Obama Engages Dictators, Abandons Pro-Democracy Movements

The column below was published in The Pitt News today. Enjoy, read and comment:

Two nights of clashes between students and police have stolen the local media spotlight in the aftermath of the G-20 Summit but the major story for the international community to come out of Pittsburgh is the disclosure of Iran’s second nuclear facility.

            

Located on a military base outside of the holy city of Qum, Iran’s second uranium enrichment facility raises the stakes in tomorrow’s talks between Iran, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia.

            

These talks, to take place in Geneva, constitute the fulfillment of one of Obama’s key campaign promises to engage Iran diplomatically and it is a promise that Obama has adhered to in the face of Iran’s June 2009 coup, its continued funding of terrorism and its recent missile test.

            

Indeed, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has done everything in his power to communicate his regime’s intransigence to the world. He even appointed a wanted terrorist to the cabinet position of Defense Minister, thumbing his nose at international norms and laws.

            

Ahmadinejad is closely following the North Korean playbook of outrageous international provocations and his conduct is a clear indication that he cannot be trusted.

            

Instead of recognizing Ahmadinejad’s government as the illegitimate and brutal farce that it is, Obama has blindly adhered to his vague foreign policy of engagement. This policy is not only harming the interests of this nation but also damaging the Iranian people whose pro-democracy movement has been largely ignored by the Obama Administration.

            

Rather than denounce the Ahmadinejad government and materially pressure it to abandon its nuclear program, Obama has handled Iran’s leaders with kid gloves and granted them international legitimacy by engaging them diplomatically.

            

Obama should recognize that the Iranian government thrives on illusions and requires international sanction in order to exist. For instance, every time that Obama refers to Iran as an “Islamic Republic,” he is participating in the Iranian illusion of representative government.

            

To call Iran a republic is to ignore the fact that an unelected religious despot known as the “Supreme Leader of Iran” and his council of Medievalist mullahs control the foreign and domestic policies of Iran. This Supreme Leader appoints the heads of the military, media and judiciary as well as the 12 members of the Guardian Council tasked with deciding who runs for president and what laws are ratified.

            

It is impossible to treat this government as representative of the Iranian people but Obama continues to do just this in his desperate attempt to placate the American Left and its nonsensical belief that Iran can be engaged diplomatically.

            

Not only is this policy of engagement a dramatic betrayal of American principles, it is an insult to the Iranian people who have taken to the streets in support of democracy. We should be engaging with these pro-democracy activists and aiding them in their attempt to establish a true Iranian republic not actively undermining them by treating their dictators as legitimate rulers.

            

Indeed, a democratic Iran unfettered by the tyranny of theocracy would have no need for nuclear weapons and would pose no threat to the United States or our allies in the region. Promoting democracy in Iran is the only sure way to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of Ahmadinejad and being used in his genocidal plans to wipe Israel off the map.

            

But what’s most troubling about Obama’s engagement with Iran is that it’s part of a larger foreign policy that fails to delineate between democracy and despotism, right and wrong. Obama has shown a remarkable propensity to reach out to dictators and treat them as legitimate rulers and potential partners with the United States.

            

He has warmed American relations with the Castro dictatorship in Cuba, reached out to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and sent high-level American politicians to meet with despots in Myanmar and North Korea.

            

Dictators crave international legitimacy and whether it’s shaking Chavez’s hand in a photo-op or trading meetings with powerful American politicians for the release of hostages, Obama has consistently delivered this legitimacy to some of the world’s most despicable rulers.

            

It’s time for Obama to tell the truth about despots in Iran and throughout the world and to stop treating them as trustworthy diplomatic partners. Only by standing with the oppressed, pro-democratic elements of nations such as Iran can our nation secure its national interest. 

The Rhetoric of the War on Terror

As a rhetorical concept, “The War on Terror” has always been a mixed bag. It’s a semantically flawed expression of the U.S. war effort (a war cannot be waged against a tactic) that also manages to sum up the purpose of the U.S. war effort: to eliminate the practitioners of terrorism and their threat to our open society.

Its goals are laudable even if its execution has been flawed but as a term it has engendered partisan bickering and ideological conflict in a way that no martial phrase has in recent American memory. Both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration have attempted to phase out “The War on Terror” as a descriptor of American foreign policy in an attempt to dump the ideological baggage that comes with it and start over.

But the American people will always think of the current world conflict as “The War on Terror,” a phrase that came about logically in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The public consciousness on this issue will not be changed nor should it.

Religious Rhetoric Has No Place in Health Care

This column was just published by The Pitt News. Read it and comment.

President George W. Bush and his Republican Party consistently used religious faith to justify their policy initiatives during the Bush administration’s eight years in office. Stridently opposed by the Left, Bush injected religion into every issue — from the war in Iraq to stem cell research — and used faith as a crutch to support weakly reasoned policies.

But the American Left that assailed Bush’s religious initiatives as a violation of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause has been remarkably silent now that President Obama is enlisting religious leaders in his health care reform assault. A clear sign of desperation, Obama and his Democratic allies have attempted to use faith to sell health care reform since June, when Democrats organized an Interfaith Week of Prayer on Health Care .

Of course, Obama’s use of religion in support of public policy has grown more brazen as the debate has grown more difficult. In an Aug. 19 speech before a group of religious leaders, Obama called his health care reform plan a “core moral and ethical obligation” and identified his opponents in the health care debate as “bearing false witness.”

Obama’s language is that of the most dangerous thief who would take money from the American worker and redistribute it to the unproductive in the name of morality. He has revealed his core ethical obligation to be a massive expansion of entitlement spending, contributing trillions of dollars to this nation’s deficit, and he justified the entire program through the language of religion rather than reason.

What’s worse is that Obama has enlisted religious leaders to sell this thinly veiled theft in a blatant violation of the intent of our Constitution. The Founders understood that collusion between religious institutions and the state was not in the interest of the citizenry’s liberty.

For this reason, the Founders included the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment, and presidents and politicians have respected this division between church and state for centuries. Indeed, the 13th president, Millard Fillmore, said, “I am tolerant of all creeds. Yet if any sect suffered itself to be used for political objects I would meet it by political opposition. In my view church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact. Religion and politics should not be mingled.”

But Obama has ignored this strong secular sentiment evident in our nation’s history and done exactly what Fillmore and the Founders warned future leaders not to do: mingle faith and politics.


Now Obama is spreading his bastardized brand of politics and religion across the country in a desperate attempt to recapture public support for health care reform. Just last Wednesday, Organizing for America sponsored a health care rally on Flagstaff Hill where both a priest and a congressman enjoined the crowd to
support Obama’s health care goals.

Just as the public use of religion to justify national policy demonstrated the intellectual poverty of the Republican Party during the last decade, Obama’s attempt to sell Americans on health care reform through faith rather than reason should be understood as a sign of weakness.

Indeed, it is a weak politician who cannot support his policy positions with facts and reasoned arguments but instead resorts to statements of belief and morality. This is just what the Democratic Left is doing today by relying on the language of religion and morality in the health care debate.

Toward this end, the Democratic Left has introduced the notion that health care is an inalienable human right that the government has a moral duty to provide to all Americans. This is a great lie designed to separate hard-working Americans from the fruits of their production and redistribute it to the unproductive.


It is a dangerous argument that suggests that the American people have a right to the services of doctors and hospital administrators that trumps the right of these medical professionals to work for their own profit. It is, plain and simple, an assault on individual liberty.

And it is in this assault on individual liberty that the Obama administration has found allies in the nation’s religious leaders. Religion tells man to love his neighbor as himself and to subordinate his interests to an almighty god, just as Obama’s statist ideology demands that citizens assume their neighbor’s burden as their own and submit their liberty to the almighty state.

Both ideologies are incompatible with the republican foundation of this country that’s Founders recognized religion and government as defining threats to individual liberty. When government and religion unite, they are certain to have only one goal: the subjugation of the individual American citizen.

Obama's Foreign Policy A Boon to Dictators

Obama’s latest foreign policy initiative exchanging high profile visits for the release of hostages in North Korea and Burma has endangered Americans abroad and weakened this nation’s moral standing.

It’s clear that the recent meetings between Bill Clinton and Kim Jong-il and Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) and Burma’s General Than Shwe were payment for the return of three American hostages. These meetings served to legitimize two brutal dictatorships that used these two powerful American representatives as proof of their power and importance.

Although neither Clinton nor Webb were acting as official representatives of the Obama Administration, both have the ear of the President and both visits were approved by the White House. It’s obvious that these visits would not have been allowed had they run counter to Obama’s foreign policy.

Understanding that the visits were an extension of Obama’s foreign policy, it’s necessary to recognize that the visits have been used by both dictatorships to shore up their rule at home. Each nation is ruled by an ailing dictator, whose poor health has weakened their grip on power at home. Demonstrating that they can command meetings with American officials is a reassertion of influence at home and abroad, a reassertion that the Obama Administration is complicit in.

By trading legitimacy for hostages, Obama has made every American abroad a target for dictatorships desperate for international recognition. All a fading despot has to do at this point is kidnap an American, sentence them to hard labor and wait for a visit from a high-ranking American official. The visit is videotaped, the American should utter some words of apology and images of the event are broadcast around the world demonstrating that no matter how many of your own people you murder, the United States would still be happy to talk to you.

Even worse than making bargaining chips of Americans is the fact that this new policy of engagement has lent American prestige to the aid of the world’s worst dictators. Our nation’s greatness is being used to prop these thugs up and legitimize their rule.

This is totally unacceptable and runs counter to international efforts to marginalize and eliminate the governments of Burma and North Korea. Indeed, just days before Webb’s visit, the European Union passed new sanctions against the Burmese Junta.

It is cowardly and shortsighted for the Obama Administration to send its unofficial ambassadors around the world to visit with dictators at a time when the rest of the world is attempting to marginalize them. Obama’s foreign policy of engagement has delivered photo-op after photo-op to despots like Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong-il and Than Shwe.

He has strengthened these men at home and abroad and signaled that the United States is unwilling to take moral stands against the conduct of these thugs.

Regrettably, Obama has displayed a humiliating cowardice in his interactions with totalitarian regimes at a time when American foreign policy should be designed to rebuild our moral standing on the world stage. 

Honduran Liberty Preserved

The Obama Administration and their socialist allies in Central America attempted regime change yesterday when Manuel Zelaya, the ousted president of Honduras, boarded a Venezuelan plane in Washington and tried to land in his former country.

Thankfully, the interim government prevented Zelaya’s return and managed to protect their nation’s constitution for one more day from the designs of Latin autocrats and their Washington sycophants.

But as proud as I am of the actions taken by the Honduran military, I am daily filled with shame by the actions of Obama, a man I voted for. To allow a Venezuelan plane to take off from Washington and travel to Honduras to effect regime change is despicable.

Obama has consistently made himself and now our capital a tool of Chavez’s dictatorial foreign policy. The man who did nothing to topple the theocratic totalitarian government in Tehran is now doing his best to thwart the liberty of 7.5 million Hondurans.

Obama’s foreign policy and his specific handling of the Honduran crisis constitutes a radical departure from the founding ethos of this nation that America must serve as a beacon of liberty to the rest of the world.