Whatever Happened to...? ... Alan Caruba

Whatever Happened to...?

By Alan Caruba

In the run-up to the South Carolina primary election on Saturday, it strikes me that the overwhelming coverage of the campaign process has shoved some important stories to the sidelines.

There is noticeably little coverage of the nation’s obscene unemployment problem; one that is comparable to the Great Depression.

With ample good reason, we no longer hear anything about (a) global warming or (b) climate change. We don’t hear “renewable energy” stories in the wake of the Solyndra scandal or the demise of comparable “Green” companies, but Obama’s decision to refuse to permit the XL Keystone pipeline was a reminder that all his talk about job creation is just that—talk.

The rising price of a gallon of gasoline is never mentioned in the news, up from $1.86 when Obama took office to $3.40 now. That sort of thing used to get incumbent presidents defeated in the past.

Events beyond our shores continue whether we are in a primary season or not.

The future of the European Union is still somewhat precarious. Whether the Euro continues as the currency of the EU is an important issue affecting America’s trading partners. The U.S. Sovereign debt rating has already been reduced but now nine EU nations have been put on notice as well.

The Obama/Clinton foreign policy in the Middle East continues to erode. Egypt, a major player, is moving into Islamist—anti-American, anti-Israeli—control. For decades, the Muslim Brotherhood was suppressed as a political force in Egypt and today they have emerged as the biggest player. Egypt is moving out of our orbit of influence.

Iran continues inexorably toward acquiring the capacity to make its own nuclear weapons. Its growing desperation regarding the sanctions is generating a lot of bellicose threats. The entire Middle East is silently praying that Israel attacks and disables its nuclear capabilities. Anything else is morally indefensible.

Following the withdrawal of U.S. troops, Iraq is in shambles once again with bombs going off in its cities and little likelihood it will be able to function as a nation despite its vast oil riches. Libya has lots of oil, too, but it is still struggling to create a functioning government in the wake of Gaddafi’s overthrow. Syria has everyone in the Middle East on edge watching to see if Assad can avoid what appears to be his inevitable overthrow. His late father, though, did just that by slaughtering thousands.

The seemingly endless political debates continue minus Jon Huntsman who is backing Mitt Romney and Rick Perry who has endorsed Newt Gingrich. Pretty soon we shall be calling Romney “Teflon Mitt” because the voters appear to be bored with all the sniping from his opponents regarding his success in the private sector. Newt Gingrich seems to have no idea what capitalism is or does.

Even the calumnies heaped on the Tea Party movement don’t get much attention these days. We have learned, however, that the current Congress has been the least productive, accomplishing less in 2011 than any other year in recent history. Records have been kept since 1947. In light of the disaster called Obamacare, that is probably a good thing.

One trend is noticeable. With the exception of the Keystone decision, any news that might harm the reelection of President Obama is hard to find in the mainstream media.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

It’s Halftime In The Iraq War

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

I continue to read piece after piece about the war in Iraq winding down for US troops.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  The US is in the Middle East for the foreseeable future whether we want to be – or not!

It is only halftime in the Iraq War.  We have just finished the first two quarters and we’re off to the locker room to rest up and prepare for the second half.   There will be a second half.  Count on it.    The US has “forward positioned” war fighting material in the area in preparation for the day we next take the field in Iraq.

US troops are leaving Iraq not as winners, and not as losers -- for the war is not over.  Everyone with a lick of sense knows it. 

Iran is waiting for the dust to settle and they will begin to apply their strangle hold on Iraq.  Through out the war American troops have been fighting Iranian troops and defending against Iranian “insurgents” -- all of this on the soil of Iraq.

In my opinion -- the war in Iraq was not only a good idea -- it was necessary.   Had the US not intervened, Saddam Hussein would most certainly have gained control of a huge share of the world’s oil supply.  Iraqi troops would have smothered Kuwait and Saudi Arabia very quickly and Hussein was headed that way. 

As to the claims that Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, we KNOW that he did.  He used them on his own people.  WMD are NOT necessarily nuclear in nature. There are radiological, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction. 

There is also a school of thought that Hussein also had some nuke capability, possibly old Russian nuclear artillery shells, and the ability to create the so-called nuclear “dirty bombs.”  Some feel the Russians and the Iranians spirited those weapons out of Iraq into Syria and Iran days before hostilities began.

Saddam Hussein had to go just as Ahmadinejad in Iran has to go.  Currently Ahmadinejad is at, or very near, the top of the list of world troublemakers who find themselves in the sights of oil consuming nations around the globe.  Face it.  No one is going to be allowed total control over the flow of oil from the Middle East -- no matter the cost.

The US made a bad decision when it decided to “nation build” in Iraq.  Rather, it seems to me, we should have set up an occupational government and run the government with American military officials for as long as was necessary… even decades into the future.  As it is, we are leaving an Iraqi government that will be lucky to stand long enough for US troops to exit Kuwait.     

Even with American training the plain truth is the Iraqi military and police are pathetic.  At the first sign of real trouble it will become extremely difficult to find an Iraqi soldier or policeman.  Uniforms will be shed and they will melt away in the crowds and may even take up arms against the current government. 

Nobody wants to say it publicly but the fact is the Iraqi House the Americans built was built on quicksand and will soon sink beneath the shifting sands.

Iraq was chosen as a “killing ground” for the Islamic terrorists of the world.  And they came.  And they died. And that was good for America.  We fought them over there to avoid having to fight them over here.  It worked very well, indeed.  Islamofacists from all over the world poured into Iraq to fight the Infidel.  And the infidel kicked their collective butts into Paradise where Allah could sort them out at his leisure.  It was America’s way of “thinning the herd.”

I am not one of those pie in the sky ideologues who believe the so-called “Arab Spring” a good thing.  In fact, I think it will turn out to be a very bad thing for America and the West.   Islamofacism, I suspect, will manage to take over the majority of the countries involved in the revolutions that swept the Arab tier of states this past summer.   If I am right, and I believe I am, it will mean that America will not be allowed to disengage from the Middle East in any meaningful way.  We are there, and we will be there, for generations into the future.

No.  The Iraq war is not over.  It’s only halftime.

J. D. Longstreet

The Harm a President Can Do ... Alan Caruba

The Harm a President Can Do

 By Alan Caruba

The announcement that Barack Hussein Obama will run for reelection was greeted with little fanfare and less surprise. In order to raise money, he needed to make it official and he was quick to join Rev. Al Sharpton, a man with a dubious history of histrionics, at a Harlem event.

Even with the data available, two years into his first term, it is difficult to grasp how much harm he has done to the nation as its elected leader.

Despite the fact that, until November 2010, the Congress was controlled by the Democrats, he was so busy during his second year that he could not find time to present Congress with a budget. The government shutdown is pure political theatre and should be avoided. If it comes, it will be the result of a political calculation that the President can benefit from it.

Obamacare, the hallmark of his political legacy, is opposed by 26 U.S. States and has been declared unconstitution in a federal court. The House has voted to repeal it. Hardly a week goes by without finding billions in new costs buried within its pages, all of which expand the size of government beyond imagination.

In two years, the nation has accumulated debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as its entire prior history since the day George Washington took office. In January 2009, when President Obama was sworn into office, the national debt was $10.627 trillion. Today it is $14.052 trillion and rising.

The leadership that the world has long looked to America to provide has dissipated. The nations of the West, in particular the European socialist nations, have also spent themselves into penury. Portugal is the latest to cry out for help. Greece, Ireland, Spain, all once among the great powers, have drained their coffers with cradle-to-grave assurances that the government would always pick up the tab.

After two years in which every regulatory obstacle, including an illegal “moratorium” on deep water drilling for oil was imposed, the price of West Texas crude oil went from $38.74 a barrel to $99.02. Other commodities, soybeans, sugar, and corn have all seen similar increases. The price of corn has more than doubled in just twelve months.

America has enormous reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas. It has long been a giant agricultural economy, but all this potential wealth is being throttled by men and women in the Obama administration who think Americans must be forced to change their driving and eating habits. In a consumer-driven economy, they want Americans to consume less.

When President Obama was sworn in, there were 2,600,000 long-term unemployed. Today there are 9,193,000 Americans in that category. People living in poverty in America have, in just two year’s time, gone from 39,800,000 to 43,600,000. This occurred during a time when massive “bailouts” were undertaken by the government. They are now widely regarded as failures.

The greatest automotive manufacturer in the world, General Motors, is for all intents and purposes owned by the government. Auto union jobs had to be saved even if taxpayers had to have their taxes diverted for that purpose. Having brought the company to ruin with outrageous work, wage, health, and pension demands, they were still to be rewarded by the Obama administration. The heads of public service unions, among the largest in the nations, have enjoyed an open-door policy at the White House.

Having been elected by campaigning against the war in Iraq, President Obama expanded the number of troops in Afghanistan. While U.S. troop presence in Iraq was being reduced, the President suddenly engaged the nation militarily in Libya without any authorization from Congress.

With one glaring exception, no cohesive foreign policy regarding the Middle East exists. Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East, an ally of the United States, surrounded on all sides by enemies and threatened daily by Iran, has been abandoned.

Egypt’s Mubarack was publicly abandoned, but Iran’s Ahmadinejad’s stolen election evoked no response when people took to the streets in Tehran to protest it. Col. Gadhafi remains in control of Libya. Syria’s dictator was called “a reformer.”

Domestically, the President calls for windmills to produce energy when they remain one of the least practical means, sustained solely by government subsidies and mandates. The factory in which he made the call belongs to a Spanish company. His call for solar energy is equally fatuous. High speed rail is yet another foolish initiative.

The last two years have been testimony to the harm a President can do to a nation and yet, despite the obvious harm being imposed on millions of Americans, the President continues to enjoy the support of people for whom the growth of the government, the increase in spending, and the nation’s loss of leadership in the world is not understood and will not be until it is too late to reverse the damage.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

A World in Disarray ... Alan Caruba

A World in Disarray
By Alan Caruba

It almost makes one wistful for the Cold War when the world was neatly divided between the United States and its allies against what Ronald Reagan called “the evil empire”, the Soviet Union and its satellite nations.

Trying to bring about a League of Nations after World War One virtually killed President Woodrow Wilson who suffered a massive stroke, but liberals have always been entranced with the notion that an international organization would bring an end to war. Until, that is, World War Two.

As WWII was winding down, Franklin Delano Roosevelt set to creating the United Nations and, following his death, it came into being on June 26, 1945. The preamble to its charter says:

“We the people of the united nations determined

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,”

Yada, yada, yada!

The United Nations has devolved into a cesspool of evil and irrelevance. I cannot think of a single war, large or small, nor any genocides, it has managed to stop. There were a couple of military conflicts in which it was an active participant, mostly in the form of telling the United States to “go get’m!” and “don’t forget to wear our blue helmets.”

If there has been a force for freedom in the world, it has been the might and power of the United States of America.

Until now.

Now our President says, “No U.S. troops will be in Libya.” This administration is desperately looking for some other nation to take the lead on Libya.

Let me be clear. I have not been a fan of spending our treasure and blood for the people of the Middle East. I am not a fan of war, but I know that war is the only way that most international conflicts get settled for good or ill.

The last President, George W. Bush, put together a coalition and invaded Iraq because, well, because he really did not like Saddam Hussein who, incidentally, had been invading his neighbors since the 1980s. His father had previously done the same to drive him out of Kuwait in the first Gulf War.

If there ever was a coalition regarding Libya, it was made of sugar candy because Germany and France had serious second thoughts after a week. No fly zones, it seems, cost a lot of money to maintain and most Western nations are broke, including our own.

The Arab League that called for a no-fly zone over Libya ran away even sooner. Arabs, who have shown an unparalleled talent for killing one another, lack the stomach for anything that involves mounting a real war to stop one of their own from killing the unfortunate citizens of his satrapy.

As it is, alphabetically from Bahrain to Syria to Yemen, despots throughout the Middle East are busy right now putting down their own internal insurrections. In the late 1990s Osama bin Laden gained a lot of attention by calling for the downfall of all the monarchies and despots throughout the region and the implementation of sharia law in anticipation of a global caliphate. The Saudis exiled him as they thought this was a really bad idea despite being the protectors of Islam’s two holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

At the same time we are witnessing a remnant of the Cold War, NATO, that does not seem to be functioning all that well, nor the European Union that was formed to be an enconomic bloc and clearly not one with any kind of a military component or sense of mission.

What the world needs is decisive leadership, but instead it has the Hamlet of the White House, Barack Hussein Obama, whose initial tour of the Middle East has, in retrospect, turned out to be one that caused its despots to conclude he was a wuss, a naif, a moron.

Who’s in charge of Operation Free Libya? No one knows!

The result is a world in disarray because the one nation every other nation thought it could count upon, for better or worse, is led by the Vacationer-in-Chief, a man who thinks that merely “saying the right thing” is the same as “doing the right thing.”

The situation in Libya will not likely turn out well, nor the growing opposition in Syria. No one knows what the outcome in Egypt will be, but everyone is pleased the crowds in downtown Cairo have gone home.

Meanwhile, Hamas is gearing up to cause trouble in Israel, waging its usual Made-in-Palestine terrorism based on the Yassir Arafat Guide to Always Saying No.

It is my profound hope the Israelis will strike back very hard, but it is also my profound belief that the UN Security Council will hastily meet to pass another resolution against Israel taking any measures of self defense.

This is how really big wars break out because no one at this point wants to fight the small ones.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

Give the Peace Prize Back, Barack ... Alan Caruba

Give the Peace Prize Back, Barack
By Alan Caruba

As the Middle East begets one insurrection after another against the oppression that has been endemic to the region for centuries and as Japan faces the worst nuclear energy disaster since Chernobyl, the President of America and Commander-in-Chief is Absent Without a Leave (AWOL).

Barack Hussein Obama is the first President of the United States who received a Nobel Peace Prize just for showing up. It is a mark of how debased this once prestigious international prize has become. He should give it up.

In the past, the Peace Prize went to Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 for negotiating an end to a Russian-Japanese conflict and to Woodrow Wilson in 1919 for his efforts to create the League of Nations. Its value began to fall off the cliff when it was given to Jimmy Carter in 2002 and Obama in 2009. In between, it was awarded to former Vice President Al Gore and the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change in 2007.

It is an ancient axiom that power is lost when power is not exercised. Osama bin Laden seriously misread the U.S. when he referred to it as “a weak horse”, an Arab way of saying it could be attacked with impunity. George W. Bush responded by bombing the hell out of Tora Bora in Afghanistan and then by invading Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein. Bin Laden has been in hiding ever since and his top lieutenants keep getting whacked.

Obama’s approach to foreign affairs has been to misunderstand and denigrate the role of America in a dangerous world. Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal calls it “The Collapse of Internationalism” because the failure to lead has demonstrated the uselessness of the United Nations, its Security Council, NATO, the European Union, and the Arab League when it comes to facing down a psychopathic despot like Libya’s Quadaffi and, of course, the same was true regarding Saddam Hussein.

This is how big wars occur.

Recent history bears out the failure to take action against Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, against Adolf Hitler prior to his invasion of Poland, to anticipate the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, and now the inevitable acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran.

This is what happens when an administration’s policy makers are all “intellectuals” who have spun out hypothetical views of the world that have no relationship to history or present realities.

This is what happens when, despite our present financial woes, the most powerful nation on Earth has reduced its naval and air power, and asks its military to engage in nation-building while fighting our enemies. What is needed are entirely separate, highly trained units devoted to that task.

This is what happens when “foreign policy” involves wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on the United Nations and billions more in so-called “foreign aid” to nations that do not like us, nor support us in times of crisis and need.

Libya, said Henninger, “was a test case, and what we have seen is that a world in which the U.S. doesn’t unmistakably lead is a world that spins its wheel, and eventually the wheels start to come off.”

The U.S. is not, as Obama believes, just one more nation among others or that it is not the single most exceptional experiment in democracy and freedom.

Just as Americans must organize to resist and survive Barack Hussein Obama over the next two years, having come to realize how utterly incompetent he is, other nations are wondering what will occur without the leadership the U.S. has always provided in the past, including two world wars, several smaller ones, and the containment of the former Soviet menace.

The presidency is much more than frequent trips to the golf course, predicting the outcome of the NCAA tournament, and an ill-timed visit to Rio. It is a dangerous place filled with people like Quadaffi and others of his ilk.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

Obama Lacks Respect Among World Leaders

Obama Lacks Respect Among World Leaders
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

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Americans like to be liked. At least, that is what we have been told for decades. And while it is true to an extent, it is not one hundred percent true. In fact, the American people will take respect over likeability when the occasion calls for it. Actually, the American people’s desire for respect far exceeds that of their leaders who are, of course, politicians. We all know that a politician’s political life depends upon his/her “likeability factor.” It is far more important to them to be liked than to be respected.

That fact presents a terrible problem for the country in international diplomacy. When our representatives are dealing with the leaders of foreign countries, especially our enemies, it is immeasurably important they be respected. If there is no respect for the American leader, there is a better than even chance an attempt will be made to “roll” the American leader. The foreign leader, in such a situation, gets what he wants from the American, while the American only THINKS he got what he wanted, only to find out later that he had been conned and, in fact, got the short end of the stick.

Mr. Obama’s foreign forays, flying into European countries and Asian countries, have yielded America nothing for all his flashy efforts abroad. His meetings with foreign leaders has been “meet and greet,” dinner, posing for photographs, delivering remarks in which he apologizes for America’s short-comings, and waving from the steps of Air Force One and then flying away having accomplished nothing substantial, at all.

Even our traditional friends have taken a standoffish posture toward Obama. The British, after having been offended by Obama in the first few days of his presidency, now stand back and reserve their efforts, on America’s behalf abroad, even though they are America’s oldest friend, the Mother Country, in fact.

In the Middle East, Mr. Obama deliberately shunned The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and left Mr. Netanyahu sitting alone for an hour or more while Obama went off to have dinner with his family. That was an unforgivable snub and one that will never be forgotten. Sooner than later, the US is going to need Israel’s help, covertly, or overtly, and it will be slow in coming, IF it comes at all. What goes around -- comes around.

See, Netanyahu believes that peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis can only be accomplished under Israel’s terms. And Netanyahu has said “NO” to Obama’s demand that there be no more settlements constructed by Israel. That act by Netanyahu leaves Obama absolutely nothing he can offer to the Palestinians or the Syrians. As we said – what goes around – comes around.

Obama’s henchmen in the White House are now more than a little concerned that the Obama Regime will be compared to the Jimmy Carter Administration. They needn’t worry, it is already being compared to Jimmy Carter’s administration, and, it has come up short of Carter’s sterling performance as a paper tiger.

Newt Gingrich recently said: "Carter tried weakness and the world got tougher and tougher because the predators, the aggressors, the anti-Americans, the dictators, when they sense weakness, they all start pushing ahead." Gingrich also said, referring to the Obama Regime, "This does look a lot like Jimmy Carter." (SOURCE)

It has been said that Obama speaks apologetically and carries no stick at all!

In May of this year, Ed Koch, a former Mayor of New York City, (a democrat) said the following in Koch’s Comments”: “Have we lost the will to stand up to the bullies of the world? The administration points with pride to the fact that it is preceding with sanctions against Iran at the Security Council and that it succeeded in bringing Russia and China to the point where they too have agreed to vote for sanctions. To accomplish this, however, the US had to agree to Russia's delivering arms to Iran, e.g., an anti-aircraft system that would be used to shoot down US, and Israeli planes that might in the future seek to eliminate Iran's nuclear facilities. With respect to China and getting its consent to vote with us, we dropped sanction measures that would have crippled Iran's banking and financial institutions and prohibited the sale of gasoline to Iran, which has no conversion facilities, which would have devastated its economy.

Some will say that pointing out these failures of will is jingoistic. I believe these failures to stand up for allies and most importantly to stand up for ourselves is why we are taken less seriously by nations throughout the world than should be the case. When others fully respected us, we were able to keep the world at peace. We are losing that ability with each passing day, as we demonstrate our unwillingness to teach the bullies of the world the lessons they deserve.

Speak softly and carry a big stick, Teddy Roosevelt said. President Obama speaks apologetically and carries no stick at all. No wonder North Korea torpedoed that South Korean warship, something they would not have done in all probability if China had not quietly approved. No wonder Brazil and Turkey thumb their noses at us. We have become a laughingstock.” (SOURCE)

We have disagreed with Mayor Koch on numerous occasions, but this is one of those times when we are in total agreement.

We continue to see America being laughed at and made fun of around the world while Obama bows and scrapes and apologizes. It is embarrassing. But more than that -- it is dangerous, very dangerous, not only for America, but for the world.

J. D. Longstreet

NASA's Mission to the Muslims ... Alan Caruba

NASA's Mission to the Muslims
By Alan Caruba

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I felt like this back in the days when the Watergate scandal slowly, painfully unraveled, revealing the most appalling stupidity and criminality emanating from the Oval Office. From the night when the burglars were arrested in the Democrat Committee headquarters on June 17, 1972 to the day Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, Americans were forced to witness and endure something unthinkable.

The news that NASA administrator, John Bolden, had been dispatched to the Middle East to fulfill what he said was its “foremost” mission, “to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science…and math and engineering” was so appallingly stupid that it defied any legitimate reason for NASA to exist.

The other mission objectives Barack Obama charged Bolden with were to “re-inspire children to want to get into science and math” and to “expand our international relationships.”

You need a bit of history to lend some clarity to this. NASA was the direct result of the Cold War scare when the Russians put Sputnik into orbit over the Earth in October 1957, thereby demonstrating they had missiles powerful enough to launch a nuclear attack on the nation. It galvanized the U.S. government into passing the National Defense Education Act in order to get more young Americans to go into the fields of science and math, and it prompted the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for the purpose of demonstrating American scientists and engineers could create bigger and better missiles.

Muslims had nothing to do with it then and nothing to do with it now.

In February, President Obama proposed that NASA abandon its Constellation program. As the New York Times reported at the time, it would involve abandoning “the rockets and spacecraft that NASA has been working on for the past four years to replace space shuttles.” It would impose a mandate “that any future exploration program will be an international collaboration”, not an American one.

NASA made news again in mid-June when it was announced that Obama’s amended budget request would slash $100 million from its operating funds in order to “spur economic growth and job creation along Florida’s Space Coast and other affected regions.” According to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, this somehow “revitalizes NASA and transitions to new opportunities in the space industry and beyond.” How many NASA engineers and scientists will now transition to jobs at Disneyworld?

Islam has not been “hijacked” by the likes of Osama bin Laden. Islam has always been about the conquest of the world and its greatest “scientific” breakthroughs since the 1980s have been the development of truck bombs and suicide bombers who have attacked targets from Bali to London, Madrid to Manhattan.

Obama’s Cairo speech on June 4, 2009 was filled with the kind of lies that portray Islam as a peaceful religion and one responsible for all manner of scientific breakthroughs from the invention of the magnetic compass to the printing of books.

Neither is true. What is true is that the Chinese had developed the compass and Islam had resisted printing books for a thousand years following its rise after 632AD. Those under the oppression of Islam did not contribute to or experience the rise of science and the arts as both were rejected as un-Islamic. Many forms of music, for example, were banned in Islam. While the West was producing Galileo, Isaac Newton, Nicolaus Copernicus, Aristotle, Rene Descartes and Albert Einstein, not one single scholar of comparable stature was produced in the Islamic world.

Contrary to Obama’s mission to reach out to Muslims, they "reached out" to the West and, in America on September 11, 2001, destroyed the Twin Towers and attacked the Pentagon, killing some 3,000 victims. Typical of the arrogance of Islam is the proposal to build a mosque within a block of ground zero in New York City! Building mosques over sites held sacred to non-Muslims is an long tradition of Islam, from the mosque built over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, to the countless other mosques in converted Christian churches, Buddhist and Hindu temples, as a demonstration of their intention to replace Western and Asian religions.

Permitting the building of the proposed New York mosque would signal submission to Islam. Perverting and defunding NASA’s mission is evidence of Obama’s commitment to Islam.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

“Jew Hating” Alive and Well in Europe and AMERICA!

“Jew Hating” Alive and Well in Europe and AMERICA!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

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Call me naive, if you must, but I have been astounded in recent years at the depth of “Jew hating” among the peoples of Europe. I have become used to the raw, visceral, hatred of Jews from so much of the Middle East, but after fighting a war in Europe to eradicate Hitler, and the Jew hating Nazis, one would expect that Europeans had learned a lesson. Apparently, they have not.

Here in America, hatred of Jews is alive and well. One must remember that prior to the Second World War the American Nazi Party was a strong vibrant entity -- right here on American soil. One of their biggest rallies was in Madison Square Garden in, of all places, New York City.

Hatred of any race of fellow human beings is morally despicable. For those who profess to be followers of Christ, Christians, hating Jews is more than morally wrong and despicable, it is a vile sin. Jesus, Himself, was a Jew. It doesn’t even make sense.

The old excuse of blaming the Jews for the crucifixion of Christ is pure bull. History, (and the scriptures) confirm(s) the presence of a Roman governor, who pronounced the death sentence, and the Roman soldiers who carried it out. The Jews were forbidden by their faith from doing so. Both Gentile and Jew, share the blame.

For the so-called religious among us to envy the Jews as a result of their special favor in the sight of God as His “Chosen People” is ludicrous. Remember, it was Cain’s envy of the favor God extended to Cain’s brother Abel that led Cain, in his jealousy, to murder his own brother.

It is important to remember that Palestine was the name the Romans gave the area they governed in what we call the Middle East today. Israel was a part of that territory. Clearly, Jews were there. History confirms it.

The modern state of Israel was founded May 16th, 1948. Within 24 hours, their Arab neighbors attacked them from all sides. Their intent was to murder the state of Israel aborning. They failed. The Infant nation of Israel was victorious over all the nations intent on her destruction.

Israel has had its big brother, America, by its side since some ten minutes after its founding when the American President Harry Truman phoned to congratulate Israel’s government and the Israeli people -- and to pledge America’s support.

It has been an on-going struggle for Israel at the United Nations. One could even say that the only thing about which the UN is “united” is their combined distaste and hatred for Israel. One can easily conclude that the reason for this concentrated condemnation of Israel at the UN is because Israel is viewed as the “Jewish State.”

The recent incident with the so-called “peace activists, “ attempting to run the Israeli/Egyptian blockade of Gaza, exhibited all the earmarks of a “set-up.” It was an obvious publicity stunt gone very bad.

Of course, the world media made Israeli out to be the villain -- as is their wont. Apparently, it is considered villainous if Israel attempts to defend itself. It would seem that Israel is the only country on the globe expected to allow her enemies to do as they please and never, ever, dare to assert their rights as a sovereign nation – and as human beings.

All of this should tell anyone willing to listen that anti-Semitism is alive and well and even thriving -- even after the Third Reich demonstrated to the world where it ultimately leads.

I am not optimistic that hatred of the Jews will end, or even lessen, any time soon. In fact, I expect it to get much, much, worse and eventually lead the nations of the world to a place known as the Megiddo Valley and the final battle known as -- the Battle of Armageddon.

J. D. Longstreet

Sending Israel the Usual Mixed Signals

Sending Israel the Usual Mixed Signals

By Alan Caruba

********************

President Obama is discovering what presidents going back to Eisenhower in the modern era and Jefferson in the earliest days of the nation learned. The Middle East responds best to the point of a bayonet because its primary faith, Islam, was spread by the sword and its holy book is essentially a battle plan to conquer the entire world.

Whatever else you read about the United States and Israel, keep in mind that we have been the closest of allies since it was founded in 1948 and was, of course, immediately attacked by the Arabs from nations around it. As for those “Palestinian” refugees you keep hearing about, most simply fled during the first war against Israel and now several generations later they remain in United Nations refugee “camps” or as the unwelcome guests in the surrounding Arab nations that will not extend citizenship. It remains a mystery to me why American presidents, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, the two Bushes, and now Obama even bother to push for a two-state “solution” when the record shows that Arafat and his successors have fled from any negotiations that would actually accomplish that. The so-called Palestinians only want the annihilation of the Jews as does the rest of the region.

Israel, sacred to Jews and Christians, is a rebuke to their claims of holy hegemony.The United States always looks like an idiot whenever it suggests that Israel (a) give back land won in the various wars against it and (b) should stop building settlements on that land. A look at the map demonstrates that Israel is a very tiny nation and the building of housing and infrastructure for its population is no less essential to them than it is for any other nation. Is there a strategic objective to the settlements? Yes. They say this is our land and we have a right to live here.

Along with other Middle East nations, Israel is among the oldest in history, dating back some 3,500 years. When it builds new housing in Jerusalem, it is doing so in the capital of Israel that was established by King David of biblical times. The Muslim “claim” to Israel as its holy land is based entirely on military conquest in the pre-Crusades era and to the fantasy story that Muhammad journeyed to Heaven on a horse from the site of the Dome of the Rock, built from 688 to 691 AD. The rock, by the way, is one of the most holy sites in Judaism, believed to be the place where Abraham was stayed from the sacrifice of his son, thus biblically prohibiting the sacrifice of one’s child; known as the Temple Mount. Jesus preached there.

There is no record that Muhammad ever stepped foot outside of Arabia though it is known that he originally commanded the early adherents of Islam to face Jerusalem to say their daily prayers. After Jewish tribes in Arabia refused to convert to Islam and declared him a charlatan, he had one tribe slaughtered and its women and children sold into slavery. After that he told early Muslims to face Mecca instead.

In sharp contrast to slaying one’s own children, Muslims cheer when one of theirs commits suicide for the purpose of killing Jews in Israel and, it turns out, fellow Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. Vice President Biden has recently been to Israel pledging America’s support in one breath and demanding the end to new settlements in the other. This is old stuff to Israelis who are busy continuing to create a modern state in the midst of those still mired in events that occurred a thousand years ago.

For more than six decades, the Israelis have wandered back and forth in a quest for peace with their neighbors, concluding after several wars, the abandonment of a security zone in Lebanon and the entire area of Gaza, that the so-called Palestinians do not want peace. Why American presidents and this current administration even bother to seek negotiations to secure peace is a diplomatic charade they feel compelled to stage to placate the Arab nations.

Meanwhile, the Israelis and their counterparts in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and even Egypt meet secretly to discuss the real problem in the Middle East, a nuclear-armed Iran.

The Obama administration sends mixed signals because it is a good way to keep all the parties involved distracted from the reality that Israel is here to stay. Sacred to Jews and Christians, Muslims have slim reason to lay claim to it.

The irony in this, seemingly missed by everyone involved, is that the United States has had a huge military commitment of men and arms in the Middle East ever since 9/11 required that we degrade both al Qaeda and the Taliban movements. We have fought several wars there in the last decade and why we would not join in a new one to put an end to the threat the Iranian regime represents is a mystery. Or a well-kept secret.

If jihad is a holy war that must continue until a global caliphate is established, what is the fuss all about if we assist the Iranian people in their quest to overthrow their oppressive government or, if necessary, to destroy their military threat to the region? Why would we hand off this necessary war to the Israelis? Unless, of course, we don’t want our fingerprints all over it?

© Alan Caruba, 2010

US Has More Oil Than The Entire Middle East

US Has More Oil Than The Entire Middle East
Did “Environuts” censor this Information?
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(Received this by e-mail. Checked the link and it is legitimate. The author is unknown to me.)
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Enough is enough. Americans are tired of being lied to about the availability of crude oil.

So – how much oil DOES America actually have, I mean, within the borders of the US -- not counting that off shore along our coastal shelf? Read on!

J. D. Longstreet

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Here's an interesting read. This is important and verifiable information: About 6 months ago, the writer was watching a news program on oil andOne of the Forbes Bros. Was the guest. The host said to Forbes, "I am going toAsk you a direct question and I would like a direct answer; how much oil does the U.S. have in the ground?" Forbes did not miss a beat, he said, "moreThan all the Middle East put together." Please read below.

The U. S. Geological Service issued a report in April 2008 that only scientists and oil men knew was coming, but man was it big! It was a revised report (hadn't been updated since 1995) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota , western South Dakota , and extreme eastern Montana .....

Check THIS out:The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.

"When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea.." says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst.

"This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years," reports The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It's a formation known as the Williston Basin , but is more commonly referred to as the'Bakken.' It stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada . For years, U. S. Oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the 'Big Oil' companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up The Bakken's massive reserves.... and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels.... and because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL! That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 2,041 years straight.

If THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one should - because it's from 2006!

U. S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006. Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. In three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted.

With this motherload of oil why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling?

They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth. Here are the official estimates:

- 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia

- 18-times as much oil as Iraq

- 21-times as much oil as Kuwait

- 22-times as much oil as Iran

- 500-times as much oil as Yemen

- and it's all right here in the Western United States .

HOW can this BE? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this? Because the Environmentalists and others have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil! Again, we are letting a small group of people dictate our lives and our economy.....WHY?

James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we've got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East -more than 2 TRILLION barrels untapped. That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today, reports The Denver Post.

Don't think 'OPEC' will drop its price - even with this find? Think again! It's all about the competitive marketplace, - it has to. Think OPEC just might be funding the environmentalists?

Got your attention yet?

Now, while you're thinking about it, do this: Tell your friends about this. If you don't take a little time to do this, then you should stifle yourself the next time you complain about gas prices!

By doing NOTHING, you forfeit your right to complain.

Check it out at the link below!!! GOOGLE it, or follow this link. It will blow your mind.

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911<http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911>

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The Middle East: Reporting an Enigma ... Alan Caruba

The Middle East: Reporting an Enigma

By Alan Caruba

**************

When President Obama delivers a speech on why he is going to send more thousands of U.S. troops and spend more billions on the eight-year-old conflict in Afghanistan, it would be a good idea to better understand why so much of what is reported from the Middle East suffers a great disconnect from the truth.

In 1998, Joris Luyendijk , a Dutch student who had studied Arabic at Cairo University for a year, was offered a job as a Middle East correspondent for a Dutch news agency despite having no experience as a reporter. What followed was his real education about the Middle East and the way it is presented to the West by the news media.

His book about that experience, “People Like Us: Misrepresenting the Middle East” was initially published in the Netherlands in 2006 and has since then it has been translated and published in Hungary, Italy, Denmark and Germany. In October an English edition was published by Soft Scull Press, an imprint of Counterpoint, a Berkeley, California publisher.

Having begun my career as a journalist, I was interested to learn what Luyendijk had taken from his years hopping around the Middle East before and after 9/11 and during the two Iraq wars waged by the U.S. to resolve a problem called Saddam Hussein.

For anyone digesting the news from his morning newspaper or watching it on television, suspecting that it might be biased or wrong, this book that focuses on reporting from the Middle East is a revelation because Luyendijk strives mightily to expose the way the news is manipulated by all the parties involved.

Covering his experiences from 1998 to 2003, the author is refreshingly candid, admitting that, despite his student year in Cairo, he had little or no real understanding of Egypt or the rest of the Middle East.

There is, however, one thing that anyone can understand. The Middle East is composed of dictatorships and the sole purpose of each one is to survive. To do that, their people must be constantly indoctrinated and fearful. That is made possible by rendering them, individually and as a group, powerless. There simply is no such thing as justice or the opportunity to express an opinion in opposition to the leader.

Significantly, those living in the Middle East cannot make an informed judgment of what is occurring around them because they operate two points of view that are very real to them. First is a widely accepted sense of victimhood, and, second, they believe that Israel, ultimately, is manipulating the entire world!

Conversely, Americans who have no contact with the Middle East beyond the headlines and snapshots of bloodshed and warfare are comparably unable to make informed judgments about a people who differ among themselves in many ways.

The Middle East is very different from the West and Luyendijk believes that few in the West are even vaguely aware that those who live there live in a parallel universe; one that functions by the rules of ruthless dictatorships, by tribes, and by a religion that is hostile to all others.

Democracy is not likely to take root in the Middle East and this can be traced to the prevailing religion of the region, Islam. The only reason democracy occurred in Turkey is because the founder of the modern state, Ataturk, isolated Islam from the conduct of governance and that has been backed up by an army that has, thus far, ensured the separation.

The only other democracy in the Middle East is, of course, Israel. Lebanon’s effort has been steadily undermined by Hezbollah, Islamists who are an instrument of Iran.

The news coverage by Western reporters tends not to reflect the fact that Western powers have long supported the gaggle of monarchs and despots in the Middle East, at least until they saw fit to replace them. For this and for its interventions, the people of the Middle East quite naturally see the West as part of the oppression under which they live.

“EVERYONE IS AGAINST US. It’s banged into ordinary Arabs through the media and their education from a very young age, so don’t expect them to be pro-western.”

For a Western journalist, that means having to operate in societies where their reports are closely monitored and where access to events repeatedly reveal how staged they are, whether it’s a mass rally or whether it is those they interview who know that one wrong word can get them imprisoned, tortured, and even killed. The journalists, too, are at risk.

The “truth” in such a place is an impossibility. The “truth” does not exist for those who live in the Middle East and is carefully filtered by the Western news agencies that cover it for people who live thousands of miles away. The task is to report on an enigma.

Citing a group trip to Saddam’s Baghdad arranged by the Cairo Foreign Press Association, Luyendijk says, “It was complete madness. The secret-service minders practically sat on our laps. They’d regularly leave us waiting in lobbies for hours on end without any explanation, and then shove us into taxies for an excursion.”

Though a novice journalist in 1998, Luyendijk quickly “abandoned the idea that you would know what was going on in the world if you followed the news generated by the twenty dictatorships of the region “or reported by the correspondents for Western news agencies.

”There were virtually no reliable and verifiable figures or statistics against which I could I could (report) in a broader perspective.” Information is power and it was controlled by the dictators. The foreign press was and is a pawn in the game.

“When something big happens, the (Western) public wants to know things that the correspondent can’t find out.” The result is a lot of nebulous speculation or regurgitation of previous news.

While those in the West are accustomed to fairly rapid progress, the Middle East defies this because the currents that determine events are rooted in events that may have occurred a hundred or a thousand years earlier.

The hatreds, the lack of trust, the resentments, the rivalry for power, the need to survive, all jostle together in an impenetrable jumble in which one young, Dutch reporter found common human elements, “people like us”, but people whose protests subject them to arrest and execution.

Alan Caruba

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Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Every Day is Groundhog Day in the Middle East ... Alan Caruba

Every Day is Groundhog Day in the Middle East
By Alan Caruba

*****************

In the movie, “Groundhog Day”, the main character wakes up day after day, trapped in the same events, desperately looking for a way out of that living nightmare. It’s a very good metaphor for the Middle East.

Here are some quotes from a book whose title I will reveal in a moment:

“The only truly transcendent law in the Middle East is that of unintended consequences.”

“Nation-building and the redressing of historic wrongs were in the air…”

“His fighters secured control of key rivers, recaptured Kut, and on (date withheld) stormed victoriously into Baghdad. Still undecided was how this famous city—and, indeed, most of Mesopotamia—would now be governed.”

“I suppose we have underestimated the fact that this country is really an inchoate mass of tribes which can’t as yet be reduced to any system. The Turks didn’t govern and we have tried to govern…and failed.”

And finally “Our armies have come into your cities and lands not as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.”

All this and more was said in the 1920s by British imperialists. If it sounds like things being said by Americans, then you must assume that America has been repeating all the mistakes of Great Britain in the exact same places.

The book being quoted is “Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East” by Karl E. Mayer and Shareen Blair Brysac ($18.95, W.W. Norton, softcover) and its five-hundred pages are devoted to the extraordinary personalities of the 1920s who, believing it was Great Britain’s duty was to bring civilization to India, Africa, and the Middle East, devoted themselves to “Pax Britannia”, the rule of distant colonies representing a fourth of the world’s population.

The book is a reminder that whatever passes for modernity in the Middle East has generally been imposed by the process of European colonization in quest of its oil and other riches to fatten the profits of various British, French, and American business enterprises such as the Suez Canal and the oil companies.

Left to themselves the polyglot of tribes would never have experienced anything resembling modernization.

Afghanistan today would look very much the same to the earliest invaders and explorers who passed through it. No roads. No hospitals. Few schools. No jobs except raising poppies for the heroin trade or serving in the army or police. Men raised from youth to fight anyone and everyone. Pushtuns, Tajiks, Hazarus, Uzbeks, Turkmen, and Qizilbash.

The Middle East had been ruled by the Turkish Ottoman Empire for centuries—from Egypt to Persia. Going back even further in history, the region was no stranger to European invasions. The Crusades were a response against the Islamic invaders that at one point had laid siege to Vienna.

As the authors note, “In his history of Jerusalem, the Israeli writer Amos Elon calculates that over four millennia the Holy City has known ‘twenty ruinous sieges, two intervals of total destruction, eighteen recent reconstructions, and at least eleven transitions from one religion to another.” In 1967 visitors could find the remnants of “Roman encampments, Crusader castles, Turkish parapets, and British pillboxes.”

To suggest, for example, that after more than sixty years of Israeli national sovereignty that Arab neighbor nations (and Iran) have the slightest intention of allowing it to exist is to ignore the history of centuries old intolerance directed against both Christian and Jew.

Following World War One, England and France divided the remains of the Ottoman Empire that had chosen to side with Germany. It would have died sooner or later of its own dead weight, but it was Sir Percy Zachariah Cox who would take out “a map and a pencil to draw the boundary between Iraq and the Nejd (now Saudi Arabia). The borders with Syria and Transjordan were defined similarly.”

There were Arab leaders, but they were generally the pawns of the great powers, frequently assassinated or deposed. With some exceptions, the nations of the Middle East continue to be ruled by monarchs and despots.

As the British Empire shrank in the wake of World War Two and American power grew only one thing is clear. Neither of these imperial powers had any clue, nor way of dealing with the Middle East’s regressive Islamic fanaticism that remains a ceaseless threat to Western civilization. And, as in past times, the debates rage about staying in or getting out.

Every day in the Middle East is Groundhog Day.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. A business and science writer, author, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, October 2009

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Conservative+US+Middle-East+Mistake+Afghanistan+Britain+Iran+Iraq+Islam

A Sign of Weakness ... J. D. Longstreet

A Sign of Weakness

J. D. Longstreet

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It worries me that our liberal friends seem, somehow, to think that showing one's fangs to an enemy is distasteful but cannot grasp how rolling over onto one's back and presenting one's soft underbelly can be construed as a definite show of weakness and servility. What Obama was doing in the Middle East recently was, in the eyes of the Middle Easterner, a definite sign of weakness and an open invitation to Muslim disdain and disgust. They will smile, take his hand in a demonstration of friendship, slip the political knife into his back, and wait for the moment of optimum opportunity to strike the Great Satan in his own home, wreaking murder and mayhem amongst a people so brilliantly stupid as to choose a leader so naive, so narcissistic, and so committed to punishing America for it’s excellence.

I continued to hear how Obama represented the answer to Muslim prayers, how he was going to fulfill their ultimate dreams, how so much of the Muslim world had penned so much of their hopes and dreams and desires onto one person and that one person was/is Obama. The Mainstream Media and the Government Controlled Media fawned all over Obama and his entourage. It became sickening.

But what is that one dream of the Muslim world they believe Obama can help them fulfill? Could it be the Muslim dream of a one-world caliphate, a single Muslim kingdom that would span the entire globe?

Many questions are being asked here in America about Obama’s apparent favoring of the Arabs over the Israelis, as well. Many American Jews who voted for Obama are looking at their vote and questioning whether or not they made a colossal mistake in supporting the man many of us on the conservative side of the aisle tried, desperately, to warn them against. Obama has made it clear that he intends to support a Two-State Policy with an Arab state called Palestine alongside the state of Israel. Methinks Mr. Obama has no idea the potential for trouble having a STATE of Palestine next door to Israel will cause. There will be a continual state of war. Israel having to protect itself against a stateless bunch of Arab refugees and Israel protecting itself against a State of Palestine is two entirely different things - and far more deadly.

So, as Americans, can we expect massive change in the way the US is viewed by the Muslim world? No. I think not. Well, I DO suspect there might be less respect for America amongst the Muslims after Obama’s trip. I mean, once you get past the fawning press corp based in America, it is not really difficult to see that Mr. Obama is a just a naive young man with a head full of socialist dreams and a burning desire to redistributed the wealth of America no matter the cost to the average American and the kids and grandkids, yet unborn, of those same Americans. Once the hype is toned down, and the deliberate smoke screen is lifted, only the self-delusional can still see Obama as something he is not –a populist messiah sent to save America from herself.

That “open dialogue” between America and the Muslim world, Mr. Obama says he is seeking, remains as illusive as ever, only now the Muslim world, including the Islamofacist terrorists, have even more information about the Obama Administration, and their weaknesses, and more information about the man - Obama.

Even before Obama’s plane went “wheels-up” there were “over-inflated expectations” for his tour of the Middle East. Now that the tour is over, it would seem to us the use of the term “over-inflated expectations” might, itself, have been an understatement.

J. D. Longstreet

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Conservative+Middle+East+Tour+Muslims+Israel+Refugees

Freedom's Dream Is Not Dead! ... by J. D. Longstreet

Freedom’s Dream is Not Dead!

J. D. Longstreet

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Now let’s see: Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, and yes, even Lebanon, to some degree. All these nations are on their way to becoming democratic.

So “war solves nothing”, huh? Care to rethink you position on that? I thought not. When one entrenches oneself into self doubt as deeply as the peaceniks have, it is nigh impossible to extract them. So, we will simply overlook them, as we have always done. They line the fringes of our society, anyway.

No one likes war. But, contrary to what the peaceniks tell us, war does bring change for the better. Ask the Brits, the French, the Germans the Belgium’s, the Jews…. and the list goes on. (The French may still be too arrogant to admit it, but, regardless of what they tell themselves, the remainder of the world knows they exist as a nation only because of the efforts of US and allied servicemen in two world wars.)

War changes things. The Middle East, for better or for worse, is changed forever. The US has a beachhead in the Middle East and we will be there forever. We are not going to leave. As the democracies begin to shape up, and form up, and freedom begins to spread, those who hold the dictator’s reins now will find themselves out of a job. Those who would hold the Middle East back in the 14^th century will find they, alone, are left in the past. The people are going to move on to liberty and freedom. One a people have tasted freedom. It is not possible to strip them of it again.

Now we can only hope that liberty will blossom, and bloom, in the Middle East. If it does it will be the US to thank. The US took a stand in the Middle East when the rest of the world would not. The US alone had a vision of a free people who would seek after democracy. Old Europe, now irrelevant, stood on the sidelines as history passed them by. There they will remain. What they do, or say is of no consequence to anyone but themselves. It is sad to see a continent commit suicide.

In the meantime, America marches on. Ronald Reagan’s dream of America as a great “shining city on a hill” is in deep peril with the current administration of socialists in charge both in the White House and in the Congress. Among conservative Americans, Reagan’s dream still perseveres. We conservatives still believe that Reagan’s dream is, in fact, the last hope of a world, which lost its way. We include America among those nations that have lost their way today. It is truly sad.

J. D. Longstreet

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