We applaud Dick Cheney for saying this last Tuesday, December 29 (reported by Politico):

As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war.

He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war.

He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war.

He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of Sept. 11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.

He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core Al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war.

He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,’ we won’t be at war.

But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe.

Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society.

President Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war.

From a military point of view, the Iraq war was an American (or coalition) success. Bush’s surge gained a military victory. And it must be counted as a great good that the sadistic despot Saddam Hussein was overthrown and executed.

From an historian’s point of view, however, not much has been accomplished. There have been elections, yes, but they do not make Iraq a democracy. It is governed by sharia law, and sharia and Western liberal democracy are not only dissimilar, they are incompatible.

How much benefit has America itself reaped from its investment of dollars, lives, blood, sweat and tears ?

On December 18, Diana West wrote about the surge and its success:

Step One worked. Step Two didn’t. The surge, like an uncaught touchdown pass, was incomplete. The United States is now walking off the battlefield with virtually nothing to show for its blood, treasure, time and effort. In fact, another “success” like that could kill us. … When Iraq staged one of the biggest oil auctions in history last week, U.S. companies left empty-handed. Russia, China and Europe came out the big winners.

Today she writes:

So much for the lack of post-surge U.S. business benefits in Iraq, as I wrote last week. Now, what kind of post-surge ally is Iraq?

No kind.

I write in wonder that the ultimate failures of the surge strategy — which include the failure of anything resembling a U.S. ally to emerge in post-Saddam Iraq — have never entered national discourse. Rather, the strategy that “won Iraq” has been mythologized as a “success” to be repeated in Afghanistan.

It’s not that there aren’t hints to the contrary — as when … 42 percent of Iraqis polled by the BBC in March 2008 still thought it “acceptable” to attack U.S. forces. Or when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, as U.S. forces transferred security responsibilities to Iraqi forces in June, obstreperously declared “victory” over those same U.S. forces! …

Of greater consequence are the positions against U.S. interests Iraq is taking in world affairs.

Take the foundational principle of freedom of speech, continuously under assault by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in the international arena. The OIC includes the world’s 57 Muslim nations as represented by kings, heads of state and governments, with policies overseen by the foreign ministers of these same 57 nations. Describing itself as the “collective voice of the Islamic world,” the OIC strives to extend Islamic law throughout the world, and to that end, is the driving force at the United Nations to outlaw criticism of Islam (which includes Islamic law) through proposed bans on the “defamation of religions” — namely, Islam. This is a malignant thrust at the mechanism of Western liberty. Where does post-surge Iraq come down in this crucial ideological struggle?

An OIC nation, Iraq is, with other OIC nations, a signatory to the 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam. This declaration defines human rights according to Islamic law, which prohibits criticism of Islam. Indeed, Iraq’s U.S.-enabled 2004 constitution enshrines Islamic law above all. Little wonder Iraq consistently votes at the United Nations with the OIC and against the United States on this key ideological divide between Islam and the West, most recently in November.

Then there’s Iran.

Iran may be a menace to the West, but it is also Iraq’s largest trading partner. … This disastrous fact should dampen — at least enter into — assessments of the surge strategy’s “success”.

But it doesn’t. Not even the fact that Bank Melli — the Iranian terror bank outlawed by the U.S. Treasury as a conduit for Iran’s nuclear and terrorist programs — operates a branch in Baghdad gives pause to one-surge-fits-all enthusiasts. The Bank Melli example is particularly egregious because the bank funds Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Qods Force, which is responsible for innumerable American casualties in Iraq — American sacrifices on behalf of Iraq. Guess we’re supposed to look the other way. But that’s like applauding the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the United States and Iraq without noticing that the agreement prohibits the United States from attacking Iran (or any other country) from Iraq.

Iraq’s pattern of hostility to U.S. interests continues vis-a-vis Israel, a bona-fide U.S. ally against jihad terror. Whenever Israel strikes back at jihad — whether at Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon — post-Saddam Iraq is quick to condemn the Jewish state, which, not incidentally, it also continues to boycott with the rest of the Arab League. …

Onto Afghanistan.

… where, even if another military success were to be scored, the chance of that benighted land being transformed into anything significantly better is not just remote but less likely than a Yeti.

McCLATCHY reports:

As the U.S. and its allies try to overcome logistical hurdles and rush [?] some 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan in 2010, intelligence officials are warning that the Taliban-led insurgency is expanding and that “time is running out” for the U.S.-led coalition to prove that its strategy can succeed.

‘Succeed’ at what? What will constitute success? Can anyone describe what Afghanistan will look like when ‘the US-led coalition’s strategy’ has succeeded?

The report goes on:

The Taliban have created a shadow “government-in-waiting,” complete with Cabinet ministers, that could assume power if the U.S.-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai fails, a senior International Security Assistance Force intelligence official said in Kabul, speaking only on the condition of anonymity as a matter of ISAF policy.

As the Obama administration and its European allies face dwindling public and political support for the eight-year-old Afghan war, the Taliban now have what the official called “a full-fledged insurgency” and shadow governors in 33 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, including those in the north, where U.S. and other officials had thought the Islamic extremists posed less of a threat.

The Taliban’s return to the northern provinces, including Baghlan, Kunduz and Taqhar … poses serious security, logistical and political problems for the U.S.-led ISAF and Karzai’s government.

The northern region is under the command of German forces, but they and other European contingents operate under restrictions imposed by their governments that limit offensive operations against the Taliban.

The Taliban now threaten the northern supply route that the ISAF established to supplement the vulnerable routes that run through Pakistan, where the U.S.-backed government is battling its own Islamic extremists and growing sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

The Taliban in northern Afghanistan are sheltering among and recruiting from large communities of Pashtuns — descendants of settlers transplanted from the south in the early 20th century — fueling tensions with the Uzbeks and Tajiks who dominate the region.

At the same time, though, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens and Arabs linked to al Qaida have moved into northern Afghanistan with the Taliban, seeking to carry their jihad to the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and alarming Russia, which is grappling with Islamic insurgencies in the republics of Chechnya and Dagestan.

As the Taliban have extended their reach, they’ve also grown more formidable militarily by developing bigger and more effective improvised explosive devices. Insurgents have mounted 7,228 IED attacks so far this year, compared with 81 in 2003, and … the homemade bombs have even destroyed some Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, the most heavily armored U.S. troop transports….

So will success be a state of peaceful, happy co-existence among the Pashtuns, Uzbeks, and Tajiks? How likely is this?

Why are they in conflict with each other? What must change so that the ‘tensions’ between them will suddenly end? How can this be brought about?

What will make the Taliban abandon its intentions? What will have changed for them?

If by some remote chance the Karzai government found itself with an effective native fighting force, what would it do to achieve a pacified Afghanistan? Or will there be perpetual internecine war?

What might the US have gained by the time its army is pulled out? What does it want to gain?

We beg for enlightenment. Would someone who knows the answers please give them to us? We see nothing but a mess into which American troops have been plunged for no discernible reason, to fight and die with one arm tied behind their back, so to speak, for no defined or even definable goal.

Uncountable Republicans and conservatives express outrage over, loathing for, desperation about, fury with Obama, and are amply justified in doing so we believe.

But for sheer contempt for him and rage against him it would be hard to beat this rant – from the far left.

It comes from the pen, dipped in vitriol, of one David Michael Green, a professor of political science [!] at Hofstra University in New York.

His bitter denunciations and criticisms may in some instances coincide with ours, but they don’t of course arise for the same reasons. We deplore Obama’s rapid shifting of America to the left and his turning it into an impoverished, weak, welfare state.

Professor Green (how aptly named he is!) thinks that Obama is failing to take America far enough to the left, so that it is not rapidly becoming a disarmed, egalitarian utopia.

He hates Obama more for failing to transform America into a command-economy collective than we do for his failing to keep America free and strong.

He hates Obama so much – and this is truly astonishing – that he would rather have Sarah Palin as president if that would be the ultimate humiliation for ‘the little prick’.

That a man with such passionately leftist opinions as he obviously holds can become a professor of political science in an American university speaks volumes, if you’re looking for an explanation for how a disciple of the Marxist Saul Alinsky came to be elected to the presidency .

It can reasonably be assumed that the far left broadly shares the views uttered, or spat out, by Professor Green. But what did they expect? That as soon as he entered the Oval Office, Obama would nationalize every business, force the rural population on to collective farms, send all dissidents into re-education camps or forced-labor prisons, make heterosexual marriage illegal, execute Bush and Cheney, recall all American servicemen from Iraq and Afghanistan and punish them for having fought there, force Israel to surrender to Hamas, give trillions of dollars to the Third World to put out ‘the fire’ that the Greens claim is ‘burning up the world’, make us wait all day in line for a loaf of bread at a state store and put our names down for medical treatment at state-run hospitals in preparation for waiting patiently for years to be given the treatment that we might or might not eventually be allowed?

Has this Green, a professor of political science, never heard that politicians ‘cannot legislate too far ahead of public opinion’? Does he not realize, professor of political science though he is, that the Constitution and the institutions of government were designed to prevent such revolutionary change? The answer to both questions is, apparently not.

Here’s part of what he has to say (all of it can be found here):

You know, I’ve really been trying not to write an article every other week about all the things I don’t like about Barack Obama.

But the little prick is making it very hard.

Like any good progressive, I’ve gone from admiration to hope to disappointment to anger when it comes to this president. Now I’m fast getting to rage.

How much rage? I find myself thinking that the thing I want most from the 2010 elections is for his party to get absolutely clobbered, even if that means a repeat of 1994. And that what I most want from 2012 is for him to be utterly humiliated, even if that means President Palin at the helm. That much rage.

Did this clown really say on national television that “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of you know, fat cat bankers on Wall Street”?!?!

Really, Barack? So, like, my question is: Then why the hell did you help out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street?!?! Why the hell did you surround yourself with nothing but Robert Rubin proteges in all the key economic positions in your government? Why did you allow them to open a Washington branch of Goldman Sachs in the West Wing? Why have your policies been tailored to helping Wall Street bankers, rather than the other 300 million of us, who just happen to be suffering badly right now?

Are you freakin’ kidding me??? What’s up with the passive president routine, anyhow, Fool? …

But, really, are you going to spend the next three interminable years perfecting your whiney victim persona? I don’t really think I could bear that. Hearing you complain about how rough it all is, when you have vastly more power than any of us to fix it? Please. Not that.

Are you going to tell us that “I did not run for office to be shovel-feeding the military-industrial complex”? But what they’re just so darned pushy?

“…I did not run for office to continue George Bush’s valiant effort at shredding the Bill of Rights. It’s just that those government-limiting rules are so darned pesky.”

“…I did not run for office to dump a ton of taxpayer money into the coffers of health insurance companies. It’s just that they asked so nicely.”

“…I did not run for office to block equality for gay Americans. I just never got around to doing anything about it.”

“…I did not run for office to turn Afghanistan into Vietnam. I just didn’t want to say no to all the nice generals asking for more troops.”

Here’s a guy who was supposed to actually do something with his presidency, and he’s … being punked by John Boehner, for chrisakes. He’s being rolled by the likes of Joe Lieberman. He calls a come-to-Jesus meeting with Wall Street bank CEOs, and half of them literally phone it in. Everyone from Bibi Netanyahu to the Japanese prime minister to sundry Iranian mullahs is stomping all over Mr. Happy.

And he doesn’t even seem to realize it.

Did you see him tell Oprah that he gave himself “a good solid B+” for his first year in office? And that it will be an A, if he gets his healthcare legislation passed?

Somebody please pick me up and set me back on my chair, wouldya? …

I can’t even begin to describe how insulting Obama conducting a “jobs summit” is to me, or what an unbelievably ham-fisted piece of public relations that was for the White House, which is increasingly showing itself not just to be sickeningly regressive, but also fully inept. I think I speak for a whole lot of Americans when I say that, one year into his stewardship over a destroyed economy that was actually atomizing for at least six months before inauguration day, I don’t want my president sitting around a table, running a dog-and-pony show, pretending to kick around ideas on how to generate jobs. I wanted him to have those ideas, himself, before he was inaugurated. …

If Democrats think they’ll be screwed next November because of unemployment, wait till Congress passes this healthcare monstrosity. Or doesn’t. At this point, either way they’re gonna get slammed for it, and rightly so.

If they don’t pass anything, they will be seen as unable to govern. …

On the other hand, the Democrats and their hapless president are probably in worse shape if they actually pass this legislation. Especially now that it’s been stripped of nearly every real progressive reform imaginable, it has become an incredibly stupid bill, from the political perspective. …

This will be a total train wreck for the Democratic Party … You know, elite Republicans may be sociopaths, and they may be lower on the moral totem pole than your basic cannibal, but they’re not stupid. I bet they’re salivating at the idea that this thing passes. I bet they’d even have Olympia Snowe vote for it if necessary, just to put it over the top. They must be laughing their asses off at this gift. All they have to do is oppose it right down the line, then say “Told ya so!” at the next election, squashing the pathetic Demognats, one after the next. …

This is President Nothingburger’s great gift to America, along with doing nothing about jobs, doing nothing about the Middle East, nothing about civil liberties, nothing about civil rights, and now doing nothing at Copenhagen. Regarding the latter, the world is literally on fire, and he jets in, gives a speech haranguing the delegates that “Now is not the time for talk, now is the time for action”, then splits even before the vote in order to beat the snowstorm headed to the east coast that might delay him getting home to his comfy bed. I’m not kidding. You can’t make this shit up, man.

This guy is killing me, though at the same time I still can’t quite figure him out. …

Is he just massively deluded? I wouldn’t have thought so, but watching the guy give himself a very good grade for 2009 straight face and all during the same year he’s lost twenty points off his job approval rating, and at a moment when even blacks and gays are deserting him, you know, you have to wonder.

Is he happy just to be a one-term president just to say he’s been there and done that, and then sell some more books even if he is reviled as one of the worst in history? … Obama looked like he could’ve been something different. He ain’t. …

Fine and dandy. With the help of political enemies like this, the conservative right may regain the White House in 2012. Strange, though, to have to welcome such allies!

Carol Platt Liebau, writing in Townhall, trumpets a note of optimism for the coming year:

Suddenly, the liberty and free enterprise most of us have taken for granted seem to be in the greatest jeopardy of our lifetime. Worse yet, Democrat politicians have ignored the public outcry, ramming through unpopular legislation that would put one-sixth of the economy (and every American’s health care!) under government control. Regular Americans – the ones more inclined to watch sports or go shopping than to organize protests – have taken notice. They’ve also taken umbrage.

By overreaching and arrogantly ignoring the widespread public discontent with them and their policies, Democrats from the President on down have succeeded in awakening a sleeping giant – regular Americans. They are people who may often take their freedom for granted, but who don’t intend ever to let it be taken away.

They are the male and female heirs to the Sons of Liberty of Revolutionary times, the people who understand the danger of a government leviathan, and who insisted on “No taxation without representation.” After watching the politicians they voted into power last year ignore the common good, instead seeking only power and political advantage for themselves, they’re appalled – and perhaps even a little frightened.

Certainly, 2009 was a dark and disheartening year for lovers of economic and individual liberty. But if next year shapes up in accordance with current trends, the tide is about to change. With a growing recognition of the preciousness (and fragility) of liberty and a renewed appreciation of our founding principles, America is poised for a rebirth of freedom. Hail 2010: The Year of the Citizen.

Has a year of being ruled by a Marxist community organizer and the corrupt majority in Congress made tens of millions of Americans who are not usually much concerned about what their government does, suddenly become aware that they must sit up and take notice of what’s happening to their country? Realize for themselves that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom?

If so, the horrible year will have been worth living through. Obama will have served a worthwhile purpose after all.

We would like to believe that, but we read the signs differently and remain pessimistic.

Americans will be in deeper debt. Iran will have its nuclear bombs. Islam will wage its jihad ever more fiercely against the rest of us. Environmentalists will press on towards their impoverishing, collectivist, crushing goal of world government.

If the new Sons and Daughters of Liberty decide to fight it will be a tremendous battle. Do they have enough courage, passion, and tenacity for it?

We can only hope so.

Has anything been heard from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lately?

Has she nothing to say about al-Qaeda in Nigeria apparently plotting to blow up a plane over Detroit?

What about the incident in Israel when the driver of a car carrying US diplomats tried to run over an Israeli border guard?

Why did the diplomats refuse to show their identification papers?

And why did a US consulate car try to transport a Palestinian woman without permits between Jerusalem and the West Bank?

The identification of American diplomats from the consulate at IDF checkpoints has been a major sticking point for several years.In January 2008, the Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria filed complaints with the Foreign Ministry after both US Security Coordinator Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton and then-consul-general Jacob Walles refused to roll down their windows or open their car doors and show identification papers at a checkpoint.

However, Israel’s ire reached a new level after an incident on November 13 in which a five-car convoy of consulate vehicles with diplomatic plates arrived at the Gilboa crossing.

According to a detailed official Israel Police description of the incident obtained exclusively by The Jerusalem Post, the drivers refused to identify themselves or open a window or door. The drivers, according to the report, purposely blocked the crossing, tried running over one of the Israeli security guards stationed there and made indecent gestures at female guards.

The entire incident was documented by cameras at the crossing.

Following the incident, the head of the police’s Security Department, Lt.-Cmdr. Meir Ben-Yishai, convened a meeting on November 18 at police headquarters inJerusalem with the regional security officer at the consulate, Tim Laas. Also present were officials from the Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, and the regional security officer at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, Dan Power… [read more here]

Are these diplomats acting under orders? Whose? And why such orders?

Is it true that the US now recognizes East Jerusalem as the ‘capital of Palestine’, while refusing to recognize the city as the capital of Israel?

Why is a person known to have terrorist connections granted a multiple-entry US visa?

Please tell us, Mrs Clinton.

A Nigerian engineering student from University College, London, tried to blow up a plane with 278 passengers as it was approaching Detroit on Christmas Day.

Wonder what his religion is? Don’t let such a thought sully your mind.

Fox News reports:

A male passenger on an international flight bound [from Amsterdam] for Detroit Friday tried to blow up the plane with an explosive device in an incident that the White House is labeling an attempted act of terrorism.

An attempted  act of ‘terrorism‘ ?! Not an attempted  ‘man-caused disaster’?

The suspect, who ABC reported suffered second-degree burns, told federal investigators he was connected to Al Qaeda …

No … surely not?

… authorities are questioning the veracity of that statement …

We should hope so! Likely story! At any rate, nobody’s being so racist and Islamophobic as to mention the words ‘Islam’, or ‘Muslim’, or jihad’.

A federal situational awareness bulletin noted that the explosive was acquired in Yemen with instructions as to when it should be used …

Yemen? Hey! What’s going on here?

Eyewitness Peter Smith said one passenger climbed over passengers, went across the aisle and tried to restrain the alleged attacker. The heroic passenger appeared to have been burned.

Afterward, the suspect was taken to a front-row seat with his pants cut off and his legs burned. Multiple law enforcement officials also said the man appeared badly burned on his legs, indicating the explosive was strapped there. The components were apparently mixed in-flight and included a powdery substance, officials said.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) identified the suspect as 23-year-old Abdul Mudallad [full name Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab] of Nigeria, and King said Mudallad “definitely has connections” to Al Qaeda. …

Naaa! Couldn’t have! Anyway, things like that will be taken care of in a caring way by Obama.

White House officials confirmed Friday that the attack was an attempted act of terrorism. “He appears to have had some kind of incendiary device he tried to ignite,” said one of the U.S. officials. …

One law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the case, said Mudallad’s name had surfaced earlier on at least one U.S. intelligence database, but not to the extent that he was placed on a watch list or a no-fly list.

Of course not. No profiling please. Better to risk a plane full of people than descend to that sort of thing.

President Barack Obama was notified of the incident and discussed it with security officials, the White House said. It said he is monitoring the situation … Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has been briefed on the incident and is closely monitoring the situation.

There you are! They’re monitoring. Told you it would be okay.

Yet again Ahmadinejad has said NO to Obama’s gently proffered suggestion that he abandon Iran’s nuclear program.

Charles Krauthammer  advocates American support for regime change in Iran. We agree with him that Obama’s policy is ‘unforgivable’ and that America should have been wholeheartedly supporting the brave men and women of the resistance movement. However, we doubt that it would be safe to let Iran become nuclear-armed under any government, even one that looks to be pro-Western. Here in part is what he writes:

So ends 2009, the year of “engagement,” of the extended hand, of the gratuitous apology — and of spinning centrifuges, two-stage rockets and a secret enrichment facility that brought Iran materially closer to becoming a nuclear power.

We lost a year. But it was not just any year. It was a year of spectacularly squandered opportunity. In Iran, it was a year of revolution, beginning with a contested election and culminating this week in huge demonstrations mourning the death of the dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri — and demanding no longer a recount of the stolen election but the overthrow of the clerical dictatorship.

Obama responded by distancing himself from this new birth of freedom. First, scandalous silence. Then, a few grudging words. Then relentless engagement with the murderous regime. With offer after offer, gesture after gesture — to not Iran, but the “Islamic Republic of Iran,” as Obama ever so respectfully called these clerical fascists — the U.S. conferred legitimacy on a regime desperate to regain it.

Why is this so important? Because revolutions succeed at that singular moment, that imperceptible historical inflection, when the people, and particularly those in power, realize that the regime has lost the mandate of heaven. With this weakening dictatorship desperate for affirmation, why is the U.S. repeatedly offering just such affirmation?

Apart from ostracizing and delegitimizing these gangsters, we should be encouraging and reinforcing the demonstrators. …

Forget about human rights. Assume you care only about the nuclear issue. How to defuse it? Negotiations are going nowhere, and whatever U.N. sanctions we might get will be weak, partial, grudging and late. The only real hope is regime change. The revered and widely supported Montazeri had actually issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons.

And even if a successor government were to act otherwise, the nuclear threat would be highly attenuated because it’s not the weapon but the regime that creates the danger. (Think India or Britain, for example.) Any proliferation is troubling, but a nonaggressive pro-Western Tehran would completely change the strategic equation and make the threat minimal and manageable.

What should we do? Pressure from without — cutting off gasoline supplies, for example — to complement and reinforce pressure from within. The pressure should be aimed not at changing the current regime’s nuclear policy — that will never happen — but at helping change the regime itself.

Give the kind of covert support to assist dissident communication and circumvent censorship that, for example, we gave Solidarity in Poland during the 1980s. … But of equal importance is robust rhetorical and diplomatic support from the very highest level: full-throated denunciation of the regime’s savagery and persecution. In detail — highlighting cases, the way Western leaders adopted the causes of Sharansky and Andrei Sakharov during the rise of the dissident movement that helped bring down the Soviet empire.

Will this revolution succeed? The odds are long but the reward immense. Its ripple effects would extend from Afghanistan to Iraq (in both conflicts, Iran actively supports insurgents who have long been killing Americans and their allies) to Lebanon and Gaza where Iran’s proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, are arming for war.

One way or the other, Iran will dominate 2010. Either there will be an Israeli attack or Iran will arrive at — or cross — the nuclear threshold. Unless revolution intervenes. Which is why to fail to do everything in our power to support this popular revolt is unforgivable.

There’s talk in the ether that Obama has decided to allow Iran yet another year to ‘unclench its fist’ and stop enriching uranium for nuclear bombs. If so, this will be – what? the sixth or seventh extension of time that Obama has given the grim mullahs and the poisonous Ahmadinejad. The answer is always the same ‘No!’  Before Obama came along, Europe had persisted for about eight years with hinting to the Iranians that they should really try to play nice. ‘If you don’t stop’, they warned, ‘we’ll have to ask you again!’ Ignoring that withering threat, and scorning Obama’s ‘deadlines’ which they were confident would always be extended, the Iranians advanced steadily and vigorously towards becoming a nuclear-armed power.

It is also being said (less believably, we think) that Prime Minister Netanyahu has agreed to wait yet again, but only for another six months before he will use force to stop Iran getting the bomb.

Meanwhile certain Arab states which quietly hoped that either the US or Israel, or preferably both together, would act against Iran, may be running out of hope and patience. Now something dramatic seems to be developing.

Here is a mixture of fact and surmise from DEBKAfile:

The powerful Iranian speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani, arrived [last Sunday, December 20] in Cairo and was received at once by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak for a conversation lasting two hours.

DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report that the Iranian visitor carried with him a wide-ranging proposal to ease the strained relations between Tehran and the moderate Arab governments.

Without wasting a moment, the next day, the Egyptian president flew to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Arab emirates to discuss the momentous turn of events.

The octogenarian Mubarak travels very infrequently these days because of his failing health except in extraordinary circumstances. He was galvanized this time by the message Larijani brought from Tehran containing the offer of “a new Iranian approach to resolving outstanding issues.” Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already offered to open an embassy in Cairo for the first time since ties were broken off after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

Aware that any breakthrough with the Arab governments was contingent on allaying their fears of its nuclear drive, Iran’s offer of a new beginning is reported by our sources as including a form of Iranian-Arab nuclear cooperation. Its immediate objective is to close ranks with the Arab nations in order to outmaneuver the US-Israeli campaign against its nuclear drive, thereby derailing the US president Barack Obama’s plans for … sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

The expeditiousness of Mubarak response to Tehran’s overture and the promptness of his Gulf consultations indicated that the bloc of Arab nations, which he and Saudi king Abdullah lead, has given up on effective action by America or Israel, including force, for throwing Iran off its current nuclear course.

Within the region today, coexistence with Iran looks like a safer bet.

If this burgeoning realignment of Middle East partnerships goes forward, the region’s strategic balance will be pulled out of shape, Washington’s influence heavily downgraded and Israel isolated.

And Obama’s pacifist policy towards Iran will have increased the probability of war.

In a Townhall article which we quote from here, Roger Chapin sounds a warning about the weakening of America. He may be exaggerating when he speaks of a ‘nuclear doomsday’, but we do think that Obama is selling America down the river, wants world government and global redistribution of wealth, and that the transformation of America into a weak, decaying, impoverished, socialist country is a danger all too real.

Never before in our history has an American president, deliberately and by design, risked our very survival to a maniacal enemy power sworn to remove America from the world. Yet from all appearances, this is exactly what Obama is doing by failing to vigorously oppose Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. But in spite of the fact that over 60% of the public favors militarily destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities, there’s nary a word of protest from the Republicans in opposition. They’re so paranoid about being labeled warmongers, they have shamefully abdicated their own national security responsibilities, just as John McCain did during his presidential run.

Obama is weakening rather than strengthening our missile defenses. That’s how seriously this Administration takes the Iranian threat.

The reality is that the fanatical, messianically driven radical Iranian zealots will pay any price, including Iran’s virtual obliteration, in order to render the U.S. and its major allies non-players on the world scene. The mullahs expect to emerge from the ruins no longer hindered by the “Great Satan,” free to use their huge oil and gas reserves to fund the imposition of their tyranny throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Not only does Obama’s psyche make him incapable of understanding the radical’s mentality but he chooses to totally dismiss their own pronouncements spelling out their sinister intentions. Obama’s determination to make the United States subservient to an international body of nations is now driving him to systematically reduce our nation to a mere shadow of its former power and influence. …

The practical consequences of Obama’s extreme radical left agenda can only be to put our nation at the mercy of a new world order dominated by ruthless tyrants, thugs and spineless states who sell their souls for commercial gain. His first allegiance is to such an international order – not to the United States.

Obama is not only unfit to serve as commander-in-chief in a time of war, he is a menace to our national security. His obvious intent to allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, perhaps under the guise of what would undoubtedly be a totally meaningless agreement not to do so, presents a risk so grave to our survival that it can only be rationally viewed as tantamount to national suicide. Under no circumstances can the mullahs be trusted to honor any agreement, as they’ve proven time and again. …

By almost any standard, Obama is flagrantly guilty of dereliction of duty. It cannot be overemphasized how extraordinarily perilous a situation we are in, especially at a time when virtually the entire Republican Party is AWOL on bombing Iran and strengthening national security. There is no counterweight to Obama’s disastrous policies. Obama himself recently acknowledged that if terrorists get nuclear weapons “we have every reason to believe they will use them.” Despite this admission, he refuses to take the only action that will stop them from acquiring such weapons.

If we citizenry will not take the bull by the horns and demand a total reversal of our nation’s suicidal course, we could very soon experience the apocalyptic end of the America we love and all western civilization. Let us understand that the maniacal, radical Islamic enemies confronting us are irreversibly committed to making such a cataclysmic event happen – no matter how horrific the cost to them. To think that an olive branch of brotherly love could change their goals is sheer madness.

Take heed America, Obama’s policies may be paving the way for a nuclear doomsday.