A chastened President Carter attempted to invade Iran to rescue American hostages and funded the Mujahideen after the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan. President Clinton named Iran as a co-conspirator in the bombing of the Khobar Towers. Neither Democratic Party President ever snubbed our greatest ally.
President Obama has twice gone out of his way to insult the United Kingdom: first, by refusing to keep a bust of Winston Churchill in the White House that was loaned to the United States as a symbol of solidarity after 911; and by downgrading the lavish protocols ordinarily afforded visits by British Prime ministers to the White House:
After intense negotiations with the new administration, Mr Brown got some warm words on the historic links between the U.S. and UK.
But there was no family get together, nor did the President offer Mr Brown and his wife Sarah a star studded White House dinner.
And instead of the traditional joint press conference, the Prime Minister was instead given an impromptu media briefing in the Oval Office.
No one should be shocked that a Democrat President not named John F. Kennedy is less than a stalwart defender of Liberty.
The left in this country, including many Democrats, openly pulled for the communist revolutions in the USSR and China to succeed. As late as the 1980’s the present Democrat Vice President and the 2004 Democratic Party nominee supported the communist regime in Nicaragua and the senior senator from the Bay State worked behind the scenes with Gorbachev to sabotage President Reagan’s peace through strength policy to free millions from Soviet tyranny.
President Jimmy Carter came to office proclaiming an “inordinate fear of communism” and abandoned our stanch ally in Iran in favor of a “religious man he could deal with, in the Ayatollah Khomeini. Even after 911, former President Clinton praised the “liberal” Iranian regime.
President Obama is in many ways, no worse, in much the same way that death by hanging is no worse than death by firing squad. But at least our greatest ally and main progenitor of the American republic was safe from reproach from Democratic Party presidents before 2009. No more.
America is America in large part because of our magnanimity, especially to former adversaries. We fought two wars with Britain before our great alliance to save Europe from the Kaiser; and the world from Nazism and Communism. The invader of Pearl plays baseball and we have normalized relations with Vietnam.
Speaking of saving the world from Nazism and Communism, Winston Churchill takes a backseat to no one in that effort. Kenya was a part of of the world that benefited from that effort, yet:
A bust of the former prime minister once voted the greatest Briton in history, which was loaned to George W Bush from the Government’s art collection after the September 11 attacks, has now been formally handed back.
The bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds if it were ever sold on the open market, enjoyed pride of place in the Oval Office during President Bush’s tenure.
But when British officials offered to let Mr Obama to hang onto the bust for a further four years, the White House said: “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Why would an American president do such a thing? Could it be that…
Why else? Especially considering that Obama shares the same socialist vision as Britain’s with respect to economic and social policy.
Who else has offended Kenya or Obama’s paternal relations? Apparently neither Russia nor Iran.
President Obama suggests that he would consider refusing to deploy the Strategic Defense missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic if Russia helps lessen Iran;s pursuit of nuclear weapons. This is the same Russia that has made Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon possible by building Iran’s nuclear program; the same Russia that invaded Georgia with an Obama response of moral neutrality last year; and the same Russia that threatened the USSR’s former slave states of Poland of the Czech Republic last year.
This is the same Iran that President Obama exonerated for its terrorist history, including the killing of Americans in Iraq and around the world, due to American policies in his first press conference as after the Inauguration:
I said during the campaign that Iran is a country that has extraordinary people, extraordinary history and traditions, but that its actions over many years now have been unhelpful when it comes to promoting peace and prosperity both in the region and around the world, that their attacks — or their — their financing of terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas, the bellicose language that they’ve used towards Israel, their development of a nuclear weapon or their pursuit of a nuclear weapon, that all those things create the possibility of destabilizing the region and are not only contrary to our interests, but I think are contrary to the interests of international peace.
What I’ve also said is that we should take an approach with Iran that employs all of the resources at the United States’ disposal, and that includes diplomacy.
And so my national security team is currently reviewing our existing Iran policy, looking at areas where we can have constructive dialogue, where we can directly engage with them.
And my expectation is, in the coming months, we will be looking for openings that can be created where we can start sitting across the table, face-to-face diplomatic overtures, that will allow us to move our policy in a new direction.
There’s been a lot of mistrust built up over the years, so it’s not going to happen overnight. And it’s important that, even as we engage in this direct diplomacy, we are very clear about certain deep concerns that we have as a country, that Iran understands that we find the funding of terrorist organizations unacceptable, that we’re clear about the fact that a nuclear Iran could set off a nuclear arms race in the region that would be profoundly destabilizing.
“Unhelpful actions” causing “mistrust”? Yes, I guess one could characterize Pearl Harbor and 911 the same. Iran took and held 53 America hostages for over a year until a President they feared was Inaugurated. He was a Republican. They killed more Americans via terrorism than any other nation or group before 911. They waged war against us in Iraq.
Iran has also vowed to wipe Israel, an ally nearly as vital and close as the United Kingdom, yet he makes no mention of that fear in the context of a Middle East arms race. Wouldn’t a promised USE of nuclear arms to commit genocide against Jews be worse than a race?
An enemy of liberty occupies the White House and he is worse than any previous President in this regard. I think the reason he is bad is because he is a liberal Democrat.
The reason he is worse appears to be related to his Marxist parents and his familial ties to a foreign country. He is exhibit “A” for the proposition advanced by the framers insisting upon “natural born citizens” after they grandfathered the Revolutionary generation in. During the debate about candidate Obama’s eligibility, I determined that if a court decided the issue, it would have to conclude that Obama was natural born given that at least one parent, i.e. his mother, was a citizen at the time of his birth and given that the place of his birth was probably irrelevant. (For further discussion of a proposal to insist that both parents be citizens at the time of birth, which was probably the intent of the Framers, see Pilgrim’s There Oughta be a Law.
But courts would probably not ever hear such a case given that the American people, the parties and the Electoral college are available to decide this quasi-legal, yet totally political question.
We have what we have, and given the anti-American behavior of the Democratic Party’s behavior that aided and abetted America’s enemies in Iraq, we see that multigenerational natural born liberals can be fatally dangerous (except when confronted and opposed by a Dubya-like stay the course till we win spine).
Regrettably, the spine now occupying the Oval Office seems more determined to exact personal revenge against an ally rather than following the American tradition of forgiveness in the cause of Liberty.
Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson
Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report
The next Republican target Democrats and the Drive-bys will use to divert attention from Obama’s radical agenda and the recession will be Glenn Beck or Clarence Thomas;
