America has suffered enough damage from Obama’s amateurish Preisdency.

The idea promoted by President Obama and his supporters that the tentative agreement with Syria/Russia to consolidate and destroy Assad’s chemical weapons is a “breakthrough” in arms control and validates the threat of force is a deliberate dishonest attempt to misrepresent the facts to the American public.

Because there is a war on the ground in Syria and because President Obama gave Assad months to hide his chemical weapons, there is no way we will get anywhere near 100% of these weapons. Look at Libya. Years later we are still looking for his hidden chemical weapons. There is no debate that it would take thousands of trained workers and years to accomplish anything near a thorough search of the entire country. Meanwhile, Obama the “Nobel Prize Winner” leaves Assad in power to continue the slaughter of his people.

The most ridiculous of Obama’s claims is that the threat of force he used in amassing the fleet of Navy assets is what brought Syria “to it’s knees” and henceforth agreed to surrendering their weapons. That, once again, is a half-truth. Yes, the military armada was definitely a wake-up call for Assad and the Russians. In fact the Russians were evacuating their citizens and military all the way up until Obama got cold feet and went to Congress to avoid making a decision that was well within his right as President.

Now America’s primary, most vital and peaceful line of defense – the concept that America will use it’s military to back up its rhetoric is now no longer a deterrent to our enemies. Our enemies know now that our President has no stomach for even a “shot over the bow”, much less a serious military intervention. Our enemies know, like many American are just now realizing - that the substance of Obama’s character is no match for his eloquent rhetorical skills. The damage to the image of America in the eyes of the world is incalculable and at this very moment our most trusted allies are forced for the first time to question their alliance with the USA.

I am not advocating for or against American intervention in Syria. I am advocating that next time we elect a President, we elect someone who has experience in the halls of Congress or the White House. I doubt many people would want a novice surgeon to improve their learning curve using a new technique on their body. America has suffered enough damage from Obama’s amateurish Preisdency.

Obama: Please Stop Digging

         

It amazes me how POTUS Obama has made so many blunders in regards to Syria – and he’s still piling them one on top of each other!

Obama’s off-the-cuff “red line” comment a year ago was the start, but If he had just fired off a few cruise missiles at Assad when he did use chemical weapons – much like his predecessors Clinton and Bush had done with Libya this whole affair would be a distant memory by now.

But no, POTUS Obama could not make even a small decision that he would “own” – so he had to go to Congress to get approval for an action that he already had the authority to make under the war powers act. Obama’s advisors knew that Congress would not approve the act because it was not thought out and he couldn’t get anything through Congress anyway. Obama’s political strategy was to be able to blame Congress for not authorizing action and hopefully the whole affair would go away. Obama elevated what should have been a minor decision to fire some cruise missiles into a deliberation worthy of WW3 – and it isn’t about to go away.

Now that Obama has been thrown a razor blade covered life preserver by Russian President Putin, Obama has effectively pivoted away from all of the US allies in the region and has effectively rendered the US impotent from a political and military perspective in regards to Iran. Unfortunately for Obama, the story isn’t about to go away anytime soon. The whole chemical weapons inspectors fiasco will last years while Assad resumes slaughtering his people, and each massacre will now have Obama’s name associated with it.  The former allies of the USA  (like Egypt Saudi Arabia, etc.) in the Middle East will be reassessing their relationship with the USA and form alliances that met their national interest – which may not coincide with USA interests. Why wait for Obama to throw them under the bus like foormer Egyptian President Mubarak?

Even as I write, Obama is being manipulated by both Russia and Iran in what may be the most humiliating foreign policy fiasco in the history of the USA. There is an old saying that when you are in a hole, the best course of action is to stop digging. Would someone please take the shovel from Obama’s hands?

The Naivety of the Exporting “Democracy”

They say history is the record of the victor. If that is the case, then the story of the rise and fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt should become a textbook example of how NOT to promote “Democracy” and/or U.S. foreign policy in the Mideast.

The Obama administration’s rational behind pulling the rug from under long-time Egyptian ally Hosni Mubarak and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood – an organization with solid terrorist credentials was the mistaken belief that there was a material difference between the paramilitary terrorist arm of the MB and the political arm of the MB - disregarding that the only difference between the MB and the Nazi party was the symbol of a crescent instead of a swastika. The “Obama theory” was that if the MB could be “co-opted” by participating in a democratic voting process (one man, one vote) that there was a good possibility that “political Islam” would be forced to moderate it’s total world view and in a domino effect, would usher in a wave of moderation across the middle east.

The Obama “Democracy Doctrine” hit opposition from almost every U.S. ally in the region immediately. Israel, of course, had a peaceful border under PM Hosni Mubarak solidified by a treaty that was effectively enforced for over 40 years. The U.S. pressure to oust Mubarak took them by surprise and immediately raised the threat level on their southern front. Being a dutiful U.S. ally - and also with awareness that they could not/should not have any affect on internal Egyptian politics, they had to lay low and let events outside their border play out over time. In usual fashion, the Israelis prepared strategies to react to different political and military possibilities.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Kuwait on the other hand had a much different reaction to this “embrace” of political Islam. To them this was clearly a Trojan horse for the MB to organize politically and eventually force them out of power and reduce the influence of Sunni Muslims to a subservient role across the Middle East in their grandiose ambitions of Iran to be the torchbearer of Islam across the world. They immediately lobbied Washington to reverse course, but to no avail. They considered Obama an inexperienced meddler in their world and immediately started making plans which would be executed at the right time and place – hoping on events to organically take place that would give wind to their plans.

It is in this scenario that the MB took office. One of Egyptian President Morsi’s first acts was to dismiss the leadership of the Military. His second act was to re-write the constitution in such a way as to vizierate the opposition and install ultra-conservative Muslim religious laws into civil law. His arresting of opposition leaders, restriction on alcohol and turning a blind eye towards the killings and abuse of the Christian minority were also “not so democratic” and angered the “Egyptian street”. This brings to question why President Obama never protested these abuses of power. Is one man, one vote all there is to democracy? Obama’s lack of interest in the “quality” of Egyptian “democracy” delegitimized his “Nobel Prize” claim to the moral high ground when preaching human rights and pro-democracy efforts around the world. It is no surprise that there was an overwhelming organic movement to oust Morsi. If the same set of circumstances happened here in America against Democrats or Republicans, I would not be surprised to see millions marching in Washington - and our saving grace being our mature liberal democracy which has impeachment embedded and respected within our constitution.

The Gulf States of the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia saw the massive demonstrations in Cairo, saw an opening which could be exploited to their advantage, and for the first time in the 65 year history of the Middle East, these countries executed their own regional military/political strategy against the wishes of their protector – the USA. These countries would have never considered this outcome IF THEY BELIEVED that the USA really had their back. The announcement that the USA was relegating the Mideast into a second tier area of US military/political concern also signaled a lack of commitment and created a vacuum. Either the Gulf state would fill the vacuum or someone else would do it for them.

Obama’s embrace of the MB was a strategic mistake and the reverberations of damage is best exemplified in the $13 billion commitment by the Gulf states to Egypt just for the month of July. The internal U.S. debate over whether to continue the $1.5 billion in assistance is a moot issue now. Egypt is spinning away from our influence along with the other Gulf States.

Meanwhile, President Obama has Secretary of State Kerry shuttling back and forth on another “make believe” foreign policy blunder that fortunately will only spin wheels and not pose a risk. There is virtually zero chance of a peaceful 2 state solution between the Palestinians and the Israelis – and both sides know it. The Palestinians don’t have any leadership that can deliver on their side of any agreement, and the USA and the UN have no credibility in making safety guarantees after the UN abandoned their Sinai and Golan Heights posts.

The best example of democracy in the Middle East is Turkey and the recent riots and brutal way the PM Endogen pacified Giza Park was not exactly conducive to a “liberal democracy”.  It’s time that Obama makes a distinction between a “liberal democracy” where minorities have rights and a “democracy”. After all, Hitler and his socialist party were voted into power too. Would Obama not consider their record  of human rights abuses  BEFORE they executed their “final solution” an abomination of a true democracy? I would hope not.

Obama's Mideast Strategy - if he even has one - is in ruins. How is he going to react now?

It was a total shock that President Obama literally threw America’s long-time ally – Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak under the bus when a hundred thousand disenchanted Egyptians protested his autocratic regime. Mubarak was clearly willing to hand over the government, but in an orderly fashion that protected the integrity of Egypt’s national institutions. President Obama forced early elections in Egypt, when no other group was organized other than the Muslim Brotherhood – who promised that they would not run for political office. Of course, they DID run and won a bogus election without any real competition. The MB won, they immediate focused on imposing their extremist religious values on the other 75% of the country – at the expense of letting the infrastructure of Egypt disintegrate and generally create a non-functioning state.

It is no wonder that millions of Secular Egyptians, Christians, and moderate Muslims are protesting the MB regime. The protester leaders have been jailed, any critic in the press is jailed, all organs of the government are led by extremist MB in posts where they are ill equipped to govern. Egypt’s infrastructure is destroyed, and the country is on the verge of civil/sectarian war and is likely to become a failed state like Somalia without global intervention.

Our President gave the Muslim Brotherhood credibility with his undeserved support. Most Mid-East scholars knew where this was heading, yet President Obama only surrounds himself with people who agree with him and rarely convenes advisory boards to supplement his decision making process.

President Obama is not responsible for the chaos in the Mideast, but he has certainly contributed to reversing 70 years of U.S policy and even to this day he is still committed to reducing U.S. influence to the point where our allies no longer have faith in America. Many people want to frame America’s place in the world, as a “has-been” as far as global leadership is concerned. The fact is that while we had suffered an economic setback in 2008 – and are in recovery now – when compared to the rest of the world, we are in the most advantageous position of any 1^st world economy. President Obama has many problems to deal with today with the NSA, Obamacare and the Mideast. To date he has only shown an ability to be reactive and place blame elsewhere. It would be nice to see some pro-active governance that helps shape the world, rather than letting the world shape America.

The May 1, 2013 Arab League "Peace Proposal" should have been annouced on April Fools Day

As Israel has just celebrated it’s 65^th birthday, the Obama administration and the Arab League have concocted a new “groundbreaking peace initiative” that theoretically throws the “peace ball” back into Israel’s hands. The Israelis have always wanted a “durable peace” with her neighbors, but this effort is doomed to fail on so many levels that any reasonable person familiar with the conflict would have to declare it just another Arab League “dead on arrival” diplomatic PR scheme.

Let’s start with all the failed Arab peace initiatives that cost Israeli lives:

1)   The Oslo Accords (Via Bill Clinton) served to bring the PLO and Yasser Arafat into the West Bank where he systemically organized the killing of hundreds of Israelis and terrorized the country with suicides bombings. The only reason it has virtually stopped is because of a defensive wall – heavily protested b y the Palestinians - erected to prevent infiltrators. Arafat, by the way, got a Nobel Peace Prize for initiating this swindle.

2)   The U.N. negotiated Israeli pullout from Lebanon to get Israel to abandon a buffer zone utilized to protect her population from Hezbollah rockets. It was supposed to end the arming of Hezbollah and put the Lebanese army in control of the border. Instead, Hezbollah became part of the government, they have taken complete control over the border – under the nose of the U.N. troops – and have completely re-armed with over 70,000 rockets.

3)   The Gaza pullout was a strategic effort on the part of PM Sharon to demonstrate to the world that Israel wanted peace and to prove that the conflict wasn’t about land for peace. Since then there has been nothing but one bomb after another from the terrorist Hamas regime.

On top of all these failed “papered over” diplomatic peace initiatives, one has to question the 2 small elephants in the room:

1) The Palestinian as a diplomatic entity are fragmented and unable to even agree on a unified government much less a peace agreement. The West Bank under the PA, the Gaza Strip under Hamas, and the diaspora of Palestinians living in Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere have never seen common ground

 2) The Arab league as a diplomatic entity is has zero credibility. It has a history of grand pomp and circumstance for the purpose of promoting itself as a credible entity, but exactly what have they done? If they can’t stop the genocide among their Muslim brothers in Syria, or get Hezbollah or Hamas to comply with agreements, why should the Israelis – or even Obama give them credibility?

Israel has not just survived 65 years – it has thrived and has one of the most dynamic economies in the world. Israel has built, in a short 65 years, a modern, democratic country with one hand building the country and the other hand defending it. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have institutionalized – with the help of the U.N. – their identity as victims.

Stripping away the competing Israeli and Palestinian narratives about who did what to whom, the largest elephant in the room is somehow not the most obvious: The U.S.A. is not going to give America back to the Indians, the Australians are not going to give their country back to the Aborigines, and Israel – after all the blood, sweat and tears of building their country and realizing their destiny, are never going to surrender land they see vital to their security as a nation. The Palestinians are going to have to internalize this fact. This conflict was never over how much land the Israelis would concede in the West Bank, after all – Jordan controlled the entire West Bank and Jerusalem from 1948 thru 1967 and the entire time they fought Israel over it’s right to exist and their was never an effort to develop a Palestinian state. This conflict is over the acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state by the entire Arab nation. The current decaying state of the Arab world today - the failed “Arab Spring”, a belligerent terrorist Iranian regime, the disintegration of both Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, etc., the Israelis can’t be expected –nor should they – sign any agreements with any Arab entity until conditions stabilize. Unfortunately, that is not even on the horizon.

Santa Claus Downsizing at North Pole

From the A.P. desk, 7:04am February 27, 2013

A spokesman for Santa Claus has announced a layoff of 50% of his elite elves workforce, effective immediately. The total workforce, estimated at approximately 7,000 little people has worked for Mr. & Mrs. Claus for generations. Mr. Claus said “When I first started in this business, there were only 25 Elves. “ As the world’s population grew, so did the elf population at the North Pole.   In fact, the elf population grew at a rate 3X the regular population rate, probably attributable to a lot of time off during the year, as well as having to spend a lot of time indoors due to the harsh North Pole winters.”

The spokesman, Hans Claus, said “1000 of the 3500 laid off workers will be retrained to work in a top-secret state-of-the-art factory and/or distribution center that is currently being built in an undisclosed location in the North Pole.  The elves will be trained in the latest robotic manufacturing technologies, as well as logistics. A special group of elves will be trained in logistics and will  develop and implement the delivery of presents around the world via the latest laser guided drone technology in order to address the increased delivery demand.  If successful, the drone program will insure Christmas deliveries well into the next century.”

Mr. Claus said “I have an obligation to ensure the long-term viability of the Claus family business.” If this program is successful, I anticipate a productivity assessment of the rest of the organization in 2015. We are just following trends and technologies that increase productivity and increase the customer "experience".

The 2500 permanently laid off elves will be given 12 month’s pay, a discretionary retraining expense account to help migrate to another industry, and a generous travel expense allowance to move their families to a new location.

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are holding a press conference at noon today in Chicago to protest this mass re-organization of the Claus family business. “A boycott of the Claus business is not anticipated”, said Mr. Jackson’s spokesperson.

Israelis not comforted by world's reaction to Syrian conflict

The atrocities committed against the Syrian people by both the Syrian government  and the increasing barbaric Islamic extremist opposition seems to have fallen not only on deaf ears at the U.N., but  also among the global press.  If a raging civil war that has killed 60,000 people doesn’t inspire action on the part of the U.N. or the Arab governments that have a stake in resolving this conflict, then what exactly would? I am not suggesting U.S. intervention, but those with a stake in resolving the conflict should step up to the plate.

When I think of the “2 state solution” that President Obama, the U.N., the E.U and of course the Arab League want to “impose” on Israel, I can visualize a similar conflict taking place in Israel. I have no doubt that the world would sit idly by as their carefully crafted “peace agreement” (much like the Oslo Accords) disintegrates into chaos and destruction.  There is no logical reason why the current Israeli government should think their predicament with the Palestinians and the greater Arab world would be treated any differently than Syria by the U.S, the U.N. and those who perceive themselves as residing on the “moral high ground” of diplomacy.

France has just entered into a war against Islamic extremists in Mali and Somalia. The U.S. is winding down wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. None of these wars against Muslim extremists have anything to do with Israel or the Palestinians, and for anyone to say with a straight face that a 2 state solution will resolve the divide between Islamic extremists and the West is deluding themselves. Fortunately, the Israeli government under PM Netanyahu clearly understands the reality and stands firm against the diplomatic pressure, and his anticipated overwhelming victory in the upcoming Israeli elections proves that the Israeli people are in total support of his initiatives and have a strong resolve in the face of the constant threat they have fought against for 66 years.

Jordan is already 75% Palestinian, so a Palestinian state already exists.