September 18 2013

“My suspicion is that the Iranians recognize they shouldn’t draw a lesson that we haven’t struck [Syria] to think we won’t strike Iran„ — The Idiot in the White House

Rouhani sees negotiations as merely a tactic to buy time in advancing Iran’s nuclear program. We know this from his own account of the tactics he used when he served as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator in 2003. In an in-depth interview given to the Mehrnameh periodical in May 2012 to mark the publication of his book, National Security and Nuclear Diplomacy, Rouhani said that during Iran’s voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment, which Rouhani negotiated with the European Union in 2003, Iran’s nuclear program made major advances.

“Today, the rule that has guided me in most of my actions as prime minister and to which I adhere very carefully is perhaps more valid than ever. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If we are not for ourselves, who will be for us? And the practical translation of this rule is that Israel will always be able to defend itself by itself against any threat.„ — Netanyahu

Saturday marks Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar and, this year, the 40th anniversary of the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, the greatest trauma in Israeli history.

On the morning of October 6, 1973—the day on which Yom Kippur fell that year—Chief of Staff David Elazar met with Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to warn that the Egyptian and Syrian armies were about to attack Israel. Elazar urged a preemptive strike; six years earlier, in the Six-Day War, Israel’s preemptive strike had proved highly effective.

But Meir and Dayan, who were under heavy pressure from U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger not to preempt, overruled the chief of staff. The result was near-catastrophic as later that day the Egyptian and Syrian armies attacked first and took battlefield advantages while inflicting heavy casualties.

Israel was able to turn the tide and, with the help of a massive U.S. airlift, prevail. But the price was almost 2700 casualties and a country shocked, depressed, and shaken to its roots.

When even the New York Times admits that Barack Obama has been outfoxed, outsmarted and outplayed, you know he has really been outfoxed, outsmarted and outplayed.

Barack Obama, meanwhile, has been revealed as being spectacularly dispensable. The Syrian jihadis who were counting on his aid are bitterly disappointed that he has (at least for now) backed off on committing the U.S. to intervening militarily; true to form as ever, they are blaming it all on Israel.

But there it was, in Wednesday’s edition: “suddenly Mr. Putin has eclipsed Mr. Obama as the world leader driving the agenda in the Syria crisis.” Putin, wrote Steven Lee Myers for the Times, “appears to have achieved several objectives, largely at Washington’s expense.” Chief among these was that “Russia has at least for now made itself indispensable in containing the conflict in Syria, which Mr. Putin has argued could ignite Islamic unrest around the region, even as far as Russia’s own restive Muslim regions, if it is mismanaged.”

BUMBLING OBAMA OUTSMARTED BY PUTIN, ADDRESSES THE NATION ABOUT DOING NOTHING AND TAKES CREDIT FOR IT

A moment of clarity, not from Obama’s speech, but in understanding that the US is presently run by fools who are crippling the nation.

The good news is we're not at war. The bad news is … almost everything else about President Obama's handling of Syria – the fumbling and flip-flopping and marble-mouthing – undercut his credibility, and possibly with it his ability to lead the nation and world.

As he addressed a global audience Tuesday night, liberal elites blindly accepted White House fiction that Russian intervention this week was somehow part of Obama's master plan. Their conservative counterparts practically rooted against a diplomatic breakthrough, preferring an Obama black eye over peace.
Obama won! Obama lost! The fact is it's too soon to keep score. In the long view of this past week, I suspect the Syria standoff will stand as an example of the best and worst of Obama's leadership. Granted, in the heat of the moment, it's far easier to catalogue the worst.

The Syrian Crisis As Reflected In Cartoons In The Arab Media

Al-Watan (Saudi Arabia), August 23, 2013

"Syria's chemical weapons are a red line!"

Al-Watan (Saudi Arabia), August 17, 2013

Obama plays with the "red line"

Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London), August 28, 2013

Obama entangled in his own "red lines"

Al-Bayan (UAE), August 25, 2013

Assad gets a scolding: "Bombard, shell and kill, but no more chemical weapons!"

The Obama administration has crossed a line and is now backing the “bad guys.”

The war on terrorism has become the war for terrorism.

We have just entered a new era with the Middle East and its relation to the world. Not every day can you proclaim such a shift in world history; today you can. This is not a joke — definitely not — and as you will see, it is not an exaggeration.

For the last seven weeks I have been in the United States, mostly in Washington, D.C.; I have spoken with and listened to many people. As a result, I am in a position to describe to you with a high degree of confidence what U.S. policy regarding the Middle East will be for the remainder of Obama’s term, and perhaps for far into the future.

In short, the administration has crossed a line and is now backing the “bad guys.”

The President says it is war, and nobody turns up

U.S. President Barack Obama apparently had to call off the planned military strike against Syria because of a formidable mutiny in the U.S. military leadership. The soldiers could not recognize the President’s strategy – and expressed grave concerns against the action. Never before have America’s soldiers so openly refused to follow a president.

The U.S. military refused to follow U.S. President Barack Obama (shown here with the Chief of General Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates in memory of September 11): Obama has gone too far in the fight against terror. His soldiers did not want to go to war which they do not understand.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s surprising withdrawal from his Syria plans is apparently due to a massive mutiny in the U.S. Army.

“Our goal will not be to effect régime change, or alter the balance of power in Syria, or bring the civil war there to an end. We will simply do something random there for one or two days and then leave.„ — Obama

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Attempting to quell criticism of his proposal for a limited military mission in Syria, President Obama floated a more modest strategy today, saying that any U.S. action in Syria would have “no objective whatsoever.”

“Let me be clear,” he said in an interview on CNN. “Our goal will not be to effect régime change, or alter the balance of power in Syria, or bring the civil war there to an end. We will simply do something random there for one or two days and then leave.”

“I want to reassure our allies and the people of Syria that what we are about to undertake, if we undertake it at all, will have no purpose or goal,” he said. “This is consistent with U.S. foreign policy of the past.”

While Mr. Obama clearly hoped that his proposal of a brief and pointless intervention in Syria would reassure the international community, it immediately drew howls of protest from U.S. allies, who argued that two days was too open-ended a timeframe for such a mission.

That criticism led White House spokesman Jay Carney to brief reporters later in the day, arguing that the President was willing to scale down the U.S. mission to “twenty-four hours, thirty-six tops.”

“It may take twenty-four hours, but it could also take twelve,” Mr. Carney said.

“Maybe we get in there, take a look around, and get out right away. But however long it takes, one thing will not change: this mission will have no point. The President is resolute about that.”

An Accidental War

I see the Obama “reset” is going so swimmingly that the president is now threatening to go to war against a dictator who gassed his own people. Don’t worry, this isn’t anything like the dictator who gassed his own people that the discredited warmonger Bush spent 2002 and early 2003 staggering ever more punchily around the country inveighing against. The 2003 dictator who gassed his own people was the leader of the Baath Party of Iraq. The 2013 dictator who gassed his own people is the leader of the Baath Party of Syria. Whole other ball of wax. The administration’s ingenious plan is to lose this war in far less time than we usually take. In the unimprovable formulation of an unnamed official speaking to the Los Angeles Times, the White House is carefully calibrating a military action “just muscular enough not to get mocked.”

This is from May 2013 showing the “rebels” already had access to chemical weapons, and that they had been using Sarin agents before.

No congressional approval, no UN vote - just a self important buffoon hurling the United States into catastrophic action.

Who else recalls the hoops George W. Bush had to jump through to go into Iraq? Who else remembers the endless documentation from every US intel agency and the intel from our allies across the world concerning Saddam Hussein's WMD? Years of intel. And majority validation by Democrats and Republicans (who can forget Hillary?)

And still Bush was monstrously vilified.

Now we have a puffed-up, truly great phony going into Syria without knowing who is using chemical weapons. Or whose chemical weapons? The WMD the Democrats didn't exist? Saddam's? These? These?

An Iranian proxy vs Al Qaeda/ Muslim Brotherhood opposition. Only a puffed up moron would jump into those shark infested waters. At least Assad protected the millions of religious minorites in Syria.

No congressional approval, no UN vote -- just a self important buffoon hurling the United States into catastrophic action. Where is the statecraft? What can we expect Syria (or Egypt and Libya, for that matter) to look like after Obama wreaks havoc and assists in Muslim Brotherhood/Al Qaeda reigns of terror in 10 years, 20 years?

OBAMA'S WAR...
BUCHANAN: Congress should veto...
Strike within days...
Warplanes begin arriving in Cyprus...
Armed forces 'making contingency plans' for military action...
WH: Not regime change!
CAMERON RECALLS PARLIAMENT...
HOLLANDE: France ready to 'punish' Syria...
NKOREA caught trying to send gas masks, weapons to Syria...
STOCKS JOLTED...
Russia evacuates 90 people ...
Says West Acting Like 'Monkey With Hand Grenade'...
Top Syrian Official: Obama 'Completely Wrong'; 'Produce The Evidence'... links thanks to Drudge

Our president is the foreign policy Contrare. He has gotten backwards every maxim of proven wisdom for dealing with the rest of the world.

Remember the “Contrare” Sioux warrior from Little Big Man? He did everything backwards––said “hello” for “goodbye,” washed in sand instead of water. Our president is the foreign policy Contrare. He has gotten backwards every maxim of proven wisdom for dealing with the rest of the world. Teddy Roosevelt counseled, “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” but Obama has spoken loudly and carried a little stick. Churchill said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.” Obama can be always counted on to do the wrong thing––before he’s tried anything else. The Roman general Sulla was “no better friend, and no worse enemy.” Obama has been no better enemy, and no worse friend.

The president’s malignant narcissism explains a lot of this incompetence. His belief in his own transformational personality has blinded him to reality, and given him the delusions of omnipotence more typical of a child. You have to go back to Neville Chamberlain to find a major world leader so dangerously deluded by self-regard. Whenever Obama speaks to the world, I’m reminded of Chamberlain preening before his cabinet during the Munich crisis, telling his ministers that he was “satisfied Hitler was speaking the truth,” and that “he had established some degree of personal influence over Herr Hitler,” and that Hitler “would not deliberately deceive a man whom he respected.”

“We don’t take sides„ — Obama Lies

Obama has done nothing to end the slaughter of non-Muslims under the Shariah or protect the Christians in Egypt.

For decades, the United States has urged foreign governments not to free prisoners who have killed Americans. But a man who murdered an American was freed this week by Israel in a prisoner-release deal encouraged by Secretary of State John Kerry.

Among those released Tuesday as an inducement to the Palestinian Authority to return to peace negotiations was Al-Haaj Othman Amar Mustafa, a Palestinian convicted in 1991 of killing Frederick Steven Rosenfeld, who the Philadelphia Inquirer at the time of his death reported was a former U.S. Marine and U.S. citizen.

There is only one possible explanation.

The position of the State Department is that murderers of Americans must never be released, but murderers of Israelis must be released.

The US must never negotiate with terrorists, but Israel must.