From Blogs
“How Does Obama Keep A Straight Face?,” David Poff, Redstate, 05.03.10:
In his Book “Audacity of Hope” then-Junior Senator Obama had an interesting comment about Unions (via OnTheIssues.Org) [emphasis mine]:
The leaders of service workers unions broke ranks & chose to endorse me over [my opponent], support that proved critical to my campaign. It was a risky move on their part; had I lost, they might have paid a price in access, in support, in credibility.
So I owe those unions. When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away.
.. [T]hese selected quotes are rather enlightening. Especially so when you consider his proselytizing about so-called “special interests” just a handful of pages before these inspiring words about the SEIU and couple them with his Weekly addresses of 23 January and 1 May 2010.
From the Conservative Campaign Trail
Chuck Devore - The Armenian Genocide, the President, and the truth, Redstate, 04.24.10:
On April 22nd, 1981, President Ronald Reagan issued a proclamation in which he asked the American people to commemorate the “solemn anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps.” In doing so, he noted the other horrifying acts of 20th-century barbarism that preceded and succeed the Holocaust, including “the genocide of the Armenians before it.”
No American President since Reagan has had the simple courage to do the same. The Armenian Genocide that began 95 years ago today in 1915— a historical fact uncontested by the mass of serious historians — is now a forbidden topic to the leader of the free world. It’s a risible state of affairs made possible by the intersection of three factors: Turkish determination to promulgate its national mythos in our own country, a misunderstanding of the American national interest, and a failure of American political courage.
In this as in so many things, President Barack Obama is not showing himself the courageous leader Ronald Reagan was.
In mid-March, the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee attempted to stiffen the President’s spine on the public mention of the Armenian Genocide, with the narrow passage of House Resolution 252. The resolution “calls upon the President … to accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide.” It’s what candidate Obama proclaimed he would do in a speech exactly one year before his Inauguration, when he explicitly said, “[A]s President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.”
Add this to the lengthening list of Barack Obama’s broken promises. The day of the House Committee’s vote, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a plea for the resolution’s defeat; and since its referral to the full House, she has said that the Administration will “work very hard to make sure it does not go to the House floor” for a full vote. Barack Obama himself is ignoring the pleas of those Americans who believed in him, and today, as the New York Times puts it, he “marks the [Armenian] genocide without saying a word.”
Ronald Reagan understood this. That’s why he called the Armenian Genocide what it was. And that’s why the House of Representatives should vote on and pass H.R. 252 — despite the President’s objections, and perhaps even because of them.
…
Twenty-one nations officially recognize the fact of the genocide, and they include countries of major importance to Turkey like NATO allies — and hoped-for fellow E.U. members — France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Turkey maintains full and fruitful relationships with each.
The United States should not be frightened into complicity with genocide-denial over fears of a rupture that isn’t in Turkey’s interest, and has yet to happen with any other nation.
The final reason for the President’s change of heart is a plain failure of political courage. Why fight over this, and why fight now? Why not simply take the path of least resistance? Turkey is large, Armenia is small, and Armenian-Americans are well used to disappointment. Why not sell them out? It’s realpolitik, after all.
I submit that this is a betrayal of the best of the American spirit. We’ve had enough of this President’s realpolitik that leads the America to abandon the United Kingdom over the Falklands, spurn Poland over missile defense, humiliate Israel over nearly everything — and now silently comply with the remaining Big Lie of the last century.
Our nation was founded in an affirmation of fundamental truths about the nature of man. It ill befits us to assent to a lie. The fight over the Armenian Genocide resolution may seem a small thing, but it speaks directly to who we are as a people. Are we, as Thomas Jefferson said, an “empire of liberty” — or just an empire?
From Those in the Know:
Andy McCarthy @ NRO
Andy McCarthy: Petraeus’s Israel Problem, 04.08.10
As head of Central Command, General Petraeus’s area of responsibility includes Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. That is, CENTCOM is the U.S. military’s bridge to the Muslim umma, much of which despises America. The vast majority of Americans couldn’t care less about that. It is Islam’s problem, not ours — we’re not dying to be loved by a dysfunctional civilization that produces most of the planet’s terrorists. But for the Wilsonians who deem it worth our time, money, and lives to try to remake the Islamic world, Muslim animus is something that must be addressed — otherwise, they’d have to concede that there is nothing we can do about it, that Muslims resent more than appreciate our help, and that their grand project is thus a fool’s errand.
We need, they tell us, to exhibit a little sympathy. We need to be more understanding of the totalitarian, iniquitous, misogynistic, homophobic, virulently anti-Western and anti-Semitic culture that dominates Muslim countries. We need to project the image of an “honest broker” in the impasse between our stalwart ally Israel and an Islamic world bent on Israel’s elimination as a Jewish state. We need to “live our values,” a favorite slogan of both top Obama officials and General Petraeus. These always turn out to be transnational-progressive values. Under them, our justice is blind: We must make no distinction between (a) a Western-style democracy that permits Muslims to live in dignity as citizens within its borders and (b) incorrigibles who make no secret of desiring that democracy’s annihilation and who consider mass murder to be legitimate resistance.
