Garden State Patriot

With apologies to that unforgettable band of the 80’s, A Flock of Seagulls, their biggest hit song of that era is an apt description of sorts of Obama policy towards the rogue, terrorist state.

President Obama’s approach to Iran is a failure unfolding before our eyes. Despite his overtures to open up a dialogue with the Tyrants on Teheran their fists have only become more firmly and tightly clenched than ever before. Now, as their efforts to acquire nuclear weapons become ever more close to becoming reality, Obama offers the free world nothing but empty words – plenty of carrots but no stick in sight.

In fact, you know the world is turned upide down when the leader of France – France! – feels the need to scold Obama for his failure to lead on the issue.

The contempt with which the president of France regards the president of the United States was displayed in public last week.

Nicolas Sarkozy was furious with Barack Obama for his adolescent warbling about a world without nuclear weapons at a meeting Mr. Obama chaired of the United Nations Security Council last Thursday (9/24).

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

What infuriated President Sarkozy was that at the time Mr. Obama said those words, Mr. Obama knew the mullahs in Iran had a secret nuclear weapons development site, and he didn’t call them on it.

‘President Obama dreams of a world without weapons…but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite,” Mr. Sarkozy said.

“Iran since 2005 has flouted five Security Council resolutions,” Mr. Sarkozy said. “North Korea has been defying Council resolutions since 1993.”

“What good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community?” he asked rhetorically. “More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe out a UN member state off the map.”

If the Security Council had imposed serious sanctions on the regimes which are flouting UN resolutions, the resolution Mr. Obama proposed about working toward nuclear disarmament wouldn’t have been so meaningless, Mr. Sarkozy implied.

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

The extent of President Obama’s naivete – or duplicity – was on display Friday at the G20 summit when the president, flanked by Mr. Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, revealed to the American public that Iran had a second nuclear weapons site on a military base near the holy city of Qom.

News reports indicated Mr. Obama had been briefed on the site before his inauguration. But he’s been conducting his foreign policy as if the mullahs could be trusted.

The fact that Obama has known about the secret nuclear site in Iran and has still persisted in a Neville Chamberlain-like approach to this problem is stunning - and suggests that his ego is far larger than his intelligence. It his time for him to lead before it is too late.

Let me be clear. The Iranian situation is indeed complex. The answers are not easy, nor are the consequences of using military force to stop them pretty. Iran very easily could attack Israel, either directly or throught their surrogate terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah. They could also use these terror groups to attack American interests and disrupt the world’s oil supply and, thusly, further damage an already weak world economy. All of these possibilities are indeed bleak.

Bleaker yet, though, is a world in which Iran possesses nuclear weapons. Like Pakistan and North Korea now, the free world would have no leverage over Iran. The mullahs could see fit to transfer their nuclear know-how to other terror states like Syria or, worse yet, put nuclear weapons in the hands of Hamas or Hezbollah. An arms race could spread across the Middle East. Iran would also be free to continue to foment terrorist activities across the globe, with particular aim at the state of Israel, without the fear of consequence. This second scenario would be a far worse reality than using force to stop them now and, one would hope, replacing the regime with the pro-western contingent in that country.

Despite my many other serious concerns about what this President is doing, this issue should be above party and above ideology. An American President needs to, above all, be grounded in reality. He (or she) needs to understand their role as both leader of America and the free world. The time for diplomacy is quickly running out on Iran, I fear. The President now needs to step up and be forthright about the matter at hand and let the American people know that military force may be the only solution to this crisis. This is not an issue that the United States can defer on and leave to the state of Israel.

The President has before said the time for ‘childish games is over.’ Well, the time for fecklessness, weakness and naivete now ought to be over. It’s time for Obama to step up on this issue. To do otherwise, is an abrogation of his sworn duty to protect and defend our nation. To do nothing, would be unforgiveable.

Cross-posted at Red County and Conservatives with Attitude!

Residents of Englewood are taking a stand against the despicable leader of Libya. Qaddafi, who recently spit in the eye of every American – and in particular the families who lost loved ones – when he celebrated the release of Pan Am bomber, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, as seen here…

…is being told to stay out of Englewood, where the nation actually owns an estate. Here’s the story.

ENGLEWOOD, N.J. — Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi will set foot on U.S. soil for the first time next month when he comes to address the U.N. General Assembly. Now he wants to put down stakes in the middle of American suburbia.

Plans to set up a tent and allow him to stay at a Libyan-owned estate in this upscale community 12 miles north of Manhattan, were attacked Monday by neighborhood residents and public officials, particularly after the hero’s welcome extended by Libya last week to the lone man convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan American Flight 103.

The attack over Lockerbie, Scotland, thought to be the work of Libyan intelligence, killed all 259 people on board the flight, including 33 from New Jersey. Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was freed from a life sentence in a Scottish jail and returned to Libya on compassionate grounds because he is dying of cancer.

“Gadhafi is a dangerous dictator whose hands are covered with the blood of Americans and our allies,” said U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman, whose district includes Englewood. He promised there would be “hell to pay” if the U.S. State Department violates a long-standing deal barring the dictator from staying at the Libyan estate.

Susan Cohen, who lost her then 20-year old daughter in the bombing, said it best:

“This is what happens when you have the path of appeasement,” Susan Cohen, of Cape May Court House, New Jersey, said of the prospect of Gadhafi staying in Englewood. “He’s getting everything he wants, and I guess that includes a trip to the state of New Jersey, which certainly doesn’t need this.”

The mere fact alone that Qaddafi would even think of staying at the estate speaks to his incredible lack of shame – and should remind us all that some men in this world are purely evil.

Cross-posted at Red County and Conservatives with Attitude!

Give credit where credit is due. Lord knows I’m not on the same page with Steve Rothman on much of anything. But he has my support in trying to make the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) accountable — and trying to keep relief aid to Palestinians out of the hands of terrorists.

US lawmakers demanded Thursday that the United Nations impose tighter controls on the UN agency that manages aid to the Palestinians to ensure no US funds end up in the pockets of extremists.

“The United Nations should take immediate steps to improve the transparency and accountability of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA),” said Democratic Representative Steve Rothman.

Rothman has written a non-binding resolution urging US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to certify that “no American taxpayer dollars are being directed to terrorists or to further terrorist propaganda” through UNRWA.

The New Jersey lawmaker said that while aides to US President Barack Obama had yet to explicitly support the measure, “they assure me that they share our concerns.”

The resolution calls on UNRWA to improve transparency of its operations by posting on the Internet copies of all educational materials used at agency-administered schools.

“UNRWA schools have been known to, and are still continuing, to include textbooks, videotapes, and other materials which not only slander the state of Israel but also are virulently anti-Semitic,” said Rothman.

The resolution also urges UNRWA to enhance screening procedures, including terrorist name-recognition software, “to ensure that UNRWA staff, volunteers, and beneficiaries are neither terrorists themselves, nor affiliated with known terrorist organizations.”

“These are certainly reasonable recommendations, especially in this time of severe economic crisis in America, when so many of our countrymen and hurting, and the world is suffering and in need of resources, that none of our US taxpayer dollars goes to any terrorist organization,” said Rothman.

Of course, this is just another example of why we shouldn’t be un the U.N. at all. It is a corrupt organization with many members who hate America and hate Israel. Yet, we are the ones who give it the most money to operate.

Cross-posted at Red County.

From the AP:

The Pentagon’s senior judge overseeing terror trials at Guantanamo Bay dropped charges Thursday against an al-Qaida suspect in the 2000 USS Cole bombing, upholding President Barack Obama’s order to freeze military tribunals there.

The charges against suspected al-Qaida bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri marked the last active Guantanamo war crimes case.

The legal move by Susan J. Crawford, the top legal authority for military trials at Guantanamo, brings all cases into compliance with Obama’s Jan. 22 executive order to halt terrorist court proceedings at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Crawford withdrew the charges against al-Nashiri. However, new charges can be brought again later, and al-Nashiri will remain in prison for the time being.

“It was her decision, but it reflects the fact that the president has issued an executive order which mandates that the military commissions be halted, pending the outcome of several reviews of our operations down at Guantanamo,” Morrell said late Thursday night.

17 American sailors lost their lives in the Cole bombing. Their families deserve justice but Barack Obama has seen to it that their justice will be delayed if not altogether denied.

In Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address he said:

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.

There is nothing disagreeable in Obama’s statement, but as this administration embarks on efforts to ‘engage’ one of the worst regimes on the planet – Iran – one wonders just what our convictions are.

• Are our convictions to help defend and protect the lone true democracy and American ally in the Middle East – Israel?
• Are our convictions to stop the spread of terrorism around the globe?
• Are our convictions to stand against the oppression of the Iranian people and for their freedom?

Even with Obama prepared to extend a hand to the Iranian regime their leaders continue to exhibit hostility towards America and unabated hatred towards Jews. Just yesterday, Mahmoud ‘Ahmadeni-jihad’ had these scornful words to say:

“The change will be to apologize to the Iranian nation and try to compensate for their dark records and the crimes they have committed against the Iranian nation,” he said.

The hardline president also called on Washington to withdraw its troops from around the world and stop supporting Israel.

“Change means giving up support for the rootless, uncivilized, fabricated, murdering… Zionists and let the Palestinian nation decide its own destiny,” he said. “Change means putting an end to US military presence in (different parts of) the world.”

And Iran’s government spokesman, Gholam Hossein Elham, continued to promulgate the vicious, ugly falsehood that the Holocaust never happened.

“The Holocaust is a concept coming from a big lie in order to settle a rootless regime in the heart of the Islamic world”

Herein lays the problem with Obama’s approach toward Iran. One can not engage in diplomacy – which entails negotiation, finding common ground and compromise – when the ‘partner’ at the table is an opponent of the convictions and values your nation stands for. To do so would be pacifism. And as history has taught us pacifying enemies of freedom only leads to more violence, war and tyranny, not less. One can only hope that history isn’t about to repeat itself.

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!

Here is my latest post from Conservatives with Attitude!

I’m sure I speak for many conservatives in saying that Barack Obama’s approach to national security and the War on Terror have us, at the least, very uneasy if not altogether scared to death.

In his first week, Obama has issued an executive order to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Almost simultaneously we learned of what could happen – and likely will happen much more frequently - if we change our current policy toward these terrorists and illegal enemy combatants. If they go free, they will continue their jihadist ways against America.

Interestingly, it wasn’t long ago that liberals chided George W. Bush for starting the Iraq war ‘without a plan to win the peace.’ Obama’s executive order likewise is an action without a plan. The move might pacify his pacifist base, but Americans deserve answers as to what will happen with these detainees. And those answers most assuredly won’t come easy, nor will they make those of us who are rightfully worried feel as if our nation we will subsequently be safer. As succinctly put by the Ediors of National Review:

We’d love to close Guantanamo, but we can’t right now; we’d love to transfer detainees out of Guantanamo, but other countries don’t want them; we’d love to give every detainee a civilian trial, but we don’t have enough evidence; we’d love to release the detainees we can’t charge with crimes, but our intelligence tells us they’re dangerous, so doing so would be irresponsible; and we’d love to stick to the highly civilized, detainee-friendly interrogation practices approved by the Army Field Manual, but every now and then there may be an emergency when something more severe is warranted.

Lest we forget what this is all about, these prisoners are not at Guantanamo Bay unjustly or without cause. They are there because they have waged war on America. They are there as part of our effort to make sure that another 9/11 or worse does not occur on American soil ever again. And so that people like Michael Burke have some measure of justice.

Mr. Burke is lost his brother William, an FDNY fire fighter, on 9/11. And in an op-ed piece he had this to say about Obama’s decision regarding Guantanamo Bay. I couldn’t have said it better:

With his shameful order to close Guantanamo Bay, President Obama has perfectly filled the stereotype of the classic clueless ultra-Liberal – the one who can generate great passion for the rights of the guilty defendant and none for the innocent victim.

With a single stroke of the pen, Obama has delayed justice for the victims of 9/11, and in essence granted a reprieve for Al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the architect of 9/11.

America does not honor our “rule of law and the rights of man” as he put in his inauguration speech by such an action. Instead, this nation abdicated its duty to justice.

It seems the new President is too far removed from the victims of 9/11. Victims like 11-year-old Bernard Curtis Brown, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. Everyone onboard was killed, as well as 66 people in the Pentagon. Curtis was on a trip with several of his classmates to California sponsored by National Geographic.

Obama and the Democrats have had a blind spot for 9/11 and have yet to show they have an ounce of understanding what happened that day.

Here is why we were attacked: Muslim extremists hate Americans and want us dead. Our policies in no way influenced the vitriol perpetuated on innocent Americans on Sept. 11, 2001.

It is asinine to believe that Guantanamo Bay, even with its scandalously biased coverage, has in any way inspired a single terrorist.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has offered unapologetic confessions for 9/11 and also brags that he was the assassin of journalist Daniel Pearl (”with this blessed right hand I beheaded the Jew”) sits in an air-conditioned cell, innocent until proven guilty, receiving three square meals a day, specially prepared to satisfy his religious prescriptions, free medical and dental (already meeting Obama’s specifications of health care as a constitutional right) and the free services of an army of court-appointed lawyers.

Welcome to the American way of life.

Obama could grant these men full constitutional rights in an American court. And when they are exonerated, we, the U.S. taxpayers, supply a luxury cruise ship trip back home. And they will still hate us and want us dead.

The only thing Obama has accomplished is convincing these mass murderers that we are too narcissistic, too foolish and too weak to protect and defend ourselves. Just as the terrorists believed prior to 9/11.

And we do not enhance our Constitution by applying it to those it was never meant to serve. Rather, the move diminishes and threatens the foundation on which our laws are built.

It is impossible to fight the war on terrorism, like every war, under the Constitution. Consequently, we cannot convict our enemies under it. They will get off. Once free, they will, despite having enjoyed the benevolence of our constitutional rights, strike us again. The Constitution then becomes a means of our destruction. If it cannot protect us, then what is to stop somebody from trying to replace it? Obama would lead us down the road to dictatorship.

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were unprecedented. Everything we did in response was made up along the way. Despite that, and contrary to the echo chamber of criticism, America has managed, by pummeling Al Qaeda and liberating the peoples of two nations, to make the world a freer and safer place. We have successfully defended ourselves against any further attacks. And we have done it with a proper respect for the “rule of law and the rights of man.”

Justice delayed is justice denied. That goes for the American victims of foreign attacks, also.

With this order to close Guantanamo, the countdown to the next attack has begun.

The great Ronald Reagan gave us some sound advice when it came to dealing with our foreign adversaries: ‘trust but verify.’ In a few short days, however, our nation’s position will become one of ‘trust but mollify.’ (Or ‘trust but stupefy’ – take your pick).

According to a published report in the UK’s Guardian the incoming administration is prepared to engage with – and therefore legitimize – one of the most heinous terrorist organizations in the world. One dedicated not just to the destruction of Israel, but also to the destruction of America.

The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush’s ­doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.

The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush ­presidency’s ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 ­Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.

The Guardian has spoken to three ­people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp. There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, but he is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracising Hamas is counter-productive. A tested course would be to start ­contacts through Hamas and the US intelligence services, similar to the secret process through which the US engaged with the PLO in the 1970s. Israel did not become aware of the contacts until much later.

Ahh, yes, ‘counter-productive.’ You see if we just start being nice to Hamas - if we just show them a little love and a little Obama charm- then their leaders will no longer harbor these kinds of feelings towards Jews and Americans:

Amazing.

Sick. Just sick.

Hat tip to Right Wing Nut!

It seems the election of Barack Obama must not have reached the terrorists that stormed Mumbai. They must not have gotten the message to be nicer killers now that America will soon have a President who gleefully pledges to shut down Gitmo and not to torture Jihadists who want to end America. Otherwise, how else does one explain why they brutally tortured their Jewish victims before killing them in cold blood?

From the UK Telegraph:

Doctors expressed horror at the condition of the bodies recovered from the Nariman Building, which housed the Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch retreat.

“I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was traumatised,” a mortician said. “It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood.”

The group that stormed Bombay’s most famous institutions displayed unrestrained brutality throughout the mission. The captain of a fishing trawler hijacked by the group in Arabian Sea was found with his throat cut.

Police said 17 victims were pushed against a wall in the corridor of the Oberoi hotel and executed in a line.

One man who served a glass of water to a terrorist at Bombay’s main railway station was shot in the forehead.

Honestly, Obama hasn’t even taken the oath yet but somehow I already feel less safe. The apt phrase being ‘letting our guard down.’ Unfortunately, I’m afraid that’s what we are in for — hopefully not to our own peril.

One of the terrorists involved in the Mumbai attacks has been captured. In this story from My Way News, one Indian official says:

These guys could do it next week again in Mumbai and our responses would be exactly the same.

The terrorist himself, one Azam Amir Kasab, apparently has said the attacks were intended to kill 5,000 people.

Over at Fausta’s Blog, Fausta wonders if this was merely a ‘probing attack’ in advance of a much worse, larger-scale operation.

So, my question to my liberal friends is this: if this happened in an American city like New York wouldn’t you want our government to do anything possible to stop another attack? Even if – heaven forbid – it meant dunking the poor terrorist’s head upside down under water?