Obamanation's Middle East Vacation

"I think you're all [bleep]ed in the head. We were ten months from the [bleep]ing surrender and you hadda do the Surge. Well I'll tell you something. This is no longer a "fact-finding trip".  It's a quest. It's a quest for defeat. I'm gonna retreat and you're gonna retreat. We're all gonna bug outta here so [bleep]ing fast we'll need plastic surgery to remove our [bleep bleep] smiles. You'll be whistling The World Turned Upside Down out of your [bleep]s!  You gotta be crazy!  The messiah has to go on a pilgrimage to get your worship?!? Praise me! Holy [bleep]!"

-Not-President Barack Hussein Obama to U.S. CENTCOM Commander General David Petraeus and his staff in Iraq over the weekend (reportedly)

~  ~  ~

I wasn't part of the Enemy Media pilgrimmage that followed BO everywhere he went on his "coming out world tour" like the Verizon network crowd in those cell phone service commercials.  The least colorful reason being that I do not, nor will I ever own a pair of kneepads.  But I like to think of the following as kind of a personal journal of mine would have read if I'd been the proverbial fly on the wall.

SATURDAY, JULY 19: What the hell's up with Maliki?  Has Lucifer converted him from Shia Islam to Obamism?:

SPIEGEL: Would you hazard a prediction as to when most of the US troops will finally leave Iraq?

Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we’re concerned. US presidential candidate Barack Obama is right when he talks about sixteen months. Assuming that positive developments continue, this is about the same time period that corresponds to our wishes.

Yeah, he sticks in that "positive change" caveat - which Der Spiegel later removed - but hasn't Maliki been paying attention to what General Petraeus has been saying and continues to say about the folly of hard & fast withdrawal timetables?  I don't care how much he tries to spin it as declaring victory, it is a victory that the Iraqi military is not yet ready to sustain on its own.  Defeat can still be dragged out of victory's jaws, and Obama's sixteen month retreat scheme that Maliki declared guardedly peachy-keen would accomplish precisely that.  Can this even be explained as pandering to his base?

SUNDAY, JULY 20: Perhaps not in fact, but in his perception.  Indeed, Maliki may not have become an Obamasciple so much as Obama may have become Maliki's, er, tool:

According to senior Iraqi officials, the decision to play U.S. politics emerged last month after Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari’s trip to Washington for meetings with Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Obama and Senator John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee…

With the talks [on a long-term security partnership] bogged down, the Iraqis sensed desperation by the Americans to wrap up a deal quickly before the presidential campaign was in full swing.

“Let’s squeeze them,” al-Maliki told his advisers, who related the conversation to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The squeeze came July 7, when al-Maliki announced in Abu Dhabi that Iraq wanted the base deal to include some kind of timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops.

Maybe Obama and Maliki are using each other for their own respective domestic political ends.  Which says far worse about Maliki than it does about BO, because the "unstoppable momentum" for "liberationis interruptus" announcement of an ironclad timetable would likely generate would create far greater and more immediate perils for Maliki than it would St. Barry.  To say nothing of the Iraqi PM being that bereft of character and integrity.  And perspicacity, since Obama will pull out regardless of the security situation.

Here's another thought: What entitles the junior Illinois senator to conduct de facto negotiations with a foreign government's head of state?  When is the friggin' Logan Act ever going to be enforced on Democrat politicians?

MONDAY, JULY 21: No less an authority than the aforementioned Surge architect (hint: NOT Darth Queeg) testifies that al Qaeda has shifted its focus and efforts from Iraq to Afghanistan - which is to say, northwestern Pakistan, which raises the question of how much a "surge" strategy can accomplish in that theater when the real prize is in Islamabad.

Obama is going out of his way to sound as panicked about Afghanistan as he does blase about Iraq.  A sentiment not shared by his nutroot worshippers, who aren't the only ones wondering why a counterinsurgency strategy he has never stopped crapping on when applied in Iraq is his chosen means of restabilizing Afghanistan.  This is a rather large clue that Ba-ROCK isn't really serious about an Afghan Surge, much less his year-old ultimatum to the Paks to crush al Qaeda for us or suffer invasion - which would be the application of the original strategy and premise for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

It's all very confusing.  If that's by Team Hussein's deliberate design, then it is serendipitous that their guy appears to be as polleaxed as his listeners:

OBAMA: The United States has to take a regional approach to the problem. Just as we can’t be myopic and focus only on Iraq, we also can’t think that we can solve the security problems here in Afghanistan without engaging the Pakistan government.

LOGAN: How do you compel Pakistan to act?

OBAMA: Well, you know, I think that the U.S. government provides an awful lot of aid to Pakistan, provides a lot of military support to Pakistan. And to send a clear message to Pakistan that this is important, to them as well as to us, that I think — that message has not been sent.

Oh, really?:

We have not sent a message to the Pakistani government that targeting Taliban and al-Qaeda is important. This will be surprising news to Khalid Sheik Muhammad, arrested by Pakistani authorities in Rawalpindi on March 1, 2003....

Obama will persuade Musharraf to take a tougher line on groups that have tried to kill him. Apparently bombs going off in their cities is insufficient to get the Pakistanis to crack down, but Obama's threat to their aid package will.

Actually, this is consistent with his "retreat to force the Iraqi government to do his bidding" logic.  And will likely meet with about as much success.

Remarkably, the CBS interviewer tried to pin Obama down on what he would do if he can't get Prime Minister Gallani to do his military heavy-lifting for him.  Not so remarkably, the Chosen One was left going "humina, humina, humina":

OBAMA: I think that in order for us to be successful, it’s not going to be enough just to engage in the occasional shot fired. We’ve got training camps that are growing and multiplying…

LOGAN: Would you take out all those training camps?

OBAMA: Well, I think that what we’d like to see is the Pakistani government take out those training camps.

LOGAN: And if they won’t?

OBAMA: Well, I think that we’ve got to work with them so they will.

LOGAN: But would you consider unilateral U.S. action?

OBAMA: You know, I will push Pakistan very hard to make sure that we go after those training camps. I think it’s absolutely vital to the security interests of both the United States and Pakistan.

She may as well have been speaking Sanskrit to the President of Presidents (or any other non-English language).  Obama is convinced he can talk anybody into anything.  It's why he refuses to genuinely abandon his "I'll talk to any enemy any time, anywhere" stance.  It's the sort of lib conceit that, ironically, is much like the best-laid military plans: they survive right up until first contact with the enemy.  The difference is, military planners adapt on the fly, because (1) they have to and (2) they EXPECT to.  Such hard-headed realism, to say nothing of humility, is as foreign to His Eminence as the Skinny-Dippin' Wolf Women of Planet Heineken.  When the Paks don't "listen to reason,"  - or if they did, hit the terrorist camps inside their own territory, and generated a backlash (perhaps aided and facilitated by the pro-Taliban ISI) that enabled al Qaeda to take over the government - the self-humiliating national prostration process will begin in earnest; where it will end I really don't want to contemplate.  Perhaps with an Obama direct presidential diplomacy pilgrimmage to Waziristan (or Islamabad) for a summit with OBL, where he'll throw Gallani AND Musharraf under the bus and recognize al Qaeda as Pakistan's legitimate government.  In exchange for what?  Lemme think.  Ummmm - how about not returning to Iraq.  Yeah, let's go with that.  Besides, Iran will have annexed Mesopotamia by that time, anyway.

It's difficult to talk a good war strategizing game when everybody except you sees that you don't know what you're talking about.  It becomes bloody impossible when you give every indication of not knowing in which direction time flows.  From the same CBS interview:

LOGAN: Because you do have a situation seven years on into this war where Osama bin Laden and all his lieutenants and all the leaders of the Taliban, they’re still there. And they’re inside Pakistan.

OBAMA: Right. It’s a huge problem. And first of all, if we hadn’t taken our eye off the ball, we might have caught them before they got into Pakistan and were able to reconstitute themselves.

Ah, that old left-wing chestnut.  Like we're incapable of waging war in more than one theater at the same time (Of course, if Obama gets his way, we will be).  And as if the beginning of deployment of forces to Kuwait for OIF, which began four months AFTER bin Laden's escape from Tora Bora, generated a temporal rift that reached back and sucked U.S. troops forward in time and several hundred miles to the west.

Like they say, "If ya can't convince 'em, confuse 'em."  Which I suppose now qualifies as holy writ.

TUESDAY, JULY 22: Birds of a feather....?:

Members of the most active West Bank terror organization are set to serve in security forces being deployed to protect Senator Barack Obama during his trip to the West Bank tomorrow, WND has learned.

Obama is due to visit Israeli officials in Jerusalem and leaders of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank city of Ramallah as part of a wider Middle Eastern and European tour that includes Jordan, France and Germany.

According to security officials coordinating deployments of forces with the PA for Obama's Ramallah visit, members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah's declared military wing, have been called upon by the PA to participate in the protection of Obama, particularly in securing the perimeter during a scheduled meeting with PA President Mahmoud Abbas...

..."Maybe the Israelis will try something because of Obama's policy on Israel, which the Zionists don't like, but we will certainly protect Obama. We are professional security forces," the Al Aqsa member said.

"Maybe the Israelis will try something"?  This is the sort of anti-Semitic, terrorist toDsaH'pu that BO has signed off on for his Judea/Samaria security detail?  Or is this another reminder that everybody in the West appears to have forgotten that the only true difference between Fatah and Hamas is that the former aren't theocrats?

Either way, I have to differ with J-Ger - I don't think the terrorist-schmoozer will be in any jeopardy.  After all, if Millenium Man's Weathermen discipleship is any indication, he'll be among his own kind.

Also can't let Obama's incoherence to Katie Couric go unremarked.

Tomato:

COURIC: ....if General Petraeus or the chairman of the joint chiefs, Admiral Mullen, say to you, “Hey, President Obama …”

OBAMA: Right.

COURIC: …if that comes to pass, “you cannot take out the final complement of combat troops. You need them in the [Iraq] theater,” you would say?

OBAMA: I will always listen to the commanders on the ground. And I will make an assessment based on the facts at that time.

Tomahto:

COURIC: But yet you’re saying … given what you know now, you still wouldn’t support [the surge] … so I’m just trying to understand this.

OBAMA: Because … it’s pretty straightforward. By us putting $10 billion to $12 billion a month, $200 billion, that’s money that could have gone into Afghanistan. Those additional troops could have gone into Afghanistan. That money also could have been used to shore up a declining economic situation in the United States. That money could have been applied to having a serious energy security plan so that we were reducing our demand on oil, which is helping to fund the insurgents in many countries. So those are all factors that would be taken into consideration in my decision — to deal with a specific tactic or strategy inside of Iraq.

If Obama isn't listening to Petraeus on not imposing withdrawal time tables, wouldn't have listened to him on the Surge in the first place, and refuses to acknowledge that Petraeus was right and he was wrong even after the fact....

Oh, heck, you fill in the rest.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 23: Has the Enemy Media subsided into post-orgasmic drowsiness?  First Katie Couric lightly roasts His Unholiness, then the Washington Post turns the burners on high:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has a history of tailoring his public statements for political purposes, made headlines by saying he would support a withdrawal of American forces by 2010. But an Iraqi government statement made clear that Mr. Maliki’s timetable would extend at least seven months beyond Mr. Obama’s. More significant, it would be “a timetable which Iraqis set” — not the Washington-imposed schedule that Mr. Obama has in mind. It would also be conditioned on the readiness of Iraqi forces, the same linkage that Gen. Petraeus seeks. As Mr. Obama put it, Mr. Maliki “wants some flexibility in terms of how that’s carried out.”

Other Iraqi leaders were more directly critical. As Mr. Obama acknowledged, Sunni leaders in Anbar province told him that American troops are essential to maintaining the peace among Iraq’s rival sects and said they were worried about a rapid drawdown.

Sounds like Maliki got what he was using Obama to obtain, and is now throwing the Not-President under the bus before BO can do it to him.  Meanwhile, was the Illinois senator listening to the people whom he credits in lieu of the Surge for the "Anwar awakening"?

Of course not.  And the WaPo is no less belatedly skeptical about his ersatz warmongering vis-a-vie Afghanistan:

Yet Mr. Obama’s account of his strategic vision remains eccentric. He insists that Afghanistan is “the central front” for the United States, along with the border areas of Pakistan. But there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country’s strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world’s largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama’s antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

The only realities Obama is concerned with are the ones that will make him the next president of the United States.  After November 4th, his core ideology will resume being his guide, and his commitment to beefing up our forces in Afghanistan will vanish like a popped soap bubble.  He'll abandon Iraq; if he actually tries to redeploy forces to the east he'll be bludgeoned into running away from that theater as well.  The end result will be two hostile, irrational, fanatical nuclear Islamic theocracies side by side in South Asia, one Shiite, one Sunni, and both implacably dedicated to the eradication of Israel and the United States.

But look on Light-Bringer's bright side: now nobody can say he hasn't been to Iraq and Afghanistan lately.