Going from Ridiculous to Ridiculous: The Nobel Peace Prize Goes to . . .

Just taking a little break from covering the idiots who are running and ruining our country to devote a little time to The Idiots of The Great Far Abroad.

In those dark times when I despair that our country has acquired a global monopoly on stupidity, I turn to Europe for solace. We, in fact, do not have the monopoly on idiocy! No, in fact, I think we might, might still be running second to Europe on the idiocy index, although we have made great strides in shortening Europe's lead these last four years, and might well be within the margin of error.

Ah, yes, this year's Great and Noble Nobel Peace Prize has gone to--drumroll--the EU!! Yes to that monstrous bureaucracy that relegates the curvature of bananas, the cacao content of chocolate, and pays its bureaucrats astronomical salaries while its member states go bankrupt and enter varying states of anarchy. Yes, the EU has been credited for keeping the peace in Europe for the past seventy years . . . that the EU has not existed for seventy years, of course, is an irrelevant fact, and, besides, that just goes to show how good the EU is! Anyhow, the EU can certainly use the prize money.

Maybe next year the committee will award the prize for keeping Europe peaceful, free, democratic, and prosperous to the USA, or, at least, to NATO, the nom d'plume we use in Europe.

US Cemetery France

Its occupants eagerly await next year's Peace Prize decision. 

Biden: State & CIA Lie on Libya, but Tell Truth on Iran

Following last night's VP debate, I found myself extremely uneasy. After all that I have said against the current occupants of the White House, their economic and foreign policies, their governing philosophy, and their ethics, I realized that I have been way too easy on them.

Despite efforts to assist him by the atrocious debate moderator, in 90 minutes last night, Joe Biden proved over and over that neither he nor his boss should be anywhere near the levers of power of our country.

So much material, so little time . . . so let me focus on two issues: Libya and Iran.

On Libya, Biden lied gave an account at variance with the truth. He threw the entire intel community and the State Department to the wolves. He claimed that the Embassy in Libya did not ask for extra security, and that the White House was told the attack resulted from an anti-video demonstration gone awry, and not from a terrorist action. We all know that is not true. Foggy Bottom will exact its revenge. The leaks will come fast and furious (to use a phrase that did not come up last night) to show how the White House was informed and did nothing. There are now press reports that a US done was overhead for at least part of the attack; the State Department's Charlene Lamb already has testified that she was monitoring the attack in "near real time"; we know that the Embassy had requested additional security; and the CIA and State already have made known that they never concluded that the attack was anything other than a terrorist attack. Nobody has been able to explain the lack of White House response to an attack that went on for at least six hours.

In effect, he claimed that State, CIA, etc., deceived the White House. Interesting relationship that between Secretary Clinton and President Obama, that between Director Petraeus and President Obama . . .

Turning to Iran, Biden seemed to minimize the Iranian nuclear program, deriding the importance of their enrichment efforts because they have not yet developed a weaponized version of a nuclear device. He stated that we would "know" if the Iranians were close to developing a weapon. Hmmm . . . and we would "know" that how? The intelligence community would tell us! Oh, the same one that lied to misinformed the White House about what was going on in Benghazi? I see. According, therefore, to the Vice President our intelligence capabilities are not sophisticated or truthful enough to report accurately on an attack on a US facility by some two hundred heavily armed men in the middle of a city in a friendly country, but sophisticated and truthful enough to monitor intricate details of a hidden nuclear program undertaken in a very remote and heavily guarded location in the middle of an extremely hostile nation.

Sure, I am convinced. I just don't understand how those pesky Israelis, who lives depend on this, aren't convinced. Seeing the stellar performance by the White House on Libya, we and the Israelis should just put our fate in the hands of Obama, Biden, and their advisors.

Joe "Sardonicus" Biden

There was an old film, "Mr. Sardonicus," that used to scare me as a kid. I don't remember the whole plot but it had to do with somebody who did something so evil that his face was frozen into a horrible grimace. To wit,

Behold the remake,

What a truly weird and horrible performance!

Congressional Hearings on Libya Fiasco: Input Does Not Equal Output

Not going to lie to you. I did not have the stomach to listen to the entire presentation by the State Department reps today in front of Issa's committee. If I get something wrong let me know. After almost 34 years in the State Department, I have a pretty good idea of what's going on and don't really need to hear it. It is the silky swooshing sound of asses being covered.

The fact that Hillary Clinton did not show up or send any of her political appointees to represent her speaks volumes. The politicos are trying to get the top bureaucrats to take the spear. It ain't going to happen. These Obama types might think they are very clever, tough, and devious Chicago politicians, but they obviously have never gone up against senior career State Department bureaucrats fighting for their jobs and reputations. Foggy Bottom vs. Chicago? Put your money on Foggy Bottom.

I can guarantee you that the State bureaucrats are burning up the phone lines, running down their cell phones batteries, and going hoarse in "off the record" calls to Congressmen, staffers, and journalists. There is the public presentation being made before the committee, and then there is the "Open Kimono" presentations being made behind the scenes. I don't know Charlene Lamb, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security, but it sure seems as if she has been chosen as the sacrificial, ahem, lamb. How good she is at the double dealing game, I don't know. The master of the double deal is Undersecretary for Management Kennedy, whom I have known for twenty years. Whatever he says in front of the committee, which will be a "sort of" defense of the Department and White House leadership in the Benghazi fiasco, you can be sure that behind the scenes he and his acolytes are throwing Clinton, Rice, etc., under the bus. He is not about to go down in flames alone. He will not throw himself on the grenade to save Clinton and Rice and Obama. If he dies, they die, too.

I hope the congressmen can see through the classic State dodge: try to confuse input with output. Lamb, for example, proudly stated that she spent endless hours on the phone during the attacks monitoring the situation. I believe her: People at State work hard. Does it make a difference? Well, that's the rub. What did Lamb do with all this information she was gathering? Had she looped in the White House, the Pentagon, AFRICOM, or SOCOM? Was there a rescue plan underway? Hours went by, if there wasn't, why wasn't there?

Why was the Ambassador visiting Benghazi on 9/11 if he had serious concerns about security? Again, what was so important? Did the Ambassador let down his staff?

As noted, I didn't watch the whole thing; couldn't stand the State Department statements--they read too much like slick nonsense.  From what I can tell, the real question is not being asked--maybe it is in a classified hearing. What was the facility in Benghazi? What made it so important even in the face of mounting threats? If it was important enough to operate, why wasn't it important enough to protect? Did the Ambassador ever threaten to close it down if it weren't protected? The real issue, however, is that the site could not be protected from the sort of attack we saw on 9/11 short of 30 or 40 well armed US troops. Why was it so important to risk so many lives?

From the Halls of Montezuma, to the Shores of Tripoli: Obama's Disgraceful Foreign Policy

There are few martial tunes quite as stirring as the "Marines Hymn," (note: reader TartanMarine corrected me, rightly so, for having initially referred to it as the "Marine Corps Hymn." )

From the Halls of Montezuma
To the Shores of Tripoli;
We fight our country's battles
In the air, on land and sea;
First to fight for right and freedom
And to keep our honor clean;
We are proud to claim the title
of United States Marine

Our flag's unfurled to every breeze
From dawn to setting sun;
We have fought in ev'ry clime and place
Where we could take a gun;
In the snow of far-off Northern lands
And in sunny tropic scenes;
You will find us always on the job--
The United States Marines.

Here's health to you and to our Corps
Which we are proud to serve
In many a strife we've fought for life
And never lost our nerve;
If the Army and the Navy
Ever look on Heaven's scenes;
They will find the streets are guarded
By United States Marines

It is about duty; defending the flag; and fighting for "right and freedom" anywhere "we could take a gun." It is brash, unapologetic, and in your face. It is about American exceptionalism--U.S. Marines guarding the streets of Heaven--and certainly not about helping NGOs "empower feminist networks."

It celebrates the courage of honor, and the honor of courage.

This great Hymn popped into my mind while thinking about Obama's foreign policy. In this second decade of the 21st century, as we survey the scene "From the Halls of Montezuma, To the Shores of Tripoli" we see the polar opposite of the traits celebrated in the old "Marines Hymn." We see silliness, deception, delusions, cowardice, weakness, and lies. We also see people, foreign and American, killed for no morally justifiable reason because of the behavior of our President and his political, bureaucratic, and media acolytes.

For American liberals, especially the ones who dominate our government, foreign countries are just places to play out their political delusions, just mere extensions of the domestic arena. We saw it in the 1970s, when they gleefully watched the people of South Vietnam fall to the totalitarians of the North, just "to stick" it to the conservatives. We saw it in the 1980s, when they wanted Central America to go communist in order to "stick it" to Reagan and Bush.

In Mexico, we have a country and a people under assault from some of the most vicious, well-funded, and organized criminals on the planet. Tens-of-thousands of Mexicans have been slaughtered by drug cartels who are turning the great nation of Mexico into a giant "no-go" zone. The liberal loons who took over the DOJ under Obama and former campus radical Holder saw Mexico's horror as a chance to crack down on US gun owners. They would have the ATF sell guns by the thousands--"Operation Fast and Furious"-- to the cartels and blame it on US gun shows and gun stores in furtherance of the false argument that "the drugs flow north, and the guns flow south." Life would imitate Hollywood movies; life would conform to the liberal version. Most of us believe what we see, the liberals see what they believe. They would get us to "see" guns going south by making sure they did go south. This would generate demands for new anti-gun laws and treaties. That will show those red neck, Tea Party, Republican reptiles!

The end result? Carnage. Hundreds of Mexicans murdered, including children and teenagers, by the guns slipped across the border by the ATF. To "stick it" to the conservatives at  home, the liberals declared war on the people of Mexico, and in the process managed to get at least two US federal agents murdered. Obama, the great defender of Latinos, the man who gets 75% of their vote, had a deliberate policy that resulted in hundreds of Mexicans murdered. He asserted executive privilege to stifle Congressional investigators, relied on the echo chamber media to try to pour the whole putrid mess back into the jug as it began to leak out, and falsely accused his predecessor of having initiated the operation. In one of the greatest acts of betrayal since Jewish leaders refused to criticize FDR for his inaction on the Nazi death camps, the Government of Mexico and Hispanic leaders, always quick to find anti-Hispanic bias anywhere, remained docilely supportive of Obama and his henchmen.

In the Middle East and in Libya, in particular, we saw the liberal delusions play out again. The liberals, upset with Reagan and Bush, wanted to punish those in the region who had supported Reagan and Bush. Push out Mubarak; get rid of Qaddafi; denigrate and insult Netanyahu and Israel; minimize the threat from Iran.

The end result? Carnage. Assaults on our embassies. Mass murder, including of our diplomats. Strengthening of the once nearly defeated Al Qaeda brand. Iran emboldened. The West in retreat. An arc of instability from Tunisia to Indonesia which includes nations with nuclear or near-nuclear capabilities. The White House response? To lie and continue to propagate the idiotic delusions that got us into this mess in the first place. They insisted that the murdering raping mobs we saw on the streets of the Middle East were the harbingers of an Arab Spring; in the endearing and enduring words used by the pathetic hack Ambassador Susan Rice when discussing the thugs who murdered our diplomats in Libya, they were just "folks" who at times get a little out of hand when they hear of offensive videos on the internet. They didn't really mean it when they called for and carried out burnings of churches, murders of Christians, and beheadings of apostates. Just a small group of "folks" outraged by (fill in the blank) and misunderstanding the true teachings of the "Religion of Peace," and who do not yet fully realize how much President Obama really, really likes them.

We have gone from the deadly seriousness of the Marines Hymn which promises our friends a hand and our enemies a punch in the face, to the deadly silliness of Obama which promises our friends at best nothing and our enemies a kiss on the butt. As the always patient American people catch on to the nature of the disaster in the White House, that White House talks about Big Bird, contraception, "Bin Laden is still dead,"and other trivia in a desperate attempt to hold on to power for another four years.

The Obamistas continue to insist that we disbelieve what we see, and that we see what they believe.

Time to turn them out and return to the spirit of the old Hymn.

Governor Romney's Foreign Policy Speech

The Governor gave a good, solid, very American speech on foreign affairs at the Virginia Military Institute. The Obama campaign, predictably, has launched an attack (h/t Drudge Report) on Romney's foreign policy as being to the right of George Bush. They, of course, launched their nonsensical attack BEFORE Romney gave his speech--weren't they the ones who criticized the Governor for "prematurely" criticizing attacks on the American Embassy in Cairo? I find, of course, that to attack a foreign policy for being to the right of Bush's is a compliment: we should reject vast, expensive, and ultimately futile Third-World-nation-building exercises, the bane of our policy in Afghanistan.

He laid out what had been the American consensus on foreign policy for most of the post-WWII era: the idea that the United States would have a military capability second to none; that friends and foes would know what we could and would do; and that our goal was not conquest but a world engaged in peaceful trade. He showed that he has much clearer vision than Obama of what we face in the Middle East,

The attack on our Consulate in Benghazi on September 11th, 2012 was likely the work of forces affiliated with those that attacked our homeland on September 11th, 2001. This latest assault cannot be blamed on a reprehensible video insulting Islam, despite the Administration’s attempts to convince us of that for so long. No, as the Administration has finally conceded, these attacks were the deliberate work of terrorists who use violence to impose their dark ideology on others, especially women and girls; who are fighting to control much of the Middle East today; and who seek to wage perpetual war on the West.

He also reaffirmed the view of the United States as an indispensable and exceptional country,

This is what makes America exceptional: It is not just the character of our country—it is the record of our accomplishments. America has a proud history of strong, confident, principled global leadership—a history that has been written by patriots of both parties. That is America at its best. And it is the standard by which we measure every President, as well as anyone who wishes to be President. Unfortunately, this President’s policies have not been equal to our best examples of world leadership. And nowhere is this more evident than in the Middle East.

It is a good compelling vision, one that predominated in both parties until the Democrats went insane.

Venezuela

It seems the old autocrat pulled it off. I was listening to Venezuela's electoral commission announce the results and with 90% of the votes counted, Chavez has about 54% and Capriles about 44%.

Capriles reportedly has accepted his defeat.

Ten point spread . . . right. Who believes that?

This election drives home the importance of having an energy policy that makes us not dependent on dubious politics in foreign countries. I hope Governor Romney delivers the message loud and clear that his administration will end our energy dependence on places such as the Middle East and Chavezlandia.

Drill our land for oil at home, or drill our troops for war abroad.  That's the choice, and Solyndra ain't going to save you from having to make it.