OBAMA: Is he naive?

Obama to Europe and Israel: BOW BEFORE ISLAM Posted: 05 Apr 2009 07:02 PM PDT BY SULTAN With his economic house of cards looking particularly wobbly in the US, Obama has headed out to continue his charade of an international campaign over to Europe. There we were treated to a gushing media fawning over his generic speeches, which naturally always highlighted his own uniqueness and "historicity". Of course making speeches, posing for photos and discussing how important he is, is what Obama does best. It's also the only thing he does besides running a grueling marathon of saying stupid things and offending his hosts. Not only did Obama bizarrely try to dictate to the EU who their members should be, urging them to let Turkey in, a presumption that ranks right up there with France suggesting that Haiti should join the US as a State. But Obama as usual was posing for the Muslim world, and in the process tweaking Europe some more. The brokered deal that has Anders Fogh Rasmussen becoming NATO Secretary General in exchanging for apologizing for Denmark's freedom of speech, to the Muslim world, which isn't a fan of free speech when it comes to making fun of Islam, only when it comes to calls for the genocide of non-Muslims, is one more gift to the Islamists. The Danish cartoons represented a first world heritage of free speech that has been bargained away yet again. With a Turkish Vice Secretary General for NATO, Obama has certainly helped do his part for the Muslim way, though just as when he bowed to the Saudi king, there were no signs of recognition or gratitude. But that has not stopped Obama from insisting that Europe bow to Islam, just as he has. In Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama has dropped any talk of democracy. It's natural enough why the man who was elected thanks to ACORN voter fraud, mass media propaganda, racial huckstering and an economic crisis manufactured by his own backers-- would not be a particular aficionado of democracy. But that has been matched by a growing "partnership" with Iran. And that has meant a broad spectrum of appeasement toward Iran, from legalizing sexual assault for Shiite women in Afghanistan, backing the UK's Hizbollah outreach plan and arranging to give Iran a great deal of power in Afghanistan and Iraq. And of course Obama's guarantee that the US will prevent Israel from taking out Iran's nuclear program, and muscle out strong concession from Israel to Obama's new Iranian allies and their proxies, Syria, Hamas and Hizbullah. Meanwhile Saudi Arabia has its own pricetag for reining in its Wahhabi terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, to create "peace" long enough for Obama to hang a "Mission Accomplished" banner, withdraw the troops and turn over the country to them. The problem with Obama's plans is that as much as he puts on the table, his basic weakness only makes America more of a target. Both Shia and Sunni terrorists would rather achieve that withdrawal over the corpses of American troops, than through backdoor negotiations with Obama. And Obama's desperation lets them know that he won't have to be pushed very far, before he backs down. Little wonder that Europe had few troops to offer for Obama's Afghan plan. After Obama had deliberately ignored and insulted our European allies, the rejection was inevitable. But once again Obama had little sincere interest in soliciting troops from Europe. What he really wanted was to demonstrate to America's foreign policy establishment that Europe could not be counted on, requiring him to make even more concessions to win Iranian cooperation. And that's how the game is being played. Obama's real message to Europe and Israel is, "BOW BEFORE ISLAM", and his timetable for demanding that obeisance is speeding up. The closest possible analogy to the Obama Administration is had a Communist President taken power in the 60's. Under Obama, America's power is turning into a tool in the hands of our enemies and a sword at the neck of the free world. Terror has taken up residence in the White House to the loud cheers of a gulled public little realizing that in Obamaspeak, Change means Submission and Hope means Islam. //////////////////////////////////////////////// Jewish World Review April 7, 2009 / 13 Nisan 5769 No Nukes? No Thanks: Obama's odd obsession with universal nuclear disarmament By Anne Applebaum http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Believe me, it is no fun to be the one who rains on the parade, and if nothing else, President Barack Obama's trip to Europe this past week was quite a parade. Or maybe "sold-out concert tour" is the better metaphor. There was a jolly town-hall meeting in Strasbourg, France; a wonderful encounter between Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni; spectacular street scenes in Prague. The world's statesmen fell all over themselves to be photographed with the American president. (Click here to watch Italian Prime Minister Silvio Bersluconi howling for the president's attention during a photo session—to the immense annoyance of the queen.) Still, someone has to say it: Some things went well on this trip, and some things went badly. But the centerpiece of the visit, Obama's keynote foreign-policy speech in Prague—leaked in advance, billed as a major statement—was, to put it bluntly, peculiar. He used it to call for "a world without nuclear weapons" and a new series of arms-control negotiations with Russia. This was not wrong, necessarily, and not evil. But it was strange. Clearly, the "no nukes" policy is one close to the president's heart. The Prague speech even carried echoes of that most famous of all Obama speeches, the one he made after losing the New Hampshire primary. "There are those who hear talk of a world without nuclear weapons and doubt whether it is worth setting a goal that seems impossible," he told his Czech audience. (Remember "We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics"?) "When nations and peoples allow themselves to be defined by their differences, the gulf between them widens," he continued. ("We are not as divided as our politics suggests.") He didn't say "Yes, we can" at the end, but he did say "human destiny will be what we make of it," which amounts to the same thing. The rhetoric was his—as was the idea. Look at his record: One of the few foreign-policy initiatives to which Obama stuck his name during his brief Senate term was an increase in funding for nuclear nonproliferation. One of the few senatorial trips he managed was a nuclear inspection tour of Russia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan. This is all very nice—but as the central plank in an American president's foreign policy, a call for universal nuclear disarmament seems rather beside the point. Apparently, the president's intention is to lead by example: If the United States cuts its own nuclear arsenal and bans testing, others will allegedly follow. Forgive me for joining the chorus of cynics, but there is no evidence that U.S. nuclear arms reductions have ever inspired others to do the same. All the world's more recent nuclear powers—Israel, India, Pakistan—acquired their weapons well after such talks began more than 40 years ago. As for the North Koreans, they chose the very day of the Prague speech to launch (unsuccessfully) an experimental missile. In its wake, neither China nor Russia wanted to condemn the launch, since to do so might set a precedent uncomfortable for them. "Every state has the right to the peaceful use of outer space," said a Russian U.N. envoy. His government does want arms-reduction talks, it is true, but only because the Russian nuclear arsenal is rapidly deteriorating. By agreeing to start them, we've unnecessarily handed over a bargaining chip. More to the point, nuclear weapons, while terrifying in the abstract, are not an immediate strategic threat to Europe or the United States—even from Iran. Biological weapons are potentially more lethal. Chemical weapons are far cheaper to produce. Within the United States, ordinary bombs and rogue airplanes have already caused plenty of damage. Conventional weapons, meanwhile, have not gone out of fashion. The most recent use of military force in Europe—the Russian-Georgian conflict of last August—involved tanks and infantry, not nukes. Even if Russia sold its remaining nuclear weapons for scrap metal, Russia's military would still pose a potential threat to its neighbors, just as a China without nukes could still invade Taiwan. Ridding the world of nuclear weapons would be very nice, in other words, but on its own, it won't alter the international balance of power, stop al-Qaida, or prevent large authoritarian states from invading their smaller neighbors. However unsuccessful it has been so far, the promotion of democracy around the world is, ultimately, the only way to achieve these goals. Besides, however much the French loved Michelle's flowery dress, I'm not sure they have much interest in giving up their force de frappe. Ditto the British. And since they don't pose a threat, to us or anyone else, it's not clear to me why we should waste diplomatic capital trying to make them do so. It could be, of course, that the Prague speech represented a holding pattern: Obama will talk about "no nukes" until he finds a more satisfying idea on which to hang his foreign policy. And if it didn't, all that goodwill, so much in evidence last week, might well go to waste. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. APPLEBAUM'S LATEST Gulag: A History Nearly 30 million prisoners passed through the Soviet Union's labor camps in their more than 60 years of operation. This remarkable volume, the first fully documented history of the gulag, describes how, largely under Stalin's watch, a regulated, centralized system of prison labor-unprecedented in scope-gradually arose out of the chaos of the Russian Revolution. Fueled by waves of capricious arrests, this prison labor came to underpin the Soviet economy. JWR's Applebaum, a former Warsaw correspondent for the Economist and a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, draws on newly accessible Soviet archives as well as scores of camp memoirs and interviews with survivors to trace the gulag's origins and expansion Sales help fund JWR. Comment on JWR contributor Anne Applebaum's column by clicking here. Previously: 03/31/09: What's Loud, Unnecessary, and Costs $75 Million? 03/23/09: Ctrl-Alt-Diplomacy 03/03/09: European Disunion 02/24/09: Who cares what Hillary Clinton says to China's leaders about human rights? 02/17/09: Witless protection 02/10/09: Our Ticket Out of Afghanistan 01/27/09:Why some foreigners can't believe Obama won the presidency fair and square 01/20/09: A Flight Test for All of Us 01/14/09: Europe's New Cold War 01/07/09: Pointless Peace Proposals 12/30/08: The magnificent rhetorical legacy of the Founding Fathers 12/23/08: Do riots in Athens portend demonstrations in Paris and Cincinnati? 12/16/08: Breach of Trust: Bernard Madoff's massive fraud will cripple American capitalism 12/09/08: In praise of charismatic politicians 12/03/08: Moscow's Empire of Dust 11/20/08: Getting Past Mythmaking In Georgia 11/12/08: In Praise of Political Rock Stars 10/03/08: Election Day myths you must resist 09/30/08: Not just a metaphor: Lehman Brothers was economic's 9/11 09/04/08: Class of '64 08/28/08: Did Hillary really help the Barack cause? 08/27/08: ‘Show of Power,’ Indeed 08/19/08: What Is Russia Afraid Of? 08/13/08: When China Starved 08/11/08: Two of the world's rising powers are strutting their stuff 08/05/08: How Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago changed the world 07/29/08:‘The Hour of Europe’ Tolls Again � But are European politicians up to the task? 07/15/08: Why Does Obama Want To Campaign in Berlin? 07/01/08: Citizen Athletes: How did a guy who can't speak Polish end up scoring Poland's only goal of Euro 2008? 06/24/08: Why do we expect presidential candidates to be kind? 06/17/08: Pity the Poor Eurocrats 06/12/08: Is the World Ready for a Black American President? 05/28/08: The Busiest Generation: America seems to value its children's status and achievements over their happiness 05/20/08: Leave Hitler Out of It: The craze for injecting the Nazis into political debate must end 05/13/08: A Drastic Remedy: The case for intervention in Burma 05/07/08: A Warning Shot From Moscow? 04/23/08: Radio to stay tuned to 04/17/08: China learns the price of a few weeks of global attention 04/01/08: Head scarves are potent political symbols 03/26/08: The Olympics are the perfect place for a protest 03/19/08: Could Tibet bring down modern China? 03/12/08: Have political autobiographies made us more susceptible to fake memoirs? 03/05/08: Why does Russia bother to hold elections? 02/20/08: Kosovo is a textbook example of the law of unintended consequences 02/06/08: A Craven Canterbury Tale 02/06/08: French prez' whirlwind romance reminds voters of his political recklessness