Tag Archives: freedom

Foreign Policy and China

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As useless and timid as our foreign policy “strategy” has so graphically shown itself to be in the Middle East and northern Africa, it’s just as foolish in Asia, most especially regarding the People’s Republic of China.

In response to Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s much ballyhooed (in some circles) “pivot toward Asia,” Ambassador John Bolton, writing for The Wall Street Journal at the above link, points out these small details concerning the PRC and its relationship with us.

Whoever becomes president in January will require a policy of sustained American involvement and leadership….  The US is already perilously close to the point strategically where China will simply run the table with its claims [to the South China Sea, right up to the shores of the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia].  Potential hostilities are no longer hypothetical.

Last week in Beijing, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeated the usual US bromides, namely: resolving the region’s maritime disputes peacefully through negotiation consistent with international-law principles regarding freedom of navigation.

The PRC answered this nonsense with a naked threat of war if we don’t shape up and accede.

Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi replied bluntly that China was sovereign over the territories, and government media mouthpiece Xinhua warned the US that “strategic miscalculations about a rising power could well lead to confrontations and even bloody conflicts, like the war between ancient Athens and Sparta.  To avoid such a catastrophic scenario, Washington has to change its obsolete and doubt-ridden thinking pattern and cooperate with Beijing to settle their differences.

So. Obama has received his marching orders.

Bolton then offers a solution, albeit one that the present administration will find itself unable to implement after looking in the mirror.

Such [timidity] must give way to a strategic approach based on three key elements.

First, the US must decide unequivocally that Beijing’s expansionism…is contrary to American national interests.  There are high, tangible stakes for us and our Asian and Pacific friends, ranging broadly from Japan and South Korea to Australia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) including Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines.  The stakes include undersea mineral resources and sea lanes of communication and trade critical to US and global prosperity.
…
This is about power and resolve.

Second, we must rapidly rebuild America’s Navy, without which any shift in strategic thinking is hollow.  This is a maritime problem at the operational level, demanding adequate resources

China is building its own blue-water navy…actively pursuing anti-access, area-denial tactics and weapons systems intended to push the US back from the Western Pacific.  Unless we increase the Navy’s capabilities, or essentially abandon other ocean spaces, the negative direction and ultimate outcome in the waters off China are clear.

America’s current approach—watching while initially minor incidents risk escalating—puts us at a distinct disadvantage.  Passivity will allow Beijing to prevail repeatedly, incident after incident, until US weakness becomes so palpable that there is no doubt of China’s across-the-board success.

Third, we must work diplomatically, largely behind the scenes, to resolve differences among the other claimants.  In the East China Sea, Japan is the major competitor, while Beijing butts heads with Vietnam, the Philippines and other ASEAN members in the South China Sea.  These regions…for China both are part of the same strategic picture. So it must be for America.

Fat chance.

Our Judiciary’s Selective Enforcement

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The Ninth Circuit strikes again.  The Ninth agreed with a Federal district court that an Idaho law that lets state authorities bring criminal charges against pregnant women who seek abortions by using medications purchased online would likely be found unconstitutional (the Ninth Circuit ruling can be found here).  The Ninth, however, overruled the lower court’s enforcement injunction, saying it was too broad.  Instead, the Ninth substituted its own injunction: state authorities are enjoined only from enforcing the Idaho law against the particular woman who brought the case, not from enforcing the law everywhere else.

The WSJ‘s Law Blog provides a summary of the case:

In May 2011, Mark Hiedeman, the prosecuting attorney in Bannock County, Idaho, brought criminal charges against Jennie Linn McCormack, an unmarried mother of three, after she purchased medications over the Internet in 2010 to terminate her pregnancy.  There are no licensed healthcare providers who offer abortions in southeastern Idaho and Ms McCormack, who didn’t want to have additional children, claimed the medications were prescribed by a physician outside of Bannock County.

The lower court set aside the case against McCormack and enjoined the prosecutor from enforcing the law against anyone on the grounds that it was unconstitutional.

Set aside your views of abortion for a moment, and consider what this appellate court has done vis-à-vis the injunction.

The law under which Hiedeman attempted to prosecute McCormack was found by the district court to be unconstitutional, and the Ninth agreed: it is likely be found unconstitutional.  Yet the Ninth then overruled the district court’s injunction against enforcing that law at all.

Their logic centers on the premise that the law has not yet, in fact, been found unconstitutional, and so the original broad injunction went too far.  Yet injunctions, by their nature, are temporary—even permanent ones, which can be withdrawn for any number of reasons at any later date when they’re found no longer to be useful.

So where is the harm done by the lower court’s broader injunction?  The state is harmed by not being able to enforce a law that is, nominally, legitimate.  Women are harmed by being threatened with prosecution—and potentially prosecuted and convicted—for acting as McCormack did and who is protected from prosecution for those same actions by the injunction as modified by the Ninth.  The women who are under the gun here, also are in a time-sensitive situation: their pregnancy must be terminated promptly, or not at all.  We the People are harmed by this court’s announcement that selective enforcement of a law, as a matter of state policy, is entirely legitimate.

This is a rule of law question, regardless of what we might think of the legitimacy of abortion itself.

Censoring Appeasement

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These tweets are from the US’ State Department via the embassy in Cairo just prior to and during the initial rioting and American flag desecration at the embassy, and on the same day that American diplomats and staff were murdered in Libya:

We condemn the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims—
US Embassy Cairo (@USEmbassyCairo) September 11, 2012

and this:

U.S. Embassy condemns religious incitement ow.ly/dCxwY—
US Embassy Cairo (@USEmbassyCairo) September 11, 2012

Try that link.  The material on the other end is “File not found.”  Hmm….

And this:

This morning’s condemnation (issued before protest began) still stands. As does our condemnation of unjustified breach of the Embassy
—
US Embassy Cairo (@USEmbassyCairo) September 11, 2012

Which the Cairo Embassy deleted from its Twitter account.  Except that tweets last a while, as Twitchy notes.

And this carefully deleted tweet:

@BrianGriffiths we did not apologize to anyone because we did nothing—
US Embassy Cairo (@USEmbassyCairo) September 11, 2012

Follow this Twitchy link to see more that the Obama administration has deleted.

And this Cairo Embassy statement—oddly, no longer found, also; try the link:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims—as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.  Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy.  Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy.  We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others

But not a word of condemnation for those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt us.

What else is the Obama administration covering up?  What else have they tried to censor from the public’s eye concerning these despicable attacks and their timid response to them?

Can our nation afford four more years of this?

Still Equivocating

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Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama continues to soft pedal our government’s reaction to the atrocious attacks on our embassies and our personnel.

Fox News reports that in a call Tuesday to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, Obama had this to say:

…he rejects efforts to denigrate Islam…there is never any justification for violence against innocents.

Still caveating, still being squishy.  Still more concerned with the hurt feelings of thugs than with the safety, the honor of Americans and America.

And this, in a who-cares statement (indeed, throughout his entire prepared statement, Obama merely recited his lines, consulting his note cards more than the faces of his audience, with no emotion other than evident boredom, no outrage fueling his statement):

While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.

No.  No conditioned statement is necessary.  No caveats.  How do you “balance” the murders of innocents against anything?

There is never any justification for violence against innocents.

Period.

Addendum:  “We tragically learned that [Ambassador Stevens] had died.”  Tragically learned.  Not learned that [Ambassador Stevens] had tragically died.  Oh, no.  It’s Obama’s tragedy, not Stevens’ and his family’s.

Think I’m being too hard on Obama for a misspeak?  Watch the video.  He was reading from his prepared script.  He knew what he was saying.

Update: from Fox News this morning:

Secretary of State Clinton issued a statement strongly denouncing the anti-Islam video that is purportedly the cause of the violence as the administration sought to pre-empt further turmoil at its embassies and consulates.

“The United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this video,” Clinton said before a meeting with the foreign minister of Morocco at the State Department. “We absolutely reject its content and message.”

Duck and cover.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.  Apologize for having interrupted their fists with our face.  Don’t even think of denouncing the riots, the desecrations of our flag, the murders of our citizens, unequivocally.  In an actual statement of condemnation (hopefully accompanied by concrete action) that pulls no punches and that contains no other comments at all.  No, just point the finger at someone else.  Anyone else.  Especially at those evil Americans exercising their right of free speech.

You Already Have, Ace

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Egyptian Prime Minister Mohamed Morsi had this to say on the third day of rioting, vandalism, desecration, and protests in and around the American Embassy in Cairo:

We will not permit any such event, any such occurrence against the embassies present in our territories.  The Egyptian people reject any such unlawful act.

You already have permitted such events.  For days.  And apparently, for days, the Egyptian people reject no such thing.

Morsi added this, too, in all seriousness:

We count on the US administration and the US people to take serious steps to put an end to that [anti-Islamic movie], because this is considered a crime against humanity and a crime against Muslims[.]

No unutterable arrogance here.  Free speech is a crime against humanity?  Free speech is a crime against Muslims?  According to whom, exactly, and by what authority?

Speaking of crimes, where is Muslim respect for our beliefs, for our free speech?

Oh, and Morsi had some boilerplate, too:

But at the same time we firmly say that this cannot be taken as a justification to assault consulates or embassies and cannot be taken also as a justification for killing innocent people.

Sure.