Welcome to the big time, Barack Obama!
From The WorldwideStandard:
This past Friday, Germany’s highly-respected conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published an editorial page commentary — euphemistically titled “Also robust” — taking issue with the national security advice dispensed by the first-term junior senator from Illinois.Whoever takes Obama’s remark seriously will soon begin to start brooding, especially because Pakistan and its president are indispensable to wear down the terrorists. For sure, Musharraf has made mistakes and various maneuverings, but to pull the domestic political rug out from under him would further deteriorate the situation. The world that is now keenly looking forward to the end of President Bush’s administration will find out that-- if a Democrat succeeds him--there are certain continuities across U.S. party lines. Unilateralism is not Bush’s invention.
In Germany, a country where Bush’s personal approval ratings have long been in the single digits and where the Democrats are widely seen as the forces of good (back in 2004, polls indicated a German preference for John Kerry by a margin of 85-90 percent), a more differentiated assessment of U.S. politics is certainly welcome news. And so Obama’s blunt attempt to re-gain vital national security ground after losing out to Hillary Clinton in the recent Democratic debate has backfired in the States and abroad. As another Democratic candidate for the presidency, Joe Biden, said at a National Press Club luncheon last Wednesday:
"The way to deal with it is not to announce it, but to do it."
Wow. So the problem isn’t that Barack Obama would invade a nuclear-armed sovereign nation, even after arguing that we don’t have the capability to achieve victory in non-nuclear armed and (comparatively friendly) Iraq. It’s that he’d talk about it so openly.
And Bush is the unilateralist cowboy?
I mean, even Tom Tancredo is willing to discuss foreign policy options publicly. When he’s not, you know, hanging out on the southern border in a Stetson and some snake skin boots, waiting to throw rocks at parched illegals coming out of the desert.
Seems the Democrats, in their rush to out butch the Republicans in advance of the 2008 elections, might just force their candidates into a game of rhetorical escalation that will end with John Edwards claiming that, as President, he wouldn’t rest until every last jihadi is gutted, wrapped in bacon, and left hanging from a date palm.
Except, of course, during Ramadan.
Nuance, you see…
Comment by Sue on 8/6 @ 3:23 pm #
Boy, did I miss you when you were tied up a few months back; missed you posting quite as much as you used to; but, you have made it up big time the past few weeks. Keep at it. You string those words together so prettily that they don’t even feel the gutting until they’ve bled out.
Keep up the great work using your brain, which the tinfoil hatted leftist loons lost eons ago.
Comment by Fat Man on 8/6 @ 3:29 pm #
I liked Romney’s take on Obama: First he wants to have tea with our enemies, then he wants to bomb our allies; he has gone from Jane Fonda to Dr. Strangelove in the span of the week.
Obama is not chicken. He is just in way over his head.
Comment by Pablo on 8/6 @ 3:29 pm #
So that’s how we regain our international prestige! Run in disgrace from a conflict we’re neck deep in, with al-Qaeda, and then invade a sovereign, allied nation so we can fight in some of the world’s most impossible conditions and lose God knows how many men there.
It’s so simple, any fool could have thought of it! And in fact, one did.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/6 @ 4:16 pm #
He doesn’t think like other people.
Comment by Kirk on 8/6 @ 4:19 pm #
But you see, Obama is a communicator. Who cares what he says…as long as it is marked with eloquence.
TW: terrifying left
Comment by Aldo on 8/6 @ 4:26 pm #
Let’s run down the checklist:
Pre-emptive strikes.
Acting on intelligence, rather than waiting for threats to be “imminent.”
Acting without the blessing of the UN.
Acting unilaterally, rather than in concert with allies.
If the moonbats had any consistency at all they would be busy making lots of cute nicknames for Obama that include some variation of “Hitler” or “Nazi.” Of course one reason he gets a free pass is that he’s a Democrat, but the biggest reason, I suspect, is that no one on this side of the Atlantic actually believes him.
Comment by JD on 8/6 @ 4:54 pm #
“but the biggest reason, I suspect, is that no one on this side of the Atlantic actually believes him.”
So true. However, that makes the statement even more strange, as they are currently only pandering to their own party, and that type of position is not likely to help him with the base and the nutroots.
Comment by Jeff G. on 8/6 @ 5:06 pm #
Not so, JD –
They look for people who can convincingly lie. It’s the vetting process for the larger election, where they know what they need to do to win is make promises they can’t keep — and have no intention of keeping.
This is a dress rehearsal for the big show.
Comment by Major John on 8/6 @ 5:20 pm #
I wonder what COL Khan (the Pak Army LNO I worked a bit with whilst in Afghanistan) would say? They have had a whole heck of alot more casualties fighting the Talib than we have had – and active opposition from elements of their Salafist-infested/Wahbbist funded intel service [ISI] (what is it with intel services working against their ostensible bosses in this war?)…
Now the junior Senator from my state wants to go and knock heads with them? Sigh…
TW: perhaps the Senator needs some longitude education
Comment by B Moe on 8/6 @ 5:23 pm #
It is not like he is going to be help accountable for what he said, either. How is it received, spun and relayed, that is the question:
http://boortz.com/nuze/200708/08062007.html#obama
TW cooperat smedley Him too.
Comment by Pablo on 8/6 @ 5:38 pm #
Kirk,
You’re not calling him articulate, are you?
Comment by JD on 8/6 @ 5:44 pm #
Articulate?! Oh no you di-int! RACIST!
Jeff – I had never considered it that way. If that is the criteria, Obama fared miserably in this test.
Comment by John F'n Kerry on 8/6 @ 5:59 pm #
This is a dress rehearsal for the big show.
“Reporting for duty”!
Comment by slackjawedyokel on 8/6 @ 7:22 pm #
What Obama actually says is, as Kirk pointed out, immaterial. It’s as though Steve Urkel were running for President. Regardless of how stupid his comments are, he’s just so goshdarn cute and awkward when he says them that you want to pinch his cheek.
And yes, it’s a dress rehearsal for the big show.
TW: practice snickered — this damned thing is bewitched!
Comment by JD on 8/6 @ 7:25 pm #
I am probably overlooking a few obvious answers, but amoungst the actual nominees from the Reps and Dems, wouldn’t Obama’s resume be embarassingly slight in comparison?
Comment by JD on 8/6 @ 7:25 pm #
OBAMA ‘08 – “Talk to our enemas, and attack our friends”
Comment by Major John on 8/6 @ 7:50 pm #
“wouldn’t Obama’s resume be embarassingly slight in comparison?”
It was slight to get into the Senate in the first place. It just so happens that IL is pretty much a one-party state these days.
TW: Bundesrat Lander. No, the US Senate, not the German upper house and provinces. Sheesh, silly Turing!
Comment by Chairman Me on 8/6 @ 8:03 pm #
NO BLOOD FOR WHATEVER PAKISTAN EXPORTS!!!!
Let me work on it some more. I’m new to moonbattery.
Comment by Pablo on 8/6 @ 8:09 pm #
Major John, wasn’t that see very much in play until Jack Ryan got caught going super-freak?
Comment by psychologizer on 8/6 @ 8:09 pm #
“Hitlurkel” has a ring to it.
Comment by JD on 8/6 @ 8:26 pm #
Major John – I worked for a Republican officeholder during the ‘94 elections in IL, when Harold Smith of Northern Trust was still the Republican party chairman. He must be dismayed at what they have amounted to since his departure.
Comment by JD on 8/6 @ 8:27 pm #
Pablo – I think it was portrayed more as a high-profile election, with plenty of appeal to each candidate. Republicans have not really fared well in Illinois since ‘94.
Comment by ahem on 8/6 @ 11:20 pm #
1894
Comment by peter jackson on 8/6 @ 11:28 pm #
I don’t think it is in the interest of the free world to consider non-democratic governments the international privilege of “sovereignty.” Of course that doesn’t mean we should invade Pakistan either, but rather that dictator regimes such as Musharraf’s should be treated like a corporation: if they help us great, but if they become dangerous to us the junta shouldn’t be afforded the same protected status that legitimately elected, normal governments get.
But I quibble.
yours/
peter.
Comment by Percy Dovetonsils on 8/7 @ 7:43 am #
That is the $64,000 question, Major John. Not to sound like Steven Seagal here, but is the “intelligence” community that out of control internationally?
Comment by McGehee on 8/7 @ 8:10 am #
The intelligence community is an institution, like media and academia.
When you drink deeply from the Fountain of Cynicism as I have, it’s disturbingly easy to make the dots look like pretty much anything you want. Or don’t want, as the case may be.
(TW: agents process — STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!!!)
Comment by Barack Obama on 8/7 @ 11:18 am #
What I meant to say was .. If the glove doesn’t fit and you have to invade unilaterally and take on a third front in inhospitable terrain while simultaneously pandering to Iran and Syria, one must aqui …. uh scratch that.
TW: passed degrades: And how! Phew. Double bag it and to the curb.
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