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Anne Bayefsky, in the Corner, writes about Iranian president Ahmadinejad’s grotesque performance at the UN, and how appeasement is not working for the administration.
…Ahmadinejad, therefore, took the opportunity provided by the U.N. to slam the door once more in President Obama’s face. While he lectured about the “lust for capital and domination” and “the egotist and the greedy,” the American U.N. delegation sat stoically in their seats. They had instructions to tough it out until Ahmadinejad really got offensive — though what would count as sufficiently offensive was never publicly announced.
The tripwire turned out to be Ahamdinejad’s suggestion that 9/11 was an inside job. “The U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grip on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime.” With that, the Obama representatives finally hauled themselves out of their seats and put engagement temporarily on hold.
But Ahmadinejad was only warming up. After all, this was the United Nations, a place where Iranians are comfortable throwing their weight around. Once more Ahmadinejad declared his opposition to the existence of the state of Israel, repeating his call for a “vote of the people of Palestine” that would democratically outnumber and therefore rid the region of Zionists. He repeated his grotesque anti-Semitism: “All values, even the freedom of expression, in Europe and in the United States are being sacrificed on the altar of Zionism.” …
Bob Woodward’s new book gives a look inside the White House that is generating much commentary. Roger Simon is up first, discussing how security concerns were trumped with political considerations.
… Politburo? I’ve heard tea party folks and others accuse Obama of being a socialist, but I’ve never heard any of them go nearly so far as his own national security adviser, who uses full-bore Bolshevik terminology for the staff. Maybe he’s right. From what I’ve heard elsewhere, Biden is right about Holbroke, whose reputation as “the most egotistical bastard” is well known.
As for Obama, Woodward says he lectures his staff like a professor and gives them homework. Good grief! I can’t imagine anything more tedious. I’d rather have ten years of non-stop root canal.
So Rahm, run for the hills. The time is ripe — Jesse Jackson Jr. has apparently self-immolated and you are as good as mayor. I don’t know what Axelrod will do. He can probably go back to his cheesy political public relations firm. That’s what he does anyway — and he could be paid better for it.
Meanwhile, regarding Herr Professor Obama, there’s only one president in our lifetime I could see having behaved the same way. You all know it, but I’ll say it — Jimmy Carter.
Next, Peter Wehner criticizes the president’s priorities.
The Washington Post’s story on Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book, Obama’s Wars, includes these passages:
‘ Obama rejected the military’s request for 40,000 troops as part of an expansive mission that had no foreseeable end. “I’m not doing 10 years,” he told Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a meeting on Oct. 26, 2009. “I’m not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars.” …’
So we finally found the one institution where Barack Obama is frugal and interested in cost-savings: the military during time of war.
…There are two problems for Obama. The first centers on Article II, Section II, of the Constitution, which states, “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States.” The president’s primary responsibility, as envisioned by the Founders, is to serve as commander in chief, not as the tax collector for the welfare state. “Among the many objects to which a wise and free people find it necessary to direct their attention,” John Jay wrote in Federalist No. 3, “is that of providing for their safety seems to be first.”
…Quite apart from being reckless, Obama is reinforcing almost every bad impression of his party: keen on raising taxes, spending record amounts on domestic programs, centralizing power, and expanding the size and reach of the federal government. When it comes to war, though, Obama is conflicted and uncertain, in search of an exit ramp more than victory, and even willing to subordinate security needs to partisan concerns (most especially by insisting on an arbitrary drawdown date of July 2011 in order to please his political advisers). …
Nile Gardiner thinks that the Obami are going to be very unhappy with the perception of Obama’s military judgment.
How damaging will Bob Woodward’s new book Obama’s Wars be to the White House? Very. Released next Monday, the veteran Washington Post journalist’s scathing take on the Obama administration’s handling of the war in Afghanistan could not come at a worse time ahead of the November mid-terms, and will attract a huge amount of media coverage on both sides of the Atlantic. It will add to a growing perception of a deeply flawed and divided presidency that is failing to show real leadership both at home and on the world stage.
…Judging by these previews, the big picture which emerges from Woodward’s book is of a president fundamentally at odds with his military advisers, barely concerned with defeating the Taliban, obsessed with finding an early exit strategy, and driven heavily by party political considerations and his drive for re-election in 2012. To describe it as damning would be an understatement.
…The United States, Great Britain and the NATO alliance simply cannot afford to retreat from Afghanistan, with huge implications for American and international security. US and British soldiers are laying down their lives for the cause of victory over the enemy, not for an exit strategy. Unfortunately it is not a message Barack Obama appears to be heeding, while his presidency slides further towards the political abyss.
It’s hard to believe that the Obami think this reflects well on the president. Jennifer Rubin has critical comments for Obama’s unwillingness to review the Afghanistan situation and reconsider his military advisors’ assessments in the future.
…The disregard for his responsibilities — the equivalent of putting his fingers in his ears and humming — is stunning. It also stands in sharp contrast with his predecessor, who insisted on a review of flawed policy and ultimately the implementation of a winning one:
‘ The president is quoted as telling Mullen, Petraeus and Gates: “In 2010, we will not be having a conversation about how to do more. I will not want to hear, ‘We’re doing fine, Mr. President, but we’d be better if we just do more.’ We’re not going to be having a conversation about how to change [the mission] … unless we’re talking about how to draw down faster than anticipated in 2011.” ‘
Imagine FDR telling General Eisenhower, “I don’t want to hear things aren’t going well in Italy.” It’s inconceivable that Obama’s supposed role model, Abraham Lincoln, would have said, “No more news about McClellan’s shortcomings.” …
…Obama’s peevishness and determination to avoid facts that conflict with his ideological disposition are chilling. His apparent disinclination to pursue victory should frighten both allies and foes. Has he matured since the events detailed in the book? We have no evidence of that. I think it’s time to stop pretending that Obama is “growing” in the job and that he understands the responsibilities of a wartime president. …
In the Enterprise Blog, Marc Thiessen focuses on the trillion dollar comment.
“I’m not spending a trillion dollars,” President Obama declares forthrightly on the front page of today’s Washington Post—words few imagined would ever pass the lips of perhaps the biggest spender ever to occupy the Oval Office.
What sparked Obama’s sudden embrace of fiscal restraint? The only matter Obama and the Democrats seem to think is a waste of taxpayer dollars—defending the country from terrorism.
…So we see Obama spending without restraint in virtually every sphere of domestic life, but suddenly discovering fiscal discipline when it comes to defense and national security. The Woodward book promises to be a fascinating insight into the behind-the-scenes thinking of a president who sees his responsibilities as commander in chief as an expensive distraction from his real agenda.
We have more from Jennifer Rubin. She highlights an inquiry into the Rolling Stone article that got General McChrystal fired.
Stanley McChrystal didn’t do what he was accused of doing. The New York Times reports:
“An Army inquiry into a Rolling Stone magazine article about Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has found that it was not the general or senior officers on his staff who made the most egregious comments that led to his abrupt dismissal as the top Afghan commander in June, according to Army and Pentagon officials.
But the review, commissioned after an embarrassing and disruptive episode, does not wholly resolve who was responsible for the inflammatory quotations, most of which were anonymous.”
…It is yet one more indication that the White House decision-making process bounces between the slipshod (e.g., Shirley Sherrod, Stanley McChrystal) and the snail-like agonizing that characterized the Afghanistan strategy sessions. As to the latter, if Bob Woodward’s book is remotely accurate, the reason it took so long was that a recalcitrant president resisted the advice of his military advisers and was interested not in a war strategy but in a political one. Credit is due primarily to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who hung in there to get the best result obtainable from a president whose concerns were primarily political.
Rubin comments on one of the most distressing aspects of Obama’s Afghanistan policy, which David Ignatius brings up.
David Ignatius uses a peculiar adjective to describe Obama’s portrayal in Bob Woodward’s new book: “poignant.” An odd word choice, considering Ignatius’s otherwise apt description:
By Woodward’s account, Obama was looking for an exit from Afghanistan even as he sent 30,000 more U.S. combat troops there.
That’s an untenable position. If the president doubted his strategy, he shouldn’t have sent the troops. If he believes his war plan stands a chance of stabilizing Afghanistan so that he can transfer responsibility to the Afghans starting next July, then he must rally the public so that it understands and supports what he’s doing.Woodward shows us an Obama who is halfway to war, doubting his strategy even as he asks young men and women to die for it. That’s the one thing a president must not do: Sacrifice lives for a policy he doesn’t think can succeed.
Poignant or shameful? Poignant or irresponsible? Poignant is George Bush, an increasingly reviled figure in the White House making a decision for the sake of the country and the Free World that he knew would politically harm him and his party.
In the National Journals’ Against the Grain Blog, Josh Kraushaar reports on the elections in Ohio and the anti-incumbent mood there.
There’s no shortage of political tumult in the Buckeye State this year, where the Democratic-held governorship and at least six Democratic-held House seats are in jeopardy. But what makes it particularly notable is that the state represents several key demographic groups whose changing perspectives will give serious insight into President Obama’s broader political standing for 2012.
The voters Obama is losing — white-collar managers in Columbus, blue-collar union workers in Youngstown, pro-life independents around Cincinnati — are exactly the types he needs to win re-election in 2012, and they’re backing away from his party in droves. Obama tallied a whopping 60 percent disapproval rating in Quinnipiac’s latest Ohio poll, with nearly two-thirds of voters disapproving of his economic performance.
…Working-class Democrats are abandoning the party to support Republicans with both Wall Street and Washington ties. The business-friendly base around Columbus, which swung towards Obama in 2008, now gives both Portman and Kasich substantial leads. A sizable share (42 percent) of Kasich backers in the Quinnipiac poll said they were casting their vote specifically against Strickland, who was once one of the most popular chief executives in the country. …
Stuart Taylor looks at the chances for litigation, backed by twenty states, to strike down provisions of Obamacare.
…However the case turns out, any ruling by the justices on the constitutionality of the health-care law would be the most important pronouncement on the relative powers of the federal and state governments in many decades.
The most fundamental question is whether Congress’s undoubtedly broad power to regulate activities affecting interstate commerce is so sweeping as to empower the government to require people who are engaged in no relevant activity at all other than living in the United States to buy health insurance. …
The lawsuits also challenge as an invasion of state sovereignty the new law’s provisions requiring states, already strapped for cash, to spend billions of dollars expanding their Medicaid programs unless they withdraw entirely, a step widely seen as unthinkable. …
At the same time, leading centrist-to-conservative legal experts, including UCLA Law School’s Eugene Volokh, doubt that the justices would or should strike down such a hugely important enactment with so vast an impact on interstate commerce. ..
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The justices have not struck down a major piece of legislation, let alone a president’s signature initiative, as beyond Congress’s power to regulate commerce in some 75 years. …
Tony Blankley reviews the sore-loser RINOs who think they are more important than taking our country back.
…In a different season, such petulance might have strategic significance. But not in 2010. These various “moderates” and party operatives will be swept away by the coming storm – next and last to be seen as post-storm debris hanging undecorously next to old tires and broken awnings. As a party, broadly, the GOP will embrace its new voters and its old principles and thereby profit from the energized grass-roots activists whose efforts surely would flow to a third party next time if thwarted by the Republican establishment this time.
Despite their years of expertise, some Beltway insiders of all varieties – press, pundits, politicians and strategists – some friends of mine – only dimly understand the Tea Party phenomenon. Spontaneous in its formation and wide-ranging in its composition, the Tea Party upwelling is the first genuine grass-roots movement in American politics in decades.
John Fund comments on the moderates who won’t let go.
… Moderates may posture that their refusal to acknowledge the will of primary voters is based on high principle. But it appears to be more and more rooted in a desire to retain office at all costs, while ignoring a clear decision by the Republican primary electorate that the power grabs of Obama Democrats demand the election of GOP officials with stiffer spines to oppose them.