Posse Incitatus

The subversive genius of V

The H1N1 flu has swept through the ranch, which is made it somewhat difficult for the Posse to keep up on blogging duties.

So it was that I didn't get to watch "V" until tonight.

It has been a long time since I enjoyed network tv, but this show looks promising.  It is also remarkably subversive: the Visitors are all about savvy media, and they way the play the network dude was quite amusing - and given how the Obama administration is beating up on FOX, the parallel was striking. 

And they offer free universal health care!

No doubt I'm reading too much into it, but it was still fun to watch.

I expect the show will go downhill because that's what good shows do.  Those that don't get cancelled (see Firefly).  Still, for a while at least I'll be watching.

This is not a hoax

I think it says something about Obama's Nobel Prize that people have to be convinced that it isn't a joke.  I've yet to come across anyone - online or in person - who considers this an obvious decision.

Which is honestly what the Nobel Prizes are for.  When Mother Theresa recieved the prize, people could nod their heads and say "Of course, she's a living saint."  They may not already have heard of the recipient, but when they had, it seemed the right thing to do.

Well, until Jimmy Carter and Al Gore.

The world that we grew up knowing is breaking down.  Its institutions are crumbling around us.  The Nobel is only the latest edifice to crumble. 

Thus it is that a man not yet in office for a full year can receive an award for peace - even though he commands vast armies involved in two major wars with no end in sight to either of them.

There are no treaties, no peace proposals, only lofty words.  In a way, I feel sorry for the president.  By the time he is fifty, he will have achieved everything other men needed their entire lifetimes to accomplish. 

What can he possibly do for an encore?

Sweet home, Chicago

So Chicago will not get the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.  The President took a lot of time out of his busy schedule, personally lobbying the International Olympic Committee in Copenhagen.

Below is a portion of his pitch – the best, smoothest and most persuasive argument he can muster.  Read the whole thing, but here are some key paragraphs:

I know you face a difficult choice among several great cities and nations with impressive bids of their own.  So I've come here today to urge you to choose Chicago for the same reason I chose Chicago nearly 25 years ago -- the reason I fell in love with the city I still call home.  And it's not just because it's where I met the woman you just heard from -- although after getting to know her this week, I know you'll all agree that she's a pretty big selling point for the city.

You see, growing up, my family moved around a lot.  I was born in Hawaii.  I lived in Indonesia for a time.  I never really had roots in any one place or culture or ethnic group.  And then I came to Chicago.  And on those Chicago streets, I worked alongside men and women who were black and white; Latino and Asian; people of every class and nationality and religion.  I came to discover that Chicago is that most American of American cities, but one where citizens from more than 130 nations inhabit a rich tapestry of distinctive neighborhoods.

 

The arrogance of this thing is breathtaking.

This is supposed to be persuasive?  This is a supposed to win people over?  Basically, he told the IOC that they should choose Chicago because Obama did. 

There is a term for this kind of pitch: a testimonial.  In advertising they use it when the person “testifying” has some sort of qualification that the public finds compelling.

Some testimonials are just average folks saying “This worked great for me, you should buy it, too.”  Others use celebrities who are presumably experts on whatever they are selling to reassure prospective buyers that the product there are pitching works and has value.

Examples?  Think sports figures selling athlete’s foot powder or race car drivers pitching gasoline additives.

What standing is Obama supposed to have before the IOC?  Did this clown really think that they would say “Oh, well The One likes it, so I guess we should, too!”?

No wonder they dumped Chicago first.

Tom Maguire has more on the First Lady’s similarly narcissistic sales pitch.

So now the French think we are wimps

You know things are bad, when the French start calling on the Obama administration to show some backbone with Iran.

I don't usually have a lot of nice things to say about France, but they are making us look bad.  President Sarkozy - not President Obama - spoke up in support of the Iranian people without hesitation.

Now Sarkozy is warning that Iran's nuclear ambitions may require more than diplomacy.

So let's review: the French are now showing us up on both moral and strategic grounds.  Hope and Change!

Meanwhile, still no word on whether we are fighting or leaving Afghanistan - getting the Olympics into Chicago was more important.

I think it is clear that above all things, Barack Obama is parochial in his outlook and priorities.  His governance is about paying off his buddies and getting what he personally wants.

I do not believe, as some have theorized, that he would respond forcefully if challenged.  He can be a bully, but bullies as a rule prey only on the weak.  Thus far, he has avoided taking on a hard target.

Iran and Al Qaeda are both hard targets.  They will not allow themselves to be boxed in by a sycophantic media, nor will rhetoric phase them.  One cannot simultaneously be a transcendent peacemaker, committed to negotiation above all and a warrior determined to achieve victory.  This is the paradox which binds the Obama administration.

The president would just as soon turn the page on Afghanistan, Iraq and the rest and focus on his sweeping domestic agenda.  I honestly am not sure if he truly buys into the concept that other countries lack free will and will only act if we provoke them, but he is demonstrating the fallacy of this worldview.

In by October of 1939, Poland was crushed and an uneasy pause settled over Europe.  It was the period of the Phoney War, or what Churchill termed "the Twilight War."  While Hitler perfected his plans and prepared his armies, France and Britain held committee meetings and focused on building their wartime productive capacity.  What few offensive plans that were put forward were vetoed on the grounds that antagonizing the Germans would only bring reprisal.

He described the scene thusly in The Gathering Storm, the first volume of his epic The Second World War: 

On the one side [the Allies] endless discussions about trivial points, no decisions taken, or if taken rescinded, and the rule "Don't be unkind to the enemy, you will only make him angry."  On the other, doom preparing - a vast machine grinding forward ready to break upon us!

The enemy is still active, and while the Obama administration struts and preens, they plan and prepare.

And we know what the administration thinks of Churchill, because one of their first acts was to return the bust of him presented to George W. Bush.  (Followed up of course with a slew of other insults to our British friends).

Maybe it would do them some good to actually read the great man's writings. They certainly couldn't do any worse.

Goodbye to Israel

One thing I'll say for him - President Obama keeps bloggers on their toes.

Every time I try to comment on a particular outrage, he generates another one before I can get to the keyboard.

Today I guess he outdid himself at the U.N.  My esteemed co-blogger has covered most of the major points from the president's big U.N. speech, but the part about Israel left me stunned.

For those that missed it, amidst his flowery moral equivocation, he stated that US policy is now to end the "occupation" of the Palestinian territories since 1967 and to create a contiguous Palestinian state.

Of course, there is nothing magical about Israel's pre-1967 borders.  They have no legal standing.  They actually aren't even borders - they were merely the cease-fire line from Israel's war of independence.

Nor is there any basis for a "Palestinian state."  Were the Middle East to revert to a status quo ante bellum, Jordan would get back the West Bank and Egypt would get back Gaza (and Syria would receive the Golan Heights).

So right there, any rational and knowledgeable observer knows that Obama is simply regurgitating Arab Nationalist talking points.

But he want farther.  A contiguous Palestinian state means that Israel must be dismembered.  I know that the World War II parallels are seriously overdone, but this is the Sudetenland writ large - the willful and deliberate destruction of an ally in an effort to placate hostile powers.

One can only wonder what Israel's penalty will be if it refuses.

I'm honestly staggered that any American president could seriously urge this kind of policy.  I'm not prone to millennial thinking, but selling out the Jews seems like a good way to shove us all toward the Abyss.

Poles, Czechs sold out yet again

For those who thought there might be a learning curve after this spring’s gaffe-o-rama, we have the latest foreign policy goof: selling out Poland and the Czech Republic on the 70^th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland.

If I learned one thing from my time in Europe this summer, it is that these people know their history. It permeates everything they do. Dates are significant to them.

Let us be charitable and assume for the sake of argument that this latest retreat is the result of a wise and judicious reexamination of America’s strategic interest.

Even granting that, this is still a diplomatic disaster.

Both Poland and the Czech Republic are keenly sensitive to betrayal. The Czechs were bartered away at Munich in 1938 – at this time of year, no less.

Poland was then offered a guarantee by the same powers, Britain and France and this ultimately did them no good. Yes, the Western Powers declared war, but they watched passively behind their fortifications as Poland was hammed by Nazi Germany starting on Sept. 1. Two weeks later, 70 years ago today – the Russians invaded as well. Poland was divided between Germany and Russia, and its people endured all manner of atrocities. The defeat of Germany merely meant a change of oppressors for the Poles – who were sold out at Yalta in 1945.

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of history is aware of this, which apparently excludes the State Department.

I find myself wondering: is the administration purposefully attempting to alienate our allies or is it populated entirely with stupid people?

There are strong arguments each way, but of course the two possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

Eight years ago

Today kind of took me by surprise – the anniversary, I mean.

Things have been busy, what with the start of school, getting back to work, drill and of course the new football season. In short, I am just as busy as I was eight years ago today.

Of course, the president isn’t really keen on drawing much attention to today’s place in history. Nor are his allies in the media. They’d just as soon forget about it. They have space for endless remembrances of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy, but the thousands who died eight years ago today? Not so much.

We, as a country, are in a strange place in our history. We have a president who talks about fighting and winning, but does so without any real conviction. His party – which controls Congress – would also rather spend its time on other things. Certainly they want to cut the defense budget (which proves just how hollow and disingenuous their cries against Donald Rumsfeld “fighting wars on the cheap” were) and spend the money elsewhere.

For a while, right after the attacks, I thought: This is it. This is the time when we get serious about terrorism and start cracking skulls. The gloves are now off.

But they weren’t, not in Afghanistan and not in Iraq. Our political class didn’t have it within them to push that hard. And so here we are, eight years later, torn between a desire to see the thing through and wanting to just forget about it.

I have a wish, a silly, old-fashioned wish that comes from my idealistic youth. My wish is this: That the Democratic Party as a whole could muster the same visceral hatred for our nation’s enemies that they have for Republicans.

There is a lot of anger on the left, and just once, just for a while, I wish it could be directed at the people who want us all dead. I know. Not gonna happen.

We’re going to get hit again.

I can feel it, just like I could feel it in the 1990s. When I came into work eight years ago this morning and the full horror of the attack became clear, a colleague turned to me and said: “You were right. You said we’d get hit, really get hit, and here it is.”

Well, I have that same feeling. It’s coming. It can’t not come. We’re cutting the defense budget and pulling back.

The Attorney General wants to launch an Inquisition against the CIA because we may have been mean to trained terrorists.

The president would rather talk about health care than terrorism. When Iran’s people rose up in rebellion, his administration basically told them to shut up and sit down. Now Iran is allying itself with Venezuela, and Venezuela is trying to topple a democratic regime in Honduras – and we think this is swell and want to help.

At the same time, we’re telling our allies – Columbia and South Korea – to go get bent. No free trade agreements for you! We only send tribute to our enemies!

Basically, there isn’t a lot of upside in being a U.S. ally right now, nor is there much point in working extra hard to catch a terrorist if you work for U.S. intelligence agencies.

All of which leads me to conclude that we’re due for another attack.

And when it happens, we can know, with metaphysical certitude, that this administration will blame George W. Bush.

Actions speak louder than words

One of the singular features of the Obama Administration is the rapidity with which it repudiates its own promises.

George W. Bush’s administration was comically inept in its media relations, and its bungled response to the Plame Affair and the “sixteen words” about uranium in Niger played a critical role in undermining public confidence in his veracity. “Bush Lied,” eventually took root, with disastrous consequences for his credibility and thus presidency.

Of course, it didn’t help that the press was out to get him. Still, it is worth noting that even with a hyper-partisan media, it still took five years to effectively bring him down. Obama has managed to do the same thing in a matter of months. His credibility is in tatters.

Does anyone believe he is a centrist who wants to keep spending in line? Does anyone think he is interested in “net spending cuts?”

To ask the question is to answer it.

As I’ve often said on this site, don’t pay attention to what is said, look at what is being done.

And a lot of things are going on that speak volumes.

For starters, there is the run-up in gold and oil prices. Confidence in the dollar is faltering, and this is not a purely rhetorical exercise. When prices move, that is a sign of action.

Meanwhile, Americans are stockpiling firearms. It is a development that leaves me both worried and comforted: worried that people believe they are going to need to look after themselves, comforted that they are taking appropriate individual action to guarantee their safety.

Speaking of firearms, the ammo shortage continues, but in Lansing there is some easing. Prices are still high, but the shelves are starting to fill back up, even at the big box retailers.

Earlier this summer I predicted that prices would collapse once the saturation point was reached and the Bullet Bubble burst. Now I’m not so sure. Demand will likely fall, but if inflation sets in, commodities will spike, meaning that the input costs will drive ammunition up faster than most other products.

Of course, if I take Sithkitten's advice, I'll start learning to make my own black powder, since the end of civilization could well be just around the corner.  In that case, pre-industrial age weapons will be critical.  Even percussion caps will be hard to come by, so flintlocks will once again become state of the art once the existing ammo stocks are used up.

Stockpiling blackpowder: serious survivalism!

A German holiday

On Friday I returned from a delightful sojourn in the Federal Republic of Germany, courtesy of the U.S. Air Force. 

And what a change has come over the homeland in those five weeks!

When I left, Barack Obama was still flying high.  His administration was confidently insisting that Congress pass a sweeping nationalization of health care and do it within a week - or else.

Now, on that front and many others, the president finds himself stymied.  Listening to the news on Armed Forces Radio is a surreal experience - often they go with A.P. Radio News or CBS, which means it's highly partisan and usually suspect.

When Obama went on his week-long vacation to Martha's Vineyard, I was amused to hear how there would be no, repeat, no media events all week.

Of course this pledge, like all others, promptly was rendered moot with the oddly-timed announcement that Ben Bernake - who's term expires but a short four months from now - will be renominated as the Federal Reserve chairman.  This from an administration that is fighting two wars without a permanent Secretary of the Army. 

It will be interesting to see if his administration will continue to thrash about.  I doubt it - eventually even George W. Bush's ratings found a bottom despite his equally inept press relations.  To be fair, of course, Bush had the entire press corps out to get him.  

On the other hand, Obama clearly overerestimates that ability (if not the willingness) of his followers in the media to carry water for him.

Finally, thanks to T.Mo for keeping this site going in my absence.  It is much appreciated.

"Anything good that happens, I did that"

There is only one word that can now describe the Obama Administration’s policy on Iran:

Incoherent.

Okay, maybe another word comes to mind:

Idiotic.

For almost a fortnight, the people of Iran have faced down tear gas, beatings and bullets in an inspiring uprising against the brutal theocracy that has shackled them for 30 years.

The White House was caught totally off guard, and as the Posse amply documented last week, had almost nothing substantive to say.

As the chorus rose to at least match France’s level of moral stature, President Barack Obama spoke again. And again.

Yet there is still no clarity to be found. We stand with the people, but only in a non-interventionist, non-committal way. We deplore the violence, but fully recognize the government. We hate the sin, but will eat hot dogs with the sinners.

Perhaps the most stunning display of this tangled logic is this bit from the Washington Post quoted by Jonah Goldberg over on National Review:

Obama's approach to Iran, including his assertion that the unrest there represents a debate among Iranians unrelated to the United States, is an acknowledgment that a U.S. president's words have a limited ability to alter foreign events in real time and could do more harm than good. But privately Obama advisers are crediting his Cairo speech for inspiring the protesters, especially the young ones, who are now posing the most direct challenge to the republic's Islamic authority in its 30-year history.

One senior administration official with experience in the Middle East said, "There clearly is in the region a sense of new possibilities," adding that "I was struck in the aftermath of the president's speech that there was a connection. It was very sweeping in terms of its reach." [Emphasis added]

To review: The popular uprising is entirely something we had NOTHING TO DO WITH, but our president is quietly PROUD that it happened, but DON’T expect us to do anything to help.

Oh, and would the Supreme Leader’s ambassador like some relish with his American weenies?

(Goldberg has some choice words as well.  If you didn't click on the link before, do so now.)

Like the “jobs saved or created” formulation, the Obama White House is setting the stage to take credit for whatever happens, so long as it is good. If it is bad, hey, he had nothing to do with it.

What will be interesting to see is how a successor regime will treat the president if the people of Iran successfully overthrow the mullahs. I don’t expect there will be warm handshakes and smiles from this crowd after they’ve been hung out to dry so often over the last few days.

Long-time readers know that one of the things that really irritates me is how modern liberal “realists” are such colossal wimps. Realism, classically defined, is a set of assumptions about how the international system works.

“Realists” assume that states are run by rational actors who are trying to maximize the power an influence of their state.

One of the weaker criticisms of George W. Bush was that his administration was not run by “realists” but rather neocon idealogues. As a result, they screwed everything up.

But consider what the Obama realists have in mind: they want a grand bargain with a bloody, terrorist-sponsoring theocracy and the moment that government wobbles, they cease putting pressure on it.

This isn’t “realism,” its lunacy.

A true realist, a cool-headed, clear-eyed strategist, would look at the mullahs’ predicament and hammer them 24/7. If not by sending actual arms and advisors to train rebel forces, at least by stridently speaking out for the demonstrators – maybe offering billions in aid, diplomatic recognition, unfreezing assets – there are myriad things we can do for Iran in terms of development.

Would it be “meddling?” Hell yes! It would also be using our “soft power” to utterly destroy a regime that has been implacably hostile to us for 30 years. Otherwise, what the heck is the point of being a superpower?

A true realist would jump all over this situation.

Instead, our incoherent geniuses at State figure that some beans and brats will heal the fissure. This is realism?

Realists don’t figure out how to have picnics with their enemies, they DESTROY them. They can do this through open warfare or by undermining them at every turn. If you look at the great diplomats of history – Richelieu, Metternich, Bismarck – they were many words that you could use to describe them, but “squeamish” would not be one of them.

Ah, I can already sense the complaints – “But we need to have a moral foreign policy.” Fine. Let’s start with, oh, I don’t know, siding with people against a brutal theocracy that shoots girls in the street. Is that moral enough?

This bring us back to the incoherence. The Obama Administration is failing here, failing no matter how you want to score it. If they are trying to be brilliantly savvy and nuanced realists, they have blown it, big time.

A moral realist would have supported the people because it was the right thing to do.

An effective realist would have undermined the mullahs because they are geopolitical rivals.

A ruthless realist would have just sided with the mullahs from the get-go, told the people to go home, and offered diplomatic recognition of Iran in return for the nuke facility. I sometimes get the sense that Obama would like to do that, but doesn’t have the stomach for it.

So thus we have these contradictions, which mean we achieve nothing, go nowhere and broadcast to the world that we fear our enemies and cannot be counted on to help our ideological allies. Human rights are a bargaining chip that we will give up in exchange for a vague, non-committal IOU.

And none of it, of course, is Obama’s fault.