Obama: See no evil?

Obama: See No Evil

By Cal Thomas

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is the polar opposite of John F. Kennedy.

Judging from recent comments, Obama apparently would pay no price, bear no burden, forsake any hardship, support any foe and oppose any friend that wished to pursue liberty. Kennedy understood that evil exists in the world. He saw it in World War II as his generation defeated the evil that gripped Europe and Japan. And he witnessed it as president when Nikita Khrushchev approved the building of the Berlin Wall and the installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba, acts that flowed from Khrushchev's perception that the young president was weak and inexperienced.

Obama thinks he can negotiate with evil and transform evil into something else. Initially his foreign policy platform was a naive pledge to meet "unconditionally" with the leaders of Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba and other nations dominated by dictators. In recent days he has changed his tune somewhat. He would still meet with the heads of these mini evil empires without preconditions, but "there must be careful preparation. We will set a clear agenda."

This leads to an important question: On what basis does a free nation negotiate with nations that are not free? Does Obama expect leaders who got where they are by undemocratic, even violent means, to embrace press freedom, religious liberty, political pluralism and rights for women? What would evil leaders demand of him? Any concession given to dictators, who are not known for keeping their promises, would surely result in the United States being taken less seriously and contribute to the undermining of our national security.

In his recent speech to the Israeli Knesset, President Bush pointedly noted that evil cannot be accommodated, negotiated with, pampered, or appeased. It must be opposed and defeated.

Obama's "strategy" for dealing with evil is the progeny of a secular age that sees everything bad as curable through counseling, good intentions masquerading as wishful thinking and/or pharmaceutical intervention. Prosperity and a sense of entitlement have dulled our senses to what evil looks like. These days, evil is the political party to which you don't belong and the ideology to which you do not subscribe.

Evil has a definition. Dictionary.com calls it: "morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked." There is a presumption contained in this definition. It is that a standard exists by which evil (and its opposite, good) may be judged. Too many of us have been taught in government schools and by contemporary culture that such notions belong to another, less sophisticated era. In the Internet age "evil" has become extinct.

One need only consider the flaunted immorality of "Sex and the City" to get the point. Women my grandmother would have labeled "sluts" are now regarded as New York sophisticates who change men as rapidly as they change clothes, during the short breaks between sexual trysts when they bother to wear clothes at all.

In place of an immutable standard, it is in self we trust, not God (Heaven, "if it exists," forbid!)

Obama's only foreign policy strategy seems to be diplomacy, not the defeat of evil. Such an approach when not supported by a credible threat of military power is bound to encourage more evil, not less. Obama debunks the value of experience, claiming the experience of President Bush and John McCain got us into the lengthy Iraq War. That war didn't start in Iraq and it won't end there, even if our objectives are achieved. Those objectives are closer to being realized than they were a year ago, but Obama and his fellow Democrats cannot acknowledge progress because they are preoccupied with victory at the polls more than victory over evil.

Recently, The Washington Times carried a story by Rowan Scarborough that quoted intelligence officials who believe terrorist attacks could occur in the early month's of the next president's administration. Terrorists attacked in February 1993 just two months after Bill Clinton's Inauguration and again on Sept. 11, 2001, less than eight months after George W. Bush became president.

The central question for voters ought to be this: who do we want in the White House should another terrorist attack occur; one who seeks to negotiate with evil, or one who is a warrior and wants to crush it?

 

mccain might as well be mcbush. 5 years of crushing terrorists and we are no better off than we were before.
a true leader should never be unwilling to look an enemy in the eye and find some compromise. what did ronald reagan do with russia?

 

"The central question for voters ought to be this: who do we want in the White House should another terrorist attack occur; one who seeks to negotiate with evil, or one who is a warrior and wants to crush it?"

Bin Laden has been crushed?

LOL!

Bush failed to stop the guy, hardly a "warrior" act.

"Bush’s priorities have always been skewed. Just months after declaring he wanted bin Laden “dead or alive,” Bush said, “I truly am not that concerned about him.” Turning his attention away from bin Laden, Bush trained his focus on Iraq — a country he now admits had “nothing” to do with 9/11."

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/14/barnes-osama/

 

5 years of crushing terrorists and we are no better off than we were before.
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This will take a generation, unless a strong leader emerges from within the population of the terrorist countries.

 

Bush's real motivation for war

In Iraq, McClellan added, Bush saw "his opportunity to create a legacy of greatness," something McClellan said Bush has said he believes is only available to wartime presidents.

The president's real motivation for the war, he said, was to transform the Middle East to ensure an enduring peace in the region. But the White House effort to sell the war as necessary due to the stated threat posed by Saddam Hussein was needed because "Bush and his advisers knew that the American people would almost certainly not support a war launched primarily for the ambitions purpose of transforming the Middle East," McClellan wrote.

administration chose a different path — not employing out-and-out deception, but shading the truth," he wrote of the effort to convince the world that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, an effort he said used "innuendo and implication" and "intentional ignoring of intelligence to the contrary."

"President Bush managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option," McClellan concluded, noting, "The lack of candor underlying the campaign for war would severely undermine the president's entire second term in office."

http://www.ajc.com/meetro/content/news/stories/2008/05/27/mcclellanbook_0527.html

 

Flipper Flopper:


Bush's pledge to avoid nation building came during a debate with Democrat Al Gore at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., on Oct. 11, 2000. It was their second debate of the election campaign.

At that debate Bush recalled that the U.S. humanitarian mission in Somalia -- begun by his father, President George H.W. Bush -- had "changed into a nation-building mission, and that's where the mission went wrong."

He was referring to the deaths of 18 U.S. Army rangers who were killed in Mogadishu on Oct. 3-4, 1993, after a gun battle. U.S. forces were soon withdrawn from Somalia.

"The mission was changed, and as a result, our nation paid a price," Bush continued. "And so I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building."

Bush declared that it was up to those who live in the liberated lands to rebuild them.

He added the Bush administration, if he was elected, would "absolutely not" indulge in nation planning. And so we launch another round of nation building in Iraq, even as the Bush administration struggles to rebuild a nation in Afghanistan.

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/helenthomas/2117601/detail.html

 

"Bush and his advisers knew that the American people would almost certainly not support a war launched primarily for the ambitions purpose of transforming the Middle East," McClellan wrote.

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I believe that. Except for one problem, it was our turn to fight in the middle east. Many other countries have fought in the ME, no one was interested in helping when Saddam invaded Kuwait, by default, that left us.

We packed up and went home (as did other countries in the past), how many times should we pack up and go home?

 

Many other empires fought and failed in their attempts to control the middle east, like the British Empire, Russian Empire, etc. so Bush decided that we too should lose imperial wars and make fools of ourselves in the middle east...

This whole US pride business that McBush is spouting about not retreating goes before a fall...

 

Better tell that to SNOBAMA, lol. And his gay friends in Frisco.

 

' it was our turn to fight in the middle east.'

bull fucking shit

it's been our turn to fight everywhere for everything

George Washington warned us not to go into debt, nor to get caught up in every quarrel in the world

failing to heed that advice is threatening to leave us bankrupt with our next adversary (China)as our creditor

Neocon warmongering threatens to destroy our nation

while guarantees of protection can deter agression, they can also invite carelessness of those guaranteed

there can be no doubt that there is an 'insurance effect', that people are less carefull about costs when an insurer is picking up the tab, and that people are a little more carefull when 'they're on their own'

"Presidential advisers and the government were split. Clark Clifford, Truman's legal counsel, strongly favored recognition. The Jews deserved a sanctuary after the horror of the Holocaust, Clifford argued. Besides, the new state would likely come to pass whether Truman urged it or not.

But the Department of State, including the highly respected Secretary of State, George Marshall, advised against it, as did much of his cabinet. Truman greatly admired Marshall and had said, "there wasn't a decoration big enough" to honor Marshall's leadership during World War II. At a White House meeting on May 12, 1948, Marshall objected to quick US recognition of a Jewish homeland. It would look as if Truman was angling for Jewish votes, he said, and might endanger access to Arab oil. He went so far as to say that if Truman went ahead and recognized the new state, then Marshall would vote against him in the coming election."

http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_independence_recognition_us.php

Marshall was of course, exactly right