Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
a sign of how relations with the west have deteriorated in recent years
in addition to being a piece of news which must surely be an homage to the apologizer-in-chief's brilliant forward-looking policy of smartdiplomacy (Update: spasiba to Instapundit).
The document, "About the Strategy of National Security of Russian
Federation", was signed by President Vladimir Putin on New Year's Eve.
It replaces a 2009 version, endorsed by then-President Dmitry Medvedev,
the current prime minister, which mentioned neither the United States
not NATO.
… Relations between Russia and the West reached a low after
Russian forces annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014,
after protests in Ukraine forced its pro-Moscow president to flee to
Russia.
Reminder: Back during the 2008 election campaign, Sarah Palin was vilified for saying another incredibly dimwitted thing, that the election of a pacifist like Barack Obama to the White House
would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.
(Gratefully, intelligent people like those writing for Foreign Policy were around to remind everybody that in fact, such an invasion was, and is, "an extremely far-fetched scenario.")
A "sign of how relations with the west have deteriorated in recent years" is the Thomson Reuters journalist's wording of choice.
"In recent years," Vladimir Soldatkin?! "Recent"?!
You might read some blogs once in a while, Vlad. Over there, in your MSM office. And their posts.
Smart Diplomacy? Laziness? Or "Maybe the Copy Key Got Stuck on the Obama Speechwriter's Keyboard"?
When the Democrats criticized George W Bush for ruining America's foreign policy and running roughshod over the "feelings" of foreign countries, friendly or otherwise, didn't the nuance and smartdiplomacy they advocated entail using intelligence and understanding and discernment when dealing, sensitively, with the foreign countries in question, along with a minimum of careful planning?
As it turns out, Denmark is flattered to be praised by Barack Obama, as a country whose people "punch above their weight", gushes a Danish TV fact-checker, Thomas Buch-Andersen (tak til Valerie); that is, the Danes are flattered until they find out that Barack Obama has used the boxing metaphor in a few other circumstances…
According to Obama, are we doing any better than, say, the Norwegians?
asks the Danish Broadcasting Corporation's BS "detector". Let's see: from other press conferences, in the White House or abroad, Barack Obama tells us that: "Norway punches above its weight". Oh. Okay. But that's not all. What about the Netherlands? We learn that: the Dutch "punch above their weight." Hokay. How about Ireland? We learn that: "Ireland punches above its weight." And what about the Philippines? The Asian country (get this): "punches above its weight".
Along the way, we also learn from Barack Obama • that "we have no stronger ally than the Netherlands"; • that "we have no stronger ally than Australia"; • that "Poland is one of our closest and strongest allies"; • that "Great Britain is one of our closest and strongest allies"; • that "Germany is one of our strongest allies" • that South "Korea is one of our strongest allies" • that "Israel is one of our strongest allies"; • that "France … is one of our closest allies"; • that "Italy is one of our strongest allies"; and • that "Japan is one of our strongest and closest allies".
It's called Smart Diplomacy; and don't you doubt it!
Following a few remarks I read in a discussion on Facebook about how the money provided to Tehran was only Iran's to begin with, I wrote back with four points, as follows:
To provide you with an answer concerning Iran, we need to go back to the Cold War…
1) THE SOVIET UNION & RONALD REAGAN
Back in the 1980s, we heard — both from within the US and from people throughout Europe — what a terrible danger America was, what a danger this reactionary president, this clueless cowboy, represented to the world, why we should instead seek to find understanding with the Soviets, who were no worse than we in the West were, they are peaceful just like (in fact, more than) we are/were (remember the Sting song?), and why can't we all live together?
In other words: The problem was not the Soviets — don't be so silly — the problem was… that horrific peril, the United States of America (or the West in general) — more specifically, those monstrous American conservatives!
And the Gipper calling the USSR an "evil empire" — what a joke!
What a scandal that someone ought to be so backwards-thinking:
Don't The Russians Love Their Children Too?
After the wall came down — during which it turned out that all of Moscow's satellites couldn't get out of the Kremlin's sphere fast enough — Eastern Europe's new governments brought Soviet war plans to light: Poland "published a Warsaw Pact map showing detailed plans for Soviet nuclear strikes against western Europe" (no, not Fox News; the Guardian, the UK's most leftist daily).
One Soviet military map of Denmark had "only" five targets destroyed by nuclear bombs… Others featured 27 to 52 mushroom clouds.
"During the Cold War, the Soviet military mapped the entire world, parts of it down to the level of individual buildings. The Soviet maps of US and European cities have details that aren’t on domestic maps made around the same time, things like the precise width of roads, the load-bearing capacity of bridges, and the types of factories … The Soviet map of Chatham also includes the dimensions, carrying capacity, clearance, and even the construction materials of bridges over the River Medway" [Wired]
Most ominously, perhaps, Moscow had published common city maps (not military maps) of main cities for future use — all with the new names that the streets were going to get once they were in commie hands (Karl Marx Straat, l'Avenue Lénine, etc)…
In other words, might not the West's leftists have been wise to show a bit more skepticism with regards to Soviet-signed treaties and to the Kremlin's assurances of peaceful intentions?
2) "SMART DIPLOMACY" & IRAN etc…
What is the point of this?
Well, this brings us to today…
(No, I'm not comparing Reagan to Donald Trump, in no way
— no way whatsoever — except perhaps for one detail: to point out that every four years, it turns out that whoever is the Republican nominee is described as a "fascist" and compared to no less than Adolf Hitler; finally, after 70 years, when one single candidate does seem to happen to come close to fitting the bill, it turns out that the electorate is unimpressed, due to the opposition having cried "wolf" too many times.)
No, I'm not addressing Donald Trump at all here; I'm talking about the most intelligent president ever to grace the Oval Office with his presence and the Nobel Peace Prize laureate's second-to-none smartdiplomacy…
Of course, hasn't the above been the apologizer-in-chief's main contention for 8 years: that nobody is America's enemy, nobody is the world's enemy, except for… America itself, specifically its despicable conservative extremists?
And so we cozy up to countries like Cuba and Iran; don't the Cubans and the Iranians love their children too?
And again we hear the same type of refrain;
Oh, Obama's Iran move is no big deal; remember, it was Iran's money to begin with; it was just unfrozen; the Iranian nuclear program has been stopped.
This is again the "it's all (or mostly) America's fault" scenario.
We must try to understand the Iranians, for America (and/or the West) was — illegally (!) — keeping Iran's money, suggesting that the only thing Iran's leaders wanted to do was use it like Western governments use it, building schools and hospitals, etc…
Reminder: the Iranian régime's assets were frozen for a very specific reason: because the Mullahs took over 50 diplomatic personnel (never mind whose country they belonged to) hostage in the late 1970s. During which time the ayatollahs, and the masses, chanted Death to America and Death to the West — cries that continue with as much alacrity today as they have done, continuously, for 40 to 50 years… In all that time, the ayatollahs have not hesitated to provide support for terrorists in the West, while their nation, the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, has showed no more concern for diplomatic niceties with Western governments and, indeed, a total lack of respect for same…
Besides, people who don't trust the Bushes, Ted Cruz, and… Ronald Reagan and their ilk suddenly become deeply trusting when it concerns foreign leaders, whether they be from Havana (believe us, Cuba has a far better education system than under Batista) or from Tehran (no nuclear weapons — we promise):
DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA’S NEWEST, FRIENDLIEST, MOST CURIOUS ALLIES:
“Cops have caught ‘hostile’ Iranian snoops shooting pictures and video
at key city sites at least six times since 9/11 — twice the number
previously reported.” Not to mention “a man named Mohammed Alavi was
arrested for providing Iran with the floor plan of America’s largest
nuclear power plant.”
Gosh, someone should tell Ben Rhodes and
John Kerry about this stuff. I’m sure the president would want to know. [Instapundit]
As for Iran's nuclear program having been stopped, where have we heard that before? Oh right, in the 1990s, when another non-warmongering president in the White House sent a previous non-warmongering president to Pyongyang to "successfully" negotiate the end of North Korea's nukes.
Fast-forward to January 2016, when Kim Jong-un boasted that Pyongyang had just detonated its first hydrogen bomb…
For all this, thank Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. North Korea couldn’t have done it without their gullibility.
Back in 1994, President Clinton prepared to confront North Korea over
CIA reports it had built nuclear warheads and its subsequent threats to
engulf Japan and South Korea in “a sea of fire.”
Enter self-appointed peacemaker Carter: The ex-prez scurried off to
Pyongyang and negotiated a sellout deal that gave North Korea two new
reactors and $5 billion in aid in return for a promise to quit seeking
nukes.
Clinton embraced this appeasement as achieving “an end to the threat
of nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula” — with compliance
verified by international inspectors. Carter wound up winning the Nobel
Peace Prize for his dubious efforts.
But in 2002, the North Koreans ’fessed up: They’d begun violating the
accord on Day One. Four years later, Pyongyang detonated its first
nuke.
In other words, 12 years after this historic deal, Pyongyang showed that it had never had any to follow the piece of paper it duly signed, whether in spirit or in letter — and, as it were, that it had never had any respect for America or, for that matter, for any of America's politicians, especially the two presidents involved in the deal.
Are we allowed to ask the following question: What does the Iran deal bode for, say, 2028?
And how does it feel to get lectured by a Saudi citizen?
Saudi Prince Bandar: The U.S. nuclear pact with North Korea failed. The Iran deal is worse. “Writing for the London-based Arabic news Web site Elaph, Badar
suggests that President Obama is knowingly making a bad deal, while
President Bill Clinton had made a deal with North Korea with the best
intentions and the best information he had. . . . The Saudi prince says
the new Iran deal and other developments in the region have led him to
conclude that a phrase first used by Henry Kissinger – ‘America’s
enemies should fear America, but America’s friends should fear America
more’ – is correct.” [Instapundit]
Meanwhile, Cuba was never asked to release a single political prisoner (indeed, Americans were told that they have lessons to learn from the Castro brothers' single-party political system) while Iran's Green Movement was allowed to be ruthlessly suppressed in 2009 with not a peep from the White House.
We keep hearing about the sins of America and of the West. Everyday "evidence" that show that women are allegedly not equal and the ignominy of a couple of U.S. bakers refusing to bake a cake for a wedding that they (rightly or otherwise) do not agree with; all the while, not a peep about Iranians engaging in honor killings and hanging homosexuals from cranes or throwing them off the rooftops of high-rises. (Well, maybe it's not a double standard; apparently, the standard is that the only country that must always, constantly, be demonized is America—or the West broadly depicted.) 3) THE ADMINISTRATION'S "SMART DIPLOMACY" ADVISER & THE PRESS
In Rhodes's "narrative" about the Iran deal, negotiations started when
the ostensibly moderate Hassan Rouhani was elected president, providing
an opening for the administration to reach out in friendship. In
reality, as [the NYT's David Samuels] gets administration officials to admit, negotiations
began when "hardliner" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was still president. It was
Rhodes who framed the Iran deal as a choice between peace and war, and
it was Rhodes who set up a messaging unit to sell the deal that created
an "echo chamber" in the press.
"In the spring of last year," Samuels writes that
legions of arms-control experts began popping
up at think tanks and on social media, and then became key sources for
hundreds of often-clueless reporters. "We created an echo chamber,"
[Rhodes] admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly
minted experts cheerleading for the deal. "They were saying things that
validated what we had given them to say."
When I suggested that
all this dark metafictional play seemed a bit removed from rational
debate over America's future role in the world, Rhodes nodded. "In the
absence of rational discourse, we are going to discourse the [expletive]
out of this," he said. "We had test drives to know who was going to be
able to carry our message effectively, and how to use outside groups
like Ploughshares, the Iran Project and whomever else. So we knew the
tactics that worked." He is proud of the way he sold the Iran deal. "We
drove them crazy," he said of the deal's opponents.
Gleefully blowing raspberries at U.S. conservatives: another example of geniuses knowing who America's, and who the world's, true enemies are! And isn't that what Obama's policies, domestic as well as foreign, have been all about for the past eight years?
Should we ignore that with Obama's "peace in our time" in his second inaugural address, the Nobel Peace Prize winner echoed Chamberlain's hailing the Munich agreement with der Führer in 1938?
Perhaps it doesn't matter, you think…
… as William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection writes about Obama's maximum Kinsley-esque gaffe, "Obamaphiles can’t have it both ways.
"Either, as they say, he’s the most brilliant speech writer ever who
carefully crafts his texts to bring forward historical analogies — in
which case he used the phrase deliberately which is frightening – or
he’s way overblown and did it without realizing the significance."
4) SMART DIPLOMACY & RUSSIA
And this brings us back to the Soviet Union — or, rather, to Russia…
How has this wonderful new "smart diplomacy" worked out?
How about that Obama and Hillary reset with Russia (now that Russian warplanes buzz U.S. Navy vessels)?
Eight years ago we were told that once the crazy cowboy was out of office, and with someone of Obama's stature in the White House, the world (including Iran and North Korea) would respect America again and a new dawn of peace would arise…
Four years ago, Mitt Romney was mocked by Obama — and rebuked by, among others, the New York Times — for calling Russia America's "No. 1 geopolitical foe." "The 1980s, they're now calling to ask for their foreign policy back" sneered Barack Obama, "because, y'know, the Cold War's been over for 20 years."
(Reminder: Back during the 2008 election campaign, the foolish Sarah Palin was vilified for saying another incredibly dimwitted thing, that the election of a pacifist like Barack Obama to the White House "would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next." Gratefully, more intelligent people than the clueless Republicans, like those writing for Foreign Policy, were around in 2008 to remind everybody that in fact, such an invasion was, and
is, "an extremely far-fetched scenario.")
Besides Ukraine (are we also going to be told that, like the
billions of dollars were Iran's to begin with, the Crimea was/is Russian land? How about the former Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe?), here
are some other headlines from the past 18 months, all from the
New York Times or from (left-leaning) mainstream media newspapers:
Excuse me if, while comparing the international scene between 2008 and 2016, one might tend to raise a voice of doubt that the world (never mind the Middle East alone) has become anything close to safer, much less remaining just as safe, or that America, and America's president, aka the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is/are more respected than under the "crazy cowboy" and other previous administrations…
To conclude with the subject with which this comment opened:
Incidentally, it's not just Americans who are enamored — rightly or otherwise — of Ronald Reagan, the man who Polandin 1964 said that there is a simple way to have peace — you can surrender. (The Gipper might have added that the way to make the surrender palatable was to pretend that we are always to blame, to convince the people that the fault is invariably ours…)
There is a bust of a world leader in Budapest;
there is another memorial in Prague; in Poland, there is not
one statue of this world leader — there are two.
It is not Mikhail Gorbachev; nor is it Nelson Mandela or Mahatma Gandhi. It is a US president and that president is neither
John "Mr. cool personified" Kennedy nor Jimmy "détente with the Soviets" Carter nor Barack "détente with every single one of clueless America's alleged enemies" Obama…
[Barack Obama's] first meeting [with Russia's Vladimir Putin] was
marked by a nearly hourlong lecture by Mr. Putin about all the ways the
United States had offended Moscow. At their second, Mr. Putin kept Mr.
Obama waiting 30 minutes.
Even the New York Times is forced to admit that Barack "smart diplomacy" Obama often gets the cold shoulder abroad, as Mark Landler and Peter Baker report on "very blunt conversation[s]" and "bruising encounters", given that the Apologizer-in-Chief's
"main counterparts on the world stage are not his friends, and they make
little attempt to cloak their disagreements in diplomatic niceties."
While tangling with the leaders of two cold war antagonists of the
United States is nothing new, the two bruising encounters in such a
short span underscore a hard reality for Mr. Obama as he heads deeper
into a second term that may come to be dominated by foreign policy: his
main counterparts on the world stage are not his friends, and they make
little attempt to cloak their disagreements in diplomatic niceties.
Even his friends are not always so friendly. On Wednesday, for example,
the president is to meet in Berlin with Chancellor Angela Merkel of
Germany, who has invited him to deliver a speech at the Brandenburg
Gate. But Ms. Merkel is also expected to press Mr. Obama about the
National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, which offend
privacy-minded Germans.
For all of his effort to cultivate personal ties with foreign
counterparts over the last four and a half years — the informal
“shirt-sleeves summit” with Mr. Xi was supposed to nurture a friendly
rapport that White House aides acknowledge did not materialize — Mr.
Obama has complicated relationships with some, and has bet on others who
came to disappoint him.
“In Europe, especially, Obama was welcomed with open arms, and some
people had unrealistic expectations about him,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a
longtime senior American diplomat. Noting that Mr. Obama continued some
unpopular policies like the use of drones, he said, “People don’t
appreciate that American interests continue from administration to
administration.”
… Mr. Obama spent nearly four years befriending Mr. Putin’s predecessor, Dmitri A. Medvedev,
hoping to build him up as a counterweight to Mr. Putin. That never
happened, and Mr. Obama now finds himself back at square one with a
Russian leader who appears less likely than ever to find common ground
with the United States on issues like Syria.
… “You don’t need to be buddies with someone to establish an effective
relationship,” said Mr. Burns, who now teaches at Harvard. “Not everyone
can be Roosevelt and Churchill forming a personal bond to end the
Second World War.”
Even with friends, however, there is tension. President François
Hollande of France was initially thrilled with Mr. Obama because he saw
him as an ally against Ms. Merkel on economic issues.
But by the time they met at the Group of 8
summit meeting in Northern Ireland on Tuesday, the relationship had
soured, according to French analysts, because France is frustrated that
the United States did not do more to help with the war in Mali and
resisted a more robust response to Syria.
Mr. Obama differs from his most recent predecessors, who made personal
relationships with leaders the cornerstone of their foreign policies.
The first George Bush moved gracefully in foreign capitals, while
Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush related to fellow leaders as
politicians, trying to understand their pressures and constituencies.
“That’s not President Obama’s style,” said James B. Steinberg, Mr.
Clinton’s deputy national security adviser and Mr. Obama’s deputy
secretary of state.
… For Mr. Obama, no relationship is more prickly, and yet more
significant, than that with Mr. Putin. Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush forged
strong partnerships with their Russian counterparts, Boris Yeltsin and
Mr. Putin, respectively. But even that did not prevent ruptures over
NATO military action in Kosovo and the Russian war in Georgia.
Mr. Obama arrived in office determined to invest in Mr. Medvedev, but he
underestimated Mr. Putin’s continuing power. Their first meeting was
marked by a nearly hourlong lecture by Mr. Putin about all the ways the
United States had offended Moscow. At their second, Mr. Putin kept Mr.
Obama waiting 30 minutes.
… However strained their appearance on Monday, Mr. Obama did not publicly
criticize Mr. Putin on human rights or the rule of law. While the White
House is frustrated by Russia’s refusal to abandon Syria’s president,
Bashar al-Assad, Mr. Obama has been reluctant to intervene more
forcefully on behalf of the rebels.
"Obama did not publicly
criticize Mr. Putin on human rights or the rule of law." Well, no, that's something that's reserved for Republicans.
As for R. Nicholas Burns, we mention his FDR quip — “Not everyone
can be Roosevelt and Churchill forming a personal bond to end the
Second World War” — as we wonder how many media types recall how often they gushed about the One's "smart diplomacy", how often they claimed he was the man to bring respect and love back for America, and how often, precisely, they compared BHO to FDR (if it wasn't to Lincoln, to JFK, or to Reagan).
I think Romney did as well as could be expected in the second debate — although I keep wanting him to bring up the Russian microphone episode, along with Barack Obama's dissing of Russia and China's foes, Lech Walesa and the Dalai Lama — both of whom happen to be fellow Nobel Peace Prize recipients. (I mentioned all of the above several weeks ago during my televised debate with a member of the mainstream media — Newsweek's Paris Bureau Chief, no less.)
Indeed, what I really want the governor to do is tie the individual in with the general, and that means not only emphasizing the Benghazi debacle for the catastrophe it truly is, but tying an individual event like the Libyan attack in with Obama's foreign policy in general — to show it is not an isolated event but inherent in Obama's world view — as well as tying foreign policy (in general) in with economic policy. In other words, a winning strategy for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would not simply be attacking specifics, but also pointing out the underlying patterns.
From bumps on the road on the issue of economic recovery to bumps in the road in America's Mideast policy through four Americans getting killed being not optimal and blocking out any noise
regarding Israel and Iran: All those quotes — especially the first two — ought to be put together in one nation-wide ad. And how about America being able to “absorb” another 9/11-sized attack? (See also Dick Durbin.) That choice of phrases show how unconcerned the Chicago politician really is about anything not linked to himself and to his leftist ideology and, indeed, how cold-hearted, as Ed Driscoll puts it, Barack Hussein Obama turns out to be.
You would not know it if you read the mainstream media, but far from rescuing the United States (or its reputation) from George W Bush's "disastrous" foreign policy and thus being the embodiment of Smart Diplomacy, Barack Obama's antics (or refraining from acting), have managed to snub one ally after another, time and again, from the British to the French, from the Poles to the East Europeans in general, and even from the Scandinavians to America's immediate neighbors, Canada and Mexico.
What all this amounts to is obvious egotism whilerefusing to take the office of president of the United States seriously (beyond the left's own ideas of how to use it) and refusing to do the very basics (and not even unpleasant basics at that (double-date dinner in Paree with Carla Bruni and her husband?)) of one's duty as leader of the free world.
Of course, this all puts the left's world view on display (something Mitt Romney must pound home during the next debate and over the next couple of weeks):
Obama and the left must not submit to reality (yes, America has enemies, yes, diplomacy requires treating foreign dignitaries with basic courtesy, and no, you are deferential to noone — certainly not monarchs and autocrats and foes); reality must submit to Obama's leftist (and self-serving) view.
Because, in addition to all the above snubs (to America's friends), Smart Diplomacy
means that Obama has sucked up to Moscow and Beijing, along with régimes like Tehran's and that of Caracas. The Apologizer-in-Chief has been deferential — whether to autocrats like Saudi kings or to America's enemies. Because it turns out that in the leftists' fairy tale world, there are no enemies. At least, not as foreign nations; a criminal band like Al Qaeda, perhaps… But the Soviets, sorry the Russians, are not enemies — never have been, really — nor are the Chinese; after all, all of us on this planet are brothers under the skin. As are Iran's mullahs. And Hugo Chávez. Who can all live together, quite diplomatically — just like we all do among suit-wearing dipomats in the hallowed halls inside the United Nations…
We have seen many comparisons to America's 39th president. Indeed, Jimmy Carter similarly ignored the misdeeds of the West's traditional enemies, like the Soviets — who in fact, he (Carter) told us, were not our enemies (and whose misdeeds, if indeed they could so be called, were exaggerated) — in favor of weeding out horrific human rights offenders (real or alleged) among our allies (who in turn were not really our friends). Thirty years later, we — America, the world, and Iran's citizens — are still living with the results — which needless to say includes an Islamic Republic that is hostile to America and the West, a régime that sponsors terrorism while seeking nuclear warheads, and a government in Tehran that is more oppressive towards the Iranian people than the Shah ever was. (Sounds like something Obama may have duplicated in Egypt and perhaps in Libya…)
This is the leftist fairy tale: we are all friends and brothers under the skin, and given that "fact", if we (or if any of us) fail to see this in a fellow nation, the fault must lie not with their leaders but with us — or with those of us who see them as enemies, i.e., with conservatives. (Note: try taking the left's talking points to their logical conclusion…)
Thus, there is no real problem with Russia, China, Iran, or countries such as Venezuela, at least none that cannot be worked out by ever-deeper soul-searching — soul-searching on the American side, needless to say.
This has led to what Frank Gaffney called the Obama doctrine:
• Abandoning our allies,
• emboldening our enemies,
• and diminishing our country
The pretense of this fairy tale reality has gone to such lengths as hastily sending Russian spies to Moscow without garnering information about the Kremlin's spy ring beforehand and hastily announcing the death of Osama Bin Laden on the same day he was gunned down, before the documents discovered at his Pakistan home could be studied, and acted upon, by intelligence officers — never mind the Russian mike episode. Apologies have gone out to the Arab world, as we all know, but how many people realize that they even went out, before the Arab Spring, to Libya's Muhammar Gaddafi?
And then we get Benghazi: there are no enemies — unless it is us, ergo the murder of the ambassador must be due to the Mohammed-insulting videotape. Any other interpretation, unless of course it is due to Western hatred of and bigotry towards Muslims, can only amount to shameful politicizing.
To conclude: Mitt Romney must base his arguments on simple descriptions on the underlying premises and patterns of the Barack Obama administration and the leftists who embody them.
• A set of policies — foreign, domestic, and economic — based on leftist ideology, in other words, imaginary fairly tales
• Imagining that no country, large or small, is in the final analysis a foe, to America or to any of its allies — who aren't really that close friends anyway — and no disaster during the term of a leftists is really that big of a disaster anyway
• Anything going wrong in the world must somehow be the fault of America (or the West)
• A refusal by Obama to take his office seriously
• A lack of concern for anyone who doesn't support, directly or indirectly, his position and his (self-serving) world view or who can't be persuaded to jump on the bandwagon of supporters — for they can of course only be vile bigots and racists and other hatemongers.
The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been accused of
intercepting emails and messages from Ms Rousseff, her aides and state
oil company, Petrobras.
The allegations were based on documents leaked by fugitive former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.
President Barack Obama had promised to investigate the incident.
He made a phone call to Ms Rousseff on Monday, reportedly
asking her to go ahead with the visit, the Brazilian president's office
said.
This was to be the first state visit by a Brazilian president to the US since 1995. It was due to begin on 23 October.
I guess that the O's telephone call was not convincing…
As the American authorities announced a record penalty on Monday against BNP Paribas
for violating United States rules on trading with blacklisted
countries, the French political establishment had an unusual reaction:
silence.
Thus writes Liz Alderman in a New York Times story to which one is tempted to react to with biting irony: "So, Messieurs les Français, you finally got him, the U.S. president you dreamed of — the one who like the visionary Europeans is against bankers and other dirty capitalist pigs. Ain'tcha happy?!" Having said that, we must remember that Obama's outstanding, second-to-none smartdiplomacy is nothing to laugh at.
American prosecutors obtained most of what they fought for, but
financial authorities here are warning of a potential negative
consequence for the United States.
The dollar clearing at
issue in the BNP Paribas case was conducted in the United States. But,
said a person with direct knowledge of the negotiations, there is
concern that using dollars in international trade could ‘‘trigger risks
even if you do things outside the United States, because one day the
dollar you used may be seen as an opening for an extraterritorial
application of U.S. legislation.’’
‘‘That means that
using the dollar is now perceived as less safe than before the episode,
and it will probably reinforce the willingness of many countries to
trade as much as possible in other currencies,’’ the person added.
Nor will the French
government easily forget the episode. French officials are still upset
that American prosecutors appeared to be imposing a standard of justice
on foreign banks that has not been applied to American financial
institutions.
… ‘‘There is a perception that France was targeted,’’ the French official said.
… France could turn up
the heat on the United States on other fronts, especially in
negotiations underway on an American-European trade deal. ‘‘It will
probably mean that the French attitude will be even tougher,’’ said the
French official close to the discussions.
Intensifying French resistance to the deal could undermine the European Commission’s
ability to champion trans-Atlantic trade, Famke Krumbmuller, a
London-based analyst for the Eurasia Group, wrote in a recent note to
clients. But those talks are only limping along as it is, and
increasingly look doubtful to advance significantly during the Obama
presidency.
Also unclear is how
the American action will ricochet at a European level. The European
Commission has already imposed hefty fines on Microsoft and other large American technology companies for violating anti-trust behavior in Europe’s backyard.
Given that the
financial penalties by the American authorities against not only BNP,
but other European banks, have been eye-popping, ‘‘the temptation may be
there to also raise the level of the fines in Europe,’’ Mr. Godement
said, ‘‘and we could get into a kind of tit-for-tat war, which has the
added advantage of replenishing public coffers.’’
Whatever the softening
of the penalties, the BNP affair will sting in France. ‘‘This amounts
to targeting probably the closest ally that the U.S. has had in Europe
over the past four to five years,’’ Mr. Godement said. ‘‘It is very
disquieting.’’
From the annals of SmartDiplomacy: In Le Monde articles by Nicolas Bourcier and Dominique Gallois, whose main point is that France's Rafale fighter (pictured) lost the fight for Brazil's air force to Sweden's Gripen (with 0 sales of France's latest warplane so far, what country can be expected to purchase it?), we learn as an aside that Boeing's Super Hornet — once the favorite of the Brazilian military's wishes — was ousted when Brazil learned of the NSA spying scandal and after Dilma Rousseff complained of Barack Obama's "grave violation of human rights" and "disrespect to national sovereignty".
« LE TRANSFERT DE TECHNOLOGIE, UN DES ÉLÉMENTS LES PLUS IMPORTANTS »
En choisissant, mercredi, le Gripen NG du suédois Saab aux dépens du
groupe français et du F/A-18 Super Hornet de l'américain Boeing, la
présidente Dilma Rousseff a opté pour l'avion considéré par les experts
comme le moins cher. Selon la presse locale, il avait également la
préférence des militaires brésiliens depuis plusieurs années.
Ce choix permet en outre de ménager – un an avant l'élection
présidentielle au Brésil – la gauche du Parti des travailleurs (PT, au
pouvoir) qui aurait vu d'un très mauvais oeil la signature d'un contrat
avec l'avionneur américain quelques mois à peine après les révélations
sur l'espionnage de la présidence brésilienne par l'Agence nationale de
sécurité (NSA).
In a significant move to deter possible Russian aggression in Europe the Pentagon is poised to store battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles
and other heavy weapons for as many as 5,000 American troops in several
Baltic and Eastern European countries
The proposal, if approved, would represent the first time since the end
of the Cold War that the United States has stationed heavy military
equipment in the newer NATO member nations in Eastern Europe that had once been part of the Soviet sphere of influence. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine have caused alarm and prompted new military planning in NATO capitals.
Am I the only one who thinks that the world seems to be a far more dangerous place in 2015 than a decade ago?
I remember when Barack Obama mocked Mitt Romney during the 2012 election, telling him "the Cold War's been over for 20 years." I also remember him furtively asking Vladimir Putin's protégé for "space" that year, whispering that after said election he would "have more flexibility" with regards to making the U.S. missile defense more palatable to the Kremlin.
Finally, I remember the enthusiasm in 2008 for getting that dumb, war-mongering cowboy Bush out of the White House, and replaced by a visionary who would make the United States loved and respected again, bringing an unprecedented measure of peace to the world in the process.
Besides Moscow annexing Crimea (with Russian fighters routinely violating EU airspace), we have Beijing saber-rattling in the China Sea and ISIS capturing one Middle East stronghold after another. (Yes, I also remember Joe Biden calling the 2011 return of all U.S. combat troops from Baghdad "one of the great achievements of this administration", with Obama declaring "I ended the war in Iraq, as I promised.")
One might be excused for speculating that far from appreciating the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate's overtures, his numerous apologies, and what Democrats call "smartdiplomacy," all sorts of actors have become emboldened and, if anything, are itching for a fight with Uncle Sam.
During the previous administration, we kept hearing—far from inappropriately— how the latest batch of troubles of the time was "on Bush's watch." Will no media outlet point out the obvious, that the leftists' feel-good, smiley-face fairy tales about the world ("be nice and talk to everybody, we can all live together") might be at least partially responsible for the the current perilous state of events?
This must be more of the smart diplomacy that Instapundit is always talking about (his tongue firmly in cheek): While interviewed by Le Monde's
Nathalie Guibert (merci à Damian Bennett), General Vincent Desportes complained that Barack Obama's about-face shows a deep-rooted sense of contempt for France."
The French general was mentioned on No Pasarán three years ago when, like his American counterpart Stanley McChrystal, the "professeur de stratégie à Sciences Po et ancien directeur de l'Ecole de guerre" was summoned by the authorities (in his case the French authorities, natch), because he had had the gall to criticize Obama's strategy in Afghanistan.
Nathalie Guibert: What with the French and American armies being ready to hit the Syrian chemical sites in the present days, were you surprised by the decision of the U.S. President to suspend the operation?
Vincent Desportes: I was very surprised. The volte-face of President Obama shows a complete disrespect of the United States for France. The day before, President Hollande expressed in Le Monde with great seriousness, he explains why France was assuming its responsibilities. The following day, his great ally puts him in an impasse.
Les armées françaises et américaines se tenaient prêtes à
frapper les sites chimiques syriens ces jours-ci, avez-vous été surpris
par la décision prise par le président américain de surseoir à
l'opération ?
Vincent Desportes : Je suis très surpris. La
volte-face du président Obama témoigne d'un grand mépris des Etats-Unis
pour la France. La veille, le président Hollande s'exprime dans Le Monde
avec grandeur, il explique pourquoi la France prend ses
responsabilités. Le lendemain, son grand allié le place dans une
impasse.
L'armée américaine aurait-elle échoué à convaincre ?
Les militaires ne sont pas les premiers va-t-en-guerre. Rappelons que
l'armée américaine n'était pas favorable à l'opération en Irak. Elle ne
s'est mise au garde-à-vous qu'au dernier moment, en septembre 2002,
quand l'opération est devenue inévitable. Elle est, aussi, "fatiguée" de
la guerre après une décennie d'opérations et ne veut pas se remettre
dans un échec, comme en Irak ou en Afghanistan.
Les grandes puissances ont-elles perdu en crédibilité ?
Si on n'y va pas, c'est évidemment l'Iran qui ne sera plus du tout dissuadé de poursuivre son programme nucléaire.
Qu'on le veuille ou non, les grandes puissances occidentales sont
garantes de l'équilibre international. Il est plus gênant pour l'ordre
international de ne pas intervenir en Syrie que de le faire sans feu
vert du Conseil de sécurité de l'ONU. Or, il existe aujourd'hui une
dégradation forte de l'image de l'Occident dans la tête de nos
adversaires. Nos démocraties apparaissent comme faibles. Et ce qui
compte en stratégie, c'est la compréhension de l'état d'esprit de
l'autre. Nos démocraties apparaissent comme à la fin des années trente.
On peut dépenser des milliards pour avoir une belle armée, si l'on
est pusillanime, c'est incohérent. Le chef de la plus grande puissance
mondiale est apparu pusillanime. Quant à la décision du parlement
britannique, elle peut faire jurisprudence. La Grande-Bretagne ne peut
plus être considérée comme une puissance militaire crédible puisque la
politique politicienne l'emporte sur la raison d'Etat. Cela veut dire
aussi qu'elle n'a plus de dissuasion, car celle-ci repose sur la
crédibilité de l'emploi de la force conventionnelle. Il est important
que François Hollande ne cède pas à ce type de pression interne.
– and particularly what America thinks … it seems that every step the Obama administration has taken over the last 5+ years has led us to this point. Whether it was Hillary Clinton’s “Reset” button, Obama’s pledge of flexibility once the 2012 election was over, Obama’s recalcitrance on Syria, or Obama’s impotence on Iran… every foreign policy misstep has brought us down this road. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that what is happening in Eastern Europe now is as much President Obama’s fault as it is Vladimir Putin’s.
among ethnic Russians, and in the heart of the former Soviet Union, a palpable anti-American sentiment is discernible -- and it is, to some extent, the product of determined efforts by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin apparatus he controls.
"Friends of mine who have been in Moscow for the past, say, two years tell me you cannot understand the amount of propaganda, anti-U.S. propaganda, that is being fed to the Russian people on Russian television -- nothing like it, unprecedented," said Daniel Henninger, deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, in an appearance on Fox News' "Happening Now." "They didn't even do this sort of thing back during the Cold War."
It's not much longer than a filler, but the Le Monde piece by Gilles Paris has a chilling description of the foreign views of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose "leftist" (communistic) front, le Front de Gauche, may surpass Marine Le Pen's Front National during the first round of the French presidential elections to become the third-largest party in France.
A new Internationale, an "Internationale of the pavement", is the diplomatic project of Mélenchon, whose world vision begins (and ends) with the United States, "the primary problem in the world", what with "their 700,000 troops present on five continents". With the fight against terrorism or the cause of Tibet being only — deliberate — distractions to distract the populace (for in Mélenchon's viewpoint, only Palestine is a worthy cause), it is against America's "multiform" domination — from the Chicago School to NATO — that he wants to go into battle and take the world out from under the shadow of the United Statesian Empire.
(Oh, and keep in mind — this is during the friendly, peaceful reign of Barack the Redeemer, aka He Who Would Repair the Mistakes of Bush the Clueless and Make the World Come Together Thanks to His SmartDiplomacy.) The New York Times' Maïa de la Baume and Steven Erlanger have a report on Mélenchon on the front page of the International Herald Tribune:
They sang “The Internationale,” carried red flags and shouted “Resistance!” They booed whenever the word “rich” was pronounced, and they applauded when their leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, called the far right “professional racists” and the Socialist candidate “a pedal-boat captain.”
… Mr. Mélenchon is now running third in many polls for the French presidential elections this month.
With the first round of voting two weeks away, the far left is running just ahead of the far right of the National Front and its candidate, Marine Le Pen. Together, those on both wings of the French spectrum, who share strong criticism of globalization and the European Union, could take 30 percent or more of the vote in a race with 10 candidates, which would be more than either President Nicolas Sarkozy or the Socialist candidate, François Hollande, the two front-runners.
And how the voters on the so-called fringe choose to cast their ballots in the second-round runoff on May 6 is likely to decide the race.
… He once confessed that he was bored in Brussels and dreamed of creating a French equivalent of the German Die Linke, a hard-left party rooted in the old East German Communist party. He has defended the Chinese repression over Tibet, admires Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and has called the United States “the first problem of the world,” criticizing what he considers to be America’s malign military hegemony.
Jeter à la rivière le clivage classique entre atlantistes et gaullo-mitterrandistes, au profit d'une " Internationale du pavé " - celui qui finit par voler après avoir été longtemps battu -, tel est le projet diplomatique de Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Sa vision du monde part des Etats-Unis, " premier problème du monde " avec " leurs 700 000 hommes de troupes présents sur cinq continents ". C'est contre leur domination multiforme - de l'Ecole de Chicago à l'OTAN -, étendue à une Europe conservatrice et libérale, qu'il appelle au combat. La lutte contre le terrorisme ou la cause du Tibet ne sont, pour lui, que des acouphènes de nature à distraire le populo. Seule la cause palestinienne mérite quand même, selon lui, qu'on s'y intéresse. L'ombre portée de l'empire " étasunien " explique aussi l'attirance de M. Mélenchon pour les pays de l'Alliance bolivarienne, préférés aux émergents : l'Equateur de Rafael Correa plus encore que le Venezuela de Hugo Chavez, qui fait traduire Victor Hugo, ou Cuba, qu'il se refuse à qualifier de dictature. Cuba, où un autre internationaliste, vêtu de blanc, vient de remporter une victoire symbolique propre à désespérer le candidat du Front de gauche, en obtenant que le Vendredi Saint y soit désormais chômé.
par Gilles Paris
FG poster: "Seize power: Let's make the banks pay, not the peoples" (that's the "peoples" — i.e., the peoples of the Earth — not the "people")
Smart diplomacy: a former U.S. ambassador to NATO is apprehensive of "a new low point in U.S.-E.U. relations.”
How’s this for an unsettling (but still imaginary) news item: “The European Union has announced a plan that will allow member countries to offer sales or technical cooperation to China in the defense sector, involving combat planes, transport aircraft and satellites. This will strengthen Beijing’s potential for force projection from the Pacific and Indian Oceans to the coasts of Africa.”
That is the question raised by John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune. When Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac entertained the idea of resuming weapons sales to China in the mid-2000s, the Bush administration seems to have quickly put an end to the plan. What can we expect from today's occupant of the Oval Office, aka America's (ineffective) Apologizer-in-Chief who ignores all enemies (except for the internal kind, i.e., those dastardly Republican reactionaries and their distasteful Tea Party allies) and who does "not help quash the expectation that [EU schemes of this kind are] hunky-dory with Washington"?
Right now, that [imaginary news item] isn’t happening and might not. Still, the E.U.’s attitude on its 20-year-old embargo on supplying China with military wherewithal looks wobbly.
The United States has noted interest in the E.U. in lifting or modifying the ban, and while it does not consider it a fatality, is watchful and concerned, according to a U.S. official.
…The nub of the matter is a policy paper put forward last month by Catherine Ashton, the E.U. foreign policy chief, that asserts, “The current arms embargo is a major impediment for developing stronger E.U.-China cooperation on foreign policy and security measures. The E.U. should discuss its practical implication and design a way forward.”
…Ms. Ashton [aka the anti-war leftist who helped lead Britain's Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament] added an additional rationale for lifting the ban that makes Soft Power Europe, after a couple of decades preaching against a hard power approach to the world’s problems, look like a convert to the diplomatic primacy of weapons peddling to nondemocracies. Noting that Europe was no longer the United States’ main strategic preoccupation, she said, “The U.S. has argued the need for an increased engagement in Asia, and there is a risk it will see the E.U. as a less relevant partner given our relative strategic weakness there.”
Oh, yeah. That’s a concern keeping America up at night. I talked to a European defense expert who zipped around Ms. Ashton’s formulation.
Instead, the expert, who asked for anonymity, described the driving forces for lifting the embargo as a “moribund European defense sector,” a market in China for European avionics, missiles, combat planes, transport aircraft and satellites, and expanded Chinese espionage operations that attempt to procure European defense technology one way or another.
These days, with President Hu Jintao due in Washington for a state visit on Jan. 19, the reset/arms sales connection cannot be far from some European minds. Le Figaro, the newspaper most carefully reflecting France’s desires — Nicolas Sarkozy has repeatedly called on the E.U. to abandon its embargo via a required unanimous vote of its members — has reported this could happen quickly. An explanation: it describes the United States as “losing its grip” on the previously nay-saying British and Dutch.
There are some big ironies here for the Obama administration. … President Barack Obama … wrote the speaker of the House on Oct. 26 that it was “in the national interest” to lift restrictions on the export to China of six Hercules C-130 cargo planes “to be used in oil spill response operations at sea.” (The aircraft in a standard version is the world’s pre-eminent troop transport.)
It would have been asking a lot of the Europeans to ignore this as a signal to them, or an American blandishment to the Chinese — which, indeed, came before Ms. Ashton’s pro-arms sales remarks. Match cynicism for cynicism here, and you come out with something like a U.S.-E.U. standoff.
…Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and now managing director at Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, [said]: “If all this were to play out — that is, lifting the embargo, subsequent sanctions, etc. — it would be a new low point in U.S.-E.U. relations.”
As Jimmy Carter is laid to rest at the age of 100, it is time to remember that, thanks to the Georgia Democrat (and Southern Baptist peanut farmer), the United States, along with the rest of the planet, has suffered for the past 45 years from the locofocos' (the Democrats') naïve foreign policy, that is, their traditional "be kind and understanding to our enemies, be tough on our friends" approach to foreign affairs. (After all, in the Far Left's Fairy Tale View of Foreign Policy, the only true enemy of the U.S. and of the rest of the world are America's dastardly Republicans…)
Like government itself, the party of government (at the time, Carter's Democrat administration) created a problem, here internationally, where none existed before (at the time, no radical Islamist régime of note opposing America, aka the Great Satan, and Western Europe, aka the Little Satan), to be resolved somehow — by, yes, government — in the future. In its friendly obituary, Jimmy Carter was perhaps the most virtuous of all America’s presidents, The Economist writes that
The landmarks of his foreign policy—the Camp David accords between Egypt
and Israel in 1978, the Salt II disarmament treaty with the Soviet
Union and the return of the Panama Canal to Panama, all criticised by
many as giveaways at the time—were typical of a man intent on peace for
its own sake.
Missing in that sentence about the "virtuous" "peacemaker" (one, again, in the same category as Neville "Peace in our time" Chamberlain) are two other giveaways, i.e., the betrayal of (admittedly distasteful) allies like Nicaragua and Iran. Like the Russian Revolution, the Cuban Revolution (how much better was JFK in the White House?), the Nicaraguan Revolution (also the result of a Carter policy, see details in the blockquote below), and innumerable other régime changes, the Iranian Revolution made the country a far worse and far more inhumane place, both for its own citizens and for the international community at large. (Thanks for the Instalink, Sarah.)
In spite of Carter achievements, such as, arguably, the Camp David peace accords (but surely Britain's Chamberlain also had achievements that the PM could boast of), the world and Iran itself have for 45 years suffered under the helm of the Ayatollahs' "Death to the Great Satan/Death to the West" Iran, which today, as Investor's Business Daily puts it, "is the world's biggest sponsor of terror" (see, e.g., October 7, 2023).
Other American Chamberlains followed Jimmy Carter: although unlike Barack "smart diplomacy" Obama and Joe "the grown-ups are back in charge" Biden, the British PM of the 1930s never seems to have thought it rational to deliver to the Democracy-hating Nazis pallets bearing millions and millions of dollars (or of pounds sterling) in cash in the middle of the night. However, along with the Clintons, Obama and Biden did manage to hand billions and billions to the Democracy-hating Communists of China.
Carter
actually added to American weakness by well-meaning but
ill-thought-through ventures. One of them was his 'human rights'
policy, based on the Helsinki Accords
… A human rights lobby grew
up within the administration, taking over a whole section of the State
Department, which worked actively to enforce the Accords. Thus, it
played a major role in the overthrow of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua. …
The 'sharp break' took the form, in 1979, of the overthrow of Somoza, a
faithful if distasteful ally of America, and his replacement by a
Marxist and pro-Soviet regime, whose attitude to human rights was even
more contemptuous and which campaigned openly for the overthrow of
America's allies in Guatemala, El Salvador, and elsewhere in Central
America
… The next year the State Department's Bureau of Human
Rights played a significant part in undermining the position of another
old ally, the Shah of Iran, whose pro-Western regime was overthrown by
orchestrated street-mobs in 1979. It was replaced by a Moslem
fundamentalist terror regime, which swiftly accumulated an unprecedented
record of gross human rights abuses and characterized the US as the
'Great Satan.'
… During the 1970s the Cold War spread to virtually
every part of the globe and was marked by two developments: the
contraction of US naval power, and the expansion of Soviet naval power.
… While
the Carter administration was adept at damaging friends and allies, it
failed to develop any coherent response to this extension of the Cold
War
The very first thing that followed Carter's brilliant foreign policy decision about abandoning America's ally, the Shah, was the humiliating Tehran embassy hostage crisis (which would last 444 days), compounded by Carter's incompetent 1980 rescue attempt (shades of Saigon 1975 and Kabul 2021, all of them incidentally involving helicopters and the Democrat Party, if not in the White House, at least in the Congress).
Reminder: Back during the 2008 election campaign, Sarah Palin was vilified for saying another incredibly dimwitted thing, that the election of a pacifist like Barack Obama to the White House
