Category Archives: Government

Nuclear Japan – the answer to N.Korea?

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Michelle Malkin is settling into a comfy chair while N.Korea takes to the skies with more and more fireworks.

Charles Krauthammer is for the U.S. encouraging Japan to take a bold and powerful step by getting into the nuclear ring. The message would pack more punch than either Obama’s disarmament talk, disgruntling Krauthammer:

He certainly has a vision. Rather than relying on America’s unique technological edge in missile defenses to provide a measure of nuclear safety, Obama will instead boldly deploy the force of example. How? By committing his country to disarmament gestures — such as, he promised his cheering acolytes in Prague, ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban.

It would be more of a message than the one Obama’s sends with spending cuts in our defense budget and weakening our defense capabilities or the UN’s laughable assault with more empty words and inaction.  Krauthammer’s beat this drum before :

The immediate effect of Japan’s considering going nuclear would be to concentrate China’s mind on denuclearizing North Korea. China calculates that North Korea is a convenient buffer between it and a dynamic, capitalist South Korea bolstered by American troops. China is quite content with a client regime that is a thorn in our side, keeping us tied down while it pursues its ambitions in the rest of Asia. Pyongyang’s nukes, after all, are pointed not west but east.

Japan’s threatening to go nuclear would alter that calculation. It might even persuade China to squeeze Kim Jong Il as a way to prevent Japan from going nuclear. The Japan card remains the only one that carries even the remote possibility of reversing North Korea’s nuclear program.

Japan’s response to the North Korean threat has been very strong and very insistent on serious sanctions. This is, of course, out of self-interest, not altruism. But that is the point. Japan’s natural interests parallel America’s in the Pacific Rim — maintaining military and political stability, peacefully containing an inexorably expanding China, opposing the gangster regime in Pyongyang, and spreading the liberal democratic model throughout Asia.

Why are we so intent on denying this stable, reliable, democratic ally the means to help us shoulder the burden in a world where so many other allies — the inveterately appeasing South Koreans most notoriously — insist on the free ride?

Hot Air questions using logic on the illogical while seeing the logic this way:

Why would Japan want its own arsenal when it already enjoys the deterrent effect of being under America’s nuclear umbrella? Simple: A Japanese arsenal wouldn’t really be aimed at deterrence. It would be aimed at scaring the hell out of China, where memories of Japanese aggression are long. The thinking, I guess, is that China would be sufficiently cowed by Japanese nukes that they’d have no choice but to try much harder to calm Kim down lest they end up being drawn into a three-way nuclear war with North Korea and Japan.

Cheney – The Lone Ranger -Silver Bullets?

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I hope Dick Cheney keeps the pressure on Obama.  He’s a Lone Ranger with silver bullets hitting their mark.

AllahPundit writes of Cheney:

Dour though his Darth Cheney persona may be, he projects gravitas and speaks with understated eloquence. He’s bound to persuade at least a few fencesitters.

The Pundit points to Toby Harnden in Telegraph.co.uk who notes Cheney’s 10 punches:

1. “I’ve heard occasional speculation that I’m a different man after 9/11. I wouldn’t say that, but I’ll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities.”

Anyone who was in New York or Washington on 9/11 (I was here in DC) was profoundly affected and most Americans understand this. Obama was, as far as I can tell, in Chicago. His response – he was then a mere state senator for liberal Hyde Park – was startlingly hand-wringing and out of step with how most Americans were feeling. This statement by Cheney reminds people of the tough decisions he and Bush had to make – ones that Obama has not yet faced.

2. “The first attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a law- enforcement problem, with everything handled after the fact: arrests, indictments, convictions, prison sentences, case closed.”

This was the pre-9/11 mindset, much criticised after the attacks. Many sense that this is the approach Obama is increasingly taking.

3. “By presidential decision last month, we saw the selective release of documents relating to enhanced interrogations. This is held up as a bold exercise in open government, honoring the public’s right to know. We’re informed as well that there was much agonizing over this decision. Yet somehow, when the soul searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the public was given less than half the truth.”

The release of the documents was a nakedly political move by Obama and Cheney called him on it. This passage from Obama’s speech today came across as completely disingenuous: “I did not do this because I disagreed with the enhanced interrogation techniques that those memos authorized, and I didn’t release the documents because I rejected their legal rationales — although I do on both counts. I released the memos because the existence of that approach to interrogation was already widely known, the Bush Administration had acknowledged its existence, and I had already banned those methods.”

Read the full article here.

AllahPundit Update:

Update: In hindsight, wasn’t it awfully stupid of The One to rush out a national security speech to try to preempt Cheney? If he’d kept quiet, this still would have been a hit on righty blogs and Fox News but nowhere else. By jumping in, he created the sensational “terror duel” storyline that’s forcing the media to magnify this. At the very least, he should have waited a week or so and then given his speech as a rebuttal to Cheney’s. For someone so message-savvy, he crapped the bed this time.

Guantanamo-“Close it-to Close it Not”

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H/T Hot Air

Weak on the merits, but how can you not love an ad that preempts lefty cries of “fearmongering” with footage from the most ludicrously fearmongering political ad the Democrats ever ran?

Updated: Cogs Won’t Work in Galt’s America

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“We the People” aren’t cogs in a machine, even a great machine, that Our Dear Leader can fit to his purposes. We the People began this experiment of nationhood in revolution due to unresponsive tyranny:

“In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.” Decaration of Independence.

We are America and the America of our Founders is precious to the hearts of the American People, our people. We must seek better options than going Galt or conforming to Obama’s social socialist dream, never forsaking freedom and free enterprise. Our problems were caused not by free enterprise but by poor governance. We can not expect government to fix us. We must fix ourselves with the help of a good God. Our Founders formed ‘One Nation under God’ that depends on a morally healthy people.

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Adams

We are a people awaiting our transformation; seeds breaking open, falling into the ground and bringing forth in healthy, holy new life. This is the American dream. It is the dream of the broken, but more importantly, it is the dream of the gifted, the resourceful, the ingenious and the industrious, empowered by God to be a blessing to our Nation and the world. There is an old saying that says, ‘Without God, we can’t do it; but without us, God won’t do!” Together, as one People, let us do it!

Is ‘Going Galt’ is an option? Eric Etheridge writes: ‘Going Galt’: Everyone’s Doing It! With Tristero of Hullabaloo’s help, Etheridge explains ‘Going Galt’ in a nutshell.

Malkin quotes the manifesto of renowned composed Andrew Lloyd Webber, who fearing a talent exodus, writes of the punitive taxes.

Going Galt isn’t a healthy option for America! Together, as One People Under God, we will do it!

“Master of Dis-ingenuousness” Krauthammer on Obama

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“Master of Dis-ingenuousness” says Charles Krauthammer of President Obama.  While giving Barack Obama high points in a speech that lays out just how difficult decisions are in the making, it was also evident that Obama seeks to satisfy the masses with his mouth rather than corresponding actions.

Full text of Obama speech here: No point in reading it, it’s just more window dressing.

AllahPundit summarizes it well: “We must look forward while also remembering that everything is Bush’s fault, and we must not abandon our core ideals unless doing so would make things too difficult for The One.”

Personally, I’m glad Obama at least pays lip service to the fact that these Gitmo detainees are bad guys, hard core bad guys, not people pick -up at a picnic gone bad.

Obama: “We are going to exhaust every avenue that we have to prosecute those at Guantanamo who pose a danger to our country. But even when this process is complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States. Examples of that threat include people who have received extensive explosives training at al Qaeda training camps, commanded Taliban troops in battle, expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans. These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States.

As I said, I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people. Al Qaeda terrorists and their affiliates are at war with the United States, and those that we capture – like other prisoners of war – must be prevented from attacking us again.

Obama still doesn’t get the inconvenient truth that these are not “like other prisoners- of- war,” covered by the Geneva Convention, these are “TERRORISTS” without rights guaranteed by our Constitution to our citizens.  By the goodness of our hearts, they are still alive; even though they are still  trying to destroy this country and we are the  people they, given a chance, still intent to kill.

Obama Operatives Trying to Divide Catholics from Bishops

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From: Catholic News Agency Saying that Notre Dame is acting as if it is not a member of the local Church in its response to the controversy, Catholic commentator George Weigel has charged that “political operators” in the Obama administration are trying to divide Catholics from their bishops by co-opting Catholic intellectuals and their institutions. In his May 13 column in the Denver Catholic Register, Weigel noted Boston College theology professor Fr. Kenneth Himes’ charge that there is a “political game” going on in the dispute over the University of Notre Dame’s commencement invitation to President Barack Obama. Fr. Hines had commented in a Boston Globe story about former Ambassador to the Vatican Mary Ann Glendon’s decision to decline Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal. He granted that some “well-meaning people” think Notre Dame has given away its Catholic identity. However, he also warned of a “political game” which results in demonizing those who disagree with you, questioning their integrity and character, and branding them as “moral poison.” “Some people have simply reduced Catholicism to the abortion issue, and consequently, they have simply launched a crusade to bar anything from Catholic institutions that smacks of any sort of open conversation,” he said in the Boston Globe. Responding to Fr. Himes, Weigel said if Fr. Hines was referring to the leading critics of President Obama’s Notre Dame honors, the priest was “perilously close” to committing calumny. “Yes, there are self-serving nuts in the forest, some of whom have seized the Obama/Notre Dame issue for their own purposes,” Weigel said. “But why does Father Himes waste time bashing fringe crazies? Why not engage the arguments of the serious critics?” Weigel cited as one such critic Notre Dame graduate Prof. Russell Hittinger, a professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa. Hittinger has said that Notre Dame has adopted a “purely American low-church” position of institutional autonomy by acting as if its local bishop is not worthy of attention. The Obama controversy, Hittinger said, has nothing to do with academic freedom or ecclesiastical supervision but is “ecclesiological all the way down.” “What Church is Notre Dame ‘in,’ if any?” Hittinger asked. “Notre Dame is speaking and acting as though it were not a member of the local Church, let alone Rome.” Weigel said this comment was “exactly right,” alleging that the actual “political game” is being played by “very smart political operators” in the Obama administration. He charged that these operators, noting the presidential election results, have sensed the possibility of “driving a Catholic News Agency wedge through the Catholic community in America, dividing Catholics from their bishops and thus securing the majority Catholic vote.” Weigel said they are targeting Catholic intellectuals and their institutions and journals, which he described as “the soft underbelly” of Catholic resistance to the Obama administration’s “radical agenda.” “It’s a clever move on the political chessboard, and barring extraordinary actions from the bishops, it will likely meet with considerable success,” Weigel continued. He closed by again reiterating the question: “Just what Church are Notre Dame and its supporters ‘in,’ anyway?”