More evidence Obama’s foreign policy = failure

You remember the President’s new approach to dealing with our enemies. Let’s listen to them, talk to them, embrace them, apologize to them.

He said countries will be more apt to cooperate with the United States on tough issues, even if only on the margins. Resistance based on anti-American conceptions of the past will fall away. MSNBC

Evidently N. Korea sees things a little differently.

Last month they fired a long range missile in spite of Sec. of State Hillary Clinton’s threat of “consequences.” Yesterday, the communist country defied Obama and the international community by detonating a nuclear device. The leader of the free world says this action poses “a grave threat” to the world community. And today the defiant Kim Jong-Il fired off more short-range missiles to dispel Obama’s naive vision of a world in which all nations smoke a peace pipe and sing songs of unity and cooperation.

But what would give the N. Korean tyrant pause? Why would he feel the least bit hesitant about challenging the most powerful nation in the world?

The threat of “consequences” for last month’s missile test proved hollow when they manifested themselves in the form of a Security Council resolution condemning the launch. A mere slap on the wrist. UN spokeswoman Michele Montas claimed the condemnation “sends a unified message of the international community on the recent launch,” but that message really amounts to nothing more than hot air–no more punishing than a mild rebuke.

One would expect far more punitive “consequences” to follow the North’s most recent escalation of the crisis, but that wasn’t to be. Today’s aggression by N. Korea drew a response almost identical to last month’s–another resolution condemning the action and demanding the rogue nation honor the previous Security Council resolutions which call on it to drop its pursuit of nuclear weapons and vehicles to launch them.

Didn’t someone once say stupidity is repeating the same process again and again, but expecting different results, or something along those lines? By that definition, stupidity is regularly exhibited in the “consequences” dealt by the Security Council.

The ineffectiveness of such “consequences” was evidenced again in today’s UN reaction to the latest escalation. The UN Security Council is no more than a dog who’s all bark and no bite. Of course a large vicious dog’s bark can be an effective means of intimidation, but the more this scenario–vacuous cries of outrage not followed with punitive consequences–is repeated, the more the Security Council begins to resemble a toy poodle or a pomeranian than a German shepherd or a doberman.

Yet Obama and his followers remain convinced that his is the path to follow.  This would be understandable if there was evidence his “Kumbaya” approach was working in other parts of the world, but it’s not.

Today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was forced to admit the Taliban has the momentum in Afghanistan.  Despite Obama’s “surge” of 21,000 additional US troops, the Taliban is gaining ground, controlling more and more territory once considered secure, inflicting heavy casualties on US troops.  The administration refuses to consider the possibility that the President’s “mea culpa” foreign policy is making the enemy stronger, but this appears to in fact be the case.

The “Blame America” policies of the current administration embolden our enemies, motivating them to step up their attacks as they sense an impending collapse of our will to maintain our commitment to continue the fight.  In Stanley Karnow’s 1990 interview with Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, commander of Communist forces in the Vietnam War, the general emphasized the importance of “political” strategies in winning the war.  Though many dispute the internet claims that Giap’s memoirs claimed the North would have surrendered but for the anti-war movement in the US, a quote from Karnow’s article makes clear that it was a factor that provided motivation to continue the fight in the face of overwhelming losses.

“And we wanted to project the war into the homes of America’s families, because we knew that most of them had nothing against us. In short, we sought a decisive victory that would persuade America to renounce the war.”–Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap From page 6 of “Giap Remembers” by Stanley Karnow. *Emphasis mine

Can you imagine how much more invigorated the North Vietnamese forces would have been had Johnson or Nixon been repeatedly on the air saying “It’s America’s fault!”?  Obama’s habit of spewing apologies for everything America ever did, claiming blame for virtually all that is wrong in the world on his country’s behalf is providing the same motivation for our enemies today.

An old African proverb says, “Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.”  Obama has placed all our chips on the table, betting he can halt the hatred in our enemies’ hearts by blaming America for their dilemna.  Thus far, the evidence is overwhelming that his approach yields miserable failure at every turn.

But still he persists.

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Update 5/26/2009—North Korea Restarts Nuclear Plant

And so it continues.

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