A post by Pat
On her way to visiting Saudi Arabia, Hillary Clinton informed the world Iran is becoming a military dictatorship. Dang! Here we had such great expectations about having civilized talks to amicably settle differences on things like building nuclear weapons to kill Jews.
What a shock this must be for our nice President Obama. Talking was the right approach and so magnanimous of us. Iran is just a tiny country that couldn’t possibly be a serious threat. Talks would have worked. It was just a matter of the Iranian leaders deciding to take the opportunity for peace. Of course we expected it would take time since that idiot Bush poisoned the air. Now what? All of a sudden we have a different situation there. The military is supplanting the government we were cultivating. Not the President’s fault the talking strategy failed. The Revolutionary Guards pulled the rug right out from under him.
Evidently we were really blindsided by this development. Sunday morning General Jones, the National Security Adviser, indicated no awareness of this transformation. What is the time difference between Saudi Arabia and Washington, D.C. anyway? In fact he said it was a mystery why Iran hasn’t, “Come through the door.” Hours later mystery solved. The Revolutiony Guards were standing in front of the door.
..for reasons that are somewhat mysterious but nonetheless constant they have not walked through that door and they have not taken us up on the offer and therefore the President was clear through 2009 that we would give it time and then we would draw our conclusions. We are drawing our conclusions based on nonaction on the Iranian part and now moving towards a clear set of sanctions
Such a disappointing turn of affairs. This is not the kind of change we were hoping for. Now we’ll have to have some more meetings and ask China if this new development changes their minds about sanctions.
Pittiful wet noodle “Present” approach. Another boot licker. We need Patton Generals, not patent-leather!! Yeh, those “sanctions” work while Iran thumbs their nose. The real clowns are the avoidance “it will all go away” politicians and government bootlickers. They are the ones who make our country look weak! This is why liberals should not hold positions of authority because they do not know how to lead but make bad situations worse. Because of their dithering and indecision, Iran will have a bomb and be able to hold hostage the “civilized” world. No politician will sanction an invasion in Iran then. But, then again, this is what the anti-semite, MSM press, sick minded liberal radicals and politicans want, including our “dumb-ass-in-chief.” See, this will make everyone “equal.” The criminal and the innocent. Then we can sing “We aren’t the world!”
When I first heard that Hillary was saying that Iran is becoming a military dictatorship my first reaction was – Where has she been the last 30 years????
This is like someone finally discovering that water is wet, or that fire is hot.
I wonder what tipped her off???????
You’re right. And it’s unbelievable that this is news to her or the Obama Administration. This is the same country that oppresses its own citizens. But somehow this can’t be translated into worldwide destruction for the sake of spreading Islamic fascism?!?!?!?! That’s the whole goal. Obama truly believed that his presence, his a** kissing could somehow change their minds? What fools!!
Nice to see that Hillary finally woke up. Her next pronouncement: “People are starving in the Sudan.”
Brilliant, does she know that North Korea is a military dictatorship yet? Why doesn’s she send them the reset button, that always works!
Um….wasn’t Iran a dictatorship already?
Peter Robinson at the Hoover Institution interviewed Thomas Sowell on his book “A Conflict of Visions” shortly before the 2008 election. Based on this interview it looks to be a timely book on comparing the governing philosophy of President Obama and many liberals nowadays (an unconstrained vision) vs. those who hold to a conservative philosophy (a constrained vision). I’ll give some excerpts, because I think it sheds light on our situation with Iran.
Robinson: (quoting from the book) “The constrained vision: ‘War is seen as originating in human nature, and being contained by institutions. Those with the unconstrained vision tend to explain war in terms of either misunderstandings or of hostile or paranoid emotions raised to such a pitch as to override rationality.’
Is it fair to say that the constrained vision is not surprised by war, but the unconstrained vision is always a little startled when a war breaks out?”
Sowell: “Oh absolutely. You can take this back to the Federalists where they said, ‘Why do we think that the 13 colonies will make war on each other if they’re not united?’ And the answer was, ‘Because that’s what countries have always done.’ In fact it’s not just war. It’s war. It’s poverty. It’s crime. All of those are things which people with the unconstrained vision feel needs explaining. Whereas people with the constrained vision think what needs explaining is how do we sustain peace? How do we have law and order? How do we have morality?”
Sowell was asked about our overall defense/foreign policy with respect to hostile nations/forces in the world, McCain vs. Obama. Sowell said, “I think Barack Obama has a lot more faith in verbal interactions than I would.”
Robinson: “That’s the unconstrained vision.”
Sowell: “Oh, absolutely. What he is proposing under the guise of ‘change’ is what [had] been tried for two decades between the two world wars, and which failed disastrously, helping to bring on the second world war.”
When asked whether McCain was being “too belligerent” with his proposed defense policy in 2008, Sowell laughed and said, “Defending yourself is not belligerence.”
Robinson: “Back to Barack Obama. You mentioned, I think you would call, a naive view of world affairs–that he places a great deal of faith in rhetoric, the ability of rhetoric to solve global problems. This reminds you of the 1930s. It reminds you of Neville Chamberlain. I read you a quotation of ‘spreading the wealth around,’ and again you said that’s perfectly pure socialist doctrine from the 1930s. Would you argue that this man is the most left-wing, or the purest embrace of the unconstrained vision that we’ve seen in American politics since…when?…since the New Deal?”
Sowell: “Since there’s been American politics.”
Robinson: “Really?”
Sowell: “Yes. Yes. I mean, even FDR pulled back on some things. But Obama, he does have the unconstrained vision, which is really an elitist vision. He says, ‘I know what is the best to be done, and I will do it.’ When he says, ‘I will change the world,’ you realize this is a man who has actually accomplished nothing other than advancing his career through rhetoric. It reminds me of a sophomore in college who thinks that he can run the world, because he’s never had to run anything. And you can believe that only until you have personal responsibility for consequences, and that’s when it gives you a little bit of humility.”
Robinson: “Why don’t the American people see through that? Isn’t that the fundamental bet that the Founders made, that ultimately voters would see through nonsense?”
Sowell: “Yes, but that was before nonsense became a large part of the curriculum of our educational institutions.”
Robinson: “How is an informed American to choose between [the constrained vs. the unconstrained vision]?”
Sowell: “I suppose it would require thinking about it, first of all, which is what a lot of people don’t do anymore. I mean there are people who simply react because they like the way someone sounds, and unfortunately more and more such people vote.”
Robinson quoted from a Wall Street Journal article, predicting Obama would win the election, and the Democrats would win solid majorities in the House and Senate. They said, “This would be one of the most profound political, and ideological shifts in U.S. history.” He asked Sowell, “Would you agree with that?”
Sowell said, “Absolutely. The fact that they will create disasters in the economy will pale by comparison to what they will do in terms of countries acquiring nuclear weapons and turning those over to terrorists.” He added ominously, “Which is the point of no return, once that happens.”
When asked about a possible voter backlash, bringing the Republicans back into the majority in congress in 2010, as happened to President Clinton in 1994, Sowell said that was “very optimistic.”
He said, “There is such a thing as a point of no return. If in those first two years Iran gets nuclear weapons, we will be at that point of no return, and the next generation will live under that same threat for as far out as the eye can see. Sometimes people who are very clever will say, ‘It’s just as well to let these guys get in there and discredit themselves. Then we’ll win in the backlash.’ People said that when Hitler was arising in Germany, and many of the people who said that died in the concentration camps, which is a smaller tragedy than a nation dying in a sense.”
Speaking of Obama, Sowell said, “I think this man really does believe that he can change the world. And people like that are infinitely more dangerous than mere crooked politicians.”
Robinson said he wanted to end the interview on an “up” note, but was having trouble getting Sowell to say anything positive about the future. Sowell finally volunteered, “Well, one good thing is that economists’ predictions have been wrong before, and you can always hope that this will be one of those many predictions.”
As Tammy has observed, it’s a fundamentally narcissistic attitude that everything is about us. Terrorists are running around the world blowing up people just because of us. Does anybody still believe that? This is not to say that we’ve done everything perfectly or are above criticism. But maybe monsters do what they do because they’re monsters. In his campaign, Obama made it all seem so simple: Just press the reset button and scrape your nose on the floor. This is what happens when you turn your personal delusions in public policy. And then you’re shocked, shocked, to find that the monsters keep doing the same damn thing. Please God, awaken us from our national mental illness before it kills us.
Assuming we survive the era of Obama, at least one good thing will come out of it. Anyone within shouting distance of sanity will have realized that that the war on terror was not a paranoid Republican delusion, but a real fight for survival against a real enemy that wants us all dead.