PrintApril 20, 2009
No O'pology for killing three African youths?
The pirate standoff was a classic Jack Bauer crisis: Either shoot the three nutters pointing AK-47s at Captain Richard Phillips, or watch him be killed. So Obama gave permission to use all necessary force should Phillips' life be in imminent danger, and the Navy Captain in charge gave the order to kill the pirates when a gun was pointed at the hostage's head.
In the customary spin of the Leftist media -- which we've come to know so well and despise so deeply -- three innocent young black African teenagers were knocked over by a veritable White Fleet (as Teddy Roosevelt called it) using modern weapons and technology in billion-dollar war ships. And killing the pirates will not do any good; it's just another pinprick against a Vietnam-type People's Quagmire in Somalia, which is so poor that its young innocents will just go on volunteering to be pirates. All the rescue of Captain Phillips will do, as the Left always tells us, is to prop up the infamous Military-Industrial-Capitalist-White-Pig Complex.
That's what Jeremiah Wright would have said if George W. Bush had ordered the Navy to kill those pirates to save Captain Phillips.
But the peacenik Left has been quiet. Where was Mother Sheehan in her Red Peasant Woman getup? Where was the Black Caucus? And all the Peace Marchers? Where was the New York Times pant-hooting its customary outrage against this racist American attack on 3 black youths? Shouldn't the Left be out in force marching on the White House today?
Or -- is it OK for a black Democrat to kill African blacks? Have racial double standards gone this far?
Barack Obama just released secret CIA interrogation documents regarding Al Qaida bad guys subjected to high-pressure interrogation. He has just embarked on yet another O'pology Tour, this time South of the Border, where he feels we have so much to apologize for. Although he doesn't seem inclined to apologize for the Democrats in Congress today, who are keeping Colombia out of the NAFTA free-trade agreement. Apparently free trade doesn't really count as a way to support our allies, even Colombians besieged by Leftist narcofascists.
Funny thing about those O'pologies. They never seem to apply to Obama himself. They are always about George W. Bush, or about Wall Street, or other Bad White Guys. So President O can give the thumbs up for killing three black Somalis on the very day he is O'pologizing again for more of his country's sins, such as they are.
When Michelle O said that she was feeling proud of her country for the first time in her life when Barack won the Democrat caucus states against Hillary, she wasn't just kidding. She must have been reflecting on a lifetime litany of "Shame on us!" outrage, which the Obamas have been repeating all of their adult lives. They live in shame for their country and overweening pride for themselves, because they are the Good Guys in this melodrama.
The Pirates of Puntland may go down in history as the first time Barack Obama had to face reality and make a tough moral choice. Everything else in his life has been whistling in the wind, moral posturing without facing any of the dilemmas of real life.
Barack Obama is easily the most self-righteous US president since the disastrous Jimmy Carter, who is still enraged today at his fellow citizens for denying him a second term in office. It bears repeating that it is Jimmy Carter and his foreign policy team who are still directly responsible today for nuclear proliferation among the most radical countries in world today: Starting with Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea, but, as we now know, also Syria. Once the rogues go down that slippery slope, so will all the others.
If Jimmy Carter had supported the Shah in 1979 against Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian Army would have stopped the coup. Iran would be more like Turkey today -- a reasonably tolerant and democratic country, far more prosperous and less corrupt than Iran is today, with a radical Islamist movement that may be threatening but is nowhere near nukes and missiles. Instead, we have Ahmadinejad playing Hitler all over again. Thank you, Jimmy Carter.
Obama's team has just issued a public threat to Israel that tells the Israelis to concede Jerusalem and the West Bank in return for American support against Iran. That's pure Carterism. It puts the onus on the democratic State of Israel, and absolves the corrupt and tyrannical martyr movements of Hamas, Hezbollah and Fatah. It's an interesting choice of friends and enemies.
The Obama administration will be a great test of Israel's sovereignty. Has Israel become too dependent on us? In the 1960s Israel's closest ally was France, not the US. When De Gaulle took over in France, he embarked on the pro-Arab policy that has now turned Paris into a demographic colony of the Muslim Caliphate. So much for De Gaulle's reverence for La Patrie.
The United States at that time found Israel to be an important ally in the Cold War. Israel's wars of self-defense were also proxy battles between the US and the Soviet Union. The United States ended up winning the Cold War in good part because we won those proxy wars, or at least limited Soviet expansionism. Which is why Egypt, for example, decided after its 1973 war with Israel that the US was a better ally than the USSR.
The bottom line is that nations have permanent interests but no permanent friends, not if their survival is at stake. The Israelis cannot afford to be dependent on the good will of whoever happens to be US president, because it could well be Jimmy Carter again.
Pakistan, the other Muslim nuclear power, barely escaped a military coup d'etat several weeks ago, and the government has surrendered six of Pakistan's provinces to the Taliban Islamofascists. Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post is raising reasonable concerns about the stability of Pakistan, with its radicalized Islamist military and intelligence apparatus. What may be emerging therefore is an India-Israel and possibly a China-Israel alliance. Already Israel and India are cooperating on the vital project of anti-missile defense. If the Obama administration defaults on building an effect forward-located missile defense, the other high-tech powers will take the lead. They cannot afford to rely on a flabby American administration.
Both India and China have almost a thousand year of being attacked and partially conquered by Islamist aggressors. They can't pretend there is no aggressive jihadi ideology at work here, because they have suffered the consequences over the centuries. India still faces regular terror attacks from jihadis, and China worries about the Muslim Uigurs.
Is Obama another Jimmy Carter? If he is, will he let the Iranians build their nukes, and maybe pretend, as Smilin' Jimmy did, that the mullahs are saintly pacifists? Or is the reality-driven killing of those three pirates a sign of things to come? Because the real test of this administration is whether it can anticipate grave and very predictable dangers, like mullahs with nukes. The Left has far too many "experts" who are skilled in denial and rationalization. That is how the Leftist media managed to hang and quarter George W. Bush, who understood with the utmost clarity that terrorists with nukes must be prevented -- because they may not be stoppable once they get their big toys.
Bush was a foreign policy realist. Obama has made one realistic Jack Bauer decision. He hasn't yet faced a single really tough choice.
I don't think Obama is mentally prepared to meet the challenge of mullahs with nukes. He is too stuck in false liberal fantasies about the nature of the world. If that is true, our allies would be better off acting on their own to stop the spread of nukes to terror regimes. India and China must prevent Islamic fascists from controlling Islamabad. Israel must keep the mullahs from getting the technology of Armageddon.
Historically, Israel only fights when its back is against the wall. It is becoming increasingly likely that the Israelis may have to take on the mullahs by themselves, and Rahm Emmanuel be damned.
