Eastern Europe, Hung Out To Dry By Obama And Miz Hilary

Surf, and ye shall find.

The most recent round of WikiLeaks will provide reading material for months to come.

The venality and incompetence already revealed take one's breath away.

This tidbit from Poland:

President Obama cancelled anti-missile shield plans in Poland and the Czech Republic to get Russia support for UN sanctions against Iran, documents made public by Wikileaks reveal.

The whistle blowing web site, publishing diplomatic cables and other documents via The New York Times, the Guardian (UK) and other media outlets, show that George Bush’s anti-missile shield plan to station 10 interceptor rockets in Poland not far from the Kaliningrad (Russia) border and a radar system in the Czech Republic was seen as an obstacle by Washington in getting tougher sanctions against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The diplomatic cables show that the US believes that Iran has already received missiles from North Korea which could threaten western Europe.

The released documents show that Russia had intensified its campaign against the anti-missile shield in 2009, with Moscow believing the system would be directed at Poland’s immediate east and not Iran.

In September, President Obama cancelled the anti-missile system.

Well, that worked out well, now didn't it?

Give up a defensive shield against weapons one knows are in place, in exchange for the promise of cooperation from that most trustworthy of regimes, the Russian government of Putin.

What could possibly go wrong?

HT Midwest Conservative Journal

This Is How Wars Begin: Obama's Three-fer This Week

Colonel James Corum is an experienced military scholar, a credible voice, now working in a sensitive corner of the world.  
James Corum is Dean of the Baltic Defence College in Estonia. He has taught at American and British staff colleges and is the author of seven books on military history and counter-insurgency. He is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Reserve (rtd) and has 28 years' experience as an army officer.

He's not a pudgy middle-aged white guy in his mother's basement, living in his 'Don't Tread On Me' tee-shirt and adding to his gun collection.

(OS feels compelled to say these things, because anytime anyone anywhere raises his hand and says 'Scuze me! I think Mr. Obama has got it wrong', someone else feels obligated to rant that the objector is some sort of ignorant non-entity. They exist, to be certain, but OS tries to avoid them at all times. There are enough sober voices in objection for a lifetime already.)

So back to Colonel Corum: He points out, calmly, in today's Telegraph that Our Beloved Leader has managed to publicly insult not one, not two, but three loyal allies of the United States, each in its own strategic corner of the world. 

• Instead of attending the state funeral in Poland, to help console a grieving nation, he took the afternoon off to play golf. (The airport in Cracow was open, by the way.) 
• He chased off the Israelis, who chose wisely not to attend the non-proliferation conference, where they knew they would be subjected to anti-Israeli rants by Islamic dictatorships, and-- 
• his government characterized the constitutionally appropriate removal of a Chavez-in-training by the Honduran Congress as a coup-de-etat.

Sweeeet!  Three in one week!

Now, does anyone think that political leaders (outside of nutters like Hitler) wake up in the morning, have their first cup of coffee, look out the window at the flower beds and singing birds, and say: 'I'm gonna start me a war today! Let's get a few hundred thousand people ushered into eternity this year.'

No, these things get blundered into, blind-side and backwards, often because arrogant twits refuse to remember who their friends are, the difference between simple right and wrong, and that totalitarian regimes inevitably blow up and take lots of people with them. They aren't the friends of freedom, 'cuz they're dictatorships!

 
So, the Colonel, an historian, concludes by sharing a bit of irrefutable history with us.

[begin quote, OS providing the bold emphases]

Alienating three close allies in one week is quite a trick, even for a president as inept in foreign policy as Barack Obama. However, it fits a pattern. President Obama has never shown any understanding for the basic rules of foreign policy which include cultivating allies, avoiding unnecessary friction, and doing one’s homework. These things happen because Obama is fundamentally uninterested in foreign policy. It is part of a pattern that began when Obama was elected to the Senate. In 2007 his party made him the chairman of the Senate subcommittee on Europe so Obama could claim foreign policy experience for his presidential run in 2008. Yet even though Obama’s committee had oversight of such vital issues as the U.S. relationship to NATO and the EU, Obama never held Senate hearings and his committee contributed no reports or played any role in setting policy. Few senate committee chairs have ever shown less interest in the work. 

In his career in the Senate and as president, Obama enjoyed his foreign trips when it is all about him – such as receiving the Nobel Prize or basking in the adulation of the Euromasses. But rarely has a president had so much foreign travel with so little substance to show for it. So far, Obama shows no talent for learning on the job – so America’s friends should brace for more weeks like this one.

[end quote]

If you read this from overseas, OS will repeat himself: So many of us did not vote for this person, and so many who did deeply regret it. He's at the helm, but he does not speak for us! Especially to our cousins in the UK, of all stripes--we stand with you, even if he abuses your loyal friendship.

If you read this from the US, please--find a favorite candidate or three to support for Congress, Senate, governorships, and state legislatures who will stand up to these people. Don't just rant, and don't even consider spilling anyone's blood or blowing anything up.

Donate.

Get to work.

Vote, and make sure you take your family and friends with you.

It's about war, peace, and survival, that's all.

Obama Hits The Links While Poland Mourns

If you read these words from Central and Eastern Europe, please accept our apologies. So many of us did not vote for this guy, and so many who did now deeply regret it.

Barack Obama decided not to attend the funeral in Warsaw of a fellow head of state, citing the disruption of air traffic due to the Icelandic volcano.

Well, ok. Fair enough.  Not good to endanger another head of state enroute to the funeral.

But thoughts do come to mind....

The volcano may have been a factor, but there are routes to Poland that don’t involve flying over the North Atlantic east of Iceland. He had some other options available to him as well, had he cared to make use of them:

1. A video-taped or live-linked personal message of condolence to be broadcast in Poland, translated into Polish for local consumption. We have a State Department to arrange for things like that.

2. A visit to the Embassy to sign the condolence book, and to visit with the Ambassador and the staff of the embassy, many of whom surely lost friends in the tragedy.

3. An invitation for the Polish ambassador to visit the Oval Office, where condolences could have been offered, perhaps in conjunction with option 1.

4. He could have flown to Chicago to attend a Polish-language requiem mass in honor of the Polish leaders who passed away, which surely took place. He knows the way to Chicago, and his way around it, last time anyone checked.

5. He could have signed a presidential proclamation of condolence, and ordered the US flag flown at half-mast for the day of the funeral.

The list goes on, and these are just the obvious, easy things that could have been undertaken–need we continue?

Reagan, Carter, Ford, both Bushes, and probably Bill Clinton would have done at least three of the five. Clinton would have done them with the cameras running constantly, but he would have done them, probably with as sincere a heart as he was able to muster.

Obama hit the links, publicly, on the day of the funeral. Compare and contrast.

OS loves golf, and thinks it's good for everybody to play, especially people with large responsibilities on their shoulders. But, some days, it might be better to stay home...

We live in an age of medical miracles, but alas, there is no cure for lack of class.

The Second Largest City Of Poland...

..is (at least by folklore accounts), Chicago, Illinois.

It is so hard to know what to say, to express to these folks. To be Polish, by definition, is to carry a burden of true suffering in one's family history. Not the American-style neurotic suffering of 'Mom and Dad only bought me a Toyota sedan instead of sports-car, they never loved me...' sort of stuff. 

Real suffering. Parts of the family tree that went away because everyone was killed. Poverty. Political oppression. Conquering armies staging massacres, bombing their cities into rubble. The shame of having the Nazis locate those camps on their soil. Real suffering.

So many emigrated to Chicago in search of a better life. If you read the Chicago papers, you don't see accounts of Polish druglords running gangs that terrorize and shoot up neighborhoods. It's the 'unrung bell' that doesn't get heard or discussed, since the daily brutalities of the city's life leave no room for that.

Contrast that with this.

These folks aren't perfect, but they may have something to teach us in coming days, if we have ears to listen and eyes to see.

and...

The Chicago Tribune published a photo gallery of mourning from around the world.