Charles Krauthammer gets it exactly right in today’s column, on Barack Obama’s embarrassing interview with Al Arabiya: Obama Distorts America’s Stance on Muslims.
Every new president flatters himself that he, kinder and gentler, is beginning the world anew. Yet, when Barack Obama in his inaugural address reached out to Muslims by saying “to the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect,” his formulation was needlessly defensive and apologetic.
Is it “new” to acknowledge Muslim interests and show respect to the Muslim world? Obama doesn’t just think so, he said so again to millions in his al-Arabiya interview, insisting on the need to “restore” the “same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago.”
Astonishing. In these most recent 20 years — the alleged winter of our disrespect of the Islamic world — America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for them. It engaged in five military campaigns, every one of which involved — and resulted in — the liberation of a Muslim people: Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The two Balkan interventions — as well as the failed 1992-93 Somalia intervention to feed starving African Muslims (43 Americans were killed) — were humanitarian exercises of the highest order, there being no significant U.S. strategic interest at stake. In these 20 years, this nation has done more for suffering and oppressed Muslims than any nation, Muslim or non-Muslim, anywhere on Earth. Why are we apologizing?
This is what we teach children—to apologize when they’re wrong. Obama seems to believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs of Iran are just like us, basically good at heart, and only need to hear the right combination of soothing apologies to lead them back to the path of righteousness. This is an infantile, dangerous approach to dealing with truly evil people, and it’s a lesson America is apparently going to need to learn—again.
Posted by Hal (Member # 3484) on :
You could have mentioned that you copied this text from yesterday`s Washington Post.
my apologies hal. i will not let it happen again. i guess it's kind of a form of plagiarism and that's not what i had intended just merely to showcase a great journalists' point of view.
Posted by Fate111 (Member # 2627) on :
I think it speaks volumes that Obama's first television interview was made on Al Arabiya and not on any network here in the U.S..
Is it me, or does that strike anyone else as not cool?
Posted by ucflyeah (Member # 32674) on :
the following text is copied from todays washington post.
The Fierce Urgency of Pork By Charles Krauthammer Friday, February 6, 2009; A17
"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."
-- President Obama, Feb. 4.
Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.
And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.
The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As Michael Kinsley once observed, in Washington the real scandal isn't what's illegal, but what's legal. Not paying taxes is one thing. But what made this case intolerable was the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years.
He'd been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he's not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don't get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence.
At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged Treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning non-stratospheric wages. Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal's private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he'd come to Washington to upend.
And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.
It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.
It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus -- and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress's own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.
Not just to abolish but to create something new -- a new politics where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the "fierce urgency of now" includes $150 million for livestock (and honeybee and farm-raised fish) insurance.
The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports the Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting "planted" for "ready to market" would mean a windfall garnered from a new "bonus depreciation" incentive.
After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.
I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.
Posted by girlyfootlvr (Member # 27325) on :
quote:Originally posted by Fate111: I think it speaks volumes that Obama's first television interview was made on Al Arabiya and not on any network here in the U.S..
Is it me, or does that strike anyone else as not cool?
I AGREE ! We have NOTHING to apologize for. American is the ONLY country in the world that embrasses "anyone". Muslims live in US, from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa, and ALL other Muslim countries. America lets them come here, take our jobs, and live with "us" as our neighbours.
Obama represents U.S, and if he apologizes for things we didn't even do, then we all look like culprits to the world. Moreover, U.S has been always HELPING other countries with Aid, when our local citizens are suffering from lack of medical aid and finances. Also, it's worth mentioning that illegal people in this country have NO rights, and SHOULD NOT be allowed to live here, or have any rights, or benefits. Can you imagine how Americans would be treated in THEIR country? We would be kicked out. When we do anything illegal - even speeding or not stopping at a STOP sign, we get a violation ticket, and pay for it. If you steal, or hit someone, its illegal and you go to Jail. THESE illegal people ARE breaking the LAW, why are they getting benefits, and not being punished. Border Security should be a Prime concern - if not - then why have borders... let everyone just come to U.S and demolish it...
Posted by Hal (Member # 3484) on :
quote: take our jobs
Nobody is taking your job.
I like the column below by Maddox (from "The Best Page in the Universe")...it sums it up quite perfectly
True, Hal..however alot of jobs were "given" away overseas. So add that plus "lazy gluttonous Americans" and you have mass unemployment numbers.
Posted by ucflyeah (Member # 32674) on :
one must ask, is 7.6% really "mass unemployment?"
Posted by Wrinklesguy (Member # 732) on :
well, almost 600,000 lost jobs in January alone is technically Massive and never seen since the first Great Depression.
Posted by Robotron2084 (Member # 33263) on :
Are we still on this thread...geez put it to bed.
Posted by Toetapper (Member # 6473) on :
quote:Originally posted by Wrinklesguy: well, almost 600,000 lost jobs in January alone is technically Massive and never seen since the first Great Depression.
Keep in mind that the population of the U.S. has more than tripled since the Depression. Take it from one who remembers, things were a whole lot worse during the Carter years and the first two years of the Reagan Administration. Though this digresses from the original point.
Posted by ucflyeah (Member # 32674) on :
quote:Originally posted by Robotron2084: Are we still on this thread...geez put it to bed.
this thread has developed into a discussion. why do you want to "put it to bed?"
unfortunately for you, the criticism towards obama has just begun.
Posted by Robotron2084 (Member # 33263) on :
quote:Originally posted by ucflyeah:
quote:Originally posted by Robotron2084: Are we still on this thread...geez put it to bed.
this thread has developed into a discussion. why do you want to "put it to bed?"
unfortunately for you, the criticism towards obama has just begun.
We can talk all day about it, but it won't change anything. Either way I'll disengage from the discussion (not because I'm an Obama fanboy) since my opinion won't matter anyways. Have fun folks.
Posted by ucflyeah (Member # 32674) on :
robotron2084 your opinion does matter. that's the beauty of the discussion. sharing ideas and viewpoints. i always want to hear other peoples thoughts, especially on politics. i only posted Krauthammer's articles because i think he's more intelligent than i could ever hope to be, and i agree with him on alot of things.
please share your thoughts, that's what its all about.
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