Is America really going to do this?
Melanie Phillips
October 24, 2008
Melanie Phillips
October 24, 2008
Personally, I donʼt give any credence to the ʽsupportʼ for one candidate over the other that has been expressed by the enemies of civilisation (Iran and Hamas ʽsupportʼ Obama, while an al Qaeda blogger ʽsupportsʼ McCain). Their agenda is simply to sow confusion and promote American recriminations and disarray. Nor do I set much store by many of the remarks made by either candidate during the latter stages of this election campaign, since under this kind of pressure both will now say pretty much anything to win it. The New York Times has run a useful analysis of the candidatesʼ foreign policy campaign statements which shows how Obama has carefully tacked to the ʽhard powerʼ agenda while McCain has in turn nodded towards ʽsoft powerʼ.
No, the only way to assess their position is to look at each man in the round, at what his general attitude is towards war and self-defence, aggression and appeasement, the values of the west and those of its enemies and perhaps most crucially of all the nature of the advisers and associates to whom he is listening. As I have said before, I do not trust McCain; I think his judgment is erratic and impetuous, and sometimes wrong. But on the big picture, he gets it. He will defend America and the free world whereas Obama will undermine them and aid their enemies.
Hereʼs why. McCain believes in protecting and defending America as it is. Obama tells the world he is ashamed of America and wants to change it into something else. McCain stands for American exceptionalism, the belief that American values are superior to tyrannies. Obama stands for the expiation of Americaʼs original sin in oppressing black people, the third world and the poor.
Obama thinks world conflicts are basically the westʼs fault, and so it must right the injustices it has inflicted. Thatʼs why he believes in ʽsoft powerʼ diplomacy, aid, rectifying ʽgrievancesʼ (thus legitimising them, encouraging terror and promoting injustice) and resolving conflict by talking. As a result, he will take an axe to Americaʼs defences at the very time when they need to be built up. He has said he will ʽcut investments in unproven missile defense systemsʼ; he will ʽnot weaponize spaceʼ; he will ʽslow our development of future combat systemsʼ; and he will also ʽnot develop nuclear weapons,ʼ pledging to seek ʽdeep cutsʼ in Americaʼs arsenal, thus unilaterally disabling its nuclear deterrent as Russia and China engage in massive military buildups.
McCain understands that an Islamic war of conquest is being waged on a number of diverse fronts which all have to be seen in relation to each other. For Obama, however, the real source of evil in the world is America. The evil represented by Iran and the Islamic jihadists is apparently all Americaʼs fault. ʽA lot of evilʼs been perpetuated based on the claim that we were fighting evil,ʼ he said. Last May, he dismissed Iran as a tiny place which posed no threat to the US -- before reversing himself the very next day when he said Iran was a great threat which had to be defeated. He has also said that Hezbollah and Hamas have ʽlegitimate grievancesʼ. Really? And what might they be? Their grievances are a) the existence of Israel b) its support by America c) the absence of salafist Islam in the world. Does Obama think these ʽgrievancesʼ are legitimate?
To solve world conflict, Obama places his faith in the UN club of terror and tyranny, which is currently fuelling the murderous global demonisation of Israel for having the temerity to defend itself and is even now preparing for a rerun of its own anti-Jew hate-fest of Durban 2, which preceded 9/11 by a matter of days.
McCain understands that Israel is the victim rather than the victimiser in the Middle East, that it is surrounded by genocidal enemies whose undiminished intention is to destroy it as a Jewish state, and that is both the first line of defence against the Islamist attack on the free world and its most immediate and important target.
Obama dismisses the threat from Islamism, shows zero grasp of the strategic threat to the region and the world from the encirclement of Israel by Iran, displays a similar failure to grasp the strategic importance of Iraq, thinks Israel is instead the source of Arab and Muslim aggression against the west, believes that a Palestinian state would promote world peace and considers that Israel particularly through the ʽsettlementsʼ is the principal obstacle to that happy outcome. Accordingly, Obama has said he wants Israel to return to its 1967 borders actually the strategically indefensible 1948 cease-fire line, known accordingly as the ʽAuschwitz bordersʼ.
Obama would thus speak to Iranʼs genocidal mullahs without preconditions on his side (the same mullahs have now laid down their own preconditions for America: pull all US troops out of the Middle East, and abandon support for ʽZionistʼ Israel) but has said he would have problems dealing with an Israeli government headed by a member of Israelʼs Likud Party. In similar vein, it is notable that Obama opposed the congressional resolution labelling the Iranian Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization, which passed the Senate by a wide margin with support from both parties. And had he had his way, there would have been no ʽsurgeʼ in Iraq and America would instead have run up the white flag, with the incalculable bloodbath and strengthening of the jihad that would have followed.
Obama assumes that Islamic terrorism is driven by despair, poverty, inflammatory US policy and the American presence on Muslim soil in the Persian Gulf. Thus he adopts the agenda of the Islamists themselves. This is not surprising since many of his connections suggest that that the man who may be elected President of a country upon which the Islamists have declared war is himself firmly in the Islamistsʼ camp. Daniel Pipes lists Obamaʼs extensive connections to Islamists in general and the Nation of Islam in particular, and concludes with this astounding observation:
Obama's multiple links to anti-Americans and subversives mean he would fail the standard security clearance process for Federal employees. Islamic aggression represents Americaʼs strategic enemy; Obamaʼs many insalubrious connections raise grave doubts about his fitness to serve as America's commander-in-chief.
The hatred that these Islamist connections entertain towards Israel is reflected amongst Obamaʼs own advisers. With one notable exception in Dennis Ross, whose late arrival in Camp Obama suggests a cosmetic exercise designed to allay alarm among Israel supporters, his advisers are overwhelmingly not only hostile to Israel but perpetrate the loathesome canard that Jews have too much power over American policy.
The former Carter adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, for example, not only denounced Israelʼs war against Hezbollah thus:
I think what the Israelis are doing today [2006] for example in Lebanon is in effect maybe not in intent the killing of hostages
but also supports Mearsheimer and Waltʼs notorious smear that the Jews have subverted Americaʼs foreign policy in the interests of Israel. Merrill McPeak, vice chairman of Obamaʼs campaign and his chief military adviser, has similarly blamed problems in the Middle East on the influence of people who live in New York City and Miami (guess who) whom no ʽpolitician wants to run againstʼ and who he says exercise undue influence on Americaʼs foreign affairs. Most revolting of all is Samantha Power, a very close adviser whom Obama fired for calling Hillary a ʽmonsterʼ but who says she still expects to be in Obamaʼs administration. Not only has Power has advocated the ending of all aid to Israel and redirecting it to the Palestinians, but she has spoken about the need to land a ʽmammoth forceʼ of US troops in Israel to protect the Palestinians from Israeli attempts at genocide (sic) -- and has complained that criticism of Barack Obama all too often came down to what was ʽgood for the Jewsʼ.
There are, alas, many in the west for whom all this is music to their ears. Whether through wickedness, ideology, stupidity or derangement, they firmly believe that the ultimate source of conflict in the world derives at root from America and Israel, whose societies, culture and values they want to see emasculated or destroyed altogether. They are drooling at the prospect that an Obama presidency will bring that about. The rest of us canʼt sleep at night.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/2545716/is-america-really-going-to-do-this.thtml
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