Posted on 09/24/2009 4:55:31 AM PDT by Tolik
The World’s President
The President’s UN* talk was more of the same, same old formula: Me, me, me / then Bush blew it / then I came /and, presto, the waters parted.
There is no need to listen to these speeches anymore:
Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, fellow delegates, ladies and gentleman: it is my honor to address you for the first time as the forty-fourth President of the United States. I come before you humbled by the responsibility that the American people have placed upon me; mindful of the enormous challenges of our moment in history; and determined to act boldly and collectively on behalf of justice and prosperity at home and abroad.
I have been in office for just nine months, though some days it seems a lot longer. I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world. These expectations are not about me….
I took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust. Part of this was due to misperceptions and misinformation about my country. Part of this was due to opposition to specific policies, and a belief that on certain critical issues, America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others.
I think “acted unilaterally” does not refer to all the allies in Afghanistan and Iraq, but something like simply calling the Poles late at night to say the missile deal is off, and we’re cutting our own deal with Putin.
If Obama is right, and American exceptionalism is over, and we are just one of many, why, then, does he expect to garner the world’s attention and to seek the world’s limelight? What is it about America that gives him, the two-year Senate veteran, such prominence?
In fact, it is America’s 20th century of achievement, its wealth, its singular morality, its competence—all the things that Obama either takes for granted or snarls about—that alone explains everything from his enormous Air Force One to the influence he enjoys. Put mellifluous Obama as President of Sweden or Slovakia and the world, rightly or wrongly, snores. Obama tragically does not understand that America made him—he does not make America.
Here is the synopsis of the President Speech: “Ok, I came in, dissed Bush, offered hope and change, and deigned to sacrifice myself, the smartest you’ll ever meet, for you, the world. So now we aren’t Bush’s America, but Obama’s America, and therefore I expect you to reciprocate in kind—since you only have one last chance to get a divine American President of my caliber.”
There must be some Microsoft automatic program that writes these speeches.
America’s College President
I wrote today about Obama running the country as if he were an Ivy League president and we were his faculty.
If one wonders why Americans are asked to send in fishy people to the White House, or why the NEA now wants to correlate artistic grants to political obsequiousness, or why those who disagree are deprecated as mob like and worse, or why Eric Holder calls us “cowards”, or why Dr. Chu says we are like teenagers, the answer is that we are to be run like a campus, and Obama is our all-knowing paternalistic president.
Good Wars and Bad Wars
A year ago also I wrote an article predicting that the Democrats’ good war/bad war prism was a profound mistake, and that if elected Obama was going to have a hard time matching campaign rhetoric with presidential decisions. The truth is that Afghanistan—no harbors, landlocked, next to nuclear Pakistan, terribly difficult terrain, opium, harsh winters, 7th century tribal infrastructure—was always the more difficult challenge than Iraq: on the gulf, oil-rich, some secular and educated segments of the population, flat and clear weather, strategic location.
I don’t think I wrote anything a year ago that would not be entirely applicable right now:
This political dilemma again was not new. Liberal Democrats in the summer and autumn of 2002 had sounded tough and aggressive about the looming Iraq war, as long as the perception of quick and easy victory was likely, and someone else (Commander-in-Chief George Bush) took the major responsibility for the conduct of the war should it become difficult and unpopular. Something similar was happening now with Afghanistan.
“Taking our eye off the ball,” and supposedly ignoring Afghanistan, were rather inexpensive ways of voicing partisan attacks on George Bush’s Iraq War. But now the Iraq War has been largely won (the number of U.S. soldiers who died in actual combat operations in Iraq in October 2008 was seven; more than forty Americans were murdered in Chicago each month on average in 2008). And after January 20, 2009, Commander-in-Chief Obama will have the responsibility for the costs and difficulties of the Afghan war he had been apparently eager to take on during the campaign against Senator John McCain.
Consequently, we may well see president-elect Obama’s once promised hawkishness dissipate. After all, many liberal hawks figured that they could issue their war cries without ever being forced to hold the reins of governance with commensurate responsibility, or, by that the time they were given responsibility, the Afghan war would be over. Vowing to do what it takes in the good war by leaving Iraq—infusing more troops into Afghanistan, and occasionally invading Pakistan—was for candidate Obama always a rhetorical stance that proved both his anti-Iraq War bona fides and his larger credibility on matters of national security.
Eyes and Balls
Another counter-intuitive thought. Consider: as Iraq heated up, Afghanistan grew quiet, an oddity given the conventional wisdom that we had lost Afghanistan by losing in Iraq. Fatalities never exceeded 100 Americans a year from 2004-2006. Indeed in 2006 more were killed in December in Iraq (112) than during the entire year in Afghanistan (98). Yet if we took our eye off the ball, why would Afghanistan remain or grow quiet as Iraq heated up?
I think the answer is surely that Al Qaeda megaphones announced Iraq to be the main front in the war against the West. Thousands flocked there—and thousands were either killed, captured, or switched sides.
In other words, radical Islam between 2006-7 suffered a terrible defeat as its escalation in Iraq resulted in thousands killed. Polls showed radical drops in support for and popularity of bin Laden and his tactic of suicide bombing.
The Islamists, not us, “took their eye of the ball”, and as a result they shorted their jihad in Afghanistan. I would not quite call it the fly paper theory of a two-front war, but the diversions of terrorists to Iraq where they much more easily could be killed, given the nature of the war and the terrain, hurt al Qaeda and the Taliban alike in Afghanistan—far more than diversions of U.S. troops from Afghanistan (if in fact they were diverted. We forget the following statistic: In four years from 2001 through 2004, the United States lost a total of 161 troops, probably somewhere around 4 soldiers a month, or about the rate of many non-combat theater deployments. In other words, the front was quiet, and stayed quiet as a frustrated Al Qaeda turned toward Iraq where they and their allies killed 4,000 Americans, and probably lost nearly ten times that number.) Now they are desperate, and along with the Taliban think that the new administration simply will not stay the course, and so believe it is once more the time to pour it on to demoralize us further.
Note that our casualties were already spiking in Afghanistan even as more U.S. troops were diverted to it, suggesting, not just that the Taliban was laying low, hoarding resources and now reemerging, but that both sides now are turning to the once peripheral front after the decision in Iraq.
It would be tragically ironic that the miraculous American success in post-surge Iraq would lead to our depression in Afghanistan, while the humiliating defeat in Anbar and Baghdad of radical Islam would lead to its optimism for the second theater.
Some Controversial Outtakes
More on the trip
I can’t quite figure out what happened to our annual trip this year. Usually it does not sell out until May. By this week, we have only five slots left and the trip to the Danube and eastern front wars has only been announced for a little over a month. Perhaps the economy really is improving?
Obamania
I had a lot of fervent mail recently, actually quite scary. A couple of thoughts:
I think the key to stopping the Obama remaking of the U.S. is calm and reasoned analysis, since the American people are beginning to turn on his agenda. After 9 months they realize that there is no there there, just formulaic platitudes and the now tired rhetorical flourishes. Otherwise, the agenda is simply Jimmy Carter sanctimoniousness abroad, and Clinton’s first two failed years between 1993-4 at home.
But the antidote is to politely, but steadily point this out—the constant distortions, hypocrisies, and contradictions —without resorting to slurs and smears. If conservatives can stay cheery, optimistic and reasoned, the Obamians, as all fallen prophets, will become angrier, more self-righteous, and incoherent. There is no need for conspiracy theories, to banish the moderate conservatives, or to cannibalize one another; instead the Obama record is out there for all to see and examine. After all, we have a president who boasts that we are back on the UN human rights council, and then brags of our new multilateral equity–and then is followed by the likes of Gaddafi and Ahmadinejad who show us what the new unexceptional America’s peers to be are really like.
Little Green What?
Some bloggers sent me postings the other day about Charles Johnson’s Little Green Footballs website, and suggested that the site has changed—as in flipped sides. I have not followed the controversy, but I once rode a bike down in LA for an afternoon with Johnson and found him both a serious and bright guy with all sorts of original ideas about radical Islam and the anti-Enlightenment dangers it posed.
Out of curiosity I went to the site today. All I discovered different was a change in emphasis, but not necessarily attitude. He still is strongly anti-jihad; the difference is that he now worries just as much about creationism, paleo-right tribalism, and the white supremacists’ piggy-banking onto efforts to stop radical Islam. Those are legitimate worries for any liberal (as in 19th-century liberal) minded. Almost monthly I am smeared by the far far right for defending the Anglo-American effort in World War II or support for the melting-pot tradition of racial integration and intermarriage. So I understand some of his concerns.
Johnson, it should be remembered, did a masterful job of debunking the Rather nonsense, and in the dark days of 2001-2 of identifying the idiot fringe that appeased radical Islam. He was also always attuned to the anti-Semitic elements on both left and right that sought to blame Israel for our challenges in Iraq and elsewhere.
Sorry to those who wrote me, but I can no more get on the anti-Johnson bandwagon than I could the birth certificate allegations about Obama (why he won’t release his college transcripts is a far more interesting and valid inquiry).
_______________
* While Obama was praising the UN, the UN was showing America why most of us don’t want much to do with it. The Gaddafi and Ahmadinejad rambling hate-filled speeches were lunatic and nutty; but, remember, they are typical, not unrepresentative of the sort of leaders that the world outside the West so often produces these days. A Chavez, Kim Jong Il, Assad, or Mullah Omar would say about the same. Why would Obama wish to brag of returning to the human rights council given the creepy regimes on it? Watching the UN watch Ahmadinejad I was reminded of Europe circa July 1941. As Hitler swept through Russia, suddenly a Spain, a Sweden, a Turkey, a Romania, a Hungary, etc. as both Axis allies and as neutrals, all in varying ways were horse-trading with Nazi Germany for various trade deals, land grabs, and general profiteering. That the Wehrmacht slaughtered Jews by the thousands the day it entered Russia, mattered not at all; the Nazis looked like winners and it was time to cut deals. By 1944/5, the opposite was true: neutrals and formal allies were bailing and claiming they had been coerced, duped, had no choices, and were now our friends if not allies, after all. Take away oil, and Ahmadinejad and Gaddafi would be written off as two-bit psychopaths that no legitimate body would let in the service entrance.
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index:
Just a partial list. Much more at the link: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index
Ping !
Let me know if you want in or out. Links:
FR Index of his articles: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index NRO archive: http://author.nationalreview.com/?q=MjI1MQ== Pajamasmedia: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/ His website: http://victorhanson.com/
As smart as I find VDH to be, this statement is a bit jolting. Who is he REALLY talking about here? Pat Buchanan? Who in their right (or left) mind thinks there was anything wrong with the Anglo-American effort in WWII? There were some aspects of its execution that could have been done better, but overall it went about as well as could be expected, and was vitally important to beat Nazi Germany.
Anyone who disputes that really is on the fringes, and I'm not sure there's an easy label to put on them.
Fringes indeed. The problem with them is that they are more vocal and everybody can send e-mails.
The really odd thing is that while America is beginning to quietly chuckle at the Obama poses and rhetoric flourishes, Obama is still as convinced as ever of his "divinity"...and that is cause for even more worry about his sanity.
Certainly, most of those of us on the right have always laughed about Obama's narcissism but there has been little discussion of what will be the upshot of that malignancy.
Eventually, Obama will either unravel...or dig in his heels (in an effort to continue the charade regarding his divinity). Either way, I suspect we are in for real trouble.
Just wanted to repeat that for emphasis. It seems to be something that is controversal these days.
Well he is full of it about LGF. The guy is as marxist as Bozo.
I predict this is not the antidote. There is a radical sickness and the patient (America) is too weakened. Reason is a privileged position and appreciated by only a strong few — emotionalism appeals to the masses and is easier to produce by the master manipulator Obama. Obama works his crowd, works his magic to seduce America and that will have to run its course like any love sickness runs its course. The question is will America survive as we know it or will it look its been ravaged by the illness or made over to look like a unwholesome whore painted over, sold on feeling high but brought low. Reason can be used only up to a point in the best of times and with rational people. We are beyond that point: Obama has been ushered in by a wave of emotion that stills lapses up on the shores of American souls. It ain't going away any time soon.
What we see is not something that just started. It’s how the culture evolved. Left-stream-media feeds it and of it. How many times did we see a TV camera zooming into somebody screaming the lungs off with a sympathetic comment exploring the outrage, and absolutely not interested to zoom into people discussing without killing each other. If you are outraged, then you must have reasons, so you are right. If you are not outraged, then well, we are not interested in your story.
Who screams the loudest, gets noticed.
“If it bleeds, it leads” - isn’t it a favored expression of the news editors?
To support this with recent examples: the left was in a permanently outraged mode the whole 8 years, with sympathetic coverage by the left-stream-media.
Enemies of the West borrowed this Leftist trick and exploit it very well. Let’s look at the Israel’s struggles, for examples. Exaggerated claims of massacres are instantly on the front pages, debunking gets buried deep down, if it even published. Cooperation between Arabs and Jews in the daily life is not interesting neither.
Or lets take all publicity and daily count of American casualties in Iraq. When they got greatly reduced - where is the news? All the construction and cooperation between Iraqi and Americans - no news there neither.
And back to Joe Wilson. As much as I think that it goes contra the American tradition of decorum when the President speaks, and as much as I don’t want to see President Palin’s speech being interrupted every 10 seconds, I should point out, that no alternative action by the congressman would’ve concentrated the debate and been so effective as his outburst. Sad, isn’t it? So, I can’t fault him too much. Accidentally (I don’t think he was so shrewd to calculate this), he advanced the cause of highlighting Obama’s lies like nothing else would.
My conclusion. I don’t want conservatives to be a party of permanently outraged as the left did. Long-term its not conductive. But exceptions from the rule - and its very important: as long as they stay exceptions - can be a good tool.
University administrators worship private money, and then among themselves scoff at the capitalism that created it. Campus elites, looking at a benefactor, are fascinated how someone — no brighter than they are — made so much money, even as they are repelled by a system that allows those other than themselves to have pulled it off. No wonder that Obama seems enchanted by a Warren Buffett, even as he trashes the very landscape that created Berkshire Hathaway’s riches. No president has raised more money from Wall Street or has given it more protection from accountability — while at the same time demagoguing it as selfish and greedy.
Its good that VDH has pledged himself to anti-racism and intermarriage and all the good stuff, but he needs to put down the spliff and put his mind into logically interpetting what exactly is meant by “anti-racism”, and what the good liberal friends of his mean by it.
As smart as I find VDH to be, this statement is a bit jolting. Who is he REALLY talking about here? Pat Buchanan?Almost monthly I am smeared by the far far right for defending the Anglo-American effort in World War II or support for the melting-pot tradition of racial integration and intermarriage.
Pat Buchanan is the only one I know of who writes from that position.Who in their right (or left) mind thinks there was anything wrong with the Anglo-American effort in WWII? There were some aspects of its execution that could have been done better, but overall it went about as well as could be expected, and was vitally important to beat Nazi Germany.
On the fringe, indeed. But there is a lot of talk in academia, where VDH resides, that we were wrong to fight World War II the way we did, by partnering with Stalin, because we supposedly fought that war to liberate Poland and eastern Europe from the Nazi, and then turned them over to the Soviets; the Germans only wanted what was taken from them at the end of WW I; the British and France wanted to maintain their stranglehold of hegemony over Europe, and a rise of German power was a threat to that hegemony, but we had no dog in the fight...etc. For some people, the United States has never done anything right, and there is an amazing amount of loony revisionism going around that most people never see, most of which ignores the Holocaust (surprise!) but I am sure VDH is exposed to regularly. I don’t even want to think about the melting-pot stuff. It makes my head hurt.
bump
Now that one's gonna leave a mark. As I have stated repeatedly, Bush's problem wasn't that he acted unilaterally, it was that he attempted to bring the UN in and didn't jump when they backtracked on their earlier resolutions. Their hatred wasn't for a cowboy, it was for an apostate.
This is one of those random-notes columns that doesn't really have a central theme, but it seems clear to me that VDH is still a little too fond of the MSM's take on the hysteria and unreason present in those who oppose 0bama's programs. Taking Pat Buchanan seriously as a historian is a waste of time, and proposing that his is any sort of mainstream thought on the antecedents to the Second World War is simply a dry hole. It isn't really even useful as a straw man.
As for Charles Johnson, I prefer to let that gentleman speak for himself. What has happened to him is at least partly a function of him taking the same sorts of things seriously that VDH appears to. The radical fringe on the Right is far, far more marginalized and irrelevant than that same fringe on the Left. There isn't an equivalency, there isn't even anything close to one.
Take a look at Charles Johnson’s website. Maybe you have no idea of how good it used to be. And how he told Robert Spencer (Jihad Watch) to drop dead and BTW Charles designed the original Jihad Watch website
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/
Johnson has alienated most of the older anti-Jihad websites. He has mostly reverted back to liberalism
I don’t expect VDH to be aware of this history
I found the thing with Spencer alarming - sudden swervings like that are not the sign of a healthy individual. Maybe he always was more liberal than I thought but if so I've been laboring under a misapprehension for a long time. I favor the "he changed" theory but if it's true I do not know why.
So then we agree...
My guess is living in LA, Charles also always had liberal friends and business associates. He reverted back due to group pressure. Everyone can be unconscious of this. You move a little bit each day
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