cfbleachers, I’m in academia – I teach HS English, and you couldn’t be more correct. You nailed every single point – well said.

The Obama Administration calls the whole affair a distraction.

“Somali piracy is… a glimpse of the world the day after tomorrow.” (Mark Steyn)

You have to laugh at the cultural ignorance of Team Obama. Historically, the Somalis have always been a people given to banditry and piracy (c.f. the writings of the English explorer Sir Richard Burton). Taking what they need from others is not an act of desperation. It is business as usual for them. Their National Motto is: When two Somalis meet in the desert, only one walks away. Nor are Somalis easily cowed. I’ve been in that country twice (’85 and ’93) and they are the most obstinate, brazen, devil-may-care people I’ve ever seen, inured to hardship and absolutely fearless. They are, therefore, natural born pirates. And, they made $30 million in ransom payouts last year. That might be the sum total of the country’s GDP. I don’t think they will stop their depredations unless we make them. Unfortunately, with the way the Obama Administration has responded thus far, Steyn’s glimpse of the future seems to obtain in the here and now.

Caroline Glick writing in the Jerusalem Post about the new reality of the post-polar world, a world that in Obama’s mind is apparently now post strategic-thinking as well. The statement refers to Israel but the article deals with all of America’s non-Western European partners (India, Japan, the Eastern European democracies, Georgia etc) who are about to be left in the lurch by Chief Political Commissar Obama. After his virtual abandonment of America’s vital role in strategic calculations for these countries during his recent campaign tour in Europe, they’ll be re-thinking the math in hopes of passing the tests to come. For Obama, politics trumps strategy. We’ll see if it trumps reality.

The standoff with the Somali pirates is a perfect test case for Der Commissar’s new approach. Somalis only play politics with guns in hand. The Stone Age mentality of the people who scratch their living from that godforsaken land accords little merit to cheap talk not backed up by action. And they recognize weakness when they smell it.

I disagree with Dr. Hanson’s assessment of Fox News. I think Brett Baer has done a wonderful job filling Brit Hume’s role. Neil Cavuto is top notch as is Bill O’Reilly. Holding down the #1 position for 100 months is a credit to his show & news commentary. Shepard Smith is a good straight news man and outside of Jake Tapper of ABC News, there is no one better covering President Obama than Major Garrett. If there is a headline story that has a legal angle then Greta is the go-to place to get the facts.

Plus I think Fox News has to be entertaining because it’s competing against more than just network and cable news shows. On many levels, the channel has to take on all of the cultural left in the MSM from morning to night.

Liberals get to frame conservatives and political issues starting bright and early with the Today Show, GMA, the mid-afternoon women chat shows like Oprah, Tyra & The View, the evening news of Couric, Williams & NPR, the late night talkers Leno, Letterman and every left wing comedian in between like Stewart, Maher & SNL. Of course, CNN & MSNBC too.

This one broadcaster has to take on a lot of comers and I think they are holding up pretty well.

My one criticism with Fox is their weekend programming (except for Chris Wallace’s Sunday morning show). There is way too much Geraldo and Huckabee scheduled. I would like to see Fox run documentaries produced by conservatives on the weekend. Also they should produce a Sunday evening show in the format similar to 60 minutes or Frontline.

As you have well noted, Turkey occupies critical geography, bordering Europe, Asia and the ME, as well as having ports on the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean. We would be fools to not try and influence how they “evolve” in the post-polar world. Unfortunately, that seems to be the case. Obama will continue our policy of paying lip service to their concerns while doing nothing to address them. The Turks have other options, and with the NATO displaying agonal conniptions they may exercise them. Their refusal to not allow transit of our European based troops during the invasion of Iraq should not be taken as an insult, but as a wake-up call.

We should also remember that Turkey’s glorious past as the seat of the Ottoman Empire involved overthrowing the eastern remains of the (Orthodox Christian) Roman Empire in the 15th century — AFTER the Crusades — and appointing itself the ruling power of the Islamic Caliphate. (I think TLM kind of alluded to that.) The Ottoman Sultan used to style himself “Allah’s Shadow on Earth.” Key elements of the character of the Ottoman Empire were political Islam, and a fundamental posture of anti-Westernism.

Turkish territory has gone back and forth over the centuries between East and West. Turkey, as herself and as the Ottoman Empire, has fought both Europe and Russia. She has no ingrained, cultural affinity for either. But the Russians are a lot more tolerant of civic illiberality and the rewriting of the past. They are also armed and on the move, as opposed to Europe, which is simply inert. They further have a vision of Turkey’s importance to their geographic aspirations, unlike the Europeans, who do not seem to have looked at a map for at least 20 years.

We have cause to be concerned about all this, particularly because, as our president goes about releasing the mental thethers of alliances and alliance security, it will be increasingly possible for Russia and Turkey to become a de facto bloc without any obvious watershed or revolutionary goings-on. It will all just be “evolution” in the post-polar world, or whatever.

Turkey aims to recover her glorious past part, and is clever enough to press on the different alliances she can get from whatever sides they come.

as for the actual endorsement of Obama for her becoming an EU country, it is in’t gratuitous, the US need Turkey for the transit of their troops in Irak and Afghanistan, so did Bush in 2004, and both passed the armenian genocide under the bus.

I await the CBC to call for the Caribbean Workers’ Paradise to pay the brunt of the reparations which the CBC is implicitly demanding.