How's this new turn in foriegn policy working out?

[Ishmael]

Not so well it seems.

Ishmael

 

[Wrong Element]

Not so well it seems.

Ishmael

You're a regular George Kennan. Props.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...e-Gulf-as-Israel-prepares-an-Iran-strike.html

Brink of war.

Obama does Letterman and skips intel briefings.

He is the world's foremost consumer of written intelligence reports.

It seems only yesterday that we was triumphantly stepping down from AF1 waving a peace of paper...

 

[RobDownSouth]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...e-Gulf-as-Israel-prepares-an-Iran-strike.html

Brink of war.

Obama does Letterman and skips intel briefings.

He is the world's foremost consumer of written intelligence reports.

It seems only yesterday that we was triumphantly stepping down from AF1 waving a peace of paper...

...and this is one of the main reasons you'll be voting for him!

Amiright, chief? Hmmm?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Disgrace in Benghazi
Mark Steyn, NRO
September 15, 2012

So, on a highly symbolic date, mobs storm American diplomatic facilities and drag the corpse of a U.S. ambassador through the streets. Then the president flies to Vegas for a fundraiser. No, no, a novelist would say; that’s too pat, too neat in its symbolic contrast. Make it Cleveland, or Des Moines.

The president is surrounded by delirious fanbois and fangurls screaming “We love you,” too drunk on his celebrity to understand this is the first photo-op in the aftermath of a national humiliation. No, no, a filmmaker would say; too crass, too blunt. Make them sober, middle-aged midwesterners, shocked at first, but then quiet and respectful.

The president is too lazy and cocksure to have learned any prepared remarks or mastered the appropriate tone, notwithstanding that a government that spends more money than any government in the history of the planet has ever spent can surely provide him with both a speechwriting team and a quiet corner on his private wide-bodied jet to consider what might be fitting for the occasion. So instead he sloughs off the words, bloodless and unfelt: “And obviously our hearts are broken . . . ” Yeah, it’s totally obvious.

And he’s even more drunk on his celebrity than the fanbois, so in his slapdashery he winds up comparing the sacrifice of a diplomat lynched by a pack of savages with the enthusiasm of his own campaign bobbysoxers. No, no, says the Broadway director; that’s too crude, too ham-fisted. How about the crowd is cheering and distracted, but he’s the president, he understands the gravity of the hour, and he’s the greatest orator of his generation, so he’s thought about what he’s going to say, and it takes a few moments but his words are so moving that they still the cheers of the fanbois, and at the end there’s complete silence and a few muffled sobs, and even in party-town they understand the sacrifice and loss of their compatriots on the other side of the world.

But no, that would be an utterly fantastical America. In the real America, the president is too busy to attend the security briefing on the morning after a national debacle, but he does have time to do Letterman and appear on a hip-hop radio show hosted by “The Pimp with a Limp.” In the real State Department, the U.S. embassy in Cairo is guarded by Marines with no ammunition, but they do enjoy the soft-power muscle of a Foreign Service officer, one Lloyd Schwartz, tweeting frenziedly into cyberspace (including a whole chain directed at my own Twitter handle, for some reason) about how America deplores insensitive people who are so insensitively insensitive that they don’t respectfully respect all religions equally respectfully and sensitively, even as the raging mob is pouring through the gates.

When it comes to a flailing, blundering superpower, I am generally wary of ascribing to malevolence what is more often sheer stupidity and incompetence. For example, we’re told that, because the consulate in Benghazi was designated as an “interim facility,” it did not warrant the level of security and protection that, say, an embassy in Scandinavia would have. This seems all too plausible — that security decisions are made not by individual human judgment but according to whichever rule-book sub-clause at the Federal Agency of Bureaucratic Facilities Regulation it happens to fall under. However, the very next day the embassy in Yemen, which is a permanent facility, was also overrun, as was the embassy in Tunisia the day after. Look, these are tough crowds, as the president might say at Caesar’s Palace. But we spend more money on these joints than anybody else, and they’re as easy to overrun as the Belgian consulate.

As I say, I’m inclined to be generous, and put some of this down to the natural torpor and ineptitude of government. But Hillary Clinton and General Martin Dempsey are guilty of something worse, in the secretary of state’s weirdly obsessive remarks about an obscure film supposedly disrespectful of Mohammed and the chairman of the joint chiefs’ telephone call to a private citizen asking him if he could please ease up on the old Islamophobia.

Forget the free-speech arguments. In this case, as Secretary Clinton and General Dempsey well know, the film has even less to do with anything than did the Danish cartoons or the schoolteacher’s teddy bear or any of the other innumerable grievances of Islam. The 400-strong assault force in Benghazi showed up with RPGs and mortars: That’s not a spontaneous movie protest; that’s an act of war, and better planned and executed than the dying superpower’s response to it. Secretary Clinton and General Dempsey are, to put it mildly, misleading the American people when they suggest otherwise.

One can understand why they might do this, given the fiasco in Libya. The men who organized this attack knew the ambassador would be at the consulate in Benghazi rather than at the embassy in Tripoli. How did that happen? They knew when he had been moved from the consulate to a “safe house,” and switched their attentions accordingly. How did that happen? The United States government lost track of its ambassador for ten hours. How did that happen? Perhaps, when they’ve investigated Mitt Romney’s press release for another three or four weeks, the court eunuchs of the American media might like to look into some of these fascinating questions, instead of leaving the only interesting reporting on an American story to the foreign press.

For whatever reason, Secretary Clinton chose to double down on misleading the American people. “Libyans carried Chris’s body to the hospital,” said Mrs. Clinton. That’s one way of putting it. The photographs at the Arab TV network al-Mayadeen show Chris Stevens’s body being dragged through the streets, while the locals take souvenir photographs on their cell phones. A man in a red striped shirt photographs the dead-eyed ambassador from above; another immediately behind his head moves the splayed arm and holds his cell-phone camera an inch from the ambassador’s nose. Some years ago, I had occasion to assist in moving the body of a dead man: We did not stop to take photographs en route. Even allowing for cultural differences, this looks less like “carrying Chris’s body to the hospital” and more like barbarians gleefully feasting on the spoils of savagery.

In a rare appearance on a non-showbiz outlet, President Obama, winging it on Telemundo, told his host that Egypt was neither an ally nor an enemy. I can understand why it can be difficult to figure out, but here’s an easy way to tell: Bernard Lewis, the great scholar of Islam, said some years ago that America risked being seen as harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend. At the Benghazi consulate, the looters stole “sensitive” papers revealing the names of Libyans who’ve cooperated with the United States. Oh, well. As the president would say, obviously our hearts are with you.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, the local doctor who fingered bin Laden to the Americans sits in jail. In other words, while America’s clod vice president staggers around pimping limply that only Obama had the guts to take the toughest decision anyone’s ever had to take, the poor schlub who actually did have the guts, who actually took the tough decision in a part of the world where taking tough decisions can get you killed, languishes in a cell because Washington would not lift a finger to help him.

Like I said, no novelist would contrast Chris Stevens on the streets of Benghazi and Barack Obama on stage in Vegas. Too crude, too telling, too devastating.

 

[Adre]

None of this would have happened under Bush. Islamists loved us back then. And they'll love us when Mitt gets in. Everything will be alright again.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Disgrace in Benghazi
Mark Steyn, NRO
September 15, 2012

Books not blogs, chief.

None of this would have happened under Bush. Islamists loved us back then. And they'll love us when Mitt gets in. Everything will be alright again.

Rose petals in our path and all that. Bush kept us safe...Cheney said so, just this week!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

None of this would have happened under Bush. Islamists loved us back then. And they'll love us when Mitt gets in. Everything will be alright again.

I think you have it all perfectly backward.

None of this would have happened under Clinton. Islamists loved us then just as they love us now with Obama as President. But when Mitt gets in, Nelly bar the door because no one offends Islam like Mormons (with the notable exception of Tom Cruise and Scientology, but NASA is working to bridge that Grok Gap).

 

[RobDownSouth]

I think you have it all perfectly backward.

None of this would have happened under Clinton. Islamists loved us then just as they love us now with Obama as President. But when Mitt gets in, Nelly bar the door because no one offends Islam like Mormons (with the notable exception of Tom Cruise and Scientology, but NASA is working to bridge that Grok Gap).

yes, yes, chief..."But....but...CLINTON!"

 

[miles]

Obama's foreign policy is just like his other policies - a failure.

 

[tactful]

Withdraw all personal, cut all funds, hone all skills, wait and see what happens, act accordingly.

 

[Adre]

Obama's foreign policy is just like his other policies - a failure.

I guess you get smarter once you're more awake

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Obama's foreign policy is just like his other policies - a failure.

We all said that Arab Spring would lead to Arab Fall and possible Arab (Nuclear) Winter...

Meanwhile, it's all golf and Letterman.

Favorability rating is

off


the





chart

.
.
.

☟

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Bernard Lewis, the great scholar of Islam, said some years ago that America risked being seen as harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend. At the Benghazi consulate, the looters stole “sensitive” papers revealing the names of Libyans who’ve cooperated with the United States.

 

[mercury14]

Bernard Lewis, the great scholar of Islam, said some years ago that America risked being seen as harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend. At the Benghazi consulate, the looters stole “sensitive” papers revealing the names of Libyans who’ve cooperated with the United States.

You think that kind of info sits around on pieces of paper?

 

[miles]

Bernard Lewis, the great scholar of Islam, said some years ago that America risked being seen as harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend. At the Benghazi consulate, the looters stole “sensitive” papers revealing the names of Libyans who’ve cooperated with the United States.

I can't help but laugh when members of Obama's posse blame the violence on the stupid video to deflect the responsibility away from themselves.

Classic behavior from the Obama regime.

 

[miles]

Look - it's MercSeanDownSouth.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

You think that kind of info sits around on pieces of paper?

Oh no. It's memorized and the first duty of the new Ambassador is to repeat it all as it is whispered in his ear by the outgoing Ambassador until it is firmly set in his mind...

Gawd knows how the next replacement is to learn anything.

Great point! I stand corrected!




:kbate:

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I can't help but laugh when members of Obama's posse blame the violence on the stupid video to deflect the responsibility away from themselves.

Classic behavior from the Obama regime.

Anything but the weak horse.

They even had the fellow rounded up.

If Bush had done something like that, we would hear about it for months, years...

Why in 2000, Laurel was convinced that the focus of the Bush Administration was going to be to censor and shut down Lit...

'Cause, don't you know, conservatives hate free speech so,

Liberals outlawed hate speech to

Shut


them



up

.
.
.

☟

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Who loves Free Speech?

Obama vs. the First Amendment
Andrew C. McCarthy, NRO
September 15, 2012

Democrats and their sharky Obamedia defense lawyers are in a snit. For three dreamy convention days in Charlotte, they told themselves that, for the first time in decades, it was their guy who had the upper hand when it came to national security. Now that bubble has burst, the way contrived narratives do when they crash into concrete challenges. At that point, an airy president of the world won’t do; we need to have a president of the United States, a job that has never suited, and has never been of much interest to, Barack Obama.

Defense against foreign enemies is the primary job of the president of the United States. The rationale for the office’s creation is national defense — not green venture capitalism, not rationing medical care, not improving the self-image of the “Muslim world,” not leaving no child behind, not blowing out the Treasury’s credit line. Yet, though we are entering the late innings, foreign policy and national defense have not been factors in the 2012 campaign.

That is worth bearing in mind when we hear the laugh-out-loud narrative of Obama as foreign-affairs chess master. The president badly wants to win reelection. If there were anything to his alleged prowess, we’d not have heard the end of it. What we’ve heard, instead, is a bumper-sticker: “Obama killed Osama.” The Left hoped to paste it over the president’s generally dreary record. Even with the Obamedia in coordinated overdrive, the plan can work only if Mitt Romney lets it work — and, thankfully, it looks like he won’t.

Give the president his due: In 2008, he said he would go hard against terrorist havens, no matter how upset this made John McCain’s cherished “allies” in Pakistan, and he has. But even the welcome slamming of jihadist redoubts is undermined by the mess Obama has made of terrorist detention — so our forces kill in situations where they could capture, drying up the intelligence reservoir that has been vital to thwarting new cells and plots.

Moreover, any president would have given the order to take bin Laden out, and just about any post-9/11 president would bomb jihadist hideouts. What’s extraordinary about Obama’s performance in this regard is that he’s one you might have wondered about — he gets graded on a curve. But, thankful as we may be, this is thin camouflage for the rest of Obama’s agenda, which is post-American, anti-constitutional, enabling of the ideology that spawns terrorism, faithless toward our real allies, and feckless in the face of menacing Iran.

The game never goes according to plan. The batted ball always manages to find the suspect fielder, no matter how hard the coach, or the campaign, tries to hide him. On the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities, the world and its affairs found the Obama administration — intruding on the president’s effort to win reelection by a brand of domestic class warfare that gives new meaning to the word “small.”

When it came, Obama’s moment was entirely predictable. It was, after all, self-inflicted: the inevitable fallout of policy crafted by the faculty-lounge pinhead, whose ideas are so saccharine smug there’s never a thought of anything so jejune as their consequences. Obama being Obama, when the consequences came, he crawled under his desk — before escaping to a Vegas fundraiser.

“The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” So declared the Obama State Department in a statement issued on the website of its Egyptian embassy. At the time, it was clear that another episode of Muslim mayhem was imminent.

The statement is a disgrace, just as Mitt Romney said it was. It elevated over the U.S. Constitution (you know, the thing Obama took an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend”) the claimed right of sharia supremacists (you know, “Religion of Peace” adherents) to riot over nonsense. Further, it dignified the ludicrous pretext that an obscure, moronic 14-minute video was the actual reason for the oncoming jihad.

Here is the important part, however, the part not to be missed, no matter how determined the president’s media shysters are to cover it up: The disgraceful embassy statement was a completely accurate articulation of longstanding Obama policy.

...

But let’s put the legal hair-splitting aside. Knowing her legal position was unsound, and that traditional forms of law could not constitutionally be used to suppress critical examination of religion, Secretary Clinton further explained the administration’s commitment “to use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel that they have the support to do what we abhor.” The government is our servant, not our master — besides enforcing valid laws, it has no business using its coercive power to play social engineer. More to the present point, however, the administration was effectively saying it is perfectly appropriate to employ extra-legal forms of intimidation to suppress speech that “we abhor.”

That is precisely what the Egyptian mob was about to do when the U.S. embassy issued its statement. The Obama administration’s position? The president endorses extortionate “peer pressure” and “shaming,” but condemns constitutionally protected speech. That’s exactly the message the embassy’s statement conveyed.

Mind you, what is playing out in Egypt — as well as Libya, Yemen, and Tunisia — is a charade. It has nothing to do with the dopey movie. There is as much or more agitation to release the Blind Sheikh — which the Obama administration has also encouraged by its embrace of Islamists, including the Blind Sheikh’s terrorist organization. The latest round of marauding is about power.

Islamic supremacists see themselves in a civilizational war with us. When we submit on a major point, we grow weaker and they grow stronger. They win a big round in the jihad. President Obama’s anti-constitutional policy — the one he lacked the courage to stand by when, shall we say, the “chickens came home to roost” — has made speech suppression low-hanging fruit. The Islamists are going for it.

 

[mercury14]

Oh no. It's memorized and the first duty of the new Ambassador is to repeat it all as it is whispered in his ear by the outgoing Ambassador until it is firmly set in his mind...

Gawd knows how the next replacement is to learn anything.

Great point! I stand corrected!




:kbate:

Oh so the only options the US government has to store classified data is employees memorizing things and paper documents?

 

[mercury14]

Liberals outlawed hate speech

Which law did liberals pass that outlawed hate speech?

 

[mercury14]

Which law did liberals pass that outlawed hate speech?

Oh so the only options the US government has to store classified data is employees memorizing things and paper documents?

 

[Bert Notorius]

as much as i'd like to soley blame obama, the course of this ship has been set eons ago.

 

[garbage can]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...e-Gulf-as-Israel-prepares-an-Iran-strike.html

Brink of war.

Obama does Letterman and skips intel briefings.

He is the world's foremost consumer of written intelligence reports.It seems only yesterday that we was triumphantly stepping down from AF1 waving a peace of paper...

He is also the worlds foremost leaker of written intelligence reports.