Dem delusions debilitate America abroad

As the nation’s attention is currently focused on our troubled commerce, and no less on the Big Government responses that President Barack Obama favors, it is easy to slight international relations. But this administration will be no more successful in its so-called "soft power" approach to intractable and dangerous situations than was President Bill Clinton. Intellectual sophisticates are afflicted with the conceit that words can accomplish what force cannot. Long ago the Greek political philosopher Aristotle identified the error, viz., that politics can be reduced to rhetoric. Aristotle wrote a work on rhetoric as well as politics and ethics, so he did not believe that rhetoric was unnecessary. But he understood that it was not sufficient.

This sort of prudence was fully appreciated by America’s founders, as they wrote in the Declaration of Independence that "free and independent states" have "full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances [and] establish commerce." In the Constitution they authorized Congress "to provide for the common defense," "to regulate commerce with foreign nations," and declare war; and the President to command the armed forces, negotiate treaties with foreign nations and establish diplomatic relations.

It is necessary to review these elementary facts to remind ourselves that the world is a dangerous place, occupied by enemies as well as friends, not to mention fair-weather friends and even enemies with whom we may at times have a common interest. It will not do, as Democrats are prone, to take refuge in our fundamental principles. Hard choices must be made, based on what can accomplish the most good and cause the least evil in the circumstances.

When in 2001 President George W. Bush described an Axis of Evil, consisting of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, he spoke the truth and laid down our obligations to deter or defeat the threat that they posed. Their common denominators were their despotic nature and their possession, or imminent possession, of weapons of mass destruction and, sooner or later, the means of delivering them to other countries.

Much abuse was heaped upon the President for singling out Iraq, particularly when there turned out to be insufficient evidence that Saddam Hussein was as advanced a threat as our intelligence estimated. But Bush rightly concluded that temporizing with the regime that had used chemical weapons against Iran and the Kurds was no longer entitled to keep his region and the world in tension.

Barack Obama pretty consistently denounced Bush’s Iraq policy, on the grounds that force was employed without adequate cause. He also contended that "we had taken our eyes off" the primary target in Afghanistan, where the former Taliban regime had harbored the Al Qaeda terrorists who perpetrated the vicious attack on our country on September 11, 2001.

There are those who think that Obama’s public statements on Iraq and Afghanistan show that his quarrel with Bush was over strategy and tactics, not over the broad aim of defeating our enemies. But permit me to doubt. His decision to keep troops in Iraq somewhat longer than the 16 months he promised during the campaign simply split the difference with the Joint Chiefs, who recommended longer to accomplish the pullout. Whether Obama means to preserve the strategic advantage which Bush gained by the successful "surge" remains to be seen.

If nothing else, liberal Democrat members of Congress were unhappy with the decision, not less because a substantial number of troops will remain after the withdrawals. Obama already caved to Congress in the content of the "porkulus" bill recently passed. Why should he show any leadership in Iraq if his fellow Democrats want to bug out sooner with less assets left in place?

As to Iran, partly because our main focus was on Iraq but also because domestic opposition to that intervention placed severe limits on what could be accomplished elsewhere, Bush consented to European negotiations with Iran, which has not tempered the mullah’s drive for a nuclear war capacity. Yet Obama denounced Bush for not negotiating with Iran.

Similarly with North Korea. Bush lacked leverage with that tyrannical regime too, although he may be criticized for having let the State Department dominate the negotiations, as the communists’ military buildup goes on unabated.

But in spite of the failure of these negotiations, Obama has already made clear his intention to talk–"without preconditions" he said during the campaign–to these and other despotic regimes. He believes that he and his "cosmopolitan" colleagues will point out to the two remaining members of the Axis of Evil the folly of threatening the world with nuclear weapons. Fat chance.

Obama's kinder, gentler foreign policy

Though much of the focus of Barack Obama's first six weeks in office has been on his trillion dollar economic stimulus and deficit-busting budget proposals, the administration has nonetheless given us some insight into the nation's new foreign policy. If you are someone who believes that the world remains a dangerous place, it is anything but comforting. Many who voted for Obama undoubtedly believed that some of his more radical foreign policy positions during the 2008 campaign were rhetoric designed to appeal to the left-wing base of the Democratic Party -- those who believe that the Iraq War was a grievous error and that the "war on terror" is a Bush construct designed to assert U.S. imperialism abroad and usurp civil rights at home. Unfortunately, his first month as president shows that Obama intends to be largely consistent with the promises he made during the campaign. His first order of business after taking office was to sign an executive order closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, where a number of the most dangerous Al Qaeda terrorists -- including the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed -- is now housed. He also banned the use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques, limiting our ability to question terrorist detainees to the strict rules of the Army Field Manual. In making these two decisions as a first order of his new Administration, Obama was making clear that he intends to place values -- specifically the democratic ideals of due process and human rights -- at the very forefront of U.S. foreign policy. In closing Guantanamo and banning forms of interrogation that the left views as torture, Obama said "Living our values doesn't make us weaker. It makes us safer, and it makes us stronger."

It is not a stretch to believe that those who are now formulating foreign policy in the Obama Administration believe that the importance of being true to our values warrants a substantial redefining of how America extends its power to the rest of the world. For generations, our foreign policy has been based on the concept of realism and "realpolitik" -- the notion that power should be projected on the basis of our national interest, and that power (as opposed to international law or the United Nations) is the principal currency in international affairs. Realpolitik is, above all else, a practical concept; since power considerations dominate, it often leads to choices that in hindsight seem less than principled. One example that liberals like to use is U.S. support for Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran -- just a decade before the U.S. itself went to war against the Iraqi army in the first Gulf War. The U.S. supported Iraq not because we thought that Saddam Hussein was the "good guy", but because he was seen as less dangerous than Iran, and a potential tool to overthrow the regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Such "situational" principles drive liberals and idealists crazy, of course, because the left generally sees the world through a lens that doesn't lend itself to the pragmatic use of American power. Liberals have always been more idealistic about how the possibility of peace-through- negotiation. Power -- especially of the military variety -- should only be used in the most extreme cases of self defense, and then only as a last resort. And when we do use military force, we should do so in a way that is consistent with our values. Realpolitik is now valuespolitik.

Valuespolitik is entirely consistent with how Barack Obama views the world -- and appears now to be the underlying principle of our new foreign policy. At the center lies the promise of negotiation -- of finding some shared basis of interest and understanding that can lead to first engagement and then reconciliation. Here are a few examples:

-- In some of his first comments to the media as reported in the New York Times, Obama stated his "determination that the United States explore ways to engage directly with Iran", even as he confirmed Tehran is pursuing nuclear weapons and is supporting terrorist groups destabilizing Iraq and the Middle East. In this same article, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is quoted as saying “(that) there is a clear opportunity for the Iranians to demonstrate some willingness to engage meaningfully with the international community", and stated that "there could be some form of direct communication between the United States and North Korea."

-- According to a recent piece by Claudia Rossett in Forbes, the President's hand-picked Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke (has) "been talking about Iran's reach into Afghanistan not as part of the problem, but as part of the solution. Despite allegations, some by NATO officials, that Iran has been helping Taliban "extremists"--as Obama labels the terror-dedicated Taliban -- Holbrooke opined recently on an Afghan TV station that Iran (yes, the same Iran run by the totalitarian mullahs who applaud Palestinian suicide-bombers, jail and torture dissident bloggers, and execute children and homosexuals) has a "legitimate role to play in this region, as do all of Afghanistan's neighbors."

-- Rossett also notes in her Forbes article that despite overwhelming evidence of the Iranian-backed terror nest that Gaza has become, the U.S. seems less interested in ending the terrorist reign of Hamas than in bankrolling its territorial base. “Reports earlier this week, citing an unnamed U.S. official, said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to attend a funding conference in Cairo next week where she will pledge $900 million in U.S. aid for Gaza. At a Tuesday press briefing, a State Department spokesman confirmed that while details, including the exact amount, are still being worked out, a whopping pledge is indeed in the offing: It'll be, you know, several hundred million."

The pattern that emerges from these examples is that valuespolitik assumes that interests between the U.S. and the rest of the world can somehow be aligned in a way that will result in a more secure geopolitical situation – and that we can achieve this while not compromising our own democratic values. In Obama's view, valuespolitik is achieved principally through direct engagement and negotiation. Never mind, of course, that the United States and Europe have been negotiating with Iran for the past several years on their nuclear weapons program, offering all manner of economic incentives to encourage the Iranians to join the peaceful international community. The result of all this talk has been that the Iranians are now closer than ever to achieving both a nuclear warhead and the means of delivering it.

The failure of past efforts at negotiation doesn't sway our new president, however. Barack Obama genuinely believes that he is the one the international community has been waiting for; that his unique ability to communicate -- and the power that Clinton, Holbrooke and others will have speaking on his behalf -- can bring Iran, North Korea and even Hamas in from the cold. Some would call such a belief naive, others would call it hubris. I would call it both. But whatever you call it, this strategy lies at the center of the Obama foreign policy.

Thinking about Obama's foreign policy reminds me of an old story about Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War. LBJ was the consummate deal maker and believed that given an opportunity, there wasn't anyone he couldn't convince to see things his way. As the situation in Vietnam deteriorated and protests began heating up at home, LBJ offered to Ho Chi Minh a "Great Society" program for Vietnam, using American dollars to give the Vietnamese people food, shelter and prosperity. “A TVA for the Mekong Delta” he liked to say. It was all part of a fundamental belief that everyone has a price. Jack Valenti, a Johnson aide once recounted LBJ saying to him: "If I could just sit in a room with Ho Chi Minh and talk to him, I think we could cut a deal."

What Johnson failed to realize is that Ho Chi Minh was never going to accept a permanent partition of his country into North and South, and that North Vietnam would never cease their struggle for a unified, independent Vietnam. It just wasn't open to negotiation.

One guesses that this would be an instructive lesson for Barack Obama in dealing with Iran and other Islamic fundamentalists. The goal of Iran is the destruction of Israel and the West. The goal of Al Qaeda and Islamic radicals is the death of all non-believers and the establishment of a world caliphate based on Islamic law. These are not deal points to be negotiated away. These are fundamental beliefs that defy bargaining. No focus on shared values can lead to success, for we have no values in common.

And this is the core weakness of valuespolitik. While negotiation can achieve certain gains on the margins, it has the effect of blinding our policy to the true, non-negotiable threats that face us. And we pursue it at our own peril.

Iraq: good news means no news

Iraq has now taken another huge step toward stable democratic rule and no one seems to have noticed. While headlines this week followed Obama's every utterance and his cabinet's growing tax evasion problems, a story of historic proportions was unfolding in a nation that has dominated American politics for the past five years. Some 140,000 U.S. troops are deployed in Iraq, and over 4500 Americans have paid the ultimate price to create the conditions in which national elections could be held and a democratic government could peacefully take power. Just such an election occurred in Iraq this past week.

And it hardly made the news.

What a difference a year or two makes. Throughout 2007 and 2008, the debate that raged in Washington and among the pundits in the press was to whether Iraq was a "lost cause". Though evidence of the success of the "surge" being implemented by David Patreaus was clear to those who chose to see it, the media was having none of it. During the early days of the 2008 primary season, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both gave endless stump speeches decrying the war and the need to "bring the troops home now". Obama was convinced that the surge would fail, and continued to tout his "wisdom" in being the only candidate in both parties to be "against the war from the beginning". Even in the face of evidence that the surge was working, with U.S. combat deaths declining precipitously and security (and commerce) returning to areas of Iraq that were once uninhabitable, Obama never budged: Iraq was a failure, a mistake in judgment and the surge "too little, too late".

I'm sure the Iraqis who voted this past week would beg to differ. As Frederick and Kimberly Kagan wrote today in the Wall Street Journal, the Iraqi election not only reaffirmed democracy itself, but showed that voters are increasingly choosing secular candidates over religious ideologues:

Iraqi voters chose nationalist, secularist parties over religious parties by a wide margin. In the mostly Shiite south, candidates associated with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party appear to have gained significantly. This outcome is noteworthy because Dawa came to power in the 2005 elections with virtually no grass-roots support or organization. Few would have predicted Mr. Maliki's electoral success even a year ago.

In addition, the Kagans note that the influence of Moqtada al-Sadr has continued to wane. The former scourge of U.S. forces that lead the insurrection in 2006 following the bombing of the Samarra Mosque in Baghdad -- the spark that lit the sectarian tensions that threatened to subsume Iraq into Civil War. al-Sadr and his Mahdi militia ran roughshod over Iraq until the forces of the Bush/Patreaus surge prompted Sadr to disarm.

Moqtada al-Sadr, by contrast, relied on grass-roots support for his movement and seemed poised to dominate elections in the south a year ago. But he lost much of his popular support when Iraqi Security Forces defeated his militias in Basra, Baghdad and Maysan in June 2008. The door was open for the well-organized Iraqi Supreme Islamic Council (ISCI), the clerically dominated party that had controlled many important provincial governorships and councils in the south. Yet Iraqis voted instead for Mr. Maliki's coalition or for the secular Shiite coalition of former prime minister Iyad Allawi.

The Iraqi elections thus seem to have ushered in a new era of secular democracy, and provide the latest proof that the Iraq which George Bush has bequethed to the Obama Administration is well on its way to becoming a stable, functioning democracy in the heart of the Middle East. More importantly, these latest election results are a further blow to the efforts of Iran to destabilize that Maliki government in favor of an Islamic state:

The big loser in this election was Iran. Iranian agents spent a lot of money trying to influence the outcome of the elections in the south, and they largely failed. Iran's favored parties did poorly. The Iranians had hoped to persuade Iraqi voters to punish Mr. Maliki for signing the security agreement with the United States. Instead, these elections proved to be a powerful vote of confidence for the prime minister and his policies, including that agreement.

All of which puts Barack Obama in a great position to advance American interests in the region -- should he choose not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  The continued presence of American troops -- as honest brokers in the on-going negotiations between factions and as a bulwark against the return of Al Qaeda -- is essential to cementing this fragile democracy into a steady and reliable member of the international community.

The presence of a stable Iraq with a democratically elected government is a gift to the world from George W. Bush. Pray now that Barack Obama doesn't follow the self-loathing instincts of those in the media and within his party who wish to isolate us from the world, and abandon this important and noble effort before it is finished.

Merci, Monsieur le Président

Dear President George W. Bush: As you open a new chapter in your life down in Crawford, Texas, after eight, sometimes turbulent years as the 43rd President of the United States, I would like to take this opportunity to publicly express my eternal gratitude to you for strengthening my faith in America’s destiny as a truly exceptional nation. It all goes back to March 2003. Back then, I remember huddling over my ancient radio trying to pick up medium-wave signals of the BBC World Service for the latest English-language news about the outcome of a summit meeting which you were holding in the Azores with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar to work out a U.N. resolution that might eventually lead to military intervention in Iraq. In hindsight, I can truthfully say that when the report ended with the view that war was imminent, I was born again.

Please, do not get me wrong. I agree that war is ugly and should always be used as a last resort. However World War II taught us that the use of force in a just cause is an eminently virtuous course of action. In March 2003, most Europeans were still wilfully denying the essential truth of that painfully poignant lesson and you were trying hard to educate them.

Therefore, Mr. President, although your brand of conservatism eventually turned out to be too compassionate for my small-government predilections, I want to thank you again for courageously standing up for good against evil. I want to thank you again for steadfastly promoting freedom and democracy in the world. Above all, I want to thank you again for relentlessly protecting America and the American people and conserving the enduring values which your blessed country uniquely stands for.

May God bless you, Sir. May God bless the United States of America.

Yours Faithfully, A French friend of America

Note: “Paoli” is the pen name, er, nom de plume, of our French correspondent. Monsieur is a close student of European and US politics, a onetime exchange student in Colorado and a well-wisher to us Americans. He informs us the original Pasquale Paoli, 1725-1807, was the George Washington of Corsica.

Now for an apology from MSM

The Iraqi journalist that threw his shoes at President Bush is now apologizing . Apparently, the blessings of freedom of speech and liberty are sinking in and he realizes that had he done the same before brave American soldiers liberated his country from a despicable tyrant, he'd have likely been shot on site and perhaps, his family rounded up and tortured and/or killed, as well. Now if we could only get American journalists to follow suit and realize their exploitation of this act has diminished them, as does much they say and do these days. No sitting president should be mocked and teased and ridiculed by our media when an act of complete disrespect and possible danger is launched.

Entertainment Tonight, Extra, late night variety shows and all the major networks should be ashamed of their coverage. Time to apologize for being un-American, and as petty and pathetic as any junior high kid caught in an act of harassing another student.