Obama's Carter-like foreign policy blundering

Tunku Varadarajan on the unending foreign policy disaster that is the Obama Presidency:

So one wonders—as Putin embraces Chavez and Karzai plays host to Ahmadinejad; as Russia asserts the right to repudiate any nuclear-arms reduction treaty and China gives us the bird on the yuan; as the alliance with India languishes and the one with Britain experiences unprecedented atrophy; as Israel expresses acrid disagreement with us and Japan seeks to rip pages out of its postwar rulebook-what all this pragmatism has really, truly accomplished...other than give our delighted adversaries a free pass and our friends a very rude wake-up call.

Man, that's the worst kind of pragmatism-the kind that doesn't accomplish a damned thing.

Did Karl Rove elect Obama?

The war in Iraq, unlike the Democrats' narrative, was never solely about what weapons Saddam Hussein happened to possess at one moment in history-it was about his track record, and what he might do in the future.

Still, not finding WMD's (in mass quantities, anyway) did give the Democrats a fine opportunity for demagoguing the situation. And demagogue they did, till they had the bulk of the public believing Bush had lied us into Iraq.

Now, there were always stories, almost from the day we went into Iraq, saying that Saddam had sent his WMD's into a willing Syria. And it turns out that there was considerable evidence, not "merely" from American intelligence, that that was the case, as Karl Rove's new book ("Courage and Consequence") notes.


Here's Joseph Shattan, a Bush White House speechwriter, discussing what Bush actually knew about Saddam, WMD's, and Syria:

About four years ago, around the time when Democrats were heatedly charging that Bush had "lied" about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in order to build a case for war (after all, they argued, if the weapons had existed, why weren't we able to find them after liberating Iraq?), I was having lunch with Dr. Laurie Mylroie, one of America's leading students of terrorism in general, and Iraqi terrorism in particular. Laurie was beside herself with anger.

Why wasn't the Bush administration citing Gen. James Clapper, the Director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, who said that satellite imagery proved conclusively that shortly before the war's outbreak, Iraq had transferred its weapons of mass destruction to Syria? Why wasn't it quoting Gen. Georges Sada, deputy chief of Saddam's air force, or Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, Israel's chief-of-staff, both of whom also claimed that Saddam's weapons had been transferred to Syria? Why was it so tongue-tied, so unsure of itself, so unwilling to answer its critics? Didn't anybody in the White House realize that if the Democrats' charges went unanswered, they would fatally undermine the entire case for the war?

Shattan goes on to wonder why Rove didn't want the White House to talk about any of this. Presumably they didn't want the case for the war to be seen as merely a question of what Saddam had when. A seemingly valid point, but the Dems got enormous political of mileage out of their "Bush lied, people died" canard, and the Administration would've done well to have made the effort to refute the crapola. Then again, in Bush's second term, there seemed to be a near universal inability on the part of Bush and his team to fight to make the case for his policies. They seemed to be in "bunker mode", and Rove has to take some responsibility for this.


Shattan notes that Rove, Bush's "Boy Genius", does 'fess up to the screwup, easily one of the greatest miscalculations in American political history, as it helped elect that unwitting advocate of American decline, Barack Obama.

The Tea partiers are so far out of the mainstream...

...that 48% of the public agrees, more or less, with their views, while 44% hew to the Obama line.

Wow...how is it that such violent, radical, racist sorts are really at the philosophical heart of American politics? Or that 51% of those tea-party nuts are Democrats or Independents?

It's not complicated-this is what happens when a presidential candidate runs his campaign around a lie, i.e., to say- "I am a centrist, post-partisan guy. You have nothing to fear-it's not like I want the Federal government to take over the car industry, student loans, executive pay, health care, etc. That's that other kind of Democrat, not me! I don't see red America or blue America, just one beautiful country."


People bought into the image Obama created, because they were scared about the economy, sick of Iraq (remember when Iraq was a news story?), and because he's a skilled Teleprompter reader. His left-wing record in Congress, inexperience, etc. were ignored.

Say what you will about George W.Bush-he never claimed to be something he wasn't.

Fundamentalists vs. Catholics

Well, that made for an interesting Easter: there were anti-Catholic fundamentalists hanging out at The Cathedral Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul, where I went to Mass yesterday, telling us Catholics we were all hell-bound, Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. A policeman there (yes, the presence of these bigots requires the presence of cops) told me one of the fundamentalists there is a frequent visitor.

You will note that Catholics do not appear at fundamentalist churches to protest their views-that would be poor form, and against Church teachings-Catholics know that one needn't be Catholic to be a good Christian. (Keep in mind that merely disagreeing with much of Catholic teaching doesn't make one a Catholic hater, a bigot-it's those who assume Catholics aren't really Christian who deserve such labels. Now, these people are ignorant of the truth, but aren't all bigots?)

The conversation that ensued between me and one particular sign-carrying gent, named Michael, was less than pleasant, and I have to admit I lost my cool rather foolishly. In truth, it isn't hard to refute these folks. Just remember that you're arguing with Satan, who can easily use ignorant Christians as tools, and  loves to make people emotional, so they say dumb stuff the other party can seize on. 


The issue, as always in discussions with Catholic-haters, is sola scriptura, the notion that the Bible is the sole rule of faith. The Bible itself never makes this claim, though even if such a claim were made that would amount to circular reasoning.

Instead, the Church is called "the pillar of truth" (I Tim. 3:15). So when someone says, "This is Christianity", the question must be, "Under what, and whose, authority do you speak?"

My fundamentalist interlocutor was merely expressing his own views, based on his own, man-made traditions, traceable to the "innovations" of the Reformation, while I was, in my slapdash way, reflecting the teachings of the apostolic Church. Expressing the teachings of the two thousand year old Church is a lot better than just having two guys go back and forth, each claiming for himself the mantle of "my ideas are biblical."


Than again, I could merely have said to Michael-"You sound like a Pharisee. Is that intentional?", and let it go at that.

I see why you hate politics

Had a little political tussle with one of the best bloggers out there, Lynn at Violins and Starships. We never agree on political stuff (she's, I'd say, a left-leaning moderate-I'm sure she'd drop the "left-leaning" part), but I always enjoy her sharp mind and writing. (I wish she'd do more essays on classical music, as she used to).

The problem so many Americans like Lynn have with politics is the raw, often ugly partisanship. Why can't everyone sit down, talk things out, and come to the best solutions for the country as a whole? You may remember that Washington hated the factionalism of the British system so much he wanted no political parties at all.

Ideally, this is how things would work. Men and women of good will would meet amicably, talk testimony from experts of all persuasions, and devise solutions that most people could be happy with.


The difficulty is that we all have radically different views of what it is government should do, and how, and when, and why it should be done. Political views go all the way from The Nation on the Left to Reason on the Libertarian Right, and still farther, if you include the true wackos. (This is why conservatives are the true moderates, by the way-we're the ones in the middle, between the lefties and the libertarians.)

There just aren't all that many solutions that most people would in truth be happy with. And without the partisanship of warring political parties, since people can agree on so little, you'd simply have power concentrated in a few hands, which our Constitution and civic religion are rather averse to. There's very little effective partisanship in, say, Cuba.

And speaking as a partisan myself, I think this President has greatly amped up political rancor with his plans to concentrate yet more power in DC. The more the feds control, or seek to control, the higher the stakes become over political choices.

Obscene price Obamacare Love III

Bad Translation takes a given bit of text and translates it into and out of English and various other languages till you get a usually humorous result.

Here is text from a post I wrote on being tired of the health care care debate, and what I'd rather do than talk about that sometimes tedious subject. Bad Translation rendered it into amusing drivel, but not without somehow noting a salient feature of the health care law:

I'd rather witness Courtney Love's latest obscenity laced gig than discuss Obamacare. I'd rather walk on hot coals, eat deadly jellyfish, or kiss Joan Rivers (or Barney Frank) than talk about Obamacare. I'd rather have my toenails plucked out...

Becomes:

In discussing the recent obscene price Obamacare Love III and procedures. I will walk and not jellyfish and needles, which assassin or kissing Joan Rivers (or Barney Frank) The names, with Obamacare. My nails, not mine ..."

H/t-Violins and Starships.