More Obama U.N. Madness

Lots more analysis about Obama's ridiculous and dangerous actions at the U.N. this week. This is critically important because he is the primary spokesman of our country to the rest of the world, and he provides the global impression of America. Yeah, I know, it's scary, isn't it? So let's dig in.

Here's another great bit of Obama-flopping, this time on supporting democracy around the world:

As with everything, Obama's words only remain true until they become untrue...or, at least, inconvenient. Then they are flushed down the memory hole as if they never existed in the first place. The Ministry of Truth lives!

I started to see some disagreement today on whether or not Obama is hopelessly naive. It's an interesting question. For example, on the one hand (emphasis mine):

The United States elected 43 presidents before the current occupant graced the office with his presence. We fought, and won, two world wars, liberated millions of people worldwide from tyranny, and worked cooperatively with other sovereign nations to rebuild entire continents. Some might even say the character of our nation is well established considering we have been a democracy for just over 230 years now. Not President Barack Obama, who told the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, “For those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months.” 230 years versus just nine months. No wonder, the New York Times reports, were UN delegates not only applauding Obama, but snapping photos of their hero like tourists.

But the audacity of self-promotion was not the most troubling part of Obama’s speech. No, what most threatens America’s security is what Obama didn’t say. On March 27th of this year, while announcing his “New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan”, President Barack Obama said:

Al Qaeda and its allies — the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks — are in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that al Qaeda is actively planning attacks on the United States homeland from its safe haven in Pakistan. And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban — or allows al Qaeda to go unchallenged — that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can.

But yesterday at the United Nations, the Taliban magically disappeared from this formulation. Instead, all we got was this: “We will permit no safe haven for al Qaeda to launch attacks from Afghanistan or any other nation. We will stand by our friends on the front lines, as we and many nations will do in pledging support for the Pakistani people tomorrow.” This was no slip of the tongue. On the morning talk shows this past Sunday, Obama openly questioned whether fighting the Taliban insurgency is necessary to stopping al-Qaeda.

... A recent public opinion poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that 69 percent of Pakistanis worry that extremists could take control of their country. The poll further indicated that 70 percent of Pakistanis now rate the Taliban unfavorably compared to only 33 percent a year ago. The Taliban/al-Qaeda threat spans the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan; thus, failure in one country will contribute to failure in the other—just as success in one country will breed success in the other.

According to media reports, President Obama is considering implementing a plan supported by Vice President Joe Biden to scale back the American military presence in Afghanistan and focus on targeting al-Qaeda cells primarily in western Pakistan. This strategy would be insufficient to curb the terrorist threat emanating from the region. Ceding territory to the Taliban in Afghanistan would embolden international terrorists in the region, including in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

In their combined 16 years as President, neither Ronald Reagan nor George Bush ever felt the need to say they were not naive. For that matter, neither did President Clinton. But for some reason, President Obama feels the need to reassure the world in every foreign policy speech that he is no naif. He did it again yesterday (”Now, I am not naïve”). How might Shakespeare put it today? “The President doth protest too much, methinks.”

But on the other hand (emphasis mine):

I think that he rather likes tyrants [side note: in fact, he likes them so much he funds their pet projects with YOUR tax dollars!] and dislikes America. I think he'd like to be more powerful, I think he is trying to get control over as much of our lives as he can, so that he can put an end to the annoying tumult of our public life. As when he said (about health care) to the Congress, "Okay, you've talked enough, now it's time to do the right thing (my thing)." And he's trying to end American power in the outside world. He's saying "I'm going to stop us, before we kill again."

American politics are very fractious, and always have been. Leaders are constantly frustrated, and some of them come to yearn for an end to our freedom. They think they know best, they just want to tell us what to do and have us shut up and do it. I think Obama is one of them. He's not naïve. It's different. He doesn't like the way things work here, he thinks he can do much better, and he's possessed of the belief that America has done a lot of terrible things in the world, and should be prevented from doing such things ever again. The two convictions mesh perfectly. It's The Best and the Brightest run amok.

Democratic leaders' envy of tyrants' power can be understood. But it can't be forgiven.

What do you think? Naive or not, I think he's a disaster for America.

What about Obama's continuing mission to disarm America first? I know one common argument is that we have to set an example before we can expect other nations to follow us. If you believe that, you need to read my previous treatment of the idea, then check out this further explanation of why the U.N. is precisely the wrong vehicle to address this issue:

The central organizing principle of the United Nations today is the assertion of moral equivalency among its participating nations — in other words, the U.N. sees Iran and North Korea as having the same moral standing as the United States. In truth, Iran and North Korea are the most worrisome proliferators in the world today and are pursuing nuclear-weapons capabilities. Iran and North Korea have earned their reputations as aggressive powers with no claim to moral legitimacy. The Iranian president has threatened to wipe Israel off the map. North Korea deploys its military forces in a manner that would allow it to inflict massive damage on South Korea at a moment’s notice. Both governments brutalize their citizens in order to maintain a monopoly on power.

To equate these rogue states with the U.S., Great Britain, Canada, and other law-abiding countries in the areas of proliferation and arms control is more than wrongheaded, it is dangerous.

Well said!

Here's one of my favorite responses to Obama's speech, found at Hot Air's Greenroom:

This was rather amazing:

“President Obama said during his speech today: ‘For those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months.’

We know what he hasn’t gotten done - health care reform, cap and trade, any discernible bipartisanship or “healing” the country of our racial divides which his enthusiastic minions deepen at every opportunity. Has the rise of the oceans started to slow?

Getting back to his speech, consider what concrete actions has President Obama taken in the last nine months. He has:

• Insulted England
  - giving DVDs that only play on American players to Gordon Brown
  - returned the Churchill bust
  - gave the Queen an iPod full of his own speeches
  - recently rebuffed Gordon Brown five times
• Insulted Poland & Czechoslovakia
  - unilaterally broke a missile defense agreement with no warning, on the anniversary of the Russian invasion
• Insulted and threatened Israel
  - “We are going to change the world. Please, don’t interfere.” The report said Netanyahu’s aides interpreted this as a “threat.”
  - delivered an anti-Israel speech at the UN
• Aided in a coup against Honduras’ legitimate government after they legally ousted Zelaya
• Failed to bring himself to even offer a kind word to Iran’s brave protesters - for how many days? - while they were being butchered in the streets by a government to which Obama can’t stop pandering
• Embraced dictators and bowed to Saudi Arabia’s king
• He’s broken so many campaign promises I can’t even keep count, especially ones related to lobbyists and transparency
• Allowed his Attorney General to selectively prosecute racially charged cases
• Announced decision to close GTMO in a year - though with no real plan of what to do with its inmates
• Tripled the deficit and even has China worried about whether we are a good investment

(These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. List your own in the comments and I’ll add them to the post.)

And this is how he wants the world to judge the character and cause of our nation.

Added:

• The Inspector General scandal
• Government Motors
• Acted like “a bull in a china shop” with our credit industry
• Imposed a $1.01 cigarette tax (but continues to smoke)
• Cash for Clunkers - a stupid idea, poorly managed, that cost taxpayers billions.
• Released GTMO detainees to Bermuda
• Admitted not knowing what happened, but accused cops of acting stupidly, followed up with idiotic “beer summit.“
• Dude, where’s my tax cut?
• NEA propaganda push
• FCC Diversity Czar worries about the dangerous free press
• Whitehouse Hothouse - yet lectures us to use less heat

• 
  

Interesting basis for judgment, huh? Incidentally, just days after Obama boasted to the world about closing Gitmo, we see this:

With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress....

The White House has faltered in part because of the legal, political and diplomatic complexities involved in determining what to do with more than 200 terrorism suspects incarcerated at the prison. But senior advisers privately acknowledge failing to devise a concrete plan for where to move the detainees and mishandling Congress.

Oh, really? They're going to keep it open now? Hm...

Michael Goldfarb points out that Obama is blaming everyone but themselves for not being able to follow through on their promise. Where's that personal responsibility, Mr. President?

Anyway, Charles Krauthammer has some very pointed comments on the same subject that are well worth considering:

This speech hovered somewhere between embarrassing and dangerous. You had a president of the United States actually saying: “No [one] nation can or should try to dominate another.”

I will buy the "should try to" as kind of adolescent wishful thinking. But “no [one] nation can dominate another”? What planet is he living on? It is the story of man. What does he think Russia is doing to Georgia?

But the alarming part is what he said in the same paragraph where he said that it makes no sense anymore "the alignments of nations that are rooted in the cleavages of the Cold War."

Well, NATO is rooted in the cleavage of the Cold War. The European Union is rooted in the cleavage of the Cold War. Our alliances with Japan and Korea and the Philippines, our guarantees to Taiwan and Eastern Europe are all rooted in the cleavage of the Cold War. (Interesting noun, incidentally.)

So he is saying that is all now irrelevant. What does he think our allies are going to think who hear this?

Obama's speech is alarming because it says the United States has no more moral right to act or to influence world history than Bangladesh or Sierra Leone.

It diminishes the United States deliberately and wants to say that we should be one nation among others, and not defend the alliance of democracies that we have in NATO, for example, or to say — as [did] every president who goes before Obama — that we stand for something good and unique in the world.

And it [NATO] is not the equivalent, for example, of the alignment of Chavez with Ecuador and Bolivia and Nicaragua and Russia and Cuba and Iran…..

This one was worse: When he [Obama] boasted about how he had reversed the course of America, and those who doubt our character should look at our actions, among the actions he cited was our joining the U.N. Human Rights Council, which is led by the worst human rights violators on the planet. It is an Orwellian, farcical organization. The idea that we should be on it is regrettable, but the idea that we should be boasting about it as an American achievement is a scandal.

I agree that just about everything about Barack Obama's administration comes straight out of the pages of Orwell's 1984. He says he's recovered the economy while millions of jobs are lost. He talks about reigning in spending while adding trillions to the deficit and national debt. He talks about responsibility while implementing policies that will replace your decisions with the decisions of some government bureaucrat. He talks about post-racial relations while accusing white cops of acting stupidly before knowing the facts. He tells us to cut back spending and save energy while jetting the hundreds of people in the Presidential contingent to New York for a date night.

Barack Obama is turning this nation literally inside out and backwards.

One thing that really deserves to be highlighted is Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu's fiery speech, so I'll do that in a future post.

There's my two cents.