The more Obama insists that he’s not naive, the clearer it becomes that he is dreadfully naive–with a complementary political cynicism added to the mix.  Obama is horrendously naive on the issue of nuclear proliferation, as today’s news regarding a ChiCom-Iranian plot uncovered reveals*:

The President went even further in Prague, noting that “as a nuclear power — as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon — the United States has a moral responsibility to act.” That barely concealed apology for Hiroshima is an insult to the memory of Harry Truman, who saved a million lives by ending World War II without a bloody invasion of Japan. As for the persuasive power of “moral authority,” we should have learned long ago that the concept has no meaning in Pyongyang or Tehran, much less in the rocky hideouts of al Qaeda.

The truth is that Mr. Obama’s nuclear vision has reality exactly backward. To the extent that the U.S. has maintained a large and credible nuclear arsenal, it has prevented war, defeated the Soviet Union, shored up our alliances and created an umbrella that persuaded other nations that they don’t need a bomb to defend themselves.

The most dangerous proliferation in the last 50 years has come outside the U.S. umbrella on the South Asian subcontinent, where India and Pakistan want to deter each other. No treaty stopped A.Q. Khan. Meanwhile, the world’s most conspicuous antiproliferation victories in recent decades were the Israeli strike against Saddam Hussein’s nuclear plant at Osirak, and the U.S. toppling of Saddam and the way it impressed Libya’s Moammar Ghadafi.

All of which means that any serious effort at nonproliferation has to begin with North Korea and Iran. They are the urgent threat to nuclear peace, the focus of years of great-power diplomacy and sanctions. U.N. resolutions have formally barred both countries from developing an atomic bomb and the missiles to deliver them. If Iran acquires a bomb or North Korea retains one despite this attempt to stop them, then the world will conclude that there is no such thing as an enforceable antinuclear order. It will be every nation for itself.

Obama demonstrates to Czechs the operation of their new nuclear umbrella.

This is exactly right, and where Obama means conciliation, nations and institutions that are predisposed so to do will see only weakness in such symbolic acts as bowing before the House of Saud.  It is naive to think otherwise.  It is naive to think that American DVDs will play on British players.  It is naive to search for the Austrian language equivalent of “wheeling and dealing.”  It is naive to swallow the hype regarding AGW, or to believe that cap and trade can solve the imaginary dangers that CO2 emissions subject us to–though once again that is counterbalanced by cynicism regarding the ends.  It is naive to believe that Hamas or Hizbullah are at all interested in a two-state solution.  It is naive, albeit cynical, to believe that the government can direct automobile companies to produce automobiles that consumers will want to buy with the money that they won’t have as a result of the government growth initiatives that he wants them to underwrite.

And as others on the right side of the blogosphere have been pointing out with regard to Obama’s Capitulation Tour, his view of American history and the role of America in the world is exactly what you would expect from a red-diaper baby (“You may say I’m a dreamer!”).  Everywhere Obama goes, he apologizes in his uniquely arrogant way for the presumed prior arrogance of the US, as he imagines it.  But when Obama refers to the US, he does not mean himself, and he does not mean the US citizens who believe as he does.  He isn’t apologizing for his country, he’s apologizing for those in his country who believe differently from him.  Obama himself is never to blame for anything, foreign or domestic.  He has inherited problems?  Well, what President has not?

And why shouldn’t he be naive and cynical?  Obama has never been responsible for anything his entire life.  He was a figurehead at the Harvard Law Review.  He somehow managed to graduate from Columbia, apparently, without having to pass its language requirement, which, until proven wrong, I’m going to insist was in place at the time he was there.  He wasn’t responsible for the waste of $150 million poured into radical school reform in Chicago with no positive benefit.  He wasn’t responsible for the machine politics that he engaged in while an Illinois State Senator and later US Senator.  He wasn’t responsible for spending 20 years sitting in the pews of race-baiting conspiracy theorist preacher Reverend Wright’s Church of Blame Whitey.  He isn’t responsible for the sweet land deal that he received from Rezko.  He wasn’t responsible for claiming he’d accept public financing and then changing his mind.  He wasn’t responsible for the verification mechanisms being shut off at his campaign donation site.  He isn’t responsible for campaigning on promises not to make lobbyists part of his administration, just as he wasn’t responsible for the hand up he received from radical liars Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.  He won’t be responsible for his campaign promises that no one making under $250k per annum would see a dime’s worth of increase in their tax burden.  He certainly isn’t responsible for not having read line-by-line the Porkulus Bill, as he’d promised, and excised all of the pork.  He was somehow appointed to a lucrative position at the University of Chicago School of Law, despite having no history of publication.  He received a very lucrative advance on a book deal that he proceeded to blow deadlines on.  He received another on entering the White House.

He has never been responsible for anything but time serving and sinecure.

So, Obama has good reason to be naive.  Naive and cynical.

The indictment will outline the financial conspiracy behind 58 different transactions, including shipments of various banned materials from China to Iran between 2006 and late 2008.

Among them:

* 33,000 pounds of a specialized aluminum alloy used almost exclusively in long-range missile production.
* 66,000 pounds of tungsten copper plate, which is used in missile guidance systems.
* 53,900 pounds of maraging steel rods, a superhard metal used in uranium enrichment and to make the casings for nuclear bombs.

The recipient is believed to have been a subsidiary of the Iranian Defense Ministry.

The suspect, who is not believed to be in the U.S., set up four bogus import-export companies that did business with six Iranian shell firms, one source said.

“They took elaborate steps to conceal the identity of the shipper and the recipient,” the source said.

The deals went through “several” New York banks, which cooperated when the alleged plot was uncovered.

“The New York banks were completely unaware,” the source said.

Authorities first stumbled over the scheme seven months ago in an unrelated probe into Iranian money-laundering through Lloyd’s, a British bank.

In January, Lloyd’s paid a $350 million fine to settle accusations it “stripped” information from Iranian money transfers to New York banks, hiding where the cash came from.

Officials said they suspected that money was also used to finance Iran’s nuke program.

“The important thing is to put sunlight on these deals,” the law enforcement source said.