First Conservative Blog

Conservative Blog post for October 19.

Obama the Naive

President Obama trumpeted His philosophy of ‘be nice’ to others in the world under the theory that other nations would then return favorable treatment to the United States.  It has only taken a few short months for Him to be proven terribly wrong. It was reported late Sunday that the Obama administration is-internally at least – admitting to being seriously outmanuvered by Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev.  

President Obama was quite anxious to prove that the foreign policy of George W. Bush was so flawed in its arrogance and ‘bullying’ towards others, that it fell right into a major Russian trap.  The Russians of course bullied the US into removing all promises for a shield to defend the free peoples of Eastern Europe as well as the United States from incoming missiles – regardless of where they might originate. Obama gave in without any agreement, apparently believing that Russia would be so impressed with the US President’s gesture that it would back UN sanctions against Iran.  Now that serious talk of sanctions has been brought up, the Russians want no part, leaving Team Obama dismayed. 

Of course any conservative could have informed the naive President that removing missile defense from Eastern Europe would not gain a single Russian concession.  In fact, many conservatives did bring this up only to be dismissed by an arrogant Obama State Department.

Putin of course wants the necessary tools on hand to intimidate Europe into accepting  whatever policy Russia might impose.  And as Russia works to corner the supply market for European natural gas, any method to make a threat real, only helps their cause.   The Europeans will soon find themselves paying inflated prices for Russian natural gas because there will be no other alternative.   The ultimate Russian ambition may well be the eventual domination of Europe by control over natural gas supplies, sealed with a threat of conflict from which Europeans typically cower.

That Russia has never fully relinquished the occupiers role after the fall of the USSR is not a surprise.  What is a surprise is that the US was so willing to help them rebuild their role as dominators of Eastern Europe.  Democrats in general have been termed “useful idiots” by every Russian leader since Stalin but even this must have come as a shock that Obama would have been so anxious to sell out his allies. 

Unfortunately, this only escallates the conflict with Iran.  Any thinking (read non-leftist) administrator understands that Iran is the worlds second top producer of natural gas – second only to Russia.  Russia’s interest is to keep the conflict brewing with Iran to make supply contracts with the Islamic state high-risk.  This runs up the price of Iranian natural gas contracts and allows the Russians to inflate the price of theirs.  So by keeping the conflict boiling, Russia makes money. 

Additionally, since sanctions are looking less likely, Obama’s naive policy has pushed the United States closer to armed conflict with Iran simply because the Chosen One has no other options.   With Europeans becoming aware that their only supply of natural gas might put them at the risk of Russian economic domination, our allies are growing increasingly uncomfortable with Obama’s willingness to talk instead of act.   Obama should now pressure the Europeans into a united action – regardless of what happens in the dictatorship-dominated, UN.  Unless Obama has another surprise up his sleeve, this will never happen.

Interestingly, the only possible way out of a major armed conflict might be for the Europeans to step up and insist that NATO undertake direct action now to free Iran from the mullah’s oligarchy. Acting now would mean military action on a much smaller scale than if Iran lights off one of its nuclear warheads over Tel Aviv.  However, as NATO hasn’t actually fired a shot without the United States taking the lead, this could be a ‘tough-sell.’   United action requires US leadership.  President Obama has absolutely no ambition to lead the west in any military action to defend its interests because that would amount to ‘bullying.’  Without US leadership and vision, getting Obama to move off his talk first then talk more foreign policy will be difficult.   After all, Obama still has to prove GW Bush was a terrible foreign policy President.   

All this of course brings us back around to the Israelis.  Israel understands that Russia intends to keep the conflict going – even if that means allowing Iran to attain ability to build a nuclear weapon.  Given the Iranian lunatic leadership’s intent to destroy the Jewish state, Israel is going to have to take action – if for no other reason than to provoke Obama and the US leftist administration into intervening.  And now that President Obama has surrendered the safety of Eastern Europe to the Russians, Israel knows she cannot count on the US to help once Iran gets a weapon of mass destruction.  Let us hope Israel acts soon and doesn’t wait until nuclear tipped Iranian missiles start flying around.

In the end, Obama’s selling out to the Russians by dropping plans for a missile defense shield has emboldened our adversaries, encouraged our enemies and greatly increased the risk of real and sustained armed conflict.   Internally at least, Team Obama now knows that this President’s naive leadership has made the world much more dangerous. 

Conservative Blog Post for September 28

Three Historical Lessons to Help the President Cope

The President of the United States, when confronted with major challenges and decisions, did what most Democrats do when challenged – He made plans to leave town.  Flying to Denmark to pitch the 2012 Olympic Selection Committee on behalf of his semi-native Chicago, Obama will leave behind a myriad of problems requiring leadership.  Apparently believing press reports that His words are leadership enough, the President thought he could take a ride on Air Force One and go back to Europe for a day to receive the usual leftist adoration.

The President this morning appears confronted by both domestic and international crises.  Obama’s pick for General of the Afghanistan war (Obama’s ‘real’ war as opposed to George W. Bush’s Iraq war),  General Stanley McChrystal has expressed concern that the Prez will want to pull out of Afghanistan rather than fight the enemy there.  The Iranians – shaking in their shoes after Obama’s words over the weekend – continued testing its missiles designed to deliver nuclear war heads to Tel Aviv.   And the health care takeover is losing momentum.  These issues require hard work for a hardened politician.  Most that want to be President relish these days as the chance to make a real difference for the country.  Obama chooses a flight to Copenhagen.

Defense Secretary Gates furthered the concern over Afghanistan on the Sunday talk shows by pointing out that leaving that basket-case of a country would allow the Taliban and Al Qaida to regroup, rearm and re-attack the American homeland.  Should that occur, of course the US military would be sent back into Afghanistan to hunt bad guys – at least until the next leftist liberal was elected President.  The Prez though, is reluctant to get into a war that can’t be quickly won.  Accordingly He is looking for the typical Democrat solution – a way out where He can declare victory without actually doing anything. 

The President’s preferred choice may be to fight the War on Terror on the streets of American cities rather than Afghanistan.   Reasoning that we wouldn’t have to pay transportation costs to get troops to a distant land, we could just fight the bad guys here.    Obama’s waffling on making any kind of decision on the Afghan war leaves most observers wondering – what in the world is the President looking for?  General McChrystal himself hasn’t been allowed a meeting with the President over this serious situation in over two months.

And then there is Iran.  The Muslim oligarchy that runs Iran understands that Obama’s options are limited.  And the options the President has are ones He will almost certainly never use.  The laughter in Tehran has almost died down after Obama’s statement that Iran must comply with world opinion or ‘face the consequences.’  Iran’s Russian and Chinese friends will ensure that these consequences will be of little worth.  Obama’s only recourse is to threaten unilateral military action and be prepared to use it.  Unfortunately for the free world, Obama doesn’t believe in military action, preferring instead to rely on the utterly worthless and increasingly contemptible United Nations.    Israel on the other hand – very much believes that its own existence is worth defending and will probably enact some military action of its own when it becomes clear that the United States won’t.   

It seems obvious to most that Obama is caught in a quandary with few, if any, good options on either Iraq or Afghanistan.  Israel won’t wait around to get a weapon of mass destruction fired at them and Obama can’t simply talk the Iranians into giving up their nukes.  In Afghanistan, although Obama’s instinct is to cut and run, a US with drawl means seeing a resurgent Taliban and Al Qaida that will bring the War on Terror home again to US soil. 

The President took this job apparently thinking that in the old Greek model of governance applied – where decisions are entrusted to Philosopher-Kings and the execution of policy is done by underlings.  It has dawned on the administration this week that hard work is necessary to resolve these problems and that this work cannot be off-loaded to others.  As hard as the President has tried to get rid of the Afghanistan issue by ignoring it (as evidenced by only having a single phone call conversation with General McChrystal in the past 70 days) it hasn’t gone away.  Iran won’t go away either.

What does seem in danger of ‘going away’ is the President’s plan to take over American health care.  All the advertising that the Prez extorted out of insurance companies and political allies has not moved support for the endeavor at all.  Here again, the President has worked Himself into another political box where He can’t compromise to get any meaningful legislation through the Senate.  His leftist supporters threaten to abandon support if a public option is not included.  Reasonable voters are dead-set against the notion that any savings can be found in Medicare that won’t directly restrict health care to America’s senior citizens – not to mention the fact that without increasing in the supply of doctors, scarcity of medical treatment (rationing) is inevitable.

History of course provides lessons valuable in solving each of these problems.  Since Obama hasn’t and certainly won’t release his college course grades, we don’t know if the President has any understanding of history.   If the Obamamaniacs can get past their campaign slogans and do some real work, these lessons are available to all.  But, in the interest of national safety and prosperity, here are three significant lessons to help the President in His decision making:

Afghanistan:  Lefties are quick to draw comparisons to the lessons of Vietnam and conclude that the US should not be drawn into a land war.  What history shows though is that the North Vietnamese had logistical and military support from China, the USSR and the East European Communist bloc.  They were able to keep the war going to wear out American will to fight.  Their objective was to simply keep the Americans engaged militarily until they lost the will to fight.

Now, the shoe is on the other foot.  The American objective should be continual engagement with the enemy on his battlefield until the fanatics either lose their will to fight or can’t find any more young fanatics willing to blow themselves up.  A terrorist encountered on the battlefield may be killed by US forces and after that, will not endanger the US homeland.  The point to fighting in Afghanistan is based on the Napoleonic code of war which the North Vietnamese used very effectively against us– engage the enemy, destroy his capability to fight and don’t waste time worrying about capturing cities and territory.  

Obama has to understand that this commitment will take generations to fight.  It takes 15 to 18 years to replace a suicide bomber.  And if we keep killing them in Afghanistan, there will be far fewer of them attacking us here.   Still, as John McCain once said – this could leave us with a presence in the region for 100 years.  Obama needs to eat his words and admit that in the case of Afghanistan, McCain was right.

Iran:  History’s lesson on this can be summed up in a word and a date; Munich, 1938.  Allowing Hitler to complete a peaceful takeover of the Sudetenland and portions of Czechoslovakia (you libs will have to look this up), emboldened the German dictator to speed construction of his military capability.  In the end, Hitler wanted much more than the few thousands of square miles of central European land.  The western policy of appeasement resulted in millions of European lives lost.  Had the west stood up to Hitler and threatened him with war in 1938, German Generals were going to overthrow the dictator.  Unfortunately, the west –like Obama wants to do – caved in allowing the horrible destruction of WWII in Europe.   Obama of course will never allow the word ‘appeasement’ to be used in describing His policy towards Iran, but His actions have got to support His words.  And for this President, that is a tall order.

Obama especially needs to avoid His natural instinct to work through the UN.  The UN, like the western powers in 1938, has no will to fight under any circumstances.  This makes the world body completely useless.   Therefore, no credible consequences exist to Iran for continuing its nuclear program.  Hitler correctly judged the west’s lack of will and the nut cases running Iran have made the same judgment about the UN.  In swearing to protect the United States last January 20, President Obama needs to entrust security of the US and her allies to generals like McChrystal and not to the loathsome and ineffective United Nations. 

Health Care:  One doesn’t have to go too far back in history to learn a few lessons on this one.  In fact, all Obama has to do is call in his Secretary of State for a heart to heart about what went wrong the last time.  The Clinton administration also tried to take over health care and at least to their credit, had Hillary put together a comprehensive plan.  This plan was rightfully shattered in Congress, which in part helped the Republicans take over the House in 1994.  At least Hillary had the backbone to put an actual plan together and let folks shoot it down.  That at least was an honorable defeat.

Obama’s strategy – even with a huge and overwhelming majority of his party,   has been to refuse any discussion of details – believing that Hillarycare was beaten because of its specificity.  Team Obama appears completely ignorant of the fact that it is the details that have emerged are ones the voters hate.  So if Obama wants to win in health care, He has to scale His vision way back.  He especially has to end the contentious Congressional fight now so that damage to His Democrat majority will be minimized.  Fortunately for conservatives, He shows no signs of giving in on health care and continues to intimidate Grandma and Grandpa into keeping quiet at their town hall meetings.  Granny and Gramps won’t forget at all and for the first time since FDR, will be voting Republican starting in 2010.

Newt Gingrich essentially saved Clinton’s job back in 1994 by taking over the House of Representatives – causing Clinton to govern from the middle and produce a balanced federal budget.  Obama refuses to believe that He is a servant of the people and continues his efforts to impose an unpopular health care plan on the country.  By refusing to throw his leftist allies under the proverbial bus, Obama is marrying His reputation to that of Nancy Pelosi.  In 2012, that will make a very easy target for any GOP challenger.

So History is there for the Chosen One and his minions.  History allows the intelligent to learn from past mistakes.  Campaign slogans however, cause the intellectual lightweights in the population to believe that with a different leader, things can be different.  And this is where the concept of hard work leaves Democrats and liberals behind.   Studying the lesson of history is a lot more difficult than coming up with a catchy campaign slogan.

This week, President Obama revealed to the world that Iran has been secretly building an additional nuclear faciity that would be capable of producing enough material for one to two atomic weapons per year.  To the relief of many this morning came news that the US actually knew about the site for some time but withheld revealing its knowledge until world leaders had gathered in the US for the G-20 and UN opening sessions.  Given the Obama administration’s ineptitude on foreign policy, it was a relief that at least someone knew what Iran was doing.

After seeing his poll numbers slip and his personal popularity teetering on the 50% mark, the President chose this week to take advantage of the UN and G-20 functions to take voters’ minds off His takeover of the health care industry.  Figuring out a way to intimidate wavering Democrats to support a public insurance program costing untold trillions has taken its toll.

The President’s belief that words solve problems will be sorely tested this week.  Afghanistan will require resolute action to prevent the Taliban from re-overrunning that wasteland to re-establish muslim extremist training camps – from which fighters will be sent to attack the US.  Obama simply must keep the fight going there by whatever means necessary.

The President also talked himself into a corner this week by confronting Iran.  He stated yesterday that Iran must demonstrate that its intentions for nuclear use are peaceful or “face the consequences.”  It is not unusual that consequences go undefined in making these threats but the real danger to the Obama administration is that the President has created an expectation that the US is now prepared to demonstrate meaningful action and resolve of its own.  Talking about resolve is an Obama strength.  Executing action that might not be popular with the rest of the world’s despots is another matter.

Obama must believe that He now holds all the cards in dealing with the Iranian lunatics.  He surrendered the missile defense shield to Russia and got Putin & Co. to at least talk about sanctions.  But this might be as far as the Russians go.  Iran owes Putin quite a bit of money for the nuclear help they’ve already given to them, so the Ex-KGBer might actually not like it if the US brings the projects to a halt.  And what of the Chinese?  The Chi-Coms need Iranian oil and would very much like to prevent a muslim uprising within its own borders.  

In the end, although He would never admit it, Obama will come to the realization that only the threat of unilateral military force is sufficient to move lunatics such as Iran into changing their place in the world. ( Yes, yes….South Africa was deterred from continuing it’s policy of white-dominated government by extreme world sanctions, but South Africa wasn’t continually threating to wipe Uganda off the map. ) A willingness to act unilaterally is what got George W. Bush burned in effigy elsewhere in the world.  Obama couldn’t take that kind of a blow to His ego after presenting Himself at the UN as the first citizen of the world. 

Economic sanctions may have little impact on a population that has made excuses to itself that living under mullah doctrine is acceptable.  Depriving Iranians of their refined gasoline might be enough to cause a general uprising, but more logical minds in the international commuity believe that – should an embargo of refined petroleum be threated or imposed, Iran would be compelled into drastic action of its own before those supplies would run out.  What would this mean?  It only takes some 13 to 15 pounds of refined Uranium to make a crude but destructive nuclear bomb.  They could easily place that much of the stuff on a missile that Iran already has and send it off towards Tel Aviv and see what happens.  Of course, then that part of the world would be involved in just the kind of conflagration Obama wants to avoid.  The Israelis would surely wipe out Teheran and probably Damascus as well.  Preventing this requires application of ground forces capable of fighting an enemy on his home turf. The US military is the only force with this capability. 

The President has few good options with Iran and must be willing to act outside of UN authority if He expects to change Iranian behavior.  Unfortunately, few in the world believe Obama is capable of that kind of action so the President may have to prove to the world that He, too has only so much patience with the UN, the Russians, Chinese and other depostic regimes that He has sworn to talk to without preconditions.

In the end, Obama has made His foreign policy much more difficult to execute by expressing willingness to talk with foreign nut cases.  Iran is counting on this willingness to talk to allow them time to complete their nuclear bomb.  Sanctions are just a form of talking as they don’t involve immediate consequences to the offending state and-given the history of the UN – rarely involve meaningful action.  So sanctions give Iran what it needs – time. Obama seems to be on board with giving them time while threatening meaningful action.  The Iranian leaders are okay with threatening this action as they have come to believe that Obama will do nothing but talk.  They have only hardened their positions as a result of Obama’s soft foreign policy.