Obama in Cairo on Islam....

I confess to not having watched His (sic) speech in its entirety, but I've seen enough to know that I'm not impressed.

Neither is Amir Taheri of the New York Post. A snippet.....

President Obama's "address to the Muslim world" was a masterwork of equivocation and political naiveté.

Lots of commentators have already debunked Zero's acknowlegment of "civilization's debt to Islam"--"the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing." However, what caught my eye was when Zero repeated one of the reliable canards of the Left: "Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world."

The war in Iraq was not a "war of choice". We brought the matter to the U.N. and were able to get the U.N. Security Council to vote unanimously that, among other things, "the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations".

The Congress fully debated the question of going to war with Iraq. The Iraq War Authorization passed the House 297-133 (including 82 Democrats voting in favor) and the Senate 77-23. More Democrat Senators voted for the Resolution than voted against it (29 voting for; 21 voting against). Included in those Senators voting for what Zero calls a "war of choice" are his Vice President, who was "perhaps the single most important congressional backer of the Bush administration's decision to invade that oil-rich country" and Zero's Secretary of State, who, in her then-capacity as a Senator, also voted for the Resolution.

It is an outrage that Zero would go onto foreign soil (not to mention Islamic foreign soil) and cast the Iraq War as a little-debated question, decided upon rashly, and without adequate consideration for other methods of solving the Iraq problem. The world and this country fully looked at the problem we faced in Iraq, and openly decided on a course of action.

That Zero disageed with that decision, and was in the minority at the time, does not make it now a "War of choice".

Biden in Iraq....

Beyond my view that Joe Biden is one of the biggest idiots on the planet, he is, none-the-less, the Vice President-Elect.

He recently went on a tour with some other Senators of the Mid-East. [The trip itself was of some small controversy.]

But what really got me was this question: Since when do those who represent us--either as a Senator or a VP-Elect--to foreign governments wear slacks and a sport coat vice a suit?

Ted Rall

...Obama: "...[A] terrible betrayal."

h/t: Glenn.

Two plus Two equals....

...Eight.

Two. Obama on Russia's involvement in Georgia:

“...We’ve got to send a clear message to Russia and unify our allies,” Obama told a crowd of supporters in Virginia. “They can’t charge into other countries. Of course it helps if we are leading by example on that point....” [my emphasis]

Two. Michael J. Totten on Russia's involvement in Georgia:

“...We've been trying to tell the world about this for months. If you go back and look at the archives you'll see plenty of calls from the Georgian government saying they're really worried. Even some Russian commentators agree that this is exactly what happened. Don't forget, they sent in a lot of irregulars, Chechens, Cossacks, Ossetians, Ingush – basically thugs. Not normal Chechens or Ingush – thugs. Thugs out for a holiday. Many Western camera crews were robbed at gunpoint ten meters from Russian tanks while Russian commanders just stood there smoking their cigarettes while the irregulars...that happened to a Turkish TV crew. They're lucky to still be alive. Some of the Georgians were picked up by the irregulars. If they happened to be female, they got raped. If they happened to be male, they got shot immediately, sometimes tortured. Injured people we have in hospitals who managed to get out have had arms chopped off, eyes gouged out, and their tongues ripped out.”

....

Plus it's the oldest law of warfare: have your guns in populated areas, and when the enemy responds, show the world your dead women and children....”

The math adds up to this: Obama is blazingly ignorant in the field of foreign affairs. The story Totten tells is probably too complicated to explain to Joe Sixpack, but the truth shines through: Russia's Putin is a brute.

h/t to Vodkapundit for the Totten article.

Wall Street Journal

Why Iraqi's Back McCain

From the op-ed...

"...That only makes America's ambivalence toward its democratic creation that much stranger to the Iraqis. Will the next administration abandon both its principles and its friends in the region? For what?..."

Yes, Barack. For what, exactly?

“They poured everything they had into this place.... And they lost."

Here is the full quote.

“They poured everything they had into this place. The battle against Americans in Anbar became their most important fight in the world. And they lost.”

Of course, the quote is about Fallujah, and Michael J. Totten wrote it. I read this article about the First, Second, and Third Battles for Fallujah as a microcosm of our presence in Iraq...to leave Iraq will invite al Qaeda back in, and we cannot allow them to believe they've beaten us.

"Serve up a..."

"...bitch-slap"? Check.

"Speak simply yet eloquently on the questions of 'Why?' and 'How long?'". Check.



h/t Gerard.

Hey, Barry...

Have you really thought this out?

"Bringing Our Troops Home
Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda."

Really?

"Let's 'Surge' Some More"...

Michael Yon in the Wall Street Journal.

Yon is a better journalist all by himself than the cumulative work of the ten best MSM reporters.

h/t Ace, of course.

"...Sometimes you just have to win...."

A few tidbits from this guy...

"...We are on the verge of achieving the impossible: defeating an Islamic terrorist movement in the heart of the Middle East on a battlefield of their choosing. Tens of thousands of Takfiri streamed into Iraq for the opportunity to become martyrs and coalition and Iraqi forces obliged them. Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has been essentially annihilated in Al Anbar, the center of what they boldly declared as their new caliphate eighteen months ago...."

"... Sometimes you just have to win. Some conflicts just need to run their courses and some bad guys just need killing. Nazi ideology was not discredited UNTIL it was defeated on the battlefield. No amount of peaceful persuasion or appeasement worked. People thought communism was a viable alternative to the free market UNTIL it ignominiously collapsed. Massive economic evidence and even the presence of a very large and deadly wall running down the middle of Berlin did not convince the believers to abandon their failed ideology. Earlier forms of terrorism from the Barbary Pirates to the Bader-Meinhof didn’t go away until they were defeated. We tried appeasement in the 1930s and we tried ignorance in the 1990s. These things did not work...."

"...The war against terrorism is not won since a final victory is not possible. This is one of those “eternal vigilance” propositions. Our nation’s first foray into foreign policy involved fighting the Barbary Pirates; whose behavior – adjusted for the technologies of the times – closely resembled those of today’s territorially based terrorists. That was in 1804 and obviously the job is never done. But terrorism can be contained...."

[All emphases mine.]

Via DrewM. (with more information of just who John Matel is) over at Ace's Place.

"The Rumsfeld strategy DID work...."

Let me repeat that...

"...The Rumsfeld strategy DID work...."

Don Rumsfeld, the big, bad, ogre who couldn't win the peace so easily handed to him, is now, with this post, completely vindicated.

And, by extension, I maintain that in President George W. Bush, we are not dealing with some bumpkin from Texas, but rather witnessing a modern-day Churchill.

h/t Purple Avenger over at Ace's place.

Why can't we say...

Michael Yon: Pulitzer Prize winner?

See also: Glenn, Chris, Powerline, among many others, I'm sure.

"Why Dems' Iraq pullout failed"...

So asks the top-of-the-fold headline in today's Arizona Republic. Anne Flaherty, AP's analyst here, brings out three No-Duh reasons...

"A convincing four-star general, an activist group that overplayed its hand and a plainspoken Defense secretary who doesn't bother to defend the Iraq invasion."

It's not until the second to last paragraph that we get...

"...Public opinion still remains in [the Democrats] corner, and they believe that, as the 2008 elections inch closer, Republicans will be in a tighter spot."

But what if this does not reflect American public opinion, but rather just the unchallenged view of the vocal Sheehan/Code-Pink/KosKidz/MSM left? Personally, while I do believe that the American public is tired of our Iraqi War front, I don't believe that we have ever wished to end it on terms other than victory. And the American public is becoming increasingly aware of the danger that Iran poses to us.

We are no more than thirty years into a Hundred-Years War against Islamofacism. Despite that the Democrats believe that they can legislate an end to the war, this won't be over soon.

Democrats on Iraq...

A gem from Theo.



BTW, I continue to get some of my very few visitors from the very kind links of Theo and Fran at Eternity Road. If you're a returning visitor; Welcome back. If you're new here, I hope you like the place...such as it is. I'm especially proud of this posting from last fall. I haven't seen anyone else make this point about John and Elizabeth Edwards. Finally, we enjoyed a great Arizona vacation earlier this summer.