Barry Rubin, Gloria-Center.com

 

Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo is one of the most bizarre orations ever made by a U.S. president, not a foreign policy statement but rather something invented by Obama, an international campaign speech, as if his main goal was to obtain votes in the next Egyptian primary.

 

That approach defined Obama’s basic themes: Islam’s great. America is good. We’re sorry. Be moderate (not that you haven’t always been that way). Let’s be friends.

 

Here, Obama followed the idea that if you want someone to like you agree with almost everything he says. Obama also gave, albeit with some minor variations, the speech that the leader of a Third World Muslim country might give, justifying it in advance by claiming America is a big Muslim country, after all.

 

Of course, the speech had tremendous—though temporary—appeal combined with its counterproductive strategic impact. It will make him more popular. It may well make America somewhat less unpopular. But its effect on Middle East issues and U.S. interests is another matter entirely.

 

The first problem is that Obama said many things factually quite untrue, some ridiculously so. Pages would be required to list all these inaccuracies. The interesting question is whether Obama consciously lied or really believes it. I’d prefer him to be lying, because if he’s that ignorant then America and the world is in very deep trouble. Read article.

 

Ralph Peters, NY Post.com

 

Salaam aleikum, dudes!

 

I thought I knew a little bit about the Middle East. Boy, was I wrong. Last week, President Obama set me straight. Here's what our president taught me during his Middle-Eastern pilgrimage:

 

There is no more terrorism. Wow, cool! No more security checks at airports, right? It's unclear which side won, but it's all over. Obama didn't mention terrorism a single time in his star-turn speech in Cairo. Only a few "violent extremists" (our own troops?) remain at large.

 

Churches and synagogues are about to open in Saudi Arabia. Since "Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance" and there are "over 1,200 mosques within our borders," I can't wait for the first Baptist hymn-sing in Riyadh. Sign me up!

 

Behind closed doors with Saudi King Abdullah, our president must've mentioned the many hundreds of churches and synagogues that thrived on the Arabian Peninsula during the Prophet's lifetime. Muslims zealots destroyed them. Time to get the bin Laden family's construction firm on the job re-building! Read article.

 

Victor Davis Hanson, NRO.com

 

President Obama made an earnest effort — as is his way in matters of discord — to split the difference with the Islamic world. His speech essentially amounted to: “We did that, you did this, tit-for-tat, now we’re even, and can’t we all just get along?” He should be congratulated for expressing a desire for peace and for gently reminding the Muslim world of the way to reform, even if he did so while inflating Western sins.

 

But the problem with such moral equivalence is that it equates things that are, well, not equal — and therefore ends up not being moral at all.

 

To pull it off, one must distort both the past and the present for the presumed higher good of getting along. In the 1930s, British intellectuals performed feats of intellectual gymnastics in trying to contextualize Hitler’s complaints against the Versailles Treaty, assignment of guilt for the First World War, and French bellicosity — straining to overlook the intrinsic dangers of National Socialism for the higher good of avoiding another Somme. Over the short term, such revisionism worked; over the longer term, it ensured a highly destructive war. Read article.

 

Monica Crowley, Political Mavens.com

 

In an interview broadcast today on the BBC, President Obama said this about the terrorist, murderous, apocalyptic, and maniacal regime in the Islamic Republic of Iran:

 

“Without going into specifics, what I do believe is that Iran has legitimate energy concerns, legitimate concerns. On the other hand, the international community has a very real interest in preventing a nuclear arms race in the region.”

 

This is his typical “on the one hand, on the other hand” way of stating things so he looks like a reasonable guy who takes all opinions into account. What he really is is disingenuous, because he has always already made up his mind before he goes through that ridiculous “on the one hand, on the other hand” charade.

 

The Bama’s short statement on Iran tells us a few very important but disturbing things.

 

First, he’s either uneducated about the Islamic Republic or he’s falling for its propaganda. Neither scenario is desirable in an American Commander-in-Chief.

 

Iran is sitting on a ton of oil and natural gas. The idea that they are in desperate need of nuclear energy to power their nation is absurd.

 

Amir Taheri, an expert on the Middle East, brilliant syndicated columnist (read him in The New York Post), and the author of the equally brilliant book, “The Persian Night,” points out that Tehran isn’t at all interested in pursuing the nuclear fuel cycle for energy only:

 

“The only nuclear power station under construction in Iran…was designed by the Germans in the 1970s and is being built by a Russian company that constructed Chernobyl. The Bushehr plant is designed to use a specially graded and codified fuel that is produced ONLY in Russia; it CANNOT use the uranium enriched by Iran.”

 

So then: what possible reason would Iran have to enrich uranium?? (Duh.) Read article.

 

Atlas Shrugs.Typepad.com

 

In his much-heralded "Muslim world" address in Cairo on Thursday, Obama declared that the Palestinian people's "situation" is "intolerable."

 

Indeed it is, the result of 60 years of Palestinian leadership that gave its people corruption, tyranny, religious intolerance and forced militarization; leadership that for three generations — Haj Amin al-Husseini in 1947, Yasser Arafat in 2000, Abbas in December 2008 — rejected every offer of independence and dignity, choosing destitution and despair rather than accept any settlement not accompanied by the extinction of Israel.

 

In the 16 years since the Oslo accords turned the West Bank and Gaza over to the Palestinians, their leaders — Fatah and Hamas alike — built no schools, no roads, no courthouses, no hospitals, no institutions that would relieve their people's suffering. Instead they poured everything into an infrastructure of war and terror, all the while depositing billions (from gullible Western donors) into their Swiss bank accounts.

 

Obama says he came to Cairo to tell the truth. But he uttered not a word of that. Instead, among all the bromides and lofty sentiments, he issued but one concrete declaration of new American policy: "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," thus reinforcing the myth that Palestinian misery and statelessness are the fault of Israel and the settlements. Read article.

Claudia Rosett, Forbes.com

 

Americans woke up this week to news that President Obama is now describing the U.S. as--if you take into account the number of Muslim Americans--"one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."

 

Going strictly by the numbers, President Obama is wrong. America's Muslim population is variously estimated at somewhere in the range of about 3 million to a high-end guess of 6 million, which puts it way below not only all major Muslim states, but below Russia, China and--as my colleague Andrew McCarthy points out--Burkina Faso.

 

But Obama clearly wasn't much interested in the actual numbers. He was setting the stage for his speech in Cairo today, part of his attempt to retool America's image abroad and reach out to "the Muslim world." This comment was one in a series of advance signals that America itself is in the club, one of the crowd, a country that warrants acceptance by the "Muslim world" on terms that world itself deems fit.

 

That's problematic on several levels, not least that unless you embrace Osama bin Laden's scheme for a global caliphate, there is no single crowd out there to belong to. The Muslim "world" is itself highly diverse, from democratic Indonesia to despotic Iran, and from moderate Turks to the fanatical Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia. Nor is the history among Muslims themselves entirely one of brotherly love. From terrorist attacks inside Islamic states themselves, to such extravaganzas as the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, there is a considerable and recent record of Muslims killing Muslims. Read article.

 

FoxNews.com

 

President Obama glossed over the abuses of "authoritarian regimes" throughout the Middle East in his speech to the Muslim world, a Muslim Brotherhood activist said Thursday.

 

The Muslim Brotherhood is the leading opposition group in Egypt's political system. Though it officially is outlawed in the country, its members -- who run as independents -- hold 88 seats in Egypt's parliament.

 

Ibrahim Al-Houdaiby, 25, a Cairo-based activist who works for the Brotherhood's Web site, told FOXNews.com after Obama's speech that it was a "step in the right direction," but he was disappointed the U.S. president seemed to give a pass to leaders like Egypt's own Hosni Mubarak.

 

"He didn't mention any authoritarian regimes in the region," said Al-Houdaiby, who includes Egypt's regime in that category.

 

"There are tens of thousands of political prisoners who have nothing to do with violence and have nothing to do with terrorists" in Egypt and across the Middle East, he said.

 

Though Egypt holds elections, Mubarak has ruled as president since 1981 and frequently is accused of suppressing political opposition. Human Rights Watch wrote in a column ahead of Obama's visit accusing Mubarak's security forces of having "violently suppressed strikes and peaceful demonstrations."

 

Mubarak's government has arrested and imprisoned members of the Muslim Brotherhood, accusing it of aiding violent Islamic organizations. Read article.

 

Arnold Ahlert, Political Mavens.com

 

The American left will never accept the idea that liberating Iraq was a good thing for one over-riding reason: our failure to find weapons of mass destruction. Yet as this administration is forced to grapple with an out-of-control North Korea and a nuclear ambitious Iran, Iraq offers an example of the difference between symbolism and substance: of the three countries, the only “axis of evil” member that is no longer a nuclear problem is Iraq.

 

Does this matter to the “Bush lied, people died” crowd? Emphatically no. If it were up to them, the world would still be wondering what Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was capable of achieving. Remember, it was these very same people who contended that Iraq could be “contained” by international sanctions.

 

North Korea puts the lie to this philosophy. No regime on earth has been more “contained” than this Stalinist paean to totalitarianism. Did that stop them from detonating a nuclear device or testing missiles? Is “containment” per se a viable reality?

 

Iraq offers a clue. The Oil-for-Food scandal, one of the biggest kickback schemes in the history of the world, points to the idea that international “principle” is no match for billions in bribery paid to the proper government officials in a number of key countries.

 

But apparently even bribery has its limits. No one has been offered more “bribes” or as some like to say, “carrots” than North Korea. The Agreed Framework of 1994, put forth by the Clinton administration and its envoy, Jimmy Carter, was precisely the kind of “diplomatic solution” liberals like Barack Obama believe is the be-all and end-all of international politics. In reality it was nothing more than a contractualized bribe.

 

It was also a complete failure as demonstrated by the the Koreans decision to “re-negotiate”–completely on their own.

 

Iran? The X-factor between two approaches to international gangsterism. Read article.

 

Greg Lewis.org

 

— Larry Elder

 

— Patrick J. Buchanan

 

First Barack Obama's candidacy and now his presidency have been buttressed by a malleable media and by supporters promoting illegitimate, agenda-driven "science," both of which have their antecedents in the rise to and consolidation of power of Josef Stalin in Russia nearly a century ago. The parallels between Stalin's and Obama's regimes, to say nothing of the potential disastrous similarities in outcomes, are striking.

 

During the late 1920s and early '30s, the New York Times' Walter S. Duranty would misrepresent Stalin and Soviet Communism to the world in much the same way the Times and other sympathetic media outlets misrepresented who Barack Obama was during the 2008 presidential campaign and continue to do now that he has assumed office. While, unlike the Washington Post's Eli Zaslow, Duranty was apparently not directly acquainted with Russian dictator Josef Stalin's "glistening pectorals," the Times' man in Moscow nonetheless managed to describe the Russian dictator's messianic qualities quite as capably as Zaslow and the other sycophants who pass for journalists today have done Obama's.

 

Duranty characterized Stalin as one of history's great leaders, those whom God chooses "to lead mankind" and "with whom he [God] speaks directly." Stalin was for Duranty a "remote, reticent lord" and "the incarnate Superman of Nietzsche." In characterizing Stalin's rule, Duranty asserted that "Stalinism re-established the semi-divine, supreme autocracy of the imperial idea and . . . placed itself on the Kremlin throne as a ruler whose lightest word is all in all and whose frown spells death." (New York Times, June 13, 1931)

 

It's difficult to ignore the similarities between Duranty's gushing about Stalin and that of the contemporary media's about Obama. Read article.

 

Abigail Thernstrom, cnn.com

 

Some of us thought the election of Barack Obama as president might signal a fading away of the old identity politics.

 

The assumption that fundamental lines of division in politics are set by race and ethnicity would seem to be a bit passé when 43 percent of white voters cast their ballots for a proudly "post-racial" African-American.

 

But the president himself has made identity politics front-page news with his selection of Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his Supreme Court nominee. She played an important role in the New Haven firefighters' case (Ricci v. DeStefano) now awaiting decision by the Supreme Court. Sotomayor and two colleagues simply brushed aside the important constitutional and statutory questions raised by the city's decision to discard the results of a race-neutral test given to applicants for promotions within the department. Too many men of the "wrong" color had passed it -- that is, all of those who scored highest were white except for one Hispanic.

 

Sotomayor and two colleagues simply brushed aside the important constitutional and statutory questions raised by the city's decision to discard the results of a race-neutral test given to applicants for promotions within the department. Too many men of the "wrong" color had passed it -- that is, all of those who scored highest were white except for one Hispanic. Read article.

 

Victor Davis Hanson, NRO.com

 

Michelle Obama is now weighing in on the Sotomayor nomination, and I think it will prove a serious political mistake, since she is reverting back to her "me too" campaign mode, in that she emphasizes both race and the anonymous "they" who are not nice or not sufficiently accommodating to the Other.

 

So Michelle Obama describes the fear that Sotomayor felt at Princeton — and its lasting effects to this day — and then compares it, of course, to Michelle's own ambiguous feelings toward the same Princeton campus (cf. Michelle's thesis for the details), that one is willing to put up with for the education and prestige it gave, but does not really like for the presence of apparently so many stuck-up, rich, preppy kids and their ubiquitous exclusive campus culture.

 

Once more we see the schizophrenia of affirmative action, diversity, and identify politics — the university is both obliged to select students on the basis, at least in part, of race, class, and gender, but then almost immediately faulted for a climate that, in the eye of the recipient, stigmatizes those to whom it gives unusual consideration (what is the answer? — no race/class/gender consideration at all?; constant race/class/gender consideration that begins at admission and continues through graduation?; damned if you do, damned if you don't?). Read article.

 

AJ DiCintio, NMJ.us

 

Whether the object of their dictatorial pedantry is based upon what “empathic” judges, politicians, and social activists weave according to rules laid down by a penumbra, fashion from the love of power, or create from leftist ideology, liberals have something new and ridiculous to teach us every day.

 

However, on a number of days since the election of the most leftist president and Congress in the nation’s history, we have been sent reeling by so many madly perverse liberal lessons that, frustrated beyond patience, we have no other option but to avail ourselves of the cathartic effects of an especially sarcastic, “I never knew that!”

 

Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court has caused us to be bombarded with so much liberal bunk that we are afforded not a moment’s respite from issuing one mordant “I never knew that!” after another.

 

Following are a few particularly abominable examples of the stuff:

 

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Editorialist (NY Times). I never knew that! But I know now, just as I know those same “conservative judges” are certain to slime you for writing “completely unsubstantiated propaganda disguised as fact.”

 

But my gratitude mustn’t stop there because you revealed yourself a consummate political thinker when you denied the nation’s “conservatives” the opportunity to demagogue the issue of constitutional rights.

 

Yes, sir, a lesser mind would have gone on to loudly enumerate every last one of the ten thousand rights due a terrorist illegally being held at Guantanamo. But you wisely decided to wait until a liberal majority dominates the Court before making public a list of rights that includes the right even of an Adolph Hitler or a Joe Stalin not to be subjected to the “cruel and unusual punishment” of a supermax prison, where lifers spend 23-1/2 “unconstitutional” hours a day confined in a bare bones cell. Read article.

Print This E-mail This

Share It: