The Iraq War and fledging democracy continue to pay dividends. It helped convince Libya's strongman to surrender his WMD. It helped inspire a democratic movement in Lebanon. And it may, just may, help to bring down an Islamofascist government that is the leading exporter of terrorism -- before it gets a nuclear bomb. 

 

Just as the "neo-cons" had hoped. Read article.

 

Lloyd Marcus, News With Views.com

 

A recent article predicted the Tea Party Movement will fail and fade away because it does not have an official leader promoting a single agenda. I disagree.

 

After attending a Florida tea party, Rhonda Lochiatto, an elementary school teacher decided to run for school board. In her own words, "I am tired of the mismanagement of funds that goes on in the school district and of the current policies and procedures that are taking place when it comes to grading, etc."

 

Rhonda epitomizes what the Tea Party Movement is all about; concerned citizens, true patriots, stepping up to the plate and doing whatever their passions and gifts lead them to do. In my travels across America on Tea Party Express tours one and two, I met many patriots young and old who were running for office for the first time. Seeds planted by the tea parties have harvested a cornucopia of new organizations. Their common goal: Take Back America!

 

I would be extremely leery of any self appointed leader of the Tea Party Movement. If we are to have a leader, his or her emergence will happen spontaneously via the people.

 

With great optimism and anticipation, I enter 2010. This is the year politicians who have ignored our voices and betrayed their duty to uphold the Constitution will experience the shock and awe of our wrath at the polls in November.

 

As to the theory the Tea Party Movement needs a leader; like the line in the Mel Brooks movie, Blazing Saddles, "Badges? We don't need no stinking badges," I say, "Leader? We don't need no stinking leader!" We the people are doing just fine. Read article.

 

Ernest S. Christian and Gary A. Robbins, Investors.com

 

No matter who he is, the president of the United States has far too many powers over our lives and livelihoods. So do members of Congress.

 

Even if the holders of these public offices were capable of correctly performing such a vast multiplicity of complex tasks, which they aren't, and even if their intentions were always honorable, which they often aren't, it is absurd that a handful of exceedingly ordinary, highly fallible people should be telling 300 million Americans what to do, say and think — and even more ridiculous that we let them.

 

Are they smarter than we are? Are they morally superior? Are they better able to run our affairs than we are? Are their intentions toward us better than our own? Do they make us better or better off? Of course not. Just the opposite. Their record of failure is manifest.

 

Why should we pay them exorbitant salaries to ruin the economy and abridge our liberties? The current incumbents should be fired. Their jobs should be downgraded in power and scope. The staff of nearly 3 million civilian bureaucrats should be redeployed.

 

Those of us who add value to the national balance sheet should not be ruled over by those who don't. We should not have to stand in line and ask permission to enjoy the inalienable rights given us by our Creator. Read article.

 

Frank Gaffney, Jr., Center for Security Policy.org

 

Harry Truman kept on his desk a sign that read "The Buck Stops Here." As President Obama gathers with his national security team Tuesday to ensure that, as he put it last week, "there is accountability at every level" for the latest in a rising tide of terrorist attacks inside the United States, Mr. Truman's successor must accept responsibility for his own role in the growing danger.

 

I am not suggesting that Mr. Obama was directly complicit in the failure to keep Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab and his explosive-laden underwear off Northwest 253 on Christmas Day. As is often the case with these things, there were lots of red flags "in the system" about this would-be terrorist that should have kept him off that plane. Such "dots" are easily connected with hindsight, after the attack is launched. The trick is for people well south of the President to act on them beforehand.

 

One thing is already obvious, though. What Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano famously called "the system" has been trying with increasing difficulty to prevent terrorism here at home within impossible policy and programmatic constraints. Mr. Obama must take a measure of responsibility for those constraints. Read article.

 

Cal Thomas, Townhall.com

 

Suppose Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the Christmas Day underwear bomber, had succeeded and blown up Northwest Airlines flight 253, killing nearly 300 people on board and perhaps others on the ground? Would the response of the Obama administration have been different?

 

In the West's secular stupidity, we mistakenly believe we can call this war by another name, fight it with ineffective weapons and still win. We arrest those we catch, send them to American prisons (and release them from Gitmo), and give them free lawyers who advise them to remain quiet, thus depriving us of information that might dismantle terror cells and help prevent future attacks.

 

A new Rasmussen Poll shows a majority of Americans think this war should be fought in a different way. According to the poll, 58 percent of U.S. voters believe Abdul Mutallab should be subjected to waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques in order to obtain useful information.

 

Instead, we spend gobs of money on body scanners and TSA screeners who pat down innocent travelers and search their bags. Instead, or in addition, we should become more proactive.

 

During World War II, we did not establish schools of Nazi studies at American universities. Neither did we seek to understand Japan's Shinto religion, which elevated Emperor Hirohito to the level of a god. We cared nothing about any of that. We carpet-bombed German cities and dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. President Truman, a Democrat, was cut from different cloth than today's Democrats. Truman's goal (and that of his Democratic predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt) was total victory.

 

We will not win this war with the current strategy of Eid stamps, Ramadan observances in the White House, or any of the other "strategies" employed by this administration and the Bush administration before it.

 

What is required is a new approach that seeks not accommodation, but victory. Without it, more lives will be lost. Dictionary.com defines "war" as "a conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or between parties within a nation." Calling it something else doesn't alter the reality. Read article.

 

Walid Phares, Human Events.com

 

In the Arab world there is a saying: “Take their truth from their crazies.” I didn’t think it would fully apply in geopolitics until I heard Libya’s dictator, Moammar Qadhafi, claiming on al Jazeera few years ago that Bin Laden had acquired intercontinental missiles.

 

The “crazy boy,” as the late Egyptian President Sadat used to call him, argued sarcastically that al Qaeda has developed an unstoppable weapon: human transoceanic missiles. He meant by that Jihadists who were committed to istishaad (martyrdom) by blowing up commercial jets over targets in America.

 

The man who has been ruling Libya for the past forty years knows his region very well and despite his peculiar behavior, has predicted what most observers of the Jihadist movement have also projected: al Qaeda and its allies worldwide have discovered the Achilles heel of American defenses: the inability of its security apparatus to identify the readying of the new weapon, its deployment and its launching.

 

The situation is so bad, that a man who was on some “persons of interest” list was nearly able to massacre hundreds of passengers and possibly innocent people on the ground but for the failure of his underwear bomb and the courage of a citizen of the Netherlands who rose to defend humanity with his bare hands. Read article.

 

Jennifer Rubin, Commentary Magazine.com

 

Hillary Clinton emerges from her long absence to deliver this blather on Iran:

 

 

 

Can you imagine how delighted the Iranian regime must be to hear this unintelligible mush from the Obama team? Clinton has told them that there isn’t really any “deadline” and that they can proceed without fear of any serious consequences for their behavior. For the mullahs, that’s a delightful start for 2010. For the people of Iran? Not so much. Read article.

 

 

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