The tougher questions on foreign issues Republicans should ask Obama

Ulrich J. Becker, Jerusalem, 2. Mar Cheschwan 5773 

 

Typically for Obama: Trying to be liked by your sworn enemies

Having watched the first presidential and vice-presidential debate, I found Romney and Ryan correctly attacking the Obama Administration on quite some issues, but in many points they could have done much more to reveal the tremendous dangers of another four years of Obama. 

 

(Usually I write here in German, but since I want to reach also some Americans, this article is in English, which is not my mother tongue and hopefully you’ll forgive language mistakes.)

 

I will focus on the foreign policy issue, since I am not enough into the facts to judge, who is more right on economics, but in my opinion the Romney ticket had also here at least the better arguments.

And yes, when Vice President Biden sums up the current democratic economical policy and vision with the words that overall they want that everybody will have some “peace of mind”, the socialist bells should ring very loud.

I think Ryan should have pointed this out, since Biden’s statement is exactly what socialism and communism present as their economical aim, and what is the base of their failure.

Yeah, it sounds always nice, when you make people totally safe from economical hardships and that they can just sit and rest and trust in the government, but that actually halts progress, growth and development and ends in failed economies and bankruptcy.

 

Anyway I am here to talk about the catastrophic foreign policy of the Obama ticket. I try not to repeat points that Romney and Ryan already addressed, but stress points they let out or did not emphasize enough.

 

Let me – as the Biden-Ryan debate – start with Libya; not because it is the main important foreign policy ground, but because one can see it as a ‘blueprint’ for the failed strategy and lacking insight of the Obama administration.

 

The next day the Benghazi happened, I told some friends that this thing could cost Obama his election. No, I was in no way happy for what happened, but hoped that it might now maybe open the eyes of many Americans and stop this dangerous path Obama’s administration has let America, the West and the world.

 

As always in their four years, the Obama administration answered failure with denial: They tried to come up with all kind of excuses – after lying to everybody about what happened on the ground -, but the facts are that on September 11^th their embassy was attacked in Benghazi in a preplanned and sophisticated way and four Americans – including their ambassador to Libya were murdered.

 

It seems nearly unbearable to the reasonable mind, how in the world the US could have left their ambassador on this specific date without any American armed protection stay in Benghazi, ‘protected’ by Libyans that even did not take up the fight (although the Obama administration also lying about that), they weren’t even wounded.

But the problem starts not hear, not even despite it was known that armed Al Qaida cells are around. The problem starts with the Obama administration in the first place becoming the air force of Al Qaida in Libya, fighting their war. Actually the problem starts even much early, at his great official speech Barak Hussein Obama held abroad – in Cairo.

This was the starting point of a policy that pushed aside traditional allies in the region and provided the battleground for Islamist: Obama took care to invite leaders of the Muslims brotherhood to this event – something that without his pressure would never have happened.

His acts and his speech sent a clear sign to the Islamists in Egypt und later in the region: ‘With this Obama we might rise to power.’

It took not too long that the same Cairo was take over by the same Islamists, now providing the government, after Obama had abandoned Mubarak.

Sure, Mubarak was a dictator, but an Islamist Egypt will provide a far bigger danger to the freedom in Egypt, the US and the world than Mubarak’s regime ever did.

But Obama never lets rational calculations win over his preference to ‘look nice to Moslems’. That is the premise. Therefore Tough warlike leadership decisions won’t come from him, against adversaries of the US, since he want’s to look nice.

And thus the desasterous path of naïve goodwill and blind hope for the best, took his beginning and this are the main principals that Obama since then used again and again, to compromise the security of America, endanger lives, show weakness and encourage the enemy to attack.

 

In Benghazi they didn’t want American arms before the embassy in order to show naïve goodwill, to be nice…

They hoped for the bestm and that their Muslim guards would move a finger to protect them from the huge American hate around them.

Hillary Clinton even was so uninformed and naïve to even wonder, how they could have done this ‘to a friend of Libya’, after the US played their air force. She called the attack “senseless violence”.

“Senseless” you only call it, if you don’t understand, what is going on. For an Islamist ideologist such violence is everything else but “senseless”, but does the best sense in the world: It attacks the leading power of the ‘infidel west’ as hard as they can, using all possible means.

And Obama can ‘hope’ and hold nice talks as much as he wants – in their Islamist game the US has helped them to reach their goals.

Very rightly, Romney said to Obama: “Hope is not a strategy.”

He should emphasize it more. It’s the heart about the problem with Obama.

(A) You remember Obama’s reaction after the Iranians downed a highly sophisticated American drone – the fruit of years of high end secret research?

He asked the Iranians to please give it back.

It’s that pathetic and that naïve. And of course he did nothing in order to recover it. Why Romney and Ryan are not mentioning this grave failure of Obama?

(B) Why they do not remember when Hillary Clinton called the murders of the Assad regime “police actions”?

(C) When the army asks for more troops in Afghanistan he denies them and takes care for very strict rules of engagement to ‘be nice’, but makes it even harder to win in Afghanistan. In addition he tells the enemy when he will surely leave – no matter – what.

(D) He did nothing, when a Shiite, pro-Iranian government took over Iraq. The same Iraq that the US fought so hard to liberate. Many soldiers payed with their lifes. When the soldiers were leaving, Obama came by with his wife and did a funny flirt show. Now, this same Iraq helps to support Assad and broadens it’s cooperation with Iran and the end is not in sight.

 

In the whole region, the weakness of Obama let Islamists come out and take up the fight and challenge the US. I mentioned Iraq, but also in Afghanistan Obama shows that he believes to solve the problem with a ‘war light’, while more and more Americans are killed by their so called ‘friends’, the Islamic Afghan soldiers.

(E) Karzai himself felt he can openly confront the US.

(D)        Pakistan blackmails the US about their transports to Afghanistan and even verbally attacked the US in a way I can’t remember from former administrations, while at the same time not even pretending to be embarrassed that the world Terrorist No.1 had been obviously hidden by their Pakistani ISI secret service.

The Obama administration even did not make an issue out of that, since they are afraid of conflict with the Pakistanis and want to show that famous goodwill to Muslims and even took care to let everybody know that (E) they gave Ossama Bin Laden the honor of Muslim burial rituals.

Meanwhile, Yemen breaks apart, Egypt has become Islamist on Obama’s watch and already started to attack American NGOs, while Islamists have started to attack Israeli and Western targets in Sinai and more than a few of those terrorists have just been freed by the new Islamist president of Egypt. Obama is loosing it…

 

(F) But the American display of weakness under Obama does not stop in this region, but goes all the way to the far East, where South Korea is as worried as we Israelis, that the US has lost its deterrence vis-à-vis the rogue states on our borders. Tell me when North Korea was more deterred? In four years of Bush or now under Obama? When did they temporarily agree to dismantle their nuclear weapons program? When did they took the chance to attack and kill South Korean soldiers? And what was the answer of Obama? Goodwill and hope, much hope. Hope, hope and a lot of nice and important sounding words.

There is one Talmudic statement that describes this situation best:

 

“Those that are merciful to the cruel, will end up being cruel to the merciful.” (Kohelet Raba 7:33)

 

That’s what happened to Chris Stevens and three of his fellow Americans in Libya. That is what happens to American soldiers being killed by the Afghan soldier next to them. This is what South Korean and Israelis and other American allies, too, fear will happen to them. Coptic Christians in Egypt fear the same thing.

With Obama, the United States have sadly turned their back to their natural allies, while trying to pet the very enemies that want to destroy them by all kind possible means.

(G) Do you remember the White House opening a virtual embassy to Iran? What for? Did they behave so great since they have brutally overtaken and ransacked the American embassy in Teheran and taken all that were present hostage?

Obama does not understand that his ‘nice gesture’ will be interpreted as a proof of American and Western weakness.

Obama does not understand what the Arab spring is all about. A hint: It’s not about democracy, liberal values and progress. Does he not know the difference between populism and democracy? Was the German Nazi movement that took Germany by elections a ‘democratic movement’, a ‘democratic chance’, a great ‘Change’, Mr. Obama?

 

Vice President Biden asked just now in his debate with Ryan on the issue of Iran, about “what weakness” he was talking about. “What weakness”, Mr. Biden?

It’s even more alarming that the Obama administration does not just grave mistakes that could hurt generations, no, it even does not see what is going on. They are completely in denial. ‘What weakness’? Unbelievable.

If he does not know, what weakness – surely the Iranians do. It’s not just the attempt to kill the Saudi Ambassador on American soil, just look at Syria for a moment.

The US is supporting the Islamist rebel movement in a cautious, half secretly way, while the Iranians are openly in the war, even having the guts to provide support to the Assad troops through Iraqi airspace.

(H) It is also well known that they support the Taliban in all possible ways (including refuge, training, weapons, money) to kill Americans and their allies. They are not afraid the Americans could start some retaliation against them. They are not afraid to get involved in Iraq, they are not afraid to act provocatively towards American vessels in the Persian Gulf and openly harass them (also here).

(I) Not to forget Iran’s openly cross border raids into Iraq to eliminate adversaries. The US did nothing.

Dear Mr. Biden, they are not afraid and they see you as weak, as a paper tiger that never steps in, but keeps talking. That’s what they see: a paper tiger. You and Obama say in any other sentence how much you are afraid of war, so they know that they can challenge you in any way without seeing a serious reaction.

 

Biden was asked, why his administration does not step in in Syria while in Libya they stepped in for quite lesser ‘burning’ circumstances. He said, “it’s another country”. Really? To his information, every country is another country.

The question is, if you have values to keep up, or if you are just attacking small and weak countries and shy away from bigger ones, while talking about your unshakably values?

You stay out of Syria, not because it’s less worse, but because you are a f r a i d. You let Hisb’Allah and Iran work hard to butcher themselves through the country in order to keep their fascist terror base, while your main premise is to stay nice and keep out. It’s not human lives, it’s your mental weakness.

 

It’s the same weakness we saw in the try of an inner Revolution in Iran.

 

Also here Obama did not react first, then much too late and loose the whole thing. A pattern he keeps to.

 

Actually Obama nearly never starts any kind of active own initiative of the USA – except for the Pacific deployment. There he can be proud that he brought in more soldiers, although the only enemy so far there are the waves of the pacific – while taking out many soldiers from real enemies that swore to fight until their or your death.

 

But let’s come to the final and most important subject: Iran.

Biden actually summed the Obama strategy up during the debate with Ryan in one simple sentence:

 

“The last thing we need now, is another war.”

 

(J) And you know what, seemingly he is completely right: Who needs another war? Who needs war in general? Maybe just stop wars?

The problem is not just, that he mirrors the naïve world view of the escapist leftists, he seemingly believes, wars are done, because someone ‘needs’ them or ‘does not need’ them.

He does the classic leftists mistake that presumes there is no enemy, only one self and thus nobody else then we determine, if we ‘need’ a war or not. A war cannot be forced upon you. There can not be circumstances where you have to fight a war in order to survive or something.

I want to ask Mr. Biden: Was the American entrance into the second World War ‘needed’ in his definition? Or maybe they just had to enter it in order to save Europe, the world and themselves from the fascistic regimes in Europe and Asia?

Biden sounds as if one chooses when to go to war and when not, like saying: ‘Ah the next two year, we don’t need a war.’ Ok, so he decides, there won’t be one. Actions of enemies? Not existent.

 

He should ponder about the deeper truth of the ancient statement: “If you wish for peace, prepare for war.“

 

The Obama administration does exactly the opposite: It explains all enemies how much they are preparing for peace, how categorically they won’t want to put up a fight and at what dates they are pulling our their forces.

They are running away from war. But – as another wise statement has it – “Who runs away from war, war will chase him.“

 

That’s also why Biden had the audaciousness of belittling Iran’s nuclear program, telling us to “calm down” and that Iran is “more isolated today than we took office“, actually “totally isolated“.

 

(K) Totally isolated? Mmh, I read every week of a new Iranian partnership program in Asia, in Europa, in South America. About growing war relationships with Ecuador, Brazil etc., about an Iranian missile base in Venezuela, which has become a key alley of Iran, about strong ties to North Korea, about advancements in Africa, about leaders of the ‘Islamistically liberated’ countries of the ‘Arab spring’ that follow invitations to Iran after decades their countries had no connection.

Read about their new connections and people in the ground in Sinai and North Africa. In face of a retreating America, Jordan even thinks about getting along with Iranian hegemony.

(L) And let’s not forget that under Obama’s watch, too, it was that Lebanon fell in the hands of Iran, with a near putsch action. What was the reaction of the White House? Any guess? Yes, nothing. In fact, four of five of Israel’s bordering states and entities are today Islamist (three of them with strong Iranian influence and/or presence), while under Bush it was just one.

Is this the way Obama “totally isolated” Iran?

 

The fact is, under Obama the enemies of America and the West and democracy became quite stronger. The fact is, he started no foreign policy initiative, except for few that totally failed or are quite irrelevant. So everything he tried, failed or messed up, the whole Obama ticket builds he foreign successes on one thing he inherited from Bush – the hunt on Bin Laden – and his nice sounding decisions to go out of Iraq and Afghanistan, no matter what the situation, where we will only see the consequences later.

Actually his best thing he ever did in the foreign field, was not to change the existing strategy (hunt for Bin Laden).

 

In 1983 over 200 American soldiers were killed by Iran-proxy Hisb’Allah with a single bombe. The USA run away. This was the beginning of the Iranian and Islamist terror wave that is here until this day. Back then the USA thought there is no point staying and fighting, but history has proven that the enemies of Western and American civilization were just encouraged to keep on fighting.

Make you calculations if the Islamist can celebrate their ‘chasing away’ of the Americans from Iraq and Afghanistan…

 

In short: Obama’s foreign policies – if there are such – are a catastrophe so far and we don’t know how many years the Americans will need to recover from it, but surely another four years will really seal the downfall of the foremost formidable democratic empire.

 

And when it comes to Israel, Obama viciousness against Jewish homes in Jewish lands, his open and recorded lie about the united Jerusalem, his board of anti-Israeli aides, his disgusting behavior towards or Premier minister, his one sided support of Palestinian positions that stopped peace negotiations all together, we all know.

(M) But I think, one best reveals Obama’s true face, not by judging his words – since here he is a master of change and deception – but by his acts and deeds. And just to remind you of one seemingly little, tiny fact: Obama visited the Middle Eastern region five times in his four year term. Guess how many times he visisted the clothests alley of the United States in the Middle East, Israel? That’s sadly right: Zero. 0. Not one time, while flying around us, and giving his big anti-Israelian speech next door in Egypy. That says actually everything.

Republicans start to challenge Obama and his record. Start to open the eyes of the Americans. Not again four years of blind weakness and growing dangers. “Hope is not a strategy.“

 

 

 

 

P.S.: This article was written before the second presidential debate and this is not the place to go through it. Just one point: Obama claimed that he indeed called the embassy attack in Benghazi an act of terror in the Rose Garden speech. And the seemingly biased CNN moderator jumped in to support his claim (is that at all her job?). Well, check up the transcript as Obama suggested, and you will see, that Obama called it the whole way through just an “attack” while at the end once talking in general(!) about terror and mentioning “acts of terror“:

 

“No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, …”

 

At least this is not clear, so Obama and his CNN friend were misleading the public. Don’t let them fool you, check the facts.