Obama’s Enlightened Foolery

He views Putin, the 21st century, and himself as in a fun-house mirror.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online 

President Obama talks about Vladimir Putin as if he were a Pennsylvania “clinger” who operates on outdated principles, who is driven by fear, and whom unfortunately the post-Enlightenment mind of even Barack Obama

Mykl Roventine  via Flickr
Mykl Roventine via Flickr

cannot always reach. Deconstruct a recent CBS News interview with President Obama, and the limitations of his now-routine psychoanalyses are all too clear. Consider the following presidential assertions:

Obama said in the CBS interview that Vladimir Putin was “willing to show a deeply held grievance about what he considers to be the loss of the Soviet Union.”

Is that any surprise? Why would Putin not “show a deeply held grievance” — given that Russians enjoyed far more pride and influence when they had far more territory and power than they do now? Just because elites in the West might consider Denmark and Luxembourg model societies, given their per capita incomes, ample social services, high-speed mass transit, and climate-change sensitivities, does not necessarily mean that the grandchildren of Stalingrad and Leningrad would agree.   Continue reading “Obama’s Enlightened Foolery”

Obama’s Foreign Policy: Enemy Action

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine 

It’s often hard to determine whether a series of bad policies results from stupidity or malicious intent. Occam’s razor suggests that the former is the more likely explanation,

US Dept. of Labor via Flickr
US Dept. of Labor via Flickr

as conspiracies assume a high degree of intelligence, complex organization, and secrecy among a large number of people, qualities that usually are much less frequent than the simple stupidity, disorganization, and inability to keep a secret more typical of our species. Yet surveying the nearly 6 years of Obama’s disastrous foreign policy blunders, I’m starting to lean towards Goldfinger’s Chicago mob-wisdom: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it’s enemy action.”

Obama’s ineptitude started with his general foreign policy philosophy. George Bush, so the narrative went, was a trigger-happy, unilateralist, blundering, “dead or alive” cowboy who rushed into an unnecessary war in Iraq after alienating our allies and insulting the Muslim world. Obama pledged to be different. As a Los Angeles Continue reading “Obama’s Foreign Policy: Enemy Action”

Three American Teacher Slaughtered for Christian Faith in Muslim World

by Raymond Ibrahim // CBN News 

Why was Ronald Thomas Smith II, an American teaching at Benghazi’s International School, shot to death last Thursday in Libya, even as he “was looking forward to his first Christmas in

Ronald Smith with wife and child
Ronald Smith with wife and child

the United States with his wife and toddler son”?

Most Western media and analysts dismiss the killing as a random act of violence incited by a recent al-Qaeda video.

However, by connecting the dots and looking at precedence, it appears that Smith’s Christianity, specifically his talking about it among Muslims, was the motive behind the slaying.

First consider two facts gleaned from the AP report, “American killed in Benghazi remembered as ‘much loved teacher’”: 1) Smith once had plans to attend seminary, a place devoted to preparing Christians to share the Gospel—a crime according to Islamic law (recall the Coptic Christians tortured and killed on the accusation that they were proselytizing in Libya); 2) according to his home church in Texas, “Ronnie’s [Smith’s] greatest desire was for peace and prosperity in Libya and for the people of Libya to have the joy of knowing God through Christ” (emphasis added). Continue reading “Three American Teacher Slaughtered for Christian Faith in Muslim World”

Obama’s Ironic Foreign Policy

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media 

In the old postwar, pre-Obama world, the United States accepted a 65-year burden of defeating Soviet communism. It led the fight against radical Islamic terrorism. The American fleet and overseas bases ensured that global commerce, communications, and travel were largely free and uninterrupted. Globalization was a sort of synonym for Americanization. Continue reading “Obama’s Ironic Foreign Policy”

On Poking Animals and Other Stupid Things

by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner

There are lots of reasons why many of us who would like to punish the Assad-family regime for its long history of anti-American and savage and genocidal conduct fear the present course is unwise, not in America’s interest, and dangerous — at least as it has so far been articulated. Continue reading “On Poking Animals and Other Stupid Things”

Obama’s Authoritarians

Mouthing Sixties-style anti-Western slogans is the way to win the president’s heart.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

There were many paradoxes left after the protests of the 1960s. One of the worst was American elites’ hypocrisy toward authoritarianism abroad.

Most Americans granted that anti-Communist strongmen like Ferdinand Marcos, Augusto Pinochet, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, and Anastasio Somoza stifled liberty and freedom. Yet they further agreed that during a lose-lose Cold War, in which our enemies the Soviet Union and Red China had collectively murdered perhaps 80 million of their own people, there were no good choices. Thus they were willing to go along with the American government’s support for right-wing thugs who were enlisted in the war against Communism, although the elites, especially in the academy, regularly castigated them. Continue reading “Obama’s Authoritarians”

Western Cultural Suicide

We are blind to the contradictions in welcoming an immigrant but not making him one of us.

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

Multiculturalism — as opposed to the notion of a multiracial society united by a single culture — has become an abject contradiction in the modern Western world. Continue reading “Western Cultural Suicide”

Terrorism as Therapy

The Obama administration is intent on downplaying the Islamic roots of contemporary terrorism.

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

One common theme emerges from the hearings over the Benghazi disaster: The Obama administration is intent on downplaying the Islamic roots of terrorists who harbor an existential hatred of the West. Continue reading “Terrorism as Therapy”

The Islamist Pull

by Victor Davis Hanson

NRO’s The Corner

Although information is still too sketchy to draw any comprehensive conclusions (other than that the Boston killings are not, as recently suggested, fall out from sequestration, the NRA, lack of gun control, climate change, right-wing tea-party zealots, etc.), there emerges a familiar profile to the suspects that we have seen before.  Continue reading “The Islamist Pull”

The Rape of Christopher Stevens

by Raymond Ibrahim

Frontpage Magazine

By obsessing over the 14-minute YouTube Muhammad video and its maker, the mainstream media ultimately exonerates the inexcusable and murderous response of the Islamic world. Continue reading “The Rape of Christopher Stevens”