Oh, and speaking of “Smart Diplomacy”, how’d that Honduras thing turn out for The One? Apparently, they will need a full ficus to cover-up the fracas as the Michelletti/Zelaya deal gives the Hondurans the sovereign say to which they were always entitled. Once again, this administration seems bent on ingratiating enemies and annoying friends.
It would be useful to have a new watch, since with all this hopey-changey afoot, it’s easy to lose track of time. Happily, Mark Steyn has one, a Smart Diplomacy Watch. Sadly, it is already malfunctioning.
Here are some things worth reading & considering:
Obama’s misguided Weltanschauung, and the ill it means for global stabillty.
What is most astonishing is that official Washington seems entirely oblivious to the crack-up of American influence occurring in front of its eyes. None of the wonkish foreign policy blogs, let alone the mainstream press, seems able to focus.
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The difference between this administration and every other administration I have observed is that there appears to be no staff work, no departmental effort, no National Security Council - nothing but President Barack Obama. Obama’s penchant for policy czars has become the source of continuing controversy, with his opponents at Fox News and elsewhere complaining he has bypassed cabinet departments (whose senior staff require senate confirmation) in favor of 29 “policy czars” who report directly to him.
Like Poo-bah in the Mikado, the president seems to be Lord High Everything Else, Secretary of Everything and a non-stop presence before the television cameras.
The One’s cynical lip-service on international human rights (such as they are), for which the rightmost 80% of his supporters appear to be giving him a pass on China, Burma, Iran and Sudan (at least), all while snubbing Germany as it stands as a testament to the event which actually and demonstrably most improved human rights over the past 50 years (i.e., the West’s victory over the Soviets in the Cold War).
In a similar vein, his rather opaque and oblique take on “transparency” that was to be a hallmark of his administration. Oh yeah, that’s different.
Consider the president’s unfathomable decision to support the radical leftist, anti-American, would-be dictator Manuel Zelaya when all the lawful authorities in Honduras removed him from office for subverting the clear text of the Honduran constitution. Even the American Law Library of Congress concluded that the Honduran Legislature and courts acted lawfully, yet the Obama administration actually has imposed sanctions on the Honduran people, who long have been our allies.
Since July 8, 16 senators have been asking the State Department to explain the legal rationale for its stance. They received no substantive response. When Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, and three House members traveled to Honduras, U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens urged them to read a memo by State Department counsel Harold Koh explaining the administration’s analysis. On Oct. 6, the senator’s staff specifically requested that memo from the department. No response.
The One’s refusal to be held accountable–at least yet–for the responsibilities he sought (with the liberal press categorically failing in their self-appointed role as auditor), and his singular ingratitude to those who didn’t and don’t share his “vision”.
Policy differences, of course, are fair game for sharp debate, and in the end history will apportion the credit and blame due Mr. Bush. By any measure, however, Mr. Obama’s ongoing snipes against a predecessor who is no longer involved in setting policy are extraordinary. They are more extraordinary still issuing from a president who campaigned on a promise to transcend the political divisions of the past.
The One’s slow pace and short-term politicized review of Afghan policy:
Replacing the hard work of counterinsurgency and nation-building with Predator drones and Special Operations defies geography and common sense. A Predator has a range of 400 miles: It is 600 miles from Pakistan’s Waziristan region to the Arabian Sea.
Taking foreign policy advice from the likes of Joe Biden is per se disqualification from office.
Dr. K lays all of it out, in concise responses to questions most U.S. reporters are afraid to ask, especially of someone like him:
SPIEGEL: Do you really believe that Obama deliberately wants to weaken the US?
Krauthammer: The liberal vision of America is that it should be less arrogant, less unilateral, more internationalist. In Obama’s view, America would subsume itself under a fuzzy internationalism in which the international community, which I think is a fiction, governs itself through the UN.
SPIEGEL: A nightmare?
Krauthammer: Worse than that: an absurdity. I can’t even imagine serious people would believe it, but I think Obama does. There is a way America will decline — if we choose first to wreck our economy and then to constrain our freedom of action through subordinating ourselves to international institutions which are 90 percent worthless and 10 percent harmful.
At least The One will focus our attention when next we get to vote.
It is telling that The One prefers to be extolled by Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and Mahmoud Ahmedinijad than to have the friendship of those in a long-loyal democracy: Honduras. Once again, it is hard to understand how someone who is So SmartTM is so wrong about so much. Is this the “Smart Power” he promised? If so, I’ll take more of the dumb but morally unambiguously correct power. Perhaps this is somewhere on the list of policies The One can change now that he’s gotten his gold star from the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. (Oh, wait: he probably needs to wait until the award presentation to do that; wouldn’t want any awkward moments like when he expressed optimism in efforts to contain Iran’s days before he was forced to reveal that Iran had additional illicit nuclear facilities that he’d known about since his election.)
That sound you hear is the “That’s Different” starting pistol; appropriately enough, it fires only blanks.
Congratulations President Obama. Now that you’ve won yourself the highest of all left-liberal accolades, may we please have our own foreign policy back? You know, the one that advances U.S. interests instead of trying to make you look or feel better?
I think it’s safe to say that this is conclusive evidence that the Nobel Prize c0mmittee has jumped the shark.
…
“Doubtless surprised at the vigor of the responding fire they did a quick about turn but were chased by the French sailors.”
Let’s stipulate that as clever as the business model of the Somali pirates may be, they may need to improve their standards (or eyesight). But it’s a tad funny (if ironic) that they pick the French flagship…and it’s named the Somme. Now, the French have a nice navy for its size, but really, to the Anglophones, all of this is a tad funny.
As we’d say in the cavalry: “Target, Cease Fire!” George Will levels a withering verbal fusillade at The One as only he can:
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Both Obamas gave heartfelt speeches about … themselves. Although the working of the committee’s mind is murky, it could reasonably have rejected Chicago’s bid for the 2016 games on aesthetic grounds — unless narcissism has suddenly become an Olympic sport.
In the 41 sentences of her remarks, Michelle Obama used some form of the personal pronouns “I” or “me” 44 times. Her husband was, comparatively, a shrinking violet, using those pronouns only 26 times in 48 sentences. Still, 70 times in 89 sentences was sufficient to convey the message that somehow their fascinating selves were what made, or should have made, Chicago’s case compelling.
[and]
Nine days before speaking in Copenhagen, the president, addressing the United Nations General Assembly, intoned: “No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation.” What was the speechwriter thinking when he or she assembled that sentence? The “should” was empty moralizing; the “can” was nonsense redundantly refuted by history. Does our Cicero even glance at his speeches before reading them in public?
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Oh my!
I’m not sold that the F-35 is an adequate replacement, even in part, for the F-22, but this detailed review of the F-35 cockpit experience is very cool. Check out what our technology is doing:
While not demonstrated in the PVI simulator, the F-35 will have a limited voice recognition system. F-35 chief test pilot Jon Beesley says “finger activation is faster than voice activation”, and Lockeed has chosen to use voice control for housekeeping chores and other tasks that require a lot of manual data entry. As currently envisaged, voice commands will be displayed in a scratchpad in the HMD. Only after the pilot has reviewed and accepted the entry will it be executed by the system.
One enhancement planned is three-dimensional audio. Stereo headphones in the helmet enable threat cues and radio calls to be placed relative to their source, helping the pilot build a better 3D picture of the tactical environment.
The heart of the F-35’s cockpit is the large forward display. A 25mm band at the top of the display is dedicated to function access buttons. [...] The large lower display area can be divided up into a number of portals of varying sizes - the largest being 10 x 7in, which occupies half the available display area. This area can be further broken down into two portals, each of 5 x 7in. Each of these, in turn, can be split into three portals: one of 5 x 5in at the top with two of 2.5 x 2in below. Display control was fairly intuitive, with blue-hashed corners showing how portals could be expanded. The pilot interacts with the portals either by touching the screen or using the HOTAS switches
It’s not often that I find myself agreeing with Human Rights First and the Center for American Progress [sic], but this is one of those times: if the reports are true, White House Counsel Greg Craig is being hung out / scapegoated / defenestrated for failing to navigate the myriad issues involved in closing Guantanamo Bay’s detainment facilities, and that is a travesty. Greg Craig is an excellent lawyer (even if I don’t share his political views), but apparently not good enough to navigate the international, domestic, administration and congressional politics of The One’s policy. Craig should have known, but then, since President Obama is So SmartTM, I still can’t figure out why it isn’t done yet. Perhaps it would help if Rahm Emmanuel had a tantrum…oh, I see. (No, wait–IOC.)
At least there is some poetic justice having an unabashed liberal as the first victim of Obama’s Gitmo “policy”.
Would it kill a Democrat to just admit that Gitmo might just be the least worst solution until Congress passes a comprehensive detainee act that addresses situations where the rules of war developed over the centuries primarily for state actors is almost entirely inadequate? [A: apparently, yes.]
Politico has a nicely detailed report.
If true, The One may find it hard to hire folks to fill out his administration if they think it will be this easy to be cashiered.
Liberals make many assumptions I don’t share, but one of the most odious is that they have a monopoly on protecting and promoting civil rights. More Republicans than Democrats supporting the Civil Rights Act, and my own experience has certainly been that many conventionally liberal Easterners are in practice far more racist in word and deed (not to mention offensive to civil rights) than in the South where I grew up. That explains why Texas executes the murderers of James Byrd, but Attorney General Holder lets Black Panther Party activists off in the face of a default judgment for flagrant Voting Rights Act violations.
Yes, I know: “That’s different.”
Therefore, no surprise that the media establishment swallows the liberal/Obama Administration line that the preceeding administration was ineffective or inattentive to civil rights. Fortunately, those who care to review the objective data on the matter can easily determine that this is yet another case of the media waving The One’s bloody flag for him:
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The claim that enforcement of our civil rights laws was “destroyed” is ludicrous. In my area of voting, a simple check (as I suggested to your reporter) of the list of cases available on the Division’s website would have shown that the Bush Administration filed in court or settled 71 enforcement actions to enforce federal voting laws. The Clinton Administration filed a mere 33 cases. One particular example highlights the stark difference: The Clinton Administration filed just seven cases to enforce Section 203, the ballot language minority provision of the Voting Rights Act. The Bush Administration filed 28 cases — more than had been filed in total since the provision was first passed by Congress.
Another difference in the quality of the legal work between the Bush and Clinton Administrations is evidenced by the fact (not unproven allegations that permeate your story) that almost a dozen cases filed by the Clinton Administration (including five voting cases) were declared by federal judges to be “frivolous” or “vexatious.” Not only were these cases thrown out, but over $4.1 million in attorney fees and costs were awarded to the defendants because of the shoddy legal work of the lawyers in the Division. There was not a single such award during the Bush Administration.
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