A Pre-State of the Union review of the World outside the United States from a Red Stater’s point of view

But first, the State of our Union

In two days, the Chief Executive we hired on a temporary basis will deliver his report on the state of We the People’s union to a nation made stronger by the increased number of tea partiers that will occupy the joint session of Congress before whom the constitutionally required report will be received.

We can count on President Barack Obama to tell us how much weaker we would have been had not he and the Democrats borrowed $3 trillion from China to keep state and local non-teacher education employees on the public dole doing unnecessary work; keep millions of unemployed just so for 99 weeks; and how the TARP he voted for as Senator and administered as President prevented us from having to surrender China before mortgaging the future.

That is the speech in a nutshell, even if the new triangulating team and B. Hussein put a more generous-to-themselves spin on the annual D.C. exercise in inducing insomnia. We can also expect to hear about how, NOW we are ready to push policies that will produce jobs now that we have been saved from the abyss. After all, he hired Clinton’s Bill Daley and so is obviously moving to the center. No matter that Rahm Emanuel, Genius Larry Summers and Christine Roemer had more Clintonian bona fides than the 2011 crowd designed to distract us from Obama’s actual actions in office that, like FDR in his first two years, focused more on what the Left calls “reform” than recovery from the job loss emergency literally crying out for help. But Democrats obviously care most about the poor, so shut up. They know best.

No word yet on whether the Secret Service-protected Commander-in-Chief will again wage war against the defenseless, yet ostensibly “co-equal” judicial branch of government that Obama regularly defies when it comes to oil moratoriums or net neutrality denials of free speech; nor whether the Chief Justice of the United States will even appear on the battlefield.

One thing we can count on is that the “healer” that spent part of one sentence last week eschewing the failed media test in charging Rush and Sarah as accessories to murder (while spending five paragraphs in lecturing all Americans on civility) is that President Barack Hussein Obama will not utter one word praising either his predecessor’s civility towards him nor the policies he instituted at home and abroad as part of the War on Terror that the One-we-were-waiting-for has continued after trashing those for years as a Senator and candidate.

Gitmo remains open. Indefinite detentions of captured terrorists have not been made definite. Rendition has not been rendered. Military tribunals are being convened. Iraq remains Connecticut and the war against al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan continues to be engaged. No word on whether the perpetrators of 3000 murders on 911 continue to have their noses swabbed, but we doubt it since we have had more close calls since Obama took office and saw the homeland peace streak end at Fort Hood.

That Iraq continues to play more soccer than terrorist haven games and continues to vote more than they slaughter each other still owes more to former President George W. Bush given Obama’s apology tours and bowing, but we do appreciate his drones and all the harm he could have done and hasn’t.

The State of the World

Which brings us to the “jasmine revolution” in Tunisia:

Will it be a real revolution, firmly rejecting dictatorship for democracy?

And even more important, would a Tunisian revolution inspire revolts in the remaining Arab autocracies of North Africa and the Middle East?

Democracy’s growth during the 20th century did seem to come in regional waves.

Africa saw its long, difficult march toward freedom start during the 1950s and ’60s as European powers were forced to let their colonies become independent.

In Latin America, many right-wing dictatorships fell during the 1980s in large part because of a regional debt crisis.

In Asia, the Philippines “people power” revolution of 1986 against the Marcos dictatorship helped lead to democracy in South Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia (and a failed attempt in Burma).

In the 1990s, the collapse of communism in the Soviet bloc brought democracy to Eastern and Central Europe. (Russia and much of Central Asia, however, have yet to grasp democracy.)

Arab nations are long overdue in joining this global trend. President George W. Bush tried to set up Iraq as a democratic model for the region, an experiment still in the works.

This column has long argued that the Bush push for self-government is quite consistent with the Founders and the best of our Presidents. Bush did not seek out monsters to slay and convert any more than did George Washington. Only after slaying monsters that sought us out, did he, like FDR, HST and Ike in Europe, Japan and Korea; offer wealth and happiness producing democratic-republicanism to those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It appears to have taken in Iraq, with that third way serving as a model for freedom-seekers in Iran, Lebanon and now Tunisia. Time will tell in those locales, much like it took to tell in former slave-protecting united states. Sometimes in takes second and third elections. I’ll never forget that barber near Beirut surveying his bombed out shop who said that in the next election he would vote for a non-Hezbo who wouldn’t provoke Israel to bomb his next barber shop.

Other good news and bad news abroad:

• Muslims in Mauritania seem to be following a version of the Ayaan Hirsi Ali liberation project by banning female genital mutilation. There have been more killings in a Maryland county this year than in Afghanistan (Although, admittedly this seems to be more about the new line in the Old Line State than the weakness of the Taliban).

• Foreign diplomats are even trying to assist the freedom project here in the U.S. with protests against the unconstitutional peep shows and gropings by Obama and Big Sis TSA.

• B. Hussein treats Israel like a Banana Republic.

• We rightly have not invoked Woodrow Wilson’s Sedition Act against Wikileaks.

Bottom line: Bush killed and captured enemies of America that made in through the gate and those that had trained to storm the same; while also providing a third way that turns their swords into plowshares. Obama has continued much of that activity and for that we are grateful, but the Fort Hood, Underwear and Times Square bombers made it through the gate and he invited China inside.

The best activity for the GOP House in this regard is to, by all means necessary, keep the U.S. Navy strong, large and superior.

Mike DeVine

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Charlotte Observer, The Minority Report and Examiner.com archives

www.devinelawvista.com