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Charles Krauthammer: It's Your Country Too, Mr. President
Washington Post ^

Posted on 04/09/2009 11:26:25 PM PDT by Chet 99

. . .

I'm not against gift-giving in international relations. But it would be nice to see some reciprocity. Obama was in a giving mood throughout Europe. While Gordon Brown was trying to make his American DVDs work and the queen was rocking to her new iPod, the rest of Europe was enjoying a more fulsome Obama gift.

Our president came bearing a basketful of mea culpas. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.

And what did he get for this obsessive denigration of his own country? He wanted more NATO combat troops in Afghanistan to match the surge of 17,000 Americans. He was rudely rebuffed.

He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing.

From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government
KEYWORDS: appeasement; bho44; krauthammer; obama
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1 posted on 04/09/2009 11:26:26 PM PDT by Chet 99
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To: Chet 99
>>>>>A more fatuous presidential call to arms is hard to conceive.

Krauthammer can turn a phrase with the best.

2 posted on 04/09/2009 11:35:20 PM PDT by Reagan Man ("In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.")
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To: Chet 99

I was wondering...have we ever done anything good for anyone? Have we ever helped with hurricane or tsunami relief...aids prevention..the overthrough of dictators...rebuilding industry of anyone who was destroyed by war...provided a culture of democracy..provided an example of equality or of a justice based on the rule of law...

I wish we had done at least some of those things.

Oh wait, we gave $50k to the Italians for the earthquake the just had...That Obama, he is one generous guy.


3 posted on 04/09/2009 11:37:05 PM PDT by LachlanMinnesota
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To: Reagan Man

0bama is turning out to be Jimmy Carter’s second term.

People forget (too busy watching Springer), but Peanut Man was wildly popular at home and abroad as well - before winds of fickle public opinion shifted.


4 posted on 04/09/2009 11:37:54 PM PDT by Chet 99
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To: Reagan Man

I read the article, but the headline stands out like a prostitute at a convent.

It’s your country too Mr. Pes—ent. Oh really, is it?


5 posted on 04/09/2009 11:44:05 PM PDT by Semper Mark (I'm too big to fail.)
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To: Chet 99

It was stupid to try to do serious negotiations on a big splashy trip right out of the gate. Any sensible president would have been busy for months working the back channels first.


6 posted on 04/09/2009 11:47:56 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Beat a better path, and the world will build a mousetrap at your door.)
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To: Chet 99
[It is passing strange for a world leader to celebrate his own country's decline. A few more such overseas tours, and Obama will have a lot more decline to celebrate.]

Obama was greeted well on his trip because he is a novelty—like P.T. Barnum's famous midget, Tom Thumb, or the Elephant Man.

7 posted on 04/09/2009 11:51:51 PM PDT by Brad from Tennessee (A politician can't give you anything he hasn't first stolen from you.)
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To: HiTech RedNeck

I believe there were months/years? of intense negotiations between staffers for Reagan and Gorbachev before the two big men had ever met one another. But as you said, “any sensible president”... that’s clearly not who we have here.

For Obama the stage before world leaders is a much different one than one of his campaign rallies where little 20-something females would feint from the mere sight of him.


8 posted on 04/09/2009 11:59:01 PM PDT by Chet 99
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To: Chet 99

OMG, We have Natalee Maine as our President.


9 posted on 04/10/2009 12:01:15 AM PDT by freekitty (Give me back my conservative vote.)
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To: Chet 99

Has anyone made the connection between feeling ashamed of your country and the psychologial shame someone who was abandonded by his natural father might have? Worth looking at for any Gail Sheehy wannabes out there. He seems a little too comfortable with projecting shame and blame for his country. Looks like the Adult Children of Dysfunctional Parents Syndrome here again. That same scolding and blame game found with that.


10 posted on 04/10/2009 12:01:30 AM PDT by HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity
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To: Chet 99

For a President so insistent on how “humble” his country is, that really WAS pretty brash of him.


11 posted on 04/10/2009 12:06:28 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Beat a better path, and the world will build a mousetrap at your door.)
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To: Chet 99

And, it’s going to be pretty hard to lean on any of these other countries to relent after Obama pushed them to give a quick answer in the spotlight.

The common people over there may have applauded him like they did on his campaign trip, but they aren’t going to get, say, Austria to take terrorism suspects off his hands.


12 posted on 04/10/2009 12:09:32 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Beat a better path, and the world will build a mousetrap at your door.)
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To: HiTech RedNeck

“And, it’s going to be pretty hard to lean on any of these other countries to relent after Obama pushed them to give a quick answer in the spotlight.”

It is weird how with our mortal enemies, let’s chit chat without any agenda, any conditions, what have you... with our allies, Obama releases his agenda/demands via press releases and demands an immediate response.


13 posted on 04/10/2009 12:17:48 AM PDT by Chet 99
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To: Chet 99

Jimmy Carter was a better diplomat than this, IIRC.


14 posted on 04/10/2009 12:20:15 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Beat a better path, and the world will build a mousetrap at your door.)
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To: Chet 99

“You did the right thing. You know the Japanese attitude at that time, how fanatic they were, they’d die for the Emperor...Every man, woman, and child would have resisted that invasion with sticks and stones if necessary...Can you imagine what a slaughter it would be to invade Japan? It would have been terrible. The Japanese people know more about it than the American public will ever know.”

Japanese pilot Mitsuo Fuchida (Led the raid on Pearl Harbor) in a conversation with Paul Tibbets.

Taken from Flyboys by James Bradley


15 posted on 04/10/2009 12:20:50 AM PDT by Patriot Hooligan ("God have mercy on my enemies because I won't." General George S. Patton)
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To: HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity

Yep, he was abandoned by his natural father. And then his stepfather. Then his mother dumped him on his grandparents. And his granddad sloughed him off on a drunken homosexual washed up Marxist poet. There might be a little abandonment issue there.


16 posted on 04/10/2009 12:31:52 AM PDT by TigersEye (Cloward-Piven Strategy)
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To: TigersEye
He would want someone to blame for that, yes? Somewhere to shift the shame. That is how it works when these issues are unresolved.

Some of that came out in his Philadelphia speech when he threw granny under the bus. Now the USA goes under the bus. "Christian nation" goes under the bus. He is carrying out the projection far and wide.

17 posted on 04/10/2009 12:44:00 AM PDT by HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity
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To: TigersEye

Yeesh...that sequence sounds like “the worst of Dr. Laura”.


18 posted on 04/10/2009 12:48:16 AM PDT by Attention Surplus Disorder (Mr. Bernanke, have you started working on your book about the second GREATER depression?")
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To: Chet 99

Read the comments if you want to read disturbing.

There’s a growing number of people in this country that have no clue how the world works or how wealth is created.

We are all going to pay dearly for that ignorance.


19 posted on 04/10/2009 12:59:42 AM PDT by DB
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To: HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity
Mostly on America though. He doesn't like the Constitution as written. He doesn't like capitalism. He doesn't like our history. He doesn't like our military strength.

Rev. Wright helped him see that it was America that sent his African daddy away. America, the way it is, ruined his childhood.

20 posted on 04/10/2009 1:23:51 AM PDT by TigersEye (Cloward-Piven Strategy)
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