Friday, February 29, 2008

Texans - Vote for Hillary

National Security III - Texans, Vote for Hillary.

In the face of the combination primary/caucus contest in Texas March 4 Clinton rightly questions the ability of her opponent to respond properly to matters of national security. Certainly every indication is that Obama is indeed far out of his league in this department. Isn’t the selection of the commander-in-chief a major responsibility because the protection of one’s family is a major responsibility? Hillary, despite her history of personal destruction, petty theft and major scandal is still semi-grounded on national affairs (Well, ok, the little woman’s been fighting for change at the highest levels for 35 years and hasn’t accomplished a damn thing; she’s a thinly disguised end-run around the 22nd amendment on behalf of her husband, and a willing helpmeet in what’s basically an international criminal enterprise based in Hot Springs, Ark but so what?) and we think has some sense of the incorrigibility of muslim medievalists. But Obama truly believes, if one listens, that this is just one big misunderstanding and as we highlighted earlier, one that can be resolved through talk, appeasement, global anti-poverty programs and a sincere effort to make ourselves inoffensive to those sworn to destroy us.

Most retired officers, industry executives and current defense officials cite Obama's lack of experience in national security. Republicans and not just a few Democrats are very seriously worried. They also point to his determination to pull American combat units from Iraq at a time when a troop surge has reduced violence, damaged al Qaeda and allowed the Iraqi government to progress toward Sunni-Shia-Kurd reconciliation. "We're very concerned about his apparent lack of understanding on the threat of radical Islam to the United States," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney.

Apparently Obama is not well versed in history. Beyond Iraq, Iran looms largest in the matter of national security and anyone who may not realize that has been living under a rock, or, suffers from chronic lassitude and indifference. There are many of these, in fact roughly one third of the population. This was just as true during the American Revolution as it is now. One third of the colonists could not be bothered, one third were loyalists and one third were patriots. A combination of miracles pulled us through that one PLUS the fact that by 1775 and certainly 1776 ALL revolutionary leaders realized that appeasement and compromise would gain nothing with the Brits. So we did not have that handicap. If there were a B.H. Obama in place of Samuel Adams there would be no United States, or at least not then. And as George Washington set about steering an infant country, his wisdom that, "There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation," has provided a cornerstone for every diplomatic effort or success then or since.

Obama is Neville Chamberlain. He is Bambi amongst the most nefarious group of individuals the modern world has ever known. Huckabee shared this with Obama but Huckabee is history. Obama must also travel that course. Vote for Hillary!
Robert Craven

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Relax and Enjoy

We believe that for the last three years we have maintained a firm grip on matters of US security, predicting not 9/11 certainly but the Afghan, then Iraqi initiatives, and long before most observers had even a clue. This is key; it is a track record spelling success in this business - to close the pattern early on. But everything we have done in the past is freighted with sobriety, connoting the gravity of the situation. It’s been too much. So we figure we need a break; we need to relax, have a good time, amuse ourselves. What better way than to observe the left?

First and foremost there are the average Democrats, duped into thinking that at the margin their vote counts, blissfully unaware that the anointed of their party decided after the McGovern debacle that the elders should make the final choice, hence the super delegates. Now that’s grass-roots democracy!

Then there’s the spectacle of Obama’s accumulation of hard-left embarrassments, his obsequiousness towards the special interests of the Democratic left for example, enabling the lobbyists of the AFL-CIO when they demand card-check legislation to take away the right of workers to have a secret ballot in unionization efforts, or when they oppose trade deals. Or his incestuous romp with trial lawyers even when they demand the ability to sue telecom companies that make it possible for intelligence agencies to intercept communications between terrorists abroad.

Ah, cannot forget Michelle Obama who says that until her husband’s good luck she’s never before been proud of America. Whoa now! As a reporter from the Boston Herald wondered, "We wouldn’t have one of those insufferable, holier-than-thou, Blame-America-First types who lecture the unwashed from the rarefied air of Cambridge and Brookline would we?"

And then there are the O’Bambi Monies, which ABC’s Jake Tapper called the "Helter-Shelter types of Obama worshipers". From Obama’s Super Tuesday victory speech: "We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change we seek." Yes! Yes! The Obama campaign is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is. No one knows what Obama stands for of course, even his supporters. "I can’t wait to see," said actress Susan Sarandon, declaring full support nonetheless. Too much. This is fun. It really is. A re-living of Trudeau, "... who as the 1968 candidate was completely nonspecific, avoiding policy questions and depending entirely on style and panache," as the Oscar-nominated film maker Lionel Chetwynd draws the parallel. Put away your troubles said the silver-tongued candidate. Enraptured Canadians followed, without ever learning where he intended to lead. Trudeau mania was the elixir that blotted out a newly complex world. It was also, by any intelligent measure, a disaster, one Canadians are only now beginning to understand.

How about Chris Matthews, just days after reporting experiencing "a thrill going up my leg while listening to Obama speak the Hardball host asked Texas legislator Kirk Watson, who had come on the show to do his part in support of Obama’s campaign, "What has he accomplished? You say you support him. Sir, you have to give me his accomplishments. You’ve supported him for president. You’re on national television. Name his legislative accomplishments. "Well, I’m not going to be able to name you specific items of legislative accomplishments." Matthews pressed on: "Can you name any? Can you name anything he’s accomplished as a congressman?" Watson: "No, I’m not going to be able to do that tonight." Poor devil.

And now we have the NYT’s self - immolation with a story that even the Washington Post called "fatally flawed", a story which questioned more the paper’s standards than those of McCain. "All the News that’s Fit to Print." Hah! Change to All the News that Fits. Here is the paper which supposedly sets the agenda for the left whose staff are either dimwits or extremely naive or extremely phony, falling for the Tawana Brawley hoax, soon after the Duke Univ "rape" hoax, and then the several hoaxes cooked up by their own reporter Jason Blair, and then last month cooking up their own hoax about war veterans becoming killers upon returning to the US. It’s a pleasure to observe this paper’s descent into the sewer.

And finally there’s Hillary. As Mark Steyn notes, the supposed master of "the politics of personal destruction" can’t turn up anything better on Obama than some ancient essay from his Jakarta grade school, a few limp charges of plagiarism," and recently a pic of him dressed up in Kenyan garb. (She missed his pastor’s adoration of the racist Farrakhan, that talented individual who claims he was inspired to do the million man march we aboard a UFO, and the same individual who has provided a de facto endorsement for Obama) She can indeed turn up the heat on the networks however as MSNBC’s David Shuster found out the hard way. Shuster must not be a Letterman fan for if so he would have heard the following exchange between Letterman and Clinton’s press sect Dee Dee Myers, Feb 16, 1993 (courtesy the Weekly Std):
Letterman: "Are you enjoying your job there with President Clinton?"Myers: "I am; it's been great." Letterman: "And his daughter of course, Chelsea. How do you get along with her?" Myers: "Chelsea is wonderful. She's a really good kid." Letterman: "She seems like a very nice young woman." Myers: "She really is. Dave, don't ever make any Chelsea jokes!" Letterman: "I'm not making Chelsea jokes." Myers: "I know; I'm just warning you."

Back to work

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

NATIONAL SECURITY II

It is easy to succumb to distraction, to entertain perhaps the notion that the economy or health care, housing, farm subsidies or entitlements take top priority. It is a leap for most of us, in fact for Western civilization to acknowledge that there is a large and well-organized group of individuals in this world who want only our destruction. These are Muslim medievalists and they are sworn to a document which amounts to an atavistic inheritance of the dark ages. They do not negotiate; no equivalent of a contentious faculty meeting will do. The Koran explicitly commands violence against non-Muslims who may resist conversion as directed by their role model - the warlord Muhammad.

Thus we continue to look to our own security; our activities in the Middle East, past years, have been about exactly that. Amnesia visits over half of voting Americans, youth especially, those who have conveniently forgotten 9/11. Worse, many of the left and at least one Democratic presidential candidate in particular just think it’s all a big misunderstanding, one that can be resolved through talk, appeasement, global anti-poverty programs and a sincere effort to make ourselves inoffensive to those sworn to destroy us.

We must then decide who will reside at the helm of the United States. There are plenty of critics for all the current contenders: Far-right talk show hosts have targeted McCain for crossing party lines. We ourselves have targeted Huckabee in that he is profoundly out his league in foreign affairs. Some of the left, in disgust, have targeted Obama for the vacuous idiocy of this commentary. We disagree. Obama is just an orthodox liberal -- the most liberal person in the Senate in 2007, according to National Journal, which is turn makes the Democratic party machine very nervous indeed. Certainly we can acknowledge that he has a real skill in turning a phrase, but as one observer asked - does his special skill set actually mean anything, or is it instead the political equivalent of a dog walking on its hind legs--unusual and riveting, but not especially significant.

Others have targeted Clinton for her encyclopedia of tawdry scandals but Clinton’s real problem, scandals aside is that although after she left the White House (with a bunch of pilfered furniture) and went hunting for a Senate seat and got her own platform from which to establish her own record she has not had one major piece of legislation in her name, she accomplished very little except to take cheap shots at the US military. Clinton is a mediocre-to-average candidate with little governing experience; she is where she is mostly because of her husband.

McCain’s qualifications as commander-in-chief are well known. From Michael Makovsky of the Weekly Standard, "Fundamental to Churchill's world view was the belief that priorities had to be rigidly ranked and that the supreme interests need to be vigorously and single-mindedly pursued. Chief among those interests was national security. McCain has suggested a similar approach." Makovsky continues that, "McCain and Churchill lived and breathed national security issues, and it is in this policy field that their similarities are most pronounced. They both strongly believed in their countries, considering them the chief champions of civilization, and they have been rarities in usually putting national security interests ahead of their political fortunes."

Iran remains our most pressing problem. As no-friend-of-the-Administration Christopher Hitchens noted (and as we posted earlier), "The absurdly politicized finding of the National Intelligence Estimate -- to the effect that Iran has actually halted rather than merely paused its weapons-acquisition program -- has put the United States in a position where it is difficult even to continue pressing for sanctions, let alone to consider disabling the centrifuge and heavy-water sites at Natanz, Arak and elsewhere." This was a political hit job that according to Senator Bayh, "had unintended consequences that, in my own view, are damaging to the national security interests of our country." From the life-long Democrat Vic Hansen, "Somehow our politically tainted intelligence agencies argued the near laughable: claiming that Iran stopped making the bomb in 2003 but have instead only eroded much of the peaceful avenues to prevent Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon."

We have highlighted what in our view is the only effective and reasonable course of action for US diplomacy towards the mullahs. Gradually this view is gaining converts; McCain is one of them.

We will update this posting in the near term.

Robert Craven