity.
Charles Krauthammer on prophasis,
“Imagine that Guantanamo were to disappear tomorrow, swallowed in a giant tsunami. Do you think there’d be any less recruiting for al-Qaeda in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, London?
Jihadism’s list of grievances against the West is not only self-replenishing but endlessly creative. Osama bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa commanding universal jihad against America cited as its two top grievances our stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia and Iraqi suffering under anti-Saddam sanctions.
Today, there are virtually no U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. And the sanctions regime against Iraq was abolished years ago. Has al-Qaeda stopped recruiting? Ayman al-Zawahiri often invokes Andalusia in his speeches. For those not steeped in the multivolume lexicon of Islamist grievances, Andalusia refers to Iberia, lost by Islam to Christendom — in 1492.
This is a fanatical religious sect dedicated to establishing the most oppressive medieval theocracy and therefore committed to unending war with America not just because it is infidel but because it represents modernity with its individual liberty, social equality (especially for women) and profound tolerance (religious, sexual, philosophical). You going to change that by evacuating Guantanamo?”
And don’t forget the ludicrousness of Obama’s statement that if KSM is acquitted by some chance, he would not be freed. Yeah, that’ll show the world the U.S. system of justice works, won’t it?
94. ETAB:
“Your attempt to suggest that we OUGHT to show equal concern towards a terrorist attack and a natural death is illogical. The first is an intentional act of murder; the second is not.”
It depends on how you’re looking at it. If I was asked to “weigh” two particular deaths, then I’d probably also be more outraged by a murder than somebody dying peacefully in bed from a heart attack. But from the point of view of living your life, it’s completely logical to consider the relative risks posed by different threats. That (IMHO) should scale up to public policy decisions, or those decisions are irrational.
“Even if all your examples are homicides, it is still illogical to equate the two, for one cannot equate an agenda of mass murder for the sake of a fundamentalist ideology with an individual homicide”
Actually, I think you can. A violent incident that kills 10 people is obviously ten times as “bad” as a violent incident that kills one person. But that doesn’t make those ten deaths individually any worse. 9/11 was bad because it killed 3000-odd people. But it also only ever happened once – so the chances of you being affected was insignificant. On the other hand, there have been over 16000 murders every single year since – all of them (obviously) violent, and all of them motivated by some sort of hatred.
I’ll flip this around: Are you saying that the death of somebody who was (say) stabbed to death randomly while walking in the part is less important than the death of somebody who died on 9/11?
Why would you be more scared of the incredibly tiny chance of being killed in a terrorist incident than you are of the much more likely chance of you being killed in a car crash? That makes absolutely no sense. No, I’m not saying that acts of mass murder aren’t bad – I’m looking at this from the point of view of how the threat actually affects individuals. If a bad guy kills 100 people, I really don’t care if he killed them individually, in groups of 10 or all at once – the threat to life, the violence to individuals and the outcome is precisely the same.
Thomson: “Republican landslide in the November elections”
Dreamer. The Country Clubbers of the GOP and their Bozo loser-leader still fiddle and fart over the Tea Party syndrome a year after the fact. They cavil with grass-roots personalities, even their own VP candidate, to the point they get destroyed before they get properly heard.
They won’t work, and a third party won’t work. The Dems own the unions and the radicals and their moneys. They can’t lose.
Truman: The buck stops here.
Obama: The buck stops with me.
Self explanatory, isn’t it.
Clinton Did It! And, Really, Clinton Did It! And Clinton Really Did It!
So sorry, the self-righteous indignation and raging hypocrisy of the right renders all your opinions irrelevant . . . FILLIBUSTER! (How dare they!) . . . THREE DAYS BEFORE COMMENTING! (Six days is okay) . . . PROTEST! (Shut up!) . . . KEEP GOVERNMENT OUT OF MY (Medicare) . . . GOVERNMENT HAS NO RIGHT MEDDLING IN MY LIFE (except for assisted suicide or gay marriage or you’re Michael Schiavo) . . .
You see, VDH, people who pay attention put no faith in conservatives or liberals. There is no better example of the arbitrary principles and situational ethics than PJM.
Perfect example:
My Q; ‘If the Republicans win a majority position in 2010, do they become responsible for the economy?
PJMster: No, because Obama will still have veto power.
Of course that is 180 degrees from “Democrats came in in 2006 and ruined Bush’s economy!” which is the opinion of 110% of the conservatives here.
And so, you and your ilk, sharing the common nose ring leashed to Rupert’s spotted hand, have no recourse but to willfully dissemble and whine, hoping against hope that the lowest common denominator will believe it just enough to get off the couch and act on your misinformation.
You should be ashamed.
Brilliant article once DVH.
You have summed up Obama’s first term to a tee.
You’re right, Obama will never change.
Closing Gitmo Cuba and opening Gitmo IL is only going to make us less safe. Having them directly on US soil is a bad thing for symbolism.
Dear fellow readers,
Just as a suggestion, could you consider the greater importance of the future, than the past? What I mean specifically: is that yes I believe the Bush administration left this country in a horrible mess; but so what? The Bush years are over and the DEMs were elected to fix those problems. If (or probably when) the DEMs fail to deliver, that should be the point of debate. So perhaps it might be more productive to illustrate what the DEMs are doing wrong, than to complain when it’s pointed out what the REBs did do wrong.
Bush did it…..for Obama.
Obama is like a car salesman or tv pitchman who sells you the sizzle, no steak, and then even though you may not have bought into it, he moves in with you and pitches his spiel every day.
VDH you rock!
Carla, methinks you are a troll, but in the case that you are not, the point of Gitmo was to disappear people. People not directly guilty of crimes would be held for as long as anything they might say could be a detriment to our efforts and those guilty could be condemned quietly so as not to make martyrs of them. It is martyrdom that encourages many of them. If their deaths or their plight can be used to further the cause, they will sacrifice themselves. The left gives them exactly what they want, validation and publicity.
This is from the NY times.
“And so perhaps the biggest change Obama has made is what one former adviser calls the “mood music” — choice of language, outreach to Muslims, rhetorical fidelity to the rule of law and a shift in tone from the all-or-nothing days of the Bush administration. He is committed to taking aggressive actions to disrupt terrorist cells, aides said, but he also considers his speech in Cairo to the Islamic world in June central to his efforts to combat terrorism. “If you asked him what are the most important things he’s done to fight terrorism in his first year, he would put Cairo in the top three,” Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, told me.”
Since he keeps wanting to invoke Bush to blame all his problems on, maybe it’s time for The One to find a new spiritual advisor. I would suggest (from the old Flip Wilson show) Reverend Leroy of the Church of What’s Happening NOW!
Atheist Conservative and Etab.
You are probably both correct that there is no there there other than an insatiable amoral ego.
But the far more dangerous problem, and the ominous factor that vdh misses is that there is an underlying agenda by the puppeteers that control him. They yearn for a return to the halcyon days of the devine right of kings. Absolute power for the selected few. Every action is directed toward that goal, and the potential consequences make their front man more dangerous than a Bubba on steroids, or even a marxist idealogue. Bubba just wanted to have fun. Hillary just wants a giant village to order around. The crew behind the moron is determined to destroy civilization so they can rule for eternity.
“Quit whining about closing Guantanamo, and close the damn thing.”
Love it!
This is really great. It is about John Edwards fall from Grace. Very Insightful
http://nymag.com/news/politics/63045/
Today is the 11th of January and I submitted a response to this article on Jan 8 a 8:25 am PST or 6:25 CST where I am why is this comment still awaiting moderation?
When the prospect for winning a second term becomes critically small, perhaps in the wake of a major legislative defeat or scandal, and/or with the publicized ascension of a popular and strong Republican contender for ’12 (who, speaking of Nemesis, will represent true Hope and Change), I expect Obama to follow VDH’s advice and substitute Al Qaeda for Bush in his Phillipics, realize the correlation with that and rising approvals, and run with it to the point of unleashing a spectacular military spectacle somewhere, using the very military might of the United States that he has denounced as a Juvenalian circus to appease the angry gun and Bible clingers who like that sort of thing (but actually exploiting the American people’s patriotic loyalty in supporting American military operations and the Commander-in-Chief on principle, no matter how Machiavellian the orchestration of it is behind the curtain).
The good doctor here is very generous in his praise of Bill Clinton when he unleashed Operation Desert Fox on Iraq and the Shock-&-Awe over Kosovo because they just so happened to be the right–and overdue–things to do, but the post-Impeachment Clinton was using the military in precisely that wag-the-dog fashion, as well as a vehicle to vent his own private humiliation and outrage and as soemthing he hoped would drown out the clamoring of the Impeachment by the sheer decible level created by all sorts of military ordnance that were massively unloaded on defenseless Baghdad and Yugo-producing Kosovo.
Some called it gratuitous overkill. I agree with that. But it worked (and erased from the public consciousness his reputation as a draft-dodging and “military loathing” liberal who botched Somalia and Haiti and who was remembered for his “Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell” tampering with traditional–and testosterone heavy– military culture.
Obama will follow suit, as he has already proven willing to study Clinton’s political tactics that caused the latter to leave office with 60% approvals, a year or so after being Impeached.
“Hope & change” itself was plagiarized from the Clinton playbook (and Clinton must have known that, and hence his annoyance and frustration during the campaign). Recall: (Man From) Hope and (It’s Time For) Change (after 12 years of Reagan/Bush).
So it’s a good bet that Team Obama is even now hoping for an opportunity to heavily bombard a target to help balance the scale of public perception that is now leaning heavily towards weakness and ineptitude in foreign policy, and accounts for several percentage points–at least–in his disapprovals.