Chchchchchchchchanges

Turn and face the strange

Proud but Anxious Obama's scary foreign policy.
by Alan W. Dowd, Weekly Standard

HILLARY CLINTON MAY BE calling herself "the new comeback kid" after wins in Ohio and Texas. But as a number of observers are pointing out, the delegates don't add up. Barring some cataclysm, Sen. Barack Obama's lead will hold all the way to the convention, which means he's going to be the nominee.

What Obama's once-improbable bid for the presidency has achieved at the ballot box makes many Americans proud about how far this country has come. It also makes many Americans a little anxious about the likely policies of an Obama administration.

Count me among the proud and anxious.

Ditto.

First, we should take pride that the promise of Jefferson's masterpiece--"that all men are created equal"--is now underlined by the fact that an American who happens to be black is just a few steps away from the presidency. We are indeed building a more perfect union.

Yet there is another side to this still-unfinished story.

[....]

Yet nothing causes as much anxiety as what Obama has said about foreign policy.

Obama, who launched his presidential bid less than three years after being elected to the Senate, has worn his inexperience like a badge of honor at times, contrasting his politics of hope with Hillary Clinton's "politics as usual" and John McCain's "party of yesterday." But the Oval Office is not a good place for on-the-job training. No matter what fans of The Daily Show say, things actually can get worse.

Give Obama credit for consistency. The centerpiece of his foreign policy has always been an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Reasonable people can and do disagree over whether it was right to invade in March 2003, but even some of the loudest critics of the war warn that withdrawing now could derail the fragile progress made during the surge and make a difficult but tenable situation worse.

How much worse? Imagine a Balkan-style ethno-religious war with more guns and less restraint, a Rwanda with arsenals of modern weaponry instead of machetes, or a California-sized Beirut. And then imagine what an American retreat would do to U.S. standing outside Iraq.

Trying to address such worries, Obama assures us that "Nobody is proposing we leave precipitously." But actually, somebody is proposing that--and that somebody is Barack Obama.

In January 2007, for example, he outlined a plan to begin "redeployment of U.S. forces no later than May 1, 2007" and "remove all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008." Today, he vows to "immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq."

That is the very definition of precipitous.

Hedging a bit, Obama recently explained that "If al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad."

McCain couldn't resist pointing out the obvious: "Al Qaeda is in Iraq. And that's why we're fighting in Iraq."

Even as Obama vows to cede the battlefield in Iraq, where the Iraqi government is fighting alongside Americans against the jihadists, he proposes bombing the jihadists in Pakistan--over the objection of the Pakistani government. "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will," he has warned.

There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, the Bush administration has attacked targets in Pakistan--with and without the permission of the AWOL Musharraf. But Obama's anti-terror strategy seems to be premised on the notion that the United States can't fight jihadists in Iraq and Pakistan.

In truth, the United States can and must fight the enemy wherever it is--the Sahara and the Horn of Africa, Iraq and Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the list goes on.

However, there's more--and less--to Obama's foreign policy than pulling out of Iraq and pummeling Pakistan.

Obama, who reminds us that his grandfather served in "Patton's army and marched across Europe" and helped shut down Hitler's death camps, says it is not America's job to prevent genocide--in Iraq or elsewhere, apparently.

The AP reported it this way in July 2007: "Presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there."

ouch.

His defense of this position sounds surprisingly, jarringly, similar to that of isolationists on the far fringes, who always justify non-intervention somewhere by pointing out that America has not intervened everywhere.

"If that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces," Obama explained, referring to genocide, "then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now--where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife--which we haven't done." He continued: "We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done."

But the problems with Obama's fusion foreign policy don't end there. When a questioner during the CNN-YouTube debate asked whether as president Obama would be willing to meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea, his answer was unequivocal. "It is a disgrace that we have not spoken to them," he intoned. Worse, as the New York Times reported last November, Obama made it clear "that he planned to talk to Iran without preconditions."

Without preconditions? The mullahs wouldn't have to stop funding and fomenting the guerilla war that is killing American troops in Iraq, or come clean with the IAEA on their subterranean nuclear program, or stop arming Hamas with rockets that terrorize and kill Israeli civilians?

Now that would be a disgrace.

Alan W. Dowd is a researcher and writer specializing in U.S. foreign policy and national security.

And don't get me started on Obama's dhimmi, anti-Israel, anti-America foreign policy advisers.

UPDATE: But it's OK when the leftards do it right?

Comments

[Josef K]

Did you make that?

[Pal2Pal (Sara)]

Oooooooooh! So bad, Pamela. LOL

[RISE_UP]

LMAO

[ChenZhen]

Please!

[ChenZhen]

Please!

[luckybee]

Pamela can I use that picture?Obama is very popular here in Holland.

[eavesdropper]

OSAMA FOR OBAMA!

[Pamela Geller]

Be my guest :)

[HenryB]

As you likely know, Pamela, the Obamanation has some close advisors who are about as far left as one can get outside of BBC employment. An example is Samantha Power, who is quoted here and, more extensively, here.

Obama is a simple, dyed-in-the-wool Marxist. He will likely be the Democratic nominee for President. Hopefully a few media types will get over their love affair with this fellow and actually start reporting what he thinks -- but I'm not holding my breath.

[Lex]

Wow. The Photoshop retribution for this one is going to be fun. Any suggestions? Actually, I have a perfect video in mind that will require no Photoshop at all, merely screenshots of wingnuttia.

I do agree, Obama is going to get the nomination, the Dem Party won't risk giving it to Hillary after all of the national polls being taken constantly of Obama Vs. McCain/ Hillary Vs. McCain. They just won't risk not running him, especially after the clunkers they have a record for running (everyone not married to Hillary). But does Obama getting the nod mean that a rather large number of blogs will keep featuring increasingly nutty posts/comments until November? The sheer amount at LGF alone caused me to have to make my debut post at LGFWatch.

But goodies like this until November (and hopefully, beyond)? Oh, boy! I'll have nonstop fodder for posts all year!

Hey Chen! I didn't realize you stopped by here! Good to see a friendly name in the comments.

[RISE_UP]

Isn't it interesting....how all stops have been pulled in the attempts at disgracing GWB.They have put his head on Chimp bodies. Put his head on jack asses. And now some jack asses come in here crying like babies..ohhhh the agony of insulting OBAMA YO MOMA!! Obama yo moma...you ain't seen nothin yet. No one...and I mean NO ONE is going to let you just waltz past all that crap that surrounds you like camel manure.Your connections and we have yet to see just how many and how far they go to the middle east...yet to come. So...obama yo moma better put on your shield..this here is rough country. And pulling that race card or that bigot card is just not going to work. And people who know about body language know Obama can't take close up...(singing..I see a bad moon rising)

[zontar]

Disgraceful.

[Pamela Geller]

Exactly Rise up. It's funny. How many photoshops have been done to all the candidates. Hillary alone could fill a room, but this?
This is blasphemy! It's like the Danish cartoons. It's OFFENSIVE! The fact that it is such a lightening rod speaks volumes.
Obamjihad!

[Lex]

No Pamela, not quite. It's the fact that it furthers this nutty fantasy that Obama is some secret Muslim who will somehow destroy the Constitution and bring on the sharia here in a secular nation. If it was just for humor, fine, I have no problem with people not liking whichever politicians or candidates they choose to. This smear campaign, OTOH, is actually .

I enjoy funny photoshops of politicians, whether Hillary, Bush, whoever. Just not ones that buy into this weird BS. "Funny" would be showing Obama as the second coming or something with all of us Obama fans glowing in awe or something. I'd laugh, even though I like Obama. This has a different agenda. When I 'shopped Romney as a Fembot, no one was expected to actually believe that he was a cyborg. People are actually starting to think this crap is true, and therein lies the difference.

The fact that this shows the hyper-focusing of certain blogs is what speaks volumes. Kind of hard to make something actually creative and truly funny if one's entire focus is on the "Obama's a Crypto-Muslim!! AHHHH!" mania.

[Lex]

OK, and I suck at HTML sometimes.....ROFL....sorry about that one. The link that is, not the content.