Dumb and dumber in the White House and expectations fulfilled.

Some may wonder if I ever have anything positive to say or post about Obama, his administration and the job is suppossed to be doing. Well, in reality I have found very little if nothing positive that BHO has done since becoming this nation's president. Let me go a bit further. In 46 years of life Obama has done nothing of merit or that which I would consider noteworthy or in service to our country which has given him everything, especially a perverted sense of entitlement. Having watched this man and his pack of fools that he calls an administration, rush from one crisis to another, getting nothing done except causing more damage and making this country weaker and appear rudderless. As Mr. Rubin puts it so very well: "Being Incredibly Stupid?" That is something that Obama is doing very well. See, I said something nice about him.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

“Outsmarting” the Terrorists by Being Incredibly Stupid?




By Barry Rubin
Rubin Reports

Here’s my usual disclaimer: I would love to be able to stop criticizing the Obama Administration but it keeps saying and doing things that shock and surprise me or—if you want to put it this way—live up to my worst expectations.

I’m sitting on a U.S. army base briefing officers along with a high-ranking State Department official who works on the Middle East. At one point, he gets a quaver in his voice and starts talking about the Arab-Israeli conflict making quite clear which side he’s on. Sounding scared he says: “While a lot of problems in the world can bring trouble only the Arab-Israeli conflict can get you and your families killed.”

The officers look disgusted. He is fitting precisely their stereotype of a cowardly diplomat. Abandon Israel and save your life and that of your children, is his message. Oh, and this is after September 11 which makes
this statement even more ridiculous.



This kind of blatant cowardice is usually better concealed. It more often occurs in regard to intellectuals facing challenges like the “Danish cartoons.” But it is glimpsed at times in a sort of strategic fearfulness, a refusal to do what’s in one’s interest lest someone might get mad about it.

John Brennan is the president’s advisor on counter-terrorism and may be the dumbest of all Obama’s foreign policy appointments. Brennan is apparently ex-CIA and he has yet to persuade me that he has any understanding whatsoever about terrorism. He’s the guy who said that Hizballah wasn’t a terrorist group because it ran candidates for parliament and had lawyers among its members.

Now in a television interview, he stated that the Guantanamo prison should be closed because al-Qaida has used its existence in order to make propaganda.

A few hours later, President Barack Obama repeated this talking point in the course of discussing reinforced controls on airplane passengers:

"We will close Guantanamo prison, which has damaged our national security interests and become a tremendous recruiting tool for al-Qaida," Obama said. "In fact, that was an explicit rationale for the formation of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula."

What? Is his understanding really so minimal that he thinks the formation of a revolutionary movement to seize power in Iraq and overthrow the Saudi government took place because the United States maintained a prison in Cuba? Is this man who proclaims himself the great understander of other cultures so ethnocentric that he thinks, so to speak, that “everything is about us?”

Does Obama have any sense at all of what al-Qaida uses as recruiting tools, of their ideology and goals? And would closing Guantanamo deprive al-Qaida of a recruiting tool, would it hurt that group? Isn’t it obvious that, if anything, al-Qaida would proclaim this as a victory: Out of fear of us, the camp was closed! We have prevented the oppression of Muslims! We can make the great Satan tremble and give in! Now, that’s a recruiting tool!

I actually find Michael Scheuer, another former CIA guy, more congenial than Brennan though he also has some terrible ideas. Scheuer views anti-American terrorism as solely caused by U.S. support for Middle Eastern regimes.

The reality is that there are three causes: U.S. policies; hatred of the American culture and society not because they care what goes on inside the United States but because they believe it will ultimately transform their own societies through both power and seductive example; and a desire to prove their strength and increase their support base by humiliating the world’s leading power.

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