Obama's Bid For U.N. Secretary-General Has Begun

Reblogged from investors.com

05/28/2014 06:55 PM ET

Multilateralism: It is commonly observed that President Obama never started governing because he never stopped campaigning. He campaigned in his West Point speech all right — for United Nations secretary-general.

We've got a president who has unblushingly told us he's "a better speechwriter than my speechwriters," knows "more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors" and is "a better political director than my political director."

Not to mention that "like any politician at this level, I've got a healthy ego." Uh, no kidding.
An intellect that enormous must feel confined by merely leading the free world (or, more accurately, not leading). Such boundless cerebral prowess deserves a real challenge, such as running the whole world.

The president obviously agrees; his address to cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on Wednesday sounded much like the launch of a campaign for still-higher office: presiding over the hopelessly corrupt, tyrant-dominated United Nations.

After briefly giving lip service to the U.S. using "military force, unilaterally if necessary, when our core interests demand it," Obama quickly placed America under the U.N. umbrella. When faced with crises that "do not directly threaten us," he said, "we must mobilize allies and partners to take collective action."

Great wartime presidents never had to boast of U.S. power; they used it. But "those who think America is weak are wrong" was the theme of Obama's speech.

Those "who suggest that America is in decline, or has seen its global leadership slip away, are either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics," Obama claimed. "Think about it. Our military has no peer."

There's a similarity to Jimmy Carter's 1979 "malaise" speech, touting "the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might." Six months later, Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan, and less than a year after that Ronald Reagan was called in to rebuild the Pentagon and a battered U.S. economy.

"I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being," Obama told the cadets, but he defined that as the willingness to affirm "international norms ... through our actions."
The Nobel Peace Prize Committee gave Obama its award on spec, less than nine months after his inauguration in 2009, to promote "multilateral diplomacy" and an "emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play."

Now the U.N., acting similarly, can make him "president of the world." Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's term expires in early 2017. If Obama were his successor, the U.S., even under a Republican administration, might not veto an ex-U.S. president in the Security Council.

Who would the U.N. like better as secretary-general than an American who wants the world's lone superpower placed firmly under the rules made by the U.N. General Assembly, the vast majority of whose members are undemocratic and pine for redistributed U.S. wealth?

A secretary-general who can get the U.S. to accept U.N. rule.

Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/052814-702509-obama-campaigns-at-west-point-to-be-united-nations-secretary-general.htm#ixzz3wk04UTvC

 
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Obama In Paris: Mass Shootings Don’t Happen In Other Countries

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

by Charlie Spiering1 Dec 2015 Reblogged from breitbart.com

In response to a question about the Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado, President Obama went back to a familiar talking point, claiming mass shootings are unique to America.

“I say this every time we have one of these mass shootings. This just doesn’t happen in other countries,” he said during a press conference in Paris today.

The only problem with his answer was that he was standing in Paris, where a mass shooting conducted by Islamic State terrorists had just taken place, killing over 100 people.
Obama followed up his statement acknowledging that America was “rightly determined to prevent terrorist attacks wherever they occur” but seemed to separate the two events in his mind.

He argued that since the United States was determined to fight terrorism, it was important for Americans to demand more gun control as well.

“We devote enormous resources, and properly so, to rooting out networks and debilitating organizations like ISIL and maintaining the intelligence and improving the information sharing that can identify those who would try to kill innocent people,” he said. “And yet, in the United States, we have the power to do more to prevent what is just a regular process of gun homicides.”

He urged Congress and State and local governments to make changes on gun laws to prevent people who were “deranged” or had “violent tendencies” from killing in the United States.

Obama: Incompetence Or Treason?

This is not mere incompetence, but a carefully planned program of eradication: A plan to crush what he hates, the West, Christianity, Israel and America

By Ray DiLorenzo -- Bio and Archives  November 21, 2015

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As of late, there is a constant drone of political pundits, even from CNN, asking “Why is Obama doing this?  Why is he saying that?”  Even former President Carter, the weakest president of the twentieth century, has said “Obama is inept.”  Does Obama live in his own little world?  Is he truly inept or is there much more to this man that our miserable main-stream media didn’t tell us or bothered to find out?

The media seems to be playing the “we’re confused card.”  They scratch their collective heads and wonder in amazement about what Obama says and does.  They actually look as confused as so many of us.  Is he incompetent or does he have a plan he’s not divulging?  Or, did Obama plainly announce his plan in 2008 to “fundamentally change America?”

Why has Obama taken a far back seat in the war on terror?
Why has Obama seemingly switched sides? 
Why did Obama eagerly criticize Bush II about the national debt and then go about doubling it? 
Why does Obama back the Muslim Brotherhood?  
Why does Obama have such animosity towards Netanyahu and Israel, our greatest ally in the region? 
Why is Obama insisting on importing Syrian ‘refugees’ contrary to fervent public opinion in spite of the Paris tragedy and then say “Are you telling me that the American people are afraid of widows and orphans?”  Does this man think we are stupid?  
In short, why is Obama doing the opposite of what any amount of common sense would say to do?

Former Defense Secretaries Panetta and Gates have both written books and have had numerous interviews testifying to Obama’s refusal to take advice from professionals in the military and his administration as to how to deal with terrorists and criminal regimes like Iran.

Why did Obama work so hard on an Iran deal that gives that country a nuclear capability?  Why is Obama shrinking our military to pre-World War II levels? 
Why is Obama releasing terrorists from Gitmo contrary to the requirement that Congress be given a 30-day advance notice and in spite of a congressional report that says about 30% of released prisoners have either returned to military activity or suspected of doing so?  
Why did Obama choose to create Obamacare even without one vote of support from Republican members of Congress?  
Why did Obama make ‘recess appointments’ when congress was NOT in recess? 
Why does Obama ignore the plight of Christians and Jews but is constantly pleading for Muslims?  
Why does Obama insist we have a broken immigration system when it is just a matter of laws not being obeyed?  
Why does Obama seem to divide the nation by race and class, white against black, rich against poor? 
Why does Obama routinely trash his own country on foreign soil?

This is all classic Cloward/Piven, Saul Alinsky, Karl Marx, divide and conquer, create dependency and discontent, drown the nation in debt and break the financial back of the country.  A collapsed American economy wipes out the middle class, small business and with it the West.  Create a problem and then tell the American people you’re the only one who can fix it.  Lie and keep lying until everyone believes you.

Spread the gay agenda in the culture and especially in the military; sabotage their morale and morality and you help destroy the most powerful nation in the world.  Dismantle the family, the Church, repeal the SECOND AMENDMENT and the mission is complete.  Destroy the culture and you destroy the nation.

Anyone with any sense can see the destruction of our nation is increasing in intensity.  Unless an accomplice can complete the task, Obama has only a year left to conclude the work.  He has much help from the likes of Kerry, Clinton and Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s Iranian-born senior advisor and communist mentor. 

This is not mere incompetence, but a carefully planned program of eradication.  His father hated the West.  Maybe that is why Obama ordered the bust of Churchill removed from the oval office.  He has prepared his entire adult life for this end.  A plan to crush what he hates, the West, Christianity, Israel and America.   
  
Incompetence or treason?  You decide.

Obama, Putin and the Syrian Situation : Another Fine Mess

Reblogged from kingjester.wordpress.com

This is another fine mess you've gotten us into. - Oliver Hardy to Stan Laurel

To quote the late, great Strother Martin, in "Cool Hand Luke",

What we have heah is a failure to communicate.

According to mcclatchydc.com...

While they confer about “de-conflicting” their bombing raids in Syria, U.S. and Russian military officials also might want to discuss what the word “terrorist” means.That would be an easier discussion for the Russians, who began conducting airstrikes Wednesday, than the Americans, who’ve been bombing Syria for more than a year.

For Russian President Vladimir Putin and his generals, the definition of “terrorist,” when it comes to the increasingly turbulent Syrian civil war, is simple: anyone who uses violence to try to topple President Bashar Assad.

Assad is a dictator, but he’s Moscow’s dictator. Just as the late Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein was Washington’s dictator, for decades, before President George W. Bush turned against him and launched an ill-fated March 2003 invasion whose consequences are still playing out more than a dozen years later across the Middle East, from Syria and Iraq to Libya and Iran.

For President Barack Obama and his top military aides, it’s becoming more complicated by the day to say just who is a terrorist in Syria.

Like Moscow, Washington views some of the anti-Assad forces as terrorists, starting with the Islamic State militants.

But the United States’ uneasy alliances with Turkey and the elusive “moderate opposition groups” in Syria, along with the reluctance of Obama and Congress to get drawn further into that nation’s bloody disaster, require American leaders to engage in verbal jujitsu when asked if the U.S.-led air campaign is also targeting the Nusra Front, Ahrar al Shram and other al Qaida-linked groups.

“The fundamental problem is that the United States is trying to divorce its international anti-terrorism campaign from the rest of the Syrian civil war,” Christopher Kozak, an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, told McClatchy. “That’s very difficult as we saw when the (U.S.-trained) New Syrian Force went in and just got obliterated by Nusra. The rebels want to fight the regime, not ISIS.

“The Russians have some leverage because they’re coming in with a position that’s more coherent,” he added. “Their anti-terrorism strategy is part of an endgame for ending the civil war, which is to protect the Assad regime.” ISIS is one of several acronyms for the Islamic State; ISIL is another.

Beneath their diverging views of who is a terrorist lies a more fundamental difference between Moscow and Washington: Russia traces the rise of the Islamic State to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq; the United States blames it on the brutal Assad rule that it blames for the deaths of more than 200,000 Syrians.

Despite Assad’s record, Russia is now backing his regime with air strikes. It bombed other forces Wednesday and Thursday before striking Islamic State targets Friday.

Russia fought Islamic extremists in the Chechnya region within its own borders in two wars covering more than a decade and ending in 2009.
A U.S. official, who requested anonymity in order to discuss intelligence matters, confirmed the most recent Russian raids.

“We believe that they’ve struck a couple of different places where ISIL is present today, both near (Islamic State headquarters in) Raqqa and Deir el Zour” in eastern Syria, the official told McClatchy.

After Russian warplanes began bombing Syria this week, reporters repeatedly asked Pentagon officials how they felt about the Kremlin targeting Assad foes other than the Islamic State. Just as repeatedly, the U.S. military spokesmen declined to answer the questions directly.

Army Col. Steve Warren, spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve in Baghdad, was asked via video conference about reports that Kurdish fighters in Syria, who have been the United States’ most effective ground force there against the Islamic State, welcomed Russia’s entry into the air wars.

“Our focus and our determination is to defeat ISIL,” Warren said. “If others are willing to work with us to defeat ISIL, then that is something that we are willing to welcome.”

Warren was asked to respond to Russian airstrikes against CIA-backed Syrians fighting to overthrow Assad.

“It’s an extraordinarily complex battlefield,” he said. “Now, what I’ll say is our focus is ISIL, and I’ll leave it there.”

At a separate briefing, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook deflected similar questions.

“The sooner the Russians can be focused on those efforts to try and go after ISIL, the better, and that’s the message we’re going to continue to deliver,” Cook said.

Here's the problem with that:

For Putin, this military action services two distinct purposes. As was just reported, Putin is protecting his "buddy", Assad.

At the same time, Putin is enjoying making Obama look weak to the rest of the world.

And, that's not just my opinion.

Per the London Telegraph,

This past week, White House press secretary Josh Earnest strained credulity when he said Mr Obama doesn't regret drawing that red line.Weakness invites provocation, and – never one to miss an opportunity to outmanoeuvre Mr Obama – Mr Putin provided a self-serving opportunity that would also allow the president to save face: Moscow would push Syria to put their chemical weapons under international control. 

It's also important to note that in the wake of the red line being trampled, Russia invaded Crimea. President Obama's legacy may be mixed, but one thing is for sure: Vladimir Putin is much more powerful and provocative than he was before Mr Obama took office, and Russia has only expanded its sphere of influence.

The Syria bombings also come almost immediately after Mr Putin met with Mr Obama at the UN where they agreed to "deconflict" military operations – a very Obama-esque line that Mr Putin immediately crossed.

And prior to bombing our friends in Syria, the Russians also had the audacity to issue a "démarche" for the US to clear air space over northern Syria. As if that weren't enough, this came just as reports that the Russians attempted to hack Hillary Clinton's email server.

For those paying attention, Mr Obama's foreign policy world-view has failed.

The suggestion that America could leave a vacuum that wouldn't be filled by our adversaries – the idea that the "international community" (whatever that means) would respect us more if we were to retreat from the world – was always a farce.

At some level, high-stakes diplomacy is still a game of chicken – where machismo matters.

Even domestically, there are still traces of this left in our more civilised politics. 

We recently witnessed an example of Jeb Bush standing on his toes during a photo-op, attempting to appear taller than Donald Trump. This is childish and petty, and yet serious people play these power games.

But nobody plays them better than Mr Putin, the former KGB officer who likes to ride horses while shirtless.

It's nice to live in a postmodern country, but we shouldn't delude ourselves into believing the rest of the world is impressed by our sophistication.

In the vast majority of the world, power (or the perception of power) is what matters. In America, President Obama's brand of metrosexual coolness works well.

He mocked Mitt Romney, for example, as a Neanderthal stuck in the 1980s for suggesting in 2012 that Russia was still our main geopolitical foe.

Mr Obama's mix of cool insouciance and biting sarcasm plays much better with the latte-sipping crowd than it does with former KGB operatives, where his style and rhetoric suggests weakness, softness, and a lack of commitment and moral clarity.

This disdain that those in Europe hold for Obama is nothing new.

In an article posted on April 10, 2009, columnist Gerald Warner of this same London Telegraph, coined the title President Pantywaist for Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm).  He gave him this nickname after Obama:

…recently completed the most successful foreign policy tour since Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. You name it, he blew it. What was his big deal economic programme that he was determined to drive through the G20 summit? Another massive stimulus package, globally funded and co-ordinated. Did he achieve it? Not so as you’d notice. 

Given the way America’s enemies are laughing at America and spitting in our face, the way that Obama has arrogantly alienated our foreign allies, and the President’s Steve Urkel-esque naiveté as exhibited by his Smart Power Foreign Policy, I would say Mr. Warner hit the nail on the head.

In December of 1985, five U.S. citizens were murdered in simultaneous Islamic terrorist attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports. Upon finding out that Libyan Despot Muammar al-Qaddafi was behind the attacks, U.S. President Ronald Reagan ordered expanded sanctions against Libya and froze Libyan assets in the United States. On March 24, 1986, U.S. and Libyan forces clashed in the Gulf of Sidra, and four Libyan attack boats were sunk. Then, on April 5, terrorists bombed a West Berlin dance hall known to be frequented by U.S. servicemen. One U.S. serviceman and a Turkish woman were killed, and more than 200 people were wounded, including 50 other U.S. servicemen. U.S. intelligence actually intercepted radio messages sent from Libya to its diplomats in East Berlin ordering the April 5 attack on the LaBelle discotheque.

On April 14, 1986, President Reagan ordered air strikes against Libya in retaliation for their sponsorship of terrorism against American troops and citizens. The raid, which began shortly before 7 p.m. EST (2 a.m., April 15 in Libya), involved more than 100 U.S. Air Force and Navy aircraft, and was over within an hour. Five military targets and “terrorism centers” were hit, including the headquarters of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi.

In fact, the rumor was, we fired a Stinger Missile right into Qaddafi’s bedroom.

After this, Qaddafi left us alone and kept his mouth shut for 25 years. All it took to make the sponsor of Muslim Terrorism back down was a show of strength and a United States President who was not afraid to use our military might in defense of our country.

Fast forward to today…

Obama and his Secretary of State, John (I served in Vietnam) Kerry has agreed to a deal with Kerry's son-in-law's father, his counterpart in Iran, which will give them nuclear capability, while leaving four Americans, including a Christian Preacher, imprisoned in that barbaric country.

Now, Obama has Kerry trying to negotiate with Putin and the Russians after they have made the President of the United States of America look like a wuss to the rest of the world..

Meanwhile, last Friday, Obama gave a Press Conference, insisting that it is Putin who is looking weak.

Way to go, President Pantywaist. That showed ’em.

God protect us.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama to Save Presidency by Bombing Iran? Round Two

By Daniel Pipes on July 1, 2013 inNEWSUnited States

PHILADELPHIA-DanielPipes

I wrote an article 3½ years ago (see article below), at a low moment in Obama’s first term, when his ratings tanked and his party just lost Edward Kennedy’s senate seat to a Republican, that usefully suggested that Obama could “salvage his tottering administration” by taking “dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a lightweight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations.” He could do well and do good, I offered, by taking out the Iranian nuclear infrastructure.

Well, as the world knows, he did not follow my advice. But the time has come to crank it out again at a moment when Obama seems close to imploding. As the distinguished historian Andrew Roberts puts it in the July/August issue of the British magazine Standpoint:

he is credibly accused by the internal opposition of serious civil liberties violations, the secret seizure of journalists’ phone and email records, the illegal use of the state tax authorities to harass citizens, a full-scale government cover-up over the circumstances of four murders and the “systematic targeting” of news organisations. … this summer Barack Obama has no fewer than four separate scandals pending, which are collectively referred to as “Obamagate”. Astonishingly, less than a year after his re-election, we may be witnessing the unravelling of the Obama presidency.

Given this background, I propose that (updating my 2010 article) a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama’s feckless fifth year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene. It would sideline immigration reform, prompt Republicans to work with Democrats, make netroots squeal, independents reconsider, and conservatives swoon.

Daniel Pipes is an American historian, writer, and political commentator. He is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum and its Campus Watch project, and editor of its Middle East Quarterly journal.

How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran
by Daniel Pipes

National Review Online
February 2, 2010
 I do not customarily offer advice to a president whose election I opposed, whose goals I fear, and whose policies I work against. But here is an idea for Barack Obama to salvage his tottering administration by taking a step that protects the United States and its allies.

If Obama’s personality, identity, and celebrity captivated a majority of the American electorate in 2008, those qualities proved ruefully deficient in 2009 for governing. He failed to deliver on employment and health care, he failed in foreign policy forays small (e.g., landing the 2016 Olympics) and large (relations with China and Japan). His counterterrorism record barely passes the laugh test.

This poor performance has caused an unprecedented collapse in the polls and the loss of three major by-elections, culminating two weeks ago in an astonishing senatorial defeat in Massachusetts. Obama’s attempts to “reset” his presidency will likely fail if he focuses on economics, where he is just one of many players.
He needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a lightweight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations.

Barak Obama’s job approval problem. (For the current graph, seehttp://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html.)

Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy the Iranian nuclear weapon capacity.

Circumstances are propitious. First, U.S. intelligence agencies have reversed their preposterous 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, the one that claimed with “high confidence” that Tehran had “halted its nuclear weapons program,” No one (other than the Iranian rulers and their agents) denies that the regime is rushing headlong to build a large nuclear arsenal.

Second, if the apocalyptic-minded leaders in Tehran get the Bomb, they render the Middle East a yet more volatile and dangerous. They might deploy these weapons in the region, leading to massive death and destruction. Eventually, they could launch an electro-magnetic pulse attack on the United States, utterly devastating the country. By eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat, Obama protects the homeland and sends a message to American’s friends and enemies.

Third, polling shows longstanding American backing for an attack on the Iranian nuclear infrastructure.

• Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg, January 2006: 57 percent of Americans favor military intervention if Tehran pursues a program that could enable it to build nuclear arms.
• Zogby International, October 2007: 52 percent of likely voters support a U.S. military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon; 29 percent oppose such a step.
• McLaughlin & Associates, May 2009: asked whether they would support “Using the [U.S.] military to attack and destroy the facilities in Iran which are necessary to produce a nuclear weapon,” 58 percent of 600 likely voters supported the use of force and 30 percent opposed it.
• Fox News, September 2009: asked “Do you support or oppose the United States taking military action to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons?” 61 percent of 900 registered voters supported military action and 28 opposed it.
• Pew Research Center, October 2009: asked which is more important, “To prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if it means taking military action” or “To avoid a military conflict with Iran, even if it means they may develop nuclear weapons,” Out of 1,500 respondents, 61 percent favored the first reply and 24 percent the second.

The nuclear facility at Qum on Sep. 26,2009 from 423 miles in space, provided by GeoEye.

Not only does a strong majority – 57, 52, 58, 61, and 61 percent – already favor using force but after a strike Americans will presumablyrally around the flag, jumping that number much higher.

Fourth, were the U.S. strike limited to taking out the Iranian nuclear facilities, and not aspire to regime change, it would require few “boots on the ground” and entail relatively few casualties, making an attack politically more palatable.

Just as 9/11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush’s meandering early months, a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama’s feckless first year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene. It would sideline health care, prompt Republicans to work with Democrats, make netroots squeal, independents reconsider, and conservatives swoon.

But the chance to do good and do well is fleeting. As the Iranians improve their defenses and approach weaponization, the window of opportunity is closing. The time to act is now or, on Obama’s watch, the world will soon become a much more dangerous place