Watch Obama's face as Bergdahl's dad invoked Allah in Arabic
By Thomas Lifson
When
Bob Bergdahl launched in Arabic, invoking Allah while standing next to
President Obama in the White House Rose Garden, a number of Americans
were startled. Claire Lopez, a former CIA operations officer, a
strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on Middle East,
national defense, WMD, and counterterrorism issues, emailed her friend Allen West:
Watch for yourself and see if it means anything to you.
My colleague Rick Moran cautions that it just might mean he’s not a bigot. We do know that he told New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof that the Muslim call to prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” So maybe he is just fondly recalling his childhood days in Jakarta.
Or maybe this is a tell – an indication of what is going on in his heart, perhaps a bit deeper than his claim last week at West Point that he believes in American Exceptionalism with every fiber of his being.
“What none of these media is reporting is that the father’s (SGT Bowe Bergdahl’s father Bob) first words at the WH were in Arabic – those words were “bism allah alrahman alraheem” – which means “in the name of Allah the most gracious and most merciful” – these are the opening words of every chapter of the Qur’an except one (the chapter of the sword – the 9th) – by uttering these words on the grounds of the WH, Bergdahl (the father) sanctified the WH and claimed it for Islam. There is no question but POTUS knows this.”I am not knowledgeable enough to judge the claim of sanctifying the White House and claiming it for Islam, but I place a lot of stock in watching nonverbal cues, people’s quick reactions. And so, when our friends at iOwnTheWorld.com captured and enlarged President Obama’s reaction to Bergdahl’s invocation of Allah, it hit me hard.
Watch for yourself and see if it means anything to you.
My colleague Rick Moran cautions that it just might mean he’s not a bigot. We do know that he told New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof that the Muslim call to prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” So maybe he is just fondly recalling his childhood days in Jakarta.
Or maybe this is a tell – an indication of what is going on in his heart, perhaps a bit deeper than his claim last week at West Point that he believes in American Exceptionalism with every fiber of his being.
Pentagon Official: Why Obama Made The Taliban Trade
By Joseph Miller....Simply stated, it was because so long as Bergdahl remained in Taliban captivity in Pakistan, the Obama administration would never be able to close the chapter of the failed Afghanistan campaign it has owned since approving — and then under-resourcing — a surge of U.S. forces in the country
Bergdahl’s captivity served as a constant reminder of President Barack Obama’s strategic failures while U.S. forces prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan. That’s something the Democrats cannot allow going into 2014 and 2016 elections. So the president agreed to an unprecedented deal in blatant violation of U.S. law and established precedent that undermines the safety and security of the United States and her citizens, once again choosing short-term political gain over long-term security interests.
Our Future Is 1979
Obama’s foreign-policy weakness encourages our enemies and disheartens our allies.
By Victor Davis Hanson.....We are on such a precipice now, as the perception grows that Barack Obama is mired in scandal, an economy that has been stagnant throughout his tenure, and a disastrous foreign policy. It does no good to speculate whether critics at home are right in thinking that Barack Obama is “weak” in his foreign policy. Nor is there any point in arguing whether Obama believes that the U.S. is exceptional only in the relativist sense that Greece believes it is exceptional, or whether, as he stated more recently, he believes the U.S. is exceptional in absolute terms “with every fiber of [his] being.”
The point is not what we Americans think. Instead, the world abroad, fairly or not, has concluded after five and a half years that the Obama administration is both sanctimonious and absolutely risk averse. Translated, that means the administration likes to give sonorous and platitudinous sermons that needle both our friends and our enemies, but without any intention of seeing them followed by consequences. When Obama in a variety of ways assures the world that he is not George W. Bush, this does not always reassure America’s allies that he is resolute or warn our enemies that he is formidable.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that every foreign-policy initiative the Obama administration has embraced has failed: reset with Russia, the Cairo-speech outreach to Islam, surging in Afghanistan and promising to leave, the confusion over Egypt, lead-from-behind in Libya, bombing scheduled and then abruptly canceled in Syria, pulling every soldier out of Iraq, redefining jihadism through an array of euphemisms, abandoning the tough sanctions against Iran, pressuring the Israelis, a new special relationship with Turkey, and on and on.
Even the less publicized messages that the Obama administration has sent the world have revealed either incompetence or weakness — the failure to destroy the American drone downed and captured by the Iranians, or the sloppy outing of a CIA station chief in Afghanistan.
All the step-over lines, red lines, and deadlines abroad simply mirror-image the domestic false assurances of not losing your doctor or your health plan under Obamacare. The world has caught on that Obama uses a host of emphatics (e.g., Period!, Let me be clear!, Make no mistake about it!) precisely because he seeks to accomplish in speech what he cannot do in fact. Our enemies see one constant in the litany of administration scandals — the VA, IRS, NSA, AP, Fast and Furious, and Benghazi debacles: presidential distraction and indifference. The occasional eloquent presidential proclamations of “outrageous” are not followed by even a smidgeon of consequences.
For a variety of reasons, our European and Pacific partners privately sense that the American-led postwar global order is eroding and that regional hegemons like China, Iran, and Russia are filling the gaps. The Mideast badlands seem to be expanding into Egypt, Syria, and Libya. Iran wishes to do to the Middle East what Russia is doing to the former Soviet Union.
The surge had saved Iraq, and now the post-surge skedaddle is losing it. South America is increasingly regressing into leftwing statism and authoritarianism, assured that the United States either doesn’t care or privately likes its new trajectory. Al-Qaeda is hardly on the run; instead, it is spreading, partly on the suspicion that the United States with neurotic predictability seeks novel ways of not offending radical Islam. When al-Qaeda’s Dr. Zawahiri hears of overseas contingency operations, man-caused disasters, the Muslim-outreach efforts of NASA, jihadism as a personal journey, Guantanamo virtually closed, or civilian trials for terrorists and then not, he is not convinced the U.S. is ready to strike at the first sign of Islamist terror. China believes that the Obama administration is symptomatic of U.S. decline and without the wherewithal to protect its Pacific allies.
Aside from al-Qaeda–sponsored terrorism, there are lots of hot spots around the world that could flare up in the last two years of the Obama administration. Ukraine, the Baltic states, and the rest of the periphery of Putin’s Russia; Taiwan, the air and sea space surrounding Japan, the Vietnam-China border, the 38th parallel; Cyprus and the Aegean; the hostile neighborhood of Israel; Iran with its defiant nuclear efforts; and on and on. Some authoritarian rogue state or terrorist in the next 30 months may well risk aggression, on the expectation that never in the last half-century has there been a better opportunity to readjust the status quo. When Obama proclaims that climate change is now the most pressing American foreign-policy challenge, many bad actors abroad feel relieved — as if coal burning rather than aggression is about the only sin that might anger America.
Before Obama leaves office, we will see either some sort of Carter-like about-face in U.S. foreign policy, or aggression of a sort not seen since 1979 — or both.
VA Hospital Axed Veteran Programs While Approving $1 Million In Bonuses
By Michael VolpeThe Memphis Veteran Administration (VA) Medical Center approved over $1 million in bonuses months before closing a therapeutic aquatic pool citing a lack of funds.
The Memphis VA Medical Center handed out $1,005,644 in bonuses for its approximately 2,000 employees in fiscal year 2010, according to data provided to The Daily Caller by Sandra Glover, the communications officer for Veteran Integrated Services Network (VISN) 9, which includes the Memphis VA Medical Center. Glover told TheDC that cost factored into the decision to close the therapeutic aquatic pool in July 2011.
....The mention of a “new chapter” intimates that the old chapter was thrust upon him. But who, exactly, was president five years ago? Or three years ago? Editorial boards seem to have forgotten that it was Obama who escalated our involvement soon after taking office, sending 30,000 additional military personnel there—a nearly 50 percent jump. And troop levels did not peak in 2010, when the president was already talking about winding down the war, but in 2012, when more than 68,000 troops were in Afghanistan. Casualties spiked accordingly. Over 70 percent of the Afghan war’s fatalities occurred under Obama’s watch. How many Americans do you think are aware of that fact? None of the guests on the Sunday news shows seemed to think it worthy of mention.
If we use the benchmarks laid out by Obama, the surge was a failure. As The New York Times reported in 2012—although
the piece treats Obama like a bystander to unfolding events—the surge
was already being viewed as ineffective on the ground:
The American military says it has now fully withdrawn the last of the 33,000 ‘surge troops’ sent to pacify Afghanistan two years ago, but they are leaving behind an uncertain landscape of rising violence and political instability that threatens to undo considerable gains in security, particularly in the former Taliban strongholds in the south and southwest.
In the past two years, circumstances have not gotten better. We’ve
not achieved “the objectives that took us to war in the first place”—not
the real ones, and not the administration’s concocted ones.
...And through all the failures of Obama-led policies, it doesn’t seem that our presence has helped diminish al-Qaeda’s reach—even in Afghanistan. According to a new State Department report, nearly 7,000 more people were killed in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2013 than in 2012, and most of them were killed by al-Qaeda or some other jihadi terrorist group.
...And through all the failures of Obama-led policies, it doesn’t seem that our presence has helped diminish al-Qaeda’s reach—even in Afghanistan. According to a new State Department report, nearly 7,000 more people were killed in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2013 than in 2012, and most of them were killed by al-Qaeda or some other jihadi terrorist group.
How any of this meets American objectives—either the idealistic ones
or the realist ones—is a mystery. That Obama can claim his Afghan
strategy was a success without a tidal wave of criticism only indicates
how much this administration gets away with.
Democrats have long portrayed Afghanistan as the good war that was
forsaken to fight the unnecessary bad war in Iraq. So Obama focused on
Afghanistan. Why is he getting a free ride after blowing it? Now, it
would be partisan hackery to blame any single administration for the
complex and multifaceted troubles that we face in that part of the
world. Maybe there is no reform or military strategy that can live up to
the quixotic objectives we set for ourselves or for them. But that
doesn’t mean Obama should be allowed to rewrite history or avoid
culpability for his failures. Report: Obama Cares More About Glitzy Dinners with Athletes, Celebrities than Doing His Job
President Barack Obama used to be concerned that partying with celebrities and taking lavish golfing trips while Americans were suffering and struggling to find jobs would make him look out of touch.He reportedly doesn't care anymore.
In fact, he may care more about spending time with Anna Wintour, Alonzo Mourning, celebrities, and historians than going to his intelligence briefings and meeting with Members of Congress, especially those in his own party, to work on legislation.
Perhaps Donald Trump was right -- Obama may no longer love being president.
According to a Politico report, "there was a time in the first term when aides fretted over elaborate state dinners and how a glitzy Halloween party for the children of military service members, featuring actor Johnny Depp and movie director Tim Burton, would play with jobless Americans."
Not anymore.
In their second term, the Obamas are reportedly "less concerned about the optics of mingling with boldfaced names, and seem to want to take advantage of the presidential perch." That includes "hosting star-studded dinners that sometimes go on well past midnight and inviting a few newcomers such as former NBA star Alonzo Mourning into his social sphere":
When donors try to talk about policy to Obama, he reportedly has been "quick to steer conversations away from policy and toward sports, particularly the NBA playoffs, which he follows obsessively." Even when he is abroad, Obama wants to get away from the prose of governance.The presidential dinners, inside the White House and beyond, are more and more frequent. At one dinner, not previously disclosed, the Obamas hosted U2’s Bono, Gen. Colin Powell, Apple CEO Tim Cook, investor Warren Buffett and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim. Another drew actors Will Smith and Samuel L. Jackson, along with journalist Gayle King. Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue, attended a dinner with fashion industry insiders.The guests don’t appear on the public visitor logs because they are considered “purely personal” visits. Multiple White House aides claimed not to know about them. Valerie Jarrett, the senior adviser and longtime confidant of the Obamas who organizes the dinners, appears to be the only regular from the West Wing.
The late-night dinners don’t have an agenda. The protocol is that Obama has to leave first, participants say, but he seems to never want them to end. The bull sessions satisfy the president’s intellectual curiosity as he indulges in nuanced conversations about life, ideas and art.
....But Politico notes that Obama's "recent attempts at social engagement still don’t extend to the one constituency that could be most helpful to his agenda: Congress." When his critics previously accused him of not socializing as much with legislators, Obama said he would rather spend more time at home with his daughters.
His daughters are around less now and Obama may be suffering from "the early onset of empty nest syndrome," according to the report. But instead of meeting with Democrats and Republicans to find solutions to bridge "red America" and "blue America," Obama is intent on using his perch in the White House to throw himself the best dinner parties and collect new friends.
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