- Iran: No nukes? Strategic cooperation? Rule-of-law democracy? Greater freedom for the Iranian people? Naw. President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's regime plays Obama like a card sharp working a hick who just showed up with his life savings in his pocket.
- Iraq: Al Qaeda suffered a catastrophic defeat and nearly disappeared from the Iraqi landscape. Now it's resurgent -- encouraged by Obama's determination to look away. Terror bombings are up. But US troop levels are going down. That's all that matters to the blinkered White House.
- Afghanistan: Encouraged by Obama's evident weakness, the Taliban redoubled its efforts against the hated government of President Hamid Karzai. Obama dithers, Afghan leaders steal, our troops die protecting the thieves -- and the Taliban advances with fresh recruits.
- Pakistan: For all the fuss about how well-received Obama's Cairo confession was among Muslims, anti-Americanism has increased in this conflict-torn state of 180 million. We pour in billions of dollars. The Pakistani government, media and citizenry pour out anti-American rhetoric -- even blaming us for Taliban terror bombings. And Obama's a deer in the headlights of history again.
- Turkey: Advertised as a marvelous Muslim democracy and NATO member, Turkey has taken another lurch toward Islamic fundamentalism, embracing radical Arab states while slashing cooperation with Israel. Big win there, Mr. President.
- Yemen: The Great Muslim Civil War between Sunni and Shia has a new theater, with Saudi Arabia and Iran fighting a proxy campaign in the poorer-than-dirt-poor Yemeni backcountry. A Shia tribal struggle for basic rights found a cynical backer in Tehran; the Sunni-hardline Yemeni government unleashed fundamentalist jihadis -- terror, butchery and rape -- against its Shia minority. Nervous about its own oppressed Shia population, Saudi Arabia attacked Yemeni territory (with US-made weapons) to support its fellow Sunni fundamentalists. The impoverished Shia suffer grimly as pawns between greater powers. But a US president who bowed to a Saudi king won't ask the Saudis to show restraint.
- IsPal: By betraying Israel and glorifying the Palestinian cause in Cairo, Obama encouraged unrealistic expectations among Palestinians and empowered Arab hardliners -- always willing to fight to the last Palestinian. Obama's naive demand for a total freeze on Israeli settlements created a flashpoint while undercutting Palestinian and Israeli moderates. The situation's far more explosive than it was when Obama took office.
That's enough. Click on the above link to read the entire article for yourself. All of this paints a picture of a sad situation that we are becoming all too familiar with a recurring theme. That this guy has NO resume to speak of whatsoever and that he is in WAY over his head when it comes to governing this country.
12 comments:
I think we would see all these same problems with any liberal. It's that whole niave belief that people are basically good and we can just sit down and talk about our problems - I wish this were reality but wishing doesn't make it so.
Agreed Tracy. I think McCain would have bit more of a foreign policy hawk, but not much.
That's enough. Click on the above link to read the entire article for yourself. All of this paints a picture of a sad situation that we are becoming all too familiar with a recurring theme. That this guy has NO resume to speak of whatsoever and that he is in WAY over his head when it comes to governing this country.
And if he kicked the bucket and you people wound up with Palin as president? What's her resume like?
Tracy, to hear you talk, no negotiations work at any time, and only "liberals" use it. Riiiight. Didn't Reagan use negotiations with the Iranians to get the American hostages out at the start of his first term?
Everything from labour disputes to even some international disputes are resolved with negotiations. Sometimes they don't work. The smart thing is to recognize when to negotiate and when to fight.
Here's an excerpt I should've put in my last post.
Nicolle had left her gig at CBS just a few months earlier to hook up with the McCain campaign. I had to trust her experience, as she had dealt with national politics more than I had.
Palin's own words about her experience in national politics, at the time that she was running for VP!
Didn't Reagan use negotiations with the Iranians to get the American hostages out at the start of his first term?
No. The hostages were in the air on their way home as Reagan was being sworn in. The Iranians quickly realized that they werent going to be dealing with an ineffective, milquetose know-nothing anymore. Texas Fred posted this just yesterday. "the hostages were released because Iran KNEW that Reagan was about to send their useless asses back to the stone age!
Our military was on HIGH ALERT, the Mediterranean Fleet was gassed up and ready to go. Marines and Army Spec/Ops were in position and all that was needed was the word ATTACK to come from a REAL President, a President that wasn’t a WIMP, a WUSS, a, well, basically, a coward."
And besides Reynold, at least Palin had executive experience whereas Obama never even ran so much as a taco stand.
Fair enough, mind you...in real life there are many situations where negotiations, and not violence, do work. Though it does help to negotiate from a position of strength.
Though I will point out: What good did Bush Jr's little wars do? Him not being a "wimp" didn't really help your country much, did it? Bin Laden is still out there, and the ME hates America more than ever. The WMD thing was a complete lie.
If you're going to war, at least be honest about why.
As to Palin's "executive experience", do you mean her quitting her term of governor early? Whatever. That was after the election anyway.
Still, she's still admitted that she doesn't have any national experience. And the fact was, that she showed herself to be an idiot through her actions and her constant blaming of other people for her mistakes.
Now, as to Obama never even running a taco stand, well, I guess that's true. That link says nothing about him ever having done that.
None of the cited experience amounts to elected, executive experience. None. Now, since you brought it up, when it comes to his Harvard Law Review days, why doesnt he talk about it?
My favorite reason from MANY that are cited in the aritcle " Obama did not make the Harvard Law Review (HLR) the old-fashioned way, the way HLR's first black editor, Charles Houston, did 70 years prior. To Obama's good fortune, the HLR had replaced a meritocracy in which editors were elected based on grades – the president being the student with the highest academic rank – with one in which half the editors were chosen through a writing competition."
Ah yes, another wingnut daily article. The same "journal" whose editor literally prays for Obama to fail.
Do you really expect them to be honest about Obama? That'd be stupid.
Speaking of which, you said
None of the cited experience amounts to elected, executive experience. None.
while my source said:
If Obama wins election and takes office in January 2009, he will have served four years in the U.S. Senate representing Illinois.
Before that, he was a state senator in Illinois for eight years. He was also a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School during that time.
So what the hell? Are senators not elected in your country? I know that in mine they're appointed, but in the US I thought they had to be elected.
executive: adjective (from Merriam Webster) a : of or relating to the execution of the laws and the conduct of public and national affairs b : belonging to the branch of government that is charged with such powers as diplomatic representation, superintendence of the execution of the laws, and appointment of officials and that usually has some power over legislation (as through veto) — compare judicial, legislative
You are referring to legislative experience, not executive. That's why governors often run for and are at times elected as president here. While in the Illinois Senate he voted a non-committal "present" about 130 times. Could you please explain how this somehow qualifies as "experience", nevermind "leadership"? We could probably train a mastiff puppy to do that.
First, Obama.
The fact that I didn't know whether Obama had them didn't prevent me from voting for him -- none of the other candidates I might have supported had a track record in management either -- but I would have been happier had I known whether Obama was any good at running things.
I don't have that problem any more. Obama has spent the past year and a half running a large organization -- as of last December, it had "about 500 employees and a budget of $100 million" -- and running it very well. It's not just that he and his team beat the Clinton campaign, which started out with enormous advantages. It's not even that he often did so by building effective political machines from scratch in states in which Clinton had locked down the political establishment. It's that every account of the Obama campaign that I've read makes it clear that he has done an outstanding job of constructing and running a political organization. For instance, this account of Obama's campaign is very much worth reading, if you want to get a sense of how he runs things:
So the man doesn't have much executive experience, but it seems apparent that he damned well can run things.
As to your mastiff puppy, she bungled up her own VP candidacy.
Once needs compotence in the presidential seat. If McCain were to kick the bucket, Palin would be in, and she's been* abundantly shown** not*** to have**** any compotence.
*for a more polite view
**Keith Olberman reports on the peculiar situation where Sarah Palin's pastor, whom Palin gives partial credit for making her the governer of Alaska (does this qualify as cheating?), was involved in chasing an innocent woman out of her home after accusing her of being a witch.
***In speaking before her church about her son going to war in Iraq, Palin urged the congregation to pray "that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God; that's what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan." When asked about these remarks in her interview with Gibson, Palin successfully dodged the issue of her religious beliefs by claiming that she had been merely echoing the words of Abraham Lincoln. The New York Times later dubbed her response "absurd." It was worse than absurd; it was a lie calculated to conceal the true character of her religious infatuations.
****(you think that Obama's foreign policy would be worse than this?)
As for McCain, he used to be, I once thought, an honourable man, but once he threw in with the religious right and started using the same tactics that he decried when Bush used against him in the previous election, and accepted a dingbat as his VP, he lost it.
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