Right to Opine

Good news! Obama has announced his administration’s national security strategy. We’re in for a rough ride.

The Obama administration has unveiled a new national security strategy, saying armed conflict should be a last resort when diplomacy is exhausted.

Newsflash: this isn’t a new policy. America’s policy has always been “diplomacy first, war last.” The Democrats’ favorite whipping boy didn’t just decide one day to roll over Iraq. Saddam Hussein spent the decade after the end of the first Gulf War violating the very conditions that ended the war and refusing to comply with U.N. WMD inspections. I probably shouldn’t bother mentioning the latter, as the U.N. is a uselessly corrupt entity, but it only added to the justification of war prompted by the former. Years of diplomacy by the U.S. and other nations had zero effect. War was, in fact, the last and necessary resort.

The document also advocates innovation, economic stability and prosperity as essential to America’s wider security aims.

The left always comes back to economics as the cause of all evil. There is a massive failure to recognize that the leaders and planners—as well as most of the terrorists themselves—of the 9/11 were the product of Saudi Arabian wealth, not poverty. Osama Bin Laden himself is from a very wealthy royal family—the son of privilege, not hardship. The threat of radical Islamic terrorism, which the administration has a wee bit of a problem acknowledging, has nothing whatsoever to do with poverty. “Economic stability and prosperity” are not going to make al Qaeda go away.

“To succeed, we must face the world as it is,” says the document, in what is seen as a formal break from the go-it-alone Bush era.

“The world as it is” is endangered by violent, radical Islam, against which only America and a few of her closest and bravest allies have stood tall. Please face it.

As for “go-it-alone,” the left appears to forget the many nations which joined America in both the Afghan and Iraqi wars, among them some of the best friends and staunchest allies any country could be honored to have. A president who has consistently insulted and mistreated our friends while cozying up to our critics would do well to remember that.

The Obama administration’s new doctrine also reiterates the Obama’s determination to try to engage with countries like Iran and North Korea, but warns that they face deepening isolation if they do not respond to international pressure to come clean on their controversial nuclear programmes.

Translation: he’s going to do a lot of talking and precious little else, while Iran—the world’s largest exporter and supporter of terrorism—forges ahead with its nuclear program. Diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy…BOOM!

Other key initiatives outlined in Mr Obama’s strategy include the dismantling of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Not new.

The document describes the security of Israel and peaceful Israeli and Palestinian states living side by side as among the main interests of the US.

Not new, though largely contradicted by his shameful treatment of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

“We are shifting from mostly direct exercise and application of power to a more sophisticated and difficult mix of indirect power and influence,” America’s top diplomat [Secretary of State Hillary Clinton] said.

Translation: he’s going to do a lot of talking and precious little else, while Iran—the world’s largest exporter and supporter of terrorism—forges ahead with its nuclear program. Diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy…BOOM!

In her speech, Mrs Clinton also reiterated that democracy, human rights and development remained central to American foreign policy.

Yes, while we continue to prop up the U.N. with billions of our hard-earned tax dollars while they elect terrorist states and egregious human rights violators to the Human Rights Council.

Earlier, John Brennan, Mr Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser, said the new strategy also explicitly recognised the threat posed by “individuals radicalised here at home”.

“We’ve seen individuals, including US citizens, armed with their US passport, travel easily to terrorist safe havens and return to America, their deadly plans disrupted by co-ordinated intelligence and law enforcement,” Mr Brennan added.

First, anyone who travels to a “terrorist safe haven” for training and indoctrination is not “radicalised here at home.” This is not home-grown terrorism, but evil imported from the radical Islamic world. But you can’t acknowledge that, can you?

Second, the thwarted plans of the most recent terrorists was not “disrupted by co-ordinated intelligence and law enforcement” in any way, shape, or form. Fort Hood? Successful attack by a radical Muslim. The Fruit-of-Kaboom bomber? Couldn’t get his panties to light. Times Square? A fortunate case of incompetence.

Bill Clinton did not mention the domestic terrorism issue in his 1998 strategy, despite the Oklahoma City bombing three years earlier, while George W Bush made only passing reference to the issue in his 2006 document.

That would be because the bombing of the A.P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City was the act of a lone nutjob. It was a completely isolated event rather than an ongoing existential threat.

In May this year, New York City police defused a car bomb parked in Times Square, one of the city’s busiest tourist areas.

Yes, but only because Shahzad screwed up and bought the wrong ingredients for his bomb.

The truth is that over the past year we’ve been very, very lucky. Hope that luck holds, because Obama’s new strategy is a recipe for disaster.