Obama Administration – Page 2 – VDH's Blade of Perseus

The Progressive Gitmo Myth

June 9, 2014June 9, 2014 victorhanson

Photo of Amnesty International Protest via FrontPage Magazine

The swap of probable deserter Bowe Bergdahl for 5 “high-risk” Guantánamo detainees is about more than political public relations. By releasing some of the worst murderers, this deal prepares the ground for Obama’s long-term goal of shutting down the Guantánamo Bay detention facility and releasing the remaining detainees. According to Britain’s Daily Mail, a senior Pentagon official claims Obama nixed plans to rescue Bergdahl because “the president wanted a diplomatic scenario that would establish a precedent for repatriating detainees from Gitmo.” Given that on his second day in office Obama issued an executive order shutting Gitmo down, and as recently as this year’s State of the Union speech repeated this pledge, his failure to do so has aroused serial complaints from his progressive base. With his reelection behind him, Obama may now think he can fulfill this promise, no matter the danger to our efforts to protect ourselves against terrorism.

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Partisan Politics, Bad Ideas & the Bergdahl Swap

June 5, 2014 victorhanson

The Tailban 5 and Obama Photo via tpnn.com

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine

President Obama’s exchange of 5 high-ranking Taliban murderers for a soldier who possibly was a deserter and collaborator encapsulates everything that is wrong with this administration’s foreign policy. The serial failures of the past 5 years reflect a toxic brew of partisan politics and naïve ideology.

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Our Bad Habit of Negotiating with Terrorists

June 2, 2014 victorhanson

by Bruce Thornton // FrontPage Magazine

Every parent should be happy for the Bergdahl family, whose son was returned to them after five years of captivity among the Taliban. But every parent is not the president of the United States, whose primary responsibility is to protect the security and interests of all Americans, both now and in the long-term. The release of 5 “high-risk”––a phrase meaning they’re eager to kill Americans–– Taliban jihadists held in Guantanamo Bay is nothing more than ransom paid to kidnappers, and an invitation to the enemy to take more Americans captive and to hold them as bargaining chips for more concessions. And the release of hardened, high-ranking Taliban terrorists means there will be more dead Americans after theses soldiers of Allah return to the battlefield.

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Benghazi Constructs

May 20, 2014May 21, 2014 victorhanson

Much is still murky, but the Obama team was at the least guilty of negligence and deception.

By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

Almost everything the administration has alleged about Benghazi has proven false. Yet also, in Machiavellian fashion, the Obama group successfully peddled useful fictions, effectively deluded the country, adroitly ensured President Obama’s reelection, and cast aspersions on those who sought the truth.

In that sense, so far, the lies about Benghazi have won, the truth has failed.

So what really happened?

The Obama administration felt that it was behind the curve concerning the 2011 unrest in Libya. The so-called Arab Spring revolutions had toppled other governments in North Africa, and it seemed that protesters would do the same in Syria and Libya.

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Tweets Won’t Stop Modern Barbarians

May 15, 2014May 19, 2014 victorhanson

Boko Haram and the Sultan of Brunei couldn’t care less about Western outrage.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

Nigeria’s homegrown, al-Qaeda linked militant group, Boko Haram, brags openly that it recently kidnapped about 300 young Nigerian girls. It boasts that it will sell them into sexual slavery.

Those terrorists have a long and unapologetic history of murdering kids who dare to enroll in school, and Christians in general. For years, Western aid groups have pleaded with the State Department to at least put Boko Haram on the official list of terrorist groups. But former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s team was reluctant to come down so harshly, in apparent worry that some might interpret such condemnation as potentially offensive to Islamic sensitivities.

Instead, Western elites now flood Facebook and Twitter with angry postings about Boko Haram — either in vain hopes that public outrage might deter the terrorists, or simply to feel better by loudly condemning the perpetrators.

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Victor Davis Hanson on the Bill Martinez Show (VDH interview begins at 27:10)

May 15, 2014May 15, 2014 victorhanson

Click Here to Listen to the Interview now!

VDH interview begins at 27:10 (Begins again after the break at 41:30)

VDH discusses his article What Drives Vladimir Putin?

He also discusses his latest article Tweets Won’t Stop Modern Barbarians

billmartinez

The Truth Drips Out

May 1, 2014 victorhanson

by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner

Deputy_National_Security_Advisor_Rhodes_Addresses_Reporters_(12222740226) — Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes

For over a year and a half the White House successfully withheld communications between public servants, apparently in hopes that the death of four Americans in Benghazi would not become an issue in the 2012 election (at the eleventh hour CNN’s Candy Crowley did her best to ensure that goal by unethically becoming both moderator and advocate of Barack Obama in the second debate).

Even with the heavily censored and redacted recent releases of White House e-mails, one of the many messaging “goals” of Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes (“To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy”) is the evidence that proves exactly what the White House so far has denied: the highest White House officials were in a pre-election frenzy to pressure Continue reading “The Truth Drips Out” →

Foreign Policy: From Bad to None

April 29, 2014 victorhanson

Our enemies are gloating, and our allies are grimly deciding where to go from here.

by Victor Davis Hanson

Barack Obama had a foreign policy for about five years, and now he has none.

3115968002_be17a06f55 The first-term foreign policy’s assumptions went something like this. Obama was to assure the world that he was not George W. Bush. Whatever the latter was for, Obama was mostly against. Given that Bush had left office with polls similar to Harry Truman’s final numbers, this seemed to Obama a wise political approach.

If Bush wanted garrison troops left in Iraq to secure the victory of the surge, Obama would pull them out. If Bush had opened Guantanamo, used drones, relied on renditions, reestablished military tribunals, and approved preventive detention, Obama would profess to dismantle that war on terror — even to the point where the Bush-era use of the word “terrorism” and any associations between it and radical Islam would disappear.

If Bush had contemplated establishing an anti-missile system in concert with the Poles and Czechs, then it must have been unwise and unnecessary. If Bush had unabashedly supported Israel and become estranged from Turkey, Obama would predictably reverse both courses.

Second, policy per se would be secondary to Obama’s personal narrative and iconic status. Obama, by virtue of his nontraditional name, his mixed-race ancestry, and his unmistakably leftist politics, would win over America’s critics to the point where most disagreements — themselves largely provoked by prior traditional and blinkered administrations — would dissipate. Rhetoric and symbolism would trump Obama’s complete absence of foreign-policy experience.

Many apparently shared Obama’s view that disagreements abroad were not so much over substantive issues as they were caused by race, class, or gender fissures, or were the fallout from the prior insensitivity of Europe and the United States — as evidenced by a Nobel Prize awarded to Obama on the basis of his Continue reading “Foreign Policy: From Bad to None” →

The New Inquisition

April 10, 2014 victorhanson

by Victor Davis Hanson // Tribune Content Agency

What if you believed that the planet might not have warmed up the last two decades, even though carbon emissions reached all-time highs?

Or, if the earth did heat up, you thought that it was not caused by human activity?

Or, if global warming were the fault of mankind, you trusted that the slight increases would not make all that much difference? Continue reading “The New Inquisition” →

America’s New Anti-Strategy

April 8, 2014 victorhanson

Our allies and our enemies have seriously recalculated where the U.S. stands.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

It was not difficult to define American geopolitical strategy over the seven decades

Axis & Allies board game djensen47 via Flickr — Axis & Allies board game
djensen47 via Flickr

following World War II — at least until 2009. It was largely bipartisan advocacy, most ambitiously, for nations to have the freedom of adopting constitutional governments that respected human rights, favored free markets, and abided by the rule of law. And at the least, we sought a world in which states could have any odious ideology they wished as long as they kept it within their own borders. There were several general strategic goals as we calculated our specific aims, both utopian and realistic.

(1) The strategic cornerstone was the protection of a small group of allies that, as we did, embraced consensual government and free markets, and were more likely to avoid human-rights abuses. That eventually meant partnerships with Western and later parts of Eastern Europe, Great Britain, and much of its former Empire, such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In Asia, the American focus was on Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan. The U.S. military essentially guaranteed the security of these Asian nations, and they developed safely, shielded from Soviet or Chinese Communist aggression, and more recently from Russian or Chinese provocations. Continue reading “America’s New Anti-Strategy” →

Tag: Obama Administration

The Progressive Gitmo Myth

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Partisan Politics, Bad Ideas & the Bergdahl Swap

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Our Bad Habit of Negotiating with Terrorists

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Benghazi Constructs

Much is still murky, but the Obama team was at the least guilty of negligence and deception.

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Tweets Won’t Stop Modern Barbarians

Boko Haram and the Sultan of Brunei couldn’t care less about Western outrage.

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Victor Davis Hanson on the Bill Martinez Show (VDH interview begins at 27:10)

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The Truth Drips Out

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Foreign Policy: From Bad to None

Our enemies are gloating, and our allies are grimly deciding where to go from here.

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The New Inquisition

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America’s New Anti-Strategy

Our allies and our enemies have seriously recalculated where the U.S. stands.

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Much is still murky, but the Obama team was at the least guilty of negligence and deception.

Share this:

Like this:

Boko Haram and the Sultan of Brunei couldn’t care less about Western outrage.

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Our enemies are gloating, and our allies are grimly deciding where to go from here.

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Our allies and our enemies have seriously recalculated where the U.S. stands.

Share this:

Like this: