College Kid

We sat down tonight to freshen this blog. But there’s nothing to freshen. Our past several sketches have dealt with the failings of BO as commander-in-chief: his penchant for appeasement, his habit of kicking allies squarely in the face while praising despots, dictators and lunatics; and his failure to secure this country’s security. It was all there early on (and, it’s all now in the news). Thank you very much. Thank you folks. Ok, sit down. Thank you.

But why? Why does this guy reach out to Chavez, Cuba, Libya, Syria and especially Iran? Why does he insult the French and then waste our time (as he is doing today) to make up? Why does this guy ignore the UK or go out of his way to pick a fight with Israel? He simply could not wait to scold Israel over its supposedly horrendous act of building homes while saying nothing to the Palestinians about the act of naming a town square in honor of a mass murderer. (Our lefty pals in Marin missed that one or they’d have been REALLY upset.)

Is it so tough to figure this guy out? We did it. We don’t have a TV. Our computer’s no good. We have a few books. That’s it. Discard all the noise, the pundits never ending, the million upon million of written and spoken words - that’s just $ and big business.

Instead, recall your own college career, the effected rage, the fashionable protests, the damning of America as first instinct, the stuff that really pissed off your folks. Recall your professors. All world customs were sacrosanct, even honor killings; there was absolutely no right nor wrong. This is BO. Aside from the Chicago grant machine he hardly ever stepped out of the faculty lounge. Think that makes a president, or a patriot, or even a real grown up? BO’s acting like a privileged kid. There’s nothing else there with this man child.

We coined a phrase a few blogs back (and have seen it since in print) - the "great leveling." This was keyed to domestic policy. But it’s easy to apply elsewhere. Just as BO’s health care heist acquires life, heat-exchanger-fashion as it sucks the same from free enterprise, so too is his goal to level offshore - traditional allies are ignored and old enemies are courted - until as Hansen puts it, "both are on the same moral and political plane."

We can survive three more years of this guy’s domestic policy, as crippling as it might be. That’s only our wallet. How about our security? Still taking that for granted?

Robert Craven

One More Time (or back at the nursery)

Here’s a quote which has been circulating of late, perhaps because of its applicability to the far (gone) left: Albert Einstein once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

We were at the nursery the other day discussing BO’s pavlovian response to appease - predicted by us during the primaries and now, to all but the willfully blind, made famous by the actor himself. Our nurseryman friend informed us that history and lessons we maintained were tried and true, were/are irrelevant and meaningless. All people are reasonable and humane he noted so it was best to sit down and talk with terrorists, specifically the Iranian flavor, and work things out.

"Hey," he finished, "if that doesn’t work let’s blow ‘em all to hell." (Whoa! Now shame on the little prevaricator.)

It is unfortunate that our friend and most like him did not have the advantage of standing in the crowd at the Heston Aerodrome when Neville Chamberlain waved his famous "piece of paper" signed by Adolf. That might have done it and saved all of us a lot of trouble. But since 1) these types dismiss history, especially American history as passe and irrelevant, and since 2) public schools fail at their duty, the nursery staff never caught on.

But then neither did BO. Having to learn these lessons over and over again in the classroom of foreign affairs - all that wasted time - has severely corroded US security. This is especially true regarding Iran where most know what to do and are willing to do it. Only BO’s obsequiousness stands in the way.

Appeasement delays hard decisions and emboldens thugs, making it all the tougher when the will is finally gathered. We all know that. Thugs don’t respect warmth and kindness, or outreach (nor do they respect a president who kicks his own allies in the teeth by the way); they only respect power.

The nursery staff and their president would rather try once again to walk on water, expecting this time not to get wet.

Robert Craven

Dreaming

This blog is dedicated to national security. We predicted in the primary that Obama would be profoundly out of his league as commander-in-chief. We must remain balanced and objective. Maybe we were wrong. Thus, we could not ignore the results of a left-wing poll conducted by Democracy Corps and Third Way. Democracy Corps was founded by former Clinton adviser James Carville and Stanley Greenberg, a leading Democratic pollster. Third Way calls itself "the leading moderate think-tank of the progressive movement."

Too bad these guys ran the poll as they had to publish these results: A majority of Americans say the United States is less respected in the world than two years ago and believe BO and other Democrats fall short of Republicans on the issue of national security. A May/09 survey by the pollsters found that the public saw the Democratic and Republican parties as equally able to handle national security (41 percent trusted Democrats more and 43 percent trusted Republicans more). On conducting the war on terrorism, the two parties were tied at 41 percent. The latest poll shows a massive gap, with Democrats trailing by 17 points, 33 percent to 50 percent, on which party likely voters think would do a better job on national security. On terrorism, a similar failure. "We would not want the election to be held today, with this poll," said Democracy Corps chief pollster Stan Greenberg. "If the election were held today, this would be a 'change' election." You bet Stan.

Why did we elect an individual who apparently never learned a thing key to his job, while others, for centuries, not only learned these lessons but passed them on, free for the taking?

Now, he’s got all of us in a heck of a lot of trouble.

How did Obama prepare himself for the job of commander-in-chief? Has the guy read anything whatsoever about foreign affairs, or heck, even about OUR history for goodness sake? Where is the evidence of that? Does he care about our founding or the Founders? Where is the evidence of that? Does he even understand his own country? Does he respect democracy and democratic ideals; indeed, does he have any standards? Does he see black and white, or just a gray world were all is relative?

The Founders, especially George Washington admonished future diplomats and presidents not to expect sovereigns to look to other's welfare, not to expect empathy, not to expect care and understanding. Most of us know that diplomacy is not a campus 60's sensitivity session; it is not even a contentious faculty meeting; it is about looking strictly to one’s own interest. Obama doesn’t know these things because in his past career he wasn’t interested.

So what happened? Because he is illiterate in matters of foreign affairs, and, immature, he figured he’d "reach out," softly. Any fool knew that would never work with Muslim thugs. The result? The terrorists said, "Thanks for the outreach, but we’re going to kill you anyway."

But some of the left say (betraying their lack of scholarship)- hey, it was worth a try. No, it was not worth a try because it defies logic, and it defies, in this case, history.

We are thus set back in progress offshore because a bunch of college coeds, most of the public school teachers, the trial lawyers, academics and the media went bonkers for a cult figure.

As Vic Hansen noted, "Obama's utopian rhetoric created impossible expectations of a new international brotherhood. So the disappointment became greater when nations simply acted like their usual self-interested selves instead of idealistic groupies at an Obama hope-and-change rally."

We suspected we were in trouble big time when our lefty nurseryman friend cooed that Obama was a "dreamer." And then later, in the parking lot, "Did you hear that speech?" Oh boy.

Proper communication, effective delivery can enhance competence in transfer of a message, sure; slick delivery however is generally but a tool to camouflage incompetence, and Obama’s slick. It’s no secret that BO’s experience was limited to the Chicago grant-giving machine. So folks figured we’d get by because he’s a dreamer?

Think we’re safe? Dream on.

Robert Craven

Nothing New Under The Sun

Many of us have for years championed the cause for democracy worldwide. Certainly we care for humanity, thus our interest in those who may live under the heel. Primarily however we have championed democracy as a means to our own interests. Thus, Sunday’s general election in Iraq with an estimated 62% turnout of the 19 million eligible voters is cause for great celebration. We gave up hard liquor and cigars recently but figured it was OK to open a bottle of Gentleman Jack given the implications of this development.

Voting in Iraq takes guts. There’s no way we’d get it done, stateside, if we knew that the odds were pretty high that if we were to show up at the polls we’d seen our last sunrise, leaving in pieces. But heck, it’s just another day to these brave folk. From the LA Times, "People in Baqubah, for a long time one of the most violent cities in Iraq, said the attacks would not keep them from voting. ‘Maybe, because of the election, acts of violence will increase, but I don’t think it will affect the people,’ said supermarket owner Najam Shemari. ‘As for myself, I will participate and vote .....as will my family.’"

We had highlighted this spirit years ago when confronted by those who dismissed the idea, who denied that democracy would ever gain traction in the Middle East. In fact, many who had supported the notion with us early on became discouraged (the early champion, Natan Sharansky being one of these), witnessing as they may have the chaotic birthing of this infant.

Our advantage was a singular one - our familiarity with relevant history. History we have learned is the great instructor; she is patient; she repeats her lessons, providing insight to those who trust her.

Let’s back up just a tad. After our revolution, after 1776 most members of the Confederation - states - built their own constitutions. These first experiments were found by many of the Founders to be not only imperfect, but fraught with corruption, repelling really to those who believed in what was then called "public virtue" - the willingness of the individual to sacrifice his private interests for the good of the community. They believed that a successful republic demanded an extraordinary moral character in its people; and, they didn’t see it. "We are not," said Charles Lee in 1777, "materials for such divine manufacture."

The war, Robert Livingston told Gouverneur Morris in 1779, had not produced the effect "expected from it upon the manners of the people." There was disappointment that the people, having been given a considerable amount of power by the new state constitutions (most written in 1776 and 1777) were not qualified to handle it; corruption, vice, licentiousness, uprisings - all seemed common, and everywhere. Benjamin Franklin noted that, "We have been guarding against one evil - the excess of power in the rulers but our present danger seems to be the defect of obedience in the subjects." Too much.

Thus, as in Iraq, early experiments with democracy in America were rough and messy. Many, John Adams among them, lost hope. Adams felt that only scorn of ease, contempt of danger, love of valor were the things that made a nation great and he saw none of these. He saw only a social sickness that would kill the new republic as it did its ancient cousins.

But Benjamin Rush admonished those who had lost faith. It was absurd he said for Americans to "cry out, after the experience of three of four years, that we are not proper materials for republican government. Remember, we assumed these forms of government in a hurry, before we were prepared for them." Finally, he concluded that, "it remains yet to effect a revolution in our principles, opinions, and manners so as to accommodate them to the forms of government we have adopted." "Let us have patience. Our republican forms of government will in time beget republican opinions and manners. All will end well."

And so it did because others too held on, enough of them so that in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 a few gifted individuals crafted the most perfect political document known to man. One who was not at the convention but who understood, who knew there was a way, was Thomas Paine. In Common Sense, Paine said almost exactly what we have maintained these past years - that people would naturally seek out a consensual from of government when living under corrupt monarchies, if only given the chance. And key - he also saw that consensual government was in the best and mutual interests of all countries.

Democracies (with the possible exception of two Greek city states) have never warred upon one another. The reason, as Paine explains, is that "the nature of their government does not admit of an interest distinct to that of the nation." Gordon Wood interprets, "A world of republican states would encourage a peace-loving diplomacy, one based on the natural concert of international commerce." Or, to place it in the 18th century, "Our plan is commerce," Paine told Americans in Common Sense, "and that, well attended to, will secure us the peace and friendship of all of Europe, because it is the interest of all Europe to have America’s free port."

Now overlay Paine’s template onto the 21st century. Curious is it not? And fuel for great optimism.


Robert Craven

Success

We forecast mid-2004 that in the crucible of Iraq, US-led efforts to mold a consensual government would triumph and that the initial success at birthing democracy there would take most world observers by surprise.

It feels good to be right.

Feb/05 we noted: "Realists maintain that the Mid East is the least hospitable place in the world for a democracy. They are mistaken. What is true is that for the past 50 years a civilization gap has continued to widen between this region and so many other parts of the world. Arab countries have aped western ideas but sought to implement these through state power - capitalist dictatorships that don’t work. The inevitable decay and failure, the brutality of rule have together bred a growing yet sub-surface counterculture of resistance. It is this reservoir of internal pressure and agitation, before constrained or crushed by ruling thugs that now will be married to an enlightened US agenda, ultimately transforming the entire region."

Today, even Newsweek (bless their little left-leaning heart) celebrates this transformation in Iraq.

George Bush - due to your virtue, common sense and determination, millions who before lived under the heel owe you a great debt.

Robert Craven.