Friday, October 16, 2009
Here's the truth. You knew what the Obama world-view was. You've seen it on every campus from every wide-eyed freshman to their theory-bound professors. You know the drill: America is the great imperialist, the world (yes, including Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, etc...) has no agency or interest of their own in opposition to us, they are purely reactionary, and all we need to do is show them our good intentions and the stream of life and history will made to flow soft and mellow. You and I know that that's a nonsense destined for disaster, but a lot of people don't know that. So here we are, with the College One World Club president as our Commander in Chief and we're going to ride that river for all it's worth as far as it will take us. Much damage will follow, but we can only hope we'll have lessons learned that don't actually kill us.
About the only thing more comical than Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was the reaction of those who deemed the award "premature," as if the brilliance of Obama's foreign policy is so self-evident and its success so assured that if only the Norway Five had waited a few years, his Nobel worthiness would have been universally acknowledged.
To believe this, you have to be a dreamy adolescent (preferably Scandinavian and a member of the Socialist International) or an indiscriminate imbiber of White House talking points. After all, this was precisely the spin on the president's various apology tours through Europe and the Middle East: National self-denigration -- excuse me, outreach and understanding -- is not meant to yield immediate results; it simply plants the seeds of good feeling from which foreign policy successes shall come.
Chauncey Gardiner could not have said it better. Well, at nine months, let's review.
What's come from Obama holding his tongue while Iranian demonstrators were being shot and from his recognizing the legitimacy of a thug regime illegitimately returned to power in a fraudulent election? Iran cracks down even more mercilessly on the opposition and races ahead with its nuclear program.
What's come from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taking human rights off the table on a visit to China and from Obama's shameful refusal to see the Dalai Lama (a postponement, we are told)? China hasn't moved an inch on North Korea, Iran or human rights. Indeed, it's pushing with Russia to dethrone the dollar as the world's reserve currency...
