The Absurdity of Obama's Citizen of the World View

Defenders of the Bush administration point to the fact that we haven't been attacked since 9/11 as one of his best accomplishments. Now, it remains debateable how much of an accomplishment this is and how much this will help his legacy. It is of course beyond debate that we haven't been hit since 9/11.

Barack Obama sees the world in a different way. Regardless of their effectiveness, Barack Obama sees Bush's tough anti terror tactics as harming our world image. This, Obama sees, as much more damaging, Furthermore, he is either willing to risk American lives or he simply doesn't believe that any of these tactics saved lives. Now, it has long been established that Iyman Faris was stopped from blowing up the Brooklyn Bridge in part due to the terrorist surveillance program, or warrantless wiretaps. The U.S. received intelligence that the Brooklyn Bridge might be a target. The NSA began intercepting phone calls from Pakistan in which the words "Brooklyn Bridge" (which apparently doesn't translate) and eventually authorities were lead to Faris. In his place, they found plans for the bridge along with bomb making materials that experts later confirmed would have blown up the bridge.

It's also been widely reported that waterboarding eventually broke Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, mastermind of 9/11, and the information we received from him lead to a plethora of intelligence.

As such, if Obama thinks that these techniques didn't save lives, he is taking a massive risk with American lives. With that risk in play, it must be examined if appeasing world opinion is so important. Watching the current conflict in Gaza, world opinion is generally condemning of Israel. They call their response disproportionate and some even call it a genocide. World opinion would have us believe that terrorists can launch rockets at civilians at will and a Democracy should only be allowed to counter in some sort of tit for tat manner. The same world opinion called Ronald Reagan a cowboy right until the Berlin Wall came down. The same world opinion cheered on Neville Chamberlain while he sacrificed Czechoslovakia. To me, world opinion doesn't necessarily have much credibility.

In fact, world opinion has any aggressive counter terrorist action as out of bounds. There is a larger question. Who cares? Why is it so important that some French person on the street likes America? What Barack Obama will soon realize is that world opinion is with him as long as he does as the world wants. I know a lot of pretty girls like this. They love you as long as you shower them with adoration but as soon as you say something negative you are suddenly a leper.

More than that, world opinion doesn't necessarily translate into any geopolitical advantage. Does anyone believe that the French, Spanish and Germans will suddenly commit more troops and resources to the GWOT now that Barack Obama is President. The fact is that the world criticizes the U.S. until they need something and then they demand it. I also know a lot of pretty girls that act like that. To me, the idea of making foreign policy based on world opinion is ludicrous. The rest of the world does no heavy lifting. They simply do heavy criticizing. That's easy. They leave the difficult tasks to the U.S. That's just the nature of the beast when you are the world's only superpower. If that's the case, their opinion should mean absolutely nothing in determining policy especially when that policy puts lives in danger.

On top of all of this, countries that practice much more tolerant practices are not immune from attacks. No country is more tolerant of the Muslim world than France and yet that hasn't stopped multiple riots. The Netherlands is also tolerant but that didn't stop an islamist from killing Theo Van Gogh. Writers in Denmark are under constant threat of death because they dared to criticize the prophet Muhammad. Spain, Britain, Jordan, and the Phillipines have all been hit with terorist attacks. Most of these nations have criticized the U.S. for its own tough anti terror policies.

Finally, world opinion is one of those intangible things. When Barack Obama says that our image in the world has been harmed by Bush's anti terror tactics, that is awfully simplistic. The reality is that our critics are louder than our allies. In reality, Bush has gained plenty of allies despite, or maybe because of, his tough tactics. While most of Western Europe has criticized, most of the former Soviet Bloc has become much greater allies under his Presidency. The President has also secured the friendship of Colombia. Beyond that, his policies have created new allies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of course, those that scream about world opinion don't seem to notice these allies. If Barack Obama wants to be a world philanthropist, let him govern as a citizen of the world. Now that he is President of the U.S., I for one hope that world opinion plays little if any role in his decision making.

Barack Obama's Curious Latin American Philosophy

Yesterday, I pointed out a minor gaffe by Barack Obama regarding Hugo Chavez. In a speech on Latin America, Obama blamed Bush for the election of Hugo Chavez. Of course, Bush was still Governor of Texas in 1998 when Hugo Chavez was elected.

It turns out that this was not his biggest gaffe. Jake Tapper picks it up...

On Thursday Obama told the Orlando Sentinel that he would meet with Chavez and "one of the obvious high priorities in my talks with President Hugo Chavez would be the fermentation of anti-American sentiment in Latin America, his support of FARC in Colombia and other issues he would want to talk about."

OK, so a strong declaration that Chavez is supporting FARC, which Obama intends to push him on.

But then on Friday he said any government supporting FARC should be isolated.

"We will shine a light on any support for the FARC that comes from neighboring governments," he said in a speech in Miami. "This behavior must be exposed to international condemnation, regional isolation, and - if need be - strong sanctions. It must not stand."

So he will meet with the leader of a country he simultaneously says should
be isolated? Huh?

Here is how the campaign responded to the perceived inconsistency.

The Obama campaign says there's nothing unusual about proposing the isolation of a country at the same time a President talks about meeting with its country's leader. (The Obama campaign cites how the U.S. is talking to North Korea via the Six-Party talks as an example. Though it might be observed, those diplomatic efforts are quite different than a presidential-level meeting.)

Here is an excerpt of what Obama sees wrong with our Latin American policy and what he would do to resolve it.

Since the Bush Administration launched a misguided war in Iraq, its policy in the Americas has been negligent toward our friends, ineffective with our adversaries, disinterested in the challenges that matter in peoples’ lives, and incapable of advancing our interests in the region.

...

That is the record – the Bush record in Latin America – that John McCain has chosen to embrace. Senator McCain doesn’t talk about these trends in our hemisphere because he knows that it’s part of the broader Bush-McCain failure to address priorities beyond Iraq. The situation has changed in the Americas, but we’ve failed to change with it. Instead of engaging the people of the region, we’ve acted as if we can still dictate terms unilaterally. We have not offered a clear and comprehensive vision, backed up with strong diplomacy. We are failing to join the battle for hearts and minds. For far too long, Washington has engaged in outdated debates and stuck to tired blueprints on drugs and trade, on democracy and development -- even though they won’t meet the tests of the future.

...

It’s time for a new alliance of the Americas. After eight years of the failed policies of the past, we need new leadership for the future. After decades pressing for top-down reform, we need an agenda that advances democracy, security, and opportunity from the bottom up. So my policy towards the Americas will be guided by the simple principle that what’s good for the people of the Americas is good for the United States. That means measuring success not just through agreements among governments, but also through the hopes of the child in the favelas of Rio, the security for the policeman in Mexico City, and the answered cries of political prisoners heard from jails in Havana.


The first and most fundamental freedom that we must work for is political freedom. The United States must be a relentless advocate for democracy.

Now, my first question is what about the issue of free trade Senator. The so called "failed policies" that Obama refers to created one of the biggest trading alliances in the world in CAFTA. It is a free trade agreement so lucrative to Latin America that Barack Obama has blamed it for the declining job growth all over the heartland. Certainly, if it is that lucrative to our trading partners, the Bush administration hasn't been as the Senator proclaims

disinterested in the challenges that matter in peoples’ lives, and incapable of advancing our interests in the region.

If anything, he has been to interested in their challenges. So, interested in fact, that the Senator has seen it boomerang on our own economy. Obama's double talk continues...

Instead of engaging the people of the region, we’ve acted as if we can still dictate terms unilaterally.

Of course, CAFTA was agreed upon by more than ten nations, all of which are considered in Latin America (besides the U.S. itself), and yet Obama wants to renegotiate that agreement along with NAFTA. Who exactly is "dictating the terms unilaterally" here?

Furthermore, he refuses to allow the passage of our free trade agreement with Colombia. Colombia has bent over backwards to finalize the terms of this agreement. Furthermore, Colombia is a beacon of democracy and a counterweight to the leftists totalitarians in Venezuela, Bolovia, and Cuba in the region.

Barack Obama makes no mention of the importance of free trade for Latin America. I suppose he thinks that those impoverished nations can rise from third world status without access to the biggest market in the world.

Then, there is the gaffe in which he simultaneously says that Venezuela needs to be engaged and isolated. This is all part of a perverted geopolitical worldview that Obama has that sees engagement with our enemies while we punish our biggest allies where it hurts most...free trade.

Here's the thing that Obama doesn't seem to realize. Any one on one meeting with the likes of Hugo Chavez will have at its center for Chavez more free trade with the U.S. While Chavez may spew anti American vile, he does know where his proverbial bread is buttered, the U.S. market.

Bush Responsible for Chavez Coming to Power?

According to these comments Barack Obama, President Bush is responsible for the vacuum that lead to Hugo Chavez coming to power. Here is the relevant portion...

No wonder, then, that demagogues like Hugo Chavez have stepped into this vacuum. His predictable yet perilous mix of anti-American rhetoric, authoritarian government, and checkbook diplomacy offers the same false promise as the tried and failed ideologies of the past. But the United States is so alienated from the rest of the Americas that this stale vision has gone unchallenged, and has even made inroads from Bolivia to Nicaragua. And Chavez and his allies are not the only ones filling the vacuum. While the United States fails to address the changing realities in the Americas, others from Europe and Asia – notably China – have stepped up their own engagement. Iran has drawn closer to Venezuela, and just the other day Tehran and Caracas launched a joint bank with their windfall oil profits.

Of course, Chavez came to power in an election in 1998. I am reminded of the line by Tom Cruise' character in A Few Good Men

maybe if we work really hard, we can get Dawson (or in this case Bush) charged with the Kennedy assassination

I think if the Democrats work really hard soon they can get their followers at least to believe the Kennedy assassination is Bush's fault as well. I suppose that face to face meetings with Chavez and rejecting free trade deals with friends in the region like Colombia is the way to make sure that tyrants like Chavez don't come to power.

Uribe Acts: Pelosi Allayed?

(Hat Tip to Gateway Pundit)

According to the WSJ, Colombia has just taken more decisive action to confront the drug lords that have been decimating that country for years.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's main excuse for trying to kill the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is that Colombian President Álvaro Uribe winks at atrocities by his country's illegal paramilitary groups. The charge has always been false, and yesterday Mr. Uribe proved it by extraditing 14 "para" leaders to the U.S.

The 14 include major paramilitary leaders who have been engaged in a long struggle against FARC terrorists. Mr. Uribe has been fighting the FARC even as he has tried to reduce violence by the "paras," who have sometimes been complicit in killing trade unionists. The 14 have been serving time in Colombian prisons for various offenses and are wanted in the U.S. for drug trafficking. They had been arrested under a Justice and Peace law that allowed them to avoid extradition if they agreed to certain conditions.

But Mr. Uribe said yesterday that the 14 had failed to honor those commitments, which included compensating their victims. The popular two-term president said some of them were continuing to run criminal gangs from prison, and so they were put on Drug Enforcement Agency aircraft for the flight to face trial in the U.S.

The tone of the WSJ article as well as the Gateway Pundit piece that I found it through is quite cynical. Neither source expects anything to change regarding the free trade deal. I don't disagree. Pelosi's insistence that Colombia wasn't doing enough to confront its criminal element was always a trojan horse. Anyone that has been following the transformation in Colombia since Uribe has taken over knows full well that he will one day be their George Washington. What he has done in that country is truly remarkable and the stats speak for themselves. Anyone who has followed to evolution of this trade deal knows full well that Pelosi has sold out our biggest ally in the Western Hemisphere in order to pander to the unions. I welcome anyone to debate me on that issue if they think I am wrong.

I would rather focus on something nearly as important. The fourteen that have been extradited are really bad guys. They make their livings trafficking drugs that ultimately wind up killing lots of folks, and then use those profits to commit acts of terror both in Colombia and elsewhere. Now, they will face their day of justice in an American court.

Whether or not this will lead to the trade deal being consummated is one issue. The fact that these folks are heading toward justice is a good thing either way.

Political Gamesmanship on Colombian Free Trade

Ever since witnessing Democratic Texas lawmakers walk out of session and wind up in Oklahoma to avoid being arrested in the political version of a Mexican stand off with Tom Delay over redistricting in the early part of this century, I have loathed almost all forms of political gamesmanship. I am in a minority of Conservatives that applauded the gang of 14 because I believe that it averted another round of political gamesmanship over judges.

We are now either at the end or in the middle of another round of political gamesmanship over the Colombian free trade deal. The President used an obscure tactic last week in order to force the House to vote on the trade pact within 90 days. The House Speaker unwilling to hold the vote announced this week that she would simply change the rules and thus avoid having the vote. It is unclear if President Bush has anymore cards to play however it is a shame that Colombian trade had to come to this.

On any rational level expanding free trade with Colombia is frankly a no brainer. First, we already have extended free trade with Colombia and currently it is almost entirely our exports that get hurt. There continue to be large tariffs on many of our goods that would be eliminated with this agreement. Trade with Colombia amounts to only about 20 billion dollars yearly. Thus, it will have negligible affect on our economy either way.

Where the free trade agreement is vital is on a geo political level. President Uribe of Colombia has done a remarkable job of taking on rebels and drug lords and the country has been transformed in little more than a decade. Most importantly, the Colombian government has become not only our biggest ally in the region but a fierce rival and counter weight to Hugo Chavez and his coalition (including Bolivia and Nicaragua)

The Colombian economy has transformed itself while Uribe has taken on the drug lords. On the other hand, the Colombian economy is still fragile and without real economic expansion most of the folks will be lured back into the hands of the drug lords. Without an open U.S. market, it makes economic expansion in Colombia that much more difficult. Thus, this trade deal is vital to sustaining many of the gains that Uribe has created. If the Colombians aren't able to import flowers and coffee, they will import cocaine and heroin.

Furthermore, it is shameful for the Democrats to scream about a new kind of foreign policy and then close trade to most of our neighbors and allies. A new kind of foreign policy is nothing but empty rhetoric if those same folks aren't able to stand up to the all powerful unions and allow free trade agreements that are vital to most of our allies. Our geopolitical position is entirely compromised if our politicians bow down to unions over our allies. This sort of partisan political power play winds up with real geopolitical consequences and it is time for it to end.

Bush Doubles Down on Trade With Colombia

Among our allies few are more important or underappreciated than Colombia. That's because its President Alvaro Uribe has done a miraculous job in turning around a country ruled by drug lords when he took over. While there is still plenty of work left to do there, what Uribe has accomplished in his term is transformational not only internally, but in the region and the world. Yet the fragile gains are easily wasted if the country doesn't see some economic benefit from his tough stance on corruption. There is only so long that folks will want to go straight if they don't see an economic benefit. That is why a trade pact, lingering in the legislature for several years, is so vital not only economically but geopolitically.

This week President Bush doubled down on this trade pact now in limbo.

Rarely have we seen Bush go for broke as he did Wednesday, sending word he'd make Congress take a stand on the Colombia pact. For two years, Congress has dithered about its passage, constantly changing the terms of approval, and in the end just stalling because most members can't justify openly scuppering it.

But Bush called their bluff. "Time is running out," he said in an address to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, "and we must not allow delay to turn into inaction."
Wise words, because America's economy and strategic interests have been held hostage to partisan politics for too long.

There's no good reason not to pass the Colombia pact. Colombia is our best ally in the hemisphere and, coming up from a long war, has a sharply improving democracy and human rights record. "No nation has ever improved as this one has," drug czar John Walters said in a recent interview with IBD.

Right now it's under threat from FARC, an al-Qaida-like transnational terrorist gang bankrolled with $300 million from Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Both FARC and Chavez fear the prosperity and the American alliance that will come of this treaty.

While much of the dynamics has to do with mind numbing legislative maneuvers, the bottom line is that Bush is calling out the Democrats in a bold attempt to get this pact passed. Colombia can become a counter balance to anti American leftists in Bolivia and Venezuela, but that will only come if the political reforms that Uribe has started are followed by an economic awakening. If the economy doesn't prosper over the next several years, the folks will wind up right back in the arms of FARC and the other drug lords. This trade pact could play a vital role in that and Bush knows it. This maneuver seems destined for failure and so I hope that Bush has something up his sleeve. The situation remains fluid and I will follow.