The Romance of the empty rhetoric of Barack Obama

On this Super Tuesday where we take a giant leap in nominating someone to oppose Obama, we are reminded that this is a very dangerous world in which we live.  Fortunately for the United States Benjamin  Netanyahu is the leader of Israel who will not back down to the thugs of the Middle East.  The President says the right words about Iran but they ring hollow and are mostly empty rhetoric as Wes Pruden details in his article about Obama, Iran, and Israel.  Sometimes when you watch Obama with Netanyahu, you are left wondering what Bibi is thinking when he talks to Obama.

Obama reminds me of someone with all the education but each step was only a checkmark to make more money.  Along the way he doesn't seem to have absorbed much from his education.  He would probably have been much happier in life if he could have been a professional basketball player instead of President.  It is the one thing outside of his daughters that you can see his face light up when he plays a pick-up game or even when he watches the games.

Now we are fast approaching a crossroads with Iran and while I was writing this article this morning, CNN reported in a Breaking News email:

"U.S. and other countries offer to resume negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, EU foreign policy chief says."

Will Iran now blink?  How appropriate on Super Tuesday.  Maybe this will assure a win for Obama in the Oklahoma Democrat Primary.

The most likely scenario is not that Obama's speech had anything to do with countries offering to negotiate with Iran again but that Netanyahu made perfectly clear while he was in the United States that Israel would not back down and retained the right to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities without notification on time and date to the US.  That is what I would bet has the some world leaders thinking twice and deciding to talk some more with Ahmadinejad of Iran. Will it stop Israel?  No one knows the answer to that one. Find the timing suspect since it showcases Obama on foreign policy and none of the four Republican candidates have foreign policy experience.

Using the words 'empty rhetoric' sums up Obama and pretty much the four candidates running on the Republican side.   The last thing this Country needs is to get in a war with Iran when our leaders seemed to have lost the will to win again.  Most countries now realize that Obama talks a great talk but doesn't walk the walk which puts the United States in a dangerous position.  Fortunately for the United States we have a friend like Benjamin Netanyahu who has a backbone of steel to stand up to people like Ahmadinejad.

The romance of the empty rhetoric

By Wesley Pruden on March 6, 2012

Words, words, words. Stonewall Jackson famously told soldiers to “make short speeches, and when you draw the sword throw away the scabbard.” 

Barack Obama is obsessed with words, and he never learned to make a short speech, and he’s certainly no Stonewall Jackson. The Israelis understand that, however well-meaning he may be. 

The president may even believe most of the stuff he hears himself say. 

Mr. Obama made another pretty speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, on Sunday that was thrilling only to those who gorge on the romance of rhetoric. Mr. Obama and his teleprompter put on a show of bluffery that was surely the envy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “Iran’s leaders should know,” the president said, “that I do not have a policy of containment. I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I’ve made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.” 

Almost any Iranian truck driver could guide a Mack truck through the loopholes with no fear of scratching the paint. The president won’t hesitate when it’s “necessary” to defend the United States and its “interests.” The president, of course, will decide when it’s “necessary,” and he gets to determine what those “interests” may be. It may be “necessary” to reassure the Islamic world by doing nothing beyond making still another speech. The “interests” of the United States, as Mr. Obama might define them, could only be defended by another bow from the presidential waist. 

Benjamin Netanyahu, the visiting Israeli prime minister who is accustomed to tense visits to friends in Washington, reminded Mr. Obama the next day that despite the president’s scolding about “loose talk of war” his own responsibility to his country is “to ensure that Israel remains the master of its fate.” He could have reminded the president of the reply of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney to French demands for tribute and other bribes for “offensive” remarks by President John Adams to Tallyrand: “Millions for defense, sir, but not one cent for tribute.” Such plain speech has gone out of style in Washington, when and where it is needed most. But not in Jerusalem, where the threat of hanging naturally focuses the mind, as Dr. Johnson said. 

Mr. Obama, with his high regard for his reputation as a man with singular gifts of pretty speech, no doubt imagines he has discharged his obligations to an ally with words (and a few notes of the music). If he were a true student of the Muslim mind, instead of being merely an admirer of the cultural gifts of Islam (such as they are), he would understand that the hard men in Tehran hear his rhetoric not as kindly sentiment but as evidence of weakness and flaccid impotence. That’s why they so eagerly get on with the pursuit of the weapons needed to “wipe Israel off the map.” The Islamic despots understand a thing or two about empty rhetoric.  

Excerpt:  Read More at Pruden and Politics.