DANIEL GREENFIELD: THE WEEK THAT WAS PART ONE
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
VICTORIES AND DEFEATS
The whole “Gutsy Call” narrative depends on the calculus of risk. In going after Bin Laden, the SEALs were risking their lives, but what was Obama risking?
An ordinary leader would at least be expected to suffer political fallout from a failure. But does anyone really believe that a media which failed to hold Obama accountable for his defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Islamic disaster in Egypt and Libya, not to mention an economic crater, would have held him accountable if the operation had failed?
Even in the worst case scenario, had the SEALs been captured and paraded on Pakistani television, the blame for the operation would have gone to some military figures, while Obama would have given another speech, conducted more backdoor appeasement and would have been praised for his leadership in a difficult time.
This operation, like everything Obama has done, was strictly no risk. There are no “Gutsy Calls” when you never take responsibility for anything. When the buck never stops with you. To be “gutsy” you have to be playing without a net. And the media is Obama’s net.
Had the operation gone wrong, we would never have seen that situation room photo. Obama would have pretended to have had little knowledge of the operation until it was too late to prevent it from going forward. The whole thing might have even been blamed on some eager beavers who went rogue in their eagerness to get Bin Laden. In time, the story might have unraveled, and there would have been tips and conspiracy theories, but you would likely never have have heard about it from the media.
The media bubble creates Obama’s reality. The same operation under Bush would have been tagged with names like “unilateral” and “dangerously irresponsible” with a strong suggestion that the president had taken us to the brink of nuclear war because of his bloodlust and to improve his political standing. Under Obama, it’s proof that he’s a superhuman strongman who singlehandedly took down Bin Laden, doing what no one else would have done in his place.
It’s easy enough to compare the narratives. Remember how much media furor there was about a proposed invasion of Iraq? How much skepticism, criticism and sheer coverage the whole thing got? Now compare that to our proposed invasion of Syria. Oh right, we’re on track for that, but don’t expect the media to tell you about it, or to challenge the “Friends of Syria” name for the coalition, far more risible than “Coalition of the Willing”, which despite its ridicule and awkwardness was at least true. (For bonus points imagine, if Bush had dubbed it “Friends of Iraq”)
That blast in Kabul was not the first or the last. We’re losing the war. We’re trying to cut a deal with anyone in the Taliban willing to deal with us. And most of them aren’t. But you wouldn’t know all that from the splashy media coverage of the “Mission Accomplished” tour.
Targeting individual terrorist leaders is the only thing that this administration has successfully done. But as victories go, it’s akin to assassinating Hitler and Rommel while losing Africa and Europe. It’s a victory of sorts, but only if you overlook the sheer scope of defeats that occurred as a direct result of administration policy.
We got Bin Laden and lost Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Tunisia and probably Yemen. A few more victories like these and we won’t be facing one man’s terrorist army, but an entity on the scale of the Soviet Union with the oil resources of OPEC. They call it the Caliphate. Obama calls it Mission Accomplished.
DROWNING MOSCOW IN BLOOD
“You think that we are coming here as foreigners, but we believe that we are at home here and maybe you are the foreigners. We will make those laws that suit us, whether you like it or not, and any attempts to change that will lead to spilled blood. There will be a second dead sea here and we will drown the city in blood.”
Those were not the words of some back alley preacher, but of noted Moscow lawyer, Dagir Khasavov, giving an interview to a television station about his proposal to implement Sharia courts in Russia. Interspersed with footage of death sentences being executed, Khasavov spoke about his new organization that would protect Muslim rights and claimed that his proposal was only the beginning of a worldwide expansion.
“We are going to expand this net, we will begin in Russia, first Asia, and then everything will be encompassed, as it was in the Caliphate,” Khasavov said. According to Khasavov, Russian security services already unofficially refer cases involving Muslims back to Sharia courts and his proposal to officially establish such courts would only legitimize the parallel justice system that already exists for the millions of Muslims who now live in Moscow and other cities.
…Those are the opening paragraphs from my Front Page article, “Sharia in Moscow.”
….This is a generally unreported story and the larger tale of the fall of Russia to Islam. There have been a few, including Daniel Pipes, who have discussed it, but it gains far less attention than the stories about Europe falling to Islam. Yet Russia may get there sooner with its dreams of Eurasian empire.
BLIND MEN FROM CHINA
Sorry Mr. Chen, you mistook this for the America you heard about, but you ended up in an outpost of our government which is run by an Indonesian con artist and his cronies. It’s a natural mistake, we made it too and we’re not even blind men from China.
What is bitterly amusing is that in the run-up to all this, the Obamanoid media was touting his brave new foreign policy aimed at China. Even the generally reliable Walter Russell Mead suggested that Obama’s Asia policy was a major game changer and that we had actually pushed China into a corner.
The Chen case reminds us of what a load of nonsense all that is. We haven’t done anything to China. Obama may flap his lips, but China has him whipped, just as Russia and the Muslim world do. Stationing a few thousand marines in Australia isn’t a game change. It’s nothing. It might allow us to intervene in Indonesia’s next killing spree, if we were likely to do that sort of thing to one of our wonderfully genocidal Islamic allies and its elegant dog cuisines. It isn’t a game changer in the South China Sea, because everyone knows we don’t have the guts for it.
The Philippines may run to us, just like Mr. Chen did, but we won’t protect them, just like we didn’t protect him.
EVER AGAIN
On April 23rd, Obama stopped by the Holocaust Memorial Museum where he mouthed the words, “Never Again” and two days later he issued a memorandum waiving restrictions on funding to the terrorists of the Palestinian Authority, which routinely calls for the murder of Jews, and for its president who has described the Holocaust as a “fantastic lie.”
It took Obama a day to disavow his commitment to a united Jerusalem. It took him a little longer to disavow his commitment to “Never Again.”
At the Holocaust Museum, Obama said, “We must tell our children about how this evil was allowed to happen — because so many people succumbed to their darkest instincts, and because so many others stood silent.”
But Palestinian Authority television had another message for the children. “Our children are our glory and honor, they were created to be fertilizer for the land of Palestine, and for our pure land to be saturated with their blood.”
That’s from my article, Obama Funds Terrorists, it’s part of a long history of congress trying to rein in funding to Islamic terrorists and presidents overriding it with national security vetoes.
A DEMON VIRGIN NAMED JIHAD
Behind every dedicated Muslim Jihadist on trial for plotting to blow stuff up, is a liberal lawyer working hard to get him off. These are the unsung heroes of the Jihad, brave briefcased infidels trotting up the courthouse steps, and then down again to explain that their client can’t get a fair trial because the country is biased against Muslim terrorists.
This time around Robert Gottlieb did his best to convince the jury that would-be subway bomber, Adis Medunjanin, went to Afghanistan to join the Taliban and stand up for Muslims. “They wanted to fulfill some romantic version of Jihad,” he said. That was his defense. Just foolish boys in love with a beautiful demon virgin named Jihad.
Prior to this Gottlieb’s prominent clients were Cindy Sheehan and Peter Braunstein, the former Village Voice writer who dressed up as a fireman and broke into an apartment to rape a woman with whom he worked. The Sheehan rep was apparently pro-bono. Around that time, the New York Times, which came out of closet as a propaganda rag, described the case as a “a clash between high principles, represented by the Zola-like lead defense lawyer, Robert C. Gottlieb, and the black letter of the law, represented by William Beesch.”
Sadly this time Sheenan and Braunstein’s Zola lost. Adis, romantic Jihadist and would be subway bomber, will join Peter Braunstein in the clink. And Robert Gottlieb will go back to work doing what he does best.
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