…I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.

The prospect of emotionally wrenching pictures of suffering was too much for the President. Obama is not worried about logical arguments, but the emotionalist thinkers who look at pictures out of context and ask, “Why didn’t we do something?”

Take this passage:

Now we saw regime forces on the outskirts of the city. We knew that if we wanted — if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.

It was not in our national interest to let that happen. I refused to let that happen. And so nine days ago, after consulting the bipartisan leadership of Congress, I authorized military action to stop the killing and enforce U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973.

He asserts that a massacre in Libya is not in our national interest, but gives no reasons. Why does he think Americans will accept a non sequitur? He expects his audience to think emotionally rather than rationally. A fuzzy thinker listening out of focus would feel bad about the massacre, and therefore agree that it’s not in the national interest to let it happen.

Here is another incoherent passage:

Moreover, America has an important strategic interest in preventing Gadhafi from overrunning those who oppose him. A massacre would have driven thousands of additional refugees across Libya’s borders, putting enormous strains on the peaceful — yet fragile — transitions in Egypt and Tunisia. The democratic impulses that are dawning across the region would be eclipsed by the darkest form of dictatorship, as repressive leaders concluded that violence is the best strategy to cling to power. The writ of the United Nations Security Council would have been shown to be little more than empty words, crippling that institution’s future credibility to uphold global peace and security. So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.

Now, just as there are those who have argued against intervention in Libya, there are others who have suggested that we broaden our military mission beyond the task of protecting the Libyan people, and do whatever it takes to bring down Gadhafi and usher in a new government.

Of course, there is no question that Libya — and the world — would be better off with Gadhafi out of power. I, along with many other world leaders, have embraced that goal, and will actively pursue it through non-military means. But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.

So we don’t want repressive leaders to conclude that violence is the best strategy to cling to power, but we’ll let Gadhafi cling to power.

Others, such as Thomas Sowell and Melanie Phillips have written about Obama’s incoherence.

The more I read the more I’m struck by how half-assed this kinetic military action is. We could end up with jihadist regimes in Egypt and Libya, with billions of dollars in oil money — not to mention foreign aid dollars from American taxpayers — at their command to fund terrorism against us. What then?

Further half-assedness from the Obama administration:

Challenged on whether Obama overstepped his constitutional authority in attacking Libya without congressional approval, Clinton told lawmakers that White House lawyers were OK with it and that Obama has no plans to seek an endorsement from Congress, attendees told POLITICO.

Allahpundit muses on this,

Isn’t he required under the War Powers Act to seek congressional authorization after 60 days of hostilities? Or is this guy so intent on waging war whether Congress likes it or not that he’d go to court to try to have the WPA ruled unconstitutional? Normally I’d dismiss that possibility as insane given that he did, after all, run in ’08 on his anti-war cred and that not even a Republican president would dare pull a move like that amid bipartisan clamoring for accountability, but I don’t know that anything can be safely ruled out at this point.

The half-assedness is not just in America. Over in France,

Sarkozy won a fair measure of praise for being the first leader to recognize the Libyan opposition as the legitimate leadership of the country – but even that may come back to haunt him if things go wrong. Sarkozy’s decision was taken almost on the spur of the moment, and under the spectacular brow-beating of mediagenic philosopher Bernard-Henri LÉvy, who decided to make crusading to protect the Libyan opposition a re-make of his 1990 campaign as the savior of the Bosnians during the Balkan war. Sarkozy reportedly did so without even consulting his newly-named Foreign Affairs Minister Alain Juppe (who was said to have been both hostile to the move and aghast that a media star had taken his role as France’s top diplomat). “There may heavy consequences,” says Bitar, “when a president makes decisions based on input by celebrities.”

(Emphasis added.)

This whole thing was started by a French philosopher? If I believed in God, that would be enough bring me to my knees in prayer.

And that’s why building this international coalition has been so important because it means that the United States is not bearing all the cost. It means that we have confidence that we are not going in alone, and it is our military that is being volunteered by others to carry out missions that are important not only to us, but are important internationally. And we will accomplish that in a relatively short period of time.

(Emphasis Preston’s)

The Obama Doctrine restated in plain spoken clarity (which politicians never come near) is: America will not assert its national self-interest, but if other countries want to volunteer us to sacrifice for the rest of the world, we will be glad to serve.

(HT: Contentions)

In fact Obama sees that his prize only means that he stands for the hope of peace.

This view, of the Far Left Nobel Committee, is as appalling as it is unsurprising.  Does the Nobel Committee see Obama’s wishes as sufficient reason for his award?  Sure, Obama wants peace, but even he knows he has not succeeded in achieving what peace requires.  His wish for that achievement means nothing.

As the expression goes, “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride“.  Does the Nobel Committee hope to give Obama a horse, simply by presuming that his wishing is a value?  Put another way, should the fervently spoken hopes for World Peace expressed by a top Beauty Pageant contestant, gain her a Nobel Peace Prize?

All that is embarrassing enough, but this ‘award’ has already been besmirched by having been awarded to the impotent Jimmy Carter, the duplicitous Yasser Arafat, and irrational, power-seeking Al Gore!  Clearly the Nobel Peace Prize goes to the most impotent and least successful.

The Nobel Peace prize is not so much a praise of Obama, as a condemnation.  That he sees it as such is fascinating.  A *prestigious award* is given to a significant political figure, yet so serves to wreck his career that his acceptance speech must also perform damage control.

The answer is: nothing.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “It is an award that speaks to the promise of President Obama’s message of hope.” So, the President got the award for the promise of his message, but no actual accomplishment.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy said that the award confirmed, “America’s return to the hearts of the people of the world.” How is that?

The answer comes from a member of the Nobel committee that awarded the prize, who said, “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

A plurality, perhaps even a majority of the world’s population, despises the values that America has stood for, the fundamental value of an individual’s right to his own life, and all that it implies: property rights, the right to the pursuit of happiness… capitalism. The Nobel Committee is acknowledging their fervent wish that Obama will stand for those angry masses, whose values are antithetical to America. And by doing that, America will be “loved” instead of hated.

The Nobel Committee has given this prize to Obama as a moral downpayment, an advance recognition, if you will, of future “accomplishments” they expect him to make.

Let’s hope that Obama does not live up to their wishful thinking.

*****

I almost did not write this commentary because the Nobel Peace Prize, in fact, merits no respect and its award is therefore hardly noteworthy. It is more of a booby prize than an honest recognition of something good. Among its recent past recipients are Yasser Arafat and Jimmy Carter, a terrorist and the American president who passively acquiesced to terrorism. For the current award, the Nobel Committee apparently passed over a Chinese dissident, among many other honorable and dishonorable nominees. This “prize” has nothing to do with peace, and everything to do with advancing the cause of statism and destroying the values that America stood for. A man of proper integrity would have rejected it.

For a politician, there is no more dangerous combination of traits than hubris and ineptitude.

He writes about Israel’s reaction to Obama’s speech in Cairo on June 4, 2009:

Taken as a whole, the speech was simply a craven embarrassment; but the references it made to Israel could not have been more alienating and insulting had they been calculated for the purpose. How Obama’s speechwriters and advisors became convinced that equating the Holocaust with the Palestinian nakba (the word means “catastrophe,” and Arabs use it to describe the establishment of Israel and its War of Independence in 1948), comparing Israeli treatment of the Palestinians to segregation in the United States, and pointing to the Jewish people’s “tragic history” as the sole justification for Israel’s existence would assuage Israeli concerns about the new administration must remain a question for history to answer. There is no doubt, however, that this single speech (which everyone in Israel watched) did more to demolish Obama’s credibility in Israeli eyes than any of his demands on Netanyahu ever could have.

Israelis come in many political colors, but very few of them believe that if the Jews had not suffered a Holocaust, they would not deserve a state. Zionism predates the Holocaust, and it holds that the Jewish people have an inalienable right to self-determination in their homeland, regardless of their historical sufferings. In claiming otherwise, Obama revealed not only a glaring ignorance of Israeli history and sensibilities, but also the depressing tendency of many American liberals to reduce everything to do with Judaism, Israel, and the Jewish people to the Holocaust…

Kerstein makes a good observation:

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the speech, however, was that Obama clearly believed he was saying things about Israel that were positive. The impression he gave was of a man who was not merely spitting in Israeli faces, but chose to do so because he thought they would like it. In a certain sense, this was even worse than a speech that was forthrightly hostile, because it implied that Obama was perfectly capable of damaging Israel out of the belief that he was actually doing it “for your own good” – a signal that the new president of the United States simply had no idea what he was doing.

That’s Obama all over, not just on Israel. He insults doctors by saying they would actually harm patients just for a few extra bucks — and therefore, Obama must seize control of medicine to help doctors for their own good. His ideas of how doctors work revealed that, as with Israel, with health care he has no idea what he is doing. He insults insurance companies, car makers, bankers, etc. His presidency is one big insult to any individual who thinks he can live without being told what to do by the state.

Obama combines condescending insults with smarmy self-righteousness. A fool is one thing, but a smug fool is unbearable.

Kerstein’s essay is worth reading in full.

Two stunning initiatives from the Russian government over the past few weeks illustrate a disturbing fusion of religion and politics as Vladimir Putin’s regime makes a final effort to consolidate dictatorship.

First, the government announced that it would consult the Russian Orthodox Church before introducing any legislative proposals in parliament, in essence giving the church a veto on legislation and allowing the church to promote an openly religious agenda in parliament.

Then, the regime declared it would begin teaching Orthodox religion in schools, ignoring the constitutional requirement of separation of church and state. Study of other Christian faiths, like Protestantism and Catholicism, has already been ruled out, and it’s clear that the lip-service being paid to Islam is only window dressing.

The move gives Putin and the state a veneer of ideology and morality; and it gives the church power. Atilla, meet your witch doctor.

If I were a Jew, Muslim, non-Orthodox Christian or unbeliever in Russia, I’d be looking for a way out. Things could get ugly — and get so quick.

In 2002, George W. Bush went to New Jersey, stood before an audience of his fellow Americans and declared that “we will not allow the world’s worst leaders to threaten us with the world’s worst weapons. 

In 2009, Obama went to Cairo, stood before an audience of foreigners and assured those very same leaders that “[n]o single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons.”

The Obama Doctrine, if you want to call it that, is more revolutionary than most people think. Up until Obama, it had been US policy that we have a right to stop our enemies from getting nuclear weapons. Most people would not consider this policy at all controversial.

Not Obama. Although he does not specify the US, “no single nation” would apply to all nations, America included. For America to tell its enemies not to hold nuclear weapons is too much national self-assertion for Obama. In the name of altruism, America must sacrifice even its national security to the rest of the world.

Many commentators call Obama naive. He’s not naive, he’s an ideological leftist. Everything Obama does is an expression of leftist ideas. Even his first reaction to the Gates incident was to blame the police. The guy is a walking, talking personification of every left-wing cliche you’ve heard over the last 40 years. Obama’s anti-Americanism does not come from naivete, but from the ideas he has believed and never questioned since his youth. It takes a better mind than Obama’s to question the dominant bromides of the culture.

The long term dangers of Obama’s anti-Americanism are great. 10 or 15 years from now nuclear arms will have proliferated to a lot of dictatorships around the world. Nothing good can come from this.

In a world of collapsing freedom, economic instability and war, a nuclear explosion in a free country — say a blast on Wall Street or Paris or London — would be catastrophic. In addition to the economic damage and the subsequent loss of freedom, the psychological and moral effects would be profound. It could be an event on a world historical level, like the Black Death of the 14th century or the sacking of Rome in 410 a.d. Such an event would accelerate our descent into dictatorship driven by nihilist modern philosophy.

In sacrificing America’s interests to the rest of the world, Obama might be sacrificing the future of the west and of the world. And he knows what he is doing. To Obama, with his radical Alinskyist ideas, a world wide crisis would be a superb opportunity to expand state power and destroy capitalism. Why would he not want that?

The enemy is still at war with us. Why is something like the Islamic Saudi Academy, which teaches militant Islamism and plays a part in Mauro’s story, still in existence?

Our failure to destroy the enemy, including states that sponsor terrorism — our failure to wage an all-out, serious war — will come back to bite us someday. It’s just a matter of time.

Until then, the mainstream media can blather on in false security about Michael Jackson and Jon and Kate. A story such as Mauro’s gets a mention in the back pages, if even that.

But there is a fly in the ointment.  It used to be that such a talent emigration would head directly for America, the land of freedom and opportunity.  That land exists no more.  Where can freedom loving people go now?  They are left to shuffle about from one semi-free state to another, looking desperately for the last, fading beacon lights of freedom in a darkening world.

 Objectivism can relight the world.  The question is when.

As Anastasia O’Grady explains, President Zelaya, a leftist ally of Hugo Chavez, decided he wanted to stay in power longer than the legal end of his term, so he called a referendum.

That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.

Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court’s order.

The Honduras Supreme Court ordered the military to arrest Zelaya, who was being helped by the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez in an attempt to subvert the constitution so that he could keep power. Zelaya was flown to Costa Rica.

Castro, Chavez and Ortega have denounced Zelaya’s removal as a coup. And so have Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Zelaya broke the fundamental law of the land. Honduras’s judges acted to protect the constitution from the schemes of a power-hungry statist. This is not a coup. The Supreme Court acted in the cause of freedom against a potential dictator.

In both Iran and Honduras Barack Obama has failed to stand up for the cause of freedom. On the Iranian rebellion, his statements evolved, getting a little tougher each time, only because reports and videos came out of Iran on the internet that made it too embarrassing to Obama to continue all-out appeasement of the mullahs. On Honduras Obama stands with communist dictators against the rule of law.

Considering his massive expansion of the state at home, we should not be surprised that Obama cares nothing for liberty abroad.

UPDATE: The brilliant Caroline Glick explains Obama’s foreign policy.

So if Obama’s foreign policy has already failed or is in the process of failing throughout the world, why is he refusing to reassess it? Why, with blood running through the streets of Iran, is he still interested in appeasing the mullahs? Why, with Venezuela threatening to invade Honduras for Zelaya, is he siding with Zelaya against Honduran democrats? Why, with the Palestinians refusing to accept the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, is he seeking to expel some 500,000 Jews from their homes in the interest of appeasing the Palestinians? Why, with North Korea threatening to attack the US with ballistic missiles, is he refusing to order the USS John McCain to interdict the suspected North Korean missile ship it has been trailing for the past two weeks? Why, when the Sudanese government continues to sponsor the murder of Darfuris, is the administration claiming that the genocide in Darfur has ended?

The only reasonable answer to all of these questions is that far from being nonideological, Obama’s foreign policy is the most ideologically driven since Carter’s tenure in office. If when Obama came into office there was a question about whether he was a foreign policy pragmatist or an ideologue, his behavior in his first six months in office has dispelled all doubt. Obama is moved by a radical, anti-American ideology that motivates him to dismiss the importance of democracy and side with anti-American dictators against US allies.

UPDATE II: Investor’s Business Daily, which calls the US response to the removal of Zelaya a “disgrace,” has more:

Zelaya’s operatives did their dirt all the way through. First they got signatures to launch the “citizen’s power” survey through threats — warning those who didn’t sign that they’d be denied medical care and worse. Zelaya then had the ballots flown to Tegucigalpa on Venezuelan planes. After his move was declared illegal by the Supreme Court, he tried to do it anyway.

Obama cannot be moved to condemn the regime. Politico reports,

“It’s not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling … in Iranian elections,” Obama said. “What I will repeat, and what I said yesterday, is when I see violence directed at peaceful protesters, when I see peaceful dissent being suppressed … it is of concern to me and it is of concern to the American people. That is not how governments should interact with their people, and it is my hope the Iranian people will make the right steps in order for them to be able to express their voices.”

As Jennifer Rubin notes, even President Sarkozy of France issued a stronger response.

Obama’s response is especially ludicrous since the mullahs already “meddled” in the Iranian election. What happened was just the pretense of an election — a show for world opinion — and Obama is aiding that pretense by repeating it. Obama is more worried about the perception of American meddling than he is about freedom for the Iranian people.

Obama has spent his life in the cloudcuckooland  of the left, running with such anti-American freaks as William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. In cloudcuckooland, only America — and maybe South Africa and Israel — are capable of evil. All other nations are just misunderstood, especially those that have a grievance against capitalist-imperialist America.

So, while the rest of us are shocked and horrified by the repression in Iran, Obama’s ideology keeps him from feeling much emotion or issuing a strong condemnation. He is “concerned.” Any stronger response would be American bullying.

Obama is completely committed to his altruist premises. America, the most powerful nation in the world, must sacrifice to the rest of the world. America must not push around smaller nations.

Obama’s ideology makes him seem cold to the murder of actual Iranians. Oh, sure, he’s concerned — but not outraged. He serves higher values than individual people: collectivism and statism. (We see the same disregard for individual suffering in countries that have socialized medicine.)

UPDATE: Revision.

What Can the US Do to Ease Tensions With North Korea?

That was the headline I saw on Fox News today, while they were discussing the subject with some guest.  Of course, the question translates directly into this, more honest one: What can the US do to appease North Korea now, since all previous appeasements have failed?  It reminded me of a scene I had recently watched in a Korean historical drama, called Jumong.    The episode examined, and dramatized, the idea of appeasement.

The scene involves the deposed King of Puyo (a Korean kingdom), named Kumwa, lecturing his son, Taeso, who had forcibly taken over from him. Taeso has refrained from killing the King, evidently, because the people would revolt if he committed regicide. So he is ruling under the fiction that the King is incapacitated from a wound received in a recent war against the Han (China), in which Kumwa was attempting to recover lands taken from Korea by the Han in an earlier conflict.

Kumwa: I heard the Han demanded a hostage. Is that true?

Taeso: Yes.

Kumwa: You might be my representative, but shouldn’t you have told me earlier?

Taeso: I was going to, after giving it enough thought.

Kumwa: So, are you done thinking?

Taeso: Yes.

Kumwa: What will you do?

Taeso: I’m going to send a hostage.

Kumwa: Don’t you have any pride?

Taeso: Why wouldn’t I have any?

Kumwa: Yet you’re going to send a hostage and accept that we’re a tributary state?

Taeso: We can’t afford to talk about pride. The Han is just waiting for a chance to make us pay for the war. I had to marry a woman I don’t love just to put an end to it. If one hostage will save thousands of lives, why not? Your Majesty, pride won’t stop a war. I’ll reap the benefits of not starting one.

Kumwa: Give up one thing to avoid a war and the Han will demand something else. You’ll use Puyo’s peace as an excuse to back out again and again until you’re at a dead end. What will you give them then? Will you let them conquer us if they want to? Will you die for them if they ask you to? Can’t you see the reality hidden behind the so-called benefits?

 

 

 

This is indeed the fruits of appeasement. Bush did it too often, and for Obama, it is the only option he considers. How long before we reach the dead end?

Retired soldier Lian Jiansheng, 66, broke through a police cordon and reached out to shake the hand of would-be jumper Chen Fuchao before shoving him off the bridge.

“I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interests,” Lai was quoted as saying by the China Daily newspaper.

This is just one small example where the morality of altruism – living for the sake of others, or the “collective” – gives the excuse to any thug to kill, pummel or push another’s life.  When a perpetrator loudly proclaims that the victim was “selfish,” he is projecting his own motivations of cynical egoism, or range-of-the-moment gratification, onto the victim.  This thug was eager to prove that his actions were moral and his victim’s weren’t.

Under altruism, brother-love does not apply to the individual – only to the greater good.  Individuals are expendable, and thugs are justifiable.

In contrast, a couple weeks ago on my side of town in Michigan, a would-be jumper on a pedestrian bridge closed a freeway for over eight hours.  It was reported that he had lost his job.  Dozens of people gathered around to offer encouragement and finally talked him down without incident.  Benevolence and compassion are based in the minds of people who understand that they, themselves, are individuals and that individuals are more important than the collective “good.”  Rational self-interest is the only moral code that keeps the thugs at bay, is conducive to compassion and allows for human beings to flourish.

But now that the Tigers have been defeated, governments and security forces around the world may try to learn from the success of the Sri Lanka government. President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his army have turned the conventional wisdom on fighting insurgencies on its head, adopting strategies and tactics long discredited, both in the battlefield and in the military classroom. Since they appear to have worked against the Tigers, other countries wracked by insurgencies — from Pakistan to Sudan to Algeria — may be tempted to follow suit. But Rajapaksa’s triumph has come at a high cost in civilian lives and a sharp decline in democratic values — and he is no closer to resolving the ethnic resentments that underpinned the insurgency for decades. Perhaps Sri Lanka’s success should come with a warning label for political leaders and military commanders elsewhere: Do not try this at home.

Obviously, the US war with the Islamists is not the same as the insurgencies mentioned here.  But it is in fact comparable, simply on a global scale.  The Islamist insurgents want the whole world to bow to Islam, and since we are the top dog on the planet, as far as non-Muslim nations go, we are their most tempting target.  If we fall, the rest of the dominoes will quickly follow.  And the “discredited” tactics, as you will see, are certainly meant to apply to the US military as well. 

What horrible tactics were used by Sri Lanka?

Brute Force Works
Modern military wisdom says sheer force doesn’t quell insurgencies, and that in the long run political and economic power-sharing along with social reconciliation are the only ways to end the fighting. But the Sri Lankan army eventually broke down the Tigers in an unrelenting military campaign, the final phase of which lasted more than two years. That sort of sustained offensive hasn’t been tried anywhere, in decades.

I’ve never before read such a perfect statement of how the West will be lost as that one.  The way to fight a terrorist insurgency, according to Time, is not to kill the insurgents who are killing you, but a strategy of compromise and appeasement, i.e., total capitulation.  This will assuage their grievances, and voila! the insurgency will be over.  It’s so simple when you’re willing to give up without a fight, isn’t it?  This is the strategy that has led to a Hamas government in the Palestinian territory, and soon, no doubt, a Hezbollah government in Lebanon. 

Negotiations Don’t
After numerous attempts at mediation — most notably by Norway — led to nothing, Rajapaksa basically abandoned the pursuit of a negotiated solution. Once the military had the upper hand, there was little effort to treaty with the Tigers.

Negotiations assume their is something worth negotiating.  There was no mention in the article of what the Tamil Tigers wanted.  If they are anything like al Qaeda, obviously, there is nothing to negotiate with them.  We either surrender, or kill them. 

Collateral Damage Is Acceptable
In the final months of fighting, the Sri Lankan military offensive hardly differentiated between civilian and Tiger targets. Refugees fleeing the fighting said thousands of innocents were being killed in the army’s bombardments. Modern militaries typically halt hostilities when large numbers of civilians are killed. The Sri Lankan army barely paused. Reva Bhalla, director of analysis at Stratfor, a global intelligence firm, says Rajapaksa’s “disregard for civilian casualties” was a key to the success of the military operation.

In other words, we must allow our enemies to attack, and then hide behind civilian shields.  WWII would have went very well under those rules, wouldn’t it?   In fact, any civilian casualties are the responsiblity of the insurgents who initiated the warfare.  End of story.

The last point Time makes is that Sri Lanka restricted press freedom during the conflict, and kept reporters away from the fighting.  Some restrictins on the press are proper during a war.  You cannot allow reporters to give away the time and location of the D-Day invasion, for example. 

In any case, I’m not defending the Sri Lankan government as such.  They may be as bad as the Tamil Tigers, for all I know.  But the tactics they used to defeat the Tigers were exactly the right tactics, and their success should be an encouragement to anyone in the US government who wants to win this war.  Old fashioned, rational tactics still work just as well as they ever did.  We could easily defeat al Qaeda, not to mention the Somalian pirates, with a fraction of our military might, in a fraction of the time we have already spent appeasing and limiting ourselves to rules of engagement that only strengthen our enemies.  

The Sri Lankan defeat of the Tamil Tigers is, however, a lesson lost on the powers that be in this country, as the Time article so glaringly makes clear.

We’ve been down this path before. The railroads that served Standard Oil charged him a lower rate because Rockefeller could guarantee large, steady shipments of oil, which the railroads could ship more cheaply. For providing the railroads with product in a way that reduced their costs, and being charged less for providing that, Rockefeller was prosecuted.

In the same manner, a retail store that can guarantee large, steady sales of computers containing Intel chips is more valuable to Intel than a store that buys some of its chips and some of its competitor’s chips. Intel can afford to provide a discount.

Those never-to-be-denied European customers benefit from this by getting cheaper Intel chips, yet they were supposedly harmed according to the European antitrust commissioner.

But also evaded by the European antitrust commissioner is that a market for computer chips would not exist at all if Intel did not invent, develop, and constantly innovate the chips that become the brains of computers. Because of Intel’s work, each year the chips are faster and smarter. Each computer sold with those chips can do more — faster processing of material from the Internet, simultaneous handling of video and audio, and numerous other tasks — because of the relentless intellectual effort of Intel’s scientists and engineers.

That is part of what the never-to-be-denied European consumers and all others who buy Intel chips are getting.

To steal $1.44 billion from Intel is to demand that these scientists and engineers work for free. It is to steal the fruit of their effort, which we all benefit from by voluntarily buying their products that they create. As their property created by their minds, they have the right to set the terms under which we gladly buy these products, which we buy because of the great benefits they offer us.

Into all this steps the punishing European antitrust commissioner. She violates Intel’s property rights and the rights of Intel’s customers to do business with Intel on mutually agreed-upon terms. And by so doing, she ensures that Intel has $1.44 billion less in which to reward the efforts of those scientists and engineers who create the marvelous Intel chips.

If our computers are a little slower than they could be and our freedoms more diminished, thank Neelie Kroes, the European antitrust commissioner, and the legions of apologist economists who rationalize the pernicious doctrine of antitrust that gives her this power.

Caleb credits Captain Phillips’ and the Navy Seals’ bold action with saving our President from becoming a second Jimmy Carter:

Playing pansy politics with pirates put the Captain’s life at increased risk. His first escape attempt was thwarted by the thugs as Phillips remained adrift from the aid and cover of the US Navy, which sat restrained by an administration too cowardly to let slip the dogs of war. Each day the tension and humiliation of a nation grew. The emboldened pirates fired upon our men of action, who thus restrained could not yet act in kind. The terrorists’ defiant lack of fear inspired their fellows to target other American vessels. All while the community organizer in chief flipped through his conflict resolution handbook.

But here, at long last, the captive captain is free. He leapt clear and our faithful Navy, apparently at last free to take the safety off, rid the world of three contemptible degenerates and have the fourth in custody to question. So the bold leap into the sea frees the President of the burden to act.

In the end, Captain Phillips wasn’t saved by the President, but by his own courageous plunge and the deadly professionalism of our men with guns. The President, you see, was saved by the Captain.

Alas, those poor pirates! Everything the Obama administration did signaled weakness, but somehow Captain Phillips and the Navy Seals didn’t get the memo. Perhaps the pirates’ last thoughts, before the Seals sent them to Davy Jones’s locker, were, “Wait, you’re shooting at us? Does Obama know about this?”

This crisis exposes the big problem with the left’s approach to national security: they turn what should be a matter of war into a matter of law enforcement. War cannot be fought with the legal restrictions that guide the police. You don’t read the enemy his Miranda rights, you just kill him. The bold campaigns of General Patton and General Sherman could not have happened if they had been forced to consult a committee of hand-wringing lawyers before every action.

American obeisance to international law is altruism in foreign policy; it subordinates American action abroad to the will of the rest of the world — a world that is, for the most part, less free and less capitalist than America. The result is a weaker America. That’s what Obama and Secretary of State Clinton mean when they talk about restoring America’s image in the world. The only way to make a world full of socialist hell-holes and strongman dictatorships happier with America is to make America weaker and more sacrificial to the rest of the world. They want to see America bow to Muslim sheiks, and now they have a POTUS who will give them anything they want.

Grant Jones has an excellent round-up on the piracy.

UPDATE: TigerHawk credits the President:

Great news, and — yes, I’ll say it — tip o’ the hat to President Obama for signing off on the mission.

Have I been unfair to the President?

He has a blog too.   While I have not yet had a chance to read very much of it, his most recent posting about the success of the YouTube clip and how it has bypassed the traditional, mainstream Walter Duranty media outlets is interesting.

That such a non-binding resolution is on the books at the UN is sufficient reason to kick that organization out of Amerrica and into some Islamic totalitarian country, where it belongs.  But the Islamic countries are now pressing to make this into a Binding Resolution.  If America were to allow that to happen, I submit that we will have lost the war we are fumbling our way through at present.  Imagine, half way through WWII, the Axis Powers proposed a law forbidding criticism of totalitarianism, and the Allies accepted it.  What then would we have been fighting for?

What are we fighting for now, if there is nothing to criticize in the Religion of Peace, Islam?

I don’t see any chance that America will allow this totalitarian edict to pass in the UN.  But the fact that we have anything to do with the countries pushing it is so grotesque a circumstance, that one is forced to be ready for anything to happen, even to the abolishment of the First Amendment.

This story was brought to my attention at Little Green Footballs, where there is a video of Christopher Hitchens defending the First Amendment on the Lou Dobbs show against the Islamic Totalitarians.

(Edited to add the Axis Powers comparison.)

At any rate, there was a story in The Epoch Times the other day claiming that 50 million Chinese have quit the Communist Party in recent years. I don’t know how accurate the figure is, but it sounds encouraging.

Beneath the media censorship and Internet blockades of China, a movement is spreading like wildfire with the potential to put an end to the ruling communist regime.

The Tuidang or “Quit the Party” movement has seen a wave of Chinese withdrawing their memberships from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated organizations. This month the number of withdrawals exceeded 50 million.

Is the Chinese Communist government in trouble? Protests are a common occurrance. The Party is losing members. Falun Gong, ostensibly a meditation discipline, seems to me at least to be an organization that people join to express defiance of the communist government. If the Communist government is going to fall one day in the not too distant future, it would seem that Falun Gong will have had a lot to do with its demise.

Perhaps we should give some attention to this movement, to divine what the next Chinese government will be like. Would a non-communist Chinese government still want to annex Taiwan? Would it even be a bad thing, if the government is non-militaristic? Would Taiwan willingly annex itself to such a government?