{"id":7669,"date":"2014-07-21T10:37:30","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T17:37:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7669"},"modified":"2014-07-21T10:39:35","modified_gmt":"2014-07-21T17:39:35","slug":"obamas-tranquility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-tranquility\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama\u2019s Tranquility"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJMedia<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo via PJMedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Barack Obama\u2019s team recently took credit for improving the \u201ctranquility of the global community,\u201d and the president made it clear just what a calm place the world has become during his tenure.<\/p>\n

But this summer\u00a0Obama\u2019s tranquil world<\/a>\u00a0[1]<\/sup>\u00a0has descended into medieval barbarism in a way scarcely seen in decades. In Gaza, Hamas is banking its missile arsenal in mosques, schools and private homes; even Hitler did not do that with his V2s. Hamas terrorists resort to\u00a0trying to wire up animals<\/a>\u00a0[2]<\/sup>\u00a0to serve as suicide bombers. Aztec-style, they seek to capture Israeli soldiers to \u00a0torture or trade \u2014 a sort of updated version of parading captive soldiers up the\u00a0Templo Mayor<\/a>\u00a0[3]<\/sup>\u00a0in Tenochtitlan.<\/p>\n

Hamas cannot build a hotel, but instead applies its premodern cunning\u00a0to tunneling<\/a>\u00a0[4]<\/sup>\u00a0and killing in ever more insidious ways. Yet it proves incompetent in doing what it wishes to do best \u2014 kill Jewish civilians. Its efforts to kill Jews while getting killed in the process\u00a0earn it sympathy from the morally obtuse<\/a>\u00a0[5]<\/sup>\u00a0of the contemporary world who would have applauded Hitler in 1945 as an underdog who suffered greatly as he was overwhelmed by the Allies that he once tried to destroy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In Paris, just seventy years after the Holocaust, sympathetic rioters hit the streets to cheer on Hamas\u2019s efforts to kill more Jews with their crude versions of\u00a0Vergeltungswaffen<\/a>\u00a0[6]<\/sup><\/i>. The passive French solution apparently is once again to encourage Jews to leave the country, given the growing number of new Nazis in their midst. Whether Hamas or Putin, the European response is always the same: why cannot they just go away to bother to some Jews or Americans, and leave us alone?<\/p>\n

Russian operatives,\u00a0role-playing as Ukrainian separatists<\/a>\u00a0[7]<\/sup>, shot down a civilian airliner, then tried to doctor the debris field, then let the bodies decay, and now are looting the wallets of the dead. You cannot get much less tranquil than that.<\/p>\n

In Iraq, ISIS, not content with the usual Middle East savagery, resorts to warring on religious \u00a0icons, as if torture and murder of the living do not offer enough outlet for their barbarity. They blow up mosques, shatter tombs, and deface graveyards, in their eagerness to restore the 7th<\/sup>\u00a0century. All that seems more Dark Age than merely medieval.<\/p>\n

Iran\u00a0just missed our \u201cdeadline\u201d<\/a>\u00a0[8]<\/sup>\u00a0that was supposed to result in fewer centrifuges in exchange for suspending the sanctions. No sane person now believes that the Iranians will stop nuclear enrichment, or will not get a bomb, or will not threaten to use it when they get one. What will Secretary Kerry do, now that the currency of \u201cred lines,\u201d \u201cdeadlines\u201d and \u201cstep-over lines\u201d has been all used up?<\/p>\n

On the southern border, parents in Central America send unescorted preteens northward among thugs, rapists, and murderers, in hopes that their offspring will survive and thus either anchor their own immigration or at least send back money from the north. Somehow that reality is lost in all the talk about the \u201cchildren\u201d \u2014 the abject callousness of the parents, the greedy cynicism of Central American governments, the shameless duplicity of Mexico that facilitates the transit of children, and the wink-and-nod demographic angling of the Obama left.\u00a0 Add it all up and we see tens of thousands of children manipulated as mere pawns, as racialists, the callous, and the conniving all call others the very names that properly fit only themselves.<\/p>\n

Why go into the torturing, dismemberment and gassing in Syria, or the random savagery of Libya, or what the cartels do each day in Mexico?<\/p>\n

In short, outside the rather limited Western world of democracy and free market capitalism, the world \u2014 Africa, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East \u2014 is a very untranquil place, where the strong dictate to the weak and the weak suffer as they must.<\/p>\n

The West is not perfect. It is aging and tired. But right now Obama\u2019s mythical vision of global tranquility exists only in the Westernized world, the result of an aberrant 2,500-year tradition that most of the world despises even as it incompetently seeks to emulate it or travel to it \u2014 or just destroy what it cannot have.<\/p>\n

Some tranquility.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2008 Works and Days. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n

URLs in this post:<\/p>\n

[1] Obama\u2019s tranquil world:\u00a0http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2014\/07\/18\/opinion\/gingrich-obama-mind\/index.html<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

[2] trying to wire up animals:\u00a0http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/worldnews\/middleeast\/israel\/10977818\/Donkey-suicide-bomb-stopped-by-Israeli-troops-in-Gaza.html<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

[3] Templo Mayor:\u00a0http:\/\/ngm.nationalgeographic.com\/print\/2010\/11\/greatest-aztec\/draper-text<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

[4] to tunneling:\u00a0http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/rogerlsimon\/2014\/07\/18\/israel-must-destroy-hamas-tunnels-no-matter-how-long-it-takes\/<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

[5] earn it sympathy from the morally obtuse:\u00a0http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2014\/07\/18\/cnn-reporter-israelis-are-scum\/<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

[6] Vergeltungswaffen:\u00a0http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/V-weapons<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

[7] role-playing as Ukrainian separatists:\u00a0http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/instapundit\/191947\/<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

[8] just missed our \u201cdeadline\u201d:\u00a0http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/tatler\/2014\/07\/18\/white-house-extends-iran-nuclear-deadline-by-four-months\/<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJMedia Barack Obama\u2019s team recently took credit for improving the \u201ctranquility of the global community,\u201d and the president made it clear just what a calm place the world has become during his tenure. But this summer\u00a0Obama\u2019s tranquil world\u00a0[1]\u00a0has descended into medieval barbarism in a way scarcely seen in decades. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[145,11,167,46],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1ZH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7761,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-un-midas-touch\/","url_meta":{"origin":7669,"position":0},"title":"The Un-Midas Touch","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 11, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJMedia Everything that Barack Obama touches seems to turn to dross. Think of it for a minute.\u00a0He inherited a quiet Iraq\u00a0[1]\u00a0(no American combat deaths at all\u00a0in December 2009\u00a0[2]). Joe Biden bragged of the calm that it would be the administration\u2019s\u201cgreatest achievement.\u201d\u00a0[3]\u00a0But by pulling out all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/obama_analyst_1-6-14-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7776,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-face-in-the-crowd\/","url_meta":{"origin":7669,"position":1},"title":"Our \u2018Face in the Crowd\u2019","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJMedia Elia Kazan\u2019s classic\u00a0A Face in the Crowd\u00a0[2]\u00a0is a good primer on Barack Obama\u2019s rise and fall. 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Our federal agencies are now an alphabet soup of incompetence and corruption [1]. How does the IRSever quite recover [2]?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "America's Future"","block_context":{"text":"America's Future","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/americas-future\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via PJMedia","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/obama_blames_bush_11-23-14-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8163,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-dangers-of-obamas-cognitive-dissonance\/","url_meta":{"origin":7669,"position":3},"title":"The Dangers of Obama\u2019s Cognitive Dissonance","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 26, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine There are many moments from the past 6 years that demonstrate the criminal incompetence of this president and his administration. But for me, Obama\u2019s interview with GloZell\u2013\u2013whose claim to YouTube fame comes from eating Cheerios in a bathtub filled with milk\u2013\u2013represents best the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Our Contributors"","block_context":{"text":"Our Contributors","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via PJMedia","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ol-450x253.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2792,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-foreign-policy-disasters\/","url_meta":{"origin":7669,"position":4},"title":"Obama’s Foreign Policy Disasters","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 13, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Jamie Glazov FrontPageMagazine.com FP:\u00a0Victor Davis Hanson, welcome to Frontpage Interview. What report card would you give the Obama administration in terms of foreign policy right now? Why? Hanson:\u00a0An Incomplete that at the present rate will turn into a D\/F if he is not careful. Obama has confused a number\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Jamie Glazov"","block_context":{"text":"Jamie Glazov","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/jamie-glazov\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7712,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-is-the-world-becoming-such-a-nasty-place\/","url_meta":{"origin":7669,"position":5},"title":"Why Is the World Becoming Such a Nasty Place?","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 28, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJMedia Border Disorders Central American parents send their unescorted children northward in hopes of remittances and eventual anchor amnesty for themselves. 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