Obama promised to repair America’s  supposed tarnished reputation with the world. His grade so far? D-

Does Barack Obama Give a Damn about Us?

WHEN President Barack Obama declared himself “the first Pacific president”, some thought he was merely waxing lyrical about his birth in Hawaii and school days in Indonesia.

A year into office it is clear that this is a president focused not so much on old alliances across the Atlantic as on the emerging Pacific powers. Next week he will return to Indonesia, where he spent four years as a child, as well as visiting Australia.

A journey to his old primary school in Jakarta will no doubt come as a welcome break from the vitriolic battles in Washington over his attempts to reform the healthcare system, which forced him to delay the trip. Some aides advised cancelling it altogether to try to pass the bill before Congress goes on its Easter break.

The president’s affinity with the Pacific serves as a reminder that the sole European in his lineage seems to be a great-great-great-grandfather from County Offaly who inspired the 2008 folk song There’s No One as Irish as Barack O’Bama.

Unlike George W Bush and Bill Clinton, Obama has made little effort to strike up friendships with European leaders. At the G20 summit in Pittsburgh last year he was pictured walking out with the leaders of China and India, his administration’s evident priorities, along with Russia, at the expense of America’s traditional allies.

“The paradox is Europeans think Obama is one of them, that he ran [for office] on repairing American relations with them — damaged by Bush and the war in Iraq — and now feel he doesn’t care about them,” said Robert Kagan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who was foreign policy adviser to Senator John McCain, Obama’s election opponent.

“He’s just not emotionally attached to Europe,” agreed Kim Holmes, of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. “It’s not hostility. It’s just indifference.”

When the Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl asked White House officials to name a foreign leader with whom Obama had forged a personal relationship, there was “a lot of hemming and hawing”, he said. To his astonishment, no one mentioned Gordon Brown. Instead the name proffered was Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president.

Another example of an actor who should be screened and not heard. Victor Davis Hanson:

Much has been written of the recent Tom Hanks remarks to Douglas Brinkley in a Time magazine interview about his upcoming HBO series on World War II in the Pacific. Here is the explosive excerpt that is making the rounds today.

“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”

Hanks may not have been quoted correctly; and his remarks may have been impromptu and poorly expressed; and we should give due consideration to the tremendous support Hanks has given in the past both to veterans and to commemoration of World War II; and his new HBO series could well be a fine bookend to Band of Brothers.  All that said, Hanks’ comments were sadly infantile pop philosophizing offered by, well,  an ignoramus.

Hanks thinks he is trying to explain the multifaceted Pacific theater in terms of a war brought on by and fought through racial animosity. That is ludicrous. Consider:

1) In earlier times, we had good relations with Japan (an ally during World War I, that played an important naval role in defeating imperial Germany at sea) and had stayed neutral in its disputes with Russia (Teddy Roosevelt won a 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for his intermediary role). The crisis that led to Pearl Harbor was not innately with the Japanese people per se (tens of thousands of whom had emigrated to the United States on word of mouth reports of opportunity for Japanese immigrants), but with Japanese militarism and its creed of Bushido that had hijacked, violently so in many cases, the government and put an entire society on a fascistic footing. We no more wished to annihilate Japanese because of racial hatred than we wished to ally with their Chinese enemies because of racial affinity. In terms of geo-strategy, race was not the real catalyst for war other than its role among Japanese militarists in energizing expansive Japanese militarism.

2) How would Hanks explain the brutal Pacific wars between Japanese and Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, Japanese and Filipinos, and Japanese and Pacific Islanders, in which not hundreds of thousands perished, but many millions? In each of these theaters, the United States was allied with Asians against an Asian Japan, whose racially-hyped “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” aimed at freeing supposedly kindred Asians from European and white imperialism, flopped at its inauguration (primarily because of high-handed Japanese feelings of superiority and entitlement, which, in their emphasis on racial purity, were antithetical to the allied democracies, but quite in tune with kindred Axis power, Nazi Germany.)

Geoff Dyer in NYT magazine.

The first thing I ever heard about Americans was that they all carried guns. Then, when I came across people who’d had direct contact with this ferocious-sounding tribe, I learned that they were actually rather friendly. At university, friends who had traveled in the United States came back with more detailed stories, not just of the friendliness of Americans but also of their hospitality (which, in our quaint English way, was translated into something close to gullibility). When I finally got to America myself, I found that not only were the natives friendly and hospitable, they were also incredibly polite. No one tells you this about Americans, but once you notice it, it becomes one of their defining characteristics, especially when they’re abroad.

This is very strange, or at least it says something strange about the way that perception routinely conforms to the preconceptions it would appear to contradict. The archetypal American abroad is perceived as loud and crass even though actually existing American tourists are distinguished by the way they address bus drivers and bartenders as “sir” and are effusive in their thanks when any small service is rendered. We look on with some confusion at these encounters because, on the one hand, the Americans seem a bit country-bumpkinish, and, on the other, good manners are a form of sophistication.

Granted, these visiting Americans often seem to have loud voices, but on closer examination, it’s a little subtler than that. Americans have no fear of being overheard. Civic life in Britain is predicated on the idea that everyone just about conceals his loathing of everyone else. To open your mouth is to risk offending someone. So we mutter and mumble as if surrounded by informers or, more exactly, as if they are living in our heads. In America the right to free speech is exercised freely and cordially. The basic assumption is that nothing you say will offend anyone else because, deep down, everyone is agreed on the premise that America is better than anyplace else. No such belief animates British life. On the contrary. A couple of years ago a survey indicated that British Muslims were the most fed-up of any in Europe: a sign, paradoxically, of profound assimilation.

If the typical American interaction involves an ostensibly contradictory mixture of the formal (politeness), the casual and the cordial, what happens when one moves beyond the transactional? Like many Europeans, I always feel good about myself in America; I feel appreciated, liked. It took a while to realize that this had nothing to do with me. It was about the people who made me feel this way: it was about charm. Yes, this is the bright secret of life in the United States: Americans are not just friendly and polite — they are also charming. And the most charming thing of all is that it rarely looks like charm. The French put a rather charmless emphasis on charm, are consciously or unconsciously persuaded that it is either part of a display of sophistication or — and it may amount to the same thing — a tool in the service of seduction.

Obama’s decision to try KSM in NYC baffles.  There are no upsides — KSM had already confessed and asked for death– and plenty of potential downsides, such as terror attacks in NYC, jihadi grandstanding during the trial etc.

So why do it?

Some say Obama wants to show the world that we’re still the good guys, giving even murderous scum their day in court. If so, why this?

Sen. Kohl: But taking into account that you never know what happens when you walk into a court of law, in the event that for whatever reason they do not get convicted, what would be your next step? I’m sure you must have talked about it.

AG Holder: What I told the prosecutors and what I will tell you and what I spoke to them about is that failure is not an option. Failure is not an option. This–these are cases that have to be won. I don’t expect that we will have a contrary result.

James Taranto:

“Failure is not an option”? Is Eric Holder attorney general of the United States or some unctuous motivational speaker?

Kohl’s question is highly pertinent, and Holder simply evaded it. No one is suggesting that failure to win and sustain a conviction is an “option,” but it is a contingency for which it is shocking that the administration is, or at least claims to be, unprepared.

Further, Obama’s and Holder’s assurances that KSM will be convicted (and, according to the president, “put to death”) make a mockery of due process. Nothing is more fundamental to America’s criminal justice system than the presumption of innocence, and if terrorist detainees are to be treated as criminal defendants, they are entitled to that presumption.

For the sake of political expediency, Obama and Holder are refusing even to make a pretense of respect for due process. If KSM & Co. are convicted and put to death, America’s critics and enemies will point to Obama and Holder’s assurances in arguing that the defendants were subjected to sham justice. Nice work restoring America’s moral standing, Mr. President.

Mark Steyn at the Corner:

Step One:

Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother’s funeral was held there in May that year.

The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.

Hasan’s eyes “lit up” when he mentioned his deep respect for al-Awlaki’s teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort Hood base in Texas…

Step Two:

Danquah assumed the military’s chain of command knew about Hasan’s doubts, which had been known for more than a year to classmates in a graduate military medical program. His fellow students complained to the faculty about Hasan’s “anti-American propaganda,” but said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim student kept officers from filing a formal written complaint.

Step Three:

Thinking Anew—Security Priorities for the Next Administration

A coherent strategy to address 21st century threats to the United States, one that treats national and homeland security as a seamless whole, has yet to emerge… To help fuel this process, in April 2008 The George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) established the Presidential Transition Task Force, comprised of national and homeland security experts, policymakers and practitioners… The goal was to determine the top strategic priorities to advance the nation’s security in the coming decade…

Event Participants:

…Amanda Halpern
U.S. House of Representatives

Beth Hampton
Homeland Security Institute

Nidal Hasan
Uniformed Services University School of Medicine

Donald Hawkins
U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Eric Heighberger
Homeland Security Council…

That’s quite the company for a deranged misfit loner whacko of no broader significance.

I believe it was Derb a few months after 9/11 who said that for this new struggle our watchword was “Better screwed than rude.” Major Hasan represents the institutionalization of that attitude. Thirteen people are dead, dozens more will live with their injuries for the rest of their days, and a lot of families have had a great big gaping hole blown out of their lives because of it.

Anwar al-Awlaki and his chums have bet that such a society is too sick to survive. Watch the nothing-to-see-here media driveling on about pre-post-traumatic stress disorder like gibbering lunatics in a padded cell , and then think whether you’d really want to take that bet.

Oh, when will those reactionary liberals acknowledge that America in 2009 is not America in 1959? Probably never.

In the blink of an eye, late-night TV is shifting from a white men’s club to the start of a rainbow coalition.

Wanda Sykes’ weekly Fox comedy show debuts 11 p.m. EST Saturday, followed by George Lopez’s four-night-a-week talk show on TBS, starting 11 p.m. EST Monday. They join “The Mo’Nique Show” on BET.

Lopez is counting on an audience hungry for something different — as in the first Hispanic to host a nighttime talk show on a major network, cable or broadcast.

Sykes is the first black late-night host since the late 1990s, when celebrities Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Keenan Ivory Wayans tried and failed to follow in Arsenio Hall’s successful 1989-94 footsteps.

Wha?! You mean there have been black talk show hosts before? 20 years ago even?

Who knew? I wonder, are there any popular black actors? Singers maybe?

Supposedly the world hated America until Obama got elected. No so with India’s one billion plus people.

The Times of India reported on Bush’s recent lunch with India’s prime minister.

NEW DELHI: Prime ministerial lunches are rarely fun affairs. People sort of get on with it, and then get on with their lives. Not on Friday.

Early in the day, former US president George Bush, on a pleasure trip to India, announced cheerily, “I’m off to have lunch with my old pal.”

He sauntered across to the home of his pal, one Manmohan Singh, who famously abandoned his starchy mien to declare this nation’s “deep love” for Bush, then stood stoically through the vicious jokes hurled at him. But for all those present at the “friendly” lunch this afternoon, Bush clearly reciprocated in full measure. The food wasn’t to die for but the conversation, declared one guest, was adequate compensation.

Colleagues reported that Singh was rarely as “chirpy” as he was on Friday afternoon. The conversation was light and sparkling, there was a lot of laughter and banter. So when Singh talked about how much he appreciated the huge gesture of the nuclear deal, Bush quipped, “Yeah, it was a big deal and to get it we had to break a bit of china.”

Embarrassed but grateful laughter greeted this. His new venture of having his presidential library at the Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Bush declared, was his main interest now. He is also writing a book, “but most of America doesn’t believe I can read”. The laughter now was a little more uncertain because it wasn’t clear whether the assemblage should be laughing at the ex-prez of the US, or tut-tut at the American people’s naivete.

At the outset, Bush disarmed all by thanking them for coming to see a “retired guy”.

Ryan Mauro at Pajamas Media.

The Nation Brands Index now ranks the United States as the most admired country around the world. Given that the majority of the world’s population is opposed to American foreign policies and is skeptical of our intentions, this is no easy feat — especially following President Bush’s public relations problems.

“What’s really remarkable is that in all my years studying national reputation, I have never seen any country experience such a dramatic change in its standing as we see for the United States for 2009,” said Simon Anholt, the founder of the NBI. He says the only factor he can identify as causing this is the election of President Obama.

Isn’t “being popular” the mark of shallow school kids?

Should we care what tyrants/semi-tyrants think of us?

Should we care what ingrate European elites think of us?

Alas, it appears to be Obama’s first choice. Charles Krauthammer:

…The current foreign policy of the United States is an exercise in contraction. It begins with the demolition of the moral foundation of American dominance. In Strasbourg, President Obama was asked about American exceptionalism. His answer? “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

Interesting response. Because if everyone is exceptional, no one is. Indeed, as he made his hajj from Strasbourg to Prague to Ankara to Istanbul to Cairo and finally to the U.N. General Assembly, Obama drew the picture of an America quite exceptional–exceptional in moral culpability and heavy-handedness, exceptional in guilt for its treatment of other nations and peoples. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own country for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness (toward Europe), for maltreatment of natives, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantánamo, for unilateralism, and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.

Quite an indictment, the fundamental consequence of which is to effectively undermine any moral claim that America might have to world leadership, as well as the moral confidence that any nation needs to have in order to justify to itself and to others its position of leadership. According to the new dispensation, having forfeited the mandate of heaven–if it ever had one–a newly humbled America now seeks a more modest place among the nations, not above them.

But that leads to the question: How does this new world govern itself? How is the international system to function? Henry Kissinger once said that the only way to achieve peace is through hegemony or balance of power. Well, hegemony is out. As Obama said in his General Assembly address, “No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation.” (The “can” in that declaration is priceless.) And if hegemony is out, so is balance of power: “No balance of power among nations will hold.”

The president then denounced the idea of elevating any group of nations above others–which takes care, I suppose, of the Security Council, the G-20, and the Western alliance. And just to make the point unmistakable, he denounced “alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War” as making “no sense in an interconnected world.” What does that say about NATO? Of our alliances with Japan and South Korea? Or even of the European Union?

This is nonsense. But it is not harmless nonsense. It’s nonsense with a point. It reflects a fundamental view that the only legitimate authority in the international system is that which emanates from “the community of nations” as a whole. Which means, I suppose, acting through its most universal organs such as, again I suppose, the U.N. and its various agencies. Which is why when Obama said that those who doubt “the character and cause” of his own country should see what this new America–the America of the liberal ascendancy–had done in the last nine months, he listed among these restorative and relegitimizing initiatives paying up U.N. dues, renewing actions on various wholly vacuous universalist declarations and agreements, and joining such Orwellian U.N. bodies as the Human Rights Council.

…for three days, I was disconnected from the Internet, email etc. This was by choice and because I was working long hours.

My only connection to world events was USA Today, delivered to my hotel room.

What stuck out was that while Bush and Blair were in office, Khaddafi was wetting his pants for fear that he might meet Saddam’s fate. He willingly  and publicly destroyed his nukes.

Under Obama Khaddafi felt emboldened to give a speech pissing all over the USA.

On one thing he and I agree: the UN is a joke.

Michael Godwin:

The video of Hillary Clinton peevishly snapping at a student questioner in the Congo was the meltdown seen ’round the world. But that undiplomatic moment was hardly her worst on the Africa swing.

The real clunker came with her pathetic attempt to compare Nigeria’s corrupt and violent 2007 elections to the contested 2000 American presidential results.

In equating the two, the secretary of state echoes President Obama’s sour apologia tours around the globe. Either he’s writing her speeches now or Clinton’s drinking the White House Kool-Aid. Neither is appealing.

The bended-knee approach abroad shames America and reduces our great nation to the sum of its mistakes and failures. And it seems designed to create the misleading impression that Third-World kleptocrats and genocidal maniacs are, gee, just like us.

Clinton’s moral equivalency moment came when she told a group of Nigerian activists that, “In 2000, our presidential election came down to one state where the brother of the man running for President was the governor of the state. So we have our problems, too.”

The reference to Florida, where Jeb Bush was governor, was inappropriate, no matter the context Clinton had in mind. The election ultimately was decided by the Supreme Court and all but wing nuts on the Democratic left accepted the court’s historic decision.

Whatever Clinton thinks of that outcome – she might have mentioned Bubba’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky if she wanted to give a full campaign recap – it was puerile nonsense to bring it up in an African nation that has never had a peaceful and fair transition of presidential power.

Nigerians would be thankful for any election that didn’t involve the army and stacks of corpses. Instead, they get childish bromides about American flaws.

That sends a demoralizing message to reformers fighting Nigeria’s government, which is regarded as one of the most corrupt in the world. One estimate suggests some $300 billion has been siphoned from oil revenues and international aid in the last decade alone.

Claudia Rosett:

You can learn strange things, poring over transcripts of remarks made by U.S. officials traveling abroad (we do this so you don’t have to). And so it was when I pulled up a transcript of remarks made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last weekend in Mumbai, India. These were the remarks in which, to the Obama administration’s growing list of apologies for the United States, Clinton added a U.S. apology to India for the climate of the planet:

“Our point is very simple: That we acknowledge, now with President Obama, that we have made mistakes — the United States — and we along with other developed countries, have contributed most significantly to the problems that we face with climate change.” (The main thing Clinton got for her pains was a demand from India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the West fork over almost $200 billion per year to the developing world to offset costs of cutting emissions).

Come again, Madame Secretary? You don’t have to love carbon to understand that there are tradeoffs in this world. While America’s free enterprise system has been emitting all that now-reviled carbon dioxide, it has also served as the world’s liveliest source of inventions for improving quality of life around the globe. The verdict of real science (as opposed to United Nations “consensus”) is still out on what causes climate change, or whether carbon dioxide has anything much to do with it. But in coping with a global climate that has been changing since before our ancestors crawled out of the primal soup, the best hope of mankind for adapting to the weather is not a global web of UN-driven caps and regulations, but precisely the kind of creativity and flexibility that has been the hallmark of the American system. It’s a terrible idea to constrain that, and it’s dangerously absurd to apologize for it. More on this in my column this week for Forbes.com , “Stop the Apologizing.”

In further remarks, Clinton responded to a press question about her meeting earlier in the day with a number of influential Indian business executives, include the head of Reliance Petroleum, which has served in the past as a major supplier to Iran of gasoline — a product for which Iran does not have enough refining capacity to meet its own domestic demands. Clinton was asked if she had discussed with these Indian executives the possibility of using gas exports as a lever against Iran. (Interest in such leverage has been simmering on Capitol Hill, and in response to this, Reliance recently halted gas exports to Iran. But the Obama administration, rather than talking up this example, or leaning on other suppliers to stop as well,  keeps skirting the issue, while trying to extend that hand to Tehran).

Clinton’s answer: A big shrug. She did not discuss it, and this is something “we will look at later.”

That’s one mixed up set of priorities. What America really ought to be sorry about is a foreign policy that apologizes for the weather, while ignoring a last, best hope for peacefully stopping the Iranian march toward nuclear crisis in the Middle East.

“No people in history have preserved their freedom who thought that by not being strong enough to protect themselves they might prove inoffensive to their enemies.” — Harry Truman

Liz Cheney takes President Obama to task for his pathetic historial revisionism.

There are two different versions of the story of the end of the Cold War: the Russian version, and the truth. President Barack Obama endorsed the Russian version in Moscow last week.

Speaking to a group of students, our president explained it this way: “The American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose. And then within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.”

The truth, of course, is that the Soviets ran a brutal, authoritarian regime. The KGB killed their opponents or dragged them off to the Gulag. There was no free press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of worship, no freedom of any kind. The basis of the Cold War was not “competition in astrophysics and athletics.” It was a global battle between tyranny and freedom. The Soviet “sphere of influence” was delineated by walls and barbed wire and tanks and secret police to prevent people from escaping. America was an unmatched force for good in the world during the Cold War. The Soviets were not. The Cold War ended not because the Soviets decided it should but because they were no match for the forces of freedom and the commitment of free nations to defend liberty and defeat Communism.

It is irresponsible for an American president to go to Moscow and tell a room full of young Russians less than the truth about how the Cold War ended. One wonders whether this was just an attempt to push “reset” — or maybe to curry favor. Perhaps, most concerning of all, Mr. Obama believes what he said. (more…)

by J.C. Phillips

My son was confused. “Why does everyone hate America?” Sadly he wasn’t referring to Iran or even France. He was talking about the other children in his class. Apparently during his 6th grade class discussions a great many of his classmates expressed hatred for their country. Not only did they blame America for everything that was wrong in the world and condemn this nation for its greed and materialism, a great many of them expressed a desire to live someplace else. They believed New Zealand or Canada would allow them the opportunity to grow up without the stain and humiliation of being an American.

Now I was confused. I suspect the sentiments expressed by these children were more reflective of their parents’ beliefs than they were of any deep thought by the children themselves. Yet I am puzzled by such vitriol coming from children (and parents) advantaged with more liberty and opportunity than any other people in the history of the world.

I am, however, not discouraged. I know that in spite of the inclination of his classmates (and their parents)the majority of Americans love their country and love being Americans. No offense to New Zealand, but I suspect there is only a small number of Americans aspiring to live as ex-pats in Auckland. The truth is that even those that are critical of America love her dearly.

In order to demonstrate my theory I have begun asking people – friends and strangers alike – what they love about America. As one might suspect liberty, freedom of speech, freedom to worship and capitalism peppered most answers, but some of the other things people have pointed to may surprise you.

Among the terrific answers I received were the Grambling State University marching band, over-priced coffee, Thelonious Monk, South Beach, Times Square, Levi’s, Sandra Bullock and The Cosby Show. (To that list I would add: Western films, Gene Autry & Randolph Scott, The Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, Count Basie and Parliament Funkadelic.)

A teenager from Ecuador was adamant that she loves America because it is orderly. People obey traffic laws, wait their turn in lines and generally follow the rules. (Poor girl has obviously never spent any time in Manhattan.) When she goes home to visit relatives people tend to drive when, where and as fast as they like, push and shove — disorder is the rule.

My favorite response was from a man I met at a public service conference. He was emphatic: “What do I love about America? Tacos!”

It may be that this gentleman’s answer comes closest to articulating what is truly great about America: The American people, like American cuisine, are an amalgamation of different cultures and traditions that, once on these shores, begin to blend together-borrowing from and lending to each other until they become the essence of that being known as the American. It is this phenomenon described in our national motto: E Pluribus Unum – out of many, one.

But it is not what we have in America that continues to lure people across our borders, it is what we believe.

Americans are the most idealistic people on the planet. By that I do not mean a belief in some squishy utopianism. I mean that Americans are still committed to making real the ideals articulated in the principles of our founding.

It’s a shame that some American children are being taught to despise their country; that is folly for which their parents will have to answer in the future. They are, however, decidedly in the minority. Most Americans love America not because she is perfect but because most Americans esteem liberty, believe in the promise of equality and maintain a regard for private property. I would love to hear what you love about America. Give it some thought over the 4th and let me hear from you.

During the Bush years, we heard from Democrats that Bush had “politicized” the war on terror, and that anyone who criticized Democrats was guilty of “questioning their patriotism.”

It’s time for the Dem Cong to fess up and admit that they politicized the war on terror, lying about Bush, shrieking idiotically about the Constitution being shredded, torture, Gitmo as a concentration camp etc. — all for selfish political gain. In short, party over country.

Jonah Goldberg:

The fog of Pelosi’s obfuscation, self-contradiction and blame-shifting is too thick to parse in this space, but some of the highlights include her claim that, even though she was told of the program, she couldn’t do anything because lawmakers weren’t allowed to object or speak out because of secrecy laws. This is nonsense on its face. And the CIA apparently has leaked to Fox’s Jim Angle that Pelosi knows this isn’t true; she halted a 2004 CIA program she didn’t like simply by complaining about it.

Pelosi is contradicted not only by her own statements and actions but by testimony from former Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), who was in the room when Pelosi was briefed, and by President Obama’s handpicked CIA director, Leon Panetta.

Pelosi’s hypocrisy may be serving as a political logjam, but the issues at stake are far more serious. For all the talk about how the Bush White House “politicized” national security, it’s now clear that Pelosi is a purely political creature, and much of the Democrats’ opposition to the war on terror was nakedly partisan (a point underscored by Obama’s unfolding embrace of Bush-era policies, such as his recent reversal on military tribunals).

Indeed, one of Pelosi’s excuses is that she couldn’t be distracted by speaking out against what she believes to be criminal torture because it was more important to win back a Democratic majority – and become speaker. And, let the record show, Pelosi & Co. had no objection to selective CIA leaks when they undermined President Bush or the war effort. It’s only when the CIA’s testimony corrupts their simplistic moral narrative that the CIA becomes a nest of liars.

The Democrats’ political lies about Bush and the USA, trumpeted by Big Baloney, were believed around the world. Thus the tarnish on our international reputation, which Democrats so theatrically decry, was largely their doing.

Tom Purcell:

…But there is right and wrong; there is good and evil. Some people are good and some are evil. Some organizations are. Some countries are. Some political systems are.

The American political system is mostly good — though imperfect — whereas other political systems, such as the one in Communist Cuba, are mostly bad, though they have some good elements.

Nonetheless, the fellows who founded America had better ideas than those espoused by, say, Karl Marx.

Whereas freedom and representative government have unleashed unimaginable wealth in America, our current downturn aside, Marx’s ideas have failed everywhere they’ve been tried.

In a sane world, that would be beyond debate. But the world is not sane, and some are still trying to impose their wrong-headed ideas on us — and that annoys me.

It annoys me how ignorant many Americans are about how wealth is produced and retained — and how it is lost.

Great civilizations rise and fall. Ours rose fast. It may fall fast, too, in part because of our success.

Our country is so wealthy it is able to underwrite ideas that are contrary to our continued success.

People who espouse such ideas have raised millions — have exploited the technology innovations that our wealth has produced — to promote policies that will undo our wealth and inhibit our innovation.

The people who lead those efforts enjoy nice incomes and benefits packages — they live in nice suburban homes and their kids go to good schools.

At the same time such folks enjoy the luxuries our prosperity has afforded them, their ideas seek to tear down the ideas that enabled our prosperity, and that annoys me.

Americans never stop repenting our national sins (mistreatment of Indians, slavery, Jim Crow, McCarthy, etc.) In this we are unique. Find another nation that holds itself to such a high standard.

In Japan statues still stand honoring the leaders of the Rape of Nanking, and ancient discrimination still abides, as Google Earth reveals.

When Google Earth added historical maps of Japan to its online collection last year, the search giant didn’t expect a backlash. The finely detailed woodblock prints have been around for centuries, they were already posted on another Web site, and a historical map of Tokyo put up in 2006 hadn’t caused any problems.

But Google failed to judge how its offering would be received, as it has often done in Japan. The company is now facing inquiries from the Justice Ministry and angry accusations of prejudice because its maps detailed the locations of former low-caste communities.

The maps date back to the country’s feudal era, when shoguns ruled and a strict caste system was in place. At the bottom of the hierarchy were a class called the “burakumin,” ethnically identical to other Japanese but forced to live in isolation because they did jobs associated with death, such as working with leather, butchering animals and digging graves.

Castes have long since been abolished, and the old buraku villages have largely faded away or been swallowed by Japan’s sprawling metropolises. Today, rights groups say the descendants of burakumin make up about 3 million of the country’s 127 million people.

Ancient history, right? Wrong.

But they still face prejudice, based almost entirely on where they live or their ancestors lived. Moving is little help, because employers or parents of potential spouses can hire agencies to check for buraku ancestry through Japan’s elaborate family records, which can span back over a hundred years.

An employee at a large, well-known Japanese company, who works in personnel and has direct knowledge of its hiring practices, said the company actively screens out burakumin job seekers.

“If we suspect that an applicant is a burakumin, we always do a background check to find out,” she said. She agreed to discuss the practice only on condition that neither she nor her company be identified.

“A democracy as resilient as ours must reject the false choice between our security and our ideals,” President Obama said on April 16, “and that is why these methods of interrogation are already a thing of the past.”

Ideals, indeed.

For a man who was willing to abandon Iraq to near-certain genocide (pre-surge), why should scaring the mastermind of 9/11 into thinking he’s drowning in order to save American lives be so troubling?

Obama has demonstrated a willingness to give the likes of Syria’s Assad the benefit of the doubt in the name of mature diplomacy. Assad’s goons, of course, car-bombed multiple Lebanese leaders who dared speak up against the tyrant.

For decades, US practiced “realpolitik” which meant taking the side of tyrants if said tyrants were friendly to us. President George W. Bush, a president of change, said this:

And in the last 60 years, many in the West have added to this distrust by excusing tyranny in the region, hoping to purchase stability at the price of liberty. But it did not serve the people of the Middle East to betray their hope of freedom. And it has not made Western nations more secure to ignore the cycle of dictatorship and extremism. Instead we have seen the malice grow deeper, and the violence spread, until both have appeared on the streets of our own cities. Some types of hatred will never be appeased; they must be opposed and discredited and defeated by a hopeful alternative – and that alternative is freedom.

Alas, Obama appears to a realpoliticker, not the idealist he purports to be.

Now consider our European allies, who Obama felt deserved an apology for Bush’s presidency. What moral compass guides, say, Germany?

In 2001, Bush declared North Korea an evil regime. This raised eyebrows among the chattering elites, why how intemperate!

But consider the testimony of a Norbert Vollertsen, German doctor doing aid work there.

I know North Korea. I have lived there, and have witnessed its hell and madness.

I was a doctor with a German medical group, “Cap Anamur,” and entered North Korea in July 1999. I remained until my expulsion on Dec. 30, 2000, after I denounced the regime for its abuse of human rights, and its failure to distribute food aid to the people who needed it most. North Korea’s starvation is not the result of natural disasters. The calamity is man-made. Only the regime’s overthrow will end it.

Human rights are nonexistent. Peasants, slaves to the regime, lead lives of utter destitution. It is as if a basic right to exist–to be–is denied. Ordinary people starve and die. They are detained at the caprice of the regime. Forced labor is the basic way in which “order” is maintained.

Vollertsen returned to Germany and tried to get the German media to report his story of cruelty and evil in North Korea. But Vollertsen was accused of being a “war monger” and largely ignored. Only the US media gave the story its due.

Even South Korea, which you’d expect to be receptive, mistreated him, fearing that he’d upset delicate negotiations with the North. That was seven years ago. All negotiations with North Korea have gone nowhere because you cannot negotiate with evil.

Anyone who believed European anti-Americanism was the result of Bush or Iraq, should note how gleefully the German media exaggerate any problems we might have. To wit, Der Spiegel describes a contemporary America of bread lines and soup kitchens.

As is typical for such articles, it begins with an anecdote meant to summarize. It’s quite a doozy.

Business is poor in the New York banking district around Wall Street these days, even for drug dealers. In the good old days, they used to supply America’s moneyed elite with cocaine and crack. But now, with the good times gone, they spend their days in the Bowery Mission, a homeless shelter with a dining hall and a chapel.

Alvin, 47, is one of them. His customers are gone, as is the money he earned during better times. And when another dealer higher up the food chain decided he was entitled to a bigger cut of the profits, things became too dicey for Alvin. “I’m afraid,” he says.

Alvin, who is originally from Louisiana, cleared out his apartment and moved into the oldest homeless shelter in New York City. In the drug business, a dealer who doesn’t pay his bills stands to get the maximum penalty: death. But Alvin feels safe in the Bowery Mission, even though the demand for beds is so high. “Last night I slept on the floor in front of the pulpit,” he says.

Pardon me while I dab away the tears. Later on there’s this:

Poverty as a mass phenomenon is back. About 50 million Americans have no health insurance, and more people are added to their ranks every day. More than 32 million people receive food stamps, and 13 million are unemployed. The homeless population is growing in tandem with a rapid rise in the rate of foreclosures, which were 45 percent higher in March 2009 than they were in the same month of the previous year.

Yes, times are tight. But 50 million people do not lack healthcare, just insurance. As we’ve noted many times, 35 million are young people who could afford it but choose not to.

The food stamps should gladden German hearts — they love welfare — so what’s the beef?

As for unemployment, Germany in the boom year of 2000 was 9.5%.

Now, check out the US unemployment rates here. It’s instructive: only during the Jimmy Carter hangover years of the early ’80s did we ever reach such heights.

High unemployment rates in France and Germany are typical.

One-world government…

The U.S. is obligated by a United Nations convention to prosecute Bush administration lawyers who allegedly drafted policies that approved the use of harsh interrogation tactics against terrorism suspects, the U.N.’s top anti-torture envoy said Friday.

Earlier this week, President Barack Obama left the door open to prosecuting Bush administration officials who devised the legal authority for gruesome terror-suspect interrogations. He had previously absolved CIA officers from prosecution.

Manfred Nowak, who serves as a U.N. special rapporteur in Geneva, said Washington is obligated under the U.N. Convention against Torture to prosecute U.S. Justice Department officials who wrote memos that defined torture in the narrowest way in order to justify and legitimize it, and who assured CIA officials that their use of questionable tactics was legal.

This is the same UN that coutenanced the genocide of 800,000 Rwandans in 1994.

That enabled Saddam Hussein through the corrupt Oil for Food program and then whitewashed.

That deploys aid workers to Africa that rape young girls while on duty.

Victor Davis Hanson on our President of the World:

…I think a number of astute foreign leaders — rivals, enemies, and friends alike — have already drawn the following conclusions.

I.  An Obama visit
A vast entourage will descend on your capital in campaign mode. Most of your functionaries will wish to get a photo-op with the rock-star president. The American president at some point will request a “town-hall meeting,” press conference, or open-air handshake session with the crowd. All this is largely for domestic consumption back home, and is designed to offer an antidote for the concessions or apologies that follow. It is quite successful in generating temporary goodwill toward the new Obama administration.

II. “I’m sorry.”
Obama will apologize for almost anything one can imagine. First comes the generic lamentation about Bush, the need for a reset button, and America’s characteristic “arrogance.” Then there are the “we are at fault” lines on spec, tailor-made mea culpas for the country in question.

If you are Turkish and Islamic, you get a threefer: the morally equivalent reference to the American treatment of the Indians, the pledge that we are not at war with Islam (forget that no president ever said we were), and the reminder that we are not a Christian nation.

In Europe, you receive apologies for Bush, Iraq, and the financial meltdown. Each leader gets a unique version of Obama’s somewhat narcissistic “Them, not me” — either a strain of something like “Bush did it” or “Every American except me is arrogant.” We can console ourselves only that Obama has not contextualized or apologized to the Somali pirates — yet.

III. “You’re Right!”
Differences that your country has with the United States will be resolved in your favor. Foreign leaders already sense that Obama’s success hinges on his “hope and change” ecstasy back home — which cannot for long sustain stories of difficult diplomacy and public manifestations of international trouble and acrimony, of anything really that suggests he is not mesmerizing the world in the manner he did the American electorate.

Europe? Take your pick. No more combat troops to Afghanistan; an international financial “czar”; no additional financial deficit stimuli; no Guantanamo prisoners on European shores; American acknowledgment of culpability for the financial crisis; no mention of Europe’s own reckless lending, protectionism, or pre-September 2008 declining GDP. But goodwill aplenty.

China? It gets praise when it ridicules the dollar, but offers no help on North Korea. Nothing new about trade violations. Hope is expressed that they will still buy our growing debt.

Russia? Let us count the ways. No more missile defense for Eastern Europe; no mention of Russia’s human-rights violations or its policy of serial assassination abroad; de facto abandonment of advocacy for former Soviet republics’ autonomy; Russia’s energy blackmail is Russia’s business; no help with de-nuclearizing Iran.

Turkey? Yes, Europe must let you in the EU. The new Danish NATO supreme commander must apologize for defending free speech — and, as relish, hire some of your generals; continued American assurance that we are not a Christian nation.

The Islamic World is not to be inconvenienced by any mention of radical Islam, or 9/11, or of the endemic pathologies that nourished al-Qaedism in the first place — such as gender apartheid, religious intolerance, autocracy, statism, and tribalism. Instead there is plenty of Bush-bashing, courting of Iran and Syria, caricatures of the “war on terror,” and talk of Iraq as a “mistake.”

IV. “Them”
Then comes the “separation.” Obama makes it clear to any host or foreign leader that both he and his vision of America are strangely exempt from America’s past, from Bush, and from our innately arrogant nature. That is accomplished in a number of adroit ways. There is evocation of his once-taboo middle name “Hussein” to win affection in the Middle East, but also to suggest a more Third Worldish resonance such as “I am one of you too who has grievances against ‘them.’ ”

He is beginning to mention the novelty of his racial heritage a lot, usually in the context that we are now in a new world of Obama, and that his very presence is a rejection of the old and illiberal America.

That the veteran Colin Powell and Russian-speaking Condoleezza Rice ran American foreign policy the last eight years, in a way unthinkable in Europe, is never voiced. Suggesting that China would have an Uighur foreign minister, that Saudi Arabia would have a Christian foreign minister, that France would have an Algerian foreign minister, that Germany would have a Turkish foreign minister, or that Russia would have a Chechen foreign minister is as absurd as suggesting that a Powell or Rice was never a big deal.

So what Obama leaves out about America is telling. He touches on slavery, lack of voting rights for blacks in the South (although he conflates this issue and implies to foreigners that African Americans could not vote in the North as well), our past treatment of Native Americans, and the dropping of the bomb against Japan.

These transgressions are rarely put in any historical context, much less referenced as sins of mankind shared by all of his hosts (the pedigree of murder, exploitation, and rapine of his foreign interlocutors is quite stunning). We don’t hear many references to the American Revolution, or the great tradition of American ingenuity embodied by Bell, Edison, or the Wright brothers.

We hear nothing about our Gettysburg, or our entry into World War I. Iwo Jima and the Bulge are never alluded to. Drawing the line in Korea and forcing the end of the Soviet monstrosity are taboo subjects. That we pledged the life of New York for Berlin in the Cold War is unknown. Liberating Afghanistan and Iraq from the diabolical Taliban and Saddam Hussein is left unsaid. The Civil Rights movement, the Great Society, affirmative action, and present billion-dollar foreign-aid programs apparently never existed. Millions of Africans have been saved by George Bush’s efforts at extending life-saving medicines to AIDS patients — but again, this is never referenced.

Newsbusters:

Film director Ron Howard is “very optimistic” about the future of America, so long as the nation makes an “adjustment,” to fulfill his hope a “more progressive” nation will mean “at a certain point I don’t think we’ll be so consumed with being the pre-eminent super-power and, you know, driven by sort of militarism and this need to export, you know, democracy.” Howard’s reasoning, on Friday night’s Real Time with Bill Maher, came in response to Maher’s formulation that America has “seen better days. We’re sort of in place that has made a lot of people nervous. Some people would say this country has jumped the shark.”

Howard, who is out promoting ‘Angels & Demons,’ a sequel to ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ replied: “I’m a very optimistic person and I don’t want to feel like there isn’t growth, but there needs to be an adjustment anyway.” He proceeded to credit the insights he gained working on his movies with Europeans: “I’ve actually spent a lot more time in Europe and working with crew members and actors and understanding how they live and how they think.” Howard predicted “our lives are going to be better” because “we’re going to be more progressive.”

Sadly, Howard holds a very loud megaphone.

During the campaign, Obama spoke of the Turkish genocide against the Armenians in 1917. Pelosi’s House gang even prepped a resolution condemning the genocide.

To this day, the Turks get very steamed about this, denying their genocide with ballistic anger. Whether they just need more time to come to terms with this or whether they think 1.5 million Armenians simply moved to Glendale, CA is anyone’s guess.

Obama diplomatically kept mum about it during his recent visit, which is fine.

But this could be a learning experience for Obama, a chance to see how the United States is an exceptional nation. (The liberal intelligentsia pooh-poohs the notion. America is just like the rest, only greedier etc.)

However, the US is unique for its self criticism. Every nation commits sins and we have ours. But few continue to beat themselves up the way we do, whether it’s over slavery, Vietnam, mistreatment of the Indians or Jim Crow.

Every American flaw is a subject for books, TV shows and feature films. We do this because we expect more of ourselves. We have ideals.

Atoning for our racial sins begat political correctness, which has been taken to absurd lengths, like getting fired for using the word “niggardly.”

As the Turkish TV clip above demonstrates, the Turks feel no such restraint.

It’s always a pleasure to read George Handlery from Brussels Journal.

1. The season of attempted settlements – as promised by Obama – is approaching. The self-hating friends of the foe, but also well-intentioned fools, will take the mike to sell agreements. The spiel will be to market convenient excuses that make surrender in the substance appear to be a mutual compromise. Through the same magic, an unclear agreement favoring the enemy in need of R&R, will be presented as a peace settlement. (Primarily Iran, Korea and “Palestine” are meant.)

2. A speculation is going around. It has to do with Obama’s efforts to extend his hand if Iran will at least promise to consider eventually to stop its nuclear armament program. Once this is achieved, the problem will be declared as “solved”. Thereafter a “mission accomplished” sign will be raised. It will flatter in the hot winds generated by the New York Times. Nevertheless, the Mullahs might prove to be otherworldly enough not to exploit an easy opportunity to release the pressure applied on them. With that done, they could continue to cheat, albeit slowly, on their way toward their unaltered goal. If the deal serving appearances is refused, the Tehran régime’s unbending nature will be difficult to deny. This circumstance could enable those that are wise enough to realize that they are threatened by God’s nuclearized warriors, to take prophylactic measures.

3. It is a prejudice to assume that democracy (everyone has a say) results in democratic (basic personal and collective rights protected by the political system) decisions as the result of majority vote. If you add democratic elections (all can participate and choose in secret between different candidacies) to Islam, the result is at best a democratically sanctioned dictatorship of a consenting majority. Such pluralities are likely to regard power to be a legitimate instrument to achieve several things. First, to deprive the losers and members of permanent minorities (religious and racial) of their basic rights. Second, to use pressure in order to achieve a homogenous – as against a pluralistic – society.

4. Hamas considers civilian casualties involving individuals who might not have directly and knowingly consented to its actions, to be fallen soldiers of their war. As long as this remains the case, there will be a lot of civilian victims bleeding for the benefit of Hamas’ war on the propaganda front.

5. From NATO, Western Europe’s leaders mainly want the appearance of impressive strength. This shell is to raise their significance that enables them to attain a standing that buys a good relationship with Russia. What is meant here is that there are to be no openly admitted differences of the kind that require taking anything but an easy stand. This condition of bliss is expected to be sweetened by Russia’s openly expressed appreciation of the implied concession. This expectation amounts to an assurance that Moscow harbors no ill feeling or corresponding plans regarding these entities. Central and East Europe has different, even conflicting expectations. Dismissively it could be said that these peoples are overly influenced by their recent exposure to Soviet-Russian domination and before that to comparable Nazi oppression. Therefore, these small and, at least secretly, rather despised states desire that NATO protect them from Russian expansionism. The resulting split of NATO is not in the open. That is because those scheduled to be the losers of the deal are too weak and dependent to raise their voice when confronting their more senior protectors.

6. “American Arrogance” is, given its frequent absence, a favorite object of combat. Participation involves little direct and immediate risk – unlike in the case of Islamists, Russia or China. This makes the exercise into an ego-soothing undertaking. If taken seriously, “American Arrogance” can also result in repressing the US’ instinct for self-defense. This way the protection of vital interests can become subject to a limitation in that it is assumed to require the approval of outsiders. These outsiders include the enemy. Once this comes about, protection becomes illusionary even if the physical means required for it are available. Consider here that, also in the case of other entities, clarity and predictability contribute to the prevention of conflicts. It is therefore required that those who are enemies by their own choice know where the tolerated limits of encroachment lie. Ignoring this means that, for the sake of short-term advantages, long-term conflicts are accepted.

Read it all.

David’s Medienkritik:

Poll results from a 2007-2008 BBC World Service Poll reveal that a higher percentage of Germans surveyed viewed the United States (72%) and Israel (64%) as having a negative influence on the world than North Korea (62%), China (59%) and Russia (56%). The United States finished not too far ahead of Iran (85%) and Pakistan (77%).

Interestingly enough, Germany had the highest favorable ratings overall among the countries polled. Given the troubling results of this survey and the irrationally anti-American and anti-Israeli attitudes prevalent in German media and society, however, some may want to rethink their views of how positive an influence Germany really is.

No doubt here that the highly biased, one-sided and constant railing of much of the German media against the United States and Israel plays a major part in these results. This is why our subject matter is important - as an educated public, well-informed by a media community dedicated to balance and even-handedness (as opposed to the hateful populism), would not likely hold such views.

The cluelessness of the elite media never fails to astonish, as James Bowman of the New Criterion notes.

As an example of media obtuseness, the emphatic adversatives in the New York Times’s headline to Fox Butterfield’s classic story of 1997—“Crime Rates are Falling, but Prisons Keep on Filling: More Inmates, Despite Slight Drop in Crime”—take some beating. The Times itself tried to top it six years later with a variation on the same theme as Mr. Butterfield resumed his sleuthing to probe the mystery of the “researchers” who had made the “surprising” discovery of a 2.6 percent annual increase in the prison population while, at the same time, “serious crime had fallen.”

Since then, those same clueless researchers must have turned their attention to foreign attitudes towards America, as they have produced a new contender for Mr. Butterfield’s crown—also, naturally enough, from one of his colleagues at the newspaper of record. On the first day of December the Times deigned to notice the following: “World Falls for American Media, Even As It Sours on America.” Correspondent Tim Arango went on to write in full paradoxical mode: “In the last eight years, American pop culture, already popular”—hmm, do you suppose that’s why they call it “pop”?—“has boomed around the globe while opinions of America itself have soured.”

Gee, how weird is that? Could there be any ideas around about how to explain the mystery of enthusiastic consumers of American pop culture who have developed negative ideas about America? Well, I have one. Perhaps neither Mr. Arango nor his editors are frequent enough consumers of American pop culture to have noticed that much of it, especially the movies, has been exceeded in its display of relentless anti-Americanism only by the American news media—prominent among which, of course, is The New York Times itself. More likely than mere ignorance of this fact, however, is the pervasiveness of anti-Americanism in the media world generally and at the Times in particular. There it has become so much a part of the paper’s worldview under the Bushite tyranny that there can be few Times writers or editors who simply do not take it for granted when they encounter it in the popular culture—or anywhere else.

The easy adoption of American anti-American assumptions by certain classes of foreigners could have serious side-effects—besides, that is, on our beloved Motherland’s bad poll numbers worldwide. After the surviving Bombay terrorist the week before cited alleged American and Israeli atrocities as the cause of his own, for example, it could hardly be doubted that these carefully cultivated grievances owed something to the media’s overhyping of stories like Abu Ghraib or fabricating them, as in Newsweek’s now notorious Koran-down-the-toilet story of 2005. As Bret Stephens wrote in The Wall Street Journal:

Of course, it’s always possible to fall for a well-told lie. But it’s worth wondering why a media that treats nearly every word uttered by the U.S., British or Israeli governments as inherently suspect has proved so consistently credulous when it comes to every dubious or defamatory claim made against those governments. Or, for that matter, why the media has been so intent on magnifying genuine scandals (like Abu Ghraib) to the point that they become the moral equivalent of 9/11. Some caution is in order: Terrorists, of all people, might actually believe what they read in the papers.The Times’s Mr. Arango, however, was to be found reflexively turning to the all-purpose media villain of the last eight years for an explanation of the supposed mystery: “With the curtain closing on the Bush presidency, pollsters are left to wonder about the long-term effects on America’s standing.” They just report the news, you see. It’s a sort of automatic writing. Something happens. They write it down. Don’t blame the messenger. If all the news about America happens to have been bad since 2003, well, we all know who is to blame for that.

Mark Steyn was…

…at the mall two days before Christmas, and it was strangely quiet. So quiet that, sadly, I was able to hear every word of Kelly Clarkson bellowing over the sound system “My Grown-Up Christmas List.” Don’t get me wrong — I love seasonal songs. “Winter Wonderland” — I dig it. “Rudolph” — man, he’s cool, albeit not as literally as Frosty. But “Grown-Up Christmas List” is one of those overwrought ballads of melismatic bombast made for the American Idol crowd. It’s all about how the singer now eschews asking Santa for materialist goodies — beribboned trinkets and gaudy novelties — in favor of selfless grown-up stuff like world peace.

Which is an odd sentiment to hear at a shopping mall.

But it seems to have done the trick. “Retail Sales Plummet,” read the Christmas headline in the Wall Street Journal. “Sales plunged across most categories on shrinking consumer spending.”

Hey, that’s great news, isn’t it? After all, everyone knows Americans consume too much. What was it that then Senator Obama said on the subject? “We can’t just keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert and keep consuming 25 percent of the world’s resources with just 4 percent of the world’s population, and expect the rest of the world to say you just go ahead, we’ll be fine.”

And boy, we took the great man’s words to heart. SUV sales have nosedived, and 72 is no longer your home’s thermostat setting but its current value expressed as a percentage of what you paid for it. If I understand then Senator Obama’s logic, in a just world Americans would be 4 percent of the population and consume a fair and reasonable 4 percent of the world’s resources. And in these last few months we’ve made an excellent start toward that blessed utopia: Americans are driving smaller cars, buying smaller homes, giving smaller Christmas presents.

And yet, strangely, President-Elect Obama doesn’t seem terribly happy about the Obamafication of the American economy. He’s proposing some 5.7 bazillion dollar “stimulus” package or whatever it is now to “stimulate” it back into its bad old ways.

And how does the rest of the world, of whose tender sensibilities then Senator Obama was so mindful, feel about the collapse of American consumer excess? They’re aghast, they’re terrified, they’re on a one-way express elevator down to Sub-Basement Level 37 of the abyss with no hope of putting on the brakes unless the global economy can restore aggregate demand. What does all that mumbo-jumbo about “aggregate demand” mean?

Well, that’s a fancy term for you — yes, you, Joe Lardbutt, the bloated disgusting embodiment of American excess, driving around in your Chevy Behemoth, getting two blocks to the gallon as you shear the roof off the drive-thru lane to pick up your $7.93 decaf gingersnap-mocha-pepperoni-zebra mussel frappuccino, which makes for a wonderful cool refreshing thirst-quencher after you’ve been working up a sweat watching the plasma TV in your rec room all morning with the thermostat set to 87. The message from the European political class couldn’t be more straightforward: If you crass, vulgar Americans don’t ramp up the demand, we’re kaput. Unless you get back to previous levels of planet-devastating consumption, the planet is screwed.

Read on.

One of the supposed great shames of the Bush administration — and one of the key reasons cited by those who fret about America’s reputation in the world — is the use of torture.

The Europeans in particular are held out as an example of our moral superiors. Consider this:

Scene 1: Frankfurt, Germany, 1 October 2002, early morning

In the frankfurt police headquarters, the atmosphere is tense. Deputy Police Chief Wolfgang Daschner is losing patience. On the previous day, his officers arrested one Magnus Gäfgen, a 27-year-old law student. Gäfgen is suspected of having kidnapped 11-year-old Jakob von Metzler, son of the banker Friedrich von Metzler. Two days earlier, Gäfgen had personally collected a 1-million-euro ransom payment. But there is no sign of the boy and Gäfgen has refused to give police interrogators accurate information about his whereabouts. A police psychologist, observing the questioning, describes Gäfgen’s responses as a “pack of lies” [Lügengebäude]. Deputy Police Chief Daschner fears that Jakob’s life may be in danger. In a memorandum, he writes: “We need to ascertain without delay where the boy is being held. While respecting the principle of proportionality, the police have an obligation to take all measures in their power to save the child’s life.”

Daschner decides to act. He dispatches police inspector Ortwin Ennigkeit to the office in which Gäfgen is being held for interrogation. Ennigkeit’s assignment: to make Gäfgen talk — if necessary by threat of torture. Indeed, Daschner has resolved not only to threaten Gäfgen with pain, but to carry out the threat if his prisoner is not otherwise forthcoming. A doctor has been found to supervise the proceedings.

In the interrogation room, Ennigkeit tells Gäfgen that a “special officer” is on his way.  If Gäfgen does not tell Ennigkeit where the boy is, the “special officer” will “make him feel pain that he will not forget.” On Gäfgen’s own account, the formula is still more menacing: the officer “will make you feel pain like you have never felt before.” “Nobody can help you here,” Ennigkeit tells him, according to Gäfgen’s testimony. “We can do whatever we want with you.” On Gäfgen’s account, moreover, Ennigkeit already begins to rough him up: shaking him so violently that his head bangs against the wall and hitting him in the chest hard enough to leave a bruise over his collarbone. Gäfgen’s testimony is consistent with the tenor of Daschner’s instructions, which, on Daschner’s own admission, called for the “use of direct force” [ Anwendung unmittelbaren Zwangs].

In any case, whether the mere threat of pain has been sufficient or the latter has had to be supplemented by the “use of direct force,” within minutes of Ennigkeit’s entering the interrogation room Gäfgen talks. He tells Ennigkeit where Jakob is to be found. Police rush to the location and find the boy dead, his corpse wrapped in plastic and submerged under a wooden jetty in a pond.¹

Scene 2:Guantánamo Bay Prison Camp, Cuba, ten days later

The atmosphere in Joint Task Force 170 is tense. The task force has been set up to obtain intelligence from detainees, but the effort is lagging and army interrogators are losing patience. They have discovered that one of the detainees appears to have been directly involved in the 9/11 plot. Mohammed al-Qahtani attempted to enter the United States in early August 2001, but was turned back by immigration officers in Orlando, Florida. Telephone intercepts of conversations of 9/11 facilitator Mustafa al-Hawsawi indicate that al-Qahtani was slated to serve as the missing “twentieth hijacker” on September 11. Plot leader Mohammed Atta is known to have been at Orlando International Airport on the day of al-Qahtani’s arrival, presumably to meet him. Al-Qahtani was sent back to his native Saudi Arabia and then traveled to Afghanistan. In mid-December, two months after the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, he was taken prisoner on the Pakistani border along with 29 other suspected al Qaeda members apparently fleeing the Battle of Tora Bora.

In early October 2002, the questioning of al-Qahtani has been going nowhere. Interrogators and staff psychologists are convinced that he is lying: repeating prefabricated cover stories, no matter how implausible, as required by al Qaeda security protocols. He insists, for example, that he traveled to the United States to import used cars and that he was in Afghanistan merely to purchase falcons.

The first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has only just passed. A spike in intelligence has American officials on high alert. On October 8, Bin Laden deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri releases an audio statement threatening new attacks against America and American allies. The commanders of jtf 170 decide they need to act. On October 11, Major General Michael E. Dunlavey sends a memo to U.S. Army Southern Command requesting authorization to use more aggressive interrogation techniques with the detainees. The request gains still greater urgency on the very next day as al Qaeda makes good on its threats, killing over 200 people in multiple bombings on the Indonesian resort island of Bali. Dunlavey’s request will be endorsed by southcom and sent up the line to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

The request and the Department of Defense’s response to it have pride of place in the media-driven mythology of what have come to be known as the “torture memos.” The techniques proposed by jtf 170 include several milder “Category I” and “Category II” techniques, such as yelling at a detainee (Category I), requiring a detainee to stand for a maximum of four hours (Category II), and “forced grooming” (i.e. shaving a detainee’s beard against his will — likewise Category II). All these techniques will be approved. Included among the harshest “Category III” techniques, however, jtf 170 requests authorization to threaten detainees with “painful consequences” if they fail to cooperate. As it so happens, this is precisely the method used by German police inspector Ortwin Ennigkeit a mere ten days earlier to obtain the cooperation of Magnus Gäfgen. Following the advice of Department of Defense general counsel William J. Haynes, the request for authorization of this method is . . . refused.²

Later the German murderer brought a case against the German government in the European Court of Human Rights for mistreatment and lost.

Powerline writes about the Sally Field’s of American foreign policy

Other than the racial angle, the thing that has Barack Obama’s supporters most excited is the prospect that, thanks to ascension, America will once more be liked and respected around the world. Those aroused by this prospect can be divided into two categories. The first are the folks who believe, with the naivety only a certain type of liberal can possess, that a gesture (the election of Obama) can transform, lastingly and without cost, the way the world views us. These people are fools.

The second category are those who believe that Obama will take substantive positions that please foreigners and that, in particular, he will back measures that limit U.S. sovereignty. These people are on to something.

In the November 17 issue of the National Review (not available online to my knowledge), John Fonte of the Hudson Institute identifies four “transnational power grabs” that Obama is likely to push for They are: the Law of the Sea Treaty, the Rights of the Child Treaty, the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the International Criminal Court. Agreement by the U.S. to these arrangements would make us more popular with foreigners, but only at a cost to our national security, our right of self-governance, and our rights under the Constitution.

As Fonte explains, the Law of the Sea Treaty could result in maritime disputes involving U.S. defense forces being arbitrated by an international panel composed of 21 judges, some of whom would be chosen by the likes of China, Russia, and Cuba. The Rights of the Child Treaty would require uniform penal codes for minors in all 50 states. It would abolish the death penalty and life imprisonment for everyone under the age of 18. And it would limit parental rights, for example by granting children the legal right to correspond with anyone, anywhere, without interference from their parents.

According to Fonte, CEDAW would likely result in the imposition of gender-based preferences in multiple spheres, including elective offices. He says the U.N. committee that monitors compliance with CEDAW has called on the Republic of Georgia to return to its Communist-era policy of gender quotas in public offices. Britain has be told to adopt the “comparable worth” standard of “equal pay” under which bureaucrats set pay rates. Fonte also warns that CEDAW would also provide a method for “overturning a vast array of federal and state laws that [feminists] do not have the votes to defeat through democratic means.”

Eric Posner: 

The U.S. was supposed to become a normal country again. The Bush administration’s unsuccessful agenda to extend American supremacy and the repudiation of Bush in this election were supposed to prove that the United States must take its place as just one country among many. Yet the election of Barack Obama has had the reverse effect. Suddenly, the United States has prestige that matches its power and wealth, and this prestige no other country can touch. People around the world beg the United States to “exercise leadership” and solve the world’s problems (but with “humility,” please!). See here and here, among a thousand similar articles.

There are two versions of American exceptionalism. American-American exceptionalism is “we’re richer because we’re better.” European-American exceptionalism is “you’re better because you’re richer.” Both sides agree on exceptionalism, and just see different causes and implications. The Europeans expect us, on account of our wealth, to live up to (their) ideals, while we think that our wealth ought to prove to them that our ideals are better than theirs. No one of any importance seems to think that the United States is a normal country. Oh, what confusion lies ahead!