Showing posts with label Foreign Policy Experience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Foreign Policy Experience. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Obama's Mythography:An Orwellian Disaster

The following article was printed in the opinion section of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review:

President Barack Obama's Orwellian rhetoric has become absolutely pathological. And it's become so blatant that you can almost guarantee that the truth is the exact opposite of what he says. To wit:

The president insisted he had no intention of taking over Chrysler and General Motors.

He did.

The president calls "cap-and-trade" environmental legislation a "market-based" approach, based on "sound science."

It is not.

The president claims his health care reform plan is not "socialized medicine."

It is.

He claims it won't harm private insurance.

It will.

He claims service won't be rationed.

But to control costs as he proposes, it must be. (Even top aides concede the point.)

Mr. Obama says he supports "democracy" in Latin America.

How can he? He also supports the Marxist ways of Manuel Zelaya, legally removed from Honduras' presidency by the constitutional actions of the legislative and judicial branches.

And the examples of this president's mythography go on and on.

Some will dismiss Barack Obama's pronouncements merely as "rhetoric" and "posturing." "Everybody does it," they'll say. "It's politics."

But this is different and decidedly more dangerous: The president of the United States says one thing and does another and claims things that cannot possibly be.

Whether by delusion or by design, Barack Obama is being dishonest with the American people. And that is a harbinger of national disaster. (Source) - emphasis added

President Obama is a veritable Marxist but Americans are either too afraid to say that which is politically incorrect, too ignorant to realize it, or so filled with animus towards the U.S that they couldn't care less.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Thomas Sowell on "Foreign Policy Experience"

It is really not my intention to become a Sarah Palin defender or advocate but the collective retardation I am hearing from people desperate to see Obama in the White House is overwhelming. Now I want to see the him win too (that tribal part of myself). But what I'm hearing on black radio stations is lunacy. It is becoming increasing clear that we (no ya'll) need to just stop talking and starting reading and thinking. I came across this article written by Thomas Sowell (the most brilliant economist, thinker, author of this century) and I have to share and I hope that maybe just maybe someone will think this thing through instead of ranting about how inexperienced Sen. Palin is.

Now that the Democrats have recovered from the shock of Governor Sarah Palin's nomination as the Republican's candidate for vice president, they have suddenly discovered that her lack of experience in general-- and foreign policy experience in particular-- is a terrible danger in someone just a heartbeat away from being President of the United States.

For those who are satisfied with talking points, there is no need to go any further. But, for those who still consider substance relevant, this is an incredible argument coming from those whose presidential candidate has even less experience in public office than Sarah Palin, and none in foreign policy.

Moreover, if Senator Barack Obama is elected, he will not be a heartbeat away from the presidency, his would be the heartbeat of the president-- and he would be the one making foreign policy. But the big talking point is that the Democrats' vice-presidential nominee, Senator Joe Biden, has years of foreign policy experience as a member, and now chairman, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. That all depends on what the definition of "experience" is.

Before getting into that, however, a plain fact should be noted:
No governor ever had foreign policy experience before becoming president-- not Ronald Reagan, not Franklin D. Roosevelt, nor any other governor. It is hard to know how many people could possibly have had foreign policy experience before reaching the White House besides a Secretary of State or a Secretary of Defense.

The last Secretary of War (the old title of Secretaries of Defense) to later become President of the United States was William Howard Taft, a hundred years ago. The last Secretary of State to become President of the United States was James Buchanan, a century and a half ago.

The first President Bush had been head of the C.I.A., which certainly gave him a lot of knowledge of what was happening around the world, though still not experience in making the country's foreign policy.

Senator Joe Biden's years of service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is even further removed from foreign policy experience. He
has had a front-row seat as an observer of foreign policy. But Senator Biden has never had any real experience of making foreign policy and taking the consequences of the results.

The difference between being a spectator and being a participant, with responsibility for the consequences of what you say and do, is fundamental.

You can read books about crime or attend lectures by criminologists, but you have no real experience or expertise about crime unless you have been a criminal or a policeman.
Although I served in the Marine Corps, I have no military experience in any meaningful sense. The closest I ever came to combat was being assigned to photograph the maneuvers of the Second Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, N.C. That was photographic experience, not military experience. If someone gave me a policy-making job in the Pentagon, I wouldn't have a clue.

The fact that Senator Joe Biden has for years listened to all sorts of people testify on all sorts of foreign policy issues tells us nothing about how well he understood the issues.
Out of the four presidential and vice-presidential candidates this year, only Governor Palin has had to make executive decisions and live with the consequences.

As for Senator Obama, his various pronouncements on foreign policy have been as immature as they have been presumptuous. He talked publicly about taking military action against Pakistan, one of our few Islamic allies and a nation with nuclear weapons. Barack Obama's first response to the Russian invasion of Georgia was to urge "all sides" to negotiate a cease-fire and take their issues to the United Nations. That is standard liberal talk, which even Obama had second thoughts about, after Senator John McCain gave a more grown-up response.

We should all have second thoughts about what is, and is not, foreign policy "experience." "
-- Thomas Sowell