Riding the Back of the Tiger
There was a general recognition among unhinged regimes—a Cuba, Saddam’s Iraq, a Libya, a North Korea, a Syria, Venezuela—that regional aspirations were, well, contained. Redlines were everywhere—Taiwan was sacrosanct; so was South Korea. Israel would not be destroyed. Europe would not face a Russian invasion. And so on. A Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Mao, Kim Il-sung, Gaddafi, Arafat, etc. would be “corralled” and not allowed to destroy the Western-inspired global order.
Not now. Ever so insidiously in just a year, with the best intentions, the President, driven by narcissism, fueled by post-Enlightenment ignorance, is undermining old-fashioned deterrence. Chavez may have called Bush a “devil” and he may appreciate his handshakes with Obama, but an “incident” along the Colombian border is now more, not less likely.
Call him pathetic (he is), but Chavez has visions of a unified South America, communist, totalitarian, and with himself as titular head. He need not invade and occupy Colombia, only bully it, shoot a bit, humiliate it, anything to show his neighbors that he is a little crazy, mean, unpredictable, and worth kowtowing to. He thinks either that Obama will do nothing or cannot do anything, or perhaps contextualizes Chavez’s own socialist indigenous grievances against “them.”
Ditto that soon most everywhere. We bow to the Chinese and think, “Wow, our Harvard Law Review, three-pointer outside the key shooter, looks great as he breezily strides through the majestic hallways and handles his Q&A in full campaign mode.”
They in turn review his apology tours, dithering on Afghanistan, his bows, his trashing of Bush, his past demagoguery of the Iraq war and prior anti-terrorism protocols, his efforts to be liked, and always the soaring debt, and think “Wow, it’s soon time to make some regional readjustments and then remind old U.S. friends and allies, that we, unlike America, are terrible people to have as enemies, but rather loyal and devout friends.”
1979 On the Horizon
So I think we are going to see soon some regional flare-ups, minor in themselves, but terribly important as the world pauses to gauge the US reaction. Syria and Iran feel liberated and think they can act with impunity. Turkey is an emerging regional hegemon. I would not want to be a former Soviet republic—at least if I were consensually governed, pro-Western, and democratic.
If I were in Manila, I’d start learning Chinese; if in Tokyo, I’d think about massive rearmament. I would not wish to be in NATO if east of Berlin—“allies” in the West would (cf. 1939) stay theoretic and distant, enemies would be concrete and proximate.
The survival of Israel now depends on its pilots and missiles, not on any guarantees from the US. In today’s currency, what we guarantee is worth about as much as US treasury bills, or promises of missile defense for Eastern Europe. If I were an Israeli, I’d either pray for the skill and audacity of the nation’s Air Force pilots, or begin cultivating India, Russia, and China, or that and more.
The problem with all this pessimistic view of human nature is that our elite and anointed smirk at it. They seem to say, “Tsk, tsk, we are 21st century Ivy-Leaguers in the postmodern age. The world is no longer like it was in 1914. I explained all this in my latest piece in Foreign Affairs. Cell phones and the World Court are the order of the day, not Neanderthal notions of something called “appeasement””. But does anyone think human nature has changed since the Greeks due to improved diet, or that brain chemistry has altered with video games?
A Cautionary Tale
Obama inherited, he did not make the rules—whether he thinks he can hope-and-change them away or not.
He can read all the Paul Krugman’s essays all he wants that swear that deficits don’t matter that much, or the borrowing is too small, or that the mega-creditor always supposedly has leverage over the lender (reader: would you rather owe a million or be owed a million?), but that does not make a soon to be $20 trillion dollar debt go away.
Such fantasy does not mean interest rates won’t climb to 5-6% and more, and does not mean that we soon will not be paying a $1 trillion a year in interest to pay back what we owe.
The President can Van-Jones the energy question all he wants, in soaring tones bellowing out “solar, wind, and millions of new green jobs!” But that does not mean that, when the global recovery begins, oil won’t go back to $100 plus a barrel. Indeed, our import tab will grow by leaps and bounds in direct proportion to the new gas and oil we find that remains off limits here at home.
And, yes, again, we can give 100 Cairo speeches, back flip even, apologize to the world for being mean to blacks, Indians, Hispanics, Europeans, Japanese, women, birds, plants, butterflies, whatever. And still an Ahmadinejad, a Chavez or a Putin will not be impressed.
With Bush’s first-term swagger, he may have made things unpopular for America among the masses. But his enemies knew that he would do what it takes to protect the US. His friends abroad assumed that the more they hated him publicly, the more privately they counted on his support in extremis.
Now? The more the masses hail Obama, the more overseas elites in private shudder that they are on their own.
And, of course, they are.
Bulls eye, as usual, Doc!
Mr. Hanson, I take my hat off to you. That was an excellent analysis of where we are all headed with the Obama administration. Unfortunately, I can understand the liberal left’s desire (and you can throw in some libertarians too) to be isolationists. After all, Obama is the classic liberal isolationist. He obviously thinks that his domestic agenda, such as healthcare, is much more important than foreign affairs. Just look at his dithering in Afghanistan while making literally tons of speeches on healthcare. You even saw a speech in front of a joint session of Congress on healthcare, yet you did NOT see one on either Iraq or Afghanistan, two WARS which we are fighting right now. Anyone think that’s a little strange? So Obama obviously doesn’t want to be bothered by foreign affairs, yet I predict that is precisely what is going to bring down his administration. Remember, everybody thinks that it was the economy that brought down Jimmy Carter and to a large extent that was true. But it was the Iranian Hostage Crisis and the invasion of Afghanistan that showed the world just how weak a president Jimmy Carter was and those two issues probably did more to kill his presidency than anything else. And, to speak to Mr. Hanson’s point, do you really, honestly, think the Iranians would have taken those hostages or if the Russians would have invaded Afghanistan if Ronald Reagan was president? Remember, we’re talking about Ronald Reagan, the man who mounted an INVASION of Grenada in order to rescue potential American hostages. What a difference a strong president makes, right? So it will be a foreign policy incident that will be Obama’s undoing, not the economy (although, like Jimmy Carter, the lousy economy will simply seal his fate). Some country (probably Iran) will think it can go all the way in attacking either the United States or some other country and we will just be sitting there, wonder how this all happened. And what the Obama administration never seems to ask is, if the United States will not lead the world and states that it is no better than any other nation, then what other country will step into the void this creates? Will it be China, Russia, or worse, some Muslim nation like Iran with homicidal visions of grandeur? We’re getting a look into our future and it does not look good at all. Gird your loins people, we’re going to be in for a rough three years until the 2012 election. But, if current trends continue, the next president is going to have a lot of work to do rebuilding our once-great foreign policy.
When you have a faulty view of human nature, a sophomoric idea of how power functions geopolitically, and an ego that believes your mere presence can change a leapard’s spots, is it any wonder that you persue utopian fantasy’s?
When I listen to Obama I feel as though I am listening to a college freshman pontificate. When I see his international policies being enacted I get a sense he is channeling Neville Chamberlain or Jimmy Carter. His domestic policies seem to come full cloth out of Atlas Shrugged…
When will we get over our suicidal self-admiration for electing the first black president, take the blinders off and begin to judge him by the policies he persues and the company he keeps?
VDH: you needn’t apologize for “pop-historical analysis”.
You have the eye of a Tennessee marksman leading a fast pheasant.
The historical trajectory of Greece > Rome > Renaissance > Reason > Enlightenment > Industrialization plummets, and its ‘Last Best Hope’ now commits suicide. We descend into a Mad Max world of eternally evil warlords. Not to worry, though, we have a written civil code for that world. It’s the Koran.
It’s irreversible now. Go Galt while you can.
It takes the eye and mind of an historian to see the past clearly and you’ve done it. His worldview is of a piece with his pronouncements that Americans liberated Auschwitz and they speak Austrian in Austria. The Zero is leading this country (and much of the world, probably) down the road to a major war.
You wrote, “Ever so insidiously in just a year, with the best intentions, the President, driven by narcissism, fueled by post-Enlightenment ignorance, is undermining old-fashioned deterrence.”. It’s the “with the best intentions” part that worries me. We all know where they lead.
Tom Clancy once defined war as a mugging on the grand scale; “They have it. We want it. Let’s get it.”
He also pointed out two other things. One was that the decision to go to war is almost never made based on logic, but is rather almost inevitably made based on emotion. (France 1804, England and the U.S. 1812, Mexico 1837 and 1847, France, England and Russia 1856, United States [Civil War] 1861, France 1870, France, Germany, and England 1914.)
He also pointed out that since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, every country that fired the first shot in a war has in the end lost that war. Aggression has been made counter-productive, in fact nearly suicidal, by military technology; Mutual Assured Destruction being the ultimate expression of the concept.
Which means that those who start wars are, ipso facto, not basing their decision on a logical assessment of potential gain vs. potential loss. Logic would dictate not starting the war.
What The One either fails to understand, or simply refuses to accept, is that going back to Clancy’s point about emotionalism, those who seek power for its own sake (after Orwell), or who seek destruction for its own sake (the Islamists and, regrettably, some of our own “enlightened elite’”), do not reason. They simply react with a visceral lust for something they want to seize without doing anything to deserve it, or (more commonly today) an even more visceral hatred of something they want to utterly destroy.
the latter is by far the more dangerous mindset- for everyone else around its possessor. It is difficult to deter someone whose “geopolitical philosophy” consists of “I Hate You, You Must Die” by any means other than having the capability to destroy him. And it must be a real capability, with us showing the willingness to use it. Not so much to make the would-be attacker consider his own mortality if he tries (people with martyrdom complexes cannot be deterred in that way) but simply to make it clear that the attempt would be futile, and end in the attacker’s destruction without significant damage to his intended target (i.e., us.)
If they do not believe we will defend ourselves, they will attack. Their dogmas demand it as surely as The One’s dogma demands that we apologize for our existence. (Our enemies fully intend to rectify that issue ASAP.)
As for China, it has no interest in being our “loyal friend”. In the eyes of its leaders, China is now what it has always been- the Middle Kingdom, the Center of the Universe. We are the “outer barbarians”, who should be doing homage to them. If we do not understand this, we need to learn our place.
In The One’s case, the old men in the Forbidden City can mark that item off as “done” on their “Things To Do” list. By their standards, The One obviously “gets it”.
clear ether
eon
Nice article, as usual. The finish was ominously grand.
Some quibbles, however. Hitler had declared in Mein Kampf just exactly what he intended vis-a-vis Russian territory and wealth. He attacked when he did, because he realized the opportunity for victory was as great as he would ever see. Not necessarily true, but it was a resonable conclusion witht he info he had.
The appreciation for the Russian military strength was inaccurate. The plan had no follow-through for after the imitial assault. They mostly succeeded in their aims, but the Russians were still there, when the Germans thought the resistance would have collapsed, as most nations would have.
This is what the Left has done in our government: They’ve over-reached. Victory for them is so near. Will they take Moscow this Winter with the healthcare takeover? It seems likely, but they may be turned back within sight of the Kremlin.
They may then launch a new, weaker push next year, but as the Germans were shattered in Russia in November 1942, the Left will be brutally destroyed in November 2010. There may be some last, desperate effort in 2011, but thereafter, it will be a long, rollback of the Leftist tide.
If Hitler had been more patient and canny, he could have eventually ended the war in the West, then turned in Russia. True, Russia would hav been even stronger, but it would be an almost certain victory.
Likewise, if the Left had not gotten drunk with power, like Hitler did, if they’d been more patient, they could’ve won it all. “It’s the economy, stupid!” If they had done a few things right, and waited for the economy to recover, they’d've been even more popular, then they could’ve had whatever they wanted. Victory would’ve been theirs.
One sad note: One reason the USSR never wanted to go to actual war with the West, prefrring to fight via proxies, is because their country had been gutted by the war. Engineers and other educated, had been serving and being killed as infantrymen. There was just so much recovery to be made, that they were enfeebled in truth. They looked scarier than they actually were.
We are facing the same prospects. This war on our society shall gut our long-term future. It may even destroy us. Our future is balanced on a knife-edge.
As for the rest of the world, it is not merely the elite awakening to their danger, the danger caused by a diminished America. Even the masses are awakening. A great cry is rising around the world. UH-OH!
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Another example of America undermining “our friend” in support of our enemies.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134635
We are screwed. I live in Europe, and am paid in dollars. I am already experiencing what the rest of the USA will encounter soon, a dollar fading fast.
Just so, Dr. Hanson. Just so. Although it gives me no pleasure, other than good old fashioned schadenfreude, to believe you’ll be proven right about this scenario.
Is it just possible that Germany and Japansurrendered and did not engage in guerilla warfare because we totally crushed them?
Thank you. Prescient and powerful. Dr. Hanson, have you, by chance, been reading the Early Warning Report by Richard Maybury?
And, if we dealt with Iran and North Korea in the way we dealt at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would not their fanatical leaders, (those who survived), direct them to stand down and do as they were told?
We will NEVER win the hearts and minds of the islamists. We can isolate them or allow them to enslave and kill us, but their satanic religion will continue to drive their incipient sociopathy.
Take away their nukes and delivery systems, set out the rules of the game, and discipline strictly; Israeli style plus, and perhaps some sort of “peace” might be attainable.
To all the uber-educated out there: “We are far less removed from the savage than we think we are”. You cannot predict, model, or explain it away.
Victor is right: Without consequences the appeased will move quickly.
Wake up folks.
Danimal
Chavez may appreciate his handshakes with Obama
Perhaps not too much. Chavez’s repeatedly has been telling Pres. Obama to go wash his a** – back in February, and again two weeks ago.
“Wow, our Harvard Law Review…”
Barack Obama’s exalted position with the Harvard Law Review was essentially an honorary one. Carol Platt Liebau who was a member of the staff said that he rarely made an appearance. At best, Obama would visit for a little while, exchange a few pleasantries—and then leave. They would not see him again for another month or two. Obama has never released his Harvard grades. We also know that affirmative action grading has been rampant at Harvard for many decades. Our president reveals himself to be an intellectually shallow and poorly read individual. Lastly, it is fairly well established that he was not the sole author of his two books. A mystery co-author most assuredly assisted him. Who in heck is this Obama guy? How in heaven’s name did he become president of the United States?
The Ivy Leagues still provide a superior education in the hard sciences. However, their liberal arts departments are usually a joke. Affirmative action policies provide unearned grades to the politically favored. That’s the beginning and end of it. The academic community is not so subtly informed that excellence is no longer the number one goal. It has been replaced by the desire to achieve vague egalitarian ends. One immediately senses that obedience to the demands of the zeitgeist is a prudent choice. Dissenters will be punished—and mediocrities like Obama will be amply rewarded for merely behaving in a somewhat polite manner and occasionally saying hello to everyone.
Not happy happy Thanksgiving talk, but none the less penetrating insight and sad but true conclusions. When a majority of voters make a really stupid mistake, well, we all may have to pay for it.
In any case here’s to America, almost all she was and might be again someday. “When the trumpet sounded, the soldiers took up their arms and went out…” Indeed.
This country has gotten what it deserves. Elect an idiot, get idiotic policies. Talk about a reset button. Maybe now the country realizes what is needed in the oval office.
Couple of short points:
Chavez and the Venezuelan Army Vs Columbia. The Columbian Army is experienced, combat ready (to a large extent), and well led, the Venzuelans? Corrupt, an organization compromised by Chavezista parasites. If Hugo has a go he will be gone.
The only way he will survive is if the “influencers” (in this country) prevent Columbia from winning . . .
For an example of the kind of lopsided conflict this would be, think of the Italian “Invasion” of Greece. Signs popped up on the Italo-French border saying “Greeks stop here”.
Nature abhors a vacuum, so does diplomacy. As Obama does his great bow (turning over superpower status and influence to ?) we will be more challenged because someone will step in and dictate. And what will we do? Under the Negusa-Nagast we will beg forgiveness and withdraw further (after all, it’s all our fault).
Weak as water leadership emboldens everyone else.
Dr. Hanson,
Another fine article. I fear we are much closer to 1914 and the concomitant upheaval of the world order that followed than to the gentle naivety of our 21st century Harvard rulers. The world is a very unsettled place and Obama’s abdication of Pax American only serves to hasten petty tyrants.
great essay VDH
obama is already the worst president of the USA in history. I think he will set the bar so high no one will be able to be worse.
he has made the world a lot more dangerous for everyone.
Excellent analysis.
As you point out, Obama’s narcissism and ignorance create a potentially disastrous scenario. Obama is ideologically empty; his focus is always and only on Himself, and ensuring himself that he is able to ‘make people adulate him’. He has no thoughts beyond himself; no thoughts or awareness of America.
As such, he’s embedded within the socialist left, whose view of the world is postmodernist cultural relativism, where all people, nations, cultures, beliefs, behavior, are equally valid and are viewed only as ‘expressions of diversity’.
Any and all heinous behavior is viewed as due to some authoritarian agent trying to evaluate and even control this ‘freedom of diversity’.
This is the view of the postmodernist – a being cocooned without acknowledging the cocoon, in the safety of the old USA. No-one living in a dictatorship, in an impoverished and crime-ridden state – enjoys such naivete.
Obama himself has no awareness or knowledge of history or foreign affairs. He has one and only one agenda in his foreign travels: to make them adulate him. That’s all. It’s strictly a personal agenda of personal control.
To achieve this internally,Obama’s strategies are to misinform, to emotionally manipulate…all those wink, grins and ‘shout outs’…and to play heavily on race. In the US, it works; he can make you ‘his’ because he reminds you of ‘white guilt’.
The problem is that this strategy, of reminding you of your guilt, by referring to ‘race’ doesn’t work in the rest of the world. They feel absolutely no guilt for the US era of slavery. Since many of them are of diverse ethnicities, they are uninterested in Obama’s insistence on his own diversity.
So, Obama’s endless references to the Era Before Obama,and his being the ‘first black president’ a ‘Pacific president’ and references to his ‘Chicago diversity’..are totally ignored by foreign leaders. Thus, Obama has no tactics to ensure their adulation. They aren’t interested in him personally.
His apologies for the Before Obama Era, his bows to non-Western leaders; his open insults to Western leaders…suggest to them that he is insincere.
His empty rhetoric, filled with self-references and, as Sarkozy pointed out, his refusal to acknowledge reality and his rhetorical virtual world speeches…show the world that he is an ‘empty suit’.
Obama’s rejection of Iranian democratic demonstrations, his refusal to acknowledge Iranian nuclear bomb activities, his rejecion of the Honduran contitution…all of these show his ignorance and indifference to the real problems of the world.
Obama’s only interest in the world is whether or not its leaders and peoples ‘admire’ and ‘adore’ him. His only strategy, during his entire life, to achieve adulation, has been…not by merit, not by work, but by enciting guilt. It doesn’t work in the non-US world. And for Obama,if you aren’t someone who adulates him…he has absolutely no interest in you. None.
The United States should withdraw all of its troops from Europe.
The Europeans say they don’t want us there and it is time to take them at their word.
Obama’s ignorance of America, her history, and her people could fill a book. He has no idea of the role we play in the world as the symbol and personification of liberty and freedom. He does nothing to reinforce that notion, in fact, he’s doing his best to diminish if not destroy it.
I sincerely hope that my fellow countrymen awaken to the horrible mistake that occured in 2008 and that our enemies do not in any way think that the weakness of our current president extends to us.
Professor,
Just one quibble regarding Turkey. They could become a regional hegemon, but I doubt that would mean crossing the frontier into the Caucasian republics. The people of this region have survived centuries between the Russian hammer and the Turkish anvil. Even their music and dance reveal a ferocious martial spirit. I couldn’t think of a tougher place to fight a war even for the redoubtable Turks.
Any sort of cross-border incursion would bring Russia into the fight. I was not aware until reading the work of M. Philips Price that the Armenians provoked the Turkish response during World War I which nearly resulted in genocide. Price contends that thousands of Armenian men defected to Russia where they raised a number of regiments to fight with the czarist army. You can put the conflict into the category of “two sides to every story” if you like.
And finally, such a move by Turkey runs directly counter to Ataturk’s doctrine of “Turkey for the Turks.” The Ottoman state for its entire history was a multi-cultural and religiously tolerant empire. Greeks, Jews, and Armenians served the sultan as specialists and advisors. Ataturk believed, rightly or wrongly, that the various subject peoples represented a fifth column. He basically sent them packing except for the Kurds who were dispersed and resettled across eastern Anatolia. In exchange, the Balkan Turks were repatriated to their natural homeland in Asia Minor.
Turkey holds a strong hand by reason of her strategic position and martial traditions. But surely the risks of open warfare outweigh any possible gain. I’ve heard rumors that Turkey is making overtures to Iran. Is this because they have been snubbed by Europe once too often? If so, it’s high time the Europeans made an effort to fully integrate Turkey into the fold of western nations.
Damn glad I moved to China 5 years ago. I could see this coming, and got the F out of Dodge. It is absolutely fantastically great here
One of the earlier comments mentioned Clancy – another one of his great lines is “if you’re going to kick a tiger in the ass, you’d better have a plan for dealing with his teeth”
Unfortunately for everyone, globally, the current American leadership has no plan, nor even a decent appreciation of even the presence of the Tiger(s).
Well, in stating that they apparently have no plan, one has to take it on faith that Obama and his cabal really are as ignorant as they seem, and not deliberately trying to ‘take America down a peg or two’. Which isn’t such a far fetched notion for someone who developed their formative worldview as an outsider.
a 6 weeks /victory in France would mean 3 weeks / triumph in Russia
hmm, why did the Brits retreat from Dunkerque then ? they weren’t fighting during these 6 weeks ?
But he gambled that the French and UK were far more traumatized as winners in the Great War’s killing fields than were the defeated Germans
Chamberlain didn’t want to project a war against Germany, Daladier was for undertake this war, but alone he couldn’t possibly afight this war, and this is why he bitterly had to follow Chamberlain.
“Ah les cons…” of course french population was happy to avoid a war (besides, which population desires a war ?), and if the government had decided else, then the French would have complied
Obama’s campaign craftiness made the people as a whole cats-paws; however, in becoming the POTUS Obama has grabbed the tiger by the tail. President Obama is in over his head with an ego to match, combined with his ignorance, arrogance, disdain, & cowardice makes for a most combustible cocktail which is bound to explode. Never mind his Marxist policies in the House & Senate are creating another tinderbox as the anger mounts towards him. Obama lives in his own bubble & unaware of the pitchforks are aimed at him now. Obama continues to blame President Bush, but looks more the fool every time he directly or indirectly says so.
This fixation on Obama is not productive. His policies are fully endorsed by most bureaucrats in DC, almost the entire Democratic party on Capitol Hill, the press, and millions of Americans, including the highly educated elites. If he were to step down, there are many, many others with the same world views ready and eager to take his place. The problem isn’t with him, but our society, of which Obama is a simple manifestation.
Usually aggression, bullying, and nationalist agendas evolve into wars—when the aggressive party is convinced it has more to gain through war than lose.
hmm, Irak wars weren’t of the same conception ?
“… the President, driven by narcissism, fueled by post-Enlightenment ignorance….”
Well, not every president has a direct line to Jesus.
“With Bush’s first-term swagger, he may have made things unpopular for America among the masses. But his enemies knew that he would do what it takes to protect the US.”
Ah, yes, that’s why when he got that CIA memo that bin Laden was set to strike, he swung into action and … told the CIA agent, “OK, you’ve covered your ass.”
All in all, another Hanson screed that the John Birch Society would have been proud of.
So how do we survive three more years of this travesty?
Reading this essay alone should send shivers down the spine of most Americans. When combined with Dr. Hansons NRO “We Ain’t Seen Nothing Yest” http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=NTM2ZGFjNTFlMDc2YzRjOWUyOTJmMjNlMTY5YWI4ZGQ= and “The New War against Reason” http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=NmY1MThiMWYzMjBkOTJmZWYwZWQyYWFjOGFiZWZhYjE= the truly evil nature(that’s right, evil) of what Obama,his minions, the media and academia are leading us to is truly frightening.
Obama is the end product of metastatic affirmative action policies where ones ability is measured by one’s race and ethnicity, rather than ones ability. Perhaps initially, affirmative action was necessary to correct a terrible imbalance due to racism and prejudice, but after a decade or so that policy should have whithered on the vive and died.
At a young age, Obama was very well aware of the game he had to play to move forward in his education and career. He knew that it did not make a difference whether his grades were good or bad. It only mattered that he knew how to play the race card and nurture his relationships with a self loathing, guilt ridden white Academia and Democratic politics. Put simply, Obama is unqualified to be President, and the net result of this is his inability to govern our nation in an increasing complex world.
what the big O doesn’t understand is that he has the muscle to throw everyone in the world under the bus, including the Chinese. we have the oil we have the intellectual capacity, and the manufacturing capability, everything. no he just wants to let it rust so ours is as decrepit as the rest of the worlds. the healthcare boondoggle will just saddle us with dept and will give the USA a serious cash flow problem.
Indeed, our allies, and those nations that have historically looked to American for stability and protection must surely be wondering whether it is worse to be American’s friend or enemy. The greater danger is that it is America that is the ultimate force for world stability, not only militarily but economically. If a hostile power, bent on destroying America and world peace was working with a purpose to those ends, could they be doing much that would be more destructive than the policies—such as they are—that Barack Obama is following? Whether he unbalances world stability out of stupidity, misguided utopian, socialist fecklessness, or malice will matter little to those who will suffer the consequences.
Where will the first probes take place? Latin America? The Middle East, in any one of many ways? Taiwan? Poland? Georgia? South Korea? And when Obama holds endless meetings to discuss the first crisis, announcing that he is announcing that he expects to have an announcement about an announcement soon, it takes scant imagination to understand what the world’s despots will think, and what they will likely do if they realize that the only price to be paid for invoking American wrath is a lofty, hopenchangy tongue lashing?
And what do the Israelis think? Can any reasonable Israeli imagine that America will stand with her in anything beyond vague posturing, gestures, and promises of thinking about “moving toward” sanctions (when was that one? More than a month ago?), or perhaps strongly worded diplomatic protests delivered with a bow, an apology and a reset button? In a part of the world where support and help are delivered in days if not hours (or don’t bother; it’s too late), we are now operating on months to support our own troops engaged in a hot war. What Israeli, understanding that their very existence, and the existence of their nation and world Jewry has depended upon Israel’s strategic alliance with America, would continue to trust in that alliance after a year of Barack Obama? Not only will Israel attack Iran, they must. The only question remaining is will they use nuclear weapons to ensure that they finish the job and to avoid putting at risk their best air assets, assets which will become even more precious as Obama severs defense ties for Israel’s affront of trying to continue to exist. What rational nation seeking to stop rather than just slow down an imminent genocidal threat would do less?
Bill Clinton ran the White House and international affairs like a state government. Barack Obama is running things like a college debating society and local chapter of Amnesty International. I am tempted to revive the old dictum that we get precisely the politicians we deserve, but America does not deserve this. When Barack Obama bows deeply, it is the heads of all Americans our enemies urinate on. The violent and deranged understand that kind of “engagement” and “smart diplomacy” all too well.
“The challenges of the new millenium are easily remedied. I will face each with strength, courage, and an iron fisted resolve. I will unsheath the most powerful arrow in my quiver. I will give another speech. That’ll show ‘em!”
–Obama–
“Obama’s ignorance of America, her history, and her people could fill a book.”
Barack Obama is a Harvard man. There is an ugly truth regarding the Ivy Leagues that must not be ignored: a student attending one of these august universities tends to stick a wet finger into the air to see which way the wind is blowing. Their parents spend enormous amounts of money and jack the system in whatever way possible to ensure their progeny eventually attain a very affluent lifestyle. The actual education these kids receive is of secondary importance. The prestige is all that really matters. We can take it for granted that the students are encouraged to go along with the flow. They are not to dissent from the prevailing left-wing orthodoxy and risk a possible lower grade. It is this sort of cowardly cultural milieu that allows an Obama to manipulate white “elites” who know on a gut level that their soft science degrees are often phonier than a three-dollar bill.
It is a myth that affirmative action programs are useful only to minorities. The majority whites soon jump onto the bandwagon. The lower standards help them to achieve their goals. Never forget that the unimpressive Caroline “you know, you know” Kennedy also gradated from Harvard Law. Professors at most of these Ivy League institutions are infamous for inflating the grades of their students. They do it all the time. This is considered ho-hum and not in the least bit controversial.
Spot on, except for the phrase ‘ the President, with the best intentions…’. To assume Obama & Co. have the best intentions vis a vis The United States requires a leap of faith of such magnitude I cannot accept. ‘Clear and present danger’ would be a more apt description. Well, today is Thanksgiving. I guess we must give the turkey who currently occupies the White House aday off.
There is a sense of inevitability to it all. The American people choose Obama over a tough minded war hero. We knew what we were getting into. We are a free and democratic society, we want to live in peace. Most of us don’t want to go looking for trouble.
These “tin horn” dictators come and go, when one of them gets too far out of line they will once again incur the terrible wrath of the USA and her allies as VDH so well describes in books like “Carnage and Culture” and “The Soul of Battle”. The one real worry is one that Pat Buchanan writes about, and that is whether or not multiculturalism is destroying the fabric of this great society to the point we lose the will to defend ourselves.
Anonymous@32: Is that the best you can do for a comeback? Really? Because that was pathetic.
2. Libertyship46:
True..
But how many brave American men/women will have their arms and legs blown off,
and how many will have to die because our country elected a world
appeasing punk.
Screw the Water-Walkers.
Happy Thanksgiving to the troops-
Pathetic is a good word for people who ‘think’ that ‘thinking’ can change the world. Calling something a different name makes it a different thing. “A rose by any other name…” and it would still have thorns.
Our enlightened visionaries are leading us into a briar patch, confident there will be no consequences.
#32 anonymous – Yes, Bush punted on bin Laden. It took 9/11 for him to change from (compassionate conservative) dove to hawk. A conservative is a liberal who was mugged yesterday.
31. Marie Claude:
Usually aggression, bullying, and nationalist agendas evolve into wars—when the aggressive party is convinced it has more to gain through war than lose.
hmm, Irak wars weren’t of the same conception ?
although I see that one could make that argument regarding Iraq, I do think that would not be correct.
Wow…this makes about ten articles about climate change this week on this site !!!
At least we get to know what its like to be in the greenpeace site eh?
Nice article and happy thanksgiving vdh and to everyone else as well.
Obama is not only ignorant of American history but of world history. His behavior to foreign leaders and his speeches (eg Cairo) show this. And what is amazing is that his staff who are supposed to write his speeches and advise him on behavior, seem as indifferent and clueless as Obama.
The Obama administration operates in postmodern relativism, where all expression of a people, even the most barbaric, unjust and heinous, are accepted as pure expressions of their cultural uniqueness. Evaluation of such beliefs/behavior is considered something only a self-defined patriarchal authoritarian would do.
Then, following along this same sophist path of ideological leftism, both Obama and his administration consider that the pre-Obama era of the world, with its strife and wars, is a direct result of Western colonization. It never occurs to them that, quite possibly, evil exists in the hearts of others quite by itself and not as a result of some heavy Western colonial hand.
So, these cocooned Obamite individuals consider that all it takes is a grin, a wink, a ‘shout out’…and these previously resentful nations will shed their colonial anger and move right back to their fete-like multicultural expressions of diversity.
That these nations, i.e., Iran, Venezuala, Russia, N. Korea, have agendas of imperialism and control all by themselves, and not as a result of American influence..never occurs to the egoistic minds of the left.
Egoistic? Yes. After all, the Left assumes that ALL major actions in the world, both good and bad, are the result of the West. The non-Western world operates only as a diverse multicultural pavilion, not as a causal agent of any importance. Therefore, Islamic terrorism is caused by the West; not by the Islamic ideology and nations. Poverty in Africa is caused by theWest not by the corruption of the African leaders. And etc. How’s that for leftist superiority?
Since the West causes everything on this planet except the most trivial multicultural pavilion expressions of cultural diversity, then, the Obama administration is focused on withdrawing the US from everything..and focusing only on the foods and dress and ‘protocol bows’ to these weird foreign peoples.
Obama? Again, his focus is only on Himself. He wants your adulation; that’s all. Because he’s ..well, he’s Obama. Nothing more than that.
RE #16/ David Thomson:
[...] Barack Obama’s exalted position with the Harvard Law Review was essentially an honorary one. [...]
All Obama’s “official” and “academic” positions were (and are) essentially honorary ones, created and managed by a “When The Truman Show Meets The Manchurian Candidate” mystery force – conspiracy freak? Maybe -
* Occidental College (not a big deal to get into), yet Obama’s admission and status there is shrouded in mystery, exactly like his grades there -
* mystery transformation in an American citizen – no proof of being born as such, no proof of naturalization, affair fought in court (Coie Perkins having billed the WH for their services in this matter @ $ 1.5 million – and his private attorney, Robert Bauer, is now the WH, presidential legal counsel) -
* the ensuing transfer to Columbia (a more demanding school) is eqally a mystery, no paper track, no discernable recommandations, no financial records, no discernable tenure there – as far as his academic work at Columbia, that is Monty Python story -
* next leg of career in New York – mysterious -
* Harvard admission – equally mysterious, not admission records, no academic work for scutiny, mystery election at the Harvard Law,
* career in law firm in Chicago – a mystery -
* list of clients – a mystery -
* 12 years of law professorship in Chicago – mystery, not a single piece of legal writing –
*… and the list can go on and on …
… and this person nobody knows nothing about GOT 57 million votes to lead this country in peace and war – and we still know nothing about him -
Ugly… hope we won’t face a sudden, stiff bill for having him in the oval Office -
The President is pursuing a disatrous course; disastrous not only for the people of the United States but disastrous for Israel, Europe and perhaps South America. His ego, and the advise of those whom he has appointed to his staff, insure that he will be tested shortly and, based on his conduct since assuming office, he will fail at that.
Where IS the MSM on climategate? Betraying the American people….again!What a damn disgrace.
Out of the ballpark, Dr. Hanson. Stay at the plate!
I was talking to a guy on my vanpool the other day about the assault on American that Obama and Congress is carrying out, he replied with “I just can’t think of things that negatively. It will work out ok”. My response was that if you are standing on a train track, and a train is headed your way, it will run over you regardless of your perception of or understanding of the train. A train is certainly headed our way. Or, if you prefer, America is the Titanic, and Obama is at the helm, All Ahead Flank, straight at the iceberg. The question is, can we sabotage the engine to slow the ship before it strikes the iceberg?
Heard this song today and thought of the President.
“I can’t stand this indecision
Married with a lack of vision
Everybody wants to rule the world.”
Everybody Wants To Rule The World
Songwriters: Hughes,Chris;Orzabal,Roland;Stanley,Ian
I hope the professor isn’t prescient.
I hope we all have a happy holiday and a prosperous new year.
We should never be in a war we do not intend to win.
If we cannot muster the will to win it, we need to not be there in the first place. If it was Bush’s intention to weaken the terrorist’s ability to wage war on the USA,,, seems reasonable,,, we never should have invaded Iraq to remove Saddam. We should have just nuke’d em.
The same goes for Afghanistan.
I grow war weary. Time to get it done , or get out.
I hope, but I doubt, that our president has the balls to do either.
We can all admit that Obama is a big mistake. We should understand that he is in agreement with the Ultra Left in Congress.
Just think, we have Harry Reid, Chris Dodd, Tom Harken, Dick Durbin, Patrick Lahey, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Markey, Waxman,
and on, and on, and on.
THIS IS AMERICA’S MAJOR PROBLEM.
Obama will more in likely be gone in 2012, but the ultra Left Senator and Representative will still be in Washington, spending and taxing .
We need to get rid of these spenders, republican and democrat, American needs to learn how to say NO, to the Political Class.
Let’s start in 2010, by voting against every Congressman or Congresswoman. Republican or Democrat.
“THROW THE BUMS OUT”
As a late poster let me summarize by saying that it is refreshing to see the high level of discourse in the comments on VDH essays. There was only one certifiably inane comment made here today. It is amazing that the gooferista’s don’t leave their natural mating grounds at the Huffington Post or the DailyKos to try their clownish attempts at cynical satire against the stone granite logic of the good professor. Comments here are written with flair and imagery that whet the appetite for substantive thinking.
“with the best intentions”
I think you give him more credit than he deserves. I would think that’s because you’re a nice guy wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt. But I’m not the only one who think’s the destruction of the US *is* his agenda. (e.g. his comments on the constitution, and his attempts to undermine it) He wants to empower a new world order, with himself as head. Pity his advisors are so shallow even they can’t see how out of the their depth they all are.
13. white tiger:
And, if we dealt with Iran and North Korea in the way we dealt at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would not their fanatical leaders, (those who survived), direct them to stand down and do as they were told?
We will NEVER win the hearts and minds of the islamists. We can isolate them or allow them to enslave and kill us, but their satanic religion will continue to drive their incipient sociopathy.
~~~~
Orson Scott Card is a dem. sci-fi writer. despite his political leanings, he has more vision than some rep’s. One line he used in Ender’s Game describing containing an ememy to be frightfully prescient.
“their fear was greater than their hate”. iow, the only way to stop the enemy from fighting was to make them MORE afraid of getting their head handed to them on a platter. This is the only language islamists understand. He who is perceived to be the strongest/most ruthless controls the discussion. Which is what Hiroshima and Nagasaki did with the Japanese. My father-in-law was a POW, and his life was SAVED by the US dropping those bombs.
#22
His apologies for the Before Obama Era, his bows to non-Western leaders; his open insults to Western leaders…suggest to them that he is insincere.
~~~~
Well, that and the sure knowledge he’d sell his own grandmother . . . . Someone with no loyalty to anyone does not exactly engender trust from friends, let alone enemies. after all, he *did* throw his grandmother (who reared him) under the bus when he thought it would get him something.
Let us not forget that about two thirds of Israel’s defense budget comes directly from US aid money. Suggesting that we rely on our fighter pilots alone may not be enough.
Wow, Happy Thanksgiving to you too!. I guess there is no rest for the weary. Dr. Hanson, your analysis is spot on as usual. The clock is definitely ticking, and it is only a matter of time before something horrendous happens. If the Chinese don’t make a try for Taiwan, or if the North Koreans don’t do something stupid, then you know Israel and Iran will start shooting at each other soon. Or perhaps Iran will attack Saudi Arabia, they are already arming and funding shi’ite terrorists in Yemen to attack the Saudis. Obama is clueless about the true nature of humanity, he has no understanding of America’s position in the world since 1945. Maybe Obama believes western civilization is evil and needs to be destroyed. It is hard to believe that he has the best interest of the US at heart.
I pray everyday that the rank and file in the FBI, CIA, and all the other law enforcement personnel can keep this country safe, because the White House is doing everything it can to make the world a more dangerous place.
Even if they can keep us safe at home, the weakest of our allies will soon feel the wrath of our enemies, and this time, the US will not bail them out.
Even if the Republicans retake the House or the Senate, both doubtful in 2010, Obama will do nothing if the US or one of our allies is attacked. 2012 can’t come soon enough.
There has never ever been, I don’t believe, such extensive and specific documentation against public figures who are violating their oaths of office and failing to fulfill their obligations under those oaths.
Article after article, website after website, day after day, week after week…..we have more information immediately at hand than apparently be comprehended.
Is it going to do any good? Or we just going to have, in the end, the very highly documented collapse of the sovereign nation once called the United States of America, and no use will be made of the facts…..to remove the people destroying us.
It’s beginning to make me sick.
VDH: So, yes, we need to ride that tiger through to the 2010 elections and then beyond that to the 2012 elections and further. However, the voting polls must be our weapon and nothing else.
Personally I shall not vote for anyone who does not exhibit and expound conservative positions for office at any level, nationals, state, or local. We conservatives can have a big tent in that we are sound enough to allow for all stripes of social conservatives and fiscal conservatives. One principle we cannot moderate on is the that of following our nation Constitution to the letter. Our Constitution is not a living breathing entity, it says what it says. If there’s an issue with our Constitution than the process for amending it must be followed; which process does not, IMHO, include judicial modification.
It would be great if all of us who similarly dislike Obama’s policies would emulate MG Smedley Butler and volunteer stand in front of the WH protecting it from all who would storm it, as MG Butler would have back during the days of FDR, who MG Butler disliked very much.
Wait, VDH pontificates on how small things mean a lot, then omits how Bush’s ambassador to Iraq told Sadaam Hussein we wouldn’t intervene in a Kuwait invasion.
Somehow I don’t see Obama making that mistake.
Essential vdh
Why do I get the impression in all of vdh’s writing about BHO that he still does not believe what America is dealing with in BHO and the other subversives in his circle of “friends”
BHO’s back ground is a communist supported AA, and PC subversion with AA being denied by BHO as a benefit to him His rationalization is that he earned it. In reality he milked it. It was simply a pass that was not earned created by the Utopian communist subversion of words and ideas that do not even work.
All can see that no exceptional talent was developed by this suversion of AA and PC when looking at BHO’s alligator mouth and butterfly rear. When the reset button is pushed he starts with the same speech.
This Utopian subversion of American values by creating the concept of AA and PC is of course denied by BHO and his cohorts because deep down he and his “pack” know they were not really disadvantaged. It is a tool for them a vehicle.
Instead AA and PC has been used as a political club like any good communist subversion would do and as a consequence the results with any true metric of measurement show that the African American community is now less capable of dealing with life than they were in the 1940 and 50′s when they were just beginning to move forward on their own merits. They are as created a divided and anti American subgroup that manifests it self with Rev. Wright, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, The BHO’s and CZARS.
See Thomas Sowell’s and Walter Williams’ or Shelby Steel’s writings on the historical and economic facts of a robust and competent black community before welfare, AA and PC declared them incompetent and in need of help. This creating at the same time the desired communist objective of anti American feelings for the “wrongs” that were used to justify AA and PC as any good communist subversive action would employ.
BHO’s entire white family background was essentially communist indoctrination and subversion starting with his mother. Of course his “father” was looking for a handout as most African Country Moslems now expect out of the US. They also find ways to use America’s PC, AA programs.
Now in a welfare state in the Democrat run cities it is as dangerous to go into certain areas as it is in Iraq in the worst areas.
Generations of ignorance and loss of self reliance of the Individual American has occurred. Intraracial war fare descends at night and can emerge and erupt at any time for a hapless victim of drugs, robbery, rape and murder. And of course it is according to AA and PC not the fault of the perp. A class war fare tactic–its almost to easy for them now. Most Americans are still not paying attention or do not want to be called racist by the idiots.
They BHO and his like are just “smart” to take something not earned as according to non subverted American values. They cannot accept the fact that it is not deserved so they rationalize the victim indoctrination and push the subversion to justify their “gifts”. Intently Dividing Americans as never before on color, stripes, spots and any other deviant difference.
For BHO and his like America has to be the “bad guy”. That is the only way he and others can maintain their self respect and create loyalty to complete their “mission” they have to destroy American values to maintain power.
They have to deny the America where individual responsibility and hard work should be the primary reason people succeed in America.
Class war fare and redistribution of wealth is their source of power. This is not just politics this is a revolution taking place because we all have been dumbed down and not paying attention. Even the vdh’s.
Nothing about the concept of AA and PC is true for BHO and for blacks in America today. The results of AA and PC is simply creating subversive elements in the US. It demands class warfare and it is an admission by the US AA and PC “elite” subversives speaking for America and Americans the factual untruth that America treated people wrongly.
In summary It fits into the Utopian language of communist indoctrination that is designed to take America down from within. It judges America with no context of time and place and circumstances nor does it see what existed in the world at the time, what still exists in the current world and it looks at all people in contact with America as “victims” and it is of course the opposite.
BHO and his”friends” are nothing but a band of indoctrinated subversives that now have a real shot at destroying America.
Chicago politics requires a pact with the “devil”. It has been the most corrupt city in the US for at least 100 years. The BHO’s fit right in. The distribution of wealth simply means to them we will take yours, for maintaining power and keep ours and make more from distributing just some of yours.
Now that corruption tied to a communist/socialist tool of AA and PC will be used to destroy America. It will have the fig leaf of being “Capitalist” but of course the government will control it and decide who wins and loses.
The embedded communists within the “elite and truly ignorant academics” is the engine that has kept this subversion alive even in the face of its total abject monstrous failures abroad.
Not until vdh sees this subversion and the Utopian propaganda aspect of BHO and what is happening to America will he truly hit the bulls eye with his comments.
# 48 misanthropicus:
Here apart from his Vault Birth Certificate are just some but my no means ALL of the OTHER documents and information the Obamanation is HIDING.
There is a lifetime of “missing” documentation — but it must a coincidence — it has to be a coincidence — just keep telling yourself, “it’s a coincidence.”
Obama/Dunham divorce — Released (by independent investigators)
Soetoro/Dunham marriage license — Not released
Soetoro adoption records — Not released
Punahou School records — Not released
Soetoro/Dunham divorce — Released (by independent investigators)
Soetero/Obama name change documentation – Not released
Selective Service Registration — Released — Probable counterfeit
Occidental College records — Not released and vigorously defended
Passport records — Not released and official government passport files scrubbed clean by John O. Brennan — now Obama’s terrorism and intelligence czar
Just a coincidence???????????
Columbia College records — Not released
Columbia thesis — “Soviet Nuclear Disarmament” — Not released
Harvard College records — Not released
Harvard Law Review articles — None
Illinois Bar Records — Not released
Baptism certificate — None Medical records — Not released (unless you count a one-pager from his personal physician saying Obama’s healthy)
Just a coincidence????????
Law practice client list — Not released
University of Chicago scholarly articles — None
Annenberg Challenge Board Minutes — None
Illinois State Senate records — None
Illinois State Senate schedule — Lost
Almost 50 years old and there’s no paper trail — coincidence, Would you hire someone with this curriculum vitae? The man is completely undocumented. You don’t know anything about Obama — operative word, KNOW. None of us really do because he and his life are undocumented — an impossible coincidence — and Obama fiercely defends the release of what documentation is available. Some of us believe that something isn’t on the level and that we are entitled as United States citizens to ask any damned politician who he is, what his politics are, what his agenda is, where he came from and who sent him. You do know Obama could end all of this with a single phone call — why doesn’t he press the button?
“If thirty years ago anyone had dared to predict that our psychological development was tended towards a revival of that medieval persecution of the Jews, that Europe would again tremble before the Roman fasces and the tramp of legions, that people would once more give the Roman salute as two thousand years ago, and that instead of the Christain Cross an archaic swastika would lure onward millions of warriors ready for death – why, that man would have been hooted at as a mystical fool. And today? Surprising as it may seem, all this absurdity is a horrible reality.”
–Pyschiatrist Carl Jung, ‘pop historicizing’ in 1936. It seems war itself may come from a place that none of us fully understand.
Sorry for the spelling, typing to fast:
Christian/Psychiatrist
#56 “…the stone granite logic of the good professor. Comments here are written with flair and imagery that whet the appetite for substantive thinking.”
Oh, please! Both the essay and most of the responses have been boilerplate right wing rambling.
The issue that neither the right nor Obama can do much about is the emergence of China as a economic power and the sad decline of all our industrial base. When you want service for your computer and make a phone call, what country do you find yourself talking to?
A USEFUL historical study (rather than a pop rehash of the perils of appeasement) would take on the issue of whether we ever (since the War of 1812) have been in such a situation where we had declined as a nation, where we exported so many finished products and produced so little (relatively) ourselves.
I have no idea what the “solution” to this problem is, short of nuking the rest of world world and starting over, after we have nuked all the folks who previously made the stuff we bought. We CONSUME, but don’t produce and try all sort of economic shenanigans, bundles, and packages to get the money we need to consume more, whether it be health care or the newest electronic gadget. The “free market” to the extent such a thing really exists has gotten us here just as much as liberal panty-waisting.
It is scary to consider the war which might eventually be fought which would or could turn this around.
I am not advocating isolationism or war at this time, but just pointing out that ranting about Obama is NOT really addressing our problems. It is actually the right’s way of whistling past the graveyard, whereas the left does it with whistles of global warming and health care.
Yes, Dwight, it’s “scary” out there. At least you got that right. Thanks for your lukewarmplate and left wing mumblings. You just keep your head in the sand of this phoney evenhandedness and you’ll be alright.
36. Mike McDaniel -
Sadly, in a way, America does deserve Obama. Certainly the left is getting what (it thought) it always wanted: a less assertive (i.e. less confident) nanny state which will level society through propaganda and subtle coercion; and withdraw from our role as military guarantor of the current global order. But we on the right must take our share of the blame. For too long we played turtle and ceded our national culture to the left. They now control academia and the media and have succeeded in layering their socialist narrative into every aspect of our culture. We should have known that after a couple of generations of media emphasis on material acquisition, sexual hedonism, and sensory stimulation – without balancing it out with an understanding of the costs – much of our youth would have lost touch with reality. There is nothing wrong with pursuing pleasure or happiness, but when it becomes the sole focus of existence it leads to cynicism and apathy.
The left has done its job well. It has eroded our confidence so that we half believe that we are in fact as evil (imperialist, sexist, racist and exploitative) as they say we are. And we have not stood up to rebut their ludicrous worldview with the plain fact that the US is absolutely and utterly unique in the history of great powers, in its willingness to fight and die to spread human freedom, even if it is not always for 100% altruistic reasons.
As a result, huge swaths of our own population now accept this narrative as a matter of course. I’m heartened to see the right finally stirring from its apathy and asserting itself, but a lot of damage has been done, and it will be a hard task (though not impossible) task to re-introduce political incorrectness back into the media and universities… and in the shorter term, surmount the dangers that VDH outlines above…
Though I don’t like to do it, I must quote Rahm Emanuel who said that a we should never let a good crisis go to waste (or something to that effect). Let’s not let the Obama catastrophe go to waste either. Seize this chance to do everything you can to discredit the left’s corrupt, deceitful, hypocritical, factually challenged, endlessly cynical and destructive narrative. Word of mouth is a good place to start. Arm yourself with facts and speak out against the tropes of the left whenever the opportunity arises. In the end, whether the radical left succeeds in destroying this great nation or not, is basically up to us.
All the best, Thanksgiving 2009
69. Dwight
You miss the point. Whatever economic challenges we face are exarcebated by demonstrating weakness in our foreign policy. Period. Why the artful attempt to deflect an obvious conclusion?
Among our vulnerabilities, 4-stars elevating jihadist-inclusive diversity above the lives of American soldiers, rules of engagement that paint a target on and bind the hands of our own in combat, and non-uniformed foreign combatants conferred with the same legal protections, rights, and privileges as American schoolteachers, nurses, and housewives; it is the dereliction of political will to declare war that has given our warriors the understanding that they have been ordered to stand-down to their mission of pax Americana and march to the knell of requiescat in pace.
Our congress’s last declaration of war was against Romania. Their shockingly unawesome dithering, not only against jihadists but in thwarting nearly every other threat to American interests hitherto, has now made it possible for our enemies to abandon the tradition of waging war under the banner of their flag. They simply arm and direct mercenaries to lay waste our way of life in pursuit of a 1,400-year dream of our submission to the sovereignty of their caliphate.
When the next Saudi-funded, Iranian-trained, Yemeni-manned bloodbath spills over America, we all know what the reaction will be of our historic first Islamic apostate president: an apology for our blameworthiness, a harangue for their righteousness, and another display of his duplicitousness.
VDH:
“What is the point of this pop historicizing?”
As always, you have a point.
Jack Marcotte: From your post in the prior article –
“This is the very reason the 2nd Amendment was in the constitution.”
More pop historicising — with a very valid point, one known to our generation, and every generation preceding it, but now abandoned by many our clueless compatriots.
The 2nd Amendment exists to protect us from tyranny, the kind of tyranny practiced by governments throughout history.
“How Do Wars Start?” ought to be seen as patronizing. Unfortunately, the brain dead Left in this country needs to be reminded of the simplest historical truisms.
If the Left could assimilate the obvious, they might better understand the course we are now on:
Peace…War…Revolution…Civil War. Plenty of historical examples of this. And another reason why we have a 2nd Amendment.
Health Care Reform and the recession have kept America’s attention firmly riveted on the new administration’s domestic direction. But something much bigger is happening in the world, and it is going largely unnoticed.
The sole superpower is withdrawing from world affairs.
It is quickly becoming clear that President Obama’s foreign policy has a simple but astonishing goal: to rid us of both enemies and allies.
The policy of appeasement of our enemies has been painfully obvious. In facing Iran, North Korea, and now a newly revanchist Russia, Obama has offered goodwill, apologies, and concessions, in the expectation that these will appease them and ensure good behavior in the future. It didn’t work for Chamberlain and it is unlikely to work for Obama. But there it is.
The flip side has been less obvious, but it, too, is emerging. Israel has received more of Obama’s pressure and condemnation than any of the nations that seek to push her into the sea.
The “moral equivalence” approach, where the smallest failings of democracies are equated to the greatest atrocities of tyrants, has been seen before from the left. But here we have something even worse: harsh condemnation of Israel for adding bedrooms in the West Bank without even a balancing concern about Palestinian shelling of Israeli homes.
During the campaign, Candidate Obama was asked to name America’s closest allies; he slowly reeled off Britain, France (yes, France), and Canada. He did not mention Israel. It was excused at the time as a mental oversight.
And ghosts of the far Democratic past are reminding us that we have seen this before.
“Elder Statesman” Jimmy Carter blasts Israel as an apartheid regime (when not busy condemning Republicans of blanket racism). And Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski yesterday suggested that the US should shoot down Israeli jets if they cross US/patrolled Iraqi airspace on a mission to destroy Iran’s fast-developing nuclear weapons program. Shoot them down!
This reminder of the Carter foreign policy inclinations should be enlightening. Remember that the present brutal, fanatical, genocidally Jew-hating Iranian regime came to power during Carter’s (and Brzezinski’s) watch (in 1979). As was the case with the late, lamented (by some) Saddam Hussein’s brutal aggressive regime in Iraq (also in 1979). And who can forget the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (also in 1979) and Carter’s effective response?
Indeed, there is much to learn from the Carter/Brzezhinski foreign policy. But these particular gentlemen never learned it, and anyway ought to have been shamed into perpetual silence on world affairs long ago.
Yet Obama continues on in the same path – outreach to enemies, pushback to allies. Why? There are two possible answers. One is cowardice, the other ideology.
Now, cowardice (like racism) is a hefty charge, and not to be thrown around lightly. It amounts to being nice to those who are itching to fight with you, while venting your frustration on those closest to you. It is the pattern of the Bully, and there are few things uglier. (And for the record, I don’t think this is the motivator here.)
The other explanation is ideology, specifically the ideology of isolationism. We generally reserve the label for Republican policy in the 1920’s and early 1930’s, but it appears equally applicable here. Back then (and it continued well into the Roosevelt years) we intentionally distanced ourselves from our allies in the recent World War. We rejected all efforts to respond to aggression overseas. And we limited our active diplomacy to high-minded disarmament schemes.
So this stuff is nothing new. But back then it was properly condemned as “turning our backs to the world”, while today it is seen as the highest kind of international outreach, the noblest level of diversity. “All nations are equal, and we love you all equally. So don’t expect us to take sides in any of your petty quarrels.”
It is of course not just Israel who is on the receiving end of this two-sided doctrine. The retreat on missile defense in Europe is being seen properly in most places as craven appeasement of Russia, who objected to anything that would limit Iran’s western “outreach” or reinforce the independence of Russia’s former colonies in Eastern Europe. But the message was two-fold: Russia must be appeased, but similarly Poland and the Czech Republic must be reminded that we have no stake in ensuring their independence. Poles and Czechs, like our other allies, are on their own.
Similarly in the America’s, we reach out to Venezuela’s Castro clone Chavez while distancing ourselves from strong ally Colombia. In Honduras we stand up for the rights of a budding Chavez clone to make himself president-for-life. Everywhere the same: outreach to anti-American regimes, pushback to American allies. The goal? To make them all just “other nations”.
In a sense, this has been leftist doctrine consistently since the McGovern repudiation of the “Truman Democrat” foreign policy in 1972. It can be seen in the left’s repudiationof the Bush overthrow of Saddam Hussein. That was offensive on two fronts; it overthrew an enemy, and it threatened to create an ally!
Obama explains it all in beautiful rhetoric – some of the best we have ever heard. But it is all just words, until we see the reality of the actions that result. Around the world we are starting to see these results.
Here stands our sovereign lord, the king,
Whose word no man relies on;
Who never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one.
I cannot imagine any policy less wise than spurning your best allies while embracing your worst enemies. Any ally that relies on the word of America today appears headed for a fall
The meme appears to be that the US President serves the country best by being ready to, (or at least give the impression of being ready to) start a war at the drop of a hat. Lyndon Johnson got torn apart by not wanting to appear to be an appeaser. GWB invaded twice, appears to have avoided a complete disaster in Iraq, altough it is also still very unclear on what we have gained long-term. The jury is very much still out on Afghanistan. Sometimes it is the right approach, sometimes not.
Obama is mocked because he dithers. I grant you that there is no guarantee that because he has hesitated, that he will eventually make the right decision, but giving the decision a lot of thought, would seem to be the right thing to do. Obama’s base is not GWB’s base and he has to react accordingly.
But VDH and most of the people here respond with the predictable “lessons of history,” hackneyed as they are. Sorry, but it just seemed to be words to fill up space and throw red meat to the righty base.
And I am more concerned about a ten-year (or dare we say, permanent) recession-depression than whether or not we stand tall and fill more body bags in Afghanistan. I don’t believe that there are many realists who are optimistic about what we can accomplish over there. I was in favor of the surge in Iraq in that we should surge and leave. We’ll call the 30,000 that Obama will send over our surge…and then we’ll leave. Got it?
Great comments/essays above.
~Paules:
“Just one quibble regarding Turkey. They could become a regional hegemon, but I doubt that would mean crossing the frontier into the Caucasian republics.”
I agree with you re Caucasus, but I suspect VDH is referring to Turkish hegemony in the Eastern Mediterranean. I personally don’t agree with VDH’s stance on that issue, but renewed armed conflict between Greece and Turkey is certainly possible. Obama’s wishy-washy stance on foreign affairs is destabilizing worldwide and some settling of old scores is bound to happen.
While the community organizer distracts us with Show Trials and orgasmic spending, his puppet-masters and minions are burrowing away ruining the country in so many ways it’s impossible to count.
For this moron, it’s a thrilling game of risk. He has no need to worry. As the Gorbachev of his day, he will be well taken care of by the jackels who feast on our carcasses.
And whatever the outcome, he will reassure us with a brilliant speech in those soaring tones.
President Obama is following in the footsteps of the second worst modern POTUS in history: Jimmy Carter. Carter supplicated to the Soviet Union & every other thug, but what did it get the USA? Nothing. Iran held American hostages for 144 days while Carter dithered. Sound familiar?
VDH asks: What Causes Wars?
Another question might be, What Ends Wars?
Being part of the military/industrial complex and having listened in on many “what if” scenario discussions, our official answer is “Precision Strike.”
It’s why we have cruise missiles that can hit an open window from hundreds of miles away, Predators with Hellfire missiles that can take out a single car in a convoy and B-2′s that can carry 80, 500-lb independently targetable JDAMs that can hit and oil drum from ten miles.
But the enemy doesn’t quit. Why should he?
The Iraqis were on their roofs in Baghdad watching our “Shock and Awe” precision attack, knowing full well the weapons were so accurate they could safely watch the greatest show on earth.
I’m afraid our kinder and gentler waging of war is not cutting it.
Wars are won when cities are reduced to rubble and both the leaders and the people supporting them cry out, “Enough! We quit.”
Islam did a marvelous thing to New York city. A couple dozen warriors reduced a huge part of our greatest city to magnificent rubble, struck the heart of the military’s Pentagon and was heading for the White House before our citizen soldiers caught on and brought Islam’s weapon down in a Pennsylvanian field.
The result? We now cower in fear of Islam and bow to the Saudi king and any other other despot.
Did another Islamic soldier not recently shout “Allahu akbar!” before cutting down dozens of unarmed American soldiers right in the heart of Texas?
Our response? “la la la la la I hear nothing.”
Islam understands that cities in rubble are how you win wars.
We have forgotten the lesson of the last war we unambiguously won. And WWII only took four years.
This really seems to be simple enough. Why can’t we have a President as knowledgeable and understanding of world events, geopolitics and economics as Dr. H. And oh yeah, note to Lefty: stop with the Bush comparisons already, it’s not going to work any longer and besides, Obambi is no Bush. Unfortunately.
76. Dwight
“The meme appears to be that the US President serves the country best by being ready to, (or at least give the impression of being ready to) start a war at the drop of a hat.”
No – A President serves best who does not alienate allies and invite aggression. Agree or disagree?
A commander-in-chief about must be concerned with the basic psychology of power relations in a Hobbesian world, not about political optics. That is the mark of a pretender, not a leader.
The rest of your post has no discernable meaning.
76. Dwight
“The meme appears to be that the US President serves the country best by being ready to, (or at least give the impression of being ready to) start a war at the drop of a hat.”
Do you find that misdirection adds weight to your argument, or merely underscores that you have none?
No – A President serves best who does not alienate allies and invite aggression. Agree or disagree?
(Hint: A commander-in-chief about must be concerned with the basic psychology of power relations in a Hobbesian world, not about political optics. That is the mark of a pretender, not a leader.)
The rest of your post has no discernable meaning.
Thanks again Professor, for clearly describing the issues. However, I fear they’ll burn your books at some point.
I’ve read elsewhere that the only remaining weapon available to the productive class in their fight for survival against tyranny is money. Voting even 50 politicos out of office in Nov. Since, most of those responsible for the trainwreck are not up for re-election until 2012, 2010 may be far too late.
Pelosi and Reid are willing to lose those seats, if they can advance their agendas and get “things” passed, which they and their current Dem majority view as being irrevocable. Those pols who lose their seats at the trough, because they’ve voted against the wishes of their constituents, will be amply rewarded with lush gov’t positions. So, they have NOTHING TO LOSE.
As we’ve experienced, both parasites and predatory species once introduced and fostered, are difficult to eradicate without DRASTIC counter-measures. Like HIV, kudzu, cane toads, Africanized bees and boas in the Glades, eh?
The earliest opportunity to use money to thwart the avowed objectives of our Marxist overlords is 4/15/2010. Otherwise, it may well be over for US kulaks.
Victor,
Here’s my Mel Gibson “Conspiracy Theory” moment for this week.
Two well-dressed, good-looking, social-climbing, celebrity-seeking, financially-strapped, legally-ensared, but presumed-harmless people CRASHED a State dinner at the WH. The Middle Eastern male got to shake hands with the One. What? Pegged my BS meter.
For about 3 years, I dated a gal who worked for Nancy during Ronaldus’ tenure. I went to many parties. WDC is party central. I had Reagan Eagle buttons on my tux coat. Hundreds of times when I met my friend for lunch, dinner, drinks, or to drive her home, I was met with polite-but-frosty obstruction. They all knew me on-sight. They had my name, picture, fingerprints, backgrounder, DD214, security clearances and my political contributor status at hand. Plus any rapsheet, I might have had. It was always detector and patdown. “Thank you for understanding the search procedures, it’s just the Rules, Mr. G______.”
Color me really, really skeptical. Can’t happen without multiple SS agents colluding. Let me ask, if it wasn’t an accident for which the SS has apologized – promising it won’t happen again (like for Ft Hood…how can they promise that?) – then doesn’t it have to be intentional? Staged.
I submit unless this couple serves time and/or pays a huge fine, AND unless many heads roll at the Secret Service, then this whole event is part of the kabuki performance.
To quote Joe Pesci – “Okay, okay, okay” what would staging this as merely a faux pas in security procedures accomplish?
Obviously, there’s a “fricken unbelieveable” problem with Presidential security. Ergo, we’d better design a new system. Given the cost, it makes sense to extend that improved protective umbrella to cover all the other political types who attended. Therefore, we’ll need a comprehensive overhaul of Homeland Secuirty, no? Like with healthcare, banking, energy, education, automaking, job-creation, et al?
The obvious solution is better scrutiny. It’ll read something like an urgent requirement for backgrounders on all of US, not just terrorist threats, plus “data mining” tools. All that massive amount of new background info will have to be verified by the appropriate security folks, too. Door-to-door.
Of course this is only paranoid conjecture about the actions of an adminstration and Congress so willing to steal from me, to fund the means of my enslavement, using my money, and not even pretending to give a sh*t about US.
I can find no better explaination for the shenanigans at the WH.
Janet, the WH is on line 1.
Great essay, Dr. Hanson. I’ve read your books as well as listened to Donald Kagan’s lectures on the ancient Greeks. This dilemma goes all the way back. There are always high minded appeasers who think all problems can be solved by rational negotiation. Their view of human nature is utopian and we are once again about to witness the results of this utopianism.
Update Sunday Evening November 29, 2009
Iran announces it will go forward with a further 10
uranium enrichment plants.
Seems like the mullahs are taking up Obamas offer for
a new chapter in Islamic/Western relations.
To which should be added that if your strategy is to show a tiger your neck, you might not need to make any more plans.
War is the continuation of politics by other means. It is a tool, although a horrible one. Rather than simply talk about winning, we must look to see what we hope to gain. We fought the Cold War for many years without actually believing that we would ‘win’, only that we would outlast the other side. Only when we were at the point when we could dictate that outcome could we talk about winning.
Are we willing to kill a hundred million who bear us no ill will, and another hundred whose animus toward us would not lead them to action, in order to stop the ten million who would kill us all in our beds? That may be the cost of ‘winning’ this right now.
The longer struggle may be the more just one. That doesn’t mean we should give up, or be content with barricading ourselves behind X-ray machines and concrete barriers. Radical Islam and third-world totalitarianism are not like communism. Communism contained the seeds of its own collapse in its economic precepts. Radical Islam and the banana republic do not.
We must accept what all successful, long-lived states have accepted: that to live in the community of nations is to fight to survive, to fight to prosper, and to fight every day and every year. It is only our stunning success in recent generations that has taught us otherwise.
Let not the just need for that struggle blind us to the possibility that we can be parties to injustice. But let us never doubt that those who seek to destroy our prosperity and our freedom are champions of injustice.
Usually aggression, bullying, and nationalist agendas evolve into wars—when the aggressive party is convinced it has more to gain through war than lose.
You seem to finally understand what motivated the US to invade Iraq. However, we seem to have miscalculated about how much we had to lose. You’re learning. At this rate, Hanson, you might even be ready to debate high school civics class students.
You can bet that Israel has intelligence that is equal to and may exceed our own. While Obama does not take Ahmadinejah seriously Israel does. The more Obama marginalizes them the more they will feel the need to act unilaterally. They may decide to preempt Iran’s future action with a strike – they have nuclear capabilities. And, at this point, they may feel no need to let Obama know in advance or ask our opinion.
I wonder if the real answer is to do what the Byzantines did. Draw a line and say that you can do whatever you want on your side of the line. Come on our side and you get stomped on. It worked for 500 years.
Pedantic; but a good article.
Lets understand that Obama’s game is to destroy our economy as a rationalization for
surrendering us to a New World Order.
Bankrupt, to whom do we turn?
To, of course, those we have empowered to issue credit and currency; the Rothschild cabal- by whatever name.
And it, then, issues the ability to acquire any and all things, in the form of credit/currency, to whomever it pleases. And,
does not grant that capacity to whomever it pleases. “1984″ revisited.
What are you going to do about it? Hint:
Sneering and cackling won’t solve the problem.
Why ride the back of the tiger? Lets shoot the sucker, and hang him over the mantle.
First, we must become Good Guys.
Second, we must require the evil ones to become Good Guys— or else.
Third, we “or else” ‘em.