Month: February 2008

Really, Michelle? This is the first time?

Really, Michelle? This is the first time?

We should all be concerned when a would-be First Lady says she has “never really been proud of my country until now.” It is a warning about how radical an Obama presidency would be.

At a campaign rally in Madison, Wis., on Monday, the wife of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., declared: “Let me tell you something. For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.”

An editorial in Investors Business Daily comments:

Is ignorance the culprit here, or is it ingratitude — or perhaps an unhealthy mix of the two?

Michelle Obama was born in 1964, so her adulthood began in 1982. Is there really nothing about America she could think of to be proud of over the past quarter-century? How about the way firefighters, EMT personnel, police and ordinary people sacrificed to help each other in the aftermath of 9/11?

Maybe she forgot about the billions we gave in charity after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed hundreds of thousands and left homeless over a million more, contributions dwarfing those of other countries — including hundreds of millions of dollars from those evil American corporations.

She may have been unaware that the U.S. military mobilized an aircraft carrier battle group and dispatched numerous strategic and tactical airlifters, plus dozens of Navy and Marine Corps helicopters, in efforts that ranged from search-and-rescue to disaster relief. The Navy also deployed the 1,000-bed hospital ship USNS Mercy.

By the way, a quick look at the census life expectancy tables show that American blacks in 1982 could expect to live just 69.4 years. Due to improvements in medicine and greater access to care, today it’s 74 years of expected life. She’s not proud of that?

Even if she was unaware of all this, which is highly unlikely, shouldn’t the fact that a black woman from the south side of Chicago can graduate from two Ivy League schools itself be enough to make Mrs. Obama proud of such a country?

The fact that it doesn’t indicates a radical mind-set that does not appreciate what makes America great — and a presidency that would be destructive of the country’s greatness.

We need to be very concerned about an Obama Presidency. Aside from being the most liberal Senator in the Senate, he and his wife are radicals who believe in European-type socialism. Further, because of his inexperience in foreign policy, he is relying on foreign policy advisors who have been notoriously anti-Israel and sympathetic to the “oppressed” Palestinians. Warning! Danger Ahead!

 

Obama’s Foreign Policy Team of concern to Jews

Obama’s Foreign Policy Team of concern to Jews

Barack Obama, not having foreign policy experience, is relying on his advisors for his foreign policy. The problem is that he has chosen advisors who are notoriously anti-Israel.

An article in The American Thinker by Richard Baehr and Ed Lasky points out the probable anti-Israel policy if he is elected.

Over the past month, controversy has erupted over the issue of Senator Obama’s foreign policy advisers and the impact that they might have on a future President Obama’s policies toward Israel, and on American foreign policy in the broader region. Articles in the Washington Post, Newsweek, American Thinker, New York Sun, Politico, Commentary Magazine, The New Republic, CAMERA and other publications have precipitated this controversy.

Both those who support Senator Obama and his quest for the presidency and those who have concerns often share the same goal: ensuring that our next president comes to office well-prepared for the demands of the highest office in our nation. The President is uniquely powerful in the realm of foreign policy. In these perilous times, all of us want to ensure that the man or woman who steps into the White House in January is well-prepared to deal with the foreign policy challenges that lie ahead.

The problem arises when you look at who Obama has chosen for his policy advisors.

Newsweek published a list of Senator Obama’s foreign policy advisers that included Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Malley. A few weeks later, the Washington Post on October 2, 2007 published a list of foreign policy advisers for all the major candidates, which list included the names of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Malley, Samantha Power and Susan Rice as advisers to Senator Obama. Subsequently, Martin Peretz — an Obama supporter — wrote at the end of December that he got the “shudders” when thinking about the foreign policy influence of “Zbigniew Brzezinski… Anthony Lake, Susan Rice and Robert O. Malley”.

Some of his advisors:

Samantha Power

Senator Obama’s supporters have uniformly ignored the role and the views of Harvard Kennedy School of Government professor Samantha Power, who is very problematic regarding Israel, Iran, and for that matter, American supporters of Israel (see below). Power left her position at Harvard to work for Obama for a year after his election to the US Senate. She is now identified as a “senior foreign policy advisor.”.

In the case of Power, it was Senator Obama who made the initial contact with her after reading her book on genocide. Power is now actively working for the campaign. She cannot be casually dismissed as one of Obama’s many advisors, with no particular assigned role.

It is not at all hard to imagine her having a senior foreign policy role in an Obama administration, perhaps as US Ambassador to the United Nations, an organization she views warmly. The problem for those who favor a strong US-Israel relationship is that Power seems obsessed with Israel, and in a negative way. Much like the authors of the Baker-Hamilton report, she believes resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is central to solving other problems in the Middle East. And it is clear that her approach to addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be for the US to behave in a more “even handed” fashion, which of course means withdrawing US support for Israel, and instead applying more pressure on Israel for concessions.

Zbigniew Brezinski and Robert Malley are also cause for great concern with respect to Israel.

Read the whole article for more information.