What is the political equilibrium?
One thing I can imagine is setting up a defensive perimeter around yourself with your own swarm of them. But that’s the kind of world that lies ahead, absent a technological collapse (which would be even more horrible).
British schoolgirls are being systematically gang-raped by Muslims and British soldiers are being hacked to death in the street by Muslims and yet this despicable gutless appeaser, Theresa May, thinks the way to solve the problem is to ban critics of Islam?
Neville Chamberlain was a heroic statesman by comparison.
It is very sad to see the pathetic state to which England has devolved. She wouldn’t stay long in her position if Cameron were (brain) alive.
When I first read the title of Mark Steyn’s latest, on Obama’s European meltdown, I thought it was an allusion to Icarus, but apparently not. It would be a good one, though — a naive man flies too close to the sun, and consequently plummets.
Or should I just say, “Er ist kein Berliner”?
An uncomplimentary British review of The One’s latest blather in Germany:
In stark contrast to that of his presidential predecessors, Barack Obama’s message on Wednesday was pure mush, another clichéd “citizens of the world” polemic with little substance. This was a speech big on platitudes and hopeless idealism, while containing much that was counter-productive for the world’s superpower. Ultimately it was little more than a laundry list of Obama’s favourite liberal pet causes, including cutting nuclear weapons, warning about climate change, putting an end to all wars, shutting Guantanamo, ending global poverty, and backing the European Project. It was a combination of staggering naiveté, the appeasement of America’s enemies and strategic adversaries, and the championing of more big government solutions.
In other words, business (or lack of business) as usual.
…the White House fiddles:
The combination of grave and growing dangers in the Middle East with a lightweight policy response in Washington is genuinely frightening. We have no doubt that the administration wants a peaceful and stable Middle East that is moving toward greater democracy and greater respect for human rights. We share its desire to see this happen without massive US intervention. But the evidence is mounting that America’s present course in the Middle East is leading to a very bad place; real trouble looms unless the administration can begin to engage in a much more serious and thoughtful way.
Serious and thoughtful ways are not a hallmark of this administration. And this sort of fecklessness is no less than any intelligent person would have expected from the neophyte’s campaign rhetoric in 2008.
Once again demonstrates his room-temperature IQ.
And the Senate actually confirmed him to run the Pentagon.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
[Update a few minutes later]
And then there’s this:
According to the Sun and the Financial Times, Mr Obama apologised to the chancellor for calling him Jeffrey three times during the meeting – saying: “I’m sorry, man. I must have confused you with my favourite R&B singer”.
We know how this would be covered by the media if that famous moron, George Bush, had made a similar gaffe.
They can’t be fixed:
Sometimes countries dig themselves into a hole from which they cannot extricate themselves. Third World dictators typically keep their rural population poor, isolated and illiterate, the better to maintain control. That was the policy of Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party from the 1930s, which warehoused the rural poor in Stalin-modeled collective farms called ejidos occupying most of the national territory. That was also the intent of the Arab nationalist dictatorships in Egypt and Syria. The policy worked until it didn’t. In Mexico, it stopped working during the debt crisis of the early 1980s, and Mexico’s poor became America’s problem. In Egypt and Syria, it stopped working in 2011. There is nowhere for Egyptians and Syrians to go.
That first sentence could apply to us, on the route we’re on. If we allow the Democrats to remain in charge, it will be our fate, and sooner than later. We just have to hope that we’re not there already. And then there’s this:
This background lends an air of absurdity to the present debate over whether the West should arm Syria’s Sunni rebels. American hawks like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, to be sure, argue for sending arms to the Sunnis because they think it politically unwise to propose an attack on the Assad regime’s master, namely Iran. The Obama administration has agreed to arm the Sunnis because it costs nothing to pre-empt Republican criticism. We have a repetition of the “dumb and dumber” consensus that prevailed during early 2011, when the Republican hawks called for intervention in Libya and the Obama administration obliged. Call it the foreign policy version of the sequel, “Dumb and Dumberer”.
Except it’s not funny. At all.
Has the US started one?
More than passively eavesdropping, we’re penetrating and damaging foreign networks for both espionage and to ready them for attack. We’re creating custom-designed Internet weapons, pre-targeted and ready to be “fired” against some piece of another country’s electronic infrastructure on a moment’s notice.
This is much worse than what we’re accusing China of doing to us. We’re pursuing policies that are both expensive and destabilizing and aren’t making the Internet any safer. We’re reacting from fear, and causing other countries to counter-react from fear. We’re ignoring resilience in favor of offense.
This may end badly.
There are no simple answers.
Just what is that’s “moderate” about this guy, again?
…if we are to speak objectively and without comparison to even more extreme actors, these “pragmatic moderates” are anything but moderate, and their insidious “pragmatism” — i.e., their pose as conventonal political operatives rather than fire-breathing jihadists — makes them more dangerous.
And Assad was a “reformer.” Just ask that idiot, Hillary Clinton.