Here Is Something The Left Can Blame On Bush, But They Will Not

     During the lead-up to the Iraq invasion in March of 2003, the longest and most telegraphed lead-up ever, George W. Bush succumbed to the false sense of amour against criticism that he thought including the "international community" would bring him. If the Germans had as much notice about Normandy as Saddam Hussein had about the U.S. invasion of his country, France, along with most of Europe would have been ceded to Adolf Hitler in World War II.
     The long and slow germination of the seeds of war in 2003, done to curry favor with the "international community", allowed Saddam to move his weapons of mass destruction, presumably to Syria where they now have become a thorn in the side of both the United States and the "international community." Furthermore, President Bush failed to curry favor with the very "international community" he allowed to affect U.S. foreign policy. In fact, he was savaged for the rest of his term as president by the very people whose sensibilities he had taken great pains to mollify. But I do not blame the former President, at the time, I too thought it was a good idea to exhaust all diplomatic remedies before attacking militarily.
     I now see how flaccid and ineffectual the United Nations and the rest of the so-called "international community" are and that they can not be counted upon to make lucid decisions or engage in moral actions as they relate to human rights or the stability and security of any region of the world. This lesson was sorely lacking from my own curriculum, but should not have been from the former president's, who had the opportunity to witness the complete and utter bumbling incompetence of the United Nations up close and personal for years. First as the son of a two-term Vice President of the United States and one term President and then as a newly elected President himself.
     Had President Bush not given Saddam Hussein the time to move his chemical weapons to Syria, the current President could not have made his now infamous "red line" statement. Sans the "red line" statement by President Obama and the clown-like antics of his Secretary of State, Vladimir Putin and the Russians would not have had this opportunity to reduce American influence in a very strategic part of the world, and in the process make the United States of America look foolish and irrelevant.
     I suppose of all the things for which the Left tries to blame President Bush, I have never heard them say that because he did not invade Iraq sooner and prevent the movement of Saddam's weapons, President Obama was made to look like a fool. I am not holding my breath that I will ever hear such an admission from anyone on the Left, because to do so would destroy the fragile little fantasy world they have constructed from lies. Lies that include, but are not limited to, Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, their intellects are superior to common sense and rational thought and that Barack Obama possesses an acumen for world diplomacy that no other world leader can match. The Leftist world must be lonely and cold without the comfort and warmth of truth and reality.    
    

It Is Deja Vu All Over Again

     This past weekend, the United States and Russia reached an agreement on the Syrian chemical weapons stash. The details of the deal are a far cry from the administration's position just a week ago on "punishing" Assad for using chemical weapons on his own people. And it certainly is nowhere close to the administration's previous insistence that Bashar Al Assad must be removed as the leader of Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry said the deal would "verify, verify, verify" that Bashar Al Assad's chemical weapons stash was destroyed, but he did not say how that was to be accomplished.
     There was some mention of United Nations inspectors, sanctions and empty threats of "further action" if Assad violated the terms of the sketchy agreement. At this point the "deal" sounds much like the "deal" made with Saddam Hussein after the first gulf war which lead to a decade of obfuscation and downright deceit from the Iraqi leader. It also lead to the Russians selling United Nations contraband items to Iraq against the sanctions that were supposedly in place.
     The "deal" does provide Bashar Al Assad with a week to formulate a list of what weapons he has, quantities of such weapons and locations. I am completely confident that old Bashar will be totally forthright and honest when compiling this list (he says with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek). This list is eerily similar to a list that was required of Saddam Hussein about his weapons of mass destruction. Remember the thousand pages of gibberish Saddam handed over to the UN and the international community? The data dump included everything from popular Iraqi recipes to the shoe sizes of every person in the Hussein government. Unfortunately it was a little light on information about his WMDs. I would not expect Assad's list to be so blatantly disrespectful of the process, however I am not naïve enough to believe that he will reveal everything about everything as it relates to his chemical weapons.
     This "deal", hatched by the Russians and Assad to lure the United States into the trap of allowing the "international community" to orchestrate our foreign policy, makes our president and his administration look like a bunch of rubes in a high stakes poker game with professional card players. It is exemplary of the mistaken view that the Left has about our adversaries like Russia. Barack Obama, and the rest of the Left intelligentsia, see diplomacy as conflict resolution, while Vladimir Putin and the Russians see it as part of their asymmetric warfare strategy.
     I learned this lesson my freshman year of high school from one of my teachers. At the time, President Carter was giving away the farm in the now infamous SALT talks with the Russians. My wise teacher told the class that the Soviets (for you younger readers, that was what Russia was known as back in the days before they "got religion") had different definitions of words and that the United States must understand that going into any negotiations with them. He also said that their ultimate goal was domination and the spread of Communism, and deception was a perfectly legitimate vehicle for achieving that objective.
     Putting aside the tremendous boost this "deal" gives the Russian's prestige and influence in the Middle East and the deflation of American influence, it will have the effect of giving new life to the Assad regime and bolster his status as a legitimate player in the high stakes contest of world diplomacy. A contest in which President Obama and his buffoonish Secretary of State were just bluffed out of the biggest pot in recent history by a former KGB colonel holding a pair of deuces.   

The Dance Band On The Titanic

     It is said that the dance band on the Titanic played Nearer My God to Thee on the deck of the gargantuan ship as it sank into the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Some accounts even have the musicians on the ill-fated ship playing their instruments, seemingly oblivious to the rising waters that engulfed and finally drowned them. I am reminded of those musicians as I watch the stock market continue to climb higher among the rising waters of almost non-existent Gross Domestic Product growth, employment continuing to deteriorate, a government that prints 85 billion dollars a month to buy its own debt, a record hundred million people on some sort of government assistance, instability in the Middle East threatening to boil over into a regional war that may include the United States and a federal government that seems completely incapacitated by fear and incompetence.
     And yet, with the dire economic conditions engulfing our country, threatening to break apart the hull of our republic as surely as the frigid waters of the North Atlantic broke apart the hull of the Titanic, the market mavens continue to play their instruments as if nothing is wrong. But they are not playing Nearer My God To Thee, the tune they are bellowing on this sinking ship is Money For Nothing. And as long as they have a friend at the Federal Reserve in the person of Ben Bernanke, they can continue to play that song right up until the point that this nation's fiscal head disappears under the icy waters of economic realities, which are sure to make an appearance in the not-to-distant future.
     The problem with Ben Bernanke printing 85 billion dollars a month and using it to buy Treasury bonds for the purpose of keeping rates on those bonds historically low to drive money into stocks to keep them artificially high, is that at some point he will have to stop buying and start selling. And with no signs of the actual economic health of the country improving, and actually worsening when  ObamaCare is fully implemented, the money that Mr. Bernanke will be pulling out of the economy through his selling will not only collapse the market, but the economy at large. Unfortunately the people who will be hurt the worse are the middle-class and the working poor, who will lose employment and wealth from their retirement accounts.
     I recall, toward the beginning of the Obama regime, then Secretary of  the Treasury, Timothy "tax cheat" Geithner, told the Chinese that the United States was not and will not monetize its debt with the printing of dollars to buy its own bonds. Of course that is exactly what the administration was doing and has continued to do, only the last couple of years they have labeled it "Quantitative Easing." The stimulative effect that this monetizing of federal debt was suppose to have on the economy, has only served to stimulate the stock market. QE has become just another grand academic exercise imposed on the free market by people who never spent a single day actually working in that free market. The men responsible for the coming collapse, like Mr. Bernanke, will knock over the women and children as they lunge for the limited life boats that will take them to the safety of high-paying jobs in academia and in future administrations. And the rest of us will be the musicians on the deck of Titanic playing Whipping Post.

Whip Me, Beat Me, Make Me Vote Democrat !

     Recently, the largest labor union in the country, the AFL-CIO, put pen to paper and wrote a searing rebuke of ObamaCare, the law they helped ram through the United States Congress. Who would have thought that the union thugs that syphon members' dues to support their lavish lifestyles actually could write. It is hard to say whether or not the union leadership knew that ObamaCare would cause their members' premiums to skyrocket and their choices in health care to be virtually eliminated when they were using their thug tactics to help pass the law, but that is the result it has had. And it has not yet been fully implemented.
     Union leadership was OK with ObamaCare as long as it was only imposed on the great unwashed non-union workers in this country. But now that they have found out that their health care benefits will be lessened in quality and increased in cost, they are throwing a conniption. The AFL-CIO's protestations will not change the hearts of those law makers they think they have in their pockets, because those politicians value their Leftist ideology more than their union constituents. Besides, no matter how badly Democrat policies may affect union workers, their dues will still be syphoned to Democrat campaign coffers and union thugs will continue to organize their own brand of violent love-ins for Democrat politicians.
     In fact, the union constituency is much the same as other factions of the Democrat voting base, i.e., they have bought the myths and lies about Republicants and will never vote for them, no matter how badly the Democrats treat them. And treat them badly they do. Everyone of the Democrat constituency groups have done worse under the Obama administration than under the previous administration of George W. Bush. And Mr. Obama has been truly blessed to implement everything he has wanted to, and things have gotten worse for blacks, single women, Hispanics and yes, even union members. But Democrats know they can count on the votes of these groups, so they can continue to implement policies that are not in their best interest or the best interest of the country.
     The psychology behind these Democrat constituency groups continuing to vote Democrat, no matter how badly they are treated by Democrat politicians, is much the same psychology that motivates a woman to stay with an abusive man. The only difference is that the Democrat constituency groups seem to be willing participants in their own abuse. The AFL-CIO's blind allegiance to supporting ObamaCare when they thought it would not affect them, and their continued support of the Democrats who they now realize have cut their hours and given them inferior health benefits, it just one of many examples of the willing participation of Democrat constituencies in their own abuse.

The Strategy Of The Smart People

     I have recently heard some supposedly smart people, who call themselves Conservatives, suggest that the best course of action for congressional Republicants to take with regards to ObamaCare is to do nothing. These political pontificators, whose intelligence is matched only by their naivete, hold the belief that with all the problems recently brought to light with the implementation of ObamaCare, it will become the train wreck that Democrat Senator Max Baucus predicted it would be. And this will cause congressional Democrats to throw up their hands and surrender their dream of a single-payer, government-run health care system without the Republicants firing a single shot.
     This misguided theory, held by otherwise intelligent people on the Right, has a flaw, it depends on the will of Democrats in Congress to do what is best for the country. It is almost as if these folks on the Right making these dire predictions for ObamaCare that consist of no Republicant involvement, still do not understand who Barack Obama and the hard Left are and the confiscatory, authoritarian ideology that drives what they do. Just to remind the smart people on my side of the aisle of what the object of the ObamaCare exercise is all about, it is to destroy private insurance so a new government edifice can be built in its place.
     The chaos of ObamaCare implementation was baked into the cake even before the law was committed to paper and rammed through Congress in a way that made the Founding Fathers roll over in their graves. The chaos created by the law mitigates commercial insurance involvement the further down the road of implementation the law travels. Recently there have been private insurance companies that  have stopped providing health care policies in certain areas of the country. The reason is the new law's virtual moratorium on health insurance profit. Aetna of New Hampshire comes to mind, and do not fool yourself into thinking there will not be more.
     I fail to understand how anyone, knowing that a single-payer, government-run health care system has been the goal of Leftists in and out of government for decades, can believe that that dream is going to be abandon simply because of implementation problems. Furthermore, I do not know why the smart people on the Right can be so obtuse about the intended chaos of implementation, when Barack Obama has publicly stated that his ultimate goal is a single-payer, government-run system. Connecting the dots would lead one to realize that in order for that dream to come to fruition, private health insurers must be driven away from providing health insurance policies. No folks, I think ObamaCare is here to stay because the Democrats and their Leftist ideology will ensure its survival, and those on the Right who are in a position to stop it have decided to let it stop itself. Sort of like driving your car toward a cliff at a hundred miles an hour and depending on someone to build a bridge before you reach the edge. This is the strategy of the smart people.

What Is The Deal With The Russian Deal ?

     A couple of days ago, President Obama was deep into the bribery, arm-twisting and intimidation of trying to get the votes in Congress to give him cover to do some wrist-slapping in Syria with a couple of United States' missiles. Many experts were pontificating at how fragile and unstable the situation in Syria had become, and no matter what the U.S. did, it could bubble over into a regional conflict that would involve Israel and the United States in a full-fledged, boots-on-the-ground war. And then like magic, Vladimir Putin stepped out from behind the Iron Curtain to broker a deal that would save the day, and more importantly, Barack Obama's need to be a leader.
     There are several questions I have about the so-called Russian deal. First, who comprises the "International Community" to whom Assad is supposedly handing over his chemical weapons for safe keeping? Secondly, how does this yet-to-be-named group, called "The International Community" verify that any weapons Bashar places in their custody are all the chemical weapons he has and that he is not holding any back for future use? Third, are the chemical weapons in the hands of the Al Qaeda-lead rebels to be handed over to "The International Community" as well, or proof be shown that they do not have chemical weapons?
     The motivation for the Russians' deal-making is two-fold, one is to keep their debtor, Syria, from becoming a parking lot and therefore being even less likely to repay the Russian debt. And two, this "deal" is the perfect opportunity to drain even more power from the United States with respects to its influence in the Middle East. The cost of the Russians forcing Bashar Al Assad (the proxy of the Russian's proxy Iran) to "part" with his chemical weapons is most likely the fulfillment of Barack Obama's promise made before last year's election. Remember when he told Russian President, Medvedev, that he should transmit a message to Putin that after the U.S. election, Mr. Obama would have more flexibility in reducing the United States nuclear arsenal? One does not have to be a genius to figure out that Barack Obama's newly found flexibility will be the vehicle with which he will repay Putin for saving him the messiness of military intervention in Syria.
     The solace and downright exuberance over the Russian deal is exemplary of the willful blindness on the Left to believe that everyone, especially Communists, have only good and pure intentions. Russia is not brokering this deal to be magnanimous humanitarians, but because of their ulterior motives. People, especially on the Left, forget that ever since Ronald Reagan defeated the Soviet Union in the cold war in the 1980s, they have been working hard to be a fly in our ointment. Their non-support of the Iraq invasion, not on any moral or diplomatic basis, but because Russia had continued to trade with Saddam Hussein in violation of United Nations' sanctions, is just one recent example. Does anyone on the Left or the Right really think Bashar Al Assad would have jumped so quickly at this deal had it come from anyone else? Our leaders would do well to look this Russian gift horse right in the mouth and say, "No thank you."

The Incredible Credibility Argument

     One of the main reasons given by its supporters on both the Left and the Right for missile strikes in Syria, is to save the credibility of the United States and President Obama. The theory goes that since President Obama spoke about chemical weapons being used in Syria as a red line that would change his "calculus" for intervention, the U.S. is on this runaway freight train and can not get off. Even though last week, President Obama un-spoke the "red line" comment. It is fascinating to watch a media, that five years ago was anti-military intervention anywhere, now salivating to "punish" the Assad regime with missiles that are etched with the name of the great avenger, Barack Hussein Obama. Oddly enough, President Obama has said that his credibility is not at risk, taking away the core reason that has been given by the media and other pro-intervention types.
     President Obama's statement that claimed everyone in the world has their credibility at risk , even America, and his remains unchallenged, shows not only how disconnected the President is from any semblance of a coherent foreign policy, but from his own country as well. He is somehow outside America and above the human frailty of having one's credibility called into question. The President, as well as the supporters of military intervention in Syria, forget that credibility is not won or loss by a single event or decision, it is developed over time, with the aggregation of many decisions and actions. Barack Obama can not risk his own credibility because he has none, and he can not risk America's credibility because she has an almost 240 year history from which her coffers of credibility have been supplied.
     Some of the very same people that said our nation's credibility was at risk of being destroyed with military intervention in Iraq, are now saying that that same credibility is in peril if we do not militarily intercede in Syria. In Iraq, we faced a dictator who had already invaded his neighbor and threatened the free flow of oil that is vital to the world's economy. Bashar Al Assad, as brutal a dictator as he is, has never engaged in either of the previously mentioned behaviors. And now the President, who was elected to "end wars, not start them," has not only allowed U.S. foreign policy to be determined by statements he made and then unmade, but has looked like a petulant child with his exclusion of his own credibility from the massive risk pool he has helped create.
     Not only has the President's credibility been shattered with the American people, but around the world with our allies and enemies alike. The mantel of leadership waits to be lifted and employed, but Barack Obama does not possess the credible strength to take it upon himself, this is to the great peril of the United States and the world.