Globally Disrespected

Krauthammer on Ukraine: 'Everybody is shocked by the weakness of Obama's statement'

Published February 28, 2014

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Charles Krauthammer told viewers Friday on "Special Report with Bret Baier" that President Obama's statement on the latest Ukraine developments showed "weakness," and implied that "we're not really going to do anything" about the political upheaval in Ukraine.

On Friday, armed men, allegedly Russian military forces, entered the Crimea region and took control of two airports. President Obama then delivered a message from the White House briefing room, saying he was "deeply concerned" by the reports and that "there will be costs" for any military intervention in Ukraine, though he declined to specify what those costs might be.

Krauthammer, however, said the president's statement failed to make strong waves.

"The Ukrainians, and I think everybody, is shocked by the weakness of Obama's statement," he said. "What he's saying is, we're not really going to do anything."

Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist and a Fox News contributor, said Russia will interpret Obama's remarks as complacency.

"He said, any violation of Ukrainian territory is destabilizing, and that's not in Russia's interest. He is instructing Putin on what's in Russia's interest?" Krauthammer said.  "I can assure you, Putin has calculated his calculated his own interests, and he's calculated that detaching Crimea from Ukraine and making it, essentially, a colony of Russia, is in Russia's interest - because he knows he has nothing to fear from the west, because it's not led by anybody. It used to be led by the United States."

Obama Care Crash Will Crash Liberalism

Krauthammer: Collapse of ObamaCare would be huge setback for liberal ideology

Published October 30, 2013

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Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer told Megyn Kelly Wednesday on “The Kelly File” that if ObamaCare self-destructs, it could set back American liberalism for at least a decade.

Krauthammer said that if the problems plaguing the health care law eventually lead to its end, Obama's  lame-duck status would not be the liberals’ only problem.

“I would say that what’s really at stake here, is that if this thing really goes south, if ObamaCare truly self-destructs, I don’t know that it’s certain but I would say right now it is more than likely, it would really set back American liberalism for a decade at least,” he said.

Krauthammer explained that he believes ObamaCare is the “completion of the entitlement state” that began with the New Deal and the Great Society. If ObamaCare were to collapse, he said, it would “discredit the entire enterprise of the expansion of government, which is at the heart of ‘Obama-ism.’”

“That’s why I think the liberals are running scared,” he said. “It’s not just one election, it’s the whole ideology that the government knows best...”

Epic Incompetence

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The fruits of epic incompetence

By Charles Krauthammer,

The president of the United States takes to the airwaves to urgently persuade the nation to pause before doing something it has no desire to do in the first place.

Strange. And it gets stranger still. That “strike Syria, maybe” speech begins with a heart-rending account of children consigned to a terrible death by a monster dropping poison gas. It proceeds to explain why such behavior must be punished. It culminates with the argument that the proper response — the most effective way to uphold fundamental norms, indeed human decency — is a flea bite: something “limited,” “targeted” or, as so memorably described by Secretary of State John Kerry, “unbelievably small.”

The mind reels, but there’s more. We must respond — but not yet. This “Munich moment” (Kerry again) demands first a pause to find accommodation with that very same toxin-wielding monster, by way of negotiations with his equally cynical, often shirtless, Kremlin patron bearing promises.

The promise is to rid Syria of its chemical weapons. The negotiations are open-ended. Not a word from President Obama about any deadline or ultimatum. And utter passivity: Kerry said hours earlier that he awaited the Russian proposal.

Why? The administration claims (preposterously, but no matter) that Obama has been working on this idea with Putin at previous meetings. Moreover, the idea was first publicly enunciated by Kerry, even though his own State Department immediately walked it back as a slip of the tongue.

Take at face value Obama’s claim of authorship. Then why isn’t he taking ownership? Why isn’t he calling it the “U.S. proposal” and defining it? Why not issue a U.S. plan containing the precise demands, detailed timeline and threat of action should these conditions fail to be met?

Putin doesn’t care one way or the other about chemical weapons. Nor about dead Syrian children. Nor about international norms, parchment treaties and the other niceties of the liberal imagination.

He cares about power and he cares about keeping Bashar al-Assad in power. Assad is the key link in the anti-Western Shiite crescent stretching from Tehran through Damascus and Beirut to the Mediterranean — on which sits Tartus, Russia’s only military base outside the former Soviet Union. This axis frontally challengesthe pro-American Sunni Arab Middle East (Jordan, Yemen, the Gulf Arabs, even the North African states), already terrified at the imminent emergence of a nuclear Iran.

At which point the Iran axis and its Russian patron would achieve dominance over the moderate Arab states, allowing Russia to supplant America as regional hegemon for the first time since Egypt switched to our side in the Cold War in 1972.

The hinge of the entire Russian strategy is saving the Assad regime. That’s the very purpose of the “Russian proposal.” Imagine that some supposed arms-control protocol is worked out. The inspectors have to be vetted by Assad, protected by Assad, convoyed by Assad, directed by Assad to every destination. Negotiation, inspection, identification, accounting, transport and safety would require constant cooperation with the regime, and thus acknowledgment of its sovereignty and legitimacy.

So much for Obama’s repeated insistence that Assad must go. Indeed, Putin has openly demandedthat any negotiation be conditioned on a U.S. commitment to forswear the use of force against Assad. On Thursday, Assad repeated that demand, warning that without an American pledge not to attack and not to arm the rebels, his government would agree to nothing.

This would abolish the very possibility of America tilting the order of battle in a Syrian war that Assad is now winning thanks to Russian arms, Iranian advisers and Lebanese Hezbollah shock troops. Putin thus assures the survival of his Syrian client and the continued ascendancy of the anti-Western Iranian bloc.

And what does America get? Obama saves face.

Some deal.

As for the peace process, it has about zero chance of disarming Damascus. We’ve spent nine years disarming an infinitely smaller arsenal in Libya — in conditions of peace — and we’re still finding undeclared stockpiles.

Yet consider what’s happened over the last month. Assad uses poison gas on civilians and is branded, by the United States above all, a war criminal. Putin, covering for the war criminal, is exposed, isolated, courting pariah status.

And now? Assad, far from receiving punishment of any kind, goes from monster to peace partner. Putin bestrides the world stage, playing dealmaker. He’s welcomed by America as a constructive partner. Now a world statesman, he takes to the New York Times to blame American interventionist arrogance — a.k.a. “American exceptionalism” — for inducing small states to acquire WMDs in the first place.

And Obama gets to slink away from a Syrian debacle of his own making. Such are the fruits of a diplomacy of epic incompetence.


Read more from Charles Krauthammer’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

Read more about this issue: Syrian rebel leaders: Why America must act against Assad Sen. Ted Cruz: Why I’ll vote against using force in Syria Robert H. Scales: A war the Pentagon doesn’t want Dana Milbank: The White House’s Syria secrets Michael Gerson: Obama misunderstands wartime leadership

     

© The Washington Post Company

The Abandonment

The abandonment

By Charles Krauthammer, Published: September 14

There are two positions one can take regarding the Iranian nuclear program: (a) it doesn’t matter, we can deter them; or (b) it does matter, we must stop them.

In my view, the first position — that we can contain Iran as we did the Soviet Union — is totally wrong, a product of wishful thinking and misread history. But at least it’s internally coherent.

What is incoherent is President Obama’s position. He declares the Iranian program intolerable — “I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon” — yet stands by as Iran rapidly approaches nuclearization.

A policy so incoherent, so knowingly and obviously contradictory, is a declaration of weakness and passivity. And this, as Anthony Cordesman, James Phillips and others have argued, can increase the chance of war. It creates, writes Cordesman, “the same conditions that helped trigger World War II — years of negotiations and threats, where the threats failed to be taken seriously until war became all too real.”

This has precipitated the current U.S.-Israeli crisis, sharpened by the president’s rebuff of the Israeli prime minister’s request for a meeting during his upcoming U.S. visit. Ominous new developments; no Obama response. Alarm bells going off everywhere; Obama plays deaf.

The old arguments, old excuses, old pretensions have become ridiculous:

(1) Sanctions. The director of national intelligence testified to Congress at the beginning of the year that they had zero effect in slowing the nuclear program. Now the International Atomic Energy Agency reports (Aug. 30) that the Iranian nuclear program, far from slowing, is actually accelerating. Iran has doubled the number of high-speed centrifuges at Fordow, the facility outside Qom built into a mountain to make it impregnable to air attack.

This week, the agency reported Iranian advances in calculating the explosive power of an atomic warhead. It noted once again Iran’s refusal to allow inspection of its weapons testing facility at Parchin and cited satellite evidence of Iranian attempts to clean up and hide what’s gone on there.

The administration’s ritual response is that it has imposed the toughest sanctions ever. So what? They’re a means, not an end. And they’ve had no effect on the nuclear program.

(2) Negotiations. The latest, supposedly last-ditch round of talks in Istanbul, Baghdad, then Moscow has completely collapsed. The West even conceded to Iran the right to enrich — shattering a decade-long consensus and six Security Council resolutions demanding its cessation.

Iran’s response? Contemptuous rejection.

Why not? The mullahs have strung Obama along for more than three years and still see no credible threat emanating from the one country that could disarm them.

(3) Diplomatic isolation. The administration boasts that Iran is becoming increasingly isolated. Really? Just two weeks ago, 120 nations showed up in Tehran for a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement — against U.S. entreaties not to attend. Even the U.N. secretary-general attended — after the administration implored him not to.

Which shows you what American entreaties are worth today. And the farcical nature of Iran’s alleged isolation.

The Obama policy is in shambles. Which is why Cordesman argues that the only way to prevent a nuclear Iran without war is to establish a credible military threat to make Iran recalculate and reconsider. That means U.S. red lines: deadlines beyond which Washington will not allow itself to be strung, as well as benchmark actions that would trigger a response, such as the further hardening of Iran’s nuclear facilities to the point of invulnerability and, therefore, irreversibility.

Which made all the more shocking Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s dismissal last Sunday of the very notion of any U.S. red lines. No deadlines. No bright-line action beyond which Iran must not go. The sleeping giant continues to slumber. And to wait — as the administration likes to put it, “for Iran to live up to its international obligations.”

This is beyond feckless. The Obama policy is a double game: a rhetorical commitment to stopping Iran, yet real-life actions that everyone understands will allow Iran to go nuclear.

Yet at the same time that it does nothing, the administration warns Israel sternly, repeatedly, publicly, even threateningly not to strike the Iranian nuclear program. With zero prospect of his policy succeeding, Obama insists on Israeli inaction, even as Iran races to close the window of opportunity for any successful attack.

Not since its birth six decades ago has Israel been so cast adrift by its closest ally.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

© The Washington Post Company

Bed Bugs And Apologies

Human Rights Travesty

Here's Krauthammer on apologizing for koran-burning:

“That was embarrassing what we saw,” Charles Krauthammer said about the Obama administration issuing multiple apologies to the Muslim world for the Koran-burning incident.

“We have gone from apology here to abject self-debasement and groveling. And groveling to whom? To the mob. We should’ve had a single apology from the commander on the ground and that’s it. Not from the Secretary of Defense. Not from the President, of all people. Remember when the president had to pick up the phone when there was a crazy pastor in Florida who wanted a Koran burning and he had to be talked out of it,” Krauthammer said on FOX News’ “Special Report.”

“Is the president in charge of offenses against a certain religious tradition in the world?” Krauthammer asked.

“This is a world in which nobody asked the Islamic conference, the grouping of the 56 Islamic countries to issue an apology when Christians are attacked and churches are burned in Egypt or in Pakistan. And have we heard a word from any Islamic leader anywhere about the radical Muslims in Nigeria, who not only are burning churches but burning women and children who are Christian in the Churches. When I hear that I’ll expect my president to start issuing an apology,” he said.

Commentator Kirsten Powers disagreed. When asked if the Obama administration went “too far” in their multiple apologies, “No, absolutely not,” she said.

“It’s not true that the Muslims never respond to it the way that they should. And the reason that Obama is apologizing is because he knows that there is a connection between this behavior and the American soldiers getting killed. It’s not — and you have General Allen is apologizing. I don’t know if they are attacking General Allen for apologizing in Afghanistan and saying we need to not have this happen again. And I think that what we just saw was addressing Muslims in the country, it’s an entirely different thing. If Bibles were burned, I think people would be demanding apologies,” Powers argued.

“No one would be killing anyone, however,” Tucker Carlson said.

“I’m not sure the argument that Kirsten has made that you have to do it as a way to protect our soldiers is correct because the fact that after the president apologized and after we have been on our knees groveling there was an increase in violence. I mean, it isn’t as if it has any effect whatsoever. It whets the appetite. People love to see America on its knees. Second, on the idea that their leaders, Mu slim leaders in the world who have apologized. There are 56 nations in the Islamic conference, has one apologized for the attacks on Coptics in Egypt? Has the leader in Egypt itself apologized? No. Sorry,” Krauthammer responded.

“I have a hard time following the idea that we should be demanding apologies from other people but we shouldn’t apologize. I mean, is this what people tell their children? ‘Only apologize if somebody else apologizes.’ We have our standards based on what we believe in. We are the United States. We’re better than those people,” Powers shot back.

“The reason we’re apologizing is not because of politeness or showing respect. A single apology would have done that. it’s the fear of violence. People don’t object if the Mormons are mocked on Broadway, if a Christian crucifix are put in bottles of urine and displayed at a museum because the violence isn’t a factor. People are afraid. You do a cartoon of Muhammad and you get beheaded or shot. It’s a matter of fear, it’s not respect. One apology is enough. It shouldn’t have been done, absolutely. All of this stuff is craven,” Krauthammer said.