Sarkozy: mark him unimpressed with Obama

The New Neo Posted on by

And here we thought Obama was going to make the Europeans love us again—for the first time since VE day, which was a temporary anomaly anyway.

But no; French President Sarkozy is clearly alarmed at what he hears from the US President. Maybe the problem began with Obama’s flat-footed letter to Chirac back in March, which reportedly upset and annoyed Sarkozy (Obama’s overtures to European leaders in general have seemed oddly tone-deaf, including his bizarre gifts).

But if Sarkozy’s animosity towards Obama began on a more trivial (albeit personal) note, now the President of France has something to sink his teeth into—Obama’s recent Neville Chamberlain impression at the UN General Assembly:

Obama: “We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth.”

Sarkozy: “We live in the real world, not the virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions.”

The rest of Sarkozy’s remarks were, well, remarkable:

“President Obama dreams of a world without weapons ”¦ but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite.

“Iran since 2005 has flouted five security council resolutions. North Korea has been defying council resolutions since 1993.

“I support the extended hand of the Americans, but what good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community? More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe a UN member state off the map,” he continued, referring to Israel.

The sharp-tongued French leader even implied that Mr Obama’s resolution 1887 had used up valuable diplomatic energy.

“If we have courage to impose sanctions together it will lend viability to our commitment to reduce our own weapons and to making a world without nuke weapons,” he said.

Mr Sarkozy has previously called the US president’s disarmament crusade “naive.”

As several commenters on the BigGovernment thread about Sarkozy’s remarks have noted, it’s a sad day when the French leader has more cojones (and more sense) than the American President.

Iran and the West: the ruthless laugh at the weak, all the way to the enrichment facility

The New Neo Posted on by

Does anyone else get the same feeling I do, that the Iranian leaders are toying with the West and its dialoguing hero Barack Obama, seeing their threats as just so much sputtering impotence? And should anyone with a functioning brain be surprised in the least by this Iranian announcement, and this Western reaction?:

President Obama and the leaders of France and Britain blasted Iran’s construction of a previously unacknowledged uranium enrichment facility and demanded Friday that Tehran immediately fulfill its obligations under international law or risk the imposition of harsh new sanctions.

“Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow,” Obama said, detailing how the facility near Qom had been under construction for years without being disclosed, as required, to the International Atomic Energy Agency. “International law is not an empty promise.”

“All nations must follow”—who said, Obama? That outlaw pariah nation, Israel?

Oh, and Mr. President—“international law” is exactly and precisely that: an empty promise. Unless the nation being chastised freely cooperates, or unless the other nations of the world have some meaningful leverage to place on the country that violates it.

Or unless they are willing to back up international law with international force. Come to think of it, though, that’s not called international law. It’s called war.

[NOTE: If you read the entire article, you’ll see a few more things: Ahmadinejad’s exquisitely contemptuous message to Obama. Britain’s Brown responding by saying “Iran must abandon any military ambitions for its nuclear program,” as though he’s got anything to say about it. The news that Obama was briefed about this second enrichment facility back when he first came into office, and yet he still abandoned the planned missile defense for Poland and the Czechs last week designed to counter a nuclear threat, citing the fact that Iran wasn’t on track to develop nuclear weapons within the next five years.]

Zelaya’s not so fond of the accommodations at the Brazilian Embassy

The New Neo Posted on by

We already knew that Zelaya was a Leftist with aspirations to follow the example of his buddy Chavez and usurp ever more power in his country. But until now we didn’t know that he was delusional.

How else to explain the bizarre interview he gave to the Miami Herald yesterday in which he made the following “woe is me” assertions:

He’s sleeping on chairs, and he claims his throat is sore from toxic gases and “Israeli mercenaries” are torturing him with high-frequency radiation.

“We are being threatened with death,” he said in an interview with The Miami Herald, adding that mercenaries were likely to storm the embassy where he has been holed up since Monday and assassinate him.

When in trouble, the Left can always invoke the Israelis, those international boogie men. My guess is that Zelaya doesn’t actually believe a word he says, and is just playing to the gullible (would that include one of his major supporters, President Obama?) But if Zelaya does believe his own claims, I would add schizophrenia to the list of his non-qualifications for continuing to hold public office.

Mona Charen on Obama’s narcissism

The New Neo Posted on by

Or is it megalomania?

Mona Charen has Obama’s number. She notes in particular the odd combination of fake humility and real self-aggrandizement present towards the beginning of his speech to the UN General Assembly:

Beware of politicians who claim to be “humbled by the responsibility the American people have placed upon me.” It’s a neon sign flashing the opposite. And sure enough, in almost the next sentence, the president allowed that “I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world.” Really? The whole world pulses with hope and expectation because Obama is president? People in Amsterdam, Sao Paulo and Taipei have a spring in their step because an Illinois Democrat won the White House?

Well, yes, he says, but it’s not “about me,” rather it’s a reflection of dissatisfaction with the “status quo that has allowed us to be increasingly defined by our differences and outpaced by our problems.” Oh, yes, and everyone around the world was electrified by Obama’s campaign slogan because these expectations “are also rooted in hope.

Shorter Obama: t’s not about me, and I’m so humble—but the entire world waits on my magical solutions.

Charen goes on to skewer the hypocrisy of the member nations and their representatives, when Obama proudly announced:

On my first day in office, I prohibited without exception or equivocation the use of torture by the United States of America. I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed.” The audience, composed in part of regimes that pluck out the eyeballs of political enemies and hack off the hands of suspected thieves, applauded vigorously.

I have long joked that, with his propensity to stay at jobs only a short while before going on to ever bigger and grander positions, Obama had nowhere to go after the presidency except UN Secretary-General. It’s an office uniquely suited for his skill set, one in which he can do a lot less harm than he can as POTUS. Perhaps it’s time for a promotion?

How can you tell when Axelrod is lying?

The New Neo Posted on by

Ann Althouse says it’s “when he starts yammering inapt polysyllabic ‘e’ words.”

I say it’s when he moves his mouth.

Ah, but we can’t have the American people dealing with the “disruption” of being able to buy health insurance across state lines, can we?

And both Althouse and I are amazed at the fact that Wolf Blitzer actually managed to ask Axelrod some hard questions.

A week of Obama weakness: have you noticed…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the proliferation of the “Obama is weak” meme in recent MSM articles?

For example, see the Telegraph’s “The UN loves Obama because he is weak,” and George Will’s “Obama’s willowy weakness,”, as well as this Jerusalem Post piece that calls him a weak president who is likely to remain weak for his entire first term (although it blames that fact on the economy rather than some inherent flaw of Obama’s). And then there are the articles by admirers (or former admirers, or soon-to-be-former admirers) that use euphemisms to mean much the same thing, such as this one that worries that no one around the world seems to fear Obama.

The trend may have begun back in April, with the leak of French President Sarkozy’s statement that Obama is weak. But it’s only been building ever since, about matters both domestic and foreign. Obama’s UN speech yesterday did nothing to change that perception, and everything to perpetuate it.

But there are weaknesses and there are weaknesses, some of them intentional and some not. I would wager that Obama most definitely does not mean to portray himself as weak in terms of passing his own policy initiatives, standing up to opponents in Congress (be they from his own party or Republicans), or fighting the Afghan war against Al Qaeda that was a centerpiece of his campaign rhetoric. He wants, however, to be able to succeed in those endeavors while still projecting an image of a kindly fellow interested in hearing all sides, whether reality matches that perception or not.

This would be a neat trick if he could perform it, but Obama is getting less and less successful at the gymnastics required, and this failure then causes him to be perceived as even weaker. This is true even of many of his supporters, who are understandably frustrated at his failure so far to get his more Leftist agenda passed, and his seeming willingness to jettison some of the most extreme parts of the platform, such as the public option on health care reform.

But in one respect Obama’s projection of weakness is intentional: he does not want America to be perceived as stronger and more powerful than other nations. He expressed that thought quite explicitly in his speech to the UN:

No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold. The traditional divisions between nations of the South and the North make no sense in an interconnected world; nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War.

According to Obama, not only is the Cold War over, but so is any long-term balance of power. So much for allies and enemies; such outdated notions! If we can’t have liberty (something Obama rarely, rarely speaks of), then we’ll have equality and fraternity—between nations rather than within them. And if this means America must weaken itself in order to even the playing field, then so be it.

[ADDENDUM: Rich Lowry with a riff on the theme: “Obama comes across as a gullible sap” who is “shockingly weak, if his weakness still retained the capacity to shock.” Here’s more:

President Obama yesterday did his best impression of a high-school soph omore participating in his first Model UN meeting, retailing pious clichés he learned from his pony-tailed social studies teacher.

Even Woodrow Wilson might have blanched at the mushy-headed exhortations to world peace and collective action better suited to a college dorm-room bull session or a holiday-season Coca-Cola commercial.

“No nation can or should try to dominate another nation,” Obama intoned. “No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold.”

Has an American president ever expressed such implicit hostility toward his own nation’s pre-eminence in world affairs? Or so relished in recalling its failings, or so readily elevated himself and his own virtues over those of his country?

Read the whole thing.]

How democracies perish

The New Neo Posted on by

Jean-Francois Revel was a Frenchman who some twenty-five years ago wrote a book called How Democracies Perish. And although we’re a republic rather than a democracy, I think his words are important to read, especially right about now:

Exaggerated self-criticism would be a harmless luxury of civilization if there were no enemy at the gate condemning democracy’s very existence. But it becomes dangerous when it portrays its mortal enemy as always being in the right. Extravagant criticism is a good propaganda device in internal politics. But if it is repeated often enough, it is finally believed. And where will the citizens of democratic societies find reasons to resist the enemy outside if they are persuaded from childhood that their civilization is merely an accumulation of failures and a monstrous imposture?…

But democracy can defend itself only very feebly; its internal enemy has an easy time of it because he exploits the right to disagree that is inherent in democracy. His aim of destroying democracy itself, of actively seeking an absolute monopoly of power, is shrewdly hidden behind the citizen’s right to oppose and criticize the system. Paradoxically, democracy offers those seeking to abolish it a unique opportunity to work against it legally. They can even receive almost open support from the external enemy without its being seen as a truly serious violation of the social contract. The frontier is vague, the transition easy between the status of a loyal opponent wielding a privilege built into democratic institutions and that of an adversary subverting those institutions. To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying it principles.

At Wiki, Revel is described as having been a philosopher of freedom in the tradition of Raymond Aron (you may remember Aron as the French writer and anti-Left intellectual about whom Roger Kimball wrote so eloquently):

A socialist until the end of the 1960’s, (he ran as a socialist candidate in parliamentary elections in 1967 but lost), [Revel] was known during the Cold War as a champion of the western version of values such as liberty and democracy at a time when the majority of European intellectuals praised Communism or Maoism.

We need such champions today. And we need to heed Revel’s insights about the special vulnerabilities inherent in democracies.

So Obama, how’s that dialogue thing going?

The New Neo Posted on by

Obama is annoyed that his magic touch has failed to instantly fix a 60-year-old problem area of the world, Israel and Palestine. Oh, those silly children! Why can’t they all just get along?:

Bristling with impatience, President Barack Obama sternly prodded Israeli and Palestinian leaders to relaunch Mideast peace negotiations Tuesday, grasping a newly personal role in their historic standoff. He won an awkward, stone-faced handshake but no other apparent progress beyond a promise to talk about more talks.

But, after all, isn’t talking about more talking what Obama does best?

Message from a 74-year-old bodybuilder

The New Neo Posted on by

74body.jpg

Seventy-four-year-old Japanese champion bodybuilder Tosaka says “anyone can stay young and healthy if they exercise from time to time.”

Sure. The voiceover then goes on to say, without missing a beat, [emphasis mine] “Tosaka spends most of his time working out at a small gym in Tokyo…”

He also probably spends most of his meals eating raw fish, because there’s not an ounce of fat on him. Nevertheless, you have to admit the guy looks extraordinary (video here).

Is the Iranian regime toast?

The New Neo Posted on by

It very well could be, if (and it’s a big “if”) Michael Ledeen is correct in his assessment of the situation there [emphasis mine]:

When a tyrannical regime dies, you can see the symptoms in the little things. Late Friday afternoon, after millions (yes, millions”“this according to Le Monde, France 2, and L’Express, with the BBC saying that the demonstrations were bigger than those at the time of the Revolution) of Greens mobbed the streets and squares of more than thirty towns and cities to call for the end of the regime, there was a soccer game in Azadi Stadium in Tehran. It holds about a hundred thousand fans, and it was full of men wearing green and carrying green balloons. When state-run tv saw what was happening, the color was drained from the broadcast, and viewers saw the game in black and white. And when the fans began to chant “Death to the Dictator,” “Death to Russia,” and “Death to Putin, Chavez and Nasrallah, enemies of Iran,” the sound was shut off. So the game turned into a silent movie.

But the censors forgot about the radio, and the microphones stayed open, so that millions of listeners could hear the sounds of the revolution. And in Azadi Stadium, as in most parts of the country, the security officers either walked away or joined the party…

Look at what didn’t happen in the streets last Friday. Not a shot was fired at the millions of demonstrators in Tehran. There are YouTubes of police fraternizing with the Greens. There are stories of Revolutionary Guardsmen helping the demonstrators, and even the Basij didn’t dare to attack or arrest, with a handful of exceptions (one of which is notable: in Tabriz, if I remember correctly, they started to round up some people, and the crowd turned on them, freed the would-be victims, and beat the Basijis to death).

One cannot overestimate the importance of the occurrences I’ve highlighted in bold, because they represent an absolute necessity if the Iranian people are ever to cause a change in government in their country. Last June, when the anti-regime demonstrations got going and were then suppressed, I wrote the following, and I see no reason to change my mind:

However, the real questions are (1) how far the demonstrators are willing to go, and how much violence against them are they willing to absorb; (2) how far the mullahs are willing to go, and how much violence they are willing to perpetrate; and (3) will the police, the Guards, and other forces called in by the mullahs to quell the crowds be willing to fire on them, or will they stay their hands?

That last question may be the most important of all. Like all tyrants, the mullahs can do little without the help of the vast numbers of henchmen they employ, and without the exercise of fear. Sometimes there is a great deal of opposition and unrest under the radar screen even within the groups assisting tyrants, and once dissatisfaction as a whole reaches a critical mass and events transpire to release it, there can be a sudden change and a refusal to defend the regime.

And then there’s this, from a post I wrote three years ago:

When hatred of a ruler or rulers is so widespread that it has become rampant among those who would protect those rulers or enforce their edicts, then those rulers may be in big trouble, no matter how repressive and brutal they are willing to be to suppress dissent. Because they cannot do it alone; they must have a cooperative armed apparatus in place to enforce their will.

Michael Ledeen has been focusing a great deal of his considerable energy on Iran for many years. He is the originator of the phrase “Faster, please!,” a sort of modern-day “Carthago delenda est” which Ledeen has featured in many of his articles on the subject, although he is also on record as having been against a US invasion or airstrikes against the country.

Instead, his approach to Iranian regime change has been to encourage the Iranian people to dissent against its own government, forcing more and more pressure until it collapses for want of popular support. The situation Ledeen describes in Iran right now would, if true, be the vindication of his campaign and the fulfillment of his long-held desires for that country. For these reasons, it’s possible Ledeen is just a victim of his own wishful thinking. I don’t pretend to know whether this is true or not.

But Ledeen has shown prescience and insight before on the topic of Iran; for example, in 1979, when most people failed to see what was brewing, he correctly predicted the direction the Khomeini revolution would take:

In 1979, Ledeen was one of the first Western writers to argue that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was a “clerical fascist”, and that while it was legitimate to criticize the Shah’s regime, if Khomeini seized power in Iran the Iranian people would suffer an even greater loss of freedom and women would be deprived of political and social rights.

Ledeen is virtually the only person reporting right now on the current Iranian demonstrations. That doesn’t make him wrong, but it certainly makes it hard to know much about what’s really happening and whether he’s right. The lack of coverage is partly because the Iranian regime has made it very difficult if not impossible for journalists to visit that country to report on events there. Ledeen seems to have Iranian informants, but are they telling him the truth, or are they telling him what they think he wants to hear?

If Ledeen is right, however, it could be one of the best pieces of news to come along in a long while. And if the regime does fall (and something better replaces it; be careful what you wish for), will President Obama put himself on the wrong side of history again?