Tag: Foreign Policy

Romney: “Hope is Not a Strategy.”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

Yesterday, an American Leader gave an excellent, commanding speech on his vision for what our Foreign Policy should be.

And, it sure wasn’t Scooter.

Reuters.com summarizes the speech:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney delivered a sweeping critique on Monday of President Barack Obama’s handling of threats in the Middle East, saying Obama’s lack of leadership had made the volatile region more dangerous.

In what his campaign called a major foreign policy address, Romney called for a more assertive use of American influence in the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Romney, speaking before the white-uniformed cadets at Virginia Military Institute, questioned Obama’s handling of the episode in Libya last month in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed after the U.S. consulate in Benghazi came under militant attack.

The former Massachusetts governor also accused Obama of failing to use U.S. diplomacy to shape events in Iran, Iraq, Israel, Syria, Russia and elsewhere.

“The president is fond of saying that, ‘The tide of war is receding,'” Romney said. “And I want to believe him as much as anyone. But when we look at the Middle East today … it is clear that the risk of conflict in the region is higher now than when the president took office.”

Romney’s speech was short on specifics, but in broad terms he laid out his national security priorities before the second of his three debates with Obama, which will be at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York on October 16 and will include discussion of foreign policy.

Romney’s aim on Monday was to portray himself as having the presidential stature needed for the world stage. He had a similar goal during a trip overseas in July, but that was marred by a series of missteps, including his inadvertent insult of the organizers of the London Olympics.

In calling for a more forceful foreign policy, Romney indicated that he would not rush into armed conflict.

But he accused Obama of a hasty troop withdrawal from Iraq, saying hard-fought gains there are being eroded by rising violence and a resurgent al Qaeda. Obama considers his withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq the fulfillment of a 2008 campaign promise, sought by Americans weary of war.

Romney also said he might not be so quick to pull troops out of the unpopular war in Afghanistan. Obama has pledged to end the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan by the end of 2014 as part of NATO’s plan to hand over security responsibility to Afghan forces.

Romney said he would pursue a transition to Afghan security forces by that time but would evaluate conditions there before making a final decision to pull out.

Obama was right to order the mission that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden last year, Romney said, but he charged that other elements of the president’s strategy for the region were weak or ill-advised. Romney pointed to the extensive U.S. reliance on attacks by drone aircraft as “no substitute for a national security strategy for the Middle East.”

Romney, who accused Obama of pursuing a strategy of “passivity” rather than partnership with U.S. allies, is running just behind or even with his Democratic rival in most opinion polls, which have gotten closer since Romney did well in their first debate last week.

Our Brightest and Best, who have to enforce the President’s Foreign Policy know, overwhelmingly, whom they want to be the 45th President of the United States. 

Here’s a newsflash: Per militarytimes.com, again, it ain’t Scooter.

The 3,100 respondents — roughly two-thirds active-duty and one-third reserve component members — are about 80 percent white and 91 percent male. Forty percent are in paygrades E-5 through E-8, while more than 35 percent are in paygrades O-3 through O-5.

Almost 80 percent of respondents have a college degree — including 27 percent with a graduate degree and more than 11 percent with a post-graduate degree — while an additional 18.5 percent have some college under their belts.

And they are battle-hardened; almost 29 percent have spent more than two cumulative years deployed since 9/11, while a similar percentage has spent one to two cumulative years deployed.

The Military Times poll shows that Republicans continue to enjoy overwhelming support among the military’s professional ranks.

For an example of the cockeyed Foreign Policy known as Smart Power!, check this out:

Yesterday, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez “won” reelection. Today, the White House is congratulating Venezuela on that outcome.

From the pool report, which details a gaggle held by White House spokesman Jay Carney:

-Carney said US congratulates Venezuelan people on its election, while noting the US has its differences with Chavez.

President Obama is on his way to tour Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in California.

UPDATE: From the White House transcript of the gaggle:

Q Speaking of foreign policy, can you react to the election results in Venezuela?

MR. CARNEY: The Venezuelan National Elections Commission has declared that President Hugo Chavez won reelection, I believe roughly 54 to 45 percent, with 90 percent reporting. We congratulate the Venezuelan people on the high level of participation, as well as on what was a relatively peaceful election process. I would note the challenger has conceded the race.

Re-electing the despot, Hugo Chavez, signals a strong “Democracy”?

Mr. President, I do not think that you know what that word means.

And, as far as your inept and chaotic Foreign Policy is concerned, therein lies the problem.

Obama’s Polish Joke

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

Did you hear the one about the insufferable president who refused to apologize for an offensive gaffe?

Yahoo News Canada reports:

The White House on Wednesday shrugged off Polish demands to express more than mere ‘regret’ after President Barack Obama mistakenly referred to a Nazi Holocaust site as a “Polish death camp.”

“We regret the misstatement, but that is what it was,” said Obama spokesman Jay Carney, reiterating that the president “misspoke” during a ceremony awarding the highest US civilian honor to late Holocaust hero Jan Karski.

“He was referring to Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland.”

Poland had earlier insisted that Washington must do more than simply express the “regret” offered by another White House spokesman late on Tuesday, hours after Obama’s use of words deemed offensive by Warsaw.

Obama’s verbal slip overshadowed his posthumous award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Karski, a Polish underground officer who provided the Allies with early eyewitness accounts of Nazi genocide against European Jews.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Obama’s words had hurt all Poles and he expected more from Washington than just regret.

“I am convinced that our American friends can today allow themselves a stronger reaction than a simple expression of regret from the White House spokesman — a reaction more inclined to eliminate once and for all these kinds of errors,” Tusk told reporters in Warsaw.

“Today, this is a problem for the reputation of the United States,” the prime minister said.

Members of Poland’s Jewish community — including the country’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich — said in a statement that: “We expect President Barack Obama to personally correct his words.”

Poland’s President Bronislaw Komorowski said meanwhile he had sent a letter to Obama “counting on (…) cooperation in correcting this unfortunate error” which “I am certain in no way reflects the thoughts or views of our American friend.”

Obama evidently neglected his history studies during that famous Ivy League Education of his:

In 1933 approximately nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by Germany during the war. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed. Although Jews were the primary victims, hundreds of thousands of Roma (Gypsies) and at least 250,000 mentally or physically disabled persons were also victims of Nazi genocide.

As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe from 1933 to 1945, millions of other innocent people were persecuted and murdered. More than three million Soviet prisoners of war were killed because of their nationality. Poles, as well as other Slavs, were targeted for slave labor, and as a result, almost two million perished. Homosexuals and others deemed “anti-social” were also persecuted and often murdered. In addition, thousands of political and religious dissidents such as communists, socialists, trade unionists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were persecuted for their beliefs and behavior and many of these individuals died as a result of maltreatment.

The concentration camp is most closely associated with the Holocaust and remains an enduring symbol of the Nazi regime. The first camps opened soon after the Nazis took power in January 1933; they continued as a basic part of Nazi rule until May 8, 1945, when the war, and the Nazi regime, ended.

Obama’s remarks were insensitive, at best. The fact is, from 1939 and 1945, almost six million Polish citizens were killed during the Nazi occupation of their country.

More than half of them were Jewish and they, in turn, made up half of the six million European Jews who died during the Holocaust.

Scores were killed in death camps set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland, including the most infamous, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Remember Obama’s speech in Strasbourg in April of 2009?

BBC News reported that

Later, President Obama told an audience in Strasbourg that the US and Europe had allowed the alliance to drift in recent years.

He said the US had been “arrogant” and “dismissive” towards its allies, while there was “insidious” anti-Americanism in Europe. He said these attitudes had to change.

“I’ve come to Europe this week to renew our partnership – one in which America listens and learns from our friends and allies. But where our friends and allies bear their share of the burden,” he said.

How can Europe be expected to respect us with a putz like this as the Leader of the Free World?

And, you know what the worst part of this whole “Presidential gaffe” is?

It took place at the Medal of Freedom Awards where Obama was attempting to honor Jan Karski, the late Polish resistance hero who famously tried to warn the world about the atrocities being committed by Nazis against Jews in the ghettos and death camps of Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War.

A presidential apology is more than called for.

However, the “Lightbringer” will not be offering one anytime soon.

After all, he’s always the smartest person in the room.

More Chens Than a Chinese Phonebook

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

– John F. Kennedy

Obama’s “Smart Power!” Foreign Policy is looking like anything but, in his handling of the case of a blind gentleman from China who wants to defect to America.

Thehill.com has the story.

The Chinese dissident at the center of a political firestorm called a hearing Thursday and told lawmakers he wants to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng called a hearing set up to explore his efforts to leave China and escape persecution—apparently from a Chinese hospital room.

“I want to meet with Secretary Clinton,” he said on the phone. “I hope I can get more help from her. I also want to thank her face to face.”

Chen added that he is most concerned with his family, and said, “I really want to know what’s going on with them.”

“I want to thank all of you for your care and your love,” he added, through a translation by Pastor Bob Fu, Founder and President, ChinaAid Association. Fu was a witness at Thursday’s hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

Chen is at the center of a diplomatic row between the U.S. and China that has become a political liability for President Obama.

Chen was under house arrest for several months for protesting China’s one-child policy, but escaped to the U.S. Embassy, where he stayed for several days.

The U.S. and China appeared to reach a deal Wednesday that allowed Chen to remain in China, where he said he wished to stay.

But after Chen was released to a Chinese hospital to have his injuries treated, the dissident said he did not want to stay in China and requested political asylum in the U.S.

Administration officials insisted they did not pressure Chen to stay in China and that he decided on his own initially that he wanted to remain in his country.

But the about-face has led to criticism from Republicans that U.S. officials never should have allowed him to leave the U.S. embassy.

Speaking of the Republicans, the unofficial/official Republican Nominee for President was not shy about voicing his opinion concerning this fiasco:

Mitt Romney condemned the Obama administration’s handling of blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, calling the episode “a dark day for freedom” and “a day of shame” for President Obama if, he couched, reports are true that American officials communicated threats to Chen’s family.

At the same time Romney was speaking about the Chen story, about which there are conflicting reports, CNN was reporting that Chen told the network that he blamed a “misunderstanding” with the U.S. government for impressions that the Americans abandoned him and expressed “deep gratitude” to American officials.

Several times on Thursday, Romney couched his comments with disclaimers like “if the reports are true,” but the takeaway was clearly intended that the incident is a black eye for President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

“Just in the last day or two we’ve heard some disturbing things from across the world that suggest that, potentially, if the reports are true, some very troubling developments there,” Romney said. “Where an individual, Mr. Chen, has sought freedom in a bastion of freedom, an embassy of the United States of America. Aren’t we proud of the fact that people seeking freedom come to our embassy to find it?”

Romney continued: “The reports are, if they’re accurate, our administration willingly or unwittingly communicated to Chen an implicit threat to his family. And also probably sped up, or may have sped up, the process of his decision to leave the embassy because they wanted to move on to a series of discussions that Mr. Geithner and our secretary of state are planning on having with China.”

The likely GOP presidential nominee added: “It’s also apparent, according to these reports, if they’re accurate, that our embassy failed to put in place the kind of verifiable measures that would assure the safety of Mr. Chen and his family. If the reports are true, this is a dark day for freedom and it’s a day of shame for the Obama administration. We are a place of freedom, here and around the world and we should stand up and defend freedom wherever it is under attack.”

But, according to the Twitter feed of CNN executive producer Ram Ramgopal, Chen offered praise to the Americans who helped him.

“Chen Guangcheng speaks to CNN; says he believes U.S. will help him, expresses “deep gratitude” to American officials in Beijing,” Ramgopal wrote. “Chen also blames a ‘misunderstanding’ for the impression that the U.S. govt. abandoned him in the hospital.”

Romney, who has made a get-tough attitude toward China a central part of his foreign policy, on Sunday released a statement professing concern for Chen’s treatment, but had not previously spoken about the case from the stump.

Good for Mitt.  Well done.

On the subject of freedom, the greatest president in my lifetime, Ronald Wilson Reagan,  said:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

In 1974, in a speech titled, “The Shining City Upon a Hill”, Reagan said:

Standing on the tiny deck of the Arabella in 1630 off the Massachusetts coast, John Winthrop said, “We will be as a cityupon a hill.The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.”

Everyone’s watching, Mr. President.  It’s your move.

Obama: From Cairo to Arab Spring

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

On June 4, 2009, President Barack Hussein Obama, spoke the following words of reconciliation to representatives of the Muslim World, who were gathered at the University of Cairo in Egypt:

I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

I do so recognizing that change cannot happen overnight. No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, nor can I answer in the time that I have all the complex questions that brought us to this point. But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed doors. There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground. As the Holy Koran tells us, “Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.” That is what I will try to do – to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.

Part of this conviction is rooted in my own experience. I am a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith.

As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam – at places like Al-Azhar University – that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.

Fast forward to April of 2012, where Michael Hirsh, writing the following post for nationaljournal.com, seems to believe that Obama’s predilection for reconciliation with the Muslim World is something new:

In an article in the current National Journal called “The Post Al Qaida Era,” I write that the Obama administration is taking a new view of Islamist radicalism. The president realizes he has no choice but to cultivate the Muslim Brotherhood and other relatively “moderate” Islamist groups emerging as lead political players out of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere. (The Muslim Brotherhood officially renounced violence decades ago, leading then-dissident radicals such as Ayman al-Zawahiri to join al Qaida.)

It is no longer the case, in other words, that every Islamist is seen as a potential accessory to terrorists. “The war on terror is over,” one senior State Department official who works on Mideast issues told me. “Now that we have killed most of al Qaida, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaida see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism.”

The new approach is made possible by the double impact of the Arab Spring, which supplies a new means of empowerment to young Arabs other than violent jihad, and Obama’s savagely successful military drone campaign against the worst of the violent jihadists, al Qaida.

Some of the smarter hardliners on the Right, like Reuel Marc Gerecht, are coming to realize that the Arab world may find another route to democracy–through Islamism. The question is, how will this play politically at a time when Obama’s GOP rival, Mitt Romney, is painting the president as a weak accommodationist?

According to a senior advisor to Romney, the campaign is still formulating how to approach the new cuddle-up approach to Islamists. But the spectacle of an administration that is desperately trying to catch up to the fast-evolving new world of the Mideast fits into the Romney narrative of a president who “has been outmatched by events,” the adviser said. “Obama came to power with a view of the region that would make progress in the Arab world and get the Iranians back to the table. He would deal with the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and the key to that was dealing with settlements. Instead it’s been chaos.”

The president may have no choice but to preside over chaos at this point–a chaos that may not be the disaster that critics say and may in fact be the Arab world’s only path to modernity — but it won’t play well in the seven months between now and election day.

No choice?  It seems to me that this may have been his choice all along.

Smart Power? $4 Per Gallon Gas, Bankrolling Barbarians, and Ignoring Our Friends

On By kingsjesterIn Politics7 Comments

Tonight, in celebration of Valentine’s Day, a lot of American couples will be using their cars to go out to dinner.

Enjoy going out while you can still afford to, Americans.

ABC.go.com has the story:

Gasoline prices could soon hit $4 a gallon, a threshold they haven’t flirted with since last spring.

The average price paid by U.S. drivers for a gallon of regular now stands at $3.52, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which released its latest figures this afternoon. That price represents an increase of 0.04 percent from a week ago and 0.38 percent from a year ago.

Experts expect prices to spike another 60 cents or more, with the $4 mark being touched—or exceeded—sometime this summer, probably by Memorial Day weekend, the peak of the summer driving season. The last time the U.S. saw $4 gasoline was back in the summer of 2008.

“I think it’s going to be a chaotic spring,” says Tom Kloza of the Oil Price Information Service. He expects average prices to peak at $4.05, though he and other industry trackers say prices could be sharply higher in some markets.

Historically, $4 a gallon has been the upper limit of what consumers have been willing to pay. Last April, national prices peaked at about $3.98 a gallon before receding. “It’s going to be tough to sustain that level,” thinks Brian Milne of energy tracker Televent DTN. “People will drive less.”

Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates in Houston, says where prices will go long-term is anybody’s guess. He has been following gas prices one way or another for more than 30 years. He distinguishes between those forces affecting prices that are predictable, and others that are not.

Chief among the unknowns is war in the Middle East–or if not war, increased tensions. It’s such worries, he says, that are most responsible now for the run up in prices at the pump. Also boosting prices is the higher seasonal demand that comes with summer vacations, plus a federally mandated switch from winter gas formulations to costlier ones for summer. The summer ones, designed to reduce emissions, require further refining steps.

Where could gas be by year’s end? “It depends if the Middle East blows up in a war or not,” says Lipow. “That’s really the big headline out there: Whether or not geopolitical events disrupt supply. We see that affect already.”

We all know that the Middle East is a powderkeg.  Revolution is in the air, and all of the secular despots that America was used to dealing with, are being replaced by Muslim despots, who believe that we are all infidels, and who rather kill us than look at us.

So…what is our president, the Leader of the Free World doing?  Is he negotiating with Ali Baba and his forty thieves in order to drive our oil prices down, thereby stimulating our stagnant economy?

Nope.  This yutz wants to bankroll the barbarians.

Reuters.com reports:

The White House announced plans on Monday to help countries swept by “Arab Spring” revolutions with more than $800 million in economic aid, while maintaining U.S. military assistance to Egypt despite a crisis triggered by an Egyptian crackdown on U.S. democracy activists.

In a year marked by fierce debate over U.S. budget deficits, President Barack Obama sought to maintain the core of U.S. spending on overseas aid and development while squeezing savings out of existing programs and scaling back proposals to build new embassies and hire more diplomats.

In his annual budget message to Congress, Obama asked that military aid to Egypt be kept at the level of recent years – $1.3 billion – and sought $250 million in regular economic aid for the country as it makes its shaky transition away from autocratic rule following the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak last year.

The proposals are part of Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2013, which begins Oct. 1. His requests need the approval of Congress. Some lawmakers have urged cuts to overseas spending to address U.S. budget shortfalls and are particularly angry at Egypt.

Obama proposed $51.6 billion in funding for the U.S. State Department and foreign aid overall, when $8.2 billion in assistance to war zones is included.

The White House sought a 1.6 percent increase in the State Department’s budget, excluding spending for Iraq and Afghanistan, which was tallied up separately.

Most of the new economic aid for the Arab Spring countries – $770 million – would go to a new “Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund,” the president said in his budget plan.

Officials said the bulk of this would be new money, and would be spent on initiatives to support long-term economic, political, and trade reforms for countries in transition such as Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen.

“We’re in a new world. The Arab Spring has come,” said Deputy Secretary of State Tom Nides, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chief budget official.

“We need to make sure we have the tools and flexibility in which to fund these initiatives. … The world is evolving as we see it, and we felt it was important to have a pool of money.”Obama continued the practice of putting proposed foreign assistance for war zones in a separate account. This account, known as the “Overseas Contingency Operations,” includes $8.2 billion for the State Department and foreign aid.

It includes $3.3 billion for Afghanistan, $1 billion for Pakistan, and $4 billion for Iraq, where U.S. troops have left the country but the State Department has picked up some of their functions such as police training.

Overall funding for Iraq declined about 10 percent from the 2012 fiscal year to $4.8 billion.

Assistance for Israel was steady at around $3.1 billion.

Let me try to wrap my head around this.  While Americans face the propect of $4 per gallon gas, the Obama Administration’s  Middle East Policy is to reward the people jacking around with the gas prices, a bunch of murderous barbarians, and ignore our greatest ally?

And they call this Smart Power?