Obama Whiffs
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, May 16, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Appeasement: In slamming President Bush and John McCain, Barack Obama seemed to follow political consultant Jim Carville's rule: "You've got to be willing to fight." But what Obama is defending is indefensible.
When the first President Bush charged in 1992 that the only way rival Bill Clinton could keep his big-spending campaign promises was by raising taxes on families earning $36,000 and up, Clinton hit back hard.
"It is a disgrace to the American people that the president of the United States would make a claim that is so baseless, so without foundation, so shameless, in an attempt to get votes under false pretenses," he charged.
Of course, Clinton proceeded to raise taxes on families making way below $36,000. But his attack worked. Carville, the man who ran that historically successful campaign, believed in the art of counterpunch. One of his "Ten Rules for Progressives to Live By" is: "Sometimes you've got to be willing to fight. Period."
Now, in a fashion nearly identical to Clinton, Sen. Obama has hit back hard at his accusers, President Bush and Sen. McCain. In this case, however, the counterpunch may end up being a wild haymaker that only makes its thrower look foolish.
In South Dakota on Friday, Obama complained that Bush, in a speech the day before to Israel's Knesset, "accused me and other Democrats of wanting to negotiate with terrorists and said we were appeasers no different from people who appeased Adolf Hitler." Then he said McCain "has repeated this notion that I'm prepared to negotiate with terrorists. I have never said that."
But Obama's Web site says he will negotiate with terrorists. "Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions," it states.
In Friday's speech, Obama's proposed weapons against Iran were "deeper isolation and steeper sanctions." Would such tactics have changed Hitler's behavior in the 1930s? Why would it change that of another madman like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
Iran may be blowing up U.S. troops in Iraq and sponsoring terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, but what Obama worries about is that "Osama bin Laden is still at large sending out videotapes with impunity." Since 9/11, how many al-Qaida videotapes have crashed into crowded buildings on U.S. soil?
That was only one of Obama's gaffes. He also blamed the Bush administration for Hamas' control of Gaza because the U.S. "insisted that we should have democratic elections in the Palestinian Authority." Is Obama against freedom for Mideast Muslims?
Obama also gave the New York Times a look into his thinking on Iran. "We can encourage actors to think in practical and not ideological terms," he said in an interview.
But practicality is ideology for Iran — whose president calls Israel a "stinking corpse" — just as the practical and the ideological merged in Hitler's Germany.
However hard Obama fights the label of appeaser, his inability to recognize evil disqualifies him from the presidency in wartime.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=295830654715668
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, May 16, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Appeasement: In slamming President Bush and John McCain, Barack Obama seemed to follow political consultant Jim Carville's rule: "You've got to be willing to fight." But what Obama is defending is indefensible.
When the first President Bush charged in 1992 that the only way rival Bill Clinton could keep his big-spending campaign promises was by raising taxes on families earning $36,000 and up, Clinton hit back hard.
"It is a disgrace to the American people that the president of the United States would make a claim that is so baseless, so without foundation, so shameless, in an attempt to get votes under false pretenses," he charged.
Of course, Clinton proceeded to raise taxes on families making way below $36,000. But his attack worked. Carville, the man who ran that historically successful campaign, believed in the art of counterpunch. One of his "Ten Rules for Progressives to Live By" is: "Sometimes you've got to be willing to fight. Period."
Now, in a fashion nearly identical to Clinton, Sen. Obama has hit back hard at his accusers, President Bush and Sen. McCain. In this case, however, the counterpunch may end up being a wild haymaker that only makes its thrower look foolish.
In South Dakota on Friday, Obama complained that Bush, in a speech the day before to Israel's Knesset, "accused me and other Democrats of wanting to negotiate with terrorists and said we were appeasers no different from people who appeased Adolf Hitler." Then he said McCain "has repeated this notion that I'm prepared to negotiate with terrorists. I have never said that."
But Obama's Web site says he will negotiate with terrorists. "Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions," it states.
In Friday's speech, Obama's proposed weapons against Iran were "deeper isolation and steeper sanctions." Would such tactics have changed Hitler's behavior in the 1930s? Why would it change that of another madman like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
Iran may be blowing up U.S. troops in Iraq and sponsoring terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, but what Obama worries about is that "Osama bin Laden is still at large sending out videotapes with impunity." Since 9/11, how many al-Qaida videotapes have crashed into crowded buildings on U.S. soil?
That was only one of Obama's gaffes. He also blamed the Bush administration for Hamas' control of Gaza because the U.S. "insisted that we should have democratic elections in the Palestinian Authority." Is Obama against freedom for Mideast Muslims?
Obama also gave the New York Times a look into his thinking on Iran. "We can encourage actors to think in practical and not ideological terms," he said in an interview.
But practicality is ideology for Iran — whose president calls Israel a "stinking corpse" — just as the practical and the ideological merged in Hitler's Germany.
However hard Obama fights the label of appeaser, his inability to recognize evil disqualifies him from the presidency in wartime.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=295830654715668
