Nobel Peace Prize Cheaped?

tac wrote:AD cheaping political discussion by quoting Charlie Sheen . . .

tac wrote:FWIW, I think Obama's attitude toward muslims, his attempts to marginalize Al Qaeda and others within the muslim community as a whole is something that was very necessary and cold bring many important victories in the coming years . . . that, and his notion of "speaking to his enemies" rather than just threatening to bomb the shite out of them, spells a tremmendous change in international relations . . . but then again, what the fark would I know . . .

tac wrote:AD, marginalizing Al Qaeda puts them at odds with maintream muslims and can turn moderate muslims into an active tool against them in the countries that have hitherto been more supportive of them . . . that is not something that happened during 8 years of Bush in which pretty much muslims were lumped into the same bag and spurious connections between various muslim groups and Al Qaeda were widely promoted in an attempt to further push the Bush-Neocon agenda.

Allan D wrote:

tac wrote:AD, marginalizing Al Qaeda puts them at odds with maintream muslims and can turn moderate muslims into an active tool against them in the countries that have hitherto been more supportive of them . . . that is not something that happened during 8 years of Bush in which pretty much muslims were lumped into the same bag and spurious connections between various muslim groups and Al Qaeda were widely promoted in an attempt to further push the Bush-Neocon agenda.

On the contrary, isn't that precisely what happened with the "Sunni Awakening" in Iraq which Petraeus used, along with the troop surge, to 'marginalize' Al-Qaeda there?

tac wrote:Fair enough, AD, we can agree to differ.


With regard to Iraqi elections . .you can see already that the US-funded militias who were part of the "Awakening" have already threatened to overthrow election results in various areas citing voter fraud . . . you just can't arm militants and give them a license to kill, then hope they will be good little boys once the job is done . . .

Democracy is not a harlot to be picked up in the streets by anyone with a tommy gun

Does Obama Believe in Human Rights?

Human rights "interfere" with President Obama's campaign against climate change

By BRET STEPHENS

Wall Street Journal - 19-10-09

Nobody should get too hung up over President Obama's decision, reported by Der Spiegel over the weekend, to cancel plans to attend next month's 20th anniversary celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Germany's reunited capital has already served his purposes; why should he serve its?

To this day, the fall of the Berlin Wall on the night of Nov. 9, 1989, remains a high-water mark in the march of human freedom. It's a march to which candidate Obama paid rich (if solipsistic) tribute in last year's big Berlin speech. "At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning—his dream—required the freedom and opportunity promised by the West," waxed Mr. Obama to the assembled thousands. "This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom."

And the walls came tumbling down. Berlin, 1989.

Those were the words. What's been the record?

China: In February, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton landed in Beijing with a conciliating message about the country's human-rights record. "Our pressing on those [human-rights] issues can't interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis," she said.

In fact, there has been no pressing whatsoever on human rights. President Obama refused to meet with the Dalai Lama last month, presumably so as not to ruffle feathers with the people who will now be financing his debts. In June, Liu Xiaobo, a leading signatory of the pro-democracy Charter 08 movement, was charged with "inciting subversion of state power." But as a U.S. Embassy spokesman in Beijing admitted to the Journal, "neither the White House nor Secretary Clinton have made any public comments on Liu Xiaobo."

Sudan: In 2008, candidate Obama issued a statement insisting that "there must be real pressure placed on the Sudanese government. We know from past experience that it will take a great deal to get them to do the right thing. . . . The U.N. Security Council should impose tough sanctions on the Khartoum government immediately."

Exactly right. So what should Mr. Obama do as president? Yesterday, the State Department rolled out its new policy toward Sudan, based on "a menu of incentives and disincentives" for the genocidal Sudanese government of Omar Bashir. It's the kind of menu Mr. Bashir will languidly pick his way through till he dies comfortably in his bed.

Iran: Mr. Obama's week-long silence on Iran's "internal affairs" following June's fraudulent re-election was widely noted. Not so widely noted are the administration's attempts to put maximum distance between itself and human-rights groups working the Iran beat.

Earlier this year, the State Department denied a grant request for New Haven, Conn.-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. The Center maintains perhaps the most extensive record anywhere of Iran's 30-year history of brutality. The grant denial was part of a pattern: The administration also abruptly ended funding for Freedom House's Gozaar project, an online Farsi- and English-language forum for discussing political issues.

It's easy to see why Tehran would want these groups de-funded and shut down. But why should the administration, except as a form of pre-emptive appeasement?

Burma: In July, Mr. Obama renewed sanctions on Burma. In August, he called the conviction of opposition leader (and fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner) Aung San Suu Kyi a violation of "the universal principle of human rights."

Yet as with Sudan, the administration's new policy is "engagement," on the theory that sanctions haven't worked. Maybe so. But what evidence is there that engagement will fare any better? In May 2008, the Burmese junta prevented delivery of humanitarian aid to the victims of Cyclone Nargis. Some 150,000 people died in plain view of "world opinion," in what amounted to a policy of forced starvation.

Leave aside the nausea factor of dealing with the authors of that policy. The real question is what good purpose can possibly be served in negotiations that the junta will pursue only (and exactly) to the extent it believes will strengthen its grip on power. It takes a remarkable presumption of good faith, or perhaps stupidity, to imagine that the Burmas or Sudans of the world would reciprocate Mr. Obama's engagement except to seek their own advantage.

It also takes a remarkable degree of cynicism—or perhaps cowardice—to treat human rights as something that "interferes" with America's purposes in the world, rather than as the very thing that ought to define them. Yet that is exactly the record of Mr. Obama's time thus far in office.

In Massachusetts not long ago, I found myself driving behind a car with "Free Tibet," "Save Darfur," and "Obama 08" bumper stickers. I wonder if it will ever dawn on the owner of that car that at least one of those stickers doesn't belong.

DJ_Smerk wrote:I must appear really stupid, because I don't really understand much of what was just written.

tac wrote:We can always rely on AD to spout the latest GOP talking points . . .

Does Anyone Know Barack Obama?

By Richard Cohen

If, as the saying goes, the perfect is the enemy of the good, then Barack Obama is his own worst enemy. That becomes clear in the upcoming HBO documentary "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama," which is the product of many months of behind-the-scenes access to Obama during the presidential campaign. It reveals -- you will be surprised to learn -- that Barack Obama is pretty close to the most perfect person you will never get to know.

This is what he does not do in the course of the primary and general election campaigns: He does not lose his temper. He does not curse. He does not follow a pretty woman with his eyes or sneak a smoke. He does not dress sloppily. He is always calm and always good-natured and gets emotional only once -- the day his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, the woman who in effect raised him, died in Hawaii. At a campaign event in North Carolina he expressed his love and gratitude. He cried and, watching, I did, too.

I cried also at the very end of the documentary when African-Americans at one of the final campaign events cried at the imminence or the reality of his victory. But election night in this documentary is anti-climactic -- a contained, pallid fizz of emotion. Usually, a picture is worth a thousand words. These pictures, mainly of Obama's closest aides, have nothing to say. If these aides have a sense of history, they were keeping it to themselves.

What's striking about this inside look at Obama is how being inside gets you nowhere. It is virtually the same as being outside. What's also striking about this movie is its lack of arc. Obama is always golden, always going to win and always does. His issue, if it can be called that, is himself. He is something new, something young, something biracial and something black, but he is not something from a political or ideological constituency. He is adored by his fans -- the directors, Amy Rice and Alicia Sams, included -- not for something he's done, but rather for something he is. So far, that has been a weakness in Obama's presidency.

Obama's lack of a bonded -- as opposed to an associative -- constituency is costing him. The political left is carping because it cannot be sure he is one of them. The right carps also but it alone knows that Obama is not one of them. He doesn't go way back with the unions -- he doesn't go way back with anything -- and the Jews are having second thoughts.

In a conventional movie, the hero has to change. Something has to happen -- the moment when character is revealed. Maybe he loses the girl and has to get her back. In politics, something similar is supposed to happen. You've got to have your PT 109, your Sunrise at Campobello, your walk on the beach with Billy Graham, your combat epiphany in Vietnam, your impoverished childhood, your peanut-farming family, your mission work abroad, your haberdashery that goes bankrupt.

Obama has those moments -- abandoned by his father, biracial in a world that prefers things neat, raised in Indonesia -- but they are not cited as life-changing events. None of them, at any rate, are given much importance in the documentary. Even the bitter primary fight with Hillary Clinton -- all that ugly stuff about race and Bill Clinton, of all people, being accused of playing the race card -- could have been happening to someone else. Obama observes his own life. He's not a participant. He calls Hillary to congratulate her on some insignificant win. "Bye bye," he says without bitterness as he snaps his phone shut. He could have been talking to anyone.

Does any of this matter, or is it merely interesting -- themes for a columnist ducking Afghanistan for yet another week? I am not sure. If Obama ends the deepest recession since the Great Depression, if he enacts health care reform, if he succeeds in Afghanistan, then his presidency will have been remarkable, maybe even great -- the triumph of intellect. The man will be his own movement.

But if he fails in all or most of that, it will be because it is not enough to be the smartest person in the room. Warmth and commitment matter, too -- a driving sense of conviction, the fulsome embrace of causes and not just issues. That is not something Obama has yet shown. See the movie.

Bradman wrote:So bending over willingly to be farked in the arse is nom worthy?