The ‘Change’ of Obama’s Foreign Policy: Talk to Enemies; Insult Allies

By Julian Dunraven, J.D., M.P.A.

Honorable friends:

I think it is fair to say that when the American people elected President Obama, part of the ‘change’ they sought was in our diplomatic approach. Even I, struggling to find something to be happy about in this last election, told myself that at least Mr. Obama is unlikely to embarrass himself diplomatically as George Bush was so fond of doing. Perhaps, I thought, we would no longer have to suffer through articles about our President trying to massage the shoulders of Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel. That may have been wishful thinking given the recent diplomatic gaffes coming out of the Obama administration.

Take Hillary Clinton’s recent gift to Russia, for instance: a symbolic reset button. It was meant to represent a departure from the Bush administration’s confrontational attitude and effectively begin a new and friendlier relationship with Russia. The button read “Reset,” in English, but in Russian it apparently read, “Overcharge,” much to the embarrassment of Mrs. Clinton. Although I must say, “Overcharge,” seems to be a more accurate representation of what the Obama administration is doing, it is an appalling display of ineptitude on the part of our diplomatic corps. Even if the State Department is, for some inexplicable reason, suffering a shortage of agents literate in Russian, one would think they would at least have the presence of mind to go out and look at a Russian video game console, find the reset button, and copy the word. I dare say one of our adolescent gamers could have done a better job of it. Unfortunately, Mrs. Clinton’s error was quite minor when compared to the miserable display put on by Mr. Obama himself in receiving Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Great Britain.

During the Clinton and Bush (I & II) administrations, a visit from our closest and strongest ally’s head of governments was marked with a joint press conference, a reception at Camp David, and a formal dinner. Not so in the Obama administration, which made no arrangement for any of these things. Unfazed though, Mr. Brown pressed on and presented Mr. Obama with a pen holder made from the wood of the HMS Gannet, a ship used in fighting the slave trade. Its sister ship, HMS Resolute, provided the wood to make just two desks: one belongs to Queen Elizabeth II, the other sits in the Oval Office. In return, Mr. Obama presented the Prime Minister with a set of 25 DVDs of American movies. As if this were not tacky enough, they are American DVDs and do not play in British DVD players. He also returned the bronze bust of Winston Churchill that has been in the Oval Office since Tony Blair presented it to us after the 9/11 attacks. As reported by the New York Daily News, the British People were incensed at the slights.

Not to be outdone, Michelle Obama’s gifts to the Brown children were in equally bad taste. The Times of London reported that Mrs. Brown presented the Obamas’ daughters with, “really nice presents. A bit of thought had clearly gone into choosing them: Top Shop dresses (with matching necklaces) and a selection of books by British authors.” In return, Mrs. Obama gave the Browns’ sons toy models of Marine One, the presidential helicopter. “Short of giving the boys Action Man models of her own husband smiting the evil forces of neoconservatism,” said The Times, “Mrs Obama’s gesture could not have been more solipsistic or more inherently dismissive of Mrs Brown.” The Daily Telegraph’s James Delingpole is now calling Mrs. Obama ‘Lady MacBeth.’

According to The Telegraph, The White House explained that Mr. Obama was simply too exhausted from dealing with the economic crisis to bother with the “diplomatic niceties of the special relationship” with Britain. The Telegraph quoted one American official who noted that, so far, Mr. Obama has failed to "even fake an interest in foreign policy." Most disturbingly the Telegraph cited a State Department official who articulated the new administration’s view of Britain by saying, “There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment.” If this statement true, it is a wretched thing to stay of our strongest and most loyal ally. Glenn Beck may be correct in calling on us to write the British Embassy to apologize for our President’s appalling manners.

However, such an attitude may explain why The Times reports Britain is also finding it “unbelievably difficult” to deal with the Obama administration in planning the G20 summit or get clarity on what Obama wants to do to rescue the world’s economies.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama has announced his plans to reach out diplomatically to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Do recall that the Taliban is a fundamentalist Islamic movement that supports Sharia law and a medieval view of human rights while endorsing Osama bin Laden and jihadist actions against the United States. This is apparently the ‘change’ Obama promised us with respect to foreign policy: hold talks with avowed enemies and insult our greatest allies. If Mr. Obama treats the Taliban leaders in the same way he has treated the Prime Minister of England, I expect they will be issuing a new fatwa against the United States in the very near future.

Just War: Why Christians Should Not Falter in Support of Israel

By Julian Dunraven, J.D., M.P.A.

Honorable friends:

The Holy See permanent observer to the United Nations has quoted Pope Benedict XVI as saying of the conflict in Gaza “that the military options are no solution and that violence, wherever it comes from and whatever form it takes, must be firmly condemned.” Naturally, I would expect the pontiff to be praying for peace. However, I am surprised that the former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would make such a careless comment so wildly out of line with the Church’s teachings. Such slips only encourage the type of behavior I saw this weekend from a few guests at a wedding who, though totally uneducated on the subject, pronounced their condemnation of both Israel and Palestine while piously declaring that war is always wrong. Such statements are as contemptible as they are intellectually lazy, and I grow weary of listening to them.

While Christianity has perhaps lamented that war is always tragic and unfortunate, it has never declared that war is always wrong. To the best of my knowledge there is not a single mainstream Christian Church so foolish as to make such a declaration. Certainly, Israel’s actions in Gaza cannot be called wrong by any rational observer. To fully understand how incredibly imbalanced the ethics of this conflict are in favor of Israel, there is no better teacher than Charles Krauthammer in his last two columns, “Excruciating Moral Clarity,” and, “Ending Hamas Rule.”

However, for those of you who, like me, have an assortment of Christian friends who refuse to sanction any war no matter how powerful the justification or how clear the moral reasoning, I suggest you refer them to the Christian Just War Doctrine. Going all the way back to Saint Augustine of Hippo, it predates all the schisms and is a part of every mainstream form of Christianity.

The Just War Doctrine, codified in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, states in §2308 that, “as long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed.” Section 2309 goes on to list the conditions under which a just war may be prosecuted:
· the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
· all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
· there must be serious prospects of success;
· the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

Considering what we know of Gaza, despite all international effort over the past several decades, no authority has been successful at persuading the Palestinian militants to desist from launching rockets into Israel. As Mr. Krauthammer points out, rocket fire on the Israeli population has continued unabated even after Israel withdrew all settlers and military, and ceded governmental control to the Palestinian Authority in 2005—effectively doing everything the Palestinians had demanded for an end to hostilities. Negotiations have gone on for decades, yet only Israel attempts to abide by any of the agreements reached. There is nothing more Israel can offer save its own annihilation. Thus, I would say negotiation has proved most ineffective.

Israel does have a good chance of permanently ending this conflict, though, if its assault can topple Hamas’ control and demonstrate that Islamic militants will succeed only in bringing greater hardship down on Palestinian people. The hardship endured by the Palestinian people is indeed unfortunate, but Hamas has deliberately orchestrated that hardship by using its own civilian population and humanitarian centers as shields against Israeli counterstrikes. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) acknowledges that the problem of proportionality is “aggravated if one side deliberately positions military targets in the midst of a civilian population.” Though Israel is doing all it can to minimize civilian casualties, they are inevitable. Nonetheless, after so many decades of failed negotiations, if Israel can succeed in destroying Hamas utterly, the permanent peace to follow will be worth the terrible price.

As the Catechism states in §2304, the peace Israel fights for is “not merely the absence of war, and it is not limited to maintaining a balance of powers between adversaries. Peace cannot be attained on earth without safeguarding the goods of persons, free communication among men, respect for the dignity of persons and peoples, and the assiduous practice of fraternity. Peace is ‘the tranquility of order.’ Peace is the work of justice and the effect of charity.” According to Pope John Paul II in his World Day of Peace Message of 1982, “Unconditional and effective respect for each one's unprescriptable and inalienable rights is the necessary condition in order that peace may reign in a society.” Currently, only Israel offers such respect—going so far as to offer warnings and aid to enemy noncombatants in its quest for peace. Hamas, on the other hand, is dedicated to the complete destruction of Israel. Unless it is clearly defeated, that ideology of hate will remain as an impenetrable barrier to peace for yet more decades to come.

As the USCCB states, “This is why Christians, even as they strive to resist and prevent every form of warfare, have no hesitation in recalling that, in the name of an elementary requirement of justice, peoples have a right and even a duty to protect their existence and freedom by proportionate means against an unjust aggressor.”

Rather than making foolish statements about how all war is evil, if Christendom truly wants to see an end to conflict in the Middle East, they would do well to bring real pressure to bear on Hamas, Palestine, and their Arab allies to prevent the continual flow of weapons and armaments into Gaza, and to enforce real consequences for mortar attacks beyond occasional dispatching another diplomat for talks while the militants rearm. The USCCB reminds us that a true “Christian has no choice but to defend peace, properly understood, against aggression. This is an inalienable obligation.”

Military Guest Commentary: Why I Will Vote Republican

* * * This insightful essay comes from a U.S. officer serving in Iraq. I quite enjoyed it, and hope you all will as well. Julian Dunraven, J.D., M.P.A. * * *

By CPT. Hunter Hawke

The upcoming election is extremely important to everyone, but perhaps especially to members of the military. Thus, as a member of the military, drawing on the sum of my experiences, please allow me to explain why I will be voting Republican.

First, I believe the Democrats’ approach to foreign policy is both naïve and dangerous. Second, I simply do not believe the Democrats can do what they’re promising. They cannot continue to provide for a strong military, pay for their proposed entitlement programs, and not increase taxes. Third, they have not proved that they are capable of managing the military and our foreign policy competently.

To address my first point, I believe that a pragmatic approach to defense and foreign policy is the only reasonable one. My experiences in the military and Iraq specifically have left me doubting the good nature of man. I believe that the nature of man is not inherently good and the world is far more Hobbesian than most people would like to believe. Tribalism, corruption, cronyism, brutality and most every other vice known to man are prevalent throughout large portions of the world. You can see the symptoms of these base instincts in many other countries in the way they treat minority groups, woman, wealth distribution, elections, human rights, the press, the judiciary and so on. The governments of these countries are not equal partners with us, nor do they share the moral high ground. So when I hear the Democratic party in general and Senator Barrack Obama in particular talk about how we need to redefine our foreign policy by reaching out to these governments and people without these things in mind, it makes me ill.

The Democrats cite our standing in the court of world public opinion as evidence of the Bush administration’s disastrous handling of foreign policy. I think what they fail to understand is that the world is full of countries that would love nothing more than to see the end of American hegemony, be it economically, politically, or militarily. Some of their motives are not nefarious but rather that of a competitor. But what of those states who wish something else, something more sinister? An expansive Russia, a nuclear Iran, a radical Pakistan? Even today Zimbabwe, Sudan, North Korea, Venezuela, and countless others would love nothing more than to see an end to American hegemony. And who would suffer? Maybe we won’t, at least in the near term. But minority populations would suffer. Political dissenters would suffer. And American values such as woman’s rights, freedom of the press, an independent judiciary, and countless other values we hold dear would suffer. So to say that we are unpopular and use this as reasoning to fundamentally change our foreign policy is ridiculous. The question should be: are we doing what is morally correct?

What the Republicans have done and I strongly support is to undertake a program of aggressive engagement in foreign policy. Our military assistance abroad is a perfect example. Isolationism is no longer an option because power and influence have become a zero sum game. If we are not exerting influence or spreading American values, someone else is spreading theirs and it is to our collective detriment. We exert our influence, not to pander to our enemies, but to influence other countries to become something else, something better.

For example, over the last several years, we’ve undertaken a massive effort to combat AIDS in Africa and we’ve established an independent African military command to bolster the security of that continent. What we’ve done in Columbia is another example. I know a couple of guys who’ve spent years in Columbia training their Special Forces and intelligence organizations. What is underpublicized is the fact that the FARC, the strongest, most well equipped and well financed terrorist revolutionary organization in the western hemisphere, is now on the verge of total collapse. We didn’t negotiate with them; we defeated them.

A more specific example would be the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt as one of the culminating efforts of years of military assistance in Columbia. All of the resolutions in the parliaments of Europe, declarations of solidarity, and high level negotiations yielded nothing. She was rescued because the United States had aggressively supported the Columbian government for years. Now the Bush administration is trying to use Columbia as a template for the rest of South America and Africa. So it comes as no surprise that the countries most fearful and vocal about American power, like Venezuela, are also the ones who stand to lose.

That these countries stand up in the United Nations and decry our efforts around the globe is not only unsurprising but a testament of the great things we’re doing. Will we choose to ignore the world’s problems until they come knocking on our door? And what about the rest of the world? What are we going to do to ensure the security and prosperity of our allies and the innocent? Will we abandon them to appease our critics?

The Democrats offer the idea of soft power and negotiation as a means to accomplish our goals. But I would argue that soft power in a globalized world is largely a fraud because economic interdependence has made it increasingly difficult to employ. The Europeans refuse to stand up to Russia over the conflict with Georgia because Russia supplies most of their oil and natural gas. The Chinese oppose any intervention in the Sudan on the part of the United Nations because Sudan is one of their key trading partners. Are we going to abandon our allies and allow innocent people to be butchered because soft power is insufficient?

Europe, the center of soft power, is great at exercising their rhetorical skills, but what have they done for the people in Afghanistan, Columbia, Georgia, Darfur, and countless other countries? They can’t even send their own soldiers and humanitarian aid around the world unless it’s on board a US Navy destroyer or in an American C-130. The Europeans obviously lack the intestinal fortitude to do anything more than talk about their high ideals. That these same Europeans fall all over themselves to hear Sen. Obama speak should cast some doubt on their overwhelming support for him. Additionally, few of our allies have the resources or the commitment to do what we can. So it is left to the United States.

The Democrats say that we’re being too aggressive, but what’s the alternative? Certainly they offer nothing beyond soft power, rhetoric, and action in the United Nations. There are quite a few nations who stand to lose if we continue on our current path but I don’t believe we have another choice. These issues are too important and the consequences too grave to leave to a party that lacks the courage to do the right thing.

This leads me to the inevitable conclusion that the Democrats seemingly have no foreign policy goals beyond increasing our popularity abroad and maintaining some form of rudimentary security for the United States. This allows them to focus all of their efforts on their socialist domestic agenda but that’s another topic. The Democrats try to make their point by using Iraq as an example to show the failure of the republican approach. But they have neither a better approach to foreign policy nor a better plan for achieving our strategic goals.

President Bush was right to depose Saddam, but he went about reaching that objective with disastrous incompetence. Sen. Obama was wrong about the validity of deposing Saddam, in that it was deserving of our efforts, and even more wrong about the surge. If we had pulled out when he wanted and as he vigorously advocated, it would have resulted not only with Iraq being thrown into chaos, but the entire region may have erupted into a more widespread conflict. It also would have been tantamount to the betrayal of all the American service members who fought and died there.

Obama is trying to bolster his credentials to be commander in chief by saying that we’ve been distracted from our primary objective in Afghanistan. I remain unconvinced that he fully intends to follow through with the action plan his rhetoric has endorsed. Afghanistan is a tougher conflict than Iraq and will require additional years to sort out. I very much doubt that he has the spine for a protracted counterinsurgency and, even if he does, I doubt that his party does. At the end of the day, the fundamental difference between the foreign policy approaches of the two parties is that Democrats want to negotiate with our enemies while Republicans want to defeat them.

To address my second point, I have heard nothing from Sen. Obama about the importance he places on supporting the military beyond the opportunities he has to attack Sen. McCain on the topic. Furthermore, I’ve seen the effects of the Clinton administration on the military and I hope to God that it doesn’t happen again. During the Clinton years, budgets dwindled and manpower was slashed. Equipment was refurbished but no new equipment was procured. He took the Army that defeated the fifth largest standing army at the time in 100 hours and gutted it. He used the rational that the peace dividend brought about by winning the cold war more than justified the drawdown. Never mind the increasingly factitious and dangerous world that the fall of the iron curtain left behind.

Clinton and the Democratic Party, past and present, have never paid more than lip service to keeping a strong military. Their base demands expensive entitlement programs and the money has to come from somewhere. They can only raise taxes so much before the consequences, both political and economic, become too great. So the money comes from the most expensive government program that just so happens to be the most politically inconsequential for the Democrats. And since a strong military is not necessary to meet the Democratic foreign policy agenda, the temptation to slash military budgets is simply too great and the military’s ability to meet the enemies of our country suffers as a result.

Finally, I’ll use the Clinton years again to demonstrate that I don’t believe the Democratic Party can properly manage the military or foreign policy. Even more disastrous than the lack of financial and moral support for the military was the effect left by having a weak commander in chief. Because of Clinton’s past and the politics of his party, he could not politically afford to suffer military casualties abroad. This infused in the military a zero tolerance policy on casualties which resulted in an irrational approach to combat. We fight to win, not to avoid casualties. In combat, the mission always comes first and there is no substitute for victory. It might sound cliché but it’s the truth.

It has taken us years to overcome the Clinton mentality, and the last thing I want to see is a democratic administration take us back to the place where they cannot politically afford casualties so we either don’t fight or we do so in a cowardly and inept manner. We retreated from the field of battle in Somalia. We allowed more than half a million people in Rwanda to be butchered. We launched an ineffective and short lived humanitarian mission to Haiti that accomplished nothing. We did nothing to confront the rising threat of Islamic fanaticism. We abdicated our role as the leader of the free world. I do not believe that what we did then was the right thing and I believe that a democratic administration would take us down that same path.

If I had to pick a candidate based on my opinions on the military and foreign policy, without doubt, I would pick John McCain. I voted for him in the 2000 primaries and I think that, as a party, we made a mistake in picking Bush over him. After McCain, I would pick every single other Republican candidate. And after that, I would pick Joe Lieberman. And if I could pick none of the above, I would look into moving to Montana to ride out the coming storm.

Discussing the Ceasefire in Lebanon—Alice Roosevelt Style

By Julian Dunraven, J.D., M.P.A.

Perhaps one of my favorite political figures in American History is Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Teddy Roosevelt, wife of Speaker of the House Nicholas Longworth, known as the Grande Dame of the Republican Party, the Other Washington Monument, and the Witch of Washington. It was said in her time that dinner at the White House was nice, but you were not anyone special until you had tea at Alice’s. When Alice hosted tea, she always tried to sit Democrats next to Republicans, Catholics next to Protestants, and Liberals next to Conservatives claiming that if there was not at least one good argument by the end of the night it was to be regarded as a great failure.

Recently, my own guests for afternoon tea have done their best to emulate Alice’s salon, and by her standards my teas have been marvelous successes. Say what you will of this iconic lady, she certainly knew how to have a good time. The brawl began yesterday after one gentleman guest proclaimed his deep satisfaction with the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon and the great victory it meant for Israel and the United States. Suddenly, I felt like I was in the Knesset, so fiercely did my other guests denounce him. Though President Bush seems to support his argument, boldly proclaiming a victory in this morning’s press, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran did the same thing. I am afraid I am more inclined to agree with the later—and the majority of my guests.

It is without doubt that Israel managed to successfully seize and occupy much of southern Lebanon. This much was never in doubt and, in absolute terms, I suppose it can be called a victory. That said, Hezbollah managed to launch its rockets into Israel right up to when the ceasefire agreement took effect. Its leadership is still in tact; its militia is still well armed. Worse, no one forced it to sue for peace; rather, it is choosing to accept the ceasefire agreement as if it were a state actor. Finally, though Israel remains in existence, Hezbollah never expected to wipe it out in this conflict. All it needed to do was survive with a few teeth in order to show the entire world that standing up to Israel and, by proxy, the United States and Great Britain, is quite possible. This it managed to do with smashing success.

Israel and its British and American allies, however, were trying to obliterate Hezbollah. This they failed miserably to achieve, and now must content themselves with a ceasefire and hope the international force somehow manages to disarm, or at least restrain, Hezbollah—both extremely doubtful prospects. From where I am sitting, that looks like a defeat. Simply striking an enemy and knocking him over is useless. He will only get up again, angrier than ever, and find a way to hit back. Rather, if you strike at all, it should be such a blow that your enemy will not rise again. If anyone really believes that Hezbollah has been struck with such a blow, I can recommend several talented psychiatrists that can help work out such delusions.

A young lady acquaintance was the next person to jump into the fray. She contended that, victory or defeat, she thought Israel was totally out of line to react so forcefully to a few kidnappings. A shocked silence fell over my guests at this statement and the only sound was a slight plop and splash as the remaining bit of my crumpet leapt from my hand to drown itself despairingly in my tea.

The silence was brief, though, and both Democrat and Republican guests began to pepper her with questions: What about the barrage of rockets sent daily into Israel? What about the avowed purpose of Hezbollah to destroy Israel? Doesn’t Israel have a right to defend itself?

To these questions she could only wish that the two sides could tolerate one another. Faced with the fact that Israel has never disputed any other state’s right to exist, she wished that Muhammad was back to remind the Arab world of the virtues of peace. When she learned that Muhammad himself led the conquest of Arabia, she gave up entirely. She did not however, give up her position. She maintained that she simply felt that war was terrible and that Israel should have maintained peace above all.

To borrow again from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," she, “is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”.”

Both of these positions display a fundamental misunderstanding. My gentleman friend mistakenly believes that a technical victory on the field is enough to defeat the ideological motivation of Hezbollah. My lady friend refuses to believe that her feelings are insufficient to shape reality and that sometimes justice demands conflict. To cling to peace solely for the sake of peace even in the absence of justice is to accommodate evil. It is the position of a moral midget. Perhaps that is not a very nice way to depict one of my guests, but as Alice Roosevelt Longworth was fond of reciting, “If you can’t say something nice about someone, come sit right here next to me.”