By Mr. Curmudgeon

With President Obama’s timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan as likely to succeed as his timetable for closing Gitmo, the left is pulling out all the stops and giving the community organizer a little taste of George W. Bush’s medicine. Someone leaked six-years worth of classified military documents to that disseminator of America’s top secrets — the New York Times.

This put White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs in the uncomfortable position of having to sound like Dick Cheney. “We are in this region of the world because of what happened on 9/11,” Gibbs reminded a forgetful White House press corps. “Ensuring that there is not a safe haven in Afghanistan by which attacks against this country and countries around the world can be planned. That’s why we’re there, and that’s why we’re going to continue to make progress on this relationship.”

The documents were released through Wikileaks, a Website that dubs itself “a multi-jurisdictional public service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public.” Its founder, Julian Assange, told Germany’s Der Spiegel, “I enjoy crushing bastards.”

The administration states that there is no there there; that the information says what most have known for a while – that US military policy has been a little short in the war-making department. The documents also verify that the intelligence service of our fine ally Pakistan is aiding the Taliban. This, of course, should not surprise us since Pakistan was one of only three countries to recognize the Taliban and supply the scruffy misfits with arms.

The most striking revelation in the documents is how America’s Vietnamization program for Afghanistan (a winning-the-hearts-and-minds strategy coupled with Afghan army training intended to eventually relieve our military duties there) is turning out to be something of a fizzle.

The Second World War should have taught us that nation building only works after braking your enemies will and ability to wage war. It took two atomic bombs to break the will of Japan’s fanatical Imperial Army and its desire to die for the honor of its emperor-god.

Today’s America would never go as far to stop an enemy as ferociously fanatical. Instead, we merrily march down the well-trod road to Vietnam.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

President Obama was riding high after signing his Wall Street reform legislation into law. Then Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), came along to rain on the president’s parade. Barofsky’s report to Congress estimates that US taxpayers are on the hook for $700 billion this year (heaped atop an already staggering $3.7 trillion), resulting from the administration’s effort to stem the growing foreclosure rate. And the culprits?

“The increase was largely due to the government’s pledge to supply capital to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to buy their securities and guarantee mortgages to prop up housing,” reports the Reuters News Service. It’s funny how the President’s “sweeping financial reform” accidentally left out Freddie and Fannie…on purpose.

Barofsky lived up to his reputation for being Rep. Barney Frank and President Obama’s worst nightmare. “…I fear that the growing public suspicion that this program is an outright failure will continue unless and until Treasury…comes clean with what its goals and expectations are.” Ouch.

And while the president and his party howl about compensation for executives at the nation’s largest banks and brokerage houses, CEO’s Michael Williams (Fannie Mae) and Charles Haldeman Jr. (Freddie Mac) are both pulling in $900,000 a year. Where big government is concerned, nothing succeeds like catastrophic failure.

And speaking of failure, Obama’s “sweeping financial reform” just gave “too big to fail” the weight of US law. Now Barney Frank and friends can continue feeding the beats Freddie and Fannie tax dollars so as to continue their destructive behavior.

When conservatives criticize Obama’s new draconian law for overburdening our damaged economy, he will no doubt don his trusted fig leaf for cover. “I didn’t create TARP,” he’ll say, “Bush did.” And, sadly, he will be right.

Remember John Snow? As Bush’s Treasury Secretary, he once testified before Washington’s lawmakers, saying they needed to draft “legislation to create a new Federal agency to regulate and supervise the financial activities of our housing-related government sponsored enterprises [Freddie and Fannie].” He was ignored by his president and a Republican controlled Congress. A Wall Street Journal poll of leading economists declared Snow an ineffective Treasury secretary by a margin of two to one. Bush eventually fired him.

During the 2008 campaign, John McCain suspended his politicking to participate in legislative negotiations that began the “too big to fail” bailouts. “Now is the time to come together,” said McCain to the adoring press, “Democrats and Republicans – in a spirit of cooperation for the sake of the American people.”

Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, once said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” The economic crisis that now engulfs our nation, and that Obama uses as an excuse to radically transform America, is the handiwork of Democrats and Republicans working together in a “spirit of bipartisan cooperation.”

Yesterday, senior economist at CoreLogic, Sam Khater, told the Associated Press, “The Economy and the housing market are going to remain stagnant for a long time. There’s nothing that’s going to propel sales anytime soon. It’s all about jobs and income growth.”

Obama’s transformative socialist agenda makes certain that jobs and income growth will remain a distant mirage. And we can thank that damned “spirit of bipartisan cooperation” for it.

America, is it beginning to dawn on you why the Tea Party is so important? This is a drum I will continue to beat until I stop hearing how the Republican Party is the answer to all our problems. They controlled Congress for twelve long years. There was even a Republican president in the White House for six of them. Where were they?

If John McCain returns to Washington after the midterms, do you really believe he will work to undo the horrific damage done to the American people by Obama? Or will he revert to “maverick” mode and obstruct every rational attempt to repeal our current socialist transformation? You know the answer.

There are currently 178 Republicans in the US House of Representatives. Twenty-eight formed a “Tea Party Caucus” giving lukewarm support to the principle of limited government. The question is, Where was the Republican leadership?

“He hates being politically labeled,” said POLITICO.com of Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner. “That’s why he avoids joining caucuses. For example, earlier this week he passed up the opportunity to join the House Tea Party Caucus.” The last thing a man of conscience wants to do during a time of great crisis is take sides in an epic moral struggle to save his country. President Obama and Nancy Pelosi, on the other hand, were all to quick to choose the distructive dark side.

Tea Party, Tea Party, Tea Party!

By Mr. Curmudgeon

No one should be surprised, but President Obama is about to fulfill a campaign promise. England’s Manchester Guardian “has learned that while the American government is still officially resistant to the idea of talks with Taliban leaders, behind the scenes a shift is under way and Washington is encouraging [Afghanistan’s President] Karzai to take a lead in such negotiations.”

And why not, says the Guardian, “Barrack Obama, apparently frustrated at the way the war is going, has reminded his national security advisers that while he was on the election campaign trail in 2008, he had advocated talking to America’s enemies.”

That being the case, why not negotiate with Al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden? After all, according to the left’s narrative, America was justifiably attacked on 9/11 in retribution for our national sins. As the president’s pastor of 20-years, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, said shortly after the World Trade Center towers were brought down, “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and the black South Africans, and now we are indignant. Because the stuff we have done overseas has now been brought back into our own front yard. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

Seven years after the Rev. Wright’s sermon, parishioner Barrack Hussein Obama was elected President of the United States. It is painfully clear that Obama’s ascendancy to power is one of the Rev. Wright’s prophetic chickens come home to roost.

The two atomic flashes that ruined Japan’s imperial ambitions are hateful in the sight of Wright and his god because they ended a world war and secured the survival of our hateful nation. We then compounded that sin by recognizing a state formed from the ashes of Hitler’s Holocaust – Israel.

But President Obama is determined to set things Wright. He will drive the country into unsustainable debt, destroy a good portion of our nuclear deterrent and accommodate Al Qaeda’s Taliban ally – all as an apology to a dark and evil world for our continued existence.

Drained of their fabled self-confidence, coupled with a healthy dash of self-loathing, Americans turned to a man who offered a comical bumper sticker  slogan– hope and change. For nearly two years now, Obama’s every policy has contained within it the rich retribution of the Rev. Wright’s angry nihilistic god.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Move over Helen Thomas. CNN announced that the services of senior editor of Middle Eastern affairs, Octavia Nasr, were no longer required at the Cable News Network. Nasr released a Twitter message admitting she was “sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah…One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.” Like Thomas and many among the mainstream media, Nasr had a thing for dysfunctional killers. Many on the right mistake the affection media-type’s feel for the world’s deadly losers as a sign of their political leanings. In doing so, I think the right misses the mark.

Psychologists at the University of New Mexico describe men like Fadlallah as having “dark triad traits,” which include “callousness, impulsive behavior, extroversion, narcissism and various other anti-social traits for which ‘bad boys’ are known.” Like Helen Thomas, Octavia Nasr gets weak in the knees thinking about the brooding anti-social misfits of the Middle East.

How, you ask, can anyone be enamored of dead-enders whose only thought is of the next kill? What else explains the vampire “Twilight Saga” phenomenon? Schoolgirls force their pimple-faced boyfriends to sit through a tedious love story between a damned, blood-sucking creature of the night and his confused mortal girlfriend.

Slate.com’s Dana Stevens described the teenage vampire saga as, “essentially uncritical celebrations of that overwrought, obsessive passion that is the hallmark of immaturity — passion that wholly subordinates all sense of one’s own identity and elevates the beloved to…the sole good; passion that leaps as readily to suicidal impulses and fantasies as to longing for union.”

In other words, the tendency to apologize for the likes of Joseph Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and, apparently, the blood-sucking Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah – is an expression of the left’s over-eager adolescent female attraction to bad boys.

Octavia Nasr admitted that her fawning words for Hezbollah’s Fadlallah were due to his “contrarian and pioneering stand among Shia clerics on woman’s rights.”

Why, it’s enough to make the left’s girlish heart go pitter patter.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

While Helen Thomas and much of the world condemns Israel for defending itself against genocidal terrorists in Hamas-run Gaza, the Times of London reports that one of the Arab World’s largest and wealthiest members, Saudi Arabia, has made a secret deal with Israel – with Obama’s help.

“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over [in jets] and they will look the other way. They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [U.S.] State Department,” reports the Times.

Little Israel, it is hoped, will deal with Iran’s  nuclear program. President Obama, it seems, would like isolated Israel, whose prime minister he distains and whose self-defense policies he condemns, to take the heat for what should be an American effort to save the world.

However, hope and change is about making government bigger at home, not defending it against enemies abroad. Those who killed our citizens on 9/11 and continue terrorist acts here at home, won’t be named by this administration. This disconnect from reality also extends to Israel. Obama’s counter terrorism advisor, John Brennan, refers to Jerusalem by its Arab-occupied name, “al-Quds.”

During the Cold War, the smaller nations of Europe maintained a cordial relationship with totalitarian Russia out of fear, comforted in the assurance that the “American imperialists” would come to their rescue if the Soviet Red Army came a-calling.

Now a pathetically weak president and the pampered, self-appointed Saudi royals turn to the Middle East’s only democracy to pull their chestnuts out of Iran’s potential nuclear fire.

President Obama just added 350 million Americans to the list of sniveling moral cowards that make up his cherished international community.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Age comes with a license for eccentricity. And there are those, who nearing the end of life’s road, don’t feel the need to hold their tongue. Then there is Helen Thomas – long-time White House press corps gadfly – who is eccentric, free of tongue and filled with hate.

When Rabbi David Nesenoff approached Thomas, on her way to the White House Jewish Heritage Celebration last May 27th, and asked, “Any comments on Israel?” Thomas responded, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people [Palestinians] are occupied, and it’s their land — It’s not German it’s not Poland.”

“So, where should they go?” asked Rabbi Nesenoff. “They should go home,” said Thomas. “Where’s their home?” asked the Rabbi. “Poland, Germany,” replied Thomas. Like any White House press corps reporter worth his or her salt, the Rabbi pressed hard with a follow-up question, “So, the Jews should go back to Poland and Germany?” “And America and everywhere else,” said Thomas. Needless to say, Rabbi Nesenoff’s video went wildly viral thanks to YouTube.

Fellow media members feigned shock and outrage over Thomas’ statements but, as they are good card-carrying nihilists, secretly hold the same views. We saw it in the reporting of Israel’s justifiable enforcement of its Gaza naval blockade, which attempts to prevent Iran from arming the terrorists of Hamas. The upshot of reports from the world media was remarkably consistent in regard to the Freedom Flotilla: “Mean old Zionist entity attacks world activists on a mission of mercy to poor, victimized, Hitler-worshiping, genocidal Hamas.”

Turkey’s ambassador to the United Nations referred to flotilla passengers as the “conscience of the international community.” Helen Thomas is a free-floating fragment of that conscience.

Like the flotilla’s passengers, Thomas, too, would like Israel to vanish from the face of the Earth.

President Obama joined in solidarity with the flotilla passengers, who included friend and domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, by condemning Israel’s act of self-preservation.

This is understandable. When reporter Ed Luce of Britain’s Financial Times asked Obama if he subscribed to the idea of American exceptionalism, the president replied, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” In other words, no.

Like Helen Thomas, Bill Ayers, Freedom Flotilla passengers and the international community (and by extension, Hamas), Obama does not recognize American exceptionalism because it is inconsistent with the international community’s worldview that believes “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter.”

American exceptionalism is not economic, political or racial. Its essence is moral. In the 1930s, the nihilistic international community believed in land for peace with Nazi Germany, throwing Czechoslovakia into Hitler’s greedy arms. This only made the German dictator hungry for more land.

When America entered the war in Europe, it ended the moral confusion by demanding Germany’s unconditional surrender. Unlike the international community, the only accommodation America would broker with Germany’s Nazis was the utter annihilation of their evil ideology. Hitler shot himself because he could not bear to see American exceptionalism restore moral order to Europe.

That was a different America. Today, especially under Obama’s leadership, America joins with the world in seeking for terrorist Hamas and Fatah what it once sought for Hitler – land for peace.

Helen Thomas is in good company and will no doubt make up for her lost fees with speaking engagements from Tarahout to Tehran. You see, she is a member in good standing with the world’s largest and oldest fraternity – the morally bankrupt.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The Obama administration’s vigorous support for a U.N. resolution condemning Israel’s actions to enforce a naval blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip has had its effect. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced they are ready to escort ships attempting to break the blockade. “Iran’s Revolutionary Guards naval forces are fully prepared to escort the peace and freedom convoys to Gaza with all their powers and capabilities,” said Ali Shirazi, Ayatollah Khamenei’s Revolutionary Guards representative, told Iran’s Mehr news agency.

And why not, the Israeli blockade is interfering with Iranian shipments of Katusha (12-mile range) and Qassam (6-mile range) rockets to the genocidal killers of Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Last November, the Antiguan-flagged container ship Francop was stopped by the Israeli Navy near Cyprus. An Israeli military spokesman said the Francop was transporting “dozens of shipping containers, carrying numerous weapons, disguised as civilian cargo among hundreds of other containers on board.”

Obama’s internationalist anti-Israeli views have crept into his war strategy. According to the New York Times, “During a press conference in April, Mr. Obama declared that conflicts like the one in the Middle East ended up ‘costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure’; he drew an explicit tie between the Israeli-Palestinian strife and the safety of American soldiers as they battle Islamic extremism in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.”

Obama and members of his administration refuse to make a connection between Islamic extremism and terrorism, but have no problem drawing a convoluted connection between Israel’s fight for survival and the death of America’s fighting men.

The key to ending Islamic strife, in Obama’s view, is for Israel to sign on to a “two-state solution.” As Iran’s offer to provide naval fire power to support ships running Israel’s naval blockade shows, that two-state solution advances Iran and Hama’s plan for a final solution for Israel.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The global furor over Israel’s interdiction of a Turkish ship attempting to run a naval blockade of Hamas’ terrorist rat’s nest — a.k.a., the Gaza Strip — is just one indication of a trend building within the international community to outlaw the war on terror. Another indication is a 29-page report by the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston.

In part, Alston’s report says, “It is an essential requirement of international law that States using targeted killings demonstrate that they are complying with the various rules governing their use in situations of armed conflict. The greatest challenge to this principal today comes from the program operated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency…The international community does not know when and where the CIA is authorized to kill, the criteria for individuals who may be killed, how it ensures killings are legal, and what follow-up there is when civilians are illegally killed.”

Alston saves the best for last, “I’m particularly concerned that the United States seems oblivious to this fact when it asserts an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe…this strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability is not an entitlement which the United States or other States can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions.”

The glaring omission in Alston’s report is the reason behind the CIA drone attacks and all the “extrajudicial executions”: Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood, Fata’s al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and a host of other deadly Warner Brother’s cartoon characters, whose “ever-expanding entitlement” to murder the innocent is of little concern to bloodless U.N. bureaucrats and the international community.

The U.S. “license to kill” and its “ever-expanding entitlement” is the 3,000 Americans who died on 9/11. Alston and others in the international community wish for the United States to confer its wartime decisions to U.N. committees for approval. This is understandable in light of President Obama’s speech to the U.N., praising the organization’s founders. “These architects of international cooperation had an idealism that was anything but naïve — it was rooted in the hard-earned lessons of war; rooted in the wisdom that nations could advance their interests by acting together instead of splitting apart.”

Alston’s report was submitted to the United Nation’s Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. A partial list of the council’s stellar members includes Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Nicaragua and China. These “idealists” would like nothing better than to have a say in whether America and Israel can defend themselves against jihadist evil.

Mr. Curmudgeon

One of Europe’s great intellectuals once described Jews as “the greatest scoundrels who have ever sullied the face of the globe … They are, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and Germans are born with blond hair. I would not in the least be surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the human race … You [Jews] have surpassed all nations in impertinent fables, in bad conduct, and in barbarism. You deserve to be punished, for this is your destiny.” This from one of the fathers the Europe’s “Great Enlightenment,” François-Marie Arouet…better known to the world as Voltaire.

Hitler’s Holocaust not withstanding, the European community still holds to Voltaire’s assessment. Of Israel’s justified boarding of a Turkish vessel attempting to break a naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, the European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek called the action “unjustified” and demanded Israel “explain its actions immediately.” He added, “The European Parliament has always strongly condemned the continued policy of closure with respect to the Gaza Strip, seeing it as unacceptable and counterproductive.”

The purpose of the “Freedom Flotilla” was to run a naval blockade established by Egypt and Israel after Hamas came to power in Gaza in 2007. The blockade was established to prevent the importation of weapons. The Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara intended to deliver humanitarian supplies (maybe weapons) to Hamas-run Gaza.

It is worth reading a section of Hamas’ charter, which the blockade-runners and the international community are no doubt familiar with:

“…The Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realization of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:

“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.”

The 2007 election of Hamas, therefore, directly links Gaza’s Palestinians with its leader’s written goal to continue Hitler’s genocide. In spite of this, Israel allows humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, provided the shipments are inspected by Israel beforehand.

Of Israel’s attack on the blockade-running ship Mavi Marmara, Turkey’s U.N. ambassador said, “The use of force was not only inappropriate but also disproportionate. International law dictates that even in wartime, civilians are not to be attacked or harmed. The doctrine of self-defense does not in anyway justify the actions taken by the Israeli forces.

“…The flotilla consisted of citizens of thirty-two countries, all of them civilians…it represents the conscience of the international community. It is a model of the United Nations. Therefore, this was an attack on the United Nations and its values…”

The Ambassador speaks the truth. The anti-Semitic values of the genocidal terrorist organization Hamas and its Palestinian, European Union and international supporters most definitely represent the values of the United Nations.

According to the Israeli Defense Force, the Jewish State has suffered 7,200 missile attacks (Iranian-made Qassam rockets) from Gaza since 2005. 950,000 Israeli civilians live within their deadly range.

It is clear, therefore, that in the eyes of the international community, the treasured doctrine that declares, “Civilians are not to be attacked or harmed,” does not apply to Jews.

Just in passing, a few days ago the International Atomic Energy Agency – a branch of the United Nations – announced that Iran (another genocidal entity) possesses enough nuclear material to build two atomic weapons.

The international community, the European Union and that cherished hive of scum and villainy, the United Nations, have yet to decide whether a nuclear Iran is an affront to their sacred “values.”

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The world is shedding tears over Israel’s armed interdiction of a “relief” flotilla heading for the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. At least 10 so-called activists were killed while resisting Israeli Navy commandos, who boarded flotilla vessels by repelling down ropes hanging from Blackhawk helicopters. The ships were stopped to enforce a naval blockade of Gaza established by Israel and Egypt in June of 2007, when Hamas took control of Gaza. The blockade exists to prevent the importation of weapons and funding for terrorism.

On hearing news of the Israeli action, “dozens of journalists, aid workers and right activists held a rally outside the National Press Club office in Islamabad [Pakistan], chanting: ‘Death to terrorist Israel’ and ‘Palestinians are our heroes,’” the Hindu Times reported.

The group responsible for organizing the international “Freedom Flotilla” is Turkey’s Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), which was outlawed in Israel due to its close ties with Egypt’s radical Muslim Brotherhood and the terrorist organization Hamas. The IHH is a member of the Union of Good, an umbrella organization of more than 50 Islamic “charities” around the world.

In 2002, the Israeli Defense Forces launched Operation Defensive Shield, which was the largest military operation into the West Bank since the 1967 Six Day War. Its purpose was to disrupt the high number of suicide bombing attacks against Israeli civilians. Captured documents showed that a man working for the Union of Good Islamic charities was making payments to the families of suicide bombers. His name is Izzat Shahin, who was appointed the IHH representative for Judea and Samaria in 2009.

A 2006 report by the Danish Institute for International Studies found, “Terrorist infiltration of IHH extended to its most senior ranks…. IHH President Bulent Yildrim had directly conspired in the mid-1990s to recruit veteran soldiers in anticipation of a coming holy war [jihad]. In particular, some men were sent into war zones in Muslim countries in order to acquire combat experience.”

The report further stated that the IHH is notorious for smuggling “caches of firearms, knives and pre-fabricated explosives. An examination of IHH’s phone records in Istanbul showed repeated telephone calls in 1996 to an Al Qaeda guesthouse in Milan [Italy] and various Algerian terrorist operatives active elsewhere in Europe – including the notorious Abu el-Ma ‘ali, who has been subsequently termed by U.S. officials as a junior Osama bin Laden.”

It is a tribute to Israel’s patience and decency that the entire flotilla was not sent to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.