All Stuffed With Fluff

A tripartite follow-up on Barack's ballsy, bellowing bellicosity....

First, from Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on Barry's "nebulous" commitment to stage an Iraq "publicity stunt":

Mr. Zebari, who has served as foreign minister in every Iraqi government since 2003, finds Mr. Obama’s proposal worrying. In a meeting with Post editors and reporters Tuesday, he said that after all the pain and sacrifices of the past five years, “we are just turning the corner in Iraq.” A precipitous withdrawal, he said, “would create a huge vacuum and undo all the gains and achievements. And the others” — enemies of the United States — “would celebrate.”

Mr. Zebari said he told Mr. Obama that “Iraq is not an island.” In other words, an American withdrawal that destabilized the country would also roil the region around it and embolden U.S. adversaries such as al-Qaeda and Iran. “We have a deadly enemy,” Mr. Zebari said. “When he sees that you commit yourself to a certain timetable, he will use this to increase pressure and attacks, to make it look as though he is forcing you out. We have many actors who would love to take advantage of that opportunity.” Mr. Zebari says he believes U.S. forces can and should be drawn down. His point is that reductions should be made gradually, as the Iraqi army becomes stronger.

Sounds like BO was doing more listening than talking, doesn't it?  And that Minister Zebari was telling him what he didn't want to hear.

So, in keeping with False Messiah's neurotic conflict aversion, he evidently told the Iraqi poobah what he thought the man wanted to hear - nebulously, of course:

The foreign minister said “my message” to Mr. Obama “was very clear. . . . Really, we are making progress. I hope any actions you will take will not endanger this progress.” He said he was reassured by the candidate’s response, which caused him to think that Mr. Obama might not differ all that much from Mr. McCain. Mr. Zebari said that in addition to promising a visit, Mr. Obama said that “if there would be a Democratic administration, it will not take any irresponsible, reckless, sudden decisions or action to endanger your gains, your achievements, your stability or security. Whatever decision he will reach will be made through close consultation with the Iraqi government and U.S. military commanders in the field.”

This is, of course, diametrically the opposite of what he has said pretty much forever on this subject, while still leaving enough wiggle room (It depends on what the definition of the words "irresponsible," "reckless," and "sudden" are....) to pursue an immediate retreat as quickly after noon next January 20th as humanly possible.  Besides, who'll ever know what Lucifer promised a nameless, faceless Iraqi official who'll be among the first executed by the Iranian/al Qaeda terror regime that conquers Iraq after we leave?

Next, behind Door #2, we have this nicely done offering from the mildly oats-feeling RNC:

Ensign Ed supplies the remainder of BO's reply:

The second thing is to make sure that we’ve got good intelligence, a., to find out that we don’t have other threats and attacks potentially out there, and b., to find out, do we have any intelligence on who might have carried it out so that we can take potentially some action to dismantle that network. But what we can’t do is then alienate the world community based on faulty intelligence, based on bluster and bombast. Instead, the next thing we would have to do, in addition to talking to the American people, is making sure that we are talking to the international community.

Because as already been stated, we’re not going to defeat terrorists on our own. We’ve got to strengthen our intelligence relationships with them, and they’ve got to feel a stake in our security by recognizing that we have mutual security interests at stake.

That the perps of this hypothetical attack were al Qaeda was explicitly stated in the question.  But apart from it is where His Eminence's emphasis falls: maybe he'd take some potential action if he's ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY SURE that it's al Qaeda, but only if he gets undisputed permission from the "international community," because "we can't defeat terrorists on our own."  After the way he'll gut what's left of the military after Bill Clinton disembowled it, that'll probably be correct.

Senator Obama forgets that, for the time being, no other member of "the international community" has anywhere near the multi-faceted military capabilities we do.  So if we "can't defeat the terrorists on our own," the "international community" won't be any help, even if they were inclined to view the war on terror as anything but the "law enforcement operation" that Ba-ROCK sees it as.  Which they're not.

And leave us not forget that in the intelligence game, there's no such thing as having all the facts.  There aren't any sure things.  There are only educated guesses.  No president EVER has complete knowledge of a crisis situation, and he can't afford to sit on his thumb and wait indefinitely in the forlorn hope that he will, or countless more Americans and allies will die.

Do you even want to contemplate this man facing an Iranian nuclear ultimatum?

Which brings us to Door #3:

Richard Danzig, who served as Navy Secretary under President Clinton and is tipped to become National Security Adviser in an Obama White House, told a major foreign policy conference in Washington that the future of US strategy in the war on terrorism should follow a lesson from the pages of Winnie the Pooh, which can be shortened to: if it is causing you too much pain, try something else.

Mr Danzig told the Centre for New American Security: “Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security.”

I swear I'm not making that up.  Or, at the very least, if somebody is, it's way up the cyberstream from me.

But there's more:

Mr Danzig spelt out the need to change by reading a paragraph from chapter one of the children’s classic, which says: “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it.”

This man is actually saying that the national security policy of the most powerful nation on the planet should be patterned after the whimsical antics of a miniature, taxidermized, exhibitionist, bulemic ursine mammal named after excrement.  And he's going to be the next National Security Advisor of the United States.

But leave aside the puerile, mentally unbalanced metaphorical imagery, and focus in on the guiding principle underlying it: "If it" - our national security strategy - "is causing you too much pain, try something else."  This, by implication, is a reference to the insurgency we've been fighting for the past five years in Iraq.  Or, rather, the fact that we've been fighting it instead of just running away, abandoning the Iraqis to get slaughtered (again), providing our enemies with a huge strategic victory, and encouraging them to further escalate their already existing war against us.  The last time the Pooh Doctrine guided our national security decisions, the result was an escalating series of al Qaeda and Hezbollah attacks culminating in "Holy Tuesday" six years, nine months, and seven days ago.  It seems to me that losing three thousand American civilians in the space of forty-five minutes was all kinds of "too much pain," and fleeing the Islamic Fundies now would cause us a grievously huger load of it.

One can, of course, more succinctly and candidly rephrase Danzig's slogan: Take the easy way out.  Cut & run.  Wave a worthless piece of paper around, crow that "it is peace in our time," and watch the world - or at least Israel, Europe, and our own homeland - go up in atomic flames, one city at a time.  And stamp your ticket for Gre'thor, where all cowardly, dishonorable, infidel piles of Pooh go after their dhimmized foolishness gets them and their countrymen subjugated and/or slaughtered.

These are the people on whose judgment the lives of you and your loved ones will depend for at least the four years beginning next January 20th, gentlebeings.  My only questions are two:

1) Now are we expected to trot off into bovine obedience by Barry's manly swagger or just moo?

2) You don't really think you're going to get any sleep tonight, do ya?