Foreign Policy

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Yes, Bin Laden is dead, but …

Dr. Afridi (mohammed rauf AFP getty images

Dr. Shakil Afridi was imprisoned for helping the United States identify the location of Osama Bin Laden. Three years of quiet diplomacy has not helped to secure his release. (Mohammed Rauf photo/AFP/Getty images)

“Bin Laden is dead”…. “we took out Bin Laden” How often have we heard those words over the past three years in speeches by President Obama, Vice President Biden and members of the national security team?

But what about Dr. Shakil Afridi? “Who’s he?” would likely be the response from most Americans.  Using the cover of a door-to-door vaccination program, Doctor Afridi, was the key to our locating Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The doctor was first tried for “conspiracy against the State of Pakistan and high treason;” charges that carry the death penalty. He was later sentenced to 33 years in prison for lesser trumped up charges. Continue reading →

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Kerry, Clinton rank climate change #1 threat

Two former secretaries of state, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton took to microphones this past week to push their belief that climate change is a bigger threat than radical Muslim extremists, despite the fact that Americans disagree.

kerry (the federalistpapers.org)

John Kerry turns to the Bible for guidance to push the threat of global climate change. (thefederalistpapers.org)

For Kerry, it was his second attempt to convince us.  On Feb. 16, 2014, speaking primarily to an audience of students in Jakarta, Kerry said “climate change can now be considered another weapon of mass destruction, perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.”  He went on to say that when he thinks of global threats – terrorism, epidemics, poverty, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction – the reality is that climate change ranks right up there with every single one of them.”

In Hawaii last month, Kerry called climate change “the biggest challenge of all that we face right now.”

On Sept. 2, 2014, at a ceremony to promote Shaarik Zafar, a Texas attorney, to be a special representative of the Muslim Communities, he said, “confronting climate change is, in the long run, one of the greatest challenges that we face, and you can see this duty or responsibility laid down the scriptures, clearly, beginning in Genesis.” Kerry believes our respect for God’s creation translates into a duty to protect and sustain His first creation, Earth.  Why did Kerry choose this venue to make this pronouncement?  He believes “Muslim-majority countries are among the most vulnerable” when it comes to the impact of climate change.”

And this is our foreign policy negotiator. Continue reading →

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Brief news items you may have missed

 

A prophetic statement by a president who was a leader

GWB, topnews.in

In 2007, a prescient President Bush told the world what would happen if we left Iraq before commanders agreed. (topnews.in)

“I know some in Washington would like us to start leaving Iraq now.  To begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we are ready would be dangerous for Iraq, for the region, and for the United States.  It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al Qaeda.  It would mean that we’d be risking mass killings on a horrific scale.  It would mean we would allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan.  It would mean increasing the probability that American troops would have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous.” – President George W. Bush, July 12, 2007

For the liberal media to provide coverage of this statement would reflect poorly on President Obama, who was only interested in fulfilling his campaign promise of getting out of Iraq. Now he doesn’t know what to do.  Feckless.

                                     NBC continues to carry water for President Obama

Most of us are outraged by the lack of leadership being exhibited by President Obama in the face of the ISIS threat in Syria and Iraq with his “I don’t have a strategy” admission. But then he sends a mixed message saying, on one hand, that the U.S. would “degrade and destroy” ISIS, but follows with the unbelievable claim that it was “a manageable problem.”

Brian Williams and the NBC Nightly News, Sept. 2, 2014, saw it quite differently as you might expect. “For all those who may be wondering if the U.S. is going to rise up, take the bait and get into the fight to root them out,” he said, “the answer today from both the president and vice president appeared to be clear and unambiguous.” Continue reading →

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Our leaderless, rudderless nation

“The day I am inaugurated, not only the country looks at itself differently, but the world looks at America differently … If I’m reaching out to the Muslim world they understand that I’ve lived in a Muslim country and I may be Christian, but I also understand their point of view.  And so, I’m intimately concerned with what happens in these countries and the cultures and perspective these folks have … I think the world will have confidence that I am listening to them and that our future and our security is tied up with ability to work with other countries in the world that will ultimately make us safer.”  –  Barack Obama, Nov. 21, 2007

 

Fast forward through five and a half years of the Barack Obama presidency and we see the Muslim world on fire. The newest threat, the barbarous Muslim terrorist organization of ISIS, freely moved across Syria and into much of Iraq.  The president dithered for months before deciding to send  F-18’s and drones to hit a few targets, including vehicles we left behind after our abandonment of Iraq .

Benson cartton

(Editorial cartoons courtesy Steve Benson)

Most recently ISIS beheaded two Americans while chiding our commander-in-chief. After the first, James Foley, Obama was on the golf course within minutes of his condemnation statement.  And, while most of us learned of ISIS’s  latest victim, Steven Sotloff, during the morning hours Sept. 2,  we are led to believe the president didn’t learn about it until he was boarding the plane for Estonia late in the afternoon.

According to reports, the president hesitated for some 30 days before giving the go-ahead to rescue the American hostages on July 4, probably contributing to the mission’s failure.  He is said to have called off the Bin Laden raid several times. Continue reading →

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Is the media turning on Obama?

“No American president can survive if he lets Americans be beheaded on international television with impunity.  Impunity! He has to strike back, as an American, it’s in our soul.”  – Chris Mathews, MSNBC’s Hardball.

Mathews (realclearpolitics.com)

Chris Mathews of MSNBC’s Hardball criticized the president over his statement on the Foley beheading. (realclear politics photo)

Yes, the same Chris Mathews, who said after heading President Obama speak in 2008,”I felt a thrill going up my leg.”  I doubt if the thrill has gone from the liberal Mathews, but his remarks on the James Foley beheading was said quite forcefully on air.

Dowd (dentonrc.com)

Columnist Maureen Dowd has had some unkind things to say about the president. (dentonrc.com)

“The extraordinary candidate turns out to be the most ordinary of men, frittering away precious time on the links,” wrote columnist Maureen Dowd, adding “… this is an ugly, confusing and frightening time at home and abroad, and the country needs its president to illuminate and lead, not sink into some petulant expression of his aloofness, where he regards himself as a party of his own and a victim of petty, needy, bickering egomaniacs.”

“Obama making fools of the media,” read a headline in The Washington Times  that caught my eye, but it turned out to be old stuff.  Columnist Joseph Curl summarized all of the White House scandals that have disappeared from the news, thanks to a disinterested media.  “Say what you will about the president and his soulless team of sycophants, but they’re good.  They know to play the media, which apparently doesn’t mind in the least being played,” Curl wrote. Continue reading →

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And she wants to be president, Part 5

“… we don’t even tell our own story very well these days,” Hillary Clinton told Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic magazine interview; the same piece in which she criticized the president’s foreign policy of “don’t do stupid stuff.”

Like President Obama, Clinton must believe she operated completely under the radar and that no one was paying attention to what she said and did, or didn’t do.… read more

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Obama’s dream world

“We have come a long way over the past five and a half years.  Our challenges are nowhere near as daunting as they were when I first came into office.” – President Obama, Aug. 1, 2014

I came up out of my chair when I heard the president say that during his pre-vacation press conference on Friday, but there wasn’t a sound out of the dutiful press corps in the audience.

Really Mr. President?

Obama aug 1 2014 press conf (voanews.com)

President Obama told the press that “challenges are nowhere near as daunting” as when he came into office during his Friday press conference. (voanews.com photo)

Let’s look at the economy.  You said, “The good news is the economy clearly is getting stronger.  Things are getting better.”  And you claim “we’ve recovered faster and come farther from the recession than almost any other advanced country on Earth.”  Wrong.  We are mired in the slowest recovery ever!

What about the four per cent drop in real median household income under your watch, Mr. President?  And how about those 11 million workers who quit looking for work … the 11 million who went on food stamps … the increases in prices (food, gasoline and electricity)?  Growth is sluggish.

No, Mr. President, the economy is not looking up.  The national debt continues to climb and seniors have learned that Social Security will go broke in 2030, seven years sooner than when you took office. Continue reading →

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You can’t make this stuff up

Newly found e-mails reveal Lois Lerner’s hostility toward conservatives

“So we don’t need to worry about alien terrorists.  It’s our own crazies (Republicans) that will take us down, “wrote Lois Lerner to a friend on Nov. 9, 2012.

“And I’m talking about the hosts of these shows.  The callers are rabid,” her friend responded.

Lois Lerner

Newly found e-mails reveal Lois Lerner’s hostility toward conservatives.

“Great.  Maybe we are through if there are that many (A) holes,” wrote Lerner.

“Well, you should hear the whacko wing of the GOP.  The US is through; too many foreigners suck the teat; time to hunker down, buy ammo and food for the end.  The right wing radio shows are scary to listen to,”  her friend continued.

Though seemingly trivial in nature, this e-mail exchange released Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee clearly reveals Lerner’s feelings toward conservative groups and singling them out for extra scrutiny.

“Lois Lerner’s exposed emails show the world she was and is a political hack driven by her own partisan agenda rather than a neutral public servant,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

“This email shows that Ms Lerner’s mistreatment of conservative groups was driven by her personal hostility toward conservatives,” wrote Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder as additional input for a criminal referral.

And let’s not forget this infamous quote on the IRS scandal:

“Not even a smidgeon of corruption,” President Obama, Feb. 2, 2014 Continue reading →

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It’s amateur time in Washington

If you are as frustrated, or should I say as outraged, as I am with our president’s inability to face up to foreign crises and deal with them swiftly and confidently, you need only look at the amateurs advising him.

Just as the lack of business experience among his advisors on economic policy resulted in one of the slowest recoveries in history, the president has surrounded himself with amateurs as he dithers on foreign policy issues.… read more