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I said my next "Obama is a liar" post would be on tax raises, and that one is coming, but the emerging exploding scandal over the Benghazi attack and the administration's inept lying and then coverup delays that one another day or two.

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All about a video, eh? That was laughable on its face, everyone knew it was, and yet they kept saying it anyway.

Disgusting. But it gives me a starting point for a post I've been mulling over for a while...

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"Obama, Obama, We are all Osama!" they chanted.

"Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive," Vice President Biden has been fond of saying.

Setting aside the dubious claim that the present state of GM is "alive" rather than "zombie/undead," let's look at the first half of that supposedly stirring line on Obama's reelection resume.

Osama bin Laden is, indeed, dead...

...And?

See: Democrats hammered George W. Bush because, they claimed, he irresponsibly took his focus off of getting Osama bin Laden in favor of invading Iraq and the "global war on terror." They seemed to believe that the only necessary action in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks here in the U.S. was the apprehension of Osama bin Laden and bringing him to justice, nothing more.

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[Added 10-10-12 at 5:15 p.m.]

The book about to be released includes this:

On May 26, 2009, four months into his presidency, [President Obama] had ended a routine national security briefing in the Situation Room by pointing to [then-Deputy National Security Adviser Tom] Donilon, Leon Panetta, his newly appointed CIA director, Mike Leiter, director of the National Counter Terrorism Center, and Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff. “You, you, you, and you,” he said. “Come upstairs. I want to talk to you guys about something.”As Donilon would tell [Bowden], Obama said: “Here’s the deal. I want this hunt for Osama bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to come to the front of the line. I worry that the trail has gone cold. This has to be our top priority and it needs leadership in the tops of your organizations [...] And I want regular reports on this to me, and I want them starting in thirty days.”

At his regular daily briefings, [President] Bush would routinely ask, “How’re we doing?” and everyone knew what he was talking about. It was the same with Obama. After that impromptu meeting in his office with his new intelligence chiefs in 2009, he would bring it up at nearly every security briefing.

“Are we any closer?”

“What have we learned?”

…
The newly elected president did make it clear that he regarded the hunt for bin Laden [...] as the top national security priority of his administration. But did that really change anything? One senior intelligence official told [Bowden] that it did not [...]

Emphasis mine. The article goes on to explain that while the President’s focus on this did cause the intelligence community to work harder producing reports and briefings, it did not accelerate the acquisition of information.

And the actual decision to go in with a raid to get Osama… does anyone really believe that any other President would have decided differently? So then where are we? We are still with a dead Osama bin Laden, but possibly with a still-diminished Al Qaeda incapable of murdering an ambassador and torching a consulate. Alas.

[End addition]
————

But Osama bin Laden was never the only terrorist mastermind, financer, or field general. There were always others ready and willing to step up when “Al Qaeda’s number 2″ or “the leader of Al Qaeda in X country” was killed or apprehended, which happened with some regularity under Bush. That was precisely because Bush recognized that the struggle against those who attacked us on 9/11 could not be simply against the specific chain of command that planned, financed, and executed that specific attack. He recognized that the struggle against global Islamist terrorism would have to attack the whole cancerous ideology and all workings of those networks.

This approach was effective. Remember: during the seven-plus years after September 11, 2001, during which Bush was president there was not one more successful major terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Embassies and consulates count as American soil. If there was actionable intelligence, we acted on it, and stopped the attack.

Oh, sure, Osama was still alive—hiding in caves in Waziristan, scrambling for his dialysis, issuing grainy videos and more calls for death to America—but his effectiveness and that of his network were, clearly, diminished. They were on the run.

So which is more important? Getting that one guy who leads the network, or crippling and stopping the network’s activities such that it is no longer an effective terrorist force?

Both would be great, but I think if you’re forced to choose between them the answers will differ based on your mindset.

On the one hand you have folks like George W. Bush (and me, fwiw) who are more interested in keeping America and her allies safe while promoting our shared interests abroad. This mindset would like to get that one guy who is the leader of the opposing non-lateral paramilitary outfit, but reducing his effectiveness to practically nil while continuing to hunt him is also good. This mindset is also less concerned with the PR optics of an ample and appropriate security force for an ambassador in a war-torn region. His safety, as my representative there, is paramount. Since they are U.S. Marines his ample security force will not threaten those who do not wish us ill, and it will deter those who do.

On the other hand you have folks like Barack Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, who don’t regard the interests of our historic allies (or even our own historic national interests) with anything but disdain, and who think the proper response to any given terrorist attack is to either vaporize the terrorist via drone strike (which is far worse than anything Bush is accused of doing) or to try the non-citizen terrorist, taken on the foreign field of battle, in federal court as though he were a common criminal with all rights of due process available to a U.S. citizen. To this set of people, reducing the visibility of our presence in a country is more important than anyone’s personal safety or promoting the safety and interests of America and her allies.

The first mindset kept us safe and oversaw the establishment—belated, and more difficult than it ought to have been, no doubt—of a competent consensual government in Iraq. The second mindset has seen our consulate burned and our ambassador and three other Americans murdered in Libya by Osama bin Laden’s resurgent Al Qaeda, our embassies attacked by people chanting “We’re all Osama,” and Iraq signing a massive arms deal with Russia.

All just “bumps in the road” to Barack Obama.

If four murdered Americans and a resurgent Al Qaeda are mere “bumps in the road,” I have no desire to see where this road is leading.

But hey: “Osama bin Laden is dead, and GM is alive,” and, it was all about a video (until it wasn’t).

MEMRI caught this screen capture.

——

Note: I added “or apprehended” at 11:24 p.m. to the second sentence of the paragraph that starts “But Osama bin Laden was never the only terrorist mastermind.” I think this more accurately captures a major difference between Bush and Obama: the former was interested in collecting intelligence to further cripple the network, which requires getting information out of the terrorists, which requires taking them alive, if possible; the latter just vaporizes them with drone strikes, which means no information gathering is possible.

• The Inspector General reported that, contra Eric Holder’s assertions, top Justice officials in Washington *did* have damning knowledge of Fast and Furious, the gun-walking scandal that has left at least one American law enforcement official, and hundreds of Mexicans, dead.
• Our ambassador to Libya, who was barely guarded, was murdered in Benghazi in a coordinated assault; and our embassy in Cairo was breached in an attack by a mob that we pretty much knew were coming.
  • Despite the warnings we had, which the President didn’t hear since he had skipped so many intelligence briefings, our government insisted it was all caused by a film trailer on YouTube.
• A filmmaker was taken from his home by a cadre of sheriff’s deputies for producing a film that the government didn’t like (please, drop the pretense that the midnight visit, on that day, from that many deputies, surrounded by TV cameras, downtown to answer questions from the FBI, was strictly because of a probation violation).
• Our embassies have come under attack throughout the Middle East and are seeing loud protests in Europe and Asia.
  • While this was happening, the President of the United States was hopping a jet to a fundraiser in Las Vegas, avoiding a meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister (he later changed course, after being duly embarrassed publicly), and prepping for an appearance on Letterman.
    • During this appearance the head of the executive branch of the federal government played dumb about the size of he federal debt. He didn’t lie, precisely, when Dave asked if it were around $10 trillion, but “$16 trillion or something like that” or even, “more than that, Dave, and that’s too much,” would have been an acceptable answer.
• Our military has temporarily suspended conducting joint operations with Afghan forces because, well, the Afghanis have this tendency to shoot our guys.
  • Sidenote: more than twice as many Americans have died in Afghanistan in the three-plus years since Obama took office than did in the seven years we were there before he took office.
• We found out that Obamacare will cost 6 million taxpayers an additional $7 billion in taxes in 2016. And it rises to $8 billion the following year.
• A video has emerged that shows Barack Obama committing himself to the idea of wealth redistribution. (Not that this is news, but it bears repeating.)
• Obama held a fundraiser at a place with a $280,000 sculpture constructed with golden champagne bottles worth $300 each. Because nothing serves to underscore your opponent’s out-of-touch richness like raising money next to a stack of golden champagne bottles.
• Emails secured under a FOIA request have proved that officials at the Department of Justice colluded with Media Matters for America to target and discredit journalists who were covering scandals at the DOJ

But none of that appears to be as important as Mitt Romney’s 47% comment.

Now. Romney’s comment has plenty of problems—the 47% of Americans who do not pay income taxes cannot be uniformly characterized as lazy moochers who will all vote for Obama no matter what. Likewise, the remaining 53% are not all perfectly virtuous, industrious, assured Romney voters.

I’m not defending the comment. It was tin-eared. It was wrong. I wish he hadn’t said it and I wish he didn’t think it. Even if there is some truth to it as well: there is, statistically speaking, about 47% of the voting public that will definitely vote for Obama. Perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less, but right around there. That 47% definitely has some overlap with the 47% who do not pay income taxes, but not perfect coincidence. The task of political campaigns is to identify who is in that group who are unpersuadable and not waste resources on them. So from an electoral perspective he wasn’t wholly wrong: he doesn’t need to worry about them, for good reason. But I still wish he hadn’t said it.

That said, I’m wondering why that comment has been *so* dominant in the news cycle with all these other things going on. Perhaps it’s a rhetorical question. I’m sure some of our august commenters will have ideas.

You got it: the world is burning and I'm yukking it up with Dave and hob-nobbing with Jay-Z and Beyonce!

Apparently speaking out against the subjugation and abuse endured by Afghani girls and women means nothing if it doesn’t include a plan to bring free birth control to the victims.  And using her platform as a First Lady to bring global awareness to the plight of Muslim women during trips to the Middle East or as Mrs. Bush did in a touching op-ed for the Washington Post doesn’t count as “advancing women” for the abortion-obsessed feminist enforcers at NOW.

Sewall-Belmont House Museum took an important step toward expanding the definition of feminism.  But until the old guard in ivory towers and the board rooms of NOW catch up, young, successful women will continue to perceive the feminist movement as an irrelevant blast from the past.

CNSNews.com broke the news:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

The U.S. State Department removed the sections covering religious freedom from the Country Reports on Human Rights that it released on May 24, three months past the statutory deadline Congress set for the release of these reports.

The new human rights reports–purged of the sections that discuss the status of religious freedom in each of the countries covered–are also the human rights reports that include the period that covered the Arab Spring and its aftermath.

Thus, the reports do not provide in-depth coverage of what has happened to Christians and other religious minorities in predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East that saw the rise of revolutionary movements in 2011 in which Islamist forces played an instrumental role.

Thomas Farr, a former U.S. diplomat who served under both President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush expressed concern about the change.

“[I]t is important to note here that I do not know–I have no personal knowledge of the logic that went into removing religious freedom from the broader human rights report; but I also have observed during the three-and-a-half years of the Obama administration that the issue of religious freedom has been distinctly downplayed.

I sure hope Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee get some straight answers from the State Department on this. We’ll be watching.

Our veep.

Updated: I removed a mis-placed reference to Libya pending more information and augmented my critique of Obama’s handling of the killing of Osama.

—————-

I know, I know: it’s not a fair fight, really. Charity almost compels me not to write something that puts “incoherence” and “Joe Biden” in the same sentence. Almost, but not quite.

Joe Biden, our inestimable Vice President, delivered a speech at New York University on the foreign policy accomplishments and abilities of Barack Obama. As is typical with Biden the speech was long and circuitous, and not in a phenomenology-is-long-and-circuitous-for-good-reason sort of way.

I’ll get the easy one out of the way. Biden said of Obama, “This guy has got a backbone like a ramrod.” … well…

The emperor of Japan is just a figurehead. No deference is due, especially from the President of the United States.

And who can forget…

Ramrod!

The ramrod *has,* however, come into play when ramming it down the throat of his base by keeping Gitmo open, continuing the Bush-era policies of extraordinary rendition, and even widening our unmanned drone strikes as a major component of war fighting (or even non-war quasi-assassinations).

And I’m not sure how he demonstrated a “ramrod” of a spine when his attorney general was forced to back off plans to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civil court in New York City after massive public and governmental pushback.

Oddly, Biden didn’t mention any of those accomplishments.

Anyhow.

Biden did bring up the killing of Osama bin Laden, which Obama deserves some credit for. But only for saying, “do it,” when the evidence was overwhelming and moment was just right. (Even though there is evidence he put on asbestos underwear named “Admiral McRaven,” and that his chief concern in the whole affair was how it would play out for him in his reelection campaign.) But it’s not like it was years of Obama’s policies that kept Osama on the run and forced him finally to hole-up in a tiny compound with no internet, no phone, and walls with very high windows so he could walk around indoors without being seen. That was Bush. But that’s among the things this administration will steadfastly refuse to “blame” Bush for.

But that lone shining moment aside, let’s look at some highlights from the rest of Biden’s talk.

Biden: “He set in motion a policy to end the war in Iraq responsibly.”

That was actually made possible by the “surge” of 2007, which both Obama and Biden bitterly opposed. After the success of the surge the end of the Iraq war occurred on roughly the timetable that President George W. Bush had envisioned anyhow. So Obama didn’t set anything in motion that wasn’t already in motion. He simply managed not to screw it up.

Biden: “He set a clear strategy and an end date for the war in Afghanistan”

Really? What is it? Ever since Obama took office that war has meandered along with no clear picture of the objective or how to get out having left the Afghan government and security forces in a better position to stave off another takeover by the Taliban or forces sponsored by neighboring Iran. The only truly new development is that we have signaled our intention to get out in 2014, regardless of conditions on the ground, and our government is now in talks with the Taliban—the very regime we went there to topple for offering safe harbor to al Qaeda. So combine an announced clear timetable for departure with a blatant move to legitimize the sworn enemy and what do you get? A populace that trusts you less, and people in that populace more prone to align with the opposition that will still be around once you’re gone. A recipe for more problems…

Biden: “He cut in half the number of Americans who are literally serving in harm’s way.”

Overseeing the successful conclusion of the war in Iraq (thanks, Dubya!) and overseeing the bloodiest years of the war in Afghanistan (thanks, Barack!) will lead to a reduction in the number of troops in harm’s way: most by withdrawal, many by death.

Biden: “He repaired our alliances and restored America’s standing in the world and he saved our economy.”

The world has rarely, if ever, been more unstable than it is right now. Our historic allies have been insulted routinely by this President, while he bows and blows kisses to those who are fundamentally opposed to our way of life and system of governance. And our economy, thanks to his multi-trillion dollar deficits and flaccid job-growth policies is hardly “saved.” Only a fool or a deluded politician would believe what Biden said there.

Biden: “He saved our economy from collapse with some very unpopular but bold decisions that have turned out to be right, including the rescue of the automobile industry, all of which has made us much stronger not only at home but abroad.”

Truth is, those very unpopular decision also started under Bush (TARP, especially, which paved the way for the auto bailouts). But they won’t give credit to Bush for that, either, of course. Not that I’m endorsing TARP or disdaining the auto bailouts. I hate the corporatism it represents, I like letting market principles dictate business success, but I’m not so sure that bit of economic and societal pain in pursuit of a more healthy economic system would have been wise. However, the manner in which it was pursued, with the government deciding by fiat which creditors would get paid and which get shafted rather than observing conventional bankruptcy norms, really reeks of political payouts to Big Labor and corporate-political buddies. But still: the basis for it all was another Bush-era policy that Obama and his people perpetuated, which then produced results that they like, and they want to take full credit for it.

But Bush had nothing to do with the millions and billions in hand-outs to non-starter “green jobs” startups, killing the Keystone pipeline, the irresponsible and wholly uncalled for moratorium on off-shore drilling after the Gulf explosion, and the myriad ways the Obama EPA has sought to “crucify” energy companies, thus driving up energy costs, which drive up the price on everything, thus hurting productivity and jobs and ultimately the poorest among us. But that basic lesson in economics seems to have escaped him and his. Or they don’t care.

Which leads directly into the thesis, if you will, of Biden’s talk:

Biden: “If you’re looking for a bumper sticker to sum up how President Obama has handled what we inherited, it’s pretty simple:  Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.”

Yes, provided you include the groundwork Bush laid for both of those conclusions. (Leaving aside the conversation about whether it is a *good* thing that General Motors is still alive in its present configuration—the Volt? Really?)

Biden: “President Obama always means what he says.”

Wait, let me help: “President Obama always means what he says [in the moment when he says it, but not necessarily longer than that, especially if what he says proves to be verifiably false or politically damaging].” There, better.

Or, if he does always mean what he says, then he must really mean this “more flexibility” thing, too:

Because, you know, “ramrods” have flexibility.

Biden then goes into an attack on Romney, saying that Romney’s foreign policy would take us back to a time when we would “go it alone.” Of course, Dubya never did “go it alone,” assembling a coalition of more than 40 nations for the invasion of Iraq despite opposition from the French and Germans.

He says Romney would “waste hundreds of billions of dollars.” Which is, of course, pittance to this administration—until you propose wasting nearly a trillion on just one ineffective “stimulus” bill you’re not a serious candidate.

Of Obama, Biden says, “He has acted boldly, strengthening America’s ability to contend with the new forces shaping this century” … except the force of revanchist Russia, and “leading from behind” on “Arab Spring” matters.

Biden: “Under President Obama’s leadership, our alliances have never been stronger.”

…  almost speechless. No one respects him, or us by extension. No one fears him, or us by extension. So if by “stronger” he means, “all those other nations acting in their own selfish self-interest know they can push us around and dictate policy and they like us better because of it,” then sure. Otherwise, our staunchest allies the Brits and Aussies aren’t exactly enamored of this guy’s “leadership” and treatment of them.

Biden: “At the same time, the President shut down secret prisons overseas…”

Except Gitmo, and the rest are unverifiable because, well, they’re secret, so it’s a comfy claim to make—cannot be disproven. And if they have shut down secret prisons they must have either transferred the prisoners to Gitmo, released them, or transferred them to other countries (note he did not list “ended extraordinary rendition”), so none of these are exactly admirable to an anti-war, anti-Gitmo base.

“…banned torture…”

It was already banned.

“…and in doing so demonstrated that we don’t have to choose between protecting our country and living our values; and, as a consequence of those decisions, enhanced the security of our own soldiers abroad and the power of our persuasion around the world.”

We’ve had how many soldiers murdered in cold blood in Afghanistan by the Afghan soldiers they were training in the past few months? How, exactly, has he made our troops safer? Because the stats, at least in Afghanistan, tell a different story.

And powers of persuasion? His “powers of persuasion” were launched by “I won” and haven’t been much different since. He is about forcing his ideological agenda by any means necessary, not persuading people to come on board. If there has been anything different abroad it is because of others like Hillary Clinton and in spite of him.

Biden: “We plan for conflicts in the future with a new defense strategy, supported by the entire Defense Department’s senior leadership.”

People may not remember this, but Don Rumsfeld was up to the same thing, and was much reviled for it in hawkish circles, prior to 9/11. So this, too, was a Bush-era idea that was much modified when the planes hit the towers. Rumsfeld et al. did pursue a transformation of the military during the wars, but it’s a might-bit tougher to do during kinetic operations. It was, however, underway under Rumsfeld and then Gates, while Bush was President.

Biden then turned to Romney’s unfortunate remark about relying on the egg heads at Foggy Bottom who frequently have other-than-U.S.-interests in mind for foreign policy expertise. Biden is actually correct that the President is the chief diplomat and as such having some foreign policy chops of his own is very important. But it isn’t like Obama was a foreign policy expert in 2008—that was one of the main reasons Biden was chosen for the veep slot: he was seen as having the foreign policy chops to fill that gap in Obama’s rather thin resume. But I have no doubt that Romney would assemble a good team around him and be fine on foreign policy. The next part of Biden’s talk is, inadvertently on his part, why. In speaking about the President’s unique role in making the final decision on the big, important matters, Biden says:

And the President is all alone at that moment.  It’s his judgment that will determine the destiny of this country.  He must make the hard calls.  I’d respectfully suggest President Obama has made those hard calls with strength and steadiness.

And the reason he has been able to is because he had clear goals and a clear strategy how to achieve those goals.  He had a clear vision and has a clear vision for America’s place in the world.  He seeks all the help he can get from experts as to how to realize that vision, but ultimately he makes the decision.

So it seems to me, Governor Romney’s fundamental thinking about the role of the President in foreign policy is fundamentally wrong.  That may work — that may work — that kind of thinking may work for a CEO.  But I assure you, it will not and cannot work for a President and it will not work for a Commander-in-Chief.

Biden is exactly wrong, of course. Since Biden has been a career politician he clearly doesn’t know what being a CEO actually entails. Presidents actually have to do the coalition building thing at least as much as they have to make the hard decisions unilaterally. Corporate CEOs, on the other hand, make the unilateral decision and pretty much as a matter of course, and then use whatever management style they prefer to bring the company into the reality caused by that decision. Romney’s experience as a CEO—and, as the Obama camp will remind us repeatedly this season, a cutthroat one at times—shows him *quite* qaulified and experienced at taking the advice, hearing the sides, having his own vision, and making a decision on his own.

Biden touted the Administration’s leadership (from behind, that is) on theaters of the Arab Spring, but simply toppling a secular Muslim autocrat only to see him replaced by Islamist hard liners who hate our very existence doesn’t seem like a very responsible way to go about things.

Anyhow, the speech continues in the same vein for a lot longer—Biden is nothing if not long-winded—but I think that hits the highlights.

Romney may not already be a foreign policy wonk, but three-plus years in Obama and Biden aren’t either.

But then, what can Biden really say, considering the conditions and outcomes?

Fortunately, we have an opportunity to get these bums out of office before they do further damage. Hopefully it’s not too late.

Let’s remember that every candidate on the stage in last night’s debate is pro-life. On marriage, only Ron Paul (in favor of getting government out of the marriage ‘business’) and Jon Huntsman (pro-civil unions) are objectionable, in my mind. So Catholics who care about life and marriage could select just about any of the candidates on stage if they were an Iowa voter in Ames tomorrow. You would pick Cain, Bachmann, Pawlenty or Santorum (maybe not Romney though–still don’t trust him).

But I have to say this: Rick Santorum’s answer on Iran last night was shameful.

He suggested that someone opposed to aggressive action against Iran or anyone who thought Iran wasn’t a direct threat to the United States “wasn’t seeing the world clearly.”

He specifically compared those who oppose military intervention with Barack Obama, who went around the world apologizing for America’s past actions.

“[Ron Paul] thinks that we have to go around and apologize for the fact that we’ve gone out and exerted our influence to create freedom around the world,” said Santorum.

“Exerted our influence”? It’s called war.

Maybe I heard him wrong. He can’t be saying that someone cautious after 10 years of Afghan war and 8 years of Iraq is equivalent to Sean Penn bad mouthing our country overseas?

Well, in case you missed the point, Santorum managed to squeeze the world “apologize” 3 times in just under 20 seconds.

So in Rick’s mind, you either favor military action against Iran or you are an apologist? Talk about a false dilemma. So would Pope Benedict XVI also be an ‘apologist’ in Santorum’s mind?

I’ll readily admit that at the beginning of the Iraqi War, I was a hawk. But what has surprised me is that more conservatives haven’t decided to second guess this strategy of military interventions. Conservatives recognize government’s shortcomings in shaping our own society. You would think they could appreciate the limitations of using the military to remake an entire region of the globe into flourishing democracies.

Sadly, the only person to challenge Santorum’s saber rattling was the crazy uncle Ron Paul, who will give the pure libertarian answer every time, even if it means saying yes to legalizing heroin.

This has the disastrous effect of making noninterventionalism look crazy. When in reality, invading every country is what’s crazy. Let’s put on the brakes, people.

Iowa is in the Upper Midwest. Like Minnesota and Wisconsin, Iowa is less hawkish than other parts of the country. Republicans suffered brutal electoral loses in the Midwest in 2006 and 2008 because of the Iraqi War. I had hoped that this would mean that Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (who unlike Santorum won in 2006) would embrace a more modest foreign policy. (Not pacifist like Ron Paul, but not uber-hawk like Santorum.) Sadly, Pawlenty doubled down and went the Wilsonian direction of trying to make the world safe for democracy, like Bush in 2005.

I’ll give Santorum some credit. He’s a true believer. He really thinks that Iran is a big threat to the United States (I’ll grant it poses a threat to Israel, but not to us). He mentioned in the debate that he was on top of this issue many years ago.

Yeah, and where did that get us? The voters in Pennsylvania thought you were off base on Iran. So they sent you home and we all got stuck with Senator Casey.

Former Ambassador Jon Huntsman

Carson’s got a great write-up on Jonah Goldberg taking NPR’s Mira Liasson to task for her sloppy use of the word isolationism. As Carson notes, Goldberg regrettably criticized Patrick Buchanan unfairly. But all in all, good that Goldberg didn’t let just Liasson get away with using the term like that.

It is true that Republican candidates are (finally) less zealous about foreign wars, which Liasson noted. Bachmann questioned why America should be involved in a Libyan civil war. Gingrich suggested that after 8 years in Iraq and 10 years in Afghanistan, that perhaps it was time to end our involvements there. Jon Huntsman suggested that we exit Iraq because we could no longer afford it.

With the exception of Bachmann’s comments on Libya, none of these suggest the current Republican field is dovish. Just that they see some limit on American military action overseas. That doesn’t make them isolationists. Perhaps the term non-interventionists would be closer to the mark.

But I have to tip my hat to columnist Tim Carney who offered a more forceful and passionate rebuke to Mira Liasson and Time writer Adam Sorenson for their use of isolationism. Carney has his guns blazing in an article titled: “Isolationist: n. Someone who, on occasion, opposes bombing foreigners.”

Carney suggests that calling Huntsman an isolationist just because he was less zealous about military action would mark the term’s descent into “permanent and utter meaninglessness.”

Hunstman was an AMBASSADOR TO CHINA! He speaks Mandarin. He was deputy assistant secretary of Commerce and ambassador to Singapore. His degree from U Penn is in international politics. He was deputy U.S. Trade Representative who launched the Doha free-trade talks. Wikipedia tells me he is or has been on the boards of “the Pacific Council on International Policy … the Brookings Institute Asia Policy Board, the Asia Society in New York, and the National Bureau of Asian Research.”

But he could be an “isolationist” if he wants us to do less bombing, policing, and shooting in the Muslim world?

Carney reminds us that just because some conservatives don’t want to fight in foreign wars, that doesn’t mean they are xenophobes. (NB: I’m not calling Huntsman a conservative — after all he supports civil unions, but I like what Huntsman is saying on foreign policy.)

Again Carney:

But someone can support — and applaud — the free interchange of people, money, goods, and ideas among nations, but if he doesn’t also want to trade fire with other nations, he’s an “isolationist”?

Carney is a good friend of mine. We were even roommates about ten years ago. I remember the arguments we got into over the Iraqi War. He warned me about the dangers of Bush’s Wilsonian foreign policy. I wish that I and fellow conservatives had listened to him (and Bob Novak) back then.

It appears now that more and more conservatives are thinking clearly about the limits of military action all across the globe. Thank God.

And, let me be blunt, the Obama administration has been a near total disaster from its opening moments–from its desire to nationalize the health care system to its absurd “cash for clunkers” to its numerous foreign policy blunders (let’s not forget the WikiLeak revelation that Hilary Clinton was having American ambassadors search through the wallets and credit cards of foreign diplomats) and to its intensifying of the power and invasiveness of the Transportation Security Admnistration.

In nearly every way, Americans are less secure and less free than they were before January, 2009.  And, this, of course, on top of the incredible erosion of rights and freedoms during President Bush’s two terms.

Now, I will be even more blunt–after yesterday’s invasion, we can call the sitting president either a liar or a fraud.  Take your pick and proclaim it loudly.  President Obama, which is it, are you a liar or merely a fraud?

Even if we decide to give him the benefit of the doubt and claim him merely a fraud, President Obama should be remembered as our generation’s Nixon, power hungry and abusive.

Correctly and constitutionally, Senator Obama had chided President Bush for his use of military power, claiming the executive branch did not to have the right to intervene and declare war without the consent of Congress.  In this, and perhaps only in this, Obama proved to have some backbone and a brain.

Yesterday’s decision shows he has neither.

In every way, after yesterday’s unilateral decision to attack Libya in league an “entangling alliance” of foreign powers, President Obama has abused his position as the chief executive officer of these United States of America.  The Constitution states quite clearly that Congress and Congress alone has the power to declare war.

Needless to write, how Congress responds to this gross abuse of power will prove fascinating.  The American people can be represented only in the House of Representatives and the Senate, according to our Constitution.  As citizens, we have absolutely NO direct say as to who will govern us in the White House or from the Supreme Court.

For this reason, and this reason alone, the Founding Fathers gave the sovereign legislature the power to declare war in Article I, Section 8.

The president of the United States is “commander in chief” of armed forces, but not without restrictions.  As the Constitution states in Article II: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”

Again, how Congress responds to President Obama’s arrogance will be nothing short of fascinating.  This past November, the American people clearly and loudly elected a new Congress, presuming it would reclaim power that had been handed over to the other branches of government as well as restrain the seemingly endless growth of the powers and reach of the federal government as a whole.

If those elected last fall possess even an ounce of honor, they will begin to investigate and possibly (that is, the members of the House) impeach the sitting president.  He has grossly abused his power, and Congress must respond in kind, and it must do so immediately and without mercy.  Should Congress continue to abdicate its constitutional duties, it will have proven itself impotent and unworthy of representing the American people.

None of this blog is to suggest that somehow war in and against parts of Libya is right or ill.  It could be either, frankly, from a Catholic policy of just war.  But, the policy of war is always and everywhere fraught with many, many dangers.  We will be making alliances from expediency, not right.  We will be sending Americans out to deal with the ever-nastiness of a civil war and asking our men and women to shed blood.  And, of course, we will be directly responsible for killing civilians in North Africa, what military strategists euphemistically call “collateral damage.”

The Founding Fathers did not give power to declare war to Congress lightly.  War affects all, and the decision must be made after serious deliberations and only with the consent of the people through a sovereign legislature.

That the president would presume such a power–especially after this current president’s previous statements against Bush and his general pacific tone–is nothing short of offensive.

It’s worth repeating that President Obama is either a liar or a fraud.  Either way, Congress has the republican duty to reclaim its rightful authority and restrain the idiocy and arrogance ruling illegally and unconstitutionally from the White House.

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Tom Crowe has offered a fine assessment of the situation in Libya on this blogsite with his post yesterday.  http://www.catholicvote.org/discuss/index.php?p=15257 The best neutral analysis of the situation is George Friedman’s blog yesterday at Stratfor.  http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20110319-libyan-war-2011.  Dan McCarthy, editor of the American Conservative has kept the updates coming as well.  Each of these men is to be commended for their fine work.

By now, as the world is well aware, the website WikiLeaks released to major news agencies—and, really, though the stunning levelling of the web to everyone—a portion of nearly 250,000 diplomatic communiqués it obtained through gray channels.

The president and his secretary of state are nervously calling allies, warning them they might very well be offended by what the president and the secretary of state might or might not have said regarding allies and enemies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29cables.html?_r=1&src=se

[“Uh, I’m sorry to bother you, uh, I said some things about you I shouldn’t have.  I’m really, really sorry.  Will you still be my friend?”]

Republican Senator Lindsay Graham (SC) and Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill (MO) want to prosecute, and pro-Sinn Fein Representative Peter King (NY) hopes the U.S. State Department will classify WikiLeaks as a “Foreign Terrorist” group.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8166607/WikiLeaks-US-Senators-call-for-WikiLeaks-to-face-criminal-charges.html

There’s no doubt, much of what’s been released so far makes the United States look very, very bad.  Not surprisingly, the press, the pundits, and the public are divided over how to respond.  The New York Times wants to release the information responsibly, while the Wall Street Journal will have nothing to do with the information or its dissemination.

The British news has been especially interesting, given the profound Anglo-American alliance.  According to the London Telegraph, “American Anger is Laid Bare in Leaked Papers.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8166500/WikiLeaks-American-anger-is-laid-bare-in-leaked-papers.html

What anger you might rightly ask?  Well, if I’m a member of the British public (I’m not—I write from North America, south of the Canadian border, north of the Mexican border, somewhere in the vicinity of the western Great Lakes), I would assume ALL of America is angry and unified in its bitterness toward the world, at least given what cables have been released.

Upon a close reading of the article, though, the Americans are angry that the British have been too lax with Pakistanis living in the British Isles and Americans never really thought Gordon Brown was a strong prime minister.

I would like to be clear–no one (seven American citizens) in the Birzer household is really angry at all about any of these things. I, as a Roman Catholic, an American, and a person, love the British as much as I always have, no matter what their ethnic background.  Admittedly, I wouldn’t have voted for Gordon Brown or any member of his party, but, then again, I’m not English or Irish or Scottish.  What the Telegraph meant to write, I hope, was this: “Certain American Officials are Angry with Certain British Officials.”

And, yes, it should be noted, some private citizens are very angry as well—not at the British, but at WikiLeaks.  One of my colleagues posted the following on his Facebook page: “I think the folks at Wikileaks are scum sucking, bottom feeding, low life, good for nothing traitors.”

My colleague might very well be right, but I honestly have no idea.  I know no one at WikiLeaks, and I have no interest in getting to know any one there.  I very much doubt they are on the side of the angels, but I also doubt if they will one day reside the lowest level of the Inferno.  Thank God, I won’t have to judge such things.  Lives might be lost because of this release, and this, of course, would be horrible.  Alliances might fall.  This, too, might (possibly) be bad.

But, it’s worth considering three important issues.

1)   Someone in America leaked the information.  This someone is some one the U.S. government trusted, employed, and supported.  Without a doubt, this person (or persons) is a traitor, and he/she should be bound by law for acts of treason.  The leak also reveals that the United States government is incompetent.  It has been for a long time, and I doubt if any American is really surprised.  But, if the government (or members of it) are going to be nasty and keep so many secrets, perhaps these officials should be a little more wily about it.  I’m having flashbacks to Junior High School.

2)   One of the most important reasons Americans are angry is that these documents—none of which seem to be falsified, rewritten, or faked—make us look like arrogant, imperialist bastards.  And, maybe we are.  Not our best side, to be sure.  Here’s just one revelation from the Wikileaks as posted in today’s New York Times: “Bargaining to empty the Guantánamo Bay prison: When American diplomats pressed other countries to resettle detainees, they became reluctant players in a State Department version of “Let’s Make a Deal.” Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. The Americans, meanwhile, suggested that accepting more prisoners would be “a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe.”  If this isn’t pure arrogance, I’m not sure what is.

3)   In almost every area—foreign policy, domestic policy, etc.—our government is simply out of control.  While the leaker is certainly guilty of treason, we also have to have some checks on our government. Clearly, these—at worst, atrocities, at best, mistakes—secret actions and secretive words reveal our guilt as an American people.  Who watches the watchmen?  Especially when the watchmen seem as nasty as the enemies of civilization?  We—citizens of this republic—have allowed our government to expand well beyond anything the Founders envisioned.  We have, for all intents and purposes, made a false deity out of our government, rendering to Caesar what we should have been rendering unto God.

Our Catholic heritage has much to tell us about the nature of the state and the nature of power.  St. Augustine warned poignantly in the City of God that a state without justice is nothing more than a gang of robbers.  St. Thomas, following in the same vein, argued in On Kingship that the only good king is the king who would sacrifice himself for his people.

Considering what WikiLeaks has revealed—no matter how treacherously it obtained or disseminated the information—the United States government might very well have violated, repeatedly and heinously, the very things our Church Doctors and our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us—a just and noble commonwealth, built upon the dignity of the human person, a dignity that demands respect for all life and an openness of society.  From the brief things I’ve read about what’s been revealed, our government officials seem very, very far away from any of these things the West and Catholics have cherished for the last several thousand years.

As one of my former students, now a star journalist, Chase Purdy, tweeted yesterday: “WikiLeaks is what happens when the entire US government is forced to go through a full-body scanner.”

The federal government through a myriad of agencies from the IRS to the EPA to the TSA probes, gropes, and limits us as American citizens minute by minute, hour by hour.  It demand to know and regulate our most intimate information and traits.

Before the various official that make up the U.S. government blame one another or a website for harming the world by publishing true things, just remember—these things are TRUE.  Who created the greater harm?  He who revealed the truth, or he who erred and needed to have his error(s) made public?

The watchmen must be watched, and they must be held to a very high standard.

Bradley J. Birzer is Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies, Hillsdale College.