Bloodthirsty Liberal

You can take the communism out of Russia and China—but evidently you can’t take out the communists!

After four years of Dmitry Medvedev keeping the czar’s throne warm, Vladimir Putin is once again Russia’s president. There were no public celebrations to accompany Mr. Putin’s inauguration on May 7. Quite the opposite. Moscow’s streets had been cleared by a huge security presence; the city turned into a ghost town. This scene came the day after massive protests showed that the Russian middle class rejects Mr. Putin’s bid to become their president for life. With no independent legislature or judiciary at our disposal, Mr. Putin’s impeachment will have to take place in the streets.

Meanwhile, this modern czar is using the full power of the state to stamp out Russia’s growing democracy movement. Two young movement leaders, Alexei Navalny and Sergei Udaltsov, were arrested on May 6 and are still in jail on 15-day sentences. They’ve been charged with “violently resisting arrest,” even though several videos of the arrest show Mr. Navalny with his hands in the air shouting, “Don’t resist! Don’t resist!”

Naturally, the court has forbidden the admission of any video evidence in the case. It is possible that a criminal case will be added against them for “inciting mass violence”—Kremlin code for a political trial.

A similar case in St. Petersburg has even grimmer overtones of KGB repression. Activists of the Other Russia coalition were recently charged with “extremist activity” based on the testimony of agents and informants all in the employ of the Interior Ministry. Their crime is officially described as organizing “public events focused on inciting hatred toward high leaders of state authority”—just the sort of phrase that sends chills down the spine of anyone born behind the Iron Curtain.

We’ve covered China plenty, so this is Russia’s turn. The writer, Garry Kasparov, is a leading human rights figure in Russia—and a former world chess champion (probably the best player since Bobby Fischer’s insanity overtook his brilliance). He doesn’t like the look of the endgame.

The American reaction to the protests and the Putin regime’s vicious response to them was not long in coming. On May 8, with security forces still clearing the streets and raiding cafes, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave an interview with CNN that made the Obama administration’s position frightfully clear. In a phrase that quickly became infamous here, Mrs. Clinton said she hoped “Russia will be able to continue democratizing” during Mr. Putin’s new term.

The 12 years of Putin rule have marked a steady slide away from democracy in every way, so what message was this outrageous statement intended to convey? Are Russians still supposed to act grateful that we no longer live under Brezhnev or Stalin? Or is this the Obama administration’s way of telling Mr. Putin to carry on, that matters of human rights and democracy are safely off the table as long as NATO can use Russian territory for Afghanistan supply lines?

The myth that Russia and the U.S. have a mutually useful strategic partnership has been promoted by the Americans for years, but the fiction is becoming harder to maintain. Mr. Putin abruptly canceled his trip to the G-8 summit at Camp David and will instead make the first foreign excursion of his new term to the unalloyed dictatorship of Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus.

Let me say what Kasparov will not (doubtless out of civility): the Obama administration is a… no, I can’t say it either. I would instead observe that what Putin did was a kick in the ‘nads—but we are ‘nad-less.

And not just Hillary. Let me offer Andrew Breitbart’s $100,000 for any, ahem, hard evidence that anyone in this administration has a pair.

PS: I didn’t know that Putin had bailed on the G-8 summit to go to Belarus instead. Has the media covered the story and its implications?

A blog I read from time to time, Arlene [Kushner] in Israel, twigged me to this story:

The United States ambassador to Spain recently met with a group of Muslim immigrants in one of the most Islamized neighborhoods of Barcelona to apologize for American foreign policymaking in the Middle East.

U.S. Ambassador Alan Solomont told Muslims assembled at the town hall-like meeting in the heart of Barcelona’s old city that the United States is not an “enemy of Islam” and that U.S. President Barack Obama wants to improve America’s image in the Middle East as quickly as possible by closing the “dark chapters” of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.

“There are things that the United States has done badly,” Solomont said at the February 28 gathering organized by a non-profit organization called the Cultural, Educational and Social Association of Pakistani Women. “But now the Obama government wants to improve relations with Muslims,” he promised.

…

The U.S. State Department — working through American embassies and consulates in Europe — has been stepping-up its efforts to establish direct contacts with largely unassimilated Muslim immigrant communities in towns and cities across Europe.

Proponents of Obama’s approach to public diplomacy — some elements of which originated with his immediate predecessor — say it is part of a “counter-radicalization” strategy which aims to prevent radical Muslims with European passports from carrying out terrorist attacks against the United States.

A key component of the strategy is to “empower” Muslims who can help build a “counter-narrative” to that of terrorists. In practice, however, Obama ideologues are crisscrossing Europe on U.S. taxpayer funded trips to “export” failed American approaches to multiculturalism, affirmative action, cultural diversity and special rights for minorities.

Further, American diplomats are repeatedly apologizing to Muslims in Europe for a multitude of real or imagined slights against Islam, and the U.S. State Department is now spending millions of dollars each year actively promoting Islam — including Islamic Sharia law — on the continent.

There’s one main problem with this approach: it’s hard to convince Moslems we’re their friends when we’re killing them. We may be justified in killing them (we are); we may observe that the Moslems we’re killing are the biggest killers of other Moslems (they are); but as the recent killings in Toulouse have reaffirmed, apologies and self-recrimination, let alone reason, do not make you popular among a radicalized ideology with which you are at war.

You may be surprised to learn that the European nations where Obama is doing this outreaching do not appreciate his meddling:

Ambassador William Eacho, an Obama campaign fundraiser turned political appointee, awarded the first prize to a group of students in the northern Austrian town of Steyr who produced a one-minute silent film promoting tolerance for Muslim women who wear Islamic face-covering veils such as burkas in public spaces.

Obama and his team may think they know what is best for Europeans, but according to recent polls, more than 70% of Austrians are in favor of a law that would ban the burka.

In Belgium, U.S. Ambassador Howard Gutman, another Obama fundraiser turned diplomat, told lawyers attending a conference in Brussels in November 2011 that Israel is to blame for Muslim anti-Semitism in Europe.

According to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronot, Gutman, who is Jewish, showed conference attendees a video of himself receiving a warm welcome at a Muslim school in Brussels, which he said proved that Muslims are not anti-Semitic. Following a barrage of criticism for rationalizing the growing problem of anti-Semitism in Europe, the U.S. Embassy in Belgium removed the evidence by uploading an amended transcript of Gutman’s remarks on its website.

In France, the U.S. Embassy in Paris co-sponsored a seminar to teach Muslims in France how they can politically organize themselves. Operatives from the Democratic Party coached 70 Muslim “diversity leaders” from disaffected Muslim-majority suburban slums known as banlieues on how to develop a communications strategy, raise funds and build a political base.

The French government — which has been trying to reverse the pernicious effects of decades of state-sponsored multiculturalism — expressed dismay at what it called “meddling.”

I’ll bet they did—especially after Toulouse.

Europeans dismissed Bush as a “cowboy”. What is Obama, but a boy? (We pause here for the requisite outrage at using a racially tinged word. I use it not in that context—obviously—but to seize the theme of his naiveté, his cluelessness.)

As Aggie reports below, we had this maggot in our custody in Afghanistan—where we were killing one brand of Moslem to save another—but handed him over to the French. Okay.

PS: The Toulouse killings were no different from the slaughter in Itamar of the Fogel family—children massacred in the name of Arab nationalism—but who besides the Israelis mourns them?

PPS: Oh, this is Smart Power! Why didn’t you say so?

Be it ever so humble:

Listening to Hillary Clinton berate China and Russia for their refusal to condemn Syria’s crackdown on its own people—”It’s just despicable,” she said last week at the anti-Assad “Friends of Syria” conference in Tunis—it’s almost possible to forget that this administration was once eager to get on Bashar’s good side, too.

Not here it ain’t. We quote Madame Secretary every day. And as the sun just rose above the horizon:

“Only a year ago, this country’s government was being vilified as a dangerous pariah,” the New York Times’s Robert Worth reported in March 2009. “Today, Syria seems to be coming in from the cold.” Top administration envoy George Mitchell paid Assad a visit that June, seeking, he said, “to establish a relationship built on mutual respect and mutual interest.”

Then, as the Syrian uprising began a year ago, Mrs. Clinton continued to paint Assad as a “reformer.” It took President Obama more than six months (and 2,000 murdered Syrians) to call for Assad to step down.

Even now, the administration has no plan to get Assad to step aside, other than to call on him to do so. A U.N. resolution on Syria vetoed last month by Russia and China was the usual mush of exhortation and condemnation. Friday’s Tunis meeting ended with a ringing call for, well, nothing: “They still give this man [Assad] a chance to kill us, just as he has already killed thousands of people,” said an opposition fighter in Homs, sizing up what Hillary Clinton’s cheap solicitude means for him and his besieged city.

Compared to this, the position of the Russians is at least intellectually defensible. Say what you will about Moscow’s despotic allies, mercenary interests and autocratic principles, Vladimir Putin has been consistent in sticking up for all three. That’s more than can be said for a U.S. administration that urges democracy, nonviolence and human rights for Syria—and pays nothing but lip service to each.

While calling four-star generals fighting terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq liars.

[T]he administration has come around to the idea that being on the side of democracy is good U.S. policy. But here’s an irony: Just as it has become the conventional wisdom that Mr. Assad’s downfall is the only way to detach Syria from Iran, the administration has adopted a purely rhetorical attitude toward regime change. I have no doubt Mrs. Clinton has come around to loathing Mr. Assad as much as some wild-eyed neocons did a few years ago. But loathing combined with inaction still amounts to the worst form of indifference: the willful kind.

Which brings me back to Mrs. Clinton’s tirade on Friday. There is a good case to be made that we should apply sufficient military pressure on Assad to help tip the scales in favor of the opposition, as we did in Libya. There’s also a plausible case to be made that the last thing the U.S. needs is another military entanglement on behalf of a cause we barely know for the sake of a goal we can only hazily define.

But there is no case for lecturing Russia on its own long-standing record of engaging its faithful clients in Syria, much less for invoking the suffering of a people she has no serious intention of saving. Even chutzpah has its limits, Hillary.

Case in point:

The U.S. has repeatedly said that it is reluctant to support the direct arming of the dissidents. Why?

Clinton: Well, first of all, we really don’t know who it is that would be armed.

Maybe the real reformers? (File under Smart-Ass Power.)

Running the country and the world (not to mention your mouth) ain’t as easy as it looks, is it?

UPDATE
Elliot Abrams is just crushing.

Two American officers shot and killed in Asstan by a Taliban operative; NATO forces retreat in response.

Syria’s “reformer” (according to Hillary Clinton) massacres citizens to such a point, Obama may finally be mobilized to respond.

Iran threatening Israel, acting belligerent, dissing nuke investigators, sowing violence and dissent around the region.

Corrupt, illegitimate Palestinian Arab group (Fatah) seeks unity with corrupt, illegitimate, Islamist Palestinian Arab group (Hamas), rejecting any chance of negotiations with Israel.

Russia threatening to restart arms race, while we plan to cut back our arsenal to starting pistols.

China… don’t get me started.

Is this Smart Power?

It’s a real pity what’s going on in Syria:

“Widespread, systematic and gross human rights violations” amounting to crimes against humanity in Syria have been conducted with the “apparent knowledge and consent” of the country’s “highest levels,” a U.N. commission said Thursday.

U.N. bodies probing the crimes should identify perpetrators and hold them accountable, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic said, stressing that “urgent, inclusive political dialogue” is needed to end the crisis.

“The government has manifestly failed in its responsibility to protect the population,” the report said. “Anti-government armed groups have also committed abuses, although not comparable in scale and organization with those carried out by the state.”

The commission said it has documented “crimes against humanity and other gross violations.”

It made similar assertions in November, underscoring its belief that policies to mistreat civilians were issued at the “highest levels of the armed forces and government” and that the state is “responsible for wrongful acts, including crimes against humanity, committed by members of its military and security forces.”

November?

Try last March!

Here is a transcript of the March 27 exchange:

10:31AM ET

BOB SCHIEFFER: Madam Secretary, let me start with you. Tens of thousands of people have turned out protesting in Syria which has been under the iron grip of the Assads for so many years now. One of the most repressive regimes in the world, I suppose. And when the demonstrators turned out the regime opened fire and killed a number of civilians. Can we expect the United States to enter that conflict in the way we have entered the conflict in Libya?

HILLARY CLINTON: No. Each of these situations is unique, Bob. Certainly we deplore the violence in Syria. We call, as we have on all of these governments during this period of Arab awakening, as some have called it, to be responding to their people’s needs, not to engage in violence, permit peaceful protests and begin a process of economic and political reform.

…

There is a different leader in Syria now. Many of the members of congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer. What’s been happening there the last few weeks is deeply concerning. But there’s a different between calling out aircraft and indiscriminately strafing and bombing your own cities than police actions which frankly have exceeded the use of force that any of us would want to see.

Ah well, who among us hasn’t said something so extraordinarily and criminally stupid? It’s like when I said of the sweaty terrorist, Samir Kuntar, that he just had funny taste in facial hair and gestures of greeting:

I thought he was just saying “Hi mom, check out the ‘stache I grew in prison!” I still blush over that one.

Thank goodness Secretary Clinton said this on CBS News’ Face the Nation. If anyone had actually seen it, she’d never live it down!

Yesterday, we corrected an earlier story to say that the Mo-Bro in Egypt would honor the peace treaty with Israel, after initially writing that they said they wouldn’t.

They won’t:

The Muslim Brotherhood denied on Saturday that it had assured Washington it would uphold the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty.

US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters on Thursday that the Islamist movement, the clear victor in the first round of elections for the Egyptian Parliament, pledged to honor the various treaties signed by previous Cairo governments, including the peace deal with Israel.

Nuland insisted that the various political parties in Egypt have offered the US “good guarantees” that the peace treaty will be observed. She stressed that Washington fully expects all of Cairo’s political factions to honor the previous regime’s international agreements.

According to Essam al-Erian, deputy head of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party, the accords “are under the responsibility of the people and state institutions, and it would not be right for anyone to speak on behalf of the Egyptian people.”

Speaking to the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat, al-Erian said, “We are not in a position to give assurances.”

Rashad al-Bayoumi, the Brotherhood’s second in command, told Al-Hayat las week that “the Muslim Brotherhood will not recognize Israel under any circumstances and might put the peace treaty with the Jewish state up to a referendum.”

The Brotherhood, he added, “did not sign the peace accords… We are allowed to ask the people or the elected parliament to express their opinion on the treaty, and (to find out) whether it compromised the people’s freedom and sovereignty. We will take the proper legal steps in dealing with the peace deal. To me, it isn’t binding at all. The people will express their opinion on the matter.”

Until another politically appointed Obama stooge re-corrects the correction, we regret the error(s).

Hillary thinks her power is smart, it’s the Arab World that’s dumb:

Months after President Barack Obama hastened the end of the Mubarak regime, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wants the military regime in Cairo to move faster on elections.

Parliamentary elections are scheduled in three weeks, but discord, suspicion and protests may upset the timetable. The Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists are leading the pack, but no one really understands the parties’ policies.

The United States’ first direct presence in Middle East elections was five years ago in the Palestinian Authority voting. There, American-supervised balloting mirrored America’s principle of democracy in action.

Aides to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice woke her up in the middle of the night with election results that she found hard to believe. Hamas had won, throwing the PA into disarray and leading to the eventual forced ouster of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party rule in Gaza.

You offer some people democracy on a platter, yet they swipe it away and choose Islamic law instead. What’s a Secretary of State to do? You say that’s the way you wanted it all along:

William Taylor, an administration Middle East official who recently visited Egypt, said that if the Muslim Brotherhood wins, “I think we will be satisfied, if it is a free and fair election.”

Mubarak was a son-of-a-bitch, no doubt—but we’d be pleased to have their sons-of-bitches replace our son-of-a-bitch. See how smart this is? I can’t make sense of it either.

Madame Secretary continues to dazzle (do try to keep up):

Speaking to the National Democratic Institute on the Obama administration’s response to the Arab Spring uprisings, Clinton said the United States deals differently with pro-democracy movements, depending on the local situation.

Despite her dissatisfaction with the Egyptian’s regime’s months-long delay of elections, she said that democracy in the Middle East “can provide a more sustainable basis for addressing” American interests.

She tried to justify America’s intervention in Libya while it has laid low in Syria, whose President Bashar Assad she called a “reformer” in the beginning of the anti-regime protests seven months ago.

Clinton said action was necessary in Libya to protect civilians. In Syria, 3,500 civilians have been murdered in the uprising, but she tried to explain, “Sometimes, as in Libya, we can bring dozens of countries together to protect civilians and help people liberate their country without a single American life lost.

“In other cases, to achieve that same goal, we would have to act alone, at a much greater cost, with far greater risks and perhaps even with troops on the ground. Our choices also reflect other interests in the region with a real impact on Americans’ lives – including our fight against al Qaeda; defense of our allies; and a secure supply of energy.”

Libya is a large producer of oil. Syria is not. Damascus also is a key factor in the Arab-Israeli struggle, is an ally of Iran and in effect dominates Lebanon through pro-Syrian and Hizbullah parties.

Did she… did I just hear… are you telling me…?

Did we just go to war—sorry, time-limited, scope-limited kinetic military action—for oil? They’ve got to be pretty smart in the Obama administration if they can carry on the Bush Doctrine and not get called on it by a single media outlet, foreign government, anybody.

Wait, I’ve got a slogan… ahem… No Blood for Oil! Catchy, huh?

Nah, too lame.

You know me, I always try to be charitable toward President Obama. But the father part of me is shouting out: didn’t you just come back from several days in Europe?

What about your family?

Exactly one year before Election Day, President Obama decided to go golfing.

…

Obama was at the Fort Belvoir course with three of his usual crew of junior White House staffers.

Today was the 28th golf outing of the year for Obama and the 86th of his presidency.

The reports don’t mention it, but I heard Obama told one of his partners, “Man your game is uglier than Nicolas Sarkoy’s face!”

“I want to make mention that this is our first meeting since the arrival of the newest Sarkozy, and so I want to congratulate Nicolas and Carla on the birth of Giulia,” Mr. Obama told reporters shortly after his arrival at the G-20, with Mr. Sarkozy at his side. “And I informed Nicolas on the way in that I am confident that Giulia inherited her mother’s looks rather than her father’s, which I think is an excellent thing.”

…

Mr. Sarkozy, who is said to be very conscious about his looks, did not appear greatly amused by the comment, and some observers who attended the meeting said Mr. Obama’s remark fell flat. …

“The U.S. President’s picnic on the ‘physical’ of his French counterpart is only the latest episode of reports [which are] rather cool at best, at worst frankly tense,” said L’Observateur newspaper, which called the two leaders “the best enemies.”

Another French publication said Mr. Obama had chosen to compliment Mr. Sarkozy “in a way unique to say the least, before the cameras around the world.”

The French celebrity website Staragora said Mr. Obama’s comment was “risky” and “not very cool, for the French president [was] humiliated in public.”

“Barack Obama has openly and publicly ridiculed the physical [appearance of] Nicolas Sarkozy,” Staragora said, adding that Mr. Obama’s comments were delivered “without pity.”

No wonder we’re so loved around the world. They don’t call us the Ugly American for nothing, and we elected one as president. Hint to President Sarkozy: Obama’s supposed to be pretty sensitive about those satellite dishes on either side of his head. Thank President Dumbo for his kind remarks.

Hey, who’s up for sushi?

The White House has released the menu for tonight’s state dinner for South Korean President Lee Myung Bak, and the main course comes from Japanese cattle bred in Texas. The Texas Wagyu Beef will be served with orange-ginger fondue, sauteed kale, and roasted kabocha squash, according to the White House. The full dinner menu: First Course Butternut Squash Bisque, Honey Poached Cranberries, Virginia Cured Ham, Pumpkin Seed Praline, Crème Fraiche Second Course Early Fall Harvest Salad on Daikon Sheets, Masago Rice Pearl Crispies, Rice Wine Vinaigrette Main Course Texas Wagyu Beef, Orange-Ginger Fondue, Sauteed Kale, Roasted Kabocha Squash Dessert Chocolate Malt Devils Food Layers With Pear and Almond Brittle An American wine will be paired with each course. . .

What would Obama serve the Mayor of Nanking or the ambassador from the Philippines? Dude, they may all look alike to you, but not to each other. What a dope.

PS: Now, if he served a potato knish to the Saudi ambassador, I might think he was making a point, but this just sounds ignorant.

I understand Obama likes to lead from behind, but if he were any more behind, he’d be in front.

Or something.

The AP reports that the Obama administration has told Arab and European allies it’s close to finally calling for Syria’s president to step down.

The White House and the State Department have refused to explicitly call for Bashar al-Assad to resign, even as his security forces have killed scores of protesters in recent weeks.

Instead, the administration has said only that it would be nice if Assad weren’t in power. “Syria would be a much better place without him,” White House press secretary Jay Carney has said.

According to the AP, the timing of the administration’s decision to escalate its rhetoric is “still in flux,” but the White House is ready to send out a statement Thursday, joined by new sanctions against the regime and an appearance by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

You slaughter just one more peaceful rally of unarmed innocent people, Bashir, and we’re done with you. You hear me?

It’s one thing to lead from behind, it’s another to be a behind.

UPDATE
Do my eyes deceive me?

“We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way,” Mr. Obama said in a written statement released by the White House on Thursday morning, after coordination with allies in Europe and elsewhere, including nations that have far closer economic and diplomatic ties with Syria than the United States does. “He has not led,” Mr. Obama said of Mr. Assad. “For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.”

Oh, snap! He’s a ba-a-a-d man!