Is Obama our Boabdil?

Apologies for the very long delay in blogging. I had to deal with some boring health issues. The lab results were, well, what can I say? Just this: as with most of what happens in life, the results were worse than I hoped, but better than I feared. So, as one does in response to the majority of life's events, one muddles on and through. As the Brits, back when Brits were Brits, used to say, "Keep Calm and Carry On," or was it "Keep Clams with Curry On"? One or the other . . .

This will be a minor rant. I don't have the energy for a full-blown one. Besides, I have said so much of this before that I don't know whether it bears repeating anymore.

I won't link to all the Diplomad postings on the disaster that is Obama's foreign policy. You might want to entertain yourself on a very dull evening doing that. Suffice it to say, that the disaster was foreseen. One did not have to be Nostradamus to see that Obama's sneering disregard for American and Western interests, and the institutions and principles which maintained those, would have dire consequences for the West and the world. We see those consequences in the arc of insanity that runs from Mauritania to Iran; in Putin's gleeful mocking of the West and in his drive to rebuild the empire of the Tsars; in China's growing aggressiveness; in the collapse of our foreign policy in Central and South America epitomized by the wave of illegals blatantly crossing our southern border and the increasingly bizarre politics of Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Brazil. Everywhere we look around the world, the interests of the West--not just of America--are in retreat or collapse.

We see the disaster that has become Iraq. Obama has thrown away a stunning military victory and done so in exchange for what? Well, the same folks for whom just a few short months ago we were going to go to war in Syria (remember the "red line" days?) are now on a Jihadist rampage in Syria and Iraq; known as ISIS they vow to set up a Muslim caliphate and exterminate all the infidels. It now seems that we are discovering that the pencil-necked dictator of Syria, the very one we were preparing to attack, is now our possible ally against the Islamist murder machine. We are now conducting a desultory bombing campaign against the very people we were preparing to defend with a desultory bombing campaign. Orwell must be having a laugh, "We were never at war with Eastasia." And, at the State Department, the NSC, and the CIA? Nobody gets fired, nobody resigns, nobody stands up and says this is wrong.

The saddest, most frustrating matter of them all is that the opponents we face today are weak. They are nothing compared to Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan or even the old USSR. They should present no real challenge for the United States and the West. Russia is a gangster state kept afloat by oil money and bluff. China is largely bluff and kept afloat by our tolerance for their trade practices and the cupidity of Western governments and businesses willing to give, "lend," sell, and turn a blind eye to the theft of technology and industrial processes in exchange for, in essence, cheap or even slave labor. Islam is a hoax when it comes to warfare. Despite its chest beating and violent language, its "warriors" are good at killing the unarmed, the defenseless, and the weak. They do not do well when confronted by a determined Western army. These Jihadis, too, benefit financially from our refusal to become fully energy independent and to develop realistic and, yes, self-serving immigration laws.

When discussing Obama and his foreign policy, the range of options are that he is stupid, uninterested, or an evil little worm out to destroy the West. I think, others might disagree, that he is, in fact, all three. I will discuss that further in a subsequent post.

One of the things I have been doing on my down time these past weeks, has been  brushing up on one of my favorite topics, Spanish history. I am surprised that Hollywood has not done more with the amazing, at times, even unbelievable history of Spain. I was re-reading, in particular, accounts of the final days of the once great Muslim empire in Spain. The war to retake Iberia from the Muslims lasted nearly 800 years from a small but important victory in Covadonga to the final dramatic capitulation of Granada in 1492--an event, supposedly, witnessed by Christopher Columbus.

It was on reading the accounts of Granada's surrender to the forces of the Catholic Monarchs, Isabel and Fernando, that I thought a good name for Obama is Boabdil. Bear with me. I know there's football on the tube. Boabdil, aka Mohamed XII, was the at-times confused, somewhat hapless, and at others conniving and always desperate last Muslim Emir of Granada. It fell to him to surrender Granada when it became clear that help was not on the way from the rest of the Muslim world and that he was facing alone the rampaging and victorious Christian forces of the Catholic Monarchs. The story, perhaps apocryphal, is that as Boabdil, his family, and his reduced band of hanger-ons left Granada, he paused on a hilltop to look back at the magnificent city he had just lost. The story goes on to relate that he began to cry on viewing that sight. His mother, Sultana Aixa, who had been urging a fight to the death against the Christians, reportedly said to the son who had so disappointed her, "No llores como mujer lo que no supistes defender como hombre" ("Don't cry like a woman over what you could not defend like a man.") There are slightly different versions of what she supposedly said, but the thought was the same.

Is Obama the Boabdil of the West? Nah, he won't cry when the West collapses, he'll play golf . . .