US Military Deterrent in Free-Fall

Sensing weakness and a gaping window of opportunity, our foes and/or rivals in Tehran, Pyongyang, Moscow, Beijing, and now even crumbling Mogadishu are treating the Obama administration with open contempt... and it appears that they've already exposed him to be as unqualified and misguided as so many suspected.  It's surely not for lack of ability, as America still enjoys largely unchallenged military supremacy (and the US Navy is The Law on the world's oceans)- it's Obama's stubbornly pacifist foreign policy based in appeasement, coupled to an odd personal agenda against some traditional American allies, i.e. Britain and Israel.  That, while  "reaching out" to repulsive, untrustworthy, and morally-bankrupt regimes such as Syria and Iran... including $800M for the medieval savages of Hamas (who recently legalized crucifixion in Gaza as punishment for "insulting Islam"). 

Our allies can't trust him to deliver American power nor moral/strategic clarity, while our enemies have spit in his "open hand" without exception. Obama was caught 100% asleep-at-the-wheel while the Russians nabbed our Krgyzstani air-base vital to supplying Afghan operations, and he issued confused and weak statements when the Russian Army raped Georgia last year- so after humiliation by skinny Somali thugs in some ratty boat with an outboard motor, what's to keep the Kremlin from saying "Yes We Can invade Ukraine- so what are you going to do about it?"  An America lacking a credible deterrent based on the will and sense of when to act -not just the military capacity- makes for a surely more perilous world.  And if you don't like America as the "world cop", just wait and see how the Chinese or Russians take care of everyone. History provides ample lessons that support Reagan's "Peace Through Strength" philosophy- as The Gipper had said "Of the four wars of my lifetime, none came about because the US was too strong."

Compare Obama's dithering, negotiating with Islamic terrorist pirates, and orders not to fire on the Somalis  (wasting a precious opportunity when the Captain swam-for-it) to Ronald Reagan's stating that "we don't negotiate with terrorists"- then promptly sending F-14 Tomcats to intercept the Egyptian 737 carrying escaping PLO thugs from the Achille Lauro highjacking- you know, the one where psychopathic PLO mercenary Abu Nidal shot an senior citizen in his wheelchair? Of course, Nidal escaped capture and ended up running a terrorist training operation in Iraq, under Saddam's protection- but he was killed in 2002, most likely to keep him quiet. Yeah, Saddam didn't have anything to do with terrorism, of course not, lol.

What's truly amazing is how so many Obama supporters inexplicably anticipate different results from the same M.O. as serial-failure Jimmy Carter simply because they wish it to be so... an infantile world-view steeped in fantasy and ignoring all historical precedent. The truth is, there will always be an endless stream of those looking to oppose US interests, often simply as a political platform- and most of them are not very nice people.  Some of them will do anything to kill or rob Americans, or to thwart US interests of any kind-and actions necessary to counter this will often be controversial.  But fighting terrorists and their supporters is a mean, nasty business, one not well-suited to the misguided and inexperienced -yet arrogant- Obama's supposedly "intellectual" views.

Earlier today, the French took unilateral military action against Somali pirates with a commando raid while Barack sits out-back in the White House garden, orders-up another pepperoni-and-green olive from that pizza chef he flew in... and plans next Wednesday's lavish party. And as Sarkozy is taking care of business, Obama won't even answer the press' legitimate questions about the crisis... or bother to mention he's concerned for the heroic Captain Phillips and crew (perhaps the captain's brave actions were too "cowboy" and independent-minded for his taste). 

In Somalia, we know where the pirates' bases are... we know where many of the pirates are... and we know where their boats are. All of these things should be vaporized by Navy pilots tomorrow- this would have a substantial deterrent effect. 

But that's not going to happen with this president- and it's approaching the point where one has to question his motivations and loyalties, really. Like when he snubbed the British -our closest ally for decades- because of some weird personal grudge re. what they did in Kenya 50 years ago. Perhaps he sees legitimacy in the Somali pirates' "struggle", who knows- and hey, they're only stealing from "the rich" anyway, just the kind of class-warfare that was permanently-glamorized in Barack's eyes by Saul Alinsky and his Marxist-professor mentors.

The sooner an incremental 20% of our electorate comes out of the ether and starts to (finally) ask the strategically/economically clueless and habitually dishonest Obama some hard questions about just what the hell he thinks he's doing, the better. Maybe then the wind can be taken out of our pompous saviour's sails, so as to moderate his behavior until America delivers a proper attitude adjustment in congressional mid-terms- just 18 months from now.  

In the meantime.... pray for our country.

Socialism Returns to Prague

Twenty years after the Velvet Revolution, the former Warsaw-Pact Czechs are enjoying the fruits of a dynamic free-market democracy in a country that was crumbling in grey socialist mediocrity just a short time ago.  Today, new Mercedes and Alfa-Romeos fill streets that were previously only sparsely populated with smoking Eastern-block clunkers and the occasional frumpy black commie limo with some aparatchik in the back.   The largely pro-American Czechs (who feature Europe's one and only American country music station and a semi-pro baseball league) supplied troops in Iraq and last year signed-onto George Bush's missile defense proposal based here and in Poland. 

Czech President Vaclav Klaus is a pugnacious conservative known for his skeptimism regarding the EU- a Thatcherite capitalist who famously confronted Al Gore at Davos with "I don't think there's any global warming".  Klaus is credited for much of the speedy transition to capitalism as PM in the early-mid 1990's, albeit with some bumps... and has taken an unfashionable pro-market stance in his ideas for dealing with the world financial crisis.

Current Czech PM Mirek Topolanek is the one who stated in the EU Parliment that profligate spending favored by Obama-Pelosi-Reid represents a "road to hell" that EU governments must avoid.  He added "We need to read the history books and the lessons of history and the biggest success of the (EU) is the refusal to go this way."  

So Prague Castle doesn't seem to be the most obvious venue for President Obama's first public speech in Europe- but the Czechs currently hold the rotating EU presidency, and of course many people here, as elsewhere, are enthusiastic about the Obama presidency for whatever reasons... so here he is. And there is a varied political spectrum, with powerful social-democrats, Greens, and others- and even an only mildly reformed Communist Party who pragmatically replaced the traditional hammer-and-sickle/star symbol with a less-threatening-looking three red cherries on a stem.  

My wife happens to be Czech, and we have a place in Prague- so this morning I attended Obama's speech at the castle that overlooks this Golden City.  And the script seemed like it was written in anticipation of North Korea's Taepodong II missle test just 7 hours earlier.

The socialism that has come back to Prague 20 years after the revolution -and 40 years after the Russian invasion- now comes in the grinning form of Barack Obama- a man governing far to the left of the bipartisan-centrist rhetoric he employed during last fall's US election campaign.  

One result is a surreal situation in which America has big-spending statist allies like France and Germany considering its "stimulus" proposals too fiscally reckless for their liking.  And countries like Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, who suffered through 40 years of totalitarian socialism's systemic cruelty and comprehensive lack of results, do not share the romantic view some in the West have of Obama's ultra-liberal proposals and big-government solutions for every challenge.

With TelePrompTer screens glistening in the morning haze, Obama appeared about 20 minutes late with his wife Michelle to moderate cheers from the mostly young crowd.  Like Obama's most-fervent US supporters, those attending appeared to be 20-somethings alongside 60-something boomers-  and many of these came in from Germany, where all things Obama are quite trendy.

The President appeared with a large forced grin, as a car salesman would do to manipulate your emotions- providing the same "what's this guy up to?" feeling I got from the first time I ever heard him speak.  And like a slick salesman, Obama is unflinching as he tells you the car can fly, or go under-water... whatever you need to hear.

He proceeded to deliver a speech on green energy and foreign policy that attempted to tie-together Czech and US history and agendas with a dash of Yes-We-Can.  Obama's popularity is clearly helped by his mixed-race heritage, yet he still finds it useful to make statements like "In my birth-year of 1961, few could imagine a person like me" coming here as US President.  That lead inexplicably to "I am here today because people on both sides of the wall (Iron Curtain?) refused to be kept separated, "no matter what they looked like".  How did the communist Europeans look different from Western Europeans?  Hard to imagine just what he's talking about.

Obama used the occasion to outline his pollyanna plans for a "world without nuclear weapons"- including a comprehensive test-ban treaty, anti-proliferation regimes, a world "fuel bank" for supplying cooperative powers with fuel for peaceful uses, as well as a "strategic reduction with the Russians this year".

Obama put some effort towards presenting a case that forced-Soviet-allies of the Warsaw Pact like Prague "came together" with the West because they "wouldn't listen" to those who said it wasn't possible or likely- sounds good.  But the plain truth is that no Velvet Revolution would ever have been possible without a serious rollback of Soviet power- as accomplished by Ronald Reagan... and he didn't do it by talking.  

One only has to look to the Soviets' crushing of the Budapest (1956) and Prague Spring (1968) uprisings to see just how they dealt with renegades. President Reagan never considered "reaching out" to the Russians until they had been forced to bring in the reformer Gorbachev, and the US had regained military superiority- well into his second term as president.  Even then, he was reluctant to make any deal that would save the Soviet system economically... he wanted it to be defeated, and for millions to be freed.

It was Reagan who aggressively challenged Gorabachev with "tear down this wall" in Berlin- and was mocked by the American and European left as naive and too confrontational.   While previous presidents promoted containment or detente with the USSR, producing a smoldering, dangerous, and expensive 40-year Cold War, Reagan argued for a "real arms race" with the Soviet Union.  He said "in an all-out competition, they can't keep up" and would become economically "unhinged".  Pacifists -such as then-Senator Joe Biden- opposed Reagan's Pershing II missile deployments in Europe, SDI missile-defense inititiative, as-well as almost every other weapons program he used to confront the Soviet Union. 

When Reagan initiated this politically unpopular military buildup in 1981, called the "Evil Empire" by it's name, then later struck a deal with the Saudis to drive the price of oil to $20/bbl, the Soviet empire cracked, then crumbled... completely vindicating the principled and politically brave strategy.  The fact is that the Czechs, Poles, East Germans, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Romanians, and Slovaks didn't stand a chance of throwing-of their chains until Reagan put the Kremlin back on it's heels for good.  And it was that moral and strategic clarity that won the Cold War without firing a shot... not offers of appeasement. And clearly not the two sides joining-hands, as in Obama's version of reality.

Sounding today much like strategic train-wreck Jimmy Carter, Obama  pronounced that "Moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon"-  just the kind "moral" superiority that allowed Carter to lose countries such as Nicaragua and Iran to far worse regimes than the unsavory US ally that he withdrew support for.  In stark contrast, Reagan had told us that "We can't play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent." 

President Obama stated that in overthrowing communism, the Czechs "exposed the emptiness of an ideology"- but it would be interesting to hear him explain just what he considers the key differences to be between past socialism and the multi-trillion-dollar big-government/social programs that has unveiled since he got himself elected.

He then stressed that regarding Iran and North Korea, we should not "let anybody tell you we can't work together- because Yes  We Can"- but there's really nobody saying that except perhaps some imaginary straw-man in the speechwriter's mind.  We have worked very well with a number of allies in the Six-Party talks with Pyongyang, as well as the US-EU diplomatic efforts regarding Tehran's nuclear ambitions.  We've also been offering for years, alongside these allies, exactly the same incentives, dialog, and sanctions/threats of sanctions that Obama proposes... and without a trace of success.  There is likely little new that the West can offer at this point that would entice them into giving up a their nuclear programs- if they're not about to be bombed, then keep going- why not? 

The sad truth is that both have sensed weakness in Obama's "open hand" gestures- which they have met only with contempt.  These regimes' political survival is completely based on outside enemies, a confrontational stance, and propaganda victories- and their power can't survive a comprehensive peace deal, so they see little to gain from it.   Obama says they can "join" the rest of us- but can either really expect to compete effectively in the world economy? He seems to operate under the assumption that they don't want to be rogue states- while in reality, they thrive on it.  They've already survived all the sanctions thrown at them, and are likely correct that their strongest hand lies in pursuing nuclear weaponry and ICBM systems.  If either had wanted a good faith deal, they'd have done it a long time ago-  instead, they've broken every agreement or promise ever made.

What in-fact might work would be a credible military threat, so these apocalyptic cults would realize the consequences of such nuclear brinkmanship, while leaving them a final "out"-  but that's far from what Barack Obama was proposing today.  This speech had standard formula in-full: smiling, hope-n-change "we're-all-in-this-together" themes, false arguments regarding "they",  conveniently malleable history lessons, and the proposal of failed ideas of the past as "new" and morally-superior.  

He also stated that it was "cowardly" to embrace fear, rather than "hope"- apparently this doesn't apply to his domestic strong-arm tactics with legislators of his own party.   How much longer will this schtick work before reality intervenes, anyway?