Whose side is Obama on?

What do you get when you cross a leftist presidential administration with a modern media complex intent on furthering its politically-correct vision of America? You get lots of incomprehensible, illogical stupidity.

But, as Charles Krauthammer recently wrote, much of this is not benign stupidity. Much of it is downright dangerous. Like making a decision to close Guantanamo for no good reason -- and without an alternative place to put many of the most dangerous terrorists in the world. Or choosing to re-investigate the CIA for interrogations that were legally sanctioned by the Justice Department at the time they were carried out. Or creating a new and chilling environment that allows a radical Islamist at Fort Hood to contact Al Qaeda and make threatening presentations to other Army doctors without meaningful response. These nonsensical moves -- all in the name of political correctness and left-wing politics -- have already killed people.

How many more will die in the future?

Sadly, I believe it may be many. Now Attorney General Eric Holder has made the incomprehensible decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four other al Qaeda planners of 9/11 in a civilian court in lower Manhattan -- near the very site where they perpetrated their act of war against America. Holder's decision came at the same time that he also ruled that the detainee responsible for the USS Cole bombing would face a military commission instead of a civilian trial. If it is good for the Cole bomber, why isn't it good enough for the perpetrators of 9/11?

And herein is the main issue: Obama and Holder don't see the 9/11 attack as an act of war. This reflects the Administration's belief that the kind of terrorism that led to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were essentially law enforcement issues, and should be handled in the normal system of justice that is available to every American -- and with all the rights and protections that go along with it. This is grist, of course, for the ACLU and other left-wing interest groups who want to see the U.S. cease and desist its aggressive tactics against the poor Islamic victims of U.S. imperialism. Holder has just given them a big fat bone: the final death blow to the "war on terror".

As the Wall Street Journal opines today:

Please spare us talk of the "rule of law." If that was the primary consideration, the U.S. already has a judicial process in place. The current special military tribunals were created by the 2006 Military Commissions Act, which was adopted with bipartisan Congressional support after the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision obliged the executive and legislative branches to approve a detailed plan to prosecute the illegal "enemy combatants" captured since 9/11.

Contrary to liberal myth, military tribunals aren't a break with 200-plus years of American jurisprudence. Eight Nazis who snuck into the U.S. in June 1942 were tried by a similar court and most were hanged within two months. Before the Obama Administration stopped all proceedings earlier this year pending yesterday's decision, the tribunals at Gitmo had earned a reputation for fairness and independence.

Oh, if only it were 1942 again -- when Obama's hero, Franklin Roosevelt, was able to move against America's enemies without the glare of the media covering every move. Roosevelt ordered Attorney General Biddle to carry out a swift form of justice at a time when America was at war -- a simple, effective process that protected America. The Germans were caught, tried and hung. No hand-wringing about their treatment as detainees. We understood a central fact: they were the enemy.

So Eric Holder, with the approval of President Obama, has chosen to return the 9/11 terrorists to the site of their crime, and with all the pomp and circumstance that will go with a show trial. F. Lee Bailey might even come out of retirement for this one. Can you imagine the spectacle? The opportunity for a legion of fame-seeking defense attorneys to gum up the works on this for years -- all the while parading this mass murderer in and out of court on a daily basis? How long before the sympathy factor sets in for this poor Muslim fundamentalist who was abused by his father and grew up in a world of American imperialist oppression?

The greater danger, of course, is the chance that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his cohorts are set free on procedural grounds for lack of evidence -- or because the defense lawyers put America and its interrogation techniques on trial.

This is a very real possibility -- and one I suspect that the Obama Administration understands well. So why would they take the risk? Is it because it is an opportunity to put a final nail in the coffin of the Bush Administration's "war on terror"? Wouldn't an acquittal on the basis of water-boarding be the ultimate victory for the anti-war left?

And the Journal concludes:

One certain outcome is that an open civilian trial will provide valuable information to terrorists across the world about American methods and intelligence. Precisely because so much other evidence may not be admissable, prosecutors may have to reveal genuine secrets to get a conviction. Osama bin Laden learned a lot from the 1995 prosecution in New York of the "blind cleric" Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman for the first World Trade Center attack. His main tip was that the U.S. considered bin Laden a terrorist co-conspirator, leading him to abandon his hideout in Sudan for Afghanistan.

Terrorists also love a big stage, and none come bigger than New York. Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, made his civilian trial a spectacle. Not even the best judge can entirely stop KSM and others from doing the same. And Mr. Holder has invited grave and needless security risks by tempting jihadists the world over to strike Manhattan while the trial is in session.

Just whose side is Obama on?

Revisionists diss Reagan in Berlin

As many of you know, yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And do you know what? In all the hoopla surrounding the celebration yesterday -- not one person at the commemoration event in Berlin mentioned the role of Ronald Reagan. Can you imagine that?

Tom Brokaw -- like many commentators -- yesterday was quick to laud the role of Mikhail Gorbachev -- the darling of the media and the Nobel Committee. Gorbachev did, of course, play a pivotal role in changing the Soviet Union and opening it up to the West. But what most analysts have missed is that Gorbachev didn't get their alone. He didn't so much as jump as was pushed -- by a resolute Ronald Reagan who was unwilling to compromise with the Soviet state and kept up a relentless pressure that broke the back of the Soviet economic system.

Ronald Reagan deserves much of the credit for the fall of the Berlin Wall -- and don't let any revisionist historian tell you anything different. Reagan's force of personality -- the force of his conviction that the Soviet Union was a system that could not stand against the march of freedom -- made it clear to Gorbachev that the Soviets could never prevail. In the face of liberal pressure to "stand down" and to give in on Star Wars and other strategic initiatives, Reagan stood fast.

The result is history. Only today that history is told with a liberal bias that sees to minimize Reagan's pivotal role.

Don't believe it. Berlin owes a huge debt of gratitude to Reagan.

Here is Reagan's famous "Tear down this Wall" speech of 1987. What other leader would have the courage to make this speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate?

Reagan's "Tear down this wall" speech in Berlin, June 12, 1987

Will Obama blink on Iran?

This morning the New York Times reports that (surprise!) Iran has rejected the deal its negotiators agreed to last week that would have compelled Iran to ship its uranium to Russia for enrichmentinto fuel rods that could be used only in nuclear power plants. Leaving aside the (significant) question as to whether Russia could be trusted as a partner in this program, the agreement that was supposedly reached by the IAEA and Iran in Vienna promised to at the very least slow down Iran's bomb making program, "buying time" for Obama and the Europeans to figure out a way to resolve the nuclear "standoff" peaceably. Many news outlets had praised the apparent agreement in Vienna as a major step forward in the Obama Administration's diplomacy-centered foreign policy. Oops. Not so fast. The Iranian theocracy has apparently nixed the agreement, putting yet another spin on the on-again, off-again diplomatic machinations of dealing with the Iranians. This cannot seriously be a surprise to Barack Obama, who though living largely in a fantasy world of his own making, has to be aware of the past decade of smoke and mirrors that has marked U.S. engagement with Iran. As I have written many times, Iran's nuclear program is really non-negotiable -- so any pretense to serious discussions on it are bound to be met with failure. This has not, of course, kept the great Obama from trying to bend metal with his brain, or to use his x-ray vision and leap tall buildings in a single bound. But it should be of no surprise that the results with Iran are the same as those that confronted George W. Bush -- even in the midst of Obama's fig leaf to the Mullahs that he's ready to listen to their myriad grievances, etc.

So now that the Iranian's have apparently given Obama the proverbial finger, what's next? If his grand plan for engagement fails (as it inevitably will), will Obama be able to play hardball? Robert Kagan at the Washington Post asks this very question, and comes to the conclusion that Iran is clearly testing Obama to see whether he will blink -- and whether Tehran's friends in Moscow will be persuaded to launch sanctions that truly have a bite:

Tehran is obviously probing to see whether President Obama can play hardball or whether he can be played. If Obama has any hope of getting anywhere with the mullahs, he needs to show them he means business, now, and immediately begin imposing new sanctions.

This is precisely correct -- and the key now will be Obama's response to the Iranian rejection. Will be move forward aggressively to put together a program of aggressive penalties for Iran's non-compliance? Will he move to put a credible military option back on the table to show Iran that he means business? Can he play hardball?

For Kagan, it is an open question:

Many of us worry that, for Obama, engagement is an end in itself, not a means to an end. We worry that every time Iran rejects one proposal, the president will simply resume negotiations on another proposal and that this will continue right up until the day Iran finally tests its first nuclear weapon, at which point the president will simply begin negotiations again to try to persuade Iran to put its nuclear genie back in the bottle.

This is exactly my fear: that our president is a talker, and lacks the steel in his spine to move forcefully against this real and present threat to security in the Middle East. And as for Russia -- it is equally clear that Putin is working Obama as effectively as the Mullah's are:

Russia, meanwhile, will continue to be accommodated as a partner in this effort, on the perpetually untested theory that if Obama ever did decide to get tough with Iran, Moscow would join in. Russia thus reaps all the rewards of engagement without ever having to make a difficult decision.

This is a bad spot to be in: Iran continues to buy time to further its enrichment program, and we continue to court an "ally" in Russia that has its own economic stake in maintaining productive relations with Iran. We are caught in the middle, being played by both sides.

The rubber has hit the road concerning Obama's "talk first" policy on Iran.   Will we now get run over?

Poland: A Friend Betrayed

By Joe Gschwendtner Poland’s expansive plains have made her lands a military corridor in regional skirmishes and world wars. Teutonic Knights, cavalry and tanks have controlled her vast spaces and she has been uniquely oppressed by outsiders. Outstripping this history and braving long odds, she is now a successful recovering Soviet client state, defiant and free, the beneficiary of a robust capitalism flourishing within her borders and Eastern Europe. We would do ourselves great harm to not remember that this is the Poland of Generals Kosciusko and Pulaski who fought for our freedom in the American Revolution and it is the heritage of Colonel “Gabby” Gabreski, likely the greatest American air ace in U.S. history. Her soldiers have fought bravely, shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is it possible she is now a friend betrayed, the casualty of a missile defense gambit in the broader initiative of global engagement?

The current administration’s decision to cancel the promised missile defense system has left Poles scratching their heads while other allies silently writhe. Is this really a small tactical decision that eases tensions and saves money? Or have we witnessed a grave course adjustment in the ship of state? Has Poland again become a pawn of a new war? Her history of being on the receiving end of plunder and partition is instructive.

Polonians (“people of the open fields”) are fiercely independent and resilient; they have had to be. Their first millennium was marked by dominance and manipulation, first by Mongols, Tatars, Swedes, Cossacks, and Russians, their own nobility, and then the late empires of Europe. These constant upheavals stunted the growth of both democratic institutions and a middle class needed to drive them. Not until World War I’s Treaty of Versailles in 1918 and the tenuous independence it granted was Poland really in a position to act strategically.

As that document’s ink was still drying, President Josef Pilsudski and the Polish people recognized the appetite of the Soviet bear to the east. Clearly, Lenin’s records prove his intentions to recover territories surrendered by Bolshevik Russia during World War I and then to later create a Communist “Anschluss” with German Socialists using Poland as his corridor. The Polish-Soviet War that resulted in 1919 was a pre-emptive effort by Pilsudski to thwart a reconstituted Russian military from resuming its march westward. The humiliating defeat of the Red Army at Warsaw resulted in the Treaty of Riga in 1921. With Russia’s territorial urges still unrequited and smoldering, the devil’s table was set for Stalin’s later revenge and en passant machinations at Tehran and Yalta during World War II.

Poland’s geopolitical significance would rise exponentially with the dominance of mechanized warfare in World War II. Germany’s invasion of Poland began with the bombing of Wielun and the overwhelming of Gdansk on September 1, 1939, an act of a war that would put 100 million men under arms globally. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, struck weeks earlier between Germany and Russia, committed the signatories to non-aggression while allowing the Red Army to move quickly into eastern territories ceded to Poland at the end of World War I. The pact also made provisions for a later, final partition of Poland between Russia and Germany.

In a ruthless seven months of terror, Stalin initiated a comprehensive round-up of Polish intelligentsia, primarily officials, policemen, academics, and military officers. His defining act of revenge and brutality was the April 1940 Katyn Forest Massacre near Smolensk where 4,421 Polish officers were summarily executed. At three other nearby locations another 14,400 leaders were shot and buried in mass graves. Killings were clinical and efficient, virtually all delivered with a bullet to the back of the head.

With Operation Barbarossa, Hitler double-crossed Stalin and launched Germany’s invasion of Russia in June 1941. With the Polish pawn in play, the ebb and flow of unchecked warfare was visited upon the people of the open fields. Brutalized or exterminated by the Germans, Poles were then subsequently raped, plundered, and finally yoked by their Russian Slavic brethren in their counter-offensive. Most of today’s aging survivors have long gotten over the Germans, but will never forgive Russian depravities.

In a final preview of things to come, an extraordinary Warsaw uprising staged against the Germans by the Polish resistance in 1944 was unaided by the Russian Army positioned just across the Vistula. Stalin’s unwillingness to help was motivated by his Katyn-like desire to see the German defensive force destroyed by a still vigorous underground in a fight to the death. That Polish pawn played in Warsaw resulted in over 200,000 military and civilian deaths and Hitler’s vengeful order to level the city block by block.

Whether Katyn, the Warsaw Uprising and other compelling evidence was conveniently overlooked or ignored by the Franklin Roosevelt’s State Department is debatable. Indisputable is FDR’s bad call on the beguiling Josef Stalin. Unmoved by Winston Churchill’s suspicions, Roosevelt remarked: “I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of man….I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.” The Iron Curtain and almost 45 years of oppression was the price of that gross miscalculation.

At the Potsdam Conference, Truman was more wary of Stalin, but east-west political boundaries had been established in Crimea and only minor adjustments were made. Pawned again, Poland’s national sovereignty continued to be ignored as was her ravaged populace. Russia unilaterally shifted her post-war boundaries, reclaiming Slavic peoples and territory in eastern Poland and returning territory to Poland in the west at the expense of Germany. In the process, millions of Germans and Poles were displaced and forcibly relocated.

Fortunately, the Polish people retained their indomitable resilience. They continued on with the business of rebuilding their lives after betrayal, living as Poles and not Communists, ever guided by their Catholicism. Poles who survived the German General Government and the Polish Communist State will tell you bluntly that their beliefs were unshakable and that they deceived their communist masters at every opportunity.

It was in this environment that a shipyard worker in Gdansk and the first Polish Pope concomitantly led worker-based and spiritual efforts that would finally set them free of Cold War bondage. Pawns no longer, and in concert with other eastern bloc uprisings, the Poles foiled their masters with unionized solidarity and simple Christianity. The award in 1983 of the Nobel Peace Prize to Lech Walesa was the signal event and when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Poland quickly made its own political transition. Mikhail Gorbachev himself would later acknowledge that the Wall’s collapse would have been impossible without Pope John Paul II.

Nowhere in the failed Socialist states of Eastern Europe did freedom take deeper root. Along with the Czech and Baltic republics, no countries were more anxious to embrace America as a partner in the quest for freedom and Poland proudly joined the European Union in 2004. Her current economic challenges are not insubstantial, but Poland is committed to an ambitious $3.5 billion privatization effort to eliminate remaining state-run industries.

The defensive missile agreement struck with the Bush Administration in 2002 was emblematic, proof positive that Poland understood the nature of her contemporary adversaries and readily accepted her role in the Free World’s defense. The cancellation of this agreement has significant implications beyond the current tactical situation. Unlike current American policymakers, Poland knows that new threats to peace are no longer limited to powerful nations with massive military might, but also include stateless terrorist rogues and bad state actors with enough nuclear capacity to annihilate millions in the civilized world. Few countries on earth could know more about the horrors people are willing to inflict on each other.

What other nation is better positioned and willing to protect the Free World against an almost certain destruction that can be rained down upon the northern hemisphere from Middle Asia? If one correct answer is a willing Poland, how is it that the politics of globalization seem to have prevailed over common sense? Has Poland served as a pawn yet again?

Is it possible that our President has not completely studied the success and failures of his idol FDR? Are Mr. Ahmadinejad’s intentions not clear for the entire world to understand? Does he really think that Russia is ready to disown a history of territorial aggression? Has a potentially fatal miscalculation been made about the many threats we face? Is it worth the risk to find out?

A useful phone call for President Obama would be to former President George W. Bush. I suspect the conversation would go something like this:

“Mr. President, this is Barack Obama and I need your advice. When you said that you looked into the eyes of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and you could see the measure of his soul, what did you really see?”

Joe Gschwendtner is a Denver businessman and writer

A dangerously deluded foreign policy

Say what you will about Bill Clinton's foreign policy shortcomings, but for the most part he had the good sense not to squander Ronald Reagan's legacy of peace through strength. By contrast, Barack Obama's foreign policy seems to be predicated on a boundless faith in his own persuasive powers and the naïve notion that our international antagonists are merely misunderstood. Not since Jimmy Carter has American foreign policy been so obsequious or short-sighted.

Rather than isolate Argentine menace Hugo Chavez, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have managed the remarkable feat of backing Chavez's acolyte in Honduras, ousted president Manuel Zelaya, while still eliciting ridicule from Latin America's most notorious thug.

Zelaya, who sought to defy Honduras' constitutional prohibition against a president seeking multiple terms, was duly prosecuted by his country's attorney general, removed from office by its supreme court, lawfully replaced by a president from his own political party, and finally deported when his supporters threatened national insurrection.

Obama and Secretary Clinton — standing alongside Chavez, Cuba's Castro brothers, and the Organization of American States — want to restore Zelaya to power and chastise the Honduran government for adhering to the rule of law.

Apparently Obama longs for the bad ol' days when the Castro boys and their Soviet Russian patrons established communist dictatorships in Central America.

Or perhaps he believes that Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin is just a harmless fuzzball, rather than an erstwhile KGB officer who laments the fall of the Iron Curtain. That would explain why last year, as a candidate, Obama's initial reaction to the Russian invasion of neighboring Georgia was to urge both sides to "show restraint."

Worse still as president Obama courts Russia's cooperation by abruptly canceling plans to deploy anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. He didn't revoke these promises in exchange for Russian cooperation. He simply did it and hoped that Russia would cooperate — just as his climate change policy is to disembowel America's economy and hope China, India and others do the same to theirs.

The Poles and Czechs endured decades of Russian Soviet oppression. We should help empower them to defend themselves. Instead Obama's policy is a slap in the face — no matter how his administration spins it. To the Russians and the Iranians, against whose developing ballistic missile program the defenses offered protection, Obama's pusillanimous maneuver further demonstrates weakness.

Russian president Dmitri Medvedev applauded Obama's decision, just as a shrewd negotiator insincerely compliments the strength of an adversary he recognizes to be weak. The Kiev Post explained, "Russian diplomacy is largely a zero-sum game and relies on projecting hard power to force gains." That is, Russia plays hardball and plays for keeps.

In his speech to the U.N., Obama tossed about platitudes: "the yearning for peace is universal" and "the most powerful weapon in our arsenal is the hope of human beings." But "yearning for peace" is not universal — certainly not among governing authorities in places like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea who routinely trample "the hope of human beings" in their own country and in others.

"Two great threats facing the survival of the modern liberal West," cautions Lee Harris in The Suicide of Reason, are "exaggerated confidence in the power of reason" and "profound underestimation of the forces of fanaticism."

Because most western nations haven't faced a direct threat to their placid existence in more than a generation, we too readily forget that the majority of the world's inhabitants live their entire lives governed not by reason and rule of law but by the law of the jungle and the iron fist of an oppressive government.

Reagan understood that regimes that threaten, attack and oppress peaceful neighbors are indeed "evil" and that they can be deterred only by strength and determination. Much of the world criticized him when he stood up to "the evil empire," when he walked away from arms deals that would have weakened us and strengthened our adversaries, and most notably when he exhorted Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."

Today we know that Reagan's critics cowered because they lacked his vision.

History is replete with leaders like Obama whose sincere desire for peace blinded them to devious designs of others. Seeking peace is laudable, but lasting peace is rarely attained by those who appear desperate for it. Mark Hillman served as Colorado senate majority leader and state treasurer. To read more or comment, go to www.MarkHillman.com.