This is what I believe the next four years may be like. (See 1 below.)
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Sowell on gun laws. Facts are crushed in favor of emotion. (See 2 below.)
Has Obama put a bulls eye on the 2d Amendment or is the op ed the ravings of a radical conservative? You decide. (See 2a below.)
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Should sequester of defense expenditures occur would it be a serious threat to our military capability?
Are the warnings of the military simply an effort to keep Pentagon spending largess high?
Since Obama has decided America can no longer police the world and France cannot even transport their own troops to Mali without American help does any of this matter?
Is there a rational solution to checking radical Islamists? (See 3 below.)
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Galganov blames Boenher for the mess we are about to experience not Obama. Why? Because Boehner cowed and cried. Do you agree? (See 4 below.)
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Clinton and Benghazi. Will she prevail? Does it matter anymore since the issue has been stonewalled for so long? (See 5, 5a and 5b below.)
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Lessons eoublicans will have to learn. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1)
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Young King Arthur was ambushed and imprisoned by the monarch of a neighboring kingdom. The monarch could have killed him but was moved by Arthur's youth and ideals. So, the monarch offered him his freedom, as long as he could answer a very difficult question. Arthur would have a year to figure out the answer and, if, after a year, he stillhad no answer, he would be put to death.
The question?...What do women really want? Such a question would perplex even the most knowledgeable man, and to young Arthur, itseemed an impossible query. But, since it was better than death, he accepted the monarch's proposition to have an answer by year's end.
He returned to his kingdom and began to poll everyone: the princess, the priests, the wise men and even the court jester. He spoke witheveryone, but no one could give him a satisfactory answer.
Many people advised him to consult the old ugly woman, for only she would have the answer.
But the price would be high; as the woman was famous throughout the kingdom for the exorbitant prices she charged.
The last day of the year arrived and Arthur had no choice but to talk to the old woman. She agreed to answer the question, but he would have to agree to her price first.
The old ugly woman wanted to marry Sir Lancelot, the most noble of the Knights of the Round Table and Arthur's closest friend!
Young Arthur was horrified. She was hunchbacked and hideous, had only
one tooth, smelled like sewage, made obscene noises, etc. He had never
encountered such a repugnant creature in all his life.
He refused to force his friend to marry her and endure such a terrible burden; but Lancelot, learning of the proposal, spoke with Arthur.
He said nothing was too big of a sacrifice compared to Arthur's life and the preservation of the Round Table.
Hence, a wedding was proclaimed and the woman answered Arthur's question thus:
What a woman really wants, sheanswered....is to be in charge of her own life.
Everyone in the kingdom instantly knew that the woman had uttered a great truth and that Arthur's life would be spared.
And so it was, the neighboring monarch granted Arthur his freedom and Lancelot and the ugly woman had a wonderful wedding.
The honeymoon hour approached and Lancelot, steeling himself for a horrific experience, entered the bedroom. But, what a sight awaited him. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen lay before him on the bed. The astounded Lancelot asked what had happened.
The young beauty replied that since he had been so kind to her when she appeared ugly, she would henceforth, be her horrible deformed self only half the time and the beautiful maiden the other half.
Which would he prefer? Beautiful during the day....or night?
Lancelot pondered the predicament. During the day, a beautiful woman to show off to his friends, but at night, in the privacy of hiscastle, an old ugly woman? Or, would heprefer having a hideous woman during the day, but by night, a beautiful woman for him to enjoy wondrous intimate moments?
What would YOU do?
What Lancelot chose is below.
BUT....make YOUR choice before you scroll down below.OKAY?
Noble Lancelot said that he would allow HER to make the choice herself.
Upon hearing this, she announced that she would be beautiful all the time because he had respected her enough to let her be in charge of her own life.
Now....what is the moral to this story?
The moral is.....
If you don't let a woman have her own way....
Things are going to get ugly...
2)
Do Gun Control Laws Control Guns?
The gun control controversy is only the latest of many issues to be debated almost solely in terms of fixed preconceptions, with little or no examination of hard facts.
Robert Knight, a regular contributor to OneNewNow, is a senior fellow for The American Civil Rights Union and a columnist for The Washington Times.
Obama and his cadre of LEFTISTS are VERY bad news. As a matter of fact, they are the worst in my knowledge to have ever threatened the United States of America.
But . . . they are not the first amongst very bad people to lead America in a disastrous direction. It’s just that this time, it is gong to end in a disaster the likes of which the world might never have expected to happen to America.
And as much as I would like to just point a finger to Obama and his supporters as the cause to the destruction of the American DREAM, and the catalyst to what might very well be America’s next Civil War . . . I BLAME BOEHNER AND THE RINOS MORE.
EVIL DOES NOT HAPPEN IN A VACUUM:
Whether you love or hate Obama, you cannot take away from him . . . that he and his LEFTIST Comrades have simply shown what is no less than an unbelievable resolve to do what they had set out to do . . . AND THEY DID IT!
Obama cares NOTHING about the rule of law. And he couldn’t give a damn about the letter or spirit of America’s FOUNDATIONAL document.
MORE THAN JUST DISPARAGING THE CONSTITUTION . . . Obama has successfully used Democracy to begin the process of stripping the people from their FREEDOMS.
HE COULD HAVE BEEN STOPPED:
Obama could NOT have done what he did to America AFTER the 2010 midterm election, when the Republicans won the House . . . HAD BOEHNER NOT BEEN OBAMA’S BITCH.
All Boehner had to do from Day ONE after taking the House in ‘2010, was to say NO to Obama . . . and YES to the Constitution.
All he had to do was take a REAL position that would have defended not just the American economy and Constitution, but also the very fabric of the society that had made the USA the once-upon-a-time SHINING CITY UPON THE HILL.
BUT HE DIDN’T . . . INSTEAD - BOEHNER CHOSE TO BE THE WEEPING COWARD.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” . . . Edmund Burke.
Really BAD people can get away with REALLY BAD THINGS, only if GOOD people let them.
And in this case, the really GOOD people (Tea Partiers) who did their best to defend America against the LEFTIST attack by Obama were vilified by the LEFTIST media, and hung out to dry by the ESTABLISHMENT within their own Republican Party.
The GENIUS of the Founding Fathers was how they created a system of government with incredible checks and balances, all of which GUARANTEED the MOST confrontational and accountable system of government mankind had ever known.
But . . . what the Founding Fathers could have NEVER anticipated, was that the THIRD MOST IMPORTANT National Leader . . . The Speaker Of The House (John Boehner), would be too much of a political coward to stand-up to a TYRANT like Obama.
The FOUNDERS could also have never anticipated a population that would WANT so much from the government for NOTHING, caring so little for their own FREEDOM from government as long as they got what they wanted for FREE.
THE SECOND AMENDMENT:
Because of Boehner . . . more so than because of Obama, America has crossed a line of no return, and will collapse into CIVIL STRIFE as States will have no choice but to defend themselves from a tyrannical federal government intruding upon State’s Rights, which the founding Fathers did all they could by July 1, 1776 to guard against.
While the media wrapped themselves in Obama’s Inaugural Address as if he was indeed the Second Coming; I didn’t feel the warmth. I didn’t see hope. And I didn’t see a bright future. All I saw was a Tyrant who has sealed his deal.
And now . . . America and the rest of the world are about to pay the price.
IN CLOSING – America would be better off at this point if Boehner would simply spend the next two years playing golf with Obama, giving Obama CARTE-BLANCHE to do with the USA as Obama and the LEFT see fit.
It would be less embarrassing that way.
As for America’s Jews and Israel’s LEFT, but specifically for America’s Jewish community, Israel is about to REAP the WHIRLWIND of their own making.
Best Regards . . . Howard Galganov
Media discussions of gun control are dominated by two factors: the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment. But the over-riding factual question is whether gun control laws actually reduce gun crimes in general or murder rates in particular.
If, as gun control advocates claim, gun control laws really do control guns and save lives, there is nothing to prevent repealing the Second Amendment, any more than there was anything to prevent repealing the Eighteenth Amendment that created Prohibition.
But, if the hard facts show that gun control laws do not actually control guns, but instead lead to more armed robberies and higher murder rates after law-abiding citizens are disarmed, then gun control laws would be a bad idea, even if there were no Second Amendment and no National Rifle Association.
The central issue boils down to the question: What are the facts? Yet there are many zealots who seem utterly unconcerned about facts or about their own lack of knowledge of facts.
There are people who have never fired a shot in their life who do not hesitate to declare how many bullets should be the limit to put into a firearm's clip or magazine. Some say ten bullets but New York state's recent gun control law specifies seven.
Virtually all gun control advocates say that 30 bullets in a magazine is far too many for self-defense or hunting -- even if they have never gone hunting and never had to defend themselves with a gun. This uninformed and self-righteous dogmatism is what makes the gun control debate so futile and so polarizing.
Anyone who faces three home invaders, jeopardizing himself or his family, might find 30 bullets barely adequate. After all, not every bullet hits, even at close range, and not every hit incapacitates. You can get killed by a wounded man.
These plain life-and-death realities have been ignored for years by people who go ballistic when they hear about how many shots were fired by the police in some encounter with a criminal. As someone who once taught pistol shooting in the Marine Corps, I am not the least bit surprised by the number of shots fired. I have seen people miss a stationary target at close range, even in the safety and calm of a pistol range.
We cannot expect everybody to know that. But we can expect them to know that they don't know -- and to stop spouting off about life-and-death issues when they don't have the facts.
The central question as to whether gun control laws save lives or cost lives has generated many factual studies over the years. But these studies have been like the proverbial tree that falls in an empty forest, and has been heard by no one -- certainly not by zealots who have
made up their minds and don't want to be confused by the facts.
Most factual studies show no reduction in gun crimes, including murder, under gun control laws. A significant number of studies show higher rates of murder and other gun crimes under gun control laws.
How can this be? It seems obvious to some gun control zealots that, if no one had guns, there would be fewer armed robberies and fewer people shot to death.
But nothing is easier than to disarm peaceful, law-abiding people. And nothing is harder than to disarm people who are neither -- especially in a country with hundreds of millions of guns already out there, that are not going to rust away for centuries.
When it was legal to buy a shotgun in London in the middle of the 20th century, there were very few armed robberies there. But, after British gun control zealots managed over the years to disarm virtually the entire law-abiding population, armed robberies became literally a hundred times more common. And murder rates rose.
One can cherry-pick the factual studies, or cite some studies that have subsequently been discredited, but the great bulk of the studies show that gun control laws do not in fact control guns. On net balance, they do not save lives but cost lives.
Gun control laws allow some people to vent their emotions, politicians to grandstand and self-righteous people to "make a statement" -- but all at the cost of other people's lives.
2a)
Our president's strategy isn't hard to discern: Shoot the Second Amendment to pieces with high-velocity magazines full of executive orders and questionable legislation.
Leave it to Barack Obama to come into his inaugural weekend with a bang, and not just on guns. He's made it clear that he intends more spending, more regulation, more radical appointees and less national defense in his second term.
Since he just fired a load of executive orders on gun control like shotgun pellets at a duck hunt, I think it's time to ask a few questions about this part of his agenda. The first one's for the president.
If a Republican president issued 23 executive orders on a single subject, the media would pronounce him "obsessed." |
Why did you have children prominently displayed at your press conference? Were you implying that anyone who opposes your policies wants to see children shot? I think you were.
Second, did you really justify your assault on the Second Amendment partly by equating safe shopping with the "right of assembly"? Finally, in citing the "right to life," did you see any irony in being the most pro-abortion president in history? You support even partial-birth abortion, and when you were a state senator, you killed legislation that would have required doctors to treat children who survive abortions.
Now here's a more general question: What exactly are executive orders?
You won't find them in the Constitution. They're derived from Article II, which confers executive power on the president to "take care that all laws be faithfully executed." Executive orders are work orders from the president to employees of federal agencies. They do not apply to state or local governments. They direct the implementation of statutes that Congress enacts and which are signed by the president into law. If they go beyond this, they are unconstitutional.
A look at some of the 23 gun control executive orders that Barack Obama issued on January 16 leaves one wondering whether the president, as Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry would say, is "a man who knows his limitations." If a Republican president issued 23 executive orders on a single subject, the media would pronounce him "obsessed."
One of the orders calls for "incentives for states to share information with the background check system." Funny, Mr. Obama doesn't seem to want to apply this principle to voter registration in order to curtail vote fraud.
Mr. Obama also wants "federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations." Since most criminal enforcement occurs at the local and state levels, this would seem to give the feds carte blanche to insert themselves into every crime scene that involves a recovered firearm. Maybe they already do that. I hope not.
Two more executive orders are for the feds to "provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers," and to "develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education." Those poor local school officials, clergy and college deans must never have thought of re-tooling, say, fire drills, for other emergencies, even after Columbine, Virginia Tech, and now, Sandy Hook Elementary.
One of the executive orders calls for "incentives for states to share information with the background check system." Funny, Mr. Obama doesn't seem to want to apply this principle to voter registration in order to curtail vote fraud. |
One of the scarier orders directs "the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks." It wasn't long ago that Janet Napolitano's Department of Homeland Security issued a report tagging pro-lifers, war veterans and opponents of illegal immigration as potential terrorists.
Then there's the "doc snitch." Federal officials are to clarify that the ObamaCare law doesn't prohibit doctors from asking about guns in patients' homes. We have to wonder what the physicians are supposed to do with that information -- it's a short step to requiring them to ask.
We need to keep in mind that gun ownership is not merely a Second Amendment issue. "Guns are property," says Constitutional attorney Leah Farish. "Infringement of Second Amendment rights should also be subjected to due process scrutiny under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. I do not think that executive orders amount to sufficient due process in this context."
Attorney General Edwin Meese III said last week that impeachment could be a proper remedy if President Obama uses an executive order "to try to override the Second Amendment .... Now there are some things he can probably do in regard to the actions of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or some other governmental agency in its operations...," Mr. Meese told Newsmax. "But to impose burdens or regulations that affect society generally, he would have to have Congressional authorization."
That's why Mr. Obama is urging Congress to enact a flurry of gun restrictions, from banning so-called "assault weapons," prohibiting people from buying guns from private sellers without undergoing background checks, outlawing high-capacity magazine clips and a few other things that the anti-gun lobby wants.
All of this adds up to a mega-increase in federal law enforcement power and will require billions of dollars and thousands of new bureaucrats. Will it make us safer? Don't bet on it.
The strategy is not that hard to discern: Shoot the Second Amendment to pieces with high-velocity magazines full of executive orders and questionable legislation. And while you're at it, use some kids as political human shields in order to demonize your opponents.
Robert Knight, a regular contributor to OneNewNow, is a senior fellow for The American Civil Rights Union and a columnist for The Washington Times.
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3) Military Leaders Warn Congress of 'Hollow' Force
WASHINGTON - The nation's top military leaders warned Congress in unusually stark terms that its failure to pass a 2013 defense budget - coupled with the threat of automatic budget cuts - has pushed the Pentagon to the brink of a crisis.
They wrote in a joint letter to congressional leaders that the readiness of U.S. armed forces is at a "tipping point."
A copy of the letter was provided Wednesday to The Associated Press.
The military leaders said that troops in combat and those who are being treated for wounds will get the funds needed. But the rest of the force will be severely compromised if the Pentagon has to continue operating on last year's budget.
"We are on the brink of creating a hollow force," said the letter signed by the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and National Guard, as well as the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Pentagon is facing two major money problems. First is the threat of drastic additional budget cuts if Congress and the Obama administration are unable to agree on debt-reduction measures by March. The second is Congress' failure thus far to pass a 2013 budget; that has left the Pentagon on a spending path based on its previous budget.
In their letter the military leaders said the main risk is that budget conditions will create such a wide disconnect between their spending needs and the available funds that the armed forces will be ill prepared for future combat.
"Should this looming readiness crisis be left unaddressed, we will have to ground aircraft, return ships to port, and stop driving combat vehicles in training," they wrote, adding that training would have to be reducing by almost half of what was planning just three months ago.
"To avert this crisis we urge you to take immediate action to provide adequate and stable funding for readiness," they wrote.
"Under current budgetary uncertainty, we are at grave risk of an imposed mismatch between the size of our nation's military force and the funding required to maintain its readiness, which will inevitably lead to a hollow force."
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has been making similar arguments. Last Thursday he told a Pentagon news conference that the threat of drastic spending cuts triggered by failure to reach a debt-reduction deal by March, coupled with Congress' failure to pass a 2013 defense budget, is creating "a perfect storm of budget uncertainty."
"We have no idea what the hell's going to happen," he said. "All told, this uncertainty, if left unresolved by the Congress, will seriously harm our military readiness."
In a statement responding to the Joint Chiefs' letter, Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday that it should serve as a "wake-up call" to Congress and the White House.
"The condition of our armed forces is swiftly declining. And this is the first red flag on what could be a hazardous road for our national security," said McKeon, R-Calif.
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4) America Can’t Do Worse Than Boehner
By Howard Galganov
HAD BOEHNER NOT BEEN OBAMA’S BITCH:
Obama and his cadre of LEFTISTS are VERY bad news. As a matter of fact, they are the worst in my knowledge to have ever threatened the United States of America.
But . . . they are not the first amongst very bad people to lead America in a disastrous direction. It’s just that this time, it is gong to end in a disaster the likes of which the world might never have expected to happen to America.
And as much as I would like to just point a finger to Obama and his supporters as the cause to the destruction of the American DREAM, and the catalyst to what might very well be America’s next Civil War . . . I BLAME BOEHNER AND THE RINOS MORE.
EVIL DOES NOT HAPPEN IN A VACUUM:
Whether you love or hate Obama, you cannot take away from him . . . that he and his LEFTIST Comrades have simply shown what is no less than an unbelievable resolve to do what they had set out to do . . . AND THEY DID IT!
Obama cares NOTHING about the rule of law. And he couldn’t give a damn about the letter or spirit of America’s FOUNDATIONAL document.
MORE THAN JUST DISPARAGING THE CONSTITUTION . . . Obama has successfully used Democracy to begin the process of stripping the people from their FREEDOMS.
HE COULD HAVE BEEN STOPPED:
Obama could NOT have done what he did to America AFTER the 2010 midterm election, when the Republicans won the House . . . HAD BOEHNER NOT BEEN OBAMA’S BITCH.
All Boehner had to do from Day ONE after taking the House in ‘2010, was to say NO to Obama . . . and YES to the Constitution.
All he had to do was take a REAL position that would have defended not just the American economy and Constitution, but also the very fabric of the society that had made the USA the once-upon-a-time SHINING CITY UPON THE HILL.
BUT HE DIDN’T . . . INSTEAD - BOEHNER CHOSE TO BE THE WEEPING COWARD.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” . . . Edmund Burke.
Really BAD people can get away with REALLY BAD THINGS, only if GOOD people let them.
And in this case, the really GOOD people (Tea Partiers) who did their best to defend America against the LEFTIST attack by Obama were vilified by the LEFTIST media, and hung out to dry by the ESTABLISHMENT within their own Republican Party.
The GENIUS of the Founding Fathers was how they created a system of government with incredible checks and balances, all of which GUARANTEED the MOST confrontational and accountable system of government mankind had ever known.
But . . . what the Founding Fathers could have NEVER anticipated, was that the THIRD MOST IMPORTANT National Leader . . . The Speaker Of The House (John Boehner), would be too much of a political coward to stand-up to a TYRANT like Obama.
The FOUNDERS could also have never anticipated a population that would WANT so much from the government for NOTHING, caring so little for their own FREEDOM from government as long as they got what they wanted for FREE.
THE SECOND AMENDMENT:
Because of Boehner . . . more so than because of Obama, America has crossed a line of no return, and will collapse into CIVIL STRIFE as States will have no choice but to defend themselves from a tyrannical federal government intruding upon State’s Rights, which the founding Fathers did all they could by July 1, 1776 to guard against.
While the media wrapped themselves in Obama’s Inaugural Address as if he was indeed the Second Coming; I didn’t feel the warmth. I didn’t see hope. And I didn’t see a bright future. All I saw was a Tyrant who has sealed his deal.
And now . . . America and the rest of the world are about to pay the price.
IN CLOSING – America would be better off at this point if Boehner would simply spend the next two years playing golf with Obama, giving Obama CARTE-BLANCHE to do with the USA as Obama and the LEFT see fit.
It would be less embarrassing that way.
As for America’s Jews and Israel’s LEFT, but specifically for America’s Jewish community, Israel is about to REAP the WHIRLWIND of their own making.
Best Regards . . . Howard Galganov
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5)
Clinton in hot seat on Benghazi attack
Many questions await Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton today as she appears before Congress to explain her response to a terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
The State Department for days blamed the Sept. 11 attack on a spontaneous protest to what it called a "reprehensible" video that denigrated Islam's prophet Mohammed, while CIA and diplomats from the scene were reporting that no protest preceded the attack.
"The obvious question that Secretary Clinton would be asked is why, based on the information she had, did she mislead and misdirect people for so long," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah who chairs one of several committees investigating the incident. "She made and approved statements that were misleading -- she repeatedly talked about the video."
An Independent Accountability Review Board appointed by the State Department concluded that "systemic failures" left the consulate in Benghazi inadequately protected and confirmed that no protest preceded the deadly attack. In a report released in December, the board recommended that the State Department strengthen security at high-risk posts.
Clinton ordered the Accountability Review Board to find out what happened, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns said at the time. "We learned some very hard and painful lessons in Benghazi. We are already acting on them. We have to do better."
Chaffetz said questions for Clinton will begin with security failures that started well before the attack occurred at 9:40 p.m. Sept. 11, then focus heavily on the night of the attack and on State's response.
"The part most mysterious, the least number of questions answered, is her personal involvement during the 26 hours from start to finish, when those injured were brought to Germany," he said.
When Clinton ran in the 2008 presidential race, she ran a TV ad asking whether Barack Obama was ready for a 3 a.m. call that requires judgment and decisive action.
"Well, that call came for both of them," Chaffetz said. "The ambassador was missing for seven hours. What was her interaction with the president? Did she go to bed?"
5a)Hillary and 'Leading From Behind'
Why did Mrs. Clinton outsource to Qatar the arming of the opposition in Libya and Syria?
By PAUL WOLFOWITZ
Four months after terrorists in Benghazi, Libya, killed four Americans—including the popular and effective Ambassador Chris Stevens—Secretary of State Hillary Clintonwill finally testify before Congress on Wednesday. The testimony should be an occasion to examine how the disaster was part of a larger failure in Libya and a still larger one in Syria that will haunt U.S. interests in the Middle East for decades.
Lawmakers will ask Mrs. Clinton why security in Benghazi was so lax on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and why the Obama administration claimed falsely that the terrorist attack was a response to an obscure and distasteful anti-Islamic video when available evidence made clear that the attack was a well-planned operation with likely connections to al Qaeda. For months, the danger in Benghazi had been growing. The evidence included attacks on the British ambassador, the United Nations special envoy to Libya, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the U.S. Consulate itself. Even in Tripoli, Libya's capital, Islamist militias had—in broad daylight and with bulldozers—demolished a mosque that they considered heretical.
How is it that the State Department had no plans for an emergency evacuation in September, even though 18 months earlier, at the start of the Libyan revolution, it had struggled to evacuate diplomats from Tripoli using a chartered Italian ferry? Why did the U.S. Africa Command have no dedicated forces available to respond to the emergency in Benghazi, even though it had conducted extensive combat operations in Libyan airspace just a year before?
According to Vice President Joe Biden, the White House was never warned about security concerns in Libya. "Those are things that are handled by security personnel at the State Department," said White House spokesman Jay Carney. Did the State Department think it unimportant to inform the president's staff? Did it consider asking the Pentagon to have forces in place to respond to an emergency?
But there is a larger question that has bearing on U.S. policy across the region, namely: In a country with a population that is generally friendly and even grateful to Americans, how does a moderate and well-intentioned government—elected in the country's first free elections—have no effective control over powerful extremist militias?
Mrs. Clinton deserves great credit for her leadership when Moammar Gadhafi's forces threatened to overrun Benghazi in early 2011. But she also deserves to be questioned about the subsequent U.S. decision to outsource to Qatar the task of arming and organizing the Libyan opposition. Now, even though Islamist extremists failed to get the votes in last summer's elections, they have the guns and the country's strongest military organizations (which also contribute to instability elsewhere in Africa).
The broader failure in Libya results from an approach to the Middle East that an unnamed Obama administration official called "leading from behind" in a moment of off-the-record candor in 2011. That approach is having even more damaging consequences now in Syria.
The U.S. failure to provide weapons, training or even medical support to the Syrian opposition is yielding the very consequences that U.S. officials claimed would flow from outside intervention. It has helped prolong the conflict, which has now left some 60,000 dead and some two million displaced. It has also enabled extremist fighters armed by fundamentalist Persian Gulf governments, and even elements directly linked to al Qaeda, to gain a growing and perhaps dominant role in the opposition. Thus when the U.S. recognized Syria's new opposition coalition last month, it also designated one of the important new militias, the Nusrah Front, as a terrorist organization.
Even moderate Syrian opposition groups greeted this U.S. designation with disdain, reflecting the irrelevance with which America is now regarded by many Syrians. Where the Syrian opposition started out openly hostile to Russia, China and Iran, the U.S. failure to offer anything except empty rhetoric has caused deep resentment among previously friendly Syrians.
U.S. inaction may in fact have produced a situation in which a post-Assad Syria will be intensely anti-American, perhaps even dominated by extremists. The outcome that some feared would be the result of American action may instead result from American inaction.
It is perfectly understandable why the Obama administration wants to do nothing that would lead to a repetition of the invasion of Iraq. But no one is arguing for any such thing. The administration seems not to remember that the first Bush administration's failure to protect Iraqi Shiites in 1991, when their uprising was crushed by Saddam Hussein, helped lead to a second war in Iraq 12 years later. Or that an international arms embargo kept the Bosnians defenseless for three years against the Serbs and led to American military intervention in 1995, including the stationing of tens of thousands of NATO peacekeepers in the Balkans.
Policy makers should never underestimate the risks of action in the face of any armed conflict, but neither should they underestimate the risks of inaction. Refusing to give people the means to defend themselves—especially when their interests are congruent with those of the U.S.—can end up forcing America to do much more later. It can also breed lasting resentment by the people we abandon.
Although the outcome in Syria won't be known for some time, it will weigh heavily in judgments of Mrs. Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. As she leaves office, the American people deserve to know whether she supports the leading-from-behind approach that has undone some of the Libyan achievement and dangerously prolonged the war in Syria. If it is the president's policy and not hers, now is the time to voice her objections. If it is her policy, too, then it is fair to ask her to defend it and to be held accountable for its consequences.
Mr. Wolfowitz, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has served as deputy U.S. secretary of defense and U.S. ambassador to Indonesia.
5b)
In typical left-wing fashion, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to testify on the investigation into the events which claimed the lives of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya and said that it really makes no difference why the attack occurred... blah, blah, blah. Of course it makes a difference! It makes a big difference!
5b)
Clinton Regarding Cause of Benghazi Attack: 'What Difference Does it Make?'
In typical left-wing fashion, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to testify on the investigation into the events which claimed the lives of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya and said that it really makes no difference why the attack occurred... blah, blah, blah. Of course it makes a difference! It makes a big difference!
Why does it make a difference? Because from the time the attacks occurred the Obama administration all spoke from the same script: The attacks were due to a spontaneous uprising because of outrage over an anti-Muslim Internet video. For weeks, administration officials repeated this story. In speech after speech, Barack Obama said the same thing.
Then later we learned that this was a planned, coordinated attack, and that almost immediately, the administration knew it was terrorism. So why promote a false storyline?
As reported by the Washington Times, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) questioned Clinton on the false Benghazi story:
Mr. Johnson, a newly added member to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, had asked why the Obama administration had not been able to ascertain what had happened by simply asking officials who had been in Benghazi on the night of the attack.He asked why Susan E. Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, appeared on news talk shows five days after the attack to assert that the assault emerged from spontaneous protests against the video that had swept across the region on Sept. 11.Mr. Johnson asserted that Mrs. Rice had appeared to be “purposefully misleading the American public,” and he demanded for Mrs. Clinton to explain why “we were misled that there were supposedly protests.”“With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans,” Mrs. Clinton said as the exchange grew heated.
The Daily Caller reports that during the testimony, Clinton said she was not responsible for putting Susan Rice in front of the television cameras nor did she help craft the talking points:
Rice drew sharp condemnation for portraying the attack as anything other than terrorism and withdrew her name from consideration to be Secretary of State when it became clear that a confirmation by the Senate would be a heavy lift.Clinton said she was not the person who selected Rice to be the public face, nor was she involved in putting together the talking points on which Rice relied that day.“I personally was not focused on talking points, I was focused on keeping our people safe,” Clinton said.
Sen. Rand Paul blasted Clinton for the mistakes made and told her that if he were president, she would have been relieved of her post:
Finally, a Republican is stepping forward and telling it like it is!And so we have round one in the books and we are nowhere closer to learning why a blatantly false story was presented to the American people. Could it be that a terrorist attack in a country that Obama claims to have helped "liberate" doesn't fit nicely into his story that al Qaeda is on the run? It seems that it's so easy to blame an Internet video rather than seeing the reality that terrorism is thriving and regrouping under Obama's watch. That's the real story!-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6)The Obama Revolution
Last year, when the blogger and amateur gynecologist Andrew Sullivan published a Newsweek cover story proclaiming Barack Obama the liberal Ronald Reagan, conservatives mocked him. No one deserves mockery more than Sullivan—well, maybe Paul Krugman—but in this case the criticism was misplaced. On the eve of his second inauguration, we ought to face the unpleasant fact that Obama will be remembered as a president of achievement and consequence. It does not matter if, like I do, you think those achievements are horrible and that their consequences will be worse. Obama’s reversal of the Reagan revolution is here.
What was the Reagan revolution? It was lower taxes on the wealthy, more money for the Defense Department, a genuine if somewhat easy-going cultural conservatism, and the rhetorical promotion of business, private initiative, and American nationalism. Presidents Bush and Clinton and Bush fussed with the rhetoric—all three of them used language that was more communitarian than Reagan’s—and tinkered around the edges of tax and spending policy. Bush I raised taxes, Clinton imposed work requirements on welfare, and Bush II oversaw an additional Medicare entitlement, but Reagan’s general approach remained the dominant one.
This is something Obama understood. He wrote critically of Reagan in his first book. But, by his 2008 campaign for the presidency, he had developed something of an appreciation for our fortieth president. It soon became clear that Obama sought to be more like Reagan than Reagan’s successors had been—but in a way that would negate those aspects of Reagan’s legacy that liberals found distasteful. Obama sought to be the anti-Reagan, sought to restore the liberal consensus that prevailed in Washington prior to January 1981. He was not a revolutionary. He was a counterrevolutionary.
The inspiration for the counterrevolution was Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, who endorsed Obama over Hillary Clinton in 2008, spoke on his behalf at that year’s Democratic convention in Denver, and died eight months into his first term. Kennedy was overshadowed in life by the memory of his martyred brothers, John and Robert, but in retrospect it is clear that he was the most influential of the three.
He was the prime mover of the 1965 immigration reform that began the process of demographic change culminating in 2012’s “coalition of the ascendant.” He was the force behind an expanded federal role in education and coauthor, with George W. Bush, of No Child Left Behind. He was the most prominent advocate for the creation of a universal entitlement to health insurance and, although he did not live to see the Affordable Care Act become law, would have fought fiercely for Obama’s top domestic priority.
Kennedy worked with Republicans on occasion, but he was above all a partisan and an ideologue. He spent the last decades of his life fighting a rearguard action against the Reagan Revolution and movement conservatism. He was unsuccessful for the most part, but he never missed the chance to champion the welfare state and call for its expansion.
Obama emulated these aspects of Kennedy’s personality when he assumed the executive power. America was reeling from two unpopular wars and a brutal recession. The public’s associations of these disasters with Republicans handed Obama large Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. It was a crisis he could not waste.
And so Obama and his fellows went to work, passing a trillion-dollar stimulus, a universal health care bill, and a major financial reform. They built on Kennedy’s work on education and (via executive order) immigration. They began to reduce the defense budget while increasing spending on health care. Toward the end of the first term they began to give states the option of loosening the welfare work requirements that Clinton had signed into law.
The underperforming economy, reaction to bailouts of the financial system and the automobile sector (started under Bush II but continued under Obama), and the unpopular health care law all contributed to the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterms. Conservatives interpreted this victory as an expression of popular support for limited government. What they did not understand, however, is that control of the House does not equal divided government.
Divided government is when one party controls the presidency and the other controls the Congress. Divided government existed from 1995 to 2001, and checked Clinton’s liberal instincts. Divided government existed from 2007 to 2009, and closed the book on George W.’s unsuccessful second term. The political situation in the aftermath of 2010 was not divided government. It was schizophrenic government.
Republican control of the House could stop the liberal advance but could not reverse it. Both sides thus looked to the 2012 election to decide the question of which revolution—Reagan’s, or Obama’s—would proceed. The dissatisfaction of the public with Congress and the ambiguous approval rating of Obama suggested that the people would deliver an unequivocal choice. Instead the people affirmed precisely the arrangement of power they disliked.
There was one difference, however. Conservatives and Republicans, unlike in 2008, had been so confident of the president’s unpopularity, had so believed in the possibility that the election would be a close if not decisive victory for Mitt Romney, that they were legitimately shocked when the networks called 2012 for Obama within hours of the polls closing. The stunned silence was accompanied by the growing realization that the country was no longer the same place that had installed the Reagan Revolution. Political power had lulled the Republicans and conservatives into a complacent attitude towards the popular culture, mass media, and civil society. They had viewed the 2006 and 2008 elections as temporary boons for the Democrats that would be corrected when the public came to its senses and resumed the progress of the conservative tide. What 2012 proved was that their hypothesis was incorrect.
Republicans have lost the popular vote in five of the past six presidential elections. They have controlled both chambers of Congress for just 10 of the last 20 years. More disturbing was the recognition that conservatives have failed to limit government. Entitlements grew throughout the Reagan Revolution despite reductions in the tax burden. Americans continue to look to the federal government for solutions to every endemic problem, from inequality to the business cycle to rampage killings to the weather. Americans continue to lobby the federal government for additional economic and social rights and guard those rights zealously from interference once they have been granted. But only the smallest of minorities, the men and women who wear uniforms, seems eager to perform the duties necessary to ensure self-government.
A president known for his passivity and cool seized this moment of conservative doubt and uncertainty. In the weeks after his reelection, Obama displayed enormous and impressive energy as he moved to break the Republican Party. He pressed the GOP on every front, including tax increases, the debt ceiling, gun control (sorry: “gun violence prevention”), an immigration plan that includes amnesty for illegal migrants, and nominating for secretary of defense a Republican dove who, unlike every other prospective cabinet member, is eager to whittle down his department. The Republicans meanwhile have collapsed into infighting and retreat and, in some cases, outright delusion.
It is of course possible that the inauguration of a reelected president is his moment of maximum triumph. It is of course possible that Obama’s second term may turn out like George W. Bush’s, when the lyricism and passion of the second inaugural collided with the realities of strategic miscalculations and unexpected events. I have my doubts. What I do not doubt is that the generation of conservatives and Republicans who return one day to power will be forced to reckon with the consequences of the Obama revolution, just as a generation of defeated liberals were forced to confront and in some cases accept the revolution of Ronald Reagan.
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