Barack Obama -- June 25, 2009

June 25, 2009

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"Islam has always been a part of America’s story"

Barack Hussein Obama

event	description
Negotiating with Terrorists	As the Iranian government’s murderous repression of the Iranian people continues, critics right and left agitate over the deafening silence of Obama, who, as a candidate, derided the Bush administration’s ambitious democracy promotion as too timid. They speculate as to why Barack Obama won’t speak out: Why won’t he condemn the mullahs? Is he daft enough to believe he can charm the regime into abandoning its nuclear ambitions? Does the self-described realist so prize stability that he thinks it’s worth abandoning the cause of freedom -- and the best chance in 30 years of dislodging an implacable American enemy? In truth, it’s worse than that. Even as the mullahs are terrorizing the Iranian people, the Obama administration is negotiating with an Iranian-backed terrorist organization and abandoning the American proscription against exchanging terrorist prisoners for hostages kidnapped by terrorists. Worse still, Obama has already released a terrorist responsible for the brutal murders of five American soldiers in exchange for the remains of two deceased British hostages. Prepare to be infuriated -- continue reading here . . . There's more -- the cardinal rule, and until now the official policy of the US, is clear: We do not negotiate with terrorists. To do so only encourages more terrorism and makes civilians more vulnerable, as their value increases as hostages. It also gives more credibility to the terrorists and places them at the level of nation-states in diplomacy, which allows them to attract recruits. And, as we see here, it also doesn’t work. It doesn’t moderate terrorists, and it doesn’t satisfy their demands. As the Israelis keep discovering, it usually results in the exchange of live terrorists for the corpses of the innocent. It ensures more corpses down the road as well. Will Obama explain this change in US policy that allowed hostage exchanges, so that Americans can evaluate it openly and honestly? Don’t hold your breath.
Arabs Support Obama's Mideast Peace Drive	Arab foreign ministers vowed on Wednesday to support Barack Obama's Middle East peace efforts but said that normalization with Israel depends on a halt to its settlement activity. Arab countries "are prepared to deal positively with Obama's proposals to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict," they said in a statement after a meeting at Arab League headquarters in Cairo. They vowed to "take the necessary steps to support the American effort based on achieving comprehensive peace and the creation of a sovereign, independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital." Continue reading here . . .
Obama Opens Window Of Hope Says Arab League	The Arab League said on Wednesday it saw a "window of hope" for Middle East peace and Arab states would respond positively to Barack Obama's vision for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. But the league likened negotiating with Israel while settlements were continuing to expand as tantamount to surrendering on "matters over which we cannot surrender." "We see an open window in what the American president has said ... Now there is a window of hope that was not present for at least the previous eight years," Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa told journalists after a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo. Continue reading here . . . Well, if all these Arabs are for it, it must be good, right?
Obama's Weakness Issue	If only Obama were a third as tough on Iran and North Korea as he is on Republicans, he’d be making progress in containing the dire threats to our national security these rogue nations represent. As it is, the president is letting the perception of weakness cloud his image. Once that particular miasma enshrouds a presidency, it is hard to dissipate. If foreign policy issues actually involve war and the commitment of troops, they can be politically potent. But otherwise, the impact of international affairs on presidential image is largely metaphoric. Since foreign policy is the only area in which the president can govern virtually alone, it provides a window on his personality and use of power that domestic policy cannot. When Clinton, for example, dithered as Bosnia burned, he acquired a reputation for weakness that dragged down his ratings. It was only after he moved decisively to bomb and then disarm the Serbs that he shed that image. It took George H.W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq to set to rest concerns that he was a "wimp." Jimmy Carter never recovered from the lasting damage to his reputation that his inability to stand up to Iran during the hostage crisis precipitated. So now, as North Korea defies international sanctions and sends arms to Myanmar and Iran slaughters its citizens in the streets, Obama looks helpless and hapless. He comes across as not having a clue how to handle the crises. Continue reading here . . .
Obama, The African Colonial	Had Americans been able to stop obsessing over the color of Barack Obama's skin and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him lies with his identification with his father, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in postcolonial Africa. Like many educated intellectuals in postcolonial Africa, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was enraged at the transformation of his native land by its colonial conqueror. But instead of embracing the traditional values of his own tribal cultural past, he embraced an imported Western ideology, Marxism. I call such frustrated and angry modern Africans who embrace various foreign "isms", instead of looking homeward for repair of societies that are broken, African Colonials. They are Africans who serve foreign ideas. The tropes of America's racial history as a way of understanding all things black are useless in understanding the man who got his dreams from his father, a Kenyan exemplar of the African Colonial. Before I continue, I need to say this: I am a first generation born West African-American woman whose parents emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970's from the country now called Nigeria. I travel to Nigeria frequently. I see myself as both a proud American and as a proud Igbo (the tribe that we come from -- also sometimes spelled Ibo). Politically, I have always been conservative (though it took this past election for me to commit to this once and for all!); my conservative values come from my Igbo heritage and my place of birth. Of course, none of this qualifies me to say what I am about to -- but at the same time it does. My friends, despite what CNN and the rest are telling you, Barack Obama is nothing more than an old school African Colonial who is on his way to turning this country into one of the developing nations that you learn about on the National Geographic Channel. Continue reading here . . .
Obama’s Solution To Everything
Two Citizen Parents	Why does it require two citizen parents? What is the policy behind the language requiring two US citizen parents? Policy as used with regards to the drafting of laws is a legal term of art. It’s analogous to concern. What legal concern is acknowledged by requiring two citizen parents? Leo Donofrio addresses why Senate Resolution 511 doesn’t state that a person born abroad to one citizen parent is a natural born citizen.