Obama as War President

James Lewis at American Thinker:

The gangster regimes of the world are on the march, and they've got our number. They know how to squeeze more civilized nations. Our weakness is cowardice, and that goes double or triple in the face of nuclear weapons. That's why all the rogues are trying to get nukes as fast as they can. They know it's the perfect blackmail weapon, and it makes them invulnerable to attack.

That is also why President Obama's public rejection of General McChrystal's advice on Afghanistan affects your personal safety and mine. Gen. McChrystal wants more troops. Obama doesn't want to send them because he needs the money to promote his socialist take-over of America. You can't have both. Look at Europe, where the military have become pathetic social welfare programs. All the air is sucked out by bigger and bigger victim programs.

Obama must be realizing by now that the chance of a major war in the Gulf next year is rising to 100 percent. Ahmadinejad will have nuclear weapons too, and he already has enough radioactive materials for a dirty nuke, a low-tech weapon that can spread terror everywhere in the world. The Left always puts the burden of proof for WMDs on America, which can never prove their existence because the CIA rarely can penetrate totalitarian regimes. You can't prove a negative. Ever. So the Left is always asking the impossible. It makes them sound reasonable when they are just sabotaging common sense.

Read the rest of “Lose Afghanistan, Lose Pakistan, Lose Iran, Lose It All”.

Even Sarah Has To Take It Underground

Funny who turns up underground.

Even as prominent a person as Sarah Palin has to find ways to get her message out.

In her case, it’s because she was scheduled to speak yesterday at a rally in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza to protest the appearance at the UN and elsewhere of President Ahmadinejad of Iran, but then she was disinvited at the last minute, “two days after U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) canceled her longstanding plans to address the rally.”

This disgraceful decision by the rally organizers to disinvite Palin was almost certainly the result of Democratic pressure. So overpowering, apparently, would have been the appearance of the fluffy former Mayor of Nowhere, Alaska, that the only way to keep things fair to the Democrats--and Hillary Clinton--was to tell Palin just to stay away. Democratic organizers didn't dare risk casting an advantageous light on the Republicans. That would have been tough to avoid, given that it’s been the Bush administration, and people who share much of his foreign policy, like John McCain, who have the vastly stronger record of standing up to Iran than the Democrats could ever claim to have.

So the speech Palin intended to deliver in New York on Monday was released as a column through the New York Sun. (Okay, the New York Sun’s not exactly underground. But running as a column, Palin's message won't get the coverage—especially the TV coverage-- it would have had if she’d been allowed to speak at the rally).

So we’re posting her speech in full below, guaranteeing at least three more Americans will see it.

By the way, it seems that in spite of the efforts of the rally organizers to keep “politics” out, some of the participants didn’t read the memo. Check this out:

Holocaust survivor Nesse Godin and Iranian dissident Amir Abbas Fakhravar also spoke at the event.

Fakhravar thanked Israel and the United States for not recognizing and doing business with the Iranian regime. He also made his preference in the U.S. presidential election clear, criticizing “those who want to go to the White House to have unconditional talks with the Islamic Republic”—an apparent reference to a remark Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) made in a debate last year about being willing to meet with Ahmadinejad.

Yes, that would be an apparent reference to Obama, wouldn't it?

Palin on Ahmadinejad: 'He Must Be Stopped'

By SARAH PALIN September 22, 2008
Governor Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president, was scheduled to speak today at a rally in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza to protest the appearance here of President Ahmadinejad of Iran. Her appearance was canceled by rally organizers who sought a nonpolitical event. Following are the remarks Mrs. Palin would have given:

I am honored to be with you and with leaders from across this great country — leaders from different faiths and political parties united in a single voice of outrage.

Tomorrow, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will come to New York — to the heart of what he calls the Great Satan — and speak freely in this, a country whose demise he has called for.

Ahmadinejad may choose his words carefully, but underneath all of the rhetoric is an agenda that threatens all who seek a safer and freer world. We gather here today to highlight the Iranian dictator's intentions and to call for action to thwart him.

He must be stopped.

The world must awake to the threat this man poses to all of us. Ahmadinejad denies that the Holocaust ever took place. He dreams of being an agent in a "Final Solution" — the elimination of the Jewish people. He has called Israel a "stinking corpse" that is "on its way to annihilation."

Such talk cannot be dismissed as the ravings of a madman — not when Iran just this summer tested long-range Shahab-3 missiles capable of striking Tel Aviv, not when the Iranian nuclear program is nearing completion, and not when Iran sponsors terrorists that threaten and kill innocent people around the world.

The Iranian government wants nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that Iran is running at least 3,800 centrifuges and that its uranium enrichment capacity is rapidly improving. According to news reports, U.S. intelligence agencies believe the Iranians may have enough nuclear material to produce a bomb within a year.

The world has condemned these activities. The United Nations Security Council has demanded that Iran suspend its illegal nuclear enrichment activities. It has levied three rounds of sanctions. How has Ahmadinejad responded? With the declaration that the "Iranian nation would not retreat one iota" from its nuclear program.

So, what should we do about this growing threat? First, we must succeed in Iraq. If we fail there, it will jeopardize the democracy the Iraqis have worked so hard to build, and empower the extremists in neighboring Iran. Iran has armed and trained terrorists who have killed our soldiers in Iraq, and it is Iran that would benefit from an American defeat in Iraq.

If we retreat without leaving a stable Iraq, Iran's nuclear ambitions will be bolstered. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons — they could share them tomorrow with the terrorists they finance, arm, and train today. Iranian nuclear weapons would set off a dangerous regional nuclear arms race that would make all of us less safe.

But Iran is not only a regional threat; it threatens the entire world. It is the no. 1 state sponsor of terrorism. It sponsors the world's most vicious terrorist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Together, Iran and its terrorists are responsible for the deaths of Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s, in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, and in Iraq today. They have murdered Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians, and other Muslims who have resisted Iran's desire to dominate the region. They have persecuted countless people simply because they are Jewish.

Iran is responsible for attacks not only on Israelis, but on Jews living as far away as Argentina. Anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial are part of Iran's official ideology and murder is part of its official policy. Not even Iranian citizens are safe from their government's threat to those who want to live, work, and worship in peace. Politically-motivated abductions, torture, death by stoning, flogging, and amputations are just some of its state-sanctioned punishments.

It is said that the measure of a country is the treatment of its most vulnerable citizens. By that standard, the Iranian government is both oppressive and barbaric. Under Ahmadinejad's rule, Iranian women are some of the most vulnerable citizens.

If an Iranian woman shows too much hair in public, she risks being beaten or killed.

If she walks down a public street in clothing that violates the state dress code, she could be arrested.

But in the face of this harsh regime, the Iranian women have shown courage. Despite threats to their lives and their families, Iranian women have sought better treatment through the "One Million Signatures Campaign Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws."

The authorities have reacted with predictable barbarism. Last year, women's rights activist Delaram Ali was sentenced to 20 lashes and 10 months in prison for committing the crime of "propaganda against the system." After international protests, the judiciary reduced her sentence to "only" 10 lashes and 36 months in prison and then temporarily suspended her sentence. She still faces the threat of imprisonment.

Earlier this year, Senator Clinton said that "Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is in the forefront of that" effort. Senator Clinton argued that part of our response must include stronger sanctions, including the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization. John McCain and I could not agree more.

Senator Clinton understands the nature of this threat and what we must do to confront it. This is an issue that should unite all Americans. Iran should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Period. And in a single voice, we must be loud enough for the whole world to hear: Stop Iran!

Only by working together, across national, religious, and political differences, can we alter this regime's dangerous behavior. Iran has many vulnerabilities, including a regime weakened by sanctions and a population eager to embrace opportunities with the West. We must increase economic pressure to change Iran's behavior.

Tomorrow, Ahmadinejad will come to New York. On our soil, he will exercise the right of freedom of speech — a right he denies his own people. He will share his hateful agenda with the world. Our task is to focus the world on what can be done to stop him.

We must rally the world to press for truly tough sanctions at the U.N. or with our allies if Iran's allies continue to block action in the U.N. We must start with restrictions on Iran's refined petroleum imports.

We must reduce our dependency on foreign oil to weaken Iran's economic influence.

We must target the regime's assets abroad; bank accounts, investments, and trading partners.

President Ahmadinejad should be held accountable for inciting genocide, a crime under international law.

We must sanction Iran's Central Bank and the Revolutionary Guard Corps — which no one should doubt is a terrorist organization.

Together, we can stop Iran's nuclear program.

Senator McCain has made a solemn commitment that I strongly endorse: Never again will we risk another Holocaust. And this is not a wish, a request, or a plea to Israel's enemies. This is a promise that the United States and Israel will honor, against any enemy who cares to test us. It is John McCain's promise and it is my promise.

Thank you.

Our American Imam Wants You to Know, 'I Am Not an Iranian Agent'

Detroit-area residents who can’t find copies of the Arab American News, or who’ve had their satellite link to Al Jazeera cut off, need go no further than the Op Ed page of the Detroit News to get a view of current affairs from the pro-Iranian side of the street.

That’s where editorial page editor Nolan Finley has given the Islamic House of Wisdom’s Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi a regular column, under the title, “Faith and Policy.”

The Imam’s faith happens to be Shia Islam, of the Hezbollah-are-freedom-fighters strain. Being a Muslim, of course, should not foreclose the Imam having a voice in a free press. And Finley explains his decision to give Elahi a megaphone by noting

that Elahi is considered a moderate in Dearborn's Muslim community.

"Extreme from our point of view and extreme from mainstream America's point of view? Perhaps." Finley said. "Extreme for that community? I'm not sure. I think he has a very large following--in fact, I know he has a very large following in that community, and speaks for a very large segment of that community.”

I’ll say. All the more reason to pay close attention, eh?

As to his policies, Imam Elahi is a big believer that while everything about the American foreign policy of George W. Bush since 9/11 is “a moral tragedy, ”the recent Iranian- and Syrian-backed sacking of the Lebanese parliament is a success story, as he described it in June 3rd column. (“Bush's Middle East foreign policy creates moral tragedies”).

He’s also stated in his column that,

Regarding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent call to wipe Israel off the map . . .:

--"It is very clear that Mr. Ahmadinejad was not making an anti-Semitic statement."

--"The Iranian president's quip can best be understood in the context of the Declaration of Independence.”

--and, “Israel must stop instigating violent conflicts in the Muslim world."

Another Elahi column described Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin as a ‘Palestinian spiritual leader, (who) had a heart full of love for humanity.’ Yet another compared the Iranian constitution to that of the United States.

Imam Elahi, was at one time the spiritual leader of the Iranian navy. The self-evident benefits of an armed force having a spiritual leader can be seen in recent news about the Iranian navy, featuring stories about the navy threatening to attack and “explode” U.S. warships, (“Video of Iran ‘attack’ on three US warships released by Pentagon”), unlawfully taking British sailors hostage, (“Iranian Vessels Seize 15 British Navy Personnel in Iraqi Waters”), and how its Basiji Islamic Revolutionary Guard members brag that they’ve taken a suicide pledge. (“Iran navy in suicide attack pledge”):

“If necessary, we will use the element of martyrdom-seeking and we will become people of Ashura," Fars quoted Gen. Ali Fadavi as saying. Ashura refers to the day marking the death of Imam Hussein, Prophet Mohammed's grandson, who is revered by Shiite Muslims.

Whether or not all this misdirected belligerence is made wors or better by having “spiritual leaders” of the stripe of Imam Elahi, I’ll leave for the Imam Elahis of the world to explain.

After bucking up the Iranian sea dogs Imam Elahi came to the USA around 1991 on a 4-month visa. According to one source, that visa “enabled him to inspect American branches of Hizbullah (Tehran's network of agents) and to reinforce Tehran's influence on Shi'ite communities (in Dearborn)."

Now he’s an American citizen, which, if nothing else, grants him the right to use first-person pronouns when attacking the United States. Such as when he said in his Tuesday column,

“Our country, once a beacon of hope and freedom for the world, has squandered our prosperity to create conflicts and instigate civil wars among other nations by funding one group against another”; or, “Our nation deserves truthful and trustworthy leaders who have enough courage and commitment to turn the anti-American resentment around the world into respect and love.”

I guess I shouldn’t knock him for it. Most Democrats are born here and still reflexively refer to most Americans as “them.”

Anyway, Elahi’s nostalgia for a period of respect and love for America that he’s never been around for is truly inspiring. I get dewy-eyed thinking back on those carefree days when it was Jimmy Carter that Ahmadinejad and his scruffy cohorts were burning in effigy as they brutalized our embassy staff.

But although he denies being an Iranian agent, Imam Elahi seems to have a one-track mind when it comes to the policies he preaches. They always seem to be pointed at benefits to Iran--or Iran’s creature, Hezbollah.

For example, to undo the “moral tragedy” of the Bush foreign policy, Elahi thinks we need “to stop these wars, fix the mess in Iraq and Afghanistan and don't start yet another war in the Persian Gulf.”

But who’s to benefit from us “stopping” the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? In other words, who's to benefit from our withdrawing and leaving both newly liberated nations to the depredations of their strongest neighbor--Iran. And who’s the only Persian Gulf nation in the region there’s even the remotest chance of us going to war with? Iran.

Elahi continues: “There is no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons.” For this, Elahi cites the much-maligned National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007, which he says “confirmed that Iran's nuclear program has no military aspect -- it is not pursuing nuclear weapons.”

Except the NIE didn’t. Instead, all 16 American spy agencies that contributed to the report stated “that Tehran is likely keeping its options open with respect to building a weapon, but that intelligence agencies do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.’” (“U.S. Says Iran Ended Atomic Arms Work”).

But Elahi is particularly adamant that Iran is not nuke-bound, and he wishes Bush would quit taking the cautious route, (as if world peace depended on it, or something), pointing out how “United Nations atomic watchdog chief, Mohamed El-Baradei, accused the Bush administration of adding ‘fuel to the fire’ with bellicose rhetoric.”

But if there’s no fire, how can you add fuel to it? Besides, “watchdog” El-Baredei, even as he faces daily lies and obfuscation from Iranian authorities, has never been willing to admit there’s an Iranian bomb program, and probably won’t until he’s falling through space onto Tel Aviv straddling one Slim-Pickens style.

Imam Elahi does spare some concern for the nation he has adopted, instead of the one he's not an agent for. He cares deeply that America “deserves truthful and trustworthy leaders who have enough courage and commitment to turn the anti-American resentment around the world into respect and love.”

His advice is that the “United States should get on the right side of the struggle and be part of the triumph of peace.” He’s short on specifics, but I think this translates this way: “Dump Israel, and let Iran have the bomb.”

Imam Elahi does think there’s a way we can still be friends with Israel, but we should imitate Jimmy Carter in showing how true friendship really works. “Honestly, the best friends of Israel are those who say it like it is. Former President Jimmy Carter called the Israeli policy toward Gaza ‘one of the greatest human rights crimes on earth.’”

(What do you bet it's been a while since Rosalynn asked Jimmy, "Does this dress make me look fat?")

Now we're all waiting for Jimmy to give Hamas some of the same depth of constructive criticism, and show them some true friendship.

Sooner or Later, France Has to Revolt in the Right Direction

And you thought the whole word hated us, especially the French. (Or maybe it’s only that it's the the French whose good opinion the Left really yearns for.)

Alas, France’s new Foreign Minister, (successor to the duplicitous Dominique de Villepin, whose knife is still buried in Colin Powell’s back), “made news this week by warning that a failure to resolve mounting tensions with Iran could mean war.” (“Kouchner, French foreign minister, draws antiwar protesters in Washington”),

In response, Code Pink sent its delegation to the hotel ballroom Thursday where Kouchner was speaking to leap up and unfurl “pink banners that read: ‘Bush + Kouchner = Warmongers!’ One woman tried to climb onto the stage…. Guards escorted the protesters away as they shouted, ‘No war with Iran! No war with Iran!’”

I myself am looking forward to the outburst and arrests that I’m just certain Code Pink is going to stage next week during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s teach-in at Columbia University.

Anyway, it still puzzles the Left that Kouchner has taken such a hard position towards Iran. After all, as the International Herald Tribune explains, “Kouchner is a Socialist who joined the rightist government of President Nicolas Sarkozy and is also a founder of the Nobel Prize-winning humanitarian group Médecins sans Frontières.”

It was shocking that someone totally hip to the Socialist solution and founder of one of NPR’s favorite interview subjects (actually, Kouchner broke with MSF years ago over “the right to intervene and the use of armed force for humanitarian reasons.” should come out in favor of a military option in response to a military threat. How obnoxiously linear.

So right after Kouchner made his historic (dare we say revolutionary?) remarks about Iran’s looming belligerence and nuclear ambitions leading to a possible war, he felt pressure to backpedal. After the Code Pink demonstrators were removed on Thursday, Kouchner asked that they be allowed to return.

"But they are right," he told the crowd. As the chants continued from beyond the closed doors, he offered an undiplomatic, "But I agree, stupid!" drawing laughter. He directed the guards to let the protesters return….as the surprised members of the antiwar group Code Pink filed back into the room, Kouchner said, "I'm not in favor of war with Iran, I want to prevent the war - so they were right!"

He didn’t really think they were right, naturally, otherwise he would be stupid. When one of the reprieved Code Pinkos again started yelling about Iran, “he asked, ‘What do you propose?’ ‘Dialogue without sanctions,’ she replied. He laughed. ‘That's been done,’ he said. ‘This is not, let's say, a very strong position.’”

Which means, when translated from the French means, “alors, that’s très stupide, you want to get us all incinerated?”

What Kouchner means when he says he’s not in favor of war with Iran is that, he hopes it can be resolved short of that, without France having to surrender its sovereignty to an insane Islamic nuclear terror state. In other words, his position matches the American position exactly: let’s work this out diplomatically if we can, but we aren’t going to commit suicide:

Underscoring the changed U.S.-French dynamic, Bush warned Friday that the free world was "not going to tolerate" a nuclear-armed Iran. In Paris, Sarkozy said he favored stronger UN sanctions, which were discussed Friday at multi-nation talks in Washington.

Of all the world's problems, Kouchner said Thursday, Iran posed "the crisis the most pregnant with threats."

"Without exaggeration," he said to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, "I would say that our responses to this situation today will shape the world in which we live tomorrow."

A nuclear-armed Iran, he said, was "unacceptable." And repeated good-faith efforts by the West to engage with Tehran, he said, had been rebuffed.

"To those who say that we should handle Iran with kid gloves since it could destabilize the region, I say this: Look at its adventurism today and imagine what it would be like if Tehran thought itself one day protected by a nuclear umbrella."

The United States, Russia, China and their European partners need to pursue dialogue with Iran, "while keeping our heads cool, as far as we can go," Kouchner said in his speech. But "dialogue without sanctions is unfortunately tantamount to weakness."

We already know that when Kouchner says “sanctions,” he means to include “war.” His position tracks exactly with the Bush insistence that, where Iran and its nuclear programs are concerned, we can’t take the military option off the table.

Maureen Dowd once intemperately conferred on Cindy Sheehan “absolute moral authority” to pass judgment on the Iraq war because she had buried a child killed there, which makes as much sense as saying that a mother who buried a child killed in a traffic accident has the right to tell the nation to stop driving cars. (“Why No Tea and Sympathy?”).

Kouchner’s authority is not absolute, but it’s pretty strong, considering that he is reaching back, in my opinion, to the disastrous foreign policy of his childhood, when France was overrun by Germany after years of unmistakeable indicators of what Hitler’s intentions were.

According to Militant Islam Monitor Kouchner was a Communist very early on. Though he wasn’t born until 1939, he would have known all about how Hitler’s early breaches of treaties against German rearmament were met by French unwillingness to strengthen its own military to meet the threat. The Communists played an important role in that defeat, out of loyalty to Stalin, who had made the agreement with Ribbentrop to divide up Poland:

From the moment when Stalin made terms with Hitler, the Communists in France took their cue from Moscow and denounced the war as ‘an imperialist and capitalist crime against democracy.’ They did what they could to undermine morale in the Army and impede production in the workshops. The morale of France, both of her soldiers and her people, was now in May [1940] markedly lower than at the outbreak of war.”

France fell to Hitler a month later.

Pacifism played the same deadly role in Great Britain, where even Hitler’s defiant withdrawal of Germany from the League of Nations left the “pacifism of the Labour and Liberal parties” unaffected: “Both continued in the name of peace to urge British disarmament, and anyone who differed was called "warmonger" and "scaremonger."

According to Churchill, Hitler’s threatening moves after 1933 from time to time resulted in League of Nations votes and protests, but “how vain was all their voting without the readiness of any single Power or any group of Powers to contemplate the use of force, even in the last resort!....All [Hitler’s] terrible superiority had grown up because at no moment had the once victorious Allies dared to take any effective step, even when they were all-powerful, to resist repeated aggressions by Hitler and breaches of the Treaties.”

I don’t care at this point if Kouchner is a Socialist. He and Sarkozy both recognize the threat of a nuclear Iran, and a spreading Islamism in Europe. A minority of likeminded people are also waking up in Germany, in Holland, in Denmark, and in Great Britain. Spending his first years in the Third Reich may have given Kouchner insight into the kind of terms insane dictators are more than willing to impose on lovers of diplomacy and appeasement.

All I know is, France’s new found rationality is a welcome development, even if it comes late.

Iran: Praying For Obama

By Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, February 14, 2007

We live in a dangerous world. According to the European Union, that world will become exponentially more dangerous in the coming years. An internal EU document leaked to the Financial Times states that Iran will likely go nuclear in the near future. "Attempts to engage the Iranian administration in a negotiating process have so far not succeeded," says the document. "At some stage we must expect that Iran will acquire the capacity to enrich uranium on the scale required for a weapons programme." The document also suggests that economic sanctions will be useless.

What is to be done? The European Union, as usual, has decided to stick its collective head in the sand. No surprise there. If Iran is to be stopped, of course, it will not be the EU that takes the leadership role -- it will have to be the United States. "The price of greatness is responsibility," explained Winston Churchill. The price of global leadership is global leadership.

Unfortunately, we are currently mired in an existential crisis of our own. The war in Iraq has undermined the will to use military force, even when military force is necessary. Just because we did not find massive stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq does not mean Iran is benign. Yet, like the Western powers after World War I, we prefer to watch as our enemies re-arm rather than stopping them when we can. The results, as they were in 1939, will be devastating.

All of which makes the presidential election of 2008 the most important election in recent memory. America teeters on the brink of a crippling European post-modernism.
The political embodiment of that post-modernism -- that nihilistic resignation -- is the modern Democratic Party. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the Democrats' bright new star, is no more capable of global leadership than Jacques Chirac. Obama's politics of "understanding" dictates that evil cannot be fought -- it must be placated with psychobabble.

In his new forward to "Dreams From My Father," Obama writes, "I know, I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder -- alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a stead unthinking application of force, of more sophisticated military hardware -- is inadequate to the task." This sounds like boilerplate rhetoric. It is not. It is the theory of appeasement, stated clearly and succinctly.

Obama's adolescent insistence that everything can be talked out is matched in its idiocy only by his adolescent scorn for military sacrifice in general. In a speech in Iowa on February 11, Obama stated, "We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged -- and to which we have now spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted." Wasted. This is the language of MoveOn.org, the language of Democratic Underground, the language of the 1960s radicals Obama claims to deplore.

This was no isolated incident. It reflects what Obama believes. After Obama sponsored legislation mandating a full troop withdrawal from Iraq by March 2008, Australian Prime Minister John Howard lashed out. Al Qaeda, Howard said, would be "praying as many times as possible" for Obama's election in 2008. Obama's response was breathtakingly ignorant and immature: If Howard is "ginned up to fight the good fight in Iraq," spat Obama, "I would suggest that he call up another 20,000 Australians and send them to Iraq. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of empty rhetoric."

There are currently over 1,400 Australian troops dispatched to Iraq. Howard has a legitimate reason to declaim Obama's politics: His country has hundreds of troops on the ground, and American policy affects those troops. For Obama to dismiss Howard's opinion by insulting Australia's sacrifice is outrageous.

And yet it is Barack Obama -- a man who sees aloe vera as an actual foreign relations strategy, who routinely derides military sacrifice -- whom the Democrats put forth as their hot new candidate for the 2008 presidential nomination.

Will America join Europe, sticking its head in the sand, enabling Islamism by ignoring it? Iran certainly hopes so. Like Al Qaeda, Iran's leaders must be praying every day that Americans turn to a candidate like Barack Obama.