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Administration Criticizes America Rather Than Selling America
The Advocate
By Herb Denenberg, The Bulletin
The Obama administration bows, scrapes and sweet talks to America’s worst enemies and slaps around America’s heroes and America’s allies.
President Barack Obama and his administration sweet talk Iran, with open arms for negotiation, but fail to act on warlike provocations of North Korea, and want to hit the reset button with Russia. All this while at the same time putting out a Department of Homeland Security bulletin questioning the loyalty of our returning veterans, as well as those who oppose abortion and support the Second Amendment relating to gun ownership, and those who believe in strictly controlling our border to keep illegal immigrants out.
President Obama goes on a tour of Europe, in which he praises Muslims for their contribution to America and seems to bootlick every European leader he encounters, while at the same time putting down America and apologizing for our “dark periods” and our “arrogance.” He obviously spent too much time in the pews of the church of Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright.
As North Korea fires an ICBM missile toward Japan and into the Pacific, President Obama is cutting the budget for our missile defenses and talking loudly but carrying a toothpick-size stick, sending the matter to the United Nations, knowing that will be futile.
After letting Iran stall and dance for many years on the nuclear issue, Mr. Obama’s State Department announces it will engage in multilateral talks with Iran on the nuclear issues. Having made that announcement, Iran announces it has installed 7,000 centrifuges in its Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
And who does President Obama blame for the failure of nuclear negotiations with Iran? He, of course, blames his predecessor rather than placing any blame on Iran. As Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, pointed out in the Wall Street Journal (April 12, 2009), “While President Obama plays checkers, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei plays chess. The enrichment milestone is a testament both to Tehran’s pro-active strategy and to Washington’s refusal to recognize it.”
It’s clear to even fools that Iran is just toying with us, and that its diplomacy and negotiations are just a ploy to buy it time on the way to a nuclear bomb and nuclear diplomacy that will together threaten the Middle East and the world. Listen to this public statement from a top Iranian leader admitting that its real intentions are nuclear weapons and not electricity.
On June 14, 2008, Abdollah Ramezanadeh, former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami’s spokesman, in a debate at Gila in Northern Iran, said, “We should prove to the entire world that we want power plants for electricity. Afterwards, we can proceed with other activities.” My, I wonder what those “other activities” are?
If that’s not enough, even this month (April 2009), a leading Iranian spokesman again admitted its international pronouncements are insincere. Hassan Rowhandi, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator at the time, in an interview said that “to counter global consensus against Iran,” we agreed to a suspension of nuclear development.
But then he added, “We did not accept suspension in construction of centrifuges and continued the effort …We needed a greater number.” Mr. Rubin observed, “what diplomats considered progress, Iranian engineers understood to be an opportunity to expand their program.”
Mr. Rubin went on to summarize the situation perfectly:
“In his March 24 press conference, Mr. Obama said, ‘I’m a big believer in persistence.’ Making the same mistake repeatedly, however, is neither wise nor realism; it is arrogant, naïve, and dangerous.” (Mr. Rubin might have added that repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is also one definition of insanity.)
“When Mr. Obama declared on April 5 that ‘All countries can access peaceful nuclear energy,’ the [Iranian] state-run daily newspaper Resalat responded with a front page headline, ‘The United States capitulates to the nuclear goals of Iran,’ With Washington embracing dialogue without accountability and Tehran embracing diplomacy without sincerity, it appears the Iranian government is right.”
Observe again: From these Iranian pronouncements, Iran has made it public and clear that it is playing President Obama for a sucker. And President Obama continues to act like he doesn’t have a clue.
Observe again: He approaches Iran, our mortal enemy now supporting terrorism and war that kills American troops in Iraq, with kid gloves and bootlicking subservience, but he uses an iron fist and arrogant dictation when it comes to a close ally such as Israel. And he is cordial to the anti-American Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Read on for details.
This rookie who thinks he knows it all, also allows himself to be photographed on two occasions with tyrant Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, creating propaganda pictures that look like the two are bosom buddies. Mr. Chavez is the man who is stirring up anti-Americanism in South America, and yet President Obama gives him credibility and power for his propaganda mill. Courtesy is one thing, but does he have to act like he’s Mr. Chavez’s bosom buddy?
At the same time, when Benjamin Netanyahu, the new prime minister of Israel, schedules a trip to Washington, D.C., the White House makes it clear that President Obama won’t be there to meet him. While being silent in the face of provocations from North Korea, Iran and elsewhere, the Obama administration starts dictating the terms of a peace settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The White House also tries to use its position on Iran’s nuclear development as a bargaining chip to force Israel to give up the West Bank. It also makes it clear it is no longer opposed to Hamas being a part of the government of the Palestinian authority.
So while putting a death squeeze on Israel, President Obama seems to go out of his way to protect the interests of the terrorist organization Hamas, whose founding documents call for the destruction of Israel, an objective its leaders repeat with genocidal regularity. The safety and survival of the world is tied up in the issue of Iran’s nuclear weapon development, and the Obama administration turns that life and death issue into a bargaining chip.
Here are two more pieces of evidence that can be added to the overwhelming collection that suggests President Obama ought to be called Barack “the Appeaser” Obama and Barack “the Apologizer” Obama.
First, the U.S. failed to use its best radar system, the SBX, to track the recent firing by North Korea of a missile, contrary to United Nations regulations. Bill Gertz of the Washington Times (April 15, 2009) reports,
“SBX, deployed in 2005, can track and identify warheads, decoys and debris in space with very high precision. Officials said the radar is so powerful it could detect a baseball hit out of a ballpark more than 3,000 miles away, and that other radars used by the U.S. would not be able to provide the same level of detail about North Korea’s missile capabilities.”
Why wouldn’t we use our best radar for such an important mission? Mr. Gertz reports, “One current and two former specialists in strategic defenses said the administration rejected the request because it feared that moving the huge floating radar system would be viewed by North Korea as provocative and upset diplomatic efforts aimed at restarting six-nation nuclear talks.”
That shows you how weak Barack “The Appeaser” Obama is. He faces a North Korea defying a U.N. resolution and firing an ICBM toward Japan and the Pacific and he is afraid that our taking an obvious defensive measure is provocative. If North Korea would bomb San Francisco, President Obama would probably sit there and worry about “provoking” North Korea. Give me a break.
The Obama administration seems to be spending most of its time sending messages of weakness and appeasement to America’s enemies. Mr. Gertz reported that initially Admiral Timothy Keating, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, said the U.S. was prepared to shoot down the missile using missile interceptors based in Alaska. But then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said instead, the U.S. would send the matter to the U.N.
That is about the only place that guarantees absolutely nothing will be done. So much for President Obama’s tough talk on the missile launch. Here again, there is no connection between Obama rhetoric and hard reality.
The Obama administration also demonstrated its weakness and tendency to apologize and appease with another recent action. It released the details of the interrogation techniques used during the Bush administration. The present CIA director and four previous directors said the release of this information would be harmful to America’s security interests.
They give terrorists a road map of our decision-making processes and will enable the training of terrorists to be more effective against us if they are captured. Even if there was a change in policy, there was no good purpose for the release of this information.
By now, it is well known that the techniques disclosed did work, and a former CIA director estimated that half of what we know about al-Qaida was obtained as a result of the use of these techniques. What’s more, what we obtained from the captives enabled us to head off terrorist attacks.
But the value and importance of the techniques were edited out of the secret document just released. President Obama continues to show he is more concerned with the comfort of terrorists than the safety of Americans; he is more concerned with appeasing our enemies than supporting our allies; and he is more interested in apologizing for America than in advertising the great role America has always played as one of the world’s great defenders against tyranny and one of the world’s great humanitarian benefactors.
Unfortunately, our president seems more interested in apologizing for America than loving America. And unfortunately this perspective influences foreign policy and turns it in a direction that endangers America.
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.
President Barack Obama and his administration sweet talk Iran, with open arms for negotiation, but fail to act on warlike provocations of North Korea, and want to hit the reset button with Russia. All this while at the same time putting out a Department of Homeland Security bulletin questioning the loyalty of our returning veterans, as well as those who oppose abortion and support the Second Amendment relating to gun ownership, and those who believe in strictly controlling our border to keep illegal immigrants out.
President Obama goes on a tour of Europe, in which he praises Muslims for their contribution to America and seems to bootlick every European leader he encounters, while at the same time putting down America and apologizing for our “dark periods” and our “arrogance.” He obviously spent too much time in the pews of the church of Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright.
As North Korea fires an ICBM missile toward Japan and into the Pacific, President Obama is cutting the budget for our missile defenses and talking loudly but carrying a toothpick-size stick, sending the matter to the United Nations, knowing that will be futile.
After letting Iran stall and dance for many years on the nuclear issue, Mr. Obama’s State Department announces it will engage in multilateral talks with Iran on the nuclear issues. Having made that announcement, Iran announces it has installed 7,000 centrifuges in its Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
And who does President Obama blame for the failure of nuclear negotiations with Iran? He, of course, blames his predecessor rather than placing any blame on Iran. As Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, pointed out in the Wall Street Journal (April 12, 2009), “While President Obama plays checkers, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei plays chess. The enrichment milestone is a testament both to Tehran’s pro-active strategy and to Washington’s refusal to recognize it.”
It’s clear to even fools that Iran is just toying with us, and that its diplomacy and negotiations are just a ploy to buy it time on the way to a nuclear bomb and nuclear diplomacy that will together threaten the Middle East and the world. Listen to this public statement from a top Iranian leader admitting that its real intentions are nuclear weapons and not electricity.
On June 14, 2008, Abdollah Ramezanadeh, former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami’s spokesman, in a debate at Gila in Northern Iran, said, “We should prove to the entire world that we want power plants for electricity. Afterwards, we can proceed with other activities.” My, I wonder what those “other activities” are?
If that’s not enough, even this month (April 2009), a leading Iranian spokesman again admitted its international pronouncements are insincere. Hassan Rowhandi, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator at the time, in an interview said that “to counter global consensus against Iran,” we agreed to a suspension of nuclear development.
But then he added, “We did not accept suspension in construction of centrifuges and continued the effort …We needed a greater number.” Mr. Rubin observed, “what diplomats considered progress, Iranian engineers understood to be an opportunity to expand their program.”
Mr. Rubin went on to summarize the situation perfectly:
“In his March 24 press conference, Mr. Obama said, ‘I’m a big believer in persistence.’ Making the same mistake repeatedly, however, is neither wise nor realism; it is arrogant, naïve, and dangerous.” (Mr. Rubin might have added that repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is also one definition of insanity.)
“When Mr. Obama declared on April 5 that ‘All countries can access peaceful nuclear energy,’ the [Iranian] state-run daily newspaper Resalat responded with a front page headline, ‘The United States capitulates to the nuclear goals of Iran,’ With Washington embracing dialogue without accountability and Tehran embracing diplomacy without sincerity, it appears the Iranian government is right.”
Observe again: From these Iranian pronouncements, Iran has made it public and clear that it is playing President Obama for a sucker. And President Obama continues to act like he doesn’t have a clue.
Observe again: He approaches Iran, our mortal enemy now supporting terrorism and war that kills American troops in Iraq, with kid gloves and bootlicking subservience, but he uses an iron fist and arrogant dictation when it comes to a close ally such as Israel. And he is cordial to the anti-American Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Read on for details.
This rookie who thinks he knows it all, also allows himself to be photographed on two occasions with tyrant Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, creating propaganda pictures that look like the two are bosom buddies. Mr. Chavez is the man who is stirring up anti-Americanism in South America, and yet President Obama gives him credibility and power for his propaganda mill. Courtesy is one thing, but does he have to act like he’s Mr. Chavez’s bosom buddy?
At the same time, when Benjamin Netanyahu, the new prime minister of Israel, schedules a trip to Washington, D.C., the White House makes it clear that President Obama won’t be there to meet him. While being silent in the face of provocations from North Korea, Iran and elsewhere, the Obama administration starts dictating the terms of a peace settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The White House also tries to use its position on Iran’s nuclear development as a bargaining chip to force Israel to give up the West Bank. It also makes it clear it is no longer opposed to Hamas being a part of the government of the Palestinian authority.
So while putting a death squeeze on Israel, President Obama seems to go out of his way to protect the interests of the terrorist organization Hamas, whose founding documents call for the destruction of Israel, an objective its leaders repeat with genocidal regularity. The safety and survival of the world is tied up in the issue of Iran’s nuclear weapon development, and the Obama administration turns that life and death issue into a bargaining chip.
Here are two more pieces of evidence that can be added to the overwhelming collection that suggests President Obama ought to be called Barack “the Appeaser” Obama and Barack “the Apologizer” Obama.
First, the U.S. failed to use its best radar system, the SBX, to track the recent firing by North Korea of a missile, contrary to United Nations regulations. Bill Gertz of the Washington Times (April 15, 2009) reports,
“SBX, deployed in 2005, can track and identify warheads, decoys and debris in space with very high precision. Officials said the radar is so powerful it could detect a baseball hit out of a ballpark more than 3,000 miles away, and that other radars used by the U.S. would not be able to provide the same level of detail about North Korea’s missile capabilities.”
Why wouldn’t we use our best radar for such an important mission? Mr. Gertz reports, “One current and two former specialists in strategic defenses said the administration rejected the request because it feared that moving the huge floating radar system would be viewed by North Korea as provocative and upset diplomatic efforts aimed at restarting six-nation nuclear talks.”
That shows you how weak Barack “The Appeaser” Obama is. He faces a North Korea defying a U.N. resolution and firing an ICBM toward Japan and the Pacific and he is afraid that our taking an obvious defensive measure is provocative. If North Korea would bomb San Francisco, President Obama would probably sit there and worry about “provoking” North Korea. Give me a break.
The Obama administration seems to be spending most of its time sending messages of weakness and appeasement to America’s enemies. Mr. Gertz reported that initially Admiral Timothy Keating, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, said the U.S. was prepared to shoot down the missile using missile interceptors based in Alaska. But then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said instead, the U.S. would send the matter to the U.N.
That is about the only place that guarantees absolutely nothing will be done. So much for President Obama’s tough talk on the missile launch. Here again, there is no connection between Obama rhetoric and hard reality.
The Obama administration also demonstrated its weakness and tendency to apologize and appease with another recent action. It released the details of the interrogation techniques used during the Bush administration. The present CIA director and four previous directors said the release of this information would be harmful to America’s security interests.
They give terrorists a road map of our decision-making processes and will enable the training of terrorists to be more effective against us if they are captured. Even if there was a change in policy, there was no good purpose for the release of this information.
By now, it is well known that the techniques disclosed did work, and a former CIA director estimated that half of what we know about al-Qaida was obtained as a result of the use of these techniques. What’s more, what we obtained from the captives enabled us to head off terrorist attacks.
But the value and importance of the techniques were edited out of the secret document just released. President Obama continues to show he is more concerned with the comfort of terrorists than the safety of Americans; he is more concerned with appeasing our enemies than supporting our allies; and he is more interested in apologizing for America than in advertising the great role America has always played as one of the world’s great defenders against tyranny and one of the world’s great humanitarian benefactors.
Unfortunately, our president seems more interested in apologizing for America than loving America. And unfortunately this perspective influences foreign policy and turns it in a direction that endangers America.
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.
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