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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (19524)	4/26/2007 2:35:49 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Tuesday, April 24, 2007 Obama Blathers While the Storm Gathers Posted by Dean Barnett \| 5:45 PM Barack Obama gave what I guess you could call a major address on foreign policy yesterday. Like Andrew Sullivan, I urge you to read the whole thing. Obama’s a wonderfully felicitous wordsmith, and he crafts rhetoric that although cliché-laden still manages to soar. That said, I still wasn’t particularly impressed. I’m nothing if not a realist. I know that few of you will heed my advice to read a Barack Obama speech no matter how strongly I implore you to. Thus, as a public service, I’ll give you the basic rundown. The thrust of the speech is that Obama identifies the “five ways America will begin to lead again when I’m President. Five ways to let the world know that we are committed to our common security, invested in our common humanity, and still a beacon of freedom and justice for the world.” Yawn. Anyway, the aforementioned five ways are as follows: The first way America will lead is by bringing a responsible end to this war in Iraq and refocusing on the critical challenges in the broader region. The second way America will lead again is by building the first truly 21st century military and showing wisdom in how we deploy it. The third way America must lead again is by marshalling a global effort to meet a threat that rises above all others in urgency – securing, destroying, and stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The fourth way America must lead is to rebuild and construct the alliances and partnerships necessary to meet common challenges and confront common threats. The fifth way America will lead again is to invest in our common humanity – to ensure that those who live in fear and want today can live with dignity and opportunity tomorrow. Once again, I strongly suspect you’ll disregard my directive to read the whole thing, so I’ll spare you the bother of seeing if in this grand address that identifies the foreign policy challenges of the next ten years whether Obama mentions the threat of Radical Islam - you know, the principal foreign policy challenge that confronts us. He doesn’t. But wait – it’s worse than that. Under way number five, you know the one that has the blather about America leading again “to invest in our common humanity,” he repeats the specious canard that Al Qaeda comes from “impoverished, weak and ungoverned states.” Sure. Impoverished and ungoverned states like Saudi Arabia. WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS AN EXAMPLE of a subtle bipartisan agreement to ignore the true menace that will face us during the next president’s term. John McCain offered sentiments of a similar strain during his otherwise stellar address on Iraq when he insisted that Al Qaeda types and their supporters represent only a teensy-weensy portion of the Islamic world. We could go on believing this comforting notion, but it’s just not true. Allah (the blogger, not the deity) calls our attention today to a poll of Egyptians, Moroccans, Pakistanis and Indonesians. Happily, the Indonesians are more moderate than the others. That’s it for the good news. The bad news is that a stunning majority of those polled like the idea of making their countries subject to Sharia. The exact number is 74%. 71% of those polled support the idea of the Islamic world coalescing into a caliphate. For those of you unfamiliar with Islamic ideology, it’s not particularly likely that the caliphate would form and then peacefully coexist with the world’s other nations. Especially jarring are the numbers from Egypt. Because our government maintains cordial relations with Egypt’s dictatorship, one might have a sense that there’s a friendship between us and the Egyptian people. Unfortunately, no one thought of consulting the Egyptian people on that matter. 91% of Egyptians support attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan. 92% think it should be a goal of theirs to drive the U.S. from the region. ONE COULD ARGUE THAT SPEECHES LIKE McCAIN’S AND OBAMA’S ARE efforts to deceive the voters. I don’t necessarily think that’s the case. I think a solid majority of our leadership class doesn’t have the slightest clue of what we’re in for and who we’re up against. What’s more, I’ve talked to many intelligent and otherwise well-informed people over the past several years who have blithely asserted things like the Iranian people hunger to be our dear friends. These people haven’t been trying to deceive anyone; just like the Congressmen who couldn’t tell Sunni from Shiite or who haven’t read a single book on Islamic terror in the almost six years since 9/11, they just don’t know the score. It’s true there’s a chance that the Iranian people would love to be our friends. But it’s just a chance, and a remote one at that. It’s certainly not something that our policy makers should place their confidence in. I really hope the nest president, whoever he or she (yikes!) is, hasn’t allowed his or her (yikes!) intellect to be strangled by our politically correct climate. I hope they realize the truth, and have enough political courage to share it with the American public, which has a right to know what it’s in for. Terrorism isn’t the enemy. Terrorism is just a tactic. Al Qaeda is merely one group that uses that tactic. Declaring war against terrorism and Al Qaeda has all along never made sense. It has always been the logical equivalent of declaring war against U-Boats. And U-Boat captains. The enemy is radical Islam. And it is a larger and more dangerous enemy than virtually any domestic politician has yet given it credit for being. Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.co