Thoughts on our feckless president, and the potential new foreign-policy disaster.
[Sunday morning update]
Mark Steyn, on Barack Obama’s missionless war.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Only Because Yasser Arafat Didn’t Have Any
Seen on Facebook: “Barack Obama has launched more Tomahawk missiles than all other Nobel Peace Prize winners combined.”
Probably more Predator drones, too.
[Update a while later]
Credit where it’s due. A rare self-deprecating moment for the president. I think that even he, with all his ego, realized and realizes how ridiculous that award was, and how it may have been the last straw in finally discrediting it.
This is truly becoming farcical:
We bombed Qaddafi’s forces because they were killing civilians. So Qaddafi’s forces began dressing like civilians. So the rebels began killing civilians. So NATO is warning the rebels not to kill civilians, otherwise NATO will bomb the rebels. But the rebels are dressed like civilians.So NATO may end up killing civilians.
In other news, the administration continues to debate arming the rebels who are dressed like civilians. But Qaddafi’s forces are also dressed like civilians. So we may be arming Qaddafi’s forces who are killing civilians while we also bomb the rebels who are killing civilians and bombing civilians who really are civilians but look like Qaddafi’s forces who are killing civilians.
Who’s on first?
Via Jonah Goldberg, who writes in his weekly G-File:
The New York Times reports that NATO has told the rebels that if they kill civilians then NATO will bomb them, too.
As a commenter in the Corner put it, this is reminiscent of that scene in Bananas where the operatives are talking en route to a hot zone:
“Any word on where we’re going?”
“I hear it’s San Marcos.”
“For or against the government?”
“CIA’s not taking any chances. Some of us are for it, and some of us are gonna be against it.”More seriously, has there ever been a war where we’ve gone from taking sides in the fight to saying, “You kids play nice! Don’t make me come in there!” (Honest question, has there ever been a great power that has in effect acted like a schoolyard referee, making sure that both sides “fight fair”?)
It would be American exceptionalism at its finest. If the president believed in that sort of thing.
And we have a Secretary of State who thinks that Bashar Assad is a reformer.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
[Bumped]
We Laugh So We Don’t Cry
“Why do I have a sinking feeling that expecting the Libyan rebels to overthrow Qaddafi is like expecting the Coyote to catch the Road Runner . . . and that we’re about to become the Acme Corporation?”
Watching The Watcher
Well, this was sort of inevitable.
Religion Of PeaceBarbarity
A fourteen-year-old girl was flogged to death for the crime of being raped.
[Update a day or more later]
This poignant photo gallery seems related somehow.
What was the religion of the people who took over that country three decades ago? Gee, it’s right on the tip of my tongue.
[Bumped]
Res Ipsa Loquitur
It’s a good thing that the Brits don’t lack a sense of irony.
California’s Problem
Megan McArdle describes one of the biggest problems with a progressive income tax — the volatility of the revenue. This is why California in particular is in such big financial trouble — in boom times the coffers encourage them to create all sorts of programs, needed or otherwise, for which the revenue collapses in a recession. A flat rate would have much less dramatic swings.
That’s The Way To Bet
Will the US fail Syria again?
Going After Rolling Stone
Michael Yon wants a boycott of advertisers. I sure can’t say that I’d miss the magazine.
Obama The Muslim
This headline is not supported by the video.
I don’t think that Donald Trump thinks that Obama is a Muslim. What he said (which which I agree) is that there is something on his birth certificate that he doesn’t want us to see, and that it might be that it says he’s a Muslim (I think it might also, or instead be that Barack Hussein Obama isn’t listed as the father Who knows, unless we can see it?). That doesn’t make him one, though. As I’ve said before, in order to be a Muslim (or a Christian) you have to believe in something greater than yourself. I’ve never seen any evidence that Barack Obama does so.