Come for the Politics, Stay for the Pathologies



Friday, October 2, 2009

Sarkozy Thinks Obama Is All “Oui Oui-ed” Up

In Charles Krauthammer’s WaPo column today, French Lessons,  he lands a knockout punch regarding Obama’s dealings with nuclear Iran:

When France chides you for appeasement, you know you're scraping bottom.

And if you think that’s bad, it gets much, much uglier:

Confusing ends and means, the Obama administration strives mightily for shows of allied unity, good feeling, and pious concern about Iran’s nuclear program — whereas the real objective is stopping that program. This feel-good posturing is worse than useless…

Don’t take it from me. Take it from Sarkozy, who could not conceal his astonishment at Obama’s naïveté. On September 24, Obama ostentatiously presided over the Security Council. With 14 heads of state (or government) at the table, with an American president in the chair for the first time ever, with every news camera in the world trained on the meeting, it would garner unprecedented worldwide attention.

Unknown to the world, Obama had in his pocket explosive revelations about an illegal uranium-enrichment facility that the Iranians had been hiding near Qom. The French and the British were urging him to use this most dramatic of settings to stun the world with the revelation and to call for immediate action.

Obama refused. Not only did he say nothing about it, but, reports Le Monde, Sarkozy was forced to scrap the Qom section of his speech. Obama held the news until a day later — in Pittsburgh…

Why forgo the opportunity? Because Obama wanted the Security Council meeting to be about his own dream of a nuclear-free world. The president, reports the New York Times, citing “White House officials,” did not want to “dilute” his disarmament resolution “by diverting to Iran.”

Diversion? It’s the most serious security issue in the world. A diversion from what? From a worthless U.N. disarmament resolution?

Sarkozy had to advise our President that we live in a real world, not a virtual one.

He explained: “President Obama has even said, ‘I dream of a world without (nuclear weapons).’ Yet before our very eyes, two countries are currently doing the exact opposite.”

If raising the specter of  a nuclear armed totalitarian regime that has gone on record – repeatedly - as saying that they want to “wipe Israel off the face of the earth” is a diversion, what do you call stumping for the Olympic games? A national security initiative?

After 9 months of nearly non-stop apologizing for America, Obama is finally giving us something we really might have to apologize for. For the first time in my adult life, I might not be proud of our country. Or at least not of our country’s naive and dangerous elected leader.