PrintMay 15, 2010
Obama Learns What It Is Like to Be a Republican
I'm sure that like most right-thinking Americans, you had to uncross your eyes when Hamid Karzai and Barack Obama shared pleasantries in Washington last Wednesday.
It wasn't that long ago that Obama and Karzai were seemingly worlds apart geographically and diplomatically. The Obama administration did everything in its power to undermine Karzai in the latest elections. In addition, it went as far as alleging drug use by Karzai and drug dealing by his brother. I'm sure that in his last trip to Afghanistan, Obama gave Karzai the Chicago-style third degree.
In return, Karzai threatened to join the Taliban. And you can't blame him. American foreign policy has proved bipolar with the Obama administration (although just singularly crazy with Obama). One president (Bush) wants to run out the Taliban, and the next is intent on playing Chicago politics. The problem is that Chicago-style diplomacy is small-time when dealing with tyrannical and murderous regimes. Obama is finding out what it is like to be a Republican, but in the worst of all stages.
Republicans have proved to be well-meaning but terribly undisciplined. They want the best for the American people but as a group prove more interested in themselves. And they think that the Democratic Party has the American people's best interests at heart but is terribly misguided. This is a naïve and immature notion in the power-is-all political environment Democrats have created.
What is laughable is having Obama gallivanting around the globe thinking the other tyrannical regimes want the best for the whole world and will listen to his voice of "reason." He thinks that if he will bow to foreign leaders and apologize for previous administrations, then the rest of the world will follow his lead. Like the domestic policy of the Republicans, his foreign policy is more in line with Toy Story than the real world.
Take, for instance, Iran. We will never know what type of contact Obama made with a series of letters since taking the oath of office. We do know that he has done virtually nothing to foster and aid resistance against the regime. Voice of America, a vital tool in the Cold War, is virtually nonexistent -- if anything, it is working against freedom there. Iranians refer to it as Voice of Iran. Obama is contorting himself into the most compromising positions, and with himself, the American people. The only problem is that the Iranian regime and the rest of the world are laughing at this foolish exercise.
Needless to say, Iran is above all dangerous. It is bankrolling every major Islamic terrorist group -- Shi'ite or Sunni. It is ruthless to the point of making the old Soviet Union appear sophomoric when terrorizing its own people. They think nothing of routinely raping male political prisoners. And of course, it couldn't be considered as a leader in the Muslim world without threatening to wipe Israel off the map. This is not a rational bunch Obama is dealing with, yet he has convinced himself that he can get results, just like Republicans dealing with Obama.
Obama should know better. Iran is only utilizing the same Saul Alinsky tactics Obama uses to gain not supremacy, but hegemony throughout the world. Even the remnants of al-Qaeda get tactical support to be the thorn in our side. Hezb'allah and Hamas are only the community organizers. Yet Obama thinks he can deal with Iran rationally -- never mind that the U.S. is the Great Satan in their eyes.
And then there is Russia. Obama knuckled under to his own quixotic foreign policy (minus the chivalry) and abandoned Poland and the Czech Republic for simple diplomatic gains on Iranian sanctions -- not even the real thing. The new START treaty only makes the U.S. more vulnerable. Apparently, the Obama administration forgot that Russia still thinks it can win an all-out nuclear war.
Furthermore, there is China, who will soon be able to dominate the U.S. via manipulating our debt and then our currency. This is still a Marxist-Leninist regime, yet Timothy Geithner goes regularly hat-in-hand to Beijing begging China to bail us out of our own jams. The list goes on and on.
This is a cruel and heartless world, even among friends. And speaking of friends, why not throw our only true friend in the world (Israel) to the same wolves that want to wipe it off the map? The world today does not respond to the weakness that Obama mistakes for friendship. Chicago-style politics is considered small-time in most of the second world, and Chicago-style diplomacy works only in Obama's head.
The major players in the world are giving Obama what he wants and then getting out of the way as he runs the United States off a cliff. They don't have to face up to the U.S. as in the past. Why try to destroy the U.S. when it is doing a good job by itself? This is a world that respects only strength, which is why Karzai had to make the threats he did. Obama then had to capitulate, but only to save his own skin. This Obama-made disaster (OMD) he couldn't blame on Bush.
Obama is truly a boy among men, the kind that will slit the throats of the well-minded for sport. Karzai is well aware of the lupine skill set required to survive in a world of power. The only problem is that Obama is the leader of the only nation that enables the peace and prosperity of the modern world. It is no small responsibility, but he is willing to throw it all away for his own personal agenda.
Karzai had to play hardball to get the U.S. to own up to its responsibilities in the world. Republicans should also take up his lesson, because another four years of Obama will be a complete disaster.
