Needless to say, if the unfortunate victims of the Chapel Hill atheist nutbar had been Hasidic Jews or Mormons or born again Christians or turbaned Sikhs there'd be no outcry about how intolerant and racist etc etc America is - but because the victims were Muslims the Islamic world goes nuts and the progressives start blaming it all on Fox News even though there's zero proof they were targeted specifically for being Muslim and the perpetrator expressed political views that are decidedly left wing in their nature, not right wing. Wow. You really just wanna pull a Thoreau, no? Build your little cabin in the woods a leave this nonsensical idiocy behind.

So let me get this straight - millions of Muslims can engage in, endorse, support, subscribe to in the name of fealty to their creed behavior that is very much antagonistic even hateful towards Western values and in the case of extremists like ISIS and AQ etc etc engage in behavior that would very much like to topple and burn the modern world for the greater glory of Allah, and you dare draw conclusions about such a thing that calls into question the kind of culture engendered within Muslim polities - that amounts to a completely unacceptable attack on all Muslims by evil white Islamaphobic racists as if simply asking questions is an utterly intolerable offense - so, someone like Erdogan can insanely float antisemitic conspiracy theories about how Israel was behind the riots in Turkey or blame the rise of ISIS on Western hatred of Muslims or Iran can threaten to nuke Israel into oblivion or Hamas can hold as a central principle the desire to drive every Jew into the sea or the Saudis can flog someone for writing a blog or throw a woman in jail for driving a car or stone her to death for adultery or how it's the 21st century and blasphemy is still through much of the Muslim world considered a crime etc etc etc and if I dare suggest that this behavior and much more, ya know, kinda begs the asking of certain critical questions regarding Muslim culture, well, that makes me an Islamaphobic racist whose right to free speech needs immediately to be shut down because the drawing of empirically logical conclusions amounts to an insult of all Muslims - but one atheist wacko kills three Muslims for reasons that are not at all clear and the Islamic world feels it's completely legitimate to indict all Americans [but really just the right leaning white ones] as intolerant, Islamaphobic racists - the Muslim world is literally collapsing into violent, dysfunctional chaos for reasons which clearly have something to do with Islamism because 'trouble' is a cultural manifestation and in closed theocratic societies religion drives culture - but you dare try and draw general conclusions from that reality concerning the nature of Muslim polities and that makes you an Islam hating racist.  Case closed. Now shut up.

Wow. I really need to get my Thoreau on. Gonna build me a cabin...

This speech by Rubio is fascinating - I've talked about him before as someone to watch, not simply because he's young and a Latino with a great backstory, but because he's one of the best if not indeed the best contender out there when it comes to public speaking - especially when it comes to foreign policy. Now, foreign policy usually doesn't play a big role in elections, namely because the average voter spends little time thinking about it since it's a complex subject difficult to understand - but way things are going, could be a big if not huge factor in 2016, and that favors Rubio - and if speeches like this succeed in shaming enough Democrats into not boycotting Netanyahu if he does indeed go through with an address to Congress, then Rubio's stock rises sharply [although I still think he's running for the VP slot]. I gotta believe this speech is playing extremely well in Israel.

But what about Ukraine? Perfect example of what strategic incompetence gets ya - Europe pushed east without ever it seems stopping to consider what they were gonna do if Russia pushed back - the epitome of strategic myopia revealed by fact that every Western leader was shocked when Putin went into Crimea, shocked when Putin then stoked upheaval in eastern Ukraine - that they we're shocked by these developments screams strategic incompetence [an idiot like me predicted both of those things] and now there are few good options if any. With the recent signing of the ceasefire looks like Putin gets what he wanted all along: Crimea, autonomy in eastern Ukraine that he can continue to exploit and a show of power that exposed how weak, feckless and irresolute Western leadership is at the moment.

Those arguing to arm Ukraine, that seems like a mistake to me - that would not undo the original mistakes, just compound them - Putin has too much to lose here, he'll call your bluff, and if you're not willing to acknowledge the consequences of that reality, you'll get beat. I don't think it was ever Putin's goal to actually invade Ukraine because the sanctions that would follow such a move would truly devastate Russia's economy - but it was his goal certainly to stoke upheaval and convince the West that they should indeed fear such a thing. He wins. All you can do now is accept that you fucked up, learn your lessons and compensate before Putin acts again. Will they? Not with Obama in the White House - and all the bad players out there know it, which is why the next two years could get pretty god damn messy.

Doesn't Obama sending ISIS related AUMF to Congress contradict all those bad things people like me have been saying about his practice of foreign policy? We'll see how it plays out, but I'd say no - so far to me looks like yet another political ploy on his part - he's trying to get Republicans to sign off on his limited approach, thinking that will shut them up - if they don't sign off on it, then he gets to blame them for whatever failures that follow - it's a political ploy, far as I can tell - not dissimilar from his Afghan surge, which had much more to do with politics than it had to do with winning the war. The AUMF has a time limit and stipulates no offensive ground forces aside from special ops - that essentially amounts to the status quo and won't get the job done without the deployment of a rather large and mobile Arab/Turkish/Kurdish army under American command - don't see that happening, but even if it does it raises more questions than it answers - how competent and committed would this army be? Would it really be up to the task of urban warfare? Are they really gonna send troops into Syria, and if they do, would it be to topple or prop up Assad? Can't see a Sunni army looking to prop up Assad, so... what then? Will the al-Nursa Front also be on the target list? What about Iran? They may want to get rid of ISIS too but at the expense of the Saudis becoming a regional power in Syria and Sunni Iraq? That's a big no. But let's allow for possibility this works and you 'win' the war - without American troops how do you stabilize what you've won? If Mosul turns into another Fallujah, not only do I not believe this putative Arab army would be up to fighting such a war - but even if they pull it off who occupies the city and surrounding territory afterwards in order to secure the victory?

Nope, this has political ploy written all over it - especially since we've seen this kind of cynical politicking from Obama before - he's free to prove me wrong, but my guess is once the dust settles it will look like another reiteration of leading from behind and nothing much changes - except that Obama will now have two more things he can blame stuff on - the GOP if they don't sign off on the AUMF - and the Sunni Arab states if they refuse to send troops in or if they do and perform horribly.

[John Yoo in a nice article points to another aspect of the AUMF that seems to confirm that it's all about cynical political ploys - if Republicans agree to the 'sunset clause' of a three year deadline on the authorization they'll basically be setting a precedent that undermines the war making powers of the executive branch, something the Democrats will surely throw in their face next time a Republican president goes to war. The AUMF is nothing  more than a devious bit of politicking and I agree with Yoo, the Congress should just ignore it - if Obama truly wants to take the fight to ISIS he already has all the power he needs to do that - but of course any objective observer realizes Obama has no serious intent when it comes to ISIS, so no point allowing yourself to become the object of yet another partisan political stunt by Obama - of course Obama will then blame Republicans for the failures to come, at which point you just have to forcefully reiterate that if he's serious about about confronting the threat he should send Congress an AUMF that reflects that seriousness]

Exactly - as said before, either Obama and his team of sycophants are hardcore ideologues drowning in the delusions of their beliefs and thus incapable of seeing the folly of their ways or of even simply acknowledge the possibility of such - or, so dependent throughout his political rise on an acquiescent media which allowed him to spout bullshit and outright lies non-stop because they treated his nonsense as gospel, Obama simply doesn't know how else to behave - to him, false narratives spun by an adoring media is how you lead, is how you govern - and apparently he's just gonna try and lie and bullshit his way right to the end of his term.

Or both are true. Either way, the pathology of the man's governing style, ethos is you will, is on clear display when it comes to Iran - he's been lying all along either because he embraced the idea of deterrence and the fastasy of detente with the theocracy a long time ago and refuses to doubt for a second that he, the smartest president ever, could possibly be wrong about something - or because plan B, a military strike on Iran, was anathema to an enlightened soul like him and therefore the thinking was or has been for awhile 'we'll try for a deal that kinda looks viable regardless of whether or not it actually is - but if that doesn't work at least endless negotiations can allow us to run out the clock on this thing and keep Bibi that war mongering prick in check'.  And so you lie - and of course the 'deal' keeps getting watered down and watered down because Iran knows they have Obama over a barrel.

I mean, look at the dust up over Netanyahu's speech to congress - a perfect sampling of Obama's mode of governing - you lie, you get the New York Times to dutifully parrot that lie and flesh out the narrative, and then for good measure you play the race card and with that the story magically morphs into how the GOP and Netanyahu are racists playing politics with our national security - the man and the catamites who serve him are absolutely shameless - and you'd have to be, because their whole theory of governing is shamefully in keeping with the 'gotta break a few eggs to get an omelette' thinking that the leftists trying to defend Stalinism used to spout - lie, count on the media to enable the lie, then with that foothold and blinded by ideological certainty enact policies that push the country irretrievably to the left - if a few eggs get broken, well, don't sweat it because it'll all be worth it. And how do they know this? Because they're brilliant progressives - and how can a brilliant progressive possibly be wrong? Even facts, even reality give ground before such brilliance.

If Iran tests a nuke tomorrow, not only will Obama and his spokespersons say that has nothing to do with mistakes made by the administration - I think there's a good chance they'll actually believe it has nothing to do with something they got wrong - and they'll believe this because for them what really matters is redrawing the contours of American power to bring it in line with the progressives' worldview - that's the omelette - or the figment of one, rather.

[I should add, I get obviously that politicians lie, it's one of their chief attributes, and so Obama should not necessarily be condemned for excelling at it - the problems are, one, the media endorsing the lies, which can be nothing but bad for your democracy - and two,  the lies being divorced from any reasonable, reality based 'good' - the deceptions are all about ideological dogmatism that acts as if specific outcomes don't matter just so long as the general goal of pushing the country leftward is served - so with something like Obamacare it doesn't matter if healthcare has not been made better and less expensive as was claimed would be the case - all that matters is that the media enabled lie pushed the country leftward - and it's one thing to have this pathology infect your domestic policy - that harm can possibly be undone or corrected - when it comes to foreign policy, though, the monsters you create with your fantasies do not disappear because someone finally had the good sense to turn on a light]  

Great analysis by Mead of problems with Obama's Iran policy, criticisms and concerns that resonate when considering his entire approach to foreign policy and the seemingly grossly misguided worldview embraced by he and his inner circle. And Mead is right - the Obama administration's refusal to address in any realistic or coherent way the concerns, now increasingly also coming from the left, just stokes worries about what the hell Obama thinks he's doing.

So one can say this mess is a reflection of one of three things way I see it: Obama and his maenads are convinced they and their worldview are in the right and arrogance has cemented that belief in place and firmly locked the door of the echo chamber; or, admitting to flaws in their thinking or simply just acknowledging doubts would also amount to admitting to reality that American power and leadership are indeed essential things of vital importance to Western interests and that is something uber liberals of Obama's ilk are absolutely loathe to do - so they just blindly push on; or, terrified or disgusted by the the thought of a military confrontation Obama is simply trying to either run out the clock and pass the mess on to the next administration or looking to sign any deal bypassing Congress's concerns or input or approval and then when that deal inevitably falls apart blame that outcome on nefarious forces - Israel, neocons, American hegemony, Bush - whatever.

Gotta be one of those three - and none of the options leave one feeling very comfortable about how this will all play out.

In what may be the most odious equivocation ever, Obama attempts to explain away Islamic extremism by throwing out the tautology that, hey, Christian states did bad things too - is the man an idiot? Does he think we're all idiots? Does he actually believe the nonsense he spouts? No reasonable and reasonably educated person denies the point Dear Leader is making - but once you've admitted that, absent countervailing forces, absolutist belief systems [which all religions are] tend towards bad behavior especially when tied to political ends, the next question to ask is, and it's the only question that matters in this context: why did the Christian West evolve out of this behavior while the Muslim world has not? As said before, the answer as far as I'm concerned is that Islam is an inherently political religion while Christianity, although often used for political purposes in the past, is not - there's a strong motivation in Islam to keep the system closed - to achieve that end requires a robust and repressive political/social component which by it's very nature will be extremist. Of course all religions share more or less in this motivation to 'purity' and dogma - problems arise when this motivation is necessarily tied to a political component, which is the case with Islam but was not with Christianity.

But of course Obama does not follow the logical consequences of his statement - he just throws out the absurd equivocation and moves on as if all problems have been quelled. Has a great nation ever been led by a more pathetic leader than this guy? I'm sure some Roman emperors fit the bill - but my god, this is just getting sad to watch. Think about it, if you're not willing to pursue the logical consequences of making such a statement [which should be the sole reason for making such a statement] then why make the statement? What on earth does he think he's accomplishing with it? The frightening thought is that it isn't just him spouting more empty rhetoric but rather that he does think it accomplishes something - as if he thinks there's no problem in the world that can't be solved by the first black/sort of black president apologizing for all the horrible things those evil white capitalists have done. I dunno - can he really be such a deluded left wing ideologue that he actually believes that statement in and of itself expresses some profound truth?

[of course having said all that it is legitimate to ask if there is a point to being honest about why the Muslim world is the way it is - reform is needed but we can't force it upon them - indeed, even if reform comes it will no doubt be accompanied by much upheaval - that may be what we're seeing with ISIS - still, I don't see how in any sound way you can strategically position yourself against a threat if you can't be honest regarding the true roots of the threat - the almost universal failure of Western leaders to understand the Arab Spring and foresee how it would play out is clear example of this - Obama's embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt another - Europe's indulging of Islamist thinking and the problems that has given rise to another  - the myopic antipathy directed at Israel by both Europe and Obama another - Iran - one could go on. Even if one believes that the invasion of Iraq was the worst foreign policy decision ever - which the liberal elite en masse do believe - if you're being intellectually honest - which the liberal elite en masse seems incapable of doing - you still have to admit that it revealed something very important: our understanding of the Muslim world, on both the left and the right - but especially the left - falls far short of the clear thinking required to form a workable strategy against the threats rising out of it - and there may be no better manifestation of this failing than the singularly abysmal practice of foreign policy under Obama]

[as for me saying an inability to with honest objectivity analyze the threats against us will leave us incapable of forming a coherent strategic posture against those threats, this at Commentary fills the idea out with some nice sarcasm - and it's true, anyone surprised by how awful a president Obama is has not spent much time listening to the liberal academy arrogantly expound with utter delusion on foreign policy - I like how Mendel snarks that given his intellectual pedigree it's a wonder, bad as he is,  that Obama isn't actually worse - I don't know if you could get worse - again, understanding the intellectual milieu Obama crawled out of none of this is surprising - these people live in a world of vainglorious concepts utterly detached from reality and held unsteadily aloft by one single conviction: a disgust for American power and the ignorant instruments - capitalism and the military - that deliver it - everything they do, think and say is twisted through that prism]

Why are people taking Jordan's vow to 'destroy' ISIS seriously? Sure they can sort of go to war against them by stepping up sorties etc etc - but they're not sending troops into Iraq or Syria and therefore they're not gonna 'destroy' anything - the only way you get remotely close to a serious attack on ISIS is if you see a broad Sunni coalition ready to make actual war and not just spew angry rhetoric and even with that you'd still need to have Turkey at the head of such a thing since only they have the military assets required - and none of that is going to happen for a variety of reasons chief of which is this fantasy coalition goes nowhere without a strong American commitment backing up this would be 'war' and who believes for a second Obama would sign off on something like that? Such a commitment would mean American troops on the ground - it would mean making a decision on what to do about Assad - it would mean American troops taking the lead if [when] this Arab/Turkish amalgam falls apart - and it would mean a reoccupation of Sunni Iraq bringing you into direct conflict with Iran, which increasingly holds sway over Shia Iraq. Oh, and it would probably mean if you decide to dethrone Assad Hezbollah coming to his aid by launching an offensive on Israel which would to say the least stir the pot in ways that a reluctant warrior like Obama would have no ability or desire to deal with.

So what dream world are people living in that they take Jordan's rhetoric seriously? Hell, you could argue that ISIS committed the act of brutality for this precise reason - to lay bare divisions and make clear that there is no authority or power in the region willing or able to take them on. Jordan in a sense has thrown down a gauntlet that I doubt in the extreme can or will be backed up by significant action - which may have been exactly what ISIS was looking for. People are looking at the execution of the pilot as it were an act of senseless brutality - but much more likely is that there was a point to it - military history is full of such behavior and thinking - Genghis Khan committed atrocities with what seemed like a near reckless abandon, but in reality there was a purpose to it. Caesar as well amongst the Gauls. Napoleon in Russia - although that backfired - but one gets the point.

[Krauthammer makes my point but of course with a concise expertise that is beyond my humble efforts - but the crux of his point and mine is that those who look at ISIS and see nothing but a 'death cult' are making a big mistake - these guys may engage in barbaric acts, but they're strategic thinkers - and sad, hell pathetic as it is to acknowledge, their strategic thinking is much more coherent and reality based than Obama's - although as I've said before Obama indeed has a strategy, it's just not even remotely in touch with reality or coherence - it's the kind of 'strategic' thinking you'd hear tossed around the faculty lounge of an Ivy League school - sounds nifty, but then you leave the room and the harsh lights of the world turn it to dust]

It's simple - if your starting premise is that American power is bad then everything you do is an attempt to conceptually fill in the void left by its absence - concepts - that's how Obama and his little team of catamites govern - they've conceptualized what the world should look like and how it should behave absent American power and its cognate 'white privilege' but those are only ideas supported by little or no empirical evidence and these people aren't empiricists, they're idealists, and idealists are not good when it comes to questioning the validity of their starting premises - which is why when the facts don't say what they want them to say idealists simply ignore the facts or through equivocation, rationalization, twisted logic or just flat out lying attempt to subvert them. That in a nutshell is the Obama presidency, especially when you're talking about foreign policy.  

Since the election loss a few months ago Obama has been acting in a detached from the realities of governing way that had always obviously been an integral part of his ideological makeup but which has now stepped forward in such a pronounced form that even left wing partisan stalwarts are having trouble ignoring it - he talks as if something is necessarily true if said by him regardless of whether or not it actually is true - that's pretty much the way he's governed since taking office but the fact that he doesn't have to bother with winning another election has unleashed the full monty of prevarication and misdirection and obfuscation.

Now, I'm not suggesting he actually believes he's a master of some god-like infalability - although, who knows, maybe he is nuts - no, these are the actions of a zealot, a person who is utterly convinced that left wing thinking is inherently good and right wing thinking is inherently bad and therefore even if a progressive says something wrong or misguided or ill-founded or outright false it doesn't matter since if they're motivated by 'the forces of good' they cannot possibly be wrong when measured against the evils of conservatism. That's how zealots behave - that's why he so cavalierly ignores the election results - for zealots, elections are only legitimate if they endorse what the zealots believe to be right since anything that falls outside the sanctity of those convictions must by its very nature be wrong - and this is why he can so cavalierly ignore objective standards of truth as if they don't matter and consistently talks as if he's the only reasonable person in the room - zealots, no matter how outlandish or extreme their actions, always think they're the most reasonable person in the room because as far they're concerned you either agree with them or by not agreeing with them become necessarily mistaken. Hell, I'm sure Mao, as he was condemning millions of his own people to death, was utterly convinced of the reasonableness of his actions.

It's quite disturbing seeing the supposed greatest democracy on earth being led by such a man. But this is the way he's governed since day one, as if bullshit isn't bullshit if it's liberal bullshit - and he's gotten away with it because when you combine the cluelessness of the average voter with a media bias that protects and encourages such behavior, you've got yourself a problem.

[Seth Mendel at Commentary makes much the same point but uses apt image of 'Potemkin politics' - which fits my point nicely - for communist zealots lying was perfectly acceptable because objective notions of 'truth' did not matter - all that matters to a zealot is what they want to believe is true - this is how Obama has governed and is increasingly unguarded about it because he no longer has to fool the soft middle of the electorate into voting for him - in fact you'd almost think that he's being so brazen about this because he's trying to start a left wing rumble that opens the door for Liz Warren, a zealot just as committed to the cause as him - instinctively you'd think such ideological dogmatism would be a bad thing for whoever the Democratic nominee is - but look at Obama's approval rating still hovering around 50% which is just absurd and think about how that possibly could be - whether it's Warren or Clinton in 2016 they're gonna have the same built in advantage to exploit as Obama: the media does not treat bullshit like bullshit if it's liberal bullshit - and that is especially true if the bullshit is coming from someone whose is not a white, english speaking male]

[and Hanson over at NRO using Obama's foreign policy as example makes same point but much more effectively than a plodder like me - those who look at Obama's  practice of foreign policy and see bumbling incompetence lacking a strategy are missing the point and are allowing themselves to be fooled into thinking Obama really is a reasonably hesitant pragmatist and not a dogmatic left wing ideologue doing exactly what he intends - the man absolutely does have a strategy, he's just not being honest about it, and that's because it revolves around one simple uber liberal conceit - less American power is a good thing - that is his strategy and all gestures and policies that fill the void left behind become rationalizations meant to prop up the presumed rightness of that thinking because for a zealot like Obama that thinking cannot possibly be wrong even if facts on the ground say otherwise - and so of course you lie, you misdirect, you obfuscate, you throw up rhetorical smoke screens and you push on - for Obama his actions in Iraq will never be the cause of bad outcomes because the only truly wrong thing there was the use of American power in the first place - in his mind even if he's wrong he can't possibly wrong since his motivations are guided by a purer light - ask him, putting Bush's mismanagement of the war aside, how exactly the Mideast would be a better place with Saddam still in power and what that might say about the dysfunction endemic to Muslim polities and he'll brush the question aside as being beside the point - which is why counter narrative outcomes don't matter to idealists like him - facts are ephemera that get in the way - Obama's whole approach to Iran is predicated on the abstract conceit that American power is bad and therefore if the negotiations end with the 'negative outcomes' I fully expect to see Obama and his ilk will never acknowledge that they were wrong since they can never admit that their guiding principle was wrong i.e. that American power is bad - if manipulation of Obama through these negotiations results in Iran becoming a threshold nuclear power or an actual nuclear power this outcome will simply be rationalized away by being blamed on American hegemony or some other nefarious evil influence or propped up as a 'good' thing when compared to all the other options since all the other options would have involved in one way or another the clear expression of American power, which is the original sin from which all others flow]