In The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan lays out what he sees as Obama’s “indispensable” capacity to move the country past baby-boom feuds and the world past sectarian and racial divides. “It’s November 2008,” he imagines. “A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man — Barack Hussein Obama — is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm.” A man who wouldn't know a logarithm from a spherical harmonic.
“I’m in this race because I’m tired of reading about Jena,” he said. “I’m tired of reading about nooses. I’m tired of hearing about a Justice Department that doesn’t don't understand justice. ... I don’t doesn't want to wake up four years from now and discover that we still have more young black men in prison than in college.” Or twice as many black women in college as black men. But if you want to be a 'brother' you gotta get the lingo right.
Grrrr. I lived in Obama's state district for a while. The man is earnest enough but he's clueless on world affairs. I can forgive a president who has a clunky sense of domestic policy; we have a Congress to handle (or mis-handle) that. But a president who doesn't understand how the world works is dangerous. I don't want someone who is into NGOs, and flower power, and how the world 'should' be. I want someone who understands how it is, and how to make it move in a direction that's beneficial to all of us.
#1
The new plantation owners don't want the help to look in the mirror because only the truth can set them free. Free from their real oppressors and those who pose as their 'friends'.
#6
#5 I will consider voting for the first black candidate for president who refuses to play the race card, and not before.
Posted by Eohippus Flaviger5399 2007-12-02 03:13|| Front Page|| ||Comments Top
#7
Obama's actual quote (as published in the Dowd column):
“I’m in this race because I’m tired of reading about Jena,” he said. “I’m tired of reading about nooses. I’m tired of hearing about a Justice Department that doesn’t understand justice. ... I don’t want to wake up four years from now and discover that we still have more young black men in prison than in college.”
As far as I know, the Senator speaks gramatically-correct English.
#9
#6 #5 I will consider voting for the first black candidate for president who refuses to play the race card, and not before.
Posted by Eohippus Flaviger5399 2007-12-02 03:13
Do you mean the Reverends Sharpton and Jackson will be out of race-baiting jobs?
#10
so, apparently he's going to empty the prisons of black males and put em in colleges? That'll work swell....How many football scholarships does the Univ of Miami have?
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/02/2007 10:51 Comments ||
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#11
I wonder if Barrak thinks OJ is innocent and that those nasty cops spilled his blood all over the murder scene ?
If Barrak gets the nomination, then the trunks have the donks at the edge of destruction, and the trunks had better do it right. Split them into little pieces and lock the RINOs in the back room while we chop gubmint down to size and reduce taxes. I give this dream about a one in thirty chance. But it is doable, once we sweep the jackasses out of the way, anything is doable.
Mark Steyn on John Howard's loss in Australia. This is just a bit of it:
I am a 100 per cent ally of Howard.
From my perch several thousand kilometres away, I won't pretend to be an informed analyst of the internal dynamics of the Liberal Party. During my last visit, en route to yet another meeting, there'd usually be someone in the car explaining why the fellow I was on the way to see was on the outs with whichever prime-minister-in-waiting I'd met the day before. I felt a bit like Bob Hope in The Paleface, heading for the big shootout and getting his head stuffed full of contradictory advice: He leans to the Left, so draw to the Right; the wind's in the east, so shoot to the west.
What mattered to the world was the strategic clarity Howard's ministry demonstrated on the critical issues facing (if you'll forgive the expression) Western civilisation.
First, the prime minister grasped the particular challenge posed by Islam. "I've heard those very silly remarks made about immigrants to this country since I was a child," said the Democrats' Lyn Allison. "If it wasn't the Greeks, it was the Italians ... or it was the Vietnamese." But those are races and nationalities. Islam is a religion, and a political project, and a globalised ideology. Unlike the birthplace of your grandfather, it's not something you leave behind in the old country.
Indeed, the pan-Islamic identity embraced by many second and third-generation Muslims in the West has very little to do with where their mums and dads happen to hail from. "You can't find any equivalent in Italian or Greek or Lebanese or Chinese or Baltic immigration to Australia. There is no equivalent of raving on about jihad," said Howard, stating the obvious in a way most of his fellow Western leaders could never quite bring themselves to do.
"Raving on about jihad" is a splendid line which meets what English law used to regard as the reasonable-man test. If you're a reasonable bloke slumped in front of the telly watching jihadists threatening to behead the Pope or Muslim members of Britain's National Health Service ploughing a blazing automobile through the check-in desk at Glasgow airport, "raving on about jihad" fits in a way that President George W. Bush's religion-of-peace pabulum doesn't. Bush and Tony Blair can be accused of the very opposite of the traditional politician's failing: they walked the walk but they didn't talk the talk. That's to say neither leader found a rhetoric for the present struggle that resonated. Howard did.
An except. For the full article + context go to "Mere Rhetoric"
... this isn't about Democratic foreign policy experts being traitors. Coulterism aside, the vast majority of Democrats really do think that the policies they recommend are more likely to make the world safe than the other side's policies. Center-left foreign policy experts aren't evil, they're just wrong. They're creatures of bureaucratic and educational institutions that are invested in interpreting rather straightforward events in specialist terms that aren't at all appropriate for the context of the Middle East. So Ahmadinejad's speeches that Israel should be wiped off the map are understood in these foreign policy circles as power grabs by domestic Iranian hardliners rather than as declarations that Ahmadinejad will nuke Israel just as soon as he can. Now of course, many experts will concede that it's both - but then they go right on suggesting policy on the basis of this 'sophisticated' insight rather than on the obvious understanding that anyone can take away from the speech (because if you based policy on what everyone can see, why would we need experts?)
#1
So Ahmadinejad's speeches that Israel should be wiped off the map are understood in these foreign policy circles as power grabs by domestic Iranian hardliners rather than as declarations that Ahmadinejad will nuke Israel just as soon as he can.
The intellectual descendents of those who dismissed Mein Kampf.
#2
Memo to the 'reasonable center-left foreign policy Democratic experts': when a totalitarian thug tells the world what he wants to do, your best starting point is to believe that he's serious.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/02/2007 13:11 Comments ||
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#3
No, your best starting point is to carry a pistol, and use it, AKA Beria.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
12/02/2007 13:41 Comments ||
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#4
Democrat ineffectualness and incompetence in foreign policy has long passed the point where it endangers national security. In past, I've even suggested that it would be worth it for Republicans to *pay* Democrat up-and-comers to attend classes both in history and foreign policy, taught by top experts who are not befuddled, ivory tower Marxists. That is, who actually teach their subject instead of endlessly opine on the relative merits of socialism as a thought problem.
The problem is that nobody has ever told many of them *why* having all world leaders hold hands and sing Kumbaya while Bono plays his guitar is a futile and worse than useless gesture.
The vast majority think that foreign policy is like a 50 minute TV comedy-drama that begins with somebody running into the Oval Office with a piece of paper and shouting, "Mr. President! We have a problem!", and then the President has 45 minutes left to solve the problem. With, of course, everything being back to normal the next week.
So our nation and the world get whip-sawed by having a brilliant foreign policy alternating with one conceptualized by horny drunken monkeys and a dart board.
It is intolerable. And while they're at it, a course in non-Marxian basic economics would help as well.
"The consequence is that [center-left foreign policy experts] end up recommending policies that address triangulation by encouraging Israeli concessions, hoping thereby to get to Hamas's refusal. But Hamas's hatred of Israel is ideological not tactical, and so Israel's concessions are pocketed and ignored – to the confusion of insightful experts."
The time has long passed for everyone, center-left foreign policy experts included, to recognize this obvious reality. When we look back in 40-50+ years, it will be so clear to us, to everyone. Many have accused the current foreign policy of our country of being myopic and misguided, if not unscrupulous and even malignant. I disagree. Our myopism has cost us plenty already and the nature of emerging threats meant we had to abandon the status quo or risk the unspeakable. (Accepting this scenario requires the belief that a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States was, ultmately, a matter of capability and not will.) Anything else is, in fact, myopic and misguided because it fails to realize that this has become or always was an ideological conflict. A well-meaning belief that the next concession or the next compromise will yield positive results rests its hopes in the short-term while ignoring the potential long-term consequences.
While certainly many factors have influence-- politics, economics, and culture, to name a few-- they will end up as nothing more than background noise when all is said and done.
I really should go read the whole thing, as it squarely hits a very very long-time theme of mine, namely the over-intellectualization of foreign policy. There are two components here - the over-intellectualization in general, and separately the particular cluelessness exhibited by what I'd call the Beltway elites (this includes their academic and quasi-academic fellows outside the DC area).
But there is, I think, a crucial additional problem afflicting primarily the Dem/lefty foreign policy types, and more importantly their political leaders: cowardice. This term is tossed around far too lightly any more, but by this I mean that aside from the faulty and naive intellectual frameworks described by others above, these sorts typically simply lack the resolve or the tolerance for risk to take anything other than the most tepid or moderate steps in reaction to any international developments. As a corollary, they seem to focus on things that are either (1) not amenable to human resolution, or at least not to govt.-led remedies, like climate change, or (2) huge, amorphous, difficult but non-urgent problems like AIDS, where "taking action" is essentially risk-free and more importantly a form of the morally preening social work that really feel comfortable with.
The Clinton crew's ineffectual response to AQ in the 90s had nothing to do with a false intellectual framework, everything to do with aversion to risk, messiness, and of course the use of force.
Knowing a great number of the likely Dem foreign policy players as I have for years, I try to explain to suitable acquaintances that the risks of a Dem White House extend far beyond the individual qualities of the president her/himself. The bulk or entirety of a Dem president's supporting entourage will be of the mindset described above. So you'll have the intertia of what appear to be a very action- and change-averse State and CIA supplemented by a similar mindset among the politicals. Scary.
Try to understand what is "compassionate and merciful" in some recent decisions handed down by Islamic courts. Some courageous Muslims are speaking out against the injustice carried out in the name of their great faith, and hopefully more will do so.
First, there's the absurd teddy bear case in Khartoum. British teacher Gillian Gibons was sentenced to 15 days on charges of insulting Islam for permitting her elementary class to name a teddy bear after the prophet Mohammed. Good grief, this is a 54-year-old divorced school teacher from Liverpool who took the job at one of Sudan's top international schools for a bit of adventure and to give a little back to the world. She had no idea that the innocent game of naming the teddy bear could cause such a ruckus. What kind of heartless parent would have made such a complaint about the teacher to the point she would be charged with blasphemy? Were they people of genuine faith who marched after Friday prayers in Khartoum today, chanting, "Kill her, kill her by firing squad!"?
Far from having confessed to an "illegal affair," al-Lahem says, the ministry's claim was based, incredibly, on the say-so of her convicted assailants, the rapists.
And then there's the case of Qatif Girl. The 19-year-old Saudi woman from the eastern province town of Qatif was given a sentence of 90 lashes after she was gang raped by seven men. She was convicted of being in the company of men who were not her close relatives, forbidden under Saudi justice. Then, after she raised the issue in the media, she received a harsher sentence on appeal of six months in prison and 200 lashes. This week, the Justice Ministry claimed that the increased sentence was not due to her media pressure but the fact that she was caught having an adulterous affair. In response, the victim's lawyer, Saudi human rights advocate Abdul Rahman al-Lahem, plans to lodge a defamation case against the Justice Ministry. Far from having confessed to an "illegal affair," al-Lahem says, the ministry's claim was based, incredibly, on the say-so of her convicted assailants, the rapists.
A court dismissed the case on grounds that the accused retracted their confessions and that testimony of other religious policemen can not be used as evidence against them.
If that wasn't enough, a court in Saudi Arabia also threw out a murder case this week against two members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. In what has been a landmark case against the previously untouchable religious police, the pair had been charged in the death of a Riyadh man suspected of possessing alcohol during a massive raid on his home last May. But in what appears to be a travesty of justice, a court dismissed the case on grounds that the accused retracted their confessions and that testimony of other religious policemen can not be used as evidence against them.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/02/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
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#1
"Fanatics destroy show true image of Islam in Sudan and Saudi Arabia"
There - fixed.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
12/02/2007 0:27 Comments ||
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#2
"More Islamic than thou" means more brutal and senseless in obeying the dictates of a primitive desert cult. But its followers are so absolutely brainwashed that even the awareness that acting to further the cult's aims leads to self-destruction does not deter them.
#4
Good grief, this is a 54-year-old divorced school teacher from Liverpool who took the job at one of Sudan's top international schools for a bit of adventure and to give a little back to the world. She had no idea that the innocent game of naming the teddy bear could cause such a ruckus.
What the H*ll did she think would happen? She should be executed. It would serve as an object lesson for all the do-gooders who still think all we need to do is understand one another. I understand enough about islam. What I understand is that were it not for international media coverage and the tiny shelter still provided by a British passport this woman would be dead. How many people are murdered by clerics or wake up with dread they might be every day in the Sudan? How many in the rest of the muslim world? All this for a teddy bear and yet for the left not so much as a ripple in the pond of their treasonous stupidity.
#6
Of course the Sudanese case is even more insane.
The stupid bear wasn't name on the Paedophil Prophet (Piss be on him), but after one of the students!! Oh right the student was named MoHamHead too. That makes it sensible.
#7
My Solomonic advice is behead the student and the teddy bear, give the poor gal a few lashes in the name of Islam and call it a day. I mean, it's not like we need more evidence that Islam is incompatible with the modern world.
Again, material translated by US officials is excluded from all but a few academics, most of whom are leftists like Juan Cole, who filter it to advance their own agenda. Ignorance in not an asset.
"I hope that what was done in Iraq will not be repeated. We have all learned a lesson and I hope with all my strength that the situation in Iran will be resolved diplomatically," (said) Egypt's Mohamed ElBaradei, who is now in Buenos Aires and gave an exclusive interview to Clarin yesterday afternoon, is at the center of a storm and is working against the clock.
ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is supervising the Iranian (nuclear development) plan, and he is also under pressure from the United States and its allies to harden his stance toward Tehran. Both the United States and Israel have sharply attacked the IAEA report on Iran.
(Nestor Restivo) Washington was highly critical of you and of UN inspector Hans Blix when you both denied that Saddam Husayn had weapons of mass destruction. Then the United States invaded Iraq. Is this is a similar scenario?/
(Mohamed ElBaradei) In both cases it is our duty to work with objectivity. I hope that there is no parallel (between these two cases) and that we have all learned a lesson. Despite all of our differences, I do believe that everyone sees a single solution for Iran: diplomacy.
(Restivo) But you know that the military option is on the table...
(ElBaradei) That would not solve anything. On the contrary, it would delay the Iranian plan but in the end it would not produce a lasting solution and would generate more problems in a region that is already a huge mess, the Middle East. There is no 100 percent guarantee, but we also do not have data indicating to us that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. But we do need an additional protocol about its new facilities.
(Restivo) Is it helpful for the United States or Israel to be talking about a military option? Why would Iran allow more inspections if they (the facilities inspected) might eventually become military targets?
(ElBaradei) Diplomacy has more to do with pressures, sanctions, and incentives for good behavior than with force. It used to be said that diplomacy was war waged by other means, but that ended with the UN Charter, which only allows war for self-defense, in the case of an imminent threat, or if the Security Council approves it. The use of force would put pressure on Iran to manufacture nuclear weapons, while right now it does not have large industrial facilities in operation. What Iran has is a nascent and small nuclear enrichment plan. But when a country is threatened it generally ends up with a military system... Okay, the bomb-and-nation-build option is off the table. We bomb until locals are strong enough to bomb for us.
Posted by: McZoid ||
12/02/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
I don't buy his third to the last sentence. UN Charter, which only allows war for self-defense, in the case of an imminent threat, or if the Security Council approves it
In addition that statement makes no mention of police actions.
#2
(Restivo) Is it helpful for the United States or Israel to be talking about a military option? Why would Iran allow more inspections if they (the facilities inspected) might eventually become military targets?
Whahahhahaa, something tells me the targeting process is not dependent upon "inspections."
#3
"I hope that what was done in Iraq will not be repeated. We have all learned a lesson and I hope with all my strength that the situation in Iran will be resolved diplomatically," (said) Egypt's Mohamed ElBaradei
Exactly. And what this fascist toad has learned is that it is possible to disregard the will of the "international community", French, Russian and Chinese oils and arms interests, the "House" of Saud, the entire edifice of Frankfurt School indoctrinated academics and their mentally and morally retarded media and celebrity lickspittles. It is possible to liberate tens of millions of people from millennia of absolutism and empire and bring them to the voting booth despite the threat of medieval violence. It may even be just possible Arabs and Muslims are capable of representative democratic government and sustaining civil society, this despite a holy book that celebrates little but rape and conquest and a dictatorship toppled less than five years ago. ElBaradei and his ilk have learned despite their hatred and condescension toward the Persians and Shiites that Iran too may become a representative democracy and find its way into the enemy column for the UNs parliament of dictators. Most important, ElBaradei has learned to never, ever bet against the strength, ingenuity and determination of the United States of America.
#6
Apparently, we have a dilemma: if we bomb Iran, it will cause proliferation. If we don't bomb Iran, they will build a nuclear bomb, which is, by definition, proliferation.
I vote we bomb.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/02/2007 13:12 Comments ||
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#8
What were the consequences to the Israeli raid on Syria just a month ago?
nothing...
the Syrians didn't attack thru the Golan Heights, or rocket Israel proper. The Iranians didn't attack Israel...
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
12/02/2007 15:40 Comments ||
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#9
We should do something about the fact that a US government source defers coverage of essential information, translated from important sources, to leftist scum like Juan Cole.
Open Source Center material should be on the internet.
by Franklin Foer Took him fourteen friggin pages to throw Beauchamp under the bus and try to cover his own ass...
When I last spoke with Beauchamp in early November, he continued to stand by his stories. Unfortunately, the standards of this magazine require more than that. And, in light of the evidence available to us, after months of intensive re-reporting, we cannot be confident that the events in his pieces occurred in exactly the manner that he described them. Without that essential confidence, we cannot stand by these stories.
Fourteen pages of self-righteous mush, hand-waving, hand-wringing, obfuscation, an admission that Beauchamp's wife was indeed his fact checker (because it was 'convenient'), and it all comes down to they 'cannot stand' by his stories.
No apology. No regret. And no high-level resignations.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/02/2007 12:26 Comments ||
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#5
So who plays Beauchamp in the movie?
Robert Redford? Sure, he is a little old to play an 18 yr old soldier, but we can probably get him cheap after Lions for Lambs. Lotsa box office star power, you betcha!
Perhaps we are being a little harsh on TNR. After all, in post-modern doctrine, the difference between journalism and fiction is, well, who knows? Anyway, it's not like this has happened before at TNR. Other than the previous two or three times, I mean.
#6
So who plays Beauchamp in the movie?
Robert Redford? Sure, he is a little old to play an 18 yr old soldier, but we can probably get him cheap after Lions for Lambs. Lotsa box office star power, you betcha!
how about the lil' scientologist hissownself? He's already playing a "good" nazi in "Valkyrie"?
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/02/2007 14:37 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
