Saberi and Obama - Barry you're a pathetic wimp!

Hey Barry, I'll bet if you had just been falsely convicted and sentenced to 8 years in a Iranian prison, you'd be wanting the President of The United States to be doing a lot more than you've done. You've shown nothing but weakness regarding foreign policy since you've taken office. Every U.S. Citizen living overseas in an unstable country should be very nervous right about now.
Rees

The Sentencing of Roxana Saberi — and Obama's Tepid Reaction
from Pajamas Media
by Michael Ledeen
April 20, 2009

The president’s response to the sentencing of Roxana Saberi—eight years in prison—is a testament to the power of Iranian blackmail and Obama’s own pigheaded refusal to understand the nature of our enemies. His “disappointment” in the mullahs’ action (echoed almost to the letter by Secretary of State Clinton) suggests that he hoped, maybe even expected, something better from them. And that, in turn, demonstrates a refusal to see Iran for what it is.

If I were Saberi’s Iranian-American father, I would be furious, and I would be inclined to call a press conference to say that, while it may be interesting to know the President’s state of mind, and even a bit sad that he is disappointed, American presidents are not paid to share their emotions with us. Among other things, they are paid to defend us from our enemies. He has manifestly failed to do this in the case of Roxana. I would ask the president very publicly, “are you going to do anything for my daughter or not? Never mind ‘I’m disappointed.’ What will you do for her, and for the other Americans in the grips of the mullahs? Or are you going to wait until there are dozens of American hostages in Iranian hands?”

I think it’s a bit inconsistent for the president to take credit for the liberation of Captain Phillips—through the use of overwhelming military power—and then limit himself to expressing disappointment at the brutal treatment of an American journalist. Why is Captain Phillips worth the deployment of the U.S. Navy, while Ms Saberi is barely worth a sigh of disappointment?

The anwer seems to be: because the pirates weren’t Iranians. If they had been, the entire crew would be facing years in prison.

Obama is committed to the “talking cure” with Iran, and he seems destined to live through the humiliation to which his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, was subjected. He might go back and watch some of the old “Nightline” shows, beginning with a count of the number of days America was “held hostage.” That’s exactly where Obama is headed.

The president may well feel that this is all very unfair. He didn’t ask for this. Indeed, he thinks he has given Iran every reason to behave nicely towards him (he seems disinclined to think in terms of the nation, it’s all about him). He doesn’t seem to realize that all his sweet talk is very provocative, it plays into the mullahs’ fantasy world in which they are routing us all over the world (they know it’s all about us, not about him), and soon the American president will kneel to the Supreme Leader. He actually seems to believe that it is possible to convince the Iranian leaders to give up their nuclear program, when every major figure in the Islamic Republic has said that Iran will never, ever, abandon that program. The only thing they are willing to discuss is how we will accommodate to the fact of a nuclear Iran.

Meanwhile, their agents and proxies are killing Americans from Egypt and Saudi Arabia to Iraq and Afghanistan. And Obama does nothing in response, except to make gesture after gesture demonstrating his lack of will to confront those who have been killing Americans for thirty years. Click to read the article and comments

US Signals It Will Appease Iran - At Israel's Expense

article from Joshua Pundit
photo from Joshua Pundit
Friday, April 17, 2009

The US Signals It Will Appease Iran - At Israel's Expense

The Obama Administration has sent a number of unmistakable signals recently to Israel that it considers them an obstruction rather than an ally...and that appeasing Iran and the Muslim world takes priority its relationship with Israel.

First, President Obama agreed on an important concession to Iran, reversing years of policy. They sent a message to the Mullahs that they would be willing to begin talks on Iran's nuclear weapons program without insisting that the Iranians at least temporarily cease enrichment - which means that the mullahs can run out the clock with endless negotiations while they continue to perfect their nukes and their delivery systems.

Second, the Israelis definitely took note of the North Korean fiasco, where Secretary of Defense Robert Gates went public before the Nork's recent missile launch to tell the world that the US couldn't or wouldn't do anything about it. As I mentioned at the time the Israelis, if they're paying attention, should realize that if the US either couldn't or wouldn't do anything to stop North Korea, they're not going to stop an Iranian missile strike on Israel either. And that any guarantees the Israelis get on that score are pretty much worthless.

Just to underline that message, it recently came out that SecDef Gates refused Japan's request to allow the US Navy to utilize America's most advanced radar, a seaborne X-band unit during the North Korean launch:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates denied permission for the U.S. Northern Command to use the Pentagon's most powerful sea-based radar to monitor North Korea's recent missile launch, precluding officials from collecting finely detailed launch data or testing the radar in a real-time crisis, current and former defense officials said.

To say that the Japanese were upset about this is an understatement.

The Israelis also have an X-Band unit, stationed in the Negev Desert as part of the well-publicized link up of the Israeli and US missile defense systems designed to ease Israel's concerns about Iran's nukes.The US has insisted that the unit remain completely under US control without any Israeli oversight or involvement..which wasn't a huge problem because the Israelis felt confident that the Americans would never allow a missile attack against a long time ally of the US.

After seeing how Japan, another log-time US ally was left hanging, I doubt the Israelis have that confidence.

Finally, Israel was the recipient of two high level blunt warnings from the US in the space of about a week against taking any action to stop the Iranians from getting nukes, one from Vice President Joe Biden and the other from Secretary of Def Robert Gates.

Gates statement was reminiscent of his remarks on North Korea, saying that the US can't do anything about Iran's quest for nukes and that an Iranian nuclear bomb can be prevented only if "Iranians themselves decide it's too costly."

He also said that a strike on Iran's nukes would unify Iran, "cement their determination to have a nuclear program, and also build into the whole country an undying hatred of whoever hits them."

Of course that ignores both the Iranian regime's determination to obtain nukes that's already cemented in place and its genocidal desire to use them on Israel, whether on it's own or by providing them its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas. As for the hatred, that's pretty much a given already. Referring to a country as a cancer and threatening to wipe it off the map reflects sentiments that aren't going to change no matter what Israel does or doesn't do.

Not only does Gate's statement effectively signal the Mullahs that the US is not going to do anything effective to stop them, it tells the Israelis that the US is not to be depended on as an ally and that they're supposed to cringe, depend on Ahmadinejad and Khamenei's good graces and hope it all works out.

Gates, of course is speaking with Obama's voice. The Israelis would be fools to accept this, and I doubt they will.

As for the US, if things continue as they are we're set to learn a very hard lesson on why appeasing a regime like Iran's is a no guarantee of our own security.

We will pay in blood and treasure and treasure for that lesson, and the longer we try to delay the inevitable the higher the bill will be.
Click to read the article and comments

Roxana Saberi - Let's not forget about her!

Editorial
from The New York Times
April 17, 2009

There is nothing resembling justice in Iran’s prosecution of Roxana Saberi. The government’s accusations against Ms. Saberi, a journalist with dual American-Iranian citizenship, have fluctuated wildly — culminating only last week with charges that she spied for the United States government. Her one-day trial this week was held in secret, and state officials have not revealed any evidence against her.

Iran’s government needs to release Ms. Saberi and end this dangerous farce.

Ms. Saberi, whose father was born in Iran, grew up in North Dakota. She moved to Iran six years ago and worked as a freelance reporter, including for National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corporation, while also pursuing a master’s degree in Iranian studies.

When she was arrested in January, Ms. Saberi was first accused of buying wine (illegal in Iran but hardly meriting imprisonment) and then of working without press credentials. While the government revoked those credentials three years ago, it tolerated her filing of news stories for months afterward, according to NPR.

On March 6, in comments that seemed to suggest the case had been resolved, an Iranian prosecutor told the Iranian Student News Agency that Ms. Saberi would be released from custody “in the next few days.”

Then last week, the government suddenly charged Ms. Saberi with espionage.

Iran has played this absurd game before. In recent years, other Americans, including two scholars, a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent and an American democracy activist, were unjustly detained. Thankfully all were eventually released but only after enduring months of deprivation under house arrest or in prison. In 2003, Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-born Canadian photojournalist charged with espionage, suffered an even worse fate: According to the Iranian doctor who treated her, she died after being beaten and tortured while in Evin prison, the notorious facility where Ms. Saberi is being held. A former F.B.I. agent who went missing in 2007 while on a business trip, Robert Levinson, is also believed to be imprisoned.

We do not know why the government decided to go after Ms. Saberi. One theory is that Tehran may want to try to “trade” her for three Iranian diplomats arrested in Iraq by United States troops in 2007 and charged in connection with attacks on Iraqi and American forces. Another is that government hard-liners may be trying to sabotage President Obama’s effort to engage Tehran after 30 years of mutual isolation.

The two countries have a lot they need to talk about, including their shared interest in controlling Afghanistan’s narcotics industry and ensuring that Iraq’s civil war does not again spin out of control as American troops begin to withdraw.

They also have many difficult areas of disagreement, starting with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Tehran has often demanded that Washington not interfere in its internal affairs. By using Ms. Saberi and many of its own citizens as political pawns, Iran is ensuring that its shockingly poor human rights record will remain a contentious issue between the two countries and make finding rapprochement even harder.
Click to read the article

Obama's Mistaken Persian Gambit

This is an excellent article.
Rees

from Joshua Pundit
by Rob Miller
Monday, March 23, 2009



As you all know by now, President Obama broadcast an extraordinarily video to the government and the people of Iran, ostensibly in honor of Nahruz, the Persian New year, which is celebrated annually at the spring equinox:

I avoided writing about this thus far because I wanted to see the reaction...both from the Mullahs and from several other players in the region.

The extraordinary spectacle of the president of the United States, a nation Iran has considered itself in a state of war with for thirty years grovelling in this fashion shows that President Obama has absolutely no clue as to how to deal with these people.

In particular, it's noteworthy that this was addressed not only to the Iranian people, but to the regime.He specifically referred to Iran as an Islamic Republic and called for it to 'take it's rightful place among th4e nations of the world.'

The mullahcracy of Iran is a brutal, totalitarian regime that cheerfully hangs homosexuals, beats women on the streets who the basij , the regime's brown shirts, feel are immodestly dressed and `uppity', and leads the world in juvenile executions. Torture and beatings in secret prisons are the norm.

They train, support and finance terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, who like Iran are officially committed to annihilating Israel, teaching children the glories of 'martyrdom' and in the case of Hamas and Hezbollah, committing genocide against Jews world wide.

And they've been in a declared war for thirty years against the 'Great Satan' - that would be America - that has included targeting America servicemen and civilians over the years, including the bombing of a marine barracks in Beirut that cost 240 lives, the torture murder of Colonel William Buckley, the abduction and execution style killings of four American officers and arming and training our enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not only is Obama prepared to ignore all that, but he's also apparently prepared to allow Iran to have nuclear weapons, and expressly took any forceful response off the table stating that the US was 'fully committed to a diplomatic solution'.

Obama in his video talked a great deal about our “common humanity,” and made a point of discounting dismissed “those who insist we be defined by our differences..”

There are striking resemblances to a speech made a long time ago by another world leader attempting to placate a militant dictatorship : “We are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference, and thus to contribute to assure the peace… “ That was British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, when he returned from Munich in 1938 — in the statement Chamberlain made that promised “peace for our time.”

The Iranian response was swift and fairly predictable, as Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran responded:

Khamenei set the bar impossibly high, demanding an overhaul of U.S. foreign policy, including giving up "unconditional support" for Israel and halting claims that Iran is seeking nuclear arms. Iran insists its nuclear program is only for peaceful energy purposes.

"Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials?" Khamenei said in a speech in the northeastern city of Mashhad. The crowd chanted "Death to America."

"He (Obama) insulted the Islamic Republic of Iran from the first day. If you are right that change has come, where is that change? What is the sign of that change? Make it clear for us what has changed..

"Still, Khamenei left the door open to better ties with America, saying "should you change, our behavior will change, too."

This is far from a kiss off, by the way. There would be absolutely no value in that for Iran. Khamenei is using a classic Persian bazaari gambit of tossing the first offer to do business back at Obama and in essence asking him how far Obama is prepared to go to make a deal.

What the Mullahs want at the very least is to eat up additional time in 'negotiations' to allow them to finish nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Once that's done, the regime is going to be solidly in place, with the ability to black mail the west by threatening to shut off Persian Gulf oil at any time.
Click to read the rest of the article and comments

Obama believes "Middle America" is not something to be compromised with...

from Real Clear Politics

By David Warren

March 21, 2009

Too Clever by Half

Obama believes that those of us he categorizes as Middle America, are stupid!

All his life, from childhood through university through "community organizing" and Chicago wardheel politics, through Sunday mornings listening to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, to the left side of Democrat caucuses in Springfield and Washington, he has been surrounded almost exclusively by extremely liberal people, and moreover, by people who are quick and clever but intellectually narrow.

He is a free soul, but he is also the product of environments in which even moderately conservative ideas are never considered; but where people on the further reaches of the left are automatically welcomed as "avant-garde." His whole idea of where the middle might be, is well to the left of where the average American might think it is. To a man like Obama, as he has let slip on too many occasions when away from his teleprompter, "Middle America" is not something to be compromised with, but rather, something that must be manipulated, because it is stupid. And the proof that it can be manipulated, is that he is the president today.

It is at this point that the phenomenon known as "too clever by half" sets in. Technically, it is indistinguishable from arrogance and hubris, but it is unnecessary to stress the point. Sixty days into his first term (and I begin to doubt there'll be a second), he would seem already to have dug a hole from which no rhetorical skill can lift him.

The video to Iran is the latest catastrophe. Mr. Obama simply does not understand how his "olive branch" will be received, not only by the mullahs in Iran itself, but wherever else on the surface of the planet the United States has enemies. It "reads" -- to people who do not share anything like America's aspirations -- as an unambiguous confession of weakness. He has moved the American position towards Iran from offensive to defensive, for no defensible reason.
Click to read the rest of the article