The Brief Against Obama

I want to start a series on the Obama presidency, based on The Brief Against Obama, a wonderful book by Hugh Hewitt, a lawyer who clearly lays out the failures of the last four years.

He starts with a reminder of the famous promises Obama made as a candidate. Of course, the biggest was the “Hope and Change” theme. He said the seas would cease their rise. He promised to revive our economy and keep the unemployment below 8 percent. How have these worked out? Easy answer, right?

Hewitt says there are key arguments against Obama. Obamacare was a disaster (and still hated by many Americans), unemployment is far too high, the 2009 stimulus was a total failure, our foreign policy is in shambles, and he has abused the powers of the presidency. Each of these is huge, but Hewitt manages to clarify them in short, punchy chapters.

Let’s start with the foreign mess we now have, thanks to Obama. He snubbed our friends (think of his disgraceful treatment of Israel’s Netanyahu), ignored the Iranian resistance movement, waited for months before calling for Syria’s leader to depart, led from behind in Libya, cut and ran from Iraq, bowed to the Saudi king/Japanese emperor/Chinese president, tried to “reset” relations with the Russians only to be surprised at that country’s nasty behavior (shades of Jimmy Carter), ignored the brutalities and aggressive actions of North Korea, allowed hard-line Islamic fundamentalists to take over in several Arab countries. Each of these deserves a separate essay, but time is short. Obama’s overall problem has been his idea that the United States will gain in world opinion if we look weak, if we appear ashamed of our past policies, if we seem hesitant to defend our values. The result is what anyone would expect—aggressors of the world no longer fear us and are quite willing to go on the offensive against us and our allies.

More next time as we look at domestic failures of Obama. Oh so many of them . . .

Israel, Iran, and Obama's new tough language

Gee, there must be an election this year? How did I come to that startling conclusion? Besides the endless Republican primaries? Think about what Obama has just done when it comes to Israel. What a U-turn after three years of trying to woo the Iranian mullahs to the bargaining table with diplomacy and slapping Israel, our best ally, repeatedly in the face.


Mr. Obama opened the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Sunday with a keynote whose strong talk on Iran kept the audience coming to its feet. The President took credit for isolating the Islamic Republic diplomatically and imposing a de facto oil embargo that has sent the Iranian rial tumbling. His speech follows an interview last week with the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg in which Mr. Obama went out of his way to call a nuclear Iran "unacceptable." He referred to the "military component" of U.S. policy and said that "I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as President of the United States, I don't bluff." As startling, he added that containing a nuclear Iran wouldn't work because of near-certain proliferation in the region and that "the risks of an Iranian nuclear weapon falling into the hands of terrorist organizations are profound." Did someone kidnap the real Obama and replace him with another person?? Hard to believe this is the same man who has dissed Israel over the last three years.


The timing of all this is no accident as Benjamin Netanyahu meets Mr. Obama in the White House today amid intense speculation about an imminent Israeli strike on Iran. In an interview with Journal editors on Friday, Eyal Gabbai, the former director general of the Israeli Prime Minister's office, said Mr. Netanyahu's meeting with Mr. Obama "will be the last time they can speak face-to-face before a decision is taken."


The Israelis believe Iran's nuclear programs will soon enter a "zone of immunity," beyond which they may be effectively invulnerable to a non-nuclear Israeli strike. But also driving Israeli fears is the sense that the Obama Administration isn't prepared to use military means if diplomacy, sanctions and covert acts don't persuade Iran to stand down.


Well, no wonder they don’t trust Obama. Those fears are far from groundless. Though Mr. Obama now takes credit for sanctions, his Administration fought Congress tooth-and-nail on sanctioning Iran's central bank. The President only reluctantly signed the sanctions into law as part of a larger defense bill. His aides also worked to stop legislation to cut off Iran from making financial transactions via the Swift banking consortium.


As for military strikes, senior Administration officials have repeatedly sounded as if their top priority is deterring Israel, rather than stopping Iran from getting a bomb. Here’s one example. As recently as November, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said a military strike would have "unintended consequences" and wouldn't necessarily result in "deterring Iran from what they want to do."


It's welcome news if Mr. Obama is now trying to put those fears to rest, but he is also more outspoken than ever in trying to avert Israel from acting on its own. "Do we want a distraction in which Iran can portray itself as a victim, and deflect attention from what has to be the core issue, which is their pursuit of nuclear weapons?" Mr. Obama told Mr. Goldberg—the "distraction" here meaning an Israeli attack.


The question Mr. Netanyahu and Israeli leaders have to ponder is whether Mr. Obama now means what he says. The President has built up an immense trust deficit with Israel that can't be easily dispensed in a week. All the more so when Israelis know that this is an election year when Mr. Obama needs to appear more pro-Israel than he would if he is re-elected.


It's good to hear Mr. Obama finally sounding serious about stopping a nuclear Iran. But if he now finds himself pleading with Israel not to take matters in its own hands, he should know his Administration's vacillation and mixed signals have done much to force Jerusalem's hand. More fundamentally, a President who says he doesn't "bluff" had better be prepared to act if his bluff is called. These are serious times, and we need prayer now more than ever.

The failures of Barack Obama (Jimmy Carter 2.0)

OK, I was bored and started thinking of ways Barack Obama has been a huge disappointment. Here are some, starting with foreign affairs. If I have time and don't get too discouraged, I'll switch to domestic disappointments.

First, there's the Arab world. Wasn't he going to get the angry Muslims on our side after repeated abject apologies for being an American? How has that worked out? Well, according to The Wall Street Journal, not so well--this year, Zogby International found that 5% of Egyptians had a favorable view of the U.S. In 2008, when George W. Bush was president, it was 9%. When will we learn that tyrants and crazies respect strength and resolve, not groveling?

How about trade with the world? Bill Clinton signed Nafta in 1994, which helps facilitate nearly $2 trillion in the trade of goods and services between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. George W. Bush helped get free trade agreements all across the world, from Australia to Singapore to Morocco to Bahrain. Number of these agreements signed by the current president: zero.

Then there's Libya. Obama entered this rebellion with the goal to remove the tyrant Gadhafi. Weeks later, the Libyan strongman is still there, and NATO looks like the Marx brothers. That will be seen by the rest of the world as a failure of Western resolve. Gadhafi will loom as a new threat to spread terrorism to the West.

What other stellar jobs has he been involved with? He has mistreated our ally Israel, he has repeatedly snubbed our best ally England, he failed to back Iranian protestors, he has allowed Afghanistan to spiral out of control, he urges North Korea to act better and get involved in multi-party talks (fat chance), he has been rebuffed by Putin when he attempted to set up better relations with Russia, he has not been able to put a halt to Iranian nuclear enrichment, he has allowed Chavez of Venezuela to build up connections with Iran. And so it goes.

His failure to pursue American interests, his inability to proclaim American exceptionalism, his belief that we are a nation in decline which must be gently guided down the path of senility--all these have disappointed me and so many others. But these failures are eclipsed by his domestic disasters, which I'll try to cover next time. We need a change in 2012.

A look at Israel and the Palestinians

I recently read an article by Michael Brown on townhall.com, attempting to clarify the situation in the Middle East regarding Israel and Palestine. Considering how emotional this issue is, I think it's worthwhile to go through the five points he made.

1. There is no such thing as a historic “Palestinian people” living in the Middle East. It's true there have been Arabs living in the land of Palestine for centuries. But here's the key point--at no time before 1967 did these Arabs identify themselves as “Palestinians,” nor did they seek to achieve any kind of statehood there. So this is a made-up name for political purposes. In addition, before 1967, there was no such thing as Arab, Palestinian nationalism and no attempt to develop the territory as a homeland for the Arabs who lived there. The conclusion? The concept of a Palestinian people is a modern invention, and it is part of the anti-Israel propaganda machine without any basis in fact.

2. There were anti-Jewish intifadas in Palestine two decades before the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. There is a fantasy being sold about the peaceful coexistence of Jews and Arabs before the state of Israel was formed. The reality is far different-- as Jews began to return to their one and only ancestral homeland in the late 19th century, hostilities began to rise among their Arab neighbors, despite the fact that there was more than enough room for both. By the way, the Jews paid for the land; they did not steal or wrench it away through warfare. By the 1920’s, radical Muslim leaders like Haj Amin Al-Husseini, who later backed Adolph Hitler, were organizing intifadas against the Jewish population, with many Jewish lives lost. And what helped fuel this hostility was the anti-Jewish sentiment found in the Koran and early Muslim traditions. Post-1948 Jew-hatred simply built on centuries of Islamic anti-Semitism.

3. Jewish refugees fleeing from Muslim and Arab countries were absorbed by Israel after 1948; Arab refugees fleeing from Israel after 1948 were not absorbed by Muslim and Arab countries. With their huge size, it would have been easy for Arab countries to absorb the approximately 600,000 Arab refugees who fled Israel in 1948 when war was declared on Israel by five neighboring Arab nations. To this day, these refugees are not welcomed by other Arab states. These states want this problem to stay on the front burner as a way to avoid fixing their own problems and showing what failures modern Arab states are. How did Israel do with this same refugee problem? The tiny nation absorbed roughly 800,000 Jewish refugees that had to flee from Muslim nations after 1948.

4. Only one side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is truly committed to peaceful co-existence. Michael Brown, the author of this article, says there is an common expression that sums this up: If the Palestinians put down their weapons, there would be no more war, but if the Israelis put down their weapons, there would be no more Israel. He cautions the reader that we shouldn't believe all Palestinians are warmongers and all Israelis are doves. But "the vast majority of Israelis are not driven by a radical ideology that calls for the extermination of their Arab neighbors, nor are they teaching their children songs about the virtues of religious martyrdom." Good point.

5. The current uprisings throughout the Muslim and Arab world today remind us that Israel cannot fairly be blamed for all the tension and conflicts in the region. If Israel disappeared, the Arab world would not be a peaceful place. As an example, Brown cites the constant disputes between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. He notes that in 1980, Abd Alhalim Khaddam, then Syria’s Foreign Minister, admitted, “If we look at a map of the Arab Homeland, we can hardly find two countries without conflict. . . . We can hardly find two countries which are not either in a state of war or on the road to war.”

Let me close with a powerful quotation from the article: "Certainly, there are many obstacles that stand in the way of a true peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, and the road ahead is fraught with uncertainty, but it would be a good starting point if we replaced myths and emotional arguments with facts." Isn't that true of so much we argue about?