Believing one's own propaganda can only lead to huge mistakes: Bush was well liked.

There are people around the world who will always hate or distrust us, like the mullahs of Iran or Kim Jong Il or Castro.  Obama seems determined to befriend these mortal enemies.  Then there are peoples, nations, and leaders which share natural interests with America, like Israel, Poland, India, Columbia, and Britain.   Toward these nations and their leaders, Obama seems bent on being the very ugliest Ugly American.

Bruce Walker at the American Thinker manages to put into words what I have always suspected: the only reason I can come up with to explain Obama’s absurd and inconsistent foreign policy is that, as ridiculously naïve as it may sound, Obama really believes the anti-bush propaganda the dems have circulated in the past 8 years.

As I suggested earlier, it is very simple to wake up from this – for some – daydream:

Take pen and paper and draw a divider (no pun intended) like a capital  T on a sheet of paper (like an accountant’s debit and credit graph); go back in your mind to a few months or few years ago. On the left column start listing Bush’s foes and on the right his friends/allies; you will immediately realize that the list on the left contains the names of tyrants, dictators, madmen, fraudsters, corrupt politicians, etc. (Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, the Castro brothers, Chavez, Morales, Chirac, Schroeder, Saddam Hussein, etc., etc.) and the right mostly the names of heads of state of democratic countries (Israel, Sarkozy, Merkel, Harper, John Howard and now Rudd, New Zealand, Italy, Iraq, etc., etc.).

You get the drift. So where did the myth (yes, it is a myth) of “the world hates Bush” originates? In the same place where all attacks against center and center-right parties originates: on the left (see what they are trying to do to Berlusconi, arguably the best government Italy has ever had since WWII).

The result of Obama’s gullibility? He has consistently been alienating the guys on the right side of the list: UK, Israel, Honduras, Poland, Czech Republic, etc. and getting comfy with America’s enemies. I am afraid that the next President of the USA will have a lot of apologizing to do; this time for real.

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Latest tweets from the Captain

• Christiane Amanpour interviewing Mugabe on CNN; he's lying, of course, but she's toothless and unprepared. She'll never be a Fallaci.
• Mixed Reactions Over CNN Interview With Mugabe. Yes, she was unprepapared. Good to see him squirm & defensive tho http://viigo.im/10vp
• US welcomes #Iran inspection offer.Another "ballet" that'll give'em more time.As if Sarkozy deadline wasn't enough http://viigo.im/10vw
• EU envoys return to #Honduras to help resolve coup crisis & possibly stir up some violence to help Chavez http://viigo.im/10vA
• Afghanistan Troop Request Splits Advisers to Obama. No doubt he'll pick the wrong one... http://viigo.im/10vF
• Chavez, Gaddafi seek new world order. Why 2 "bipolar" want a "multipolar" world beats me. http://viigo.im/10vI
• Kenyan president protests U.S. warning letters. Priceless! Non-interference, sorry if Bush was pushy, no more? http://viigo.im/10vR
• Obama accuses #Iran of pattern of evasion. Do'h! Ahmadinedjad must be LOL! http://viigo.im/10vU
• RT @StrvingBloggist: Obama = One Big Awful Mistake America
• Iran tests short-range missiles. http://tr.im/zRSq This must be the dialogue they talk about...
• By keeping silent on #Iran second plant about which he knew for months, Obama has caused irreversible damage. http://bit.ly/26DDcm
• Gates: No Afghan Withdrawal Date; would be a strategic mistake. Ahem, isn't this what Republicans used to say? http://viigo.im/10Yk
• Brazil to lose its right to an embassy in Honduras in 10 days if it does not decide on handing over Zelaya. Good! http://viigo.im/10Yq
• RT @TaoWizard: The wise one accomplishes each small task as if they were the greatest task ~ Daodejing
• @badbanana of course it is! Otherwise the West'd've done something, they have known about it for a year...
• Mugabe & those like him R our creation; we have feted and honored them for too long for our own reasons (cold war). What can we expect now?
• If anyone wants an invite to try out Brizzly; looking really good so far. http://is.gd/3JEd3
• RT @dvd493: RT @LadyImpactOhio @Ohio_Tea_Party OPERATION SENATE OVERLOAD ON HEALTHCARE HAS BEGUN. PLS RT. http://bit.ly/1ayyVS
• #tcot When they start talking about "the vast right wing conspiracy" you can relax; you know they are losing. http://ow.ly/15RvtU
• Sell out your friends, and you’re a cretin. Sell them out and get nothing in return, and you’re a cretin and a fool. http://bit.ly/82GVV

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In the end, it is up to those who get it sooner to be patient and do the hard work...

I was surprised recently, when a colleague of mine, talking about one of our contractors, said that he looked honest and hard working and he was sure he would deliver in time. I had a meeting afterwards with the guy and immediately judged him a crook or at least someone who didn’t know what he was talking about; I was sure (and was proved correct)  that, as soon as he got the contract, he would scout around for cheap labor, botch the work and disappear after receiving an advance payment.

This got me wondering what I have, in addition to age and experience, that others don’t; I assure you, for example, that watching someone on TV who to you is clearly lying and dissimulating, together with friends who miss all the telltale signs and take the person’s words at face value is a disheartening, irritating experience. “Can’t you see he is lying?” you feel like bursting out saying; “don’t you understand he doesn’t mean that at all?”.

Of course, after many years, I – and those like me, a bit quicker on the draw, let’s say – have learnt to be patient; we know that eventually these people will reveal themselves for what they are (I remember with a smile Dean’s horrible “aaaaarghhhh” when he lost or Edwards’ “scandal”: I wouldn’t have trusted him with a second hand toothbrush from the moment I saw him). As painful as all this is (you always have to stop yourself from saying: “I told you so” and you keep wondering how grownups and/or professionals can talk seriously about this or that person), it is also funny. I remember last year someone asking me what I thought of Obama (for me it was unbelievable to watch all these people drinking in his “hopeychangey” thing; he is perhaps the most empty, hypocritical, fake, dissimulating man I have ever watched perform in public); naively, I replied: “I don’t see how he can even win his party’s primaries”. Knowing smiles of superiority welcomed my – in their eyes – ignorant opinion.

They were right, of course; they believed as gospel what the man and MSM were saying (to the point of forgetting his ineffectual career, dark past and criminal frequentations). I had again committed the sin of thinking that no one could miss the blatant incompetence, the emptiness of the words, the disgusting moral equivalence always at the forefront. Am I happy now that I can say “I told you so” as more and more people realize the truth? No, I am not; the stakes are too high and the damage could be irreversible. It is time for those who are only waking up now to make up for the time lost.

Ultimately, the America we love lives or dies because of the action or inaction of its citizens. Revel reminds us of the terrible responsibility of that citizenship, as we face a battle for survival, against ourselves.

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Afghanistan: how to lose a war and blame someone else

I do hope that someone in this dysfunctional administration listens to Max Boot:

Until now international forces and their Afghan partners have lacked the will and resources to implement a classic counterinsurgency plan designed to secure the populace. But that is precisely what Gen. Stanley McChrystal will undertake—assuming he gets the resources he needs from Washington. To pull the plug on our operations now, when our troops are only beginning to fight in earnest, would be even more foolish than it would have been to short-circuit the surge in Iraq in 2007—as so many who are freely offering advice on Afghanistan today once advocated.

However, I have my doubts; four main mistakes were made by Obama and his ideological cronies:

1)      Spreading the word that they wanted to talk to “moderate” Taliban (there is not such a thing and it has – rightly – been interpreted as a sign of extreme weakness)

2)      Hoping stupidly that the perceived European ill will against Bush (itself a fabrication of the Dems) would miraculously transform itself in love and military support for Obama’s endevours

3)      Afghanistan, like Iraq and all the rest of it, is a regional problem and no amount of appeasement towards Syria or Iran will reduce their desire to do harm to US/Western interests in the region; on the contrary, it will only encourage them

4)      First thing to do to protect the population is to eliminate corruption (which was the main reason of the Taliban’s’ first success); to do this allies must destroy completely poppy fields and opium cultivations which only benefit and fund the Taliban’s’ murderous activities (farmers and villagers get very little out of it anyway; they would be better off planting grains)

Of course, when you have people like Dennis Ross advising a young and inexperienced President that protecting the poppy fields must be the first objective of the counterinsurgency (a “no brainer” he calls it) you can only despair…let’s hope McCrystal, with his love of napalm, will use it where it is now needed most.

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Latest tweets from the Captain

• 'Reborn' Jesus Leads Vegans in Russia. And the "this is my body this is my blood" thing? Haven't read the fine print? http://bit.ly/2czCKA
• Slogans for Windows 7. http://bit.ly/1i4SxO The best? Because owning a Mac is one step away from drinking lattes at a Green Party tweetup.
• In a new, gentler time, apparently it’s now possible to swap mass murderers for oil. Think of the possibilities. http://tinyurl.com/lqb2uh
• 12 Facts about Global Climate Change That You Won’t Read in the Popular Press. http://tinyurl.com/kqtooo ESSENTIAL READING!
• Global March against Hugo Chavez next 4 September at 12:00. http://www.nomaschavez.org/ (via @fausta)
• #tcot Is this how the "reset" with Syria is working? http://tinyurl.com/lp6cn4
• #iran #iranelection Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
• #tcot The real Ted Kennedy. http://tinyurl.com/274evx
• Chappaquiddick, the true story: when a man is not a man anymore. http://tinyurl.com/n8rey2
• Splendid cartoon: British Lockerbie memorial. http://tinyurl.com/ksffb2
• #tcot Kennedy tried to enlist the aid of the Soviet regime, Yuri Andropov, to get President Reagan defeated. http://tinyurl.com/ma9o9h
• Following my latest tweet...British Lockerbie memorial http://post.ly/3aBb

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Following my latest tweet...British Lockerbie memorial

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