Just in case anybody forgot about Obama’s foreign policy failures…

It’s sometimes easy to become distracted by President Barack Hussein Obama’s domestic attacks on our US Constitution, and overlook what horrendous effects his foreign policy failures have created. Here’s an article from Newsmax reporting on the fruits of President Barack Hussein Obama’s “We Just Wanna Be Friends” policy of dealing with Iran.

Iran Begins Production of Cruise Missiles Sunday, 07 Mar 2010 05:09 PM Iran announced Sunday that it has started a new production line of highly accurate, short range cruise missiles, which would add a new element to the country’s already imposing arsenal. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi told Iranian state TV that the cruise missile, called Nasr 1, would be capable of destroying targets up to 3,000 tons in size. The minister said the missile can be fired from ground-based launchers as well as ships, but would eventually be modified to be fired from helicopters and submarines. Western powers are already concerned about Iran’s military capabilities, especially the implications of its nuclear program. The U.S. and some of its allies, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency, fear Iran is trying to produce nuclear weapons, a charge Iran denies. …More

It seems conservatives were correct (go figure!) when they predicted the President’s overtures would only embolden the terrorist leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Brigitte Gabriel: Open Letter to Obama

Brigitte Gabriel was born in Lebanon to Christian parents in 1965.  Only 10 years old at the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War, she learned first-hand what it’s like to be a victim of Islamic militants.  As a child, she was spent months in a hospital recovering from wounds suffered at the hands of militants who destroyed everything her family owned.  She survived and emigrated to the US in 1989 where she founded a television production company.  Following the 9/11  attacks by radical Muslim terrorists, she founded American Congress for Truth, an organization which seeks to educate the public to the constant threat to the US and the West by radical Islam in the hopes those threatened will recognize and defend against these dangerous zealots.

The following is her response to President Obama’s speech to the Muslim world, in which she refutes the President’s version of the history of US-Muslim tensions.

An Open Letter to President Obama by Brigitte Gabriel Dear Mr. President, You face difficult challenges in matters such as achieving peace in the Middle East and protecting America from the threat of radical Islam and terrorism. These are challenges that have vexed past presidents, going as far back as our second president, John Adams. I have no doubt you appreciate both the gravity of these challenges and the enormous obstacles that exist to solving them. I also have no doubt that you and your staff understood that, no matter what you said in your speech last Thursday in Cairo, there would be those who would take issue with you. That is always the case when attempting to solve problems that are as deep and emotionally-laden as these challenges are. I am assuming it is your sincere hope that the approach you have chosen to take, as evidenced by what I’m sure was a carefully crafted speech, will ultimately prove successful. However, it pains me to say this sir, but, while you said in your speech that you are a “student of history,” it is abundantly clear that, in these matters, you do not know history and thus, as Santayana noted, you are doomed to repeat it. In doing so your efforts, however well-intentioned they may be, will not produce what you profess to hope they will produce. A wise man once said that if you start with the wrong assumptions, no matter how logical your reasoning is, you will end up with the wrong conclusion. With all due respect Mr. President, you are starting with certain assumptions that are unsupported by history and an objective study of the ideology of political Islam. You began in your speech by asserting that “tensions” exist between the United States and Muslims around the world, which, of course, is correct. Unfortunately, you then proceeded, incorrectly, to lay virtually all the blame for these tensions at the feet of America and the West. You blamed western colonialism, the Cold War, and even modernity and globalism. A student of American history, who is not trying to reconstruct it to fit a modern politically correct narrative, would state that tensions between America and Muslims began with the unprovoked, four-decades long assault by the Muslim Barbary pirates against American shipping in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I find it telling that you mentioned the Treaty of Tripoli in your speech but ignored the circumstances that led to it. That treaty was but one of numerous attempts by the United States to achieve peace with the jihadists of the Barbary Coast who were attacking our shipping and killing and enslaving our citizens and our soldiers – and who by their own admission were doing so to fulfill the call to jihad. These jihadists were not acting to protest American foreign policy, which was decidedly isolationist, and there was no state of Israel to scapegoat. They were doing what countless Islamic jihadists have done throughout history – acting upon the hundreds of passages in the Qur’an and the Hadith that call upon faithful Muslims to kill, conquer or subjugate the infidel. A student of world history would know that, for all the acknowledged evils of Western colonialism, these evils pale in comparison to the nearly 14 centuries of Islamic colonialism that began in Arabia under the leadership of Mohammed. The student of history would know that Islamic forces eradicated all Jewish and Christian presence from Arabia after Mohammed’s death, and then succeeded in conquering all of North Africa, most of the Middle East, much of Asia Minor, and significant portions of Europe and India – eventually creating an empire larger than Rome’s was at its peak. The number of dead and enslaved during these many centuries of Islamic imperial conquest and colonialism have been estimated to total more than 300 million. What’s more, the wealth of many of the conquered nations and cultures was plundered by the Islamic conquerors, and millions of millions of non-Muslims who did survive were forced to pay onerous taxes, such as the “jizya,” a humiliation tax to the Islamic caliphs. Indeed, in some areas Christians and Jews were made to wear a receipt for the jizya around their neck as a mark of their dishonor. These facts have not been invented by Christian or Jewish historical revisionists, but were chronicled by Muslim eyewitnesses throughout the past 14 centuries and are available to be researched by any person seeking an objective understanding of how Islam spread throughout the world. You say in your speech that we must squarely face the tensions that exist between America and the Muslim world. That is a laudable notion with which I agree, but by casting Islam as the historical victim and the West (and by implication, America) as the aggressor, you do not face these tensions squarely, but alleviate the Muslim world from coming to grips with the jihadist ideology embedded in its holy books and acted upon for 1,400 years. Even worse, you empower and embolden militant Islamists who regard your gestures as signs of weakness and capitulation. The issue is not that all Muslims are terrorists or radicals or extremists. We all know that the majority of Muslims are not. We also know that many peace-loving Muslims are victims of Islamist violence. The issue is this: what drives hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide to call for the death of Jews? What drives millions of Muslims to riot, destroy property, and take innocent lives in reaction to the Danish cartoons? What drives tens of thousands of Muslims to demand the execution of a British teacher whose only “crime” was allowing her students to name their teddy bears “Mohammed”? What drives countless Muslims worldwide to actively participate in, or fund, or provide nurture to, terrorist organizations? What drives Muslims in mosques in America to proclaim and distribute materials that call for hatred of and the destruction of infidels? What drives entire Islamic countries to prohibit the building of a Christian church or synagogue? To assume, as you apparently do, that what drives these actions is not an ideology embedded in the holy books of Islam, but rather other “root causes,” most of which you lay at the feet of America and the West, is at best naïve and at worst dangerous. Lastly, I must address your statement that “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance.” Unfortunately, the examples you gave are the exception rather than the rule. Historically speaking, I seriously doubt the Egyptian Copts, the Lebanese Maronites, the Christians in Bethlehem, the Assyrians, the Hindus, the Jews, and many others who have been persecuted by Islamic violence and supremacism, would agree with your assertion. For instance, Christians and Jews became “Dhimmis,” a second class group under Islam. Dhimmis were forced to wear distinctive clothing; it was Baghdad’s Caliph Al-Mutawakkil, in the ninth century, who designated a yellow badge for Jews under Islam, which Hitler copied and duplicated in Nazi Germany nearly a thousand years later. I witnessed first-hand the “tolerance” of Islam when Islamists ravaged my country of birth, Lebanon, in the 1970’s, leaving widespread death and destruction in their wake. I saw how they re-paid the tolerance that Lebanese Christians extended toward them. My experience is not an isolated one. When you make an unfounded assertion about the “proud tradition” of tolerance in Islam, you do a great disservice to the hundreds of millions of non-Muslims who have been killed, maimed, enslaved, conquered, subjugated or displaced – in the cause of Islamic jihad. Mr. President, those of us like me who are ringing the alarm in America about the threat of radical Islam would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world. Most Americans would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world. The obstacle to achieving this does not lie with us in America and the West. It lies with the hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide, including many of their spiritual leaders, who take seriously the repeated calls to jihad in the Qur’an and the Hadith. Who regard “infidels” as inferior and worthy of conquering, subjugating and forcibly converting. Who support “cultural jihad” as a means to subvert non-Muslim societies from within. Who take seriously the admonitions throughout the Qur’an and the Hadith to convert the world to Islam – by force if necessary – and bring it under the rule of Allah. Unless you are willing to courageously and honestly accept this, your aspirations for worldwide comity and peace in the Middle East are doomed to fail. Sincerely, Brigitte Gabriel

Abbas: “I do not accept the Jewish State.”

President Obama has chosen sides in the quest for peace in the Middle East?  But has he chosen wisely?

Speech of a Muslim cleric who identifies the mosque as a factory for jihadists. Last month.

The supposed moderate Palestinian Authority president and chairman of Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas, made the following statement at a Palestinian Youth Parliament conference:

“I say this clearly: I do not accept the Jewish State, call it what you will.”

In this video at the same conference, Abbas reiterates his refusal to accept a two-state solution:

In the same conference, Abbas was presented with a framed map of “Palestine” that covered the entire state of Israel.

Muslim children have been indoctrinated in their mosques, schools, by their media and leaders to believe that Israel has no right to exist.  In these videos we see this indoctrination is perpetrated by radical and moderate Muslims alike.  Yet, our President has chosen sides in this battle and he’s chosen to be on the side of those who deny Israel has any legitimate right to the Jewish homeland, those who call for the destruction of Israel.

Obama calls for a two-state solution, but refuses to acknowledge that Muslims like Abbas, who’ve formerly stated they’re open to such a solution, continue to fan the flames of hate and discord among their own populations.  Using an old American Indian metaphor, they speak with a forked tongue. 

The simple fact is, Israel’s enemies view Obama’s willingness to abandon the long-time American ally as a further sign of American weakness–and an opportunity to step up their attacks.  Iran continues to pursue nuclear weapons, and just this morning yet another assault on Israel was launched from Gaza.

Israelis feel thrown under bus

After Obama’s speech in Cairo, Israelis are feeling somewhat abandoned by their US ally.

Duane Lester at All-American Blogger has a great post that quotes several of Obama’s pre-election campaign promises to stand by the Jewish state and several Israeli commentators’ problems with the President’s current promises to the Muslim world.

Read Duane’s post: Obama’s Pledges “Unshakable Commitment” To Israel…During the Campaign

More results of Obama’s foreign policy blunders…

Iraqi soldier kills 2 US soldiers, wounds 3

So maybe arbitrary deadlines for troop withdrawals do encourage the enemy.

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Chavez Slams Terror Report, Claims ‘New Aggression’ by U.S.

I guess the hugs, handshakes, and gifts didn’t soften the two-bit dictator’s stone heart after all.

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Suicide bomb kills 6 in Mosul

The deadliest month of the year for US troops in Iraq. Imagine that, the enemy is stepping up its attacks now that it knows we’re pulling out. But don’t worry, Hillary told Iraq we’re not abandoning them, and the Obamessiah promises increased violence won’t alter his plan to withdraw troops. Talk about mixed messages to our Iraqi allies!

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U.S. to hold new talks with Syria

This should be interesting since Syria backs Hezbollah and Hamas. Former President Carter has used his trips to Syria to bash Israel and defend terrorists. I’m sure the terrorist sponsoring nation is looking forward to manipulating a sitting President for its propaganda.

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Officials: Gitmo court system likely to stay open

This should play well overseas with all the countries that criticized Bush for not treating the terrorists like jaywalkers. Of course they thought things would “change” with Obama in the White House since this was one of his major criticisms of the previous administration.

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I’m sure this list will continue to grow as long as our President thinks the best foreign policy is to stroke the egos of our enemies by condemning our own country. Stay tuned for more next week.

Poll: Israel vs. Hamas

#TCOT #diggcons

Inspired by this poll which mistakenly pits Israel against “Palestine.”

Israel isn’t targeting Palestine. If it were it would be fighting in the West Bank also. Israel is attempting to stamp out Hamas’ ability to threaten its citizens.

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Related Posts

Gaza fighting continues as diplomacy efforts ramp up–CNN

Is it Israel? or Palestine? What’s the Truth?–Navitor

Hamas Doesn’t Want Peace

#TCOT #diggcons

After two weeks of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, Hamas continues to hold the citizens of Gaza hostage.  Hamas continues to demand a complete Israeli withdrawal before it will discuss a cease fire.  This routine is so familiar it’s amazing the UN, MSM, and anti-Semitic leftists around the world still fall for it.  At least it would be if their real goal didn’t coincide with that of Hamas–Israel’s annihilation.

That’s exactly what it is; the MSM, UN, and anti-Semitic groups around the world have long sided with Hamas and other terror groups for no other reason than the underlying bigotry that blinds them to terrorist acts, human rights violations, and acts of war against the tiny Jewish state.

Bordered by hostile neighbors on three sides and backed against the Mediterranean Sea on the other, Israel has fought wars to repel aggressor states throughout its six decades of existence.  From the time it was recognized as an independent state, Islamic governments and terror groups have called for its annihilation, pitted their armies against Israel, and launched terror attacks designed to maximize civilian casualties.

Virtually every time Israel responds to aggression by its enemies, the UN denounces its actions while ignoring the fact that the violence was initiated by those the UN considers victims of the Jewish state.

Here’s a great post by Dennis Prager that compares Israel with her neighbors and the UN’s treatment of Israel vs. its treatment of the aggressors in this decades-long conflict.  An excerpt of these comparisons:

… Number of U.N. agencies that deal only with Palestinian refugees: 1 Number of U.N. agencies that deal with all the other refugees in the world: 1 Number of Jewish states that have existed on the land called Palestine: 3 Number of Arab or Muslim states that have existed on the land called Palestine: 0 Number of Arabs Israel allows to live in Arab settlements in Israel: 1,250,000 Number of Jews Palestinian Authority allows to live in Jewish settlements in Palestinian Authority: 0 Number of U.N. Security Council resolutions on the Middle East between 1948 and 1991: 175 Number of these resolutions against Israel: 97 Number of these resolutions against an Arab state: 4 Number of Arab countries that have been members of the U.N. Security Council: 16 Number of times Israel has been a member of the U.N. Security Council: 0 …

Hamas is strengthened by UN condemnation of Israeli responses and the terror organization’s strategy of using Palestinian civilians as human shields serves its propaganda purposes when the MSM twists its reporting to lay the blame for every death on Israel instead of where it belongs, with Hamas.

Using schools, mosques, and civilian homes to stage attacks and store weapons makes Hamas directly responsible for every civilian death that results from Israel’s targets of these installations.  In the following video, a Hamas spokesman admits the terror organization uses women, children and the elderly as human shields.

Watch it again if you still buy the UN, MSM, and Hamas line that presents the Palestinian people as victims of Israel.  In their own words, Hamas intentionally places civilians in the line of fire, knowing full well their deaths will be the result.  Using women, children, and the elderly as pawns they sacrifice to achieve their strategic aim–Israel’s annihilation.

Israeli government statement on civilian casualties–“These deaths are indeed a tragedy, and investigations are underway to ensure that further operations continue to avoid civilian casualties.”

Hamas statement from video–“For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry at which women excel, as do all the people living in this land.  The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahadeen and the children.  This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahadeen…It is as if to say, ‘We desire death as you desire life.’ “

No.  Hamas doesn’t seek peace.  They seek the destruction of Israel and they’re willing to sacrifice as many Palestinian civilians as it takes to accomplish that goal.

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Related Posts

Video of Hamas Kidnapping Children for Use as Human Shields–Doug Ross @ Journal

What does Hamas want?–Israel Politik

Israeli Address to UN Security Council

#TCOT #diggcons

You can view the entire transcript here on IsraelPolitik.org, but here are some highlights:

Eight years. For eight years the citizens of southern Israel have suffered the trauma of almost daily missile attacks from Gaza. For eight years more than 8,000 rockets and mortar shells have targeted Israeli towns and villages. For eight years the residents of these towns have had a bare 15 seconds to hurry, with their children and their elderly, to find cover before rockets and missiles land on their houses and schools.

Many in this hall have condemned Hamas’ terrorist attacks, and we welcome this statement of basic principle. But the families at home in the city of Sderot, and children at school in Kibbutz Netiv Ha’asara will not be protected by these condemnations. In the face of such terrorism we have no choice. We have to defend ourselves – not from the Palestinian people, but from the terrorists who have taken them hostage. Not to gain territory or power, but to demonstrate that our restraint was not weakness and to give our citizens the basic right of a normal life.

Hamas shows a similar disdain for the lives of Palestinians. It has adopted the terrorists’ tactic – the coward’s tactic – of using civilians as shields while its leaders themselves flee from combat with Israel’s soldiers and make pathetic demonstrations of bravado from their bunkers. It hides its missiles and terrorist bases in homes and hospitals and mosques, and, as we saw earlier today, deliberately launches attacks from in and around schools and United Nations’ facilities – with tragic results.

Since the start of the fighting, Israel facilitated the entry into Gaza of over 540 trucks, delivering over 10,000 tons of humanitarian assistance. In fact, just a few days ago Israel was asked by the World Food Program to halt supplies of food shipments since their warehouses were full.

As Hamas spokesman Fathi Hamad was proud to announce on Al Aqsa TV: Palestinians have created a human shield of women, children the elderly and the jihad fighters as if to say to the Zionist enemy: “We desire death as you desire life.”

We, the people of Israel, listened to the international community when you told us to withdraw from Gaza and promised that this would give us the credibility to respond forcefully should Gaza turn into a launching pad for terrorism. We listened when you promised us that acting with restraint during the period of calm would give us the credibility to fight back should the rocket attacks resume. Now is your time to make good on those promises.

Of course the UN will continue to condemn Israel for defending her citizens against the terror attacks by Hamas, but Ambassador Gabriela Shalev very eloquently made a case that any rational person could understand.

Israelis and Palestinians: Who’s David, Who’s Goliath?–Jewish World Review

Radical Islamists’ rocket attack hits Jewish nursing home

#TCOT #diggcons

Radical Islam is attempting to open a second front in Israel’s battle to eliminate threats of rocket attacks on it’s citizens. With world opinion following the MSM’s propaganda campaign against the tiny Jewish state, it’s little wonder the terrorists are emboldened.  One of the rockets launched today into Israel hit the kitchen of a nursing home while the residents were having breakfast.

I guess the UN peacekeeping force in the south of Lebanon isn’t really protecting Israel, is it?

This just goes to show, we need to quit interfering with Israel and let her defeat these animals once and for all.

Attack on Israel from Lebanon threatens 2nd front By IBRAHIM BARZAK and STEVE WEIZMAN, Associated Press Writers JERUSALEM – Lebanese militants fired at least three rockets into Israel early Thursday, threatening to open a new front for the Jewish state as it pushed forward with a bloody offensive in the Gaza Strip that has killed nearly 700 people. Two people were lightly injured, and the rockets that exploded in Israel’s north raised the specter of renewed hostilities with Hezbollah, just 2 1/2 years after Israel battled the guerrilla group to a 34-day stalemate. Hezbollah started the 2006 war as Israel was battling Palestinian militants in Gaza. …(Read full article)

Related Posts

Hamas executes ‘collaborators’, restricts Fatah movement–Haaretz

Rockets from Lebanon–Israel Politik

“It’s Israeli Double Standard Time, which only occurs on days that end with a ‘y.’”–Michelle Malkin

Video of Hamas Missile Strike

#TCOT #diggcons

The MSM loves to point to the difference in Palestinian casualties vs. Israeli’s killed and wounded in Israel’s effort to eliminate the Hamas threat to its citizens in the south.  The latest figures I’ve seen claim more than 680 Palestinian dead while the Israelis have lost 10 killed in the violence.  

The intent of course, is to imply the Hamas threat to Israel is minute, maybe even virtually non-existent.  Here’s a quote from a Richard Falk article on the Huffington post that plainly states what the MSM propaganda implies.

…some six months ago when an Egyptian arranged truce produced an effective ceasefire that cut Israeli casualties to zero despite the cross-border periodic firing of homemade rockets that fell harmlessly* on nearby Israeli territory…

*emphasis added

Now, Mr. Falk has lots of fancy degrees from lots of fancy schools, but I wonder how many times he’s had to flee to a bomb shelter when the air raid sirens sound, contemplating whether he’ll make it before an explosion that will shred him to pieces. 

Tell me, Mr. Falk, how many of a country’s citizens must die before military action is justified in your eyes?   If one citizen is killed, is that enough?  Or do you have some other arbitrary number in mind?  Perhaps 10, 20, 50, 100, or maybe military isn’t justified until Israel loses 1000 citizens.

It’s easy to place such arbitrary demands on others when he’s never been in the line of fire.  I wonder, if Mr. Falk lived with this threat every day, if he’d been born in a place where just miles away are 1.5 million people whose self-stated purpose in life was the destruction of his entire race, would he feel differently.

Well, Mr. Falk, what if you were the man in this video?  How do you think he feels about your ridiculous notion that Israel has no right to protect him because he escaped death by mere seconds?

I’ll just bet this guy is glad Israel is working to destroy Hamas’ military capability.

It should also be noted that Falk is also one of those highly educated nit wits that espouses US government involvement in the 9/11 attacks.  Toward the end of this article which calls on the Bush administration to use restraint in responding to the attack on our country that claimed some 3000 lives, Falk states that terrorism stems from American technological dominance that leaves people with two choices, subjugation and poverty or “vindictive violence.”  In other words, it’s America’s fault. 

This defense of terrorism and terrorists isn’t a new fad with Falk.  In 1973, he defended Karleton Armstrong who killed a University of Wisconsin researcher when he bombed the Army Math Research Center at UW-Madison.

So, Mr. Falk, why don’t you spend a little time in Sderot or Ashkelon and see if that doesn’t enlighten you?  It’s easy to criticize those who seek to defend themselves from radical zealots who seek only the eradication of Israel and her people when you’ve never walked in their shoes.  Let the missiles fly into your neighborhood, putting your family at risk and tell me then how many Israeli’s must die before taking action against Hamas.