Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (305115)	4/6/2011 11:55:08 AM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 306849

Foreign Policy Baffles Obama but retard tejek isn't bright enough to see that.

To: tejek who wrote (305115)	4/6/2011 12:15:44 PM
From: Jim McMannis	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 306849

Obama's foreign policy is easy, same as Bushes. But even making the USA weaker.

To: tejek who wrote (305115)	4/6/2011 12:23:16 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 306849

A Middle East Policy in Shambles ....................................................... APRIL 6, 2011 nationalreview.com Obama turned his back on a million protesters in the streets of Tehran, with bizarre promises not to “meddle,” coupled with vague apologies about American behavior more than a half-century ago. A golden opportunity to help topple a vicious anti-American theocracy in Iran was turned into a buffoonish effort to appear multiculturally sensitive. We have intervened in Libya on “humanitarian grounds,” but have not argued that more were likely to die in Libya than in the Ivory Coast or the Congo. We wish to help the “rebels,” but we do not know who or what they are. Apparently we came to their aid simply because they seemed both likable and Westernized on CNN and because for a moment they seemed likely to win and remove Qaddafi — and on the initiative of the Europeans, who have sizable oil interests in Libya. The president has both demanded that Qaddafi leave and asserted that regime change is not our aim; he has both promised to enforce a no-fly zone only and often gone beyond such patrolling by bombing ground targets and inserting American agents. He has sought the sanction of the U.N. and the Arab League, and then de facto ignored their resolutions by occasionally calling for regime change and bombing Qaddafi’s bunkers, while not asking Congress for similar authorization to intervene. We are told Qaddafi is doing terrible things (and he is), but we were also told up until a few weeks ago that he was in diplomatic rehab and was now more an ally than a mad-dog enemy. Then, after two weeks of confused “kinetic military action,” the United States abruptly quit fighting and outsourced further direct military operations to European NATO members — apparently in the hope that either the Europeans or the rebels can oust Qaddafi. In any case, Libya may be the first war in American history in which the United States directly attacked another nation-state, in an act of war, then abruptly quit the preemptive assault with the enemy still very much in power. If Qaddafi survives, do we say we’re sorry, pay reparations, take in rebel refugees, patrol a protected enclave for years, bisect the country, or play golf and let the Europeans deal with the mess? The Obama administration, in finger-in-the-wind fashion, urged pro-American authoritarians in Egypt and Tunisia to leave — but only belatedly and only when it appeared that the protesters would probably win. In the aftermath, the Obama administration still has little notion who the successors will be, or what their agenda is, or whether they will be better than what they replaced. Most likely, the United States now suffers the worst of both worlds: looking weak and opportunistic in withdrawing support from former American allies, while not receiving much credit from the protesters because of the absence of early principled support. If the Muslim Brotherhood assumes de facto power in Egypt, opens another front against Israel, and serves as the Sunni bookend to Shiite theocratic Iran, then we may witness the worst geopolitical calamity since the fall of pro-American Iran, or indeed the Communist takeover of China.

To: tejek who wrote (305115)	4/6/2011 12:37:23 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 306849

Ex-Illinois state senator changes mind on U.S. government causing Middle Eastern regime change March 25, 2011 latimesblogs.latimes.com With President Obama locked out of his own White House (see photo on right and video below), Jay Carney stepped up and issued the latest in a series of official denunciations Thursday of a Middle Eastern dictator doing deadly things to demonstrators. Such warnings about dictators behaving badly have been the political precursor this winter to even more serious American pronouncements and foreign trips by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who's off again this weekend. First Tunisia, then Egypt have been warned by this White House under what is becoming known as the Obama Doctrine. The emerging Obama Doctrine can be roughly described as being caught off-guard by foreign events, issuing numerous rhetorical warnings that sound swell and waiting for somebody else to do something because the president's too busy calling on someone to do something about the quality of American education, which has polled better than foreign forays. Coming days after Syrian government agents began killing demonstrators there, is Carney's.... ...strong statement on that country a sign that ophthalmologist-turned-dictator Bashar al-Assad is next on President Obama's to be severely warned list? The presidential warnings have not yet had the desired effect on the current bad guy, Libya's Moammar Kadafi. So the United Nations passed a resolution last week for allies to take action against only Libya three weeks after it might have made a difference. The allies imposed a no-fly zone over much of Libya, which produced grand TV footage of heavily armed jets taking off and $1.5-million Tomahawk cruise missiles roaring out of ship holds. Fortunately, the war only caused minor disruption to the long-planned, five-day tour of South America by the entire Obama family including Grandma Robinson and her Chicago friend. The alleged U.N. concern was Kadafi saying he was going to go around killing his revolting enemies, a popular activity among brutal dictators in numerous locales around the world for centuries. In Obama's rather expansive words: Where a brutal dictator is threatening his people, and saying he will show no mercy and go door-to-door and hunt people down and we have the capacity under international sanction to do something about that, I think it’s in America’s national interest to do something about that. Unfortunately, it seems Kadafi intends to perform this lethal roundup by foot. So being unable to fly house-to-house has little effect. And so far Kadafi's tanks seem to be doing OK against the untrained rebels' pickup trucks. Because President Obama has been busy traveling and on the telephone and.... ....lunching with Vice President Joe "I'm Back from Two Florida fundraisers" Biden, the Nobel Peace Prize winner has not really had an opportunity to clear up the growing confusion among Americans about combat operations just now in a third Middle Eastern country where the bad guy has been bad for four decades, including the Lockerbie bombing nearly 23 years ago. And although he was a member of Congress briefly, Obama hasn't had a chance to talk to them much about the war that isn't really a war; he just sent them a letter. The widespread public confusion seems to stem from a 2002 speech the then-Democrat state Sen. Obama gave about meddling in another country's affairs to oust a brutal dictator who'd slain thousands of his own people over many years. Somehow Americans came away from that speech and a gazillion references to it during ensuing debates and remarks with the impression that Obama opposed such international interference, endorsed by the U.S. Congress, and executed by a Republican president whose name escapes us at the moment. The Iraq war happened despite the state senator's wishes. The regime was changed. And Saddam Hussein was hanged. Unfortunately, more deadly fighting erupted there involving citizens and U.S. troops. Things weren't going very well in 2007 when the what's-his-name Republican ordered an unpopular troop surge to quell the uprising. The ex-state-senator-now-a-U.S.-senator seemed to oppose that action too, saying he was sure it would only worsen the violence and Iraq would fly apart. However, the surge worked. So, 13 months ago ex-senator-now-vice-president Biden, who had wanted to divvy Iraq into three parts because national unity was hopeless, went on CNN and told Larry King and his surviving viewers that a unified Iraq had become one of Obama's "great achievements" as president. Having opposed the 2007 troop surge that wouldn't work but did, Obama in 2009 ordered not one but two of his own troop surges into Afghanistan because no foreign military force has ever won a lasting victory in that place. This winter when the democratic ruckus began in Tunisia, ex-state-senator-ex-U.S.-senator-now-President Obama warned the autocratic rulers that he was opposed to crushing demonstrators with military and police force. The regime changed. When the same street rumbling began down the coast in Egypt, Obama warned its dictator Hosni Mubarak again and again about not liking violence against protesters. That didn't work for a while. But eventually the longtime dictator stepped down (it may have had something to do with the Egyptian army giving him no choice) and no one knows now what will fill the void. When the Libya unpleasantness erupted, the earnest rebels enjoyed a string of military victories, causing much shooting into the air. Unfortunately, the United States didn't have an aircraft carrier in that sea at the time, another reason for delaying the no-fly zone that isn't going to work anyway. Now, it could be Syria's chance to take the world warning stage. On Thursday, Obama press secretary Carney, apparently unaware of the U.S. combat operations underway around Libya, flatly declared: "We reject the use of violence under any circumstances." The same day Obama sent Secretary Clinton out to explain that Americans were no longer going to command the Libyan no-fly zone, that because the United States is the world's only remaining superpower, we are relinquishing command and turning it over to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Which is commanded by an American. So now, finally, everything is clear. -- Andrew Malcolm