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hjmick
04-22-2009, 01:36 PM
Shmuley Boteach, in an article for The Jerusalem Post, asks some very good questions. Worth the read. Food for thought...


No Holds Barred: Why does Obama smile at dictators?
By SHMULEY BOTEACH

The picture of the president of the United States smiling broadly as he met President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela startled me. Our president is a nice guy. Chavez is anything but.

The State Department maintains that Chávez has attacked democratic traditions and has put Venezuelan democracy on life support with unchecked concentration of power, political persecution, and intimidation. Foreign Affairs magazine says that Chávez is a power-hungry dictator with autocratic and megalomaniacal tendencies whose authoritarian vision and policies are a serious threat to his people. In testimony before the US Senate, the South American project director for the Center for Strategic International Studies said that Chavez's government engages in "arresting opposition leaders, torturing some members of the opposition (according to human rights organizations) and encouraging, if not directing, its squads of Bolivarian Circles to beat up members of Congress and intimidate voters-all with impunity..."

...Hmmm. An autocratic dictator who abuses human rights and undermines democracy being warmly embraced by the American president. There's something wrong with that picture.

Then there was the incident of President Barack Obama seeming to bow before King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at the G-20 summit in London. The president's people denied it was a bow, but it certainly was a sign of great deference from the American president to the dictator of a country who just six weeks ago sentenced a 75-year-old woman to 40 lashes for having been secluded with her nephew after he delivered bread to her home...

Obama is also pursuing a renewed relationship with Cuba, a country which engages in systemic human rights abuses, including torture, arbitrary imprisonment, unfair trials and extrajudicial executions. Censorship is so extensive that Cubans face five-year prison sentences for connecting to the Internet illegally. And not only is emigration illegal, but even discussing it carries a six-month prison sentence.

WATCHING ALL THIS, I was wondering what the new standards were. How oppressive must a leader be before we determine that he has not merited a hug by the democratic standard-bearer of the free world, the president of the United States? Yes, I get it. We have to speak to our enemies, and America has to push "reset" on its relationship with many of these countries. We should try and change them through charm. But who said the president himself, rather than a lower-level diplomat, must do so?

And if Obama feels that he has to be the one to greet a man like Chavez, must it be with the kind of ear-to-ear grin that one might show girl scouts selling cookies...?

LIKE MANY AMERICANS, I have been awed by our president's capacity to draw those who hate us near...

While he was campaigning for the presidency, Obama promised, "As president I will recognize the Armenian genocide." But in a press conference in Ankara with President Abdullah Gul, he refused to use the word "genocide" when challenged by a reporter on the issue. Yet, it was Obama's early foreign policy adviser Samantha Power of Harvard who wrote A Problem from Hell, the definitive book on the American non-intervention in repeated 20th-century genocides, beginning with the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks which killed 1.5 million between the years of 1915 and 1923. When I read the book it changed my life.

As a Jew who does not want the world to forget the Holocaust, I can only imagine the pain of the Armenian community as it struggles to have modern Turkey acknowledge the crime. And why should modern Turkey not oblige? No one is blaming it for something that happened 90 years ago....

ALL THIS LEADS to one important question. Suppose Obama succeeds in building friendships with Chavez, Castro, Ahmadinejad and the Taliban. What then? Does America still get to feel that it stands for something? Will we still be the beacon of liberty and freedom to the rest of the world, or will we have sold out in the name of political expediency? And do any of us seriously believe that presidential friendship is going to get a megalomaniac like Hugo Chavez to ease up on the levers of power, or are we just feeding his ego by showing him he can be a tyrant and still have a beer with the president of the United States? Will the Iranians really stop enriching uranium through diplomacy rather than economic sanctions...?


Complete column... (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1239710740265&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)

Psychoblues
04-24-2009, 01:09 AM
Diplomacy escapes you, doesn't it, hmjick?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!

Could I get you something to quell all that fear, loathing and ridiculous jealosy that you've been feeling?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!

:beer::cheers2::beer:

Psychoblues

hjmick
04-24-2009, 11:35 AM
Diplomacy escapes me not at all. Perhaps it is you who fails to what is right and what is wrong? How many thousands who are oppressed in these countries look to America with hope and longing? How many dreams are fueled by a desire to live in the U.S., without oppression, or perhaps they hope for reform in their own country? Imagine their disappointment when the see the leader of the country that inspires them and their dreams embrace the very person who's foot they find on their necks.

There is a time and place for diplomacy, but right and wrong never go out of style.


And just for the record, Psycho, I feel no fear, no loathing, and no jealousy. Doing so serves no purpose and is generally counterproductive.

actsnoblemartin
04-24-2009, 04:59 PM
he (obama) can talk to a wall, but he will get the same result

im critical of our president for legitimizing dictators because they are evil, and kill their own people. I dont see how being nice to them (in the hopes they will like us) will make them stop being assholes.

but then again, i could be wrong my dear friend pb

No1tovote4
04-25-2009, 10:26 AM
Because he thinks they are just misunderstood.

REDWHITEBLUE2
04-25-2009, 02:34 PM
Why does Obama smile at dictators? Because they all think alike obama is in training to become Dictator for life

April15
04-25-2009, 03:46 PM
Barrack smiles for everyone. That is the sign of a good up brining. Show a smile, you don't scare me. It also puts the other at ease.

No1tovote4
04-25-2009, 05:13 PM
Maybe he can peer into their eyes and see their awesome goodness in their soul...

:poke:

April15
04-25-2009, 06:47 PM
Maybe he can peer into their eyes and see their awesome goodness in their soul...

:poke:
That was Bush's trick, NOT.

actsnoblemartin
04-25-2009, 06:53 PM
That was Bush's trick, NOT.

i was just thinking the same thing

No1tovote4
06-07-2009, 01:08 PM
That was Bush's trick, NOT.

Um... That was my point.

These two are much alike, so far.

Warrantless Wiretapping? Good to go! In fact Obama's position is that you can't even sue them... One step further than Bush.

Tribunals... bad... then good.

GITMO... Close it, but magically make the prisoners disappear... well, maybe not.

Iraq. Follow Bush's timetable and leave a large permanent presence in the largest "Embassy" on the planet.

When the economy is in trouble? Take over private business, have it owned and operated by politicians.. same...

I can't see why this would be different.

Bush, kisses the Saudi Prince, Barack bows to him. Bush thinks Putin is a pal, Obama thinks it's Chavez... The similarities abound.

Even the constant repetition of "We are not at war with Islam."

The main difference between the two are the people who follow without question, before they had an R after their name, now there is a D.

Kathianne
06-07-2009, 02:28 PM
Um... That was my point.

These two are much alike, so far.

Warrantless Wiretapping? Good to go! In fact Obama's position is that you can't even sue them... One step further than Bush.

Tribunals... bad... then good.

GITMO... Close it, but magically make the prisoners disappear... well, maybe not.

Iraq. Follow Bush's timetable and leave a large permanent presence in the largest "Embassy" on the planet.

When the economy is in trouble? Take over private business, have it owned and operated by politicians.. same...

I can't see why this would be different.

Bush, kisses the Saudi Prince, Barack bows to him. Bush thinks Putin is a pal, Obama thinks it's Chavez... The similarities abound.

Even the constant repetition of "We are not at war with Islam."

The main difference between the two are the people who follow without question, before they had an R after their name, now there is a D.

Ah but now Obama is differing from Bush. Floating balloon about those at Gitmo eligible for death penalty to be able to plead guilty and commence the sentence. They get their raisins.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/06/us/politics/06gitmo.html

Imagine if Bush had suggest suicide by plea?


June 6, 2009
U.S. May Permit 9/11 Guilty Pleas in Capital Cases

By WILLIAM GLABERSON
The Obama administration is considering a change in the law for the military commissions at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that would clear the way for detainees facing the death penalty to plead guilty without a full trial.

The provision could permit military prosecutors to avoid airing the details of brutal interrogation techniques. It could also allow the five detainees who have been charged with the Sept. 11 attacks to achieve their stated goal of pleading guilty to gain what they have called martyrdom.

The proposal, in a draft of legislation that would be submitted to Congress, has not been publicly disclosed. It was circulated to officials under restrictions requiring secrecy. People who have read or been briefed on it said it had been presented to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates by an administration task force on detention.

The proposal would ease what has come to be recognized as the government’s difficult task of prosecuting men who have confessed to terrorism but whose cases present challenges. Much of the evidence against the men accused in the Sept. 11 case, as well as against other detainees, is believed to have come from confessions they gave during intense interrogations at secret C.I.A. prisons. In any proceeding, the reliability of those statements would be challenged, making trials difficult and drawing new political pressure over detainee treatment...

Abbey Marie
06-07-2009, 02:56 PM
Because Pres. Hussein gets by on charm all the time. It's his go-to move.

avatar4321
06-07-2009, 06:40 PM
Because they have what he seeks. Unchecked power.

actsnoblemartin
06-07-2009, 07:39 PM
is he supposed to frown or make faces?

maybe he is supposed to punch them?

:coffee:

Kathianne
06-07-2009, 07:41 PM
is he supposed to frown or make faces?

maybe he is supposed to punch them?

:coffee:

Actually, he should refuse to meet with them. His underlings may or may not, but he shouldn't. To do so is to say they and their actions are legitimate. They aren't.

actsnoblemartin
06-07-2009, 07:56 PM
fair enough, but how can he change them if he doesnt meet them lol

:coffee:


Actually, he should refuse to meet with them. His underlings may or may not, but he shouldn't. To do so is to say they and their actions are legitimate. They aren't.

Kathianne
06-07-2009, 08:40 PM
fair enough, but how can he change them if he doesnt meet them lol

:coffee:

past statements.

Gaffer
06-08-2009, 11:51 AM
fair enough, but how can he change them if he doesnt meet them lol

:coffee:

You can meet with and talk to a rabid dog. It remains a rabid dog. There is only one action available, contain it and destroy it. Smiling and letting it run loose just spreads the infection.