I do career mentoring in my town with high school kids.  It’s kind of like Big Brother, Big Sister. A year ago I let my 16-year-old mentee, who had a driver’s permit, drive my car from the school to my house while I was in the passenger seat.  He was doing great until it was time to park in the garage.  As he pulled in he suddenly hit the gas and was head toward a wall that would lead into my living room.  Not wanting him to put a car through my house, I screamed for the kid to slam on the brakes and he did at the last possible second.  We avoided near disaster but the car had wicked damage along the side from him scraping up against an A/C unit in the garage.  That was the last day I let him drive my car.

I was dumb enough to let someone unskilled drive my car.  The Obama administration is insane enough to let someone unskilled drive a war in Libya. And the damage is getting worse and worse.  The latest wreck in the battle against Qaddafi involves airstrike last Saturday morning on a completely non-military target.

Early in the morning, thankfully before disabled children showed up for school at the Libyan Down Syndrome Society, NATO pilots sent missiles into the school building.  The attack destroyed a much-needed facility for disabled kids.  The founder of the school, and a parent of a disabled teenager were shocked.

I felt sad, really. I kept thinking, what are we going to do with these children?  This is not the place we left on Thursday afternoon.

NATO has not explained who their actual target was.  The Libyan government claims NATO planes were trying to hit Qaddafi who was doing a nearby interview at a television station that morning.

‘They maybe wanted to hit the television. This is a non-military, non-governmental building.’ -Mohammed al-Mehdi, head of the civil societies council.

Imagine what the press would have been if this building had been filled with children.  Around 60 kids could have been killed and everyone involved, including our government, would have held responsibility.  I can’t guarantee it, but I tend to think if U.S. military forces were allowed to take charge, this mistake would have never happened.

I know President Obama appears to be untouchable right now after killing Osama bin Laden, but Libya is still a serious problem that needs a serious change of policy.  We cannot be in a war but then refuse to lead it and refuse to even call it a war.  (Recently the administration rejected the word “war” for “kinetic military action”.)  We simply do not have all three of the familiar options of lead, follow, or get out of the way.  We either need to lead or get out of the way.  Following the lead of others gets schools for disabled children blown up.

The school is for kids up to age 6.  How can we say we are in Libya to protect citizens but supporting military action that almost killed 60 preschoolers with disabilities?  I understand collateral damage, but that is ridiculous.  If we aren’t in the driver seat on this thing, we need to jump out of the car and take the keys with us.

So far we’ve only scraped the side of the vehicle.  I’m afraid any day now the car is going right through the garage wall and into the living room.

We’ve seen where we’re heading today in this country and it’s the Parisian streets, with Muslims transforming prayer into an act of political intimidation and a politically correct government refusing to enforce the law against a favored minority group.

But this kind of thuggery has a political expression too and with the election of Barack Obama we’re starting to see its creep into our own political system. Look at the recent history of the United Nations and you’ll see an Islamist infiltration akin to the occupation of Paris’ streets.

NewsReal Blog‘s all-star blogger Joseph Klein has recently published Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam, a book which tackles this issue like no other.

With numerous anti-Obama books on the market right now what makes Lethal Engagement stand out? Joe is an expert on the United Nations and has covered it for years for our sister publication FrontPage Magazine. His previous book was Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom. In Lethal Engagement Joe looks at a disturbing triangle. He tells the story of how radical Islam came to dominate the UN and now how the UN has now come to dominate the Obama administration — insights that are now coming to be even more relevant after our misguided venture into Libya.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Joe ever since I came onboard as NRB‘s editor almost two  years ago — he’s one of our original contributors. Since then Joe’s blossomed into one of our most important writers. He’s developed as a blogger and learned how to blend his foreign policy and economic insights with the attention-grabbing style of the blogosphere. Just as he makes complex issues accessible in his blog posts he does so with his book as well.  Lethal Engagement is an easy crash course in the Islamist incursion into the UN, the triumph of bogus multiculturalism, and especially the issue of Shariah finance. And it’s not just a compilation of ideas you’ve heard before. Joe has filled the book with original reporting from his own tough questioning of UN officials.

Make a point to pick up the book today and follow Joe’s NRB posts here and his FPM articles here. The first step in preventing the Islamists’ Civilization Jihad against our nation is educating ourselves on the nature of the threat.

Click the image to purchase at Amazon.

There can be little doubt that the administration has made serious mistakes in Syria in regard to the protests there and Assad’s hyper violent response from day one. America’s newly appointed ambassador to Damascus arrived just weeks before the protests there erupted costing the Obama Administration much credibility and leverage.

When the Foreign Policy (FP) magazine website ran an April 14 above the fold link that read “Stop Whining About Syria and Do Something” (to the story http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/14/twisting_assads_arm) it revealed that some serious mistakes have been made by the White House.

In Libya the president’s hesitation to encourage the protesters or to pledge support to the armed rebels gave Gaddafi the opportunity to gain the upper hand in the conflict. The effect of this cannot be debated: civilians were killed by the Libyan army and the effect of the U.S. led air strikes was less in the end than it would have been had it come when Sarah Palin and others first called for it.

The Obama administration’s decision to wait until the Arab League and the U.N. gave the green light to begin air strikes against the Gaddafi regime will hurt the U.S. if any decision is made to intervene in Syria.

Obama’s outreach to Syria complicates this as well. A prime example of this was the appointment of Ambassador Robert Ford. Jim Zanotti’s “Hamas: Background and Issues for Congress” 67 page report issued by the Congressional Research Service on December 2, 2010 can be found be found on the U.S. State Department website. The report also stated “(t)he movement’s political leadership is currently headquartered in exile in Damascus, Syria.”

On December 29, just four weeks after the publication of the Congressional Research Service report, President Obama appointed Robert Ford to be the first U.S. ambassador to Syria since February 2005.

The Christian Science Monitor described the background to the appointment this way:

In June 2009, Obama announced that he was sending a new US ambassador to Damascus, but it was not until seven months later that he named Ford, a career diplomat, as the new head of mission. Even then, Ford’s departure was delayed because the Senate refused to confirm his appointment due to its opposition to returning an ambassador to Syria. Obama took advantage of the Senate recess last month to sign off on several diplomatic appointments, including Ford, allowing the new ambassador to take up his position.

The Senate had good reason to block the appointment. American mistakes in Syria can lead to disaster. Syria is much more strategically important to U.S. interests than Libya. Much more:

• Syria borders Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Israel. It is hard to imagine a more vitally positioned nation on the planet.

• Syria’s national policy for decades has been to undermine the Lebanese government and exert control over Beirut.

• Syria’s population is approximately 22.5 million compared to Libya’s less than 6.5 million.

• Syria has substantial minorities of Kurds and Armenians that are in danger.

• Syria has alliances strong with Iran and other rogue states.

• Emergency martial law has basically been in effect since 1963 and an emergency law bans demonstrations.

• The Syrian army has been used to slaughter thousands of civilians in the past.

Scattered demonstrations began in Syria as early as on January 26, 2011 and the first “Days of Rage” protests began in Damascus on February 4 and February 5.

On March 18 hundreds of protesters were injured and at least four were killed.

These mid-March protests have been described as “unprecedented” and the demonstrations are the most serious since 1982 when tens of thousands of civilians were slaughtered in the city of Hama.

And March looked calm compared to April. There were over fifty fatalities among civilians and soldiers on April 10 alone. On April 8 reports are that close to 40 civilians were killed.

The Obama administration must not continue to let the opportunity to encourage regime change in Damascus slip through its fingers. Much of the Middle East’s future stability hinges on the streets of Syrian cities and towns. Let’s hope that Team Obama sees that before it is too late.

The New York Times is still beating the war drums in Libya. The Times today urged President Obama to renew air attacks on Col. Qaddafi’s ground forces with U.S.  A-10 antitank aircraft and AC-130 ground attack gunships. It also recommended arming the rebels and providing them with training.

For a minute, I thought that George W. Bush or Dick Cheney might have written the Times‘ lead editorial today. But they wouldn’t be this foolish. It’s highly unlikely, for example, that Bush and Cheney would have considered arming and training rebel forces, some of whom are supporters of al Qaeda and whom had previously gone to Iraq in a jihad to kill our soldiers. Yet the Obama administration is still considering arming the Libyan rebels, even though we still do not know very much about whom we would be arming and the UN Security Council resolutions authorizing collective actions against the Qaddafi regime contain a total arms embargo.

The chairman of the UN Libya Sanctions Committee has said publicly that the arms embargo to Libya also applies to any arms to the rebels.

The head of U.S. Africa Command  General Carter Ham said it was the stated intent of al Qaeda’s affiliate in the area, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), to aid Libya’s opposition:

We would need, I think, necessarily to be careful about providing lethal means to a group unless we are assured that those U.S.-provided weapons would not fall into the hands of extremist organizations

Nevertheless, as recently as yesterday, a State Department spokesperson, when asked whether arming the rebels was still under consideration, replied:

it is permissible to get arms to the opposition, and that’s something that remains on the table, certainly. We’ve never taken that option away

It’s also amazing how the Times, which savaged Bush and Cheney for prosecuting the war in Iraq that Congress had authorized, didn’t once mention in its editorial today that Obama should have sought congressional authorization by now – nearly a month after he ordered American military forces into the skies over Libya. Obama’s war has already cost American taxpayers about $600 million, with no end in sight.

Obama’s failure to seek congressional authorization as the war drags on is even more amazing, considering that Obama himself had declared back in 2007 the need for such congressional authorization:

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

The Times argues, like the Obama administration itself, that there can be no political settlement in which the “ruthless dictator” Qaddafi remains in place. But that is not likely to happen anytime soon if the military campaign ends. Although Obama and his minions have said repeatedly that regime change is not a military objective, Obama just co-signed a strongly worded letter published on both sides of the Atlantic with British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy saying that leaving Qaddafi in power would be an “unconscionable betrayal:”

So long as Gaddafi is in power, NATO and its coalition partners must maintain their operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds.

But leaving another ruthless dictator in place who brutalized his own citizens - Saddam Hussein – did not bother Obama back in 2002 when he delivered his anti-Iraq war speech that he used many times during the 2008 presidential campaign to burnish his anti-war credentials:

I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power…. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States…

Neither did Qaddafi, once he gave up his nuclear weapons program in the wake of Bush’s decision to remove Saddam Hussein by force.

We have achieved the stated military objectives in Libya of establishing a no-fly zone and preventing a potentially catastrophic humanitarian disaster from occurring in Benghazi. It is time to let the Europeans and Arab League members who pressed for military intervention in the first place to assume full responsibility from here.

Joseph Klein is the author of a recent book entitled Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations and Radical Islam

On the day after Israel declared a ceasefire to end Operation Cast Lead in January 2009, the Associated Press published a story that presumably was met by those in Israel with the famous quote from Adam Sandler’s character in The Wedding Singer: “Gee, you know that information really would’ve been more useful to me yesterday.” Here’s the key paragraph:

“The high visibility of uniformed Hamas police stood in contrast to the furtive movements of Hamas fighters in civilian clothing who confronted or tried to evade the Israeli onslaught that began Dec. 27. Some have suspected the Islamic group was in disarray, but even some Israeli observers have acknowledged that the tightly knit organization remains largely intact.”

That is, Hamas waited until after the war to put their uniforms on. And how nice of the AP to tell its readers that Hamas was using the entire population of Gaza as human shields the day after the ceasefire.

In any event, the reason I bring this up is because Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has begun using the same tactic, and NATO has all but raised the white flag. Here’s the Washington Post report:

Libyan military commanders loyal to Moammar Gaddafi are blunting the impact of NATO’s air campaign by hiding tanks and artillery in densely populated areas where the alliance’s fighter planes cannot easily reach them, U.S. and European diplomats said Wednesday.

The shift in tactics has meant fewer targets for NATO warplanes, fueling complaints by rebels who say the quality of air support has plummeted since the United States turned over command of Libyan operations to NATO. Opposition leaders say Gaddafi’s forces are inflicting particularly heavy casualties on civilians in the rebel-held city of Misurata, where dug-in loyalists have been operating with little interference from NATO missiles and bombs.

NATO officials in Brussels acknowledged carrying out fewer strikes around Misurata because of fears of inadvertently killing civilians in areas where the Libyan military was cheek by jowl with civilians.

“We have confirmation that in Misurata tanks are being dispersed, being hidden, humans being used as shields in order to prevent NATO sorties to identify targets,” Brig. Gen. Mark van Uhm, NATO’s chief of allied operations, said at NATO headquarters in the Belgian capital.

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton decried the use of civilians as cover and said the tactical shift had complicated NATO’s task.

“It is difficult when you have a force such as is deployed by Gaddafi, insinuating itself into cities, using snipers on rooftops, engaging in violent, terrible behavior that puts so many lives at risk,” Clinton said at a news conference with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini. But she added that NATO was “performing admirably” under the circumstances.

And that’s exactly what the rebels we’re supporting want, right? Right?

But in Benghazi, the mood in the streets turned angry Tuesday as demonstrators blasted NATO for reducing the number of airstrikes in recent days.

At the courthouse, a hub for revolutionary activity, about 300 people waved flags and chanted slogans, demanding airstrikes from NATO and arms for the rebels.

So the rebels are upset that we’ve dramatically reduced air cover. But don’t they know we’re protecting them? Then again, it turns out we may not be protecting them at all, and the “civilians” we’re not firing at are really Gaddafi’s hired guns. Here’s Strategy Page:

Gadhafi’s henchmen are now using trucks instead of tanks for transport. This shift was forced upon them — coalition air power has turned Gadhafi’s tanks into death traps. However, another new tactic his thugs are employing — so-called human shields — is a war crime, pure and simple, and an example of the tyrant’s calculated depravity.

…

Gadhafi’s upside, however, is a reduction in the effectiveness of coalition air power. Coalition pilots must now answer a crucial question: Is the vehicle we are targeting a rebel SUV or one belonging to Gadhafi?

You see, just like Hamas, Gaddafi’s forces are dressing as civilians, so the civilians we’re protecting by not allowing strikes are actually Gaddafi’s “civilians,” which is allowing Gaddafi’s “civilians” to murder the real civilians at will. Peter Kirsanow laid this all out about a week ago while Obama was still deciding whether and how much to arm the rebels:

We bombed Qaddafi’s forces because they were killing civilians. So Qaddafi’s forces began dressing like civilians. So the rebels began killing civilians. So NATO is warning the rebels not to kill civilians, otherwise NATO will bomb the rebels. But the rebels are dressed like civilians. So NATO may end up killing civilians.

In other news, the administration continues to debate arming the rebels who are dressed like civilians. But Qaddafi’s forces are also dressed like civilians. So we may be arming Qaddafi’s forces who are killing civilians while we also bomb the rebels who are killing civilians and bombing civilians who really are civilians but look like Qaddafi’s forces who are killing civilians.

Who’s on first?

And so, here we are a week later, and NATO has made the decision that since we can’t tell who is who, we’re just going to take a mulligan, pretend we haven’t taken sides in this Libyan civil war, and hope something else distracts the media.

And why would NATO take chances anyway? They know exactly what happens to Israel when Hamas dresses up as civilians and uses the few noncombatants they find as human shields. Goldstone appears, and immediately and falsely accuses Israel of war crimes. Who needs that trouble?

Though Israel doesn’t have this luxury in Gaza—as proven by the 45 rockets fired into Israeli territory in a three-hour span on Thursday—it appears NATO is ready to turn its back on the rebels and leave.

Who knew NATO could be so easily outfoxed by Gaddafi’s band of mercenaries? I would wager a guess that the Libyan rebels didn’t. I’ll bet they thought we were serious when we promised not to throw them to Gaddafi’s wolves.

Yet again, an oh-so-enlightened left-winger tries to discredit politically inconvenient rape allegations.

By now you’ve heard the story of Iman al-Obeidi, the Libyan woman who was dragged off to prison after telling reporters of the vicious gang rape she suffered at the hands of Qaddafi’s men. Well, according to frequent HuffPo contributor and professional Bush Derangement Syndrome fomenter Russ Baker, that’s just what they want you to believe. Because psyops, man. Don’t you get it? Wheels within wheels:

As reprehensible as Qaddafi’s regime is, it is important to be on our guard against psyops–disinformation efforts designed to sway public opinion.  The Pentagon and CIA, as well as agencies of many other countries, have extensive operations focused on this objective.

In this light, we might consider this story that Qaddafi militia members raped a woman:  [bold type added for emphasis]

In the latest turn in the case of Eman al-Obeidy, a Libyan woman apprehended by security forces for trying to tell journalists that she had been raped by members of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s militia, a government spokesman said Tuesday that the unidentified militia members she accused had filed a civil case against her.

…

Mr. Ibrahim initially described her as drunk and potentially delusional. Then, later on Saturday, he called her sober and sane. And on Sunday he termed her a prostitute and a thief.

He said that her case against the men had been dropped because she refused to submit to a medical examination, and he reiterated a promise that she would be offered a chance to speak again to the press.

The story of her treatment, covered by satellite news channels and Web sites, has riveted Libyans of all stripes. To critics of the Qaddafi government Ms. Obeidy has become the new face of its brutal tactics. Her family and tribe, based in the rebel-held east, is reportedly standing by her, bucking tradition to reject any assertion of a stain on her reputation from the alleged sexual crime. Rebels in Benghazi, the de facto rebel capital, have also held rallies to support her.

Note the sections Baker emphasizes in bold. He finds al-Obeidi’s story suspicious because the accused assailants–Qaddafi’s men–are suing her. He questions the validity of her allegations because she refused to submit to a pelvic exam administered by people employed by Qaddafi’s regime.

The very fact that her story reflects poorly on the Libyan dictatorship tells Baker we’re looking at wartime propaganda. And the substantial media attention given to al-Obeidi means this is probably all part of an elaborate government ploy to gin up sympathy for American involvement in Libya:

For one thing, as awful as rape is, it is hardly uncommon anywhere in the world, and the fact that this story would get so much attention—and generate such a strong response—has to be viewed with restraint.  It may not be true, and even if it is, why would it get this much publicity at this particular moment, given the norm of brutality under Qaddafi (and many other rulers around the world.)

“As awful as rape is,” why bother publicizing this case?

To nobody’s surprise, President Barack Obama has formally announced that he will seek reelection with a video that’s clearly geared toward motivating fans rather than attracting newcomers, as it’s decidedly light on reasons why the incumbent Democrat should be given four more years in the White House.

Fortunately, Newsweek White House correspondent Daniel Stone gets a bit more specific on the Daily Beast, laying out the case he expects Team Obama to make. Let’s take a look at his points, as well as the flip side.

Last week’s economic report showed an unemployment rate continuing to fall—incredibly slowly. It’s not good enough, but it still is progress, Obama will say. Defending the actions the administration took—especially the $987 billion Recovery Act—will fall to Joe “the stimulus sheriff” Biden, who will be fortified by a team of crack researchers preparing colorful graphs showing lines with positive slopes. Obama the president had trouble arguing the hypothetical that “we’d be worse off if I did nothing,” but Obama the candidate might have better luck. Any Republican will publicly doubt him, but would only be able to offer the same hypothetical that he or she would have done any better.

On the other hand, Obama’s going to have to explain the fact that he explicitly claimed his stimulus plan was needed because it would prevent unemployment rising to 8%, we passed it…and unemployment rose past 8% anyway. He’ll have to answer for record job losses. And while the latest economic news is encouraging, it’s tentative—labor force participation is still low, and Obama is unlikely to support one policy that could accelerate recovery further still:

The United States has stood alone while the rest of the developed world has moved forward with a pro-growth strategy of slashing corporate tax rates. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that its 30-nation membership cut corporate tax rates an average of 7.1 percentage points in the past decade, and the United States will have a federal corporate tax rate one-third higher than the OECD average of 25.7 percent.[2] When Japan’s corporate tax rate is lowered, the United States is one of three nations that will not have reduced the rate.

Corporate taxes are considered the most inefficient of all tax systems. They increase the cost of capital and slow economic growth. Nearly every economist believes that that tax burden falls on individuals, namely the workers and shareholders of the company. A more efficient corporate tax system would increase economic growth and boost the labor market.[3]

Stone continues:

Most partisans either love or hate Obama’s controversial policies. But some of the independents who occupy the valuable middle ground can still be swayed. Don’t know what to think about health care reform? Here, look at this video about a family it saved from disaster. Doubt the success of the auto bailout? Read this story about GM bouncing back. From the stimulus to the war in Libya, Obama’s oppo researchers will be armed with reasoned explanations in snazzy multimedia packaging.

I’m sure we’ll see many such prepackaged stories about the miraculous impact of Obama’s policies on the lives of the American people, but whether or not they’re true is another story (anecdotes from socialized medicine proponents have this funny tendency to get debunked), and the president’s challenger will have no shortage of less pleasant consequences of ObamaCare to reply with. (There’s also the little detail that ObamaCare’s biggest, most disastrous provisions don’t take effect until after the election…) The president’s foray into the car industry will be similarly challenged. And while the polls on Libya are too mixed to make firm guesses about the political ramifications, Obama’s conduct thus far in the conflict is ripe with pitfalls, from his inability lay out a clear national interest or concrete objectives to confusion over who exactly we’re supporting among the rebels and concerns over how much we’re serving the United Nations rather than the United States.

Obama is likely to embrace the problems posed by the annual deficit and long-term debt, laboring to show that he’s more concerned about America’s fiscal issues than his GOP challenger. But the difference between them, Obama’s team will say, is his level-headed approach to solving them. Where someone like Paul Ryan wants to cut $4 trillion dollars over the next decade by taking a knife to Medicare and Medicaid, Obama may head toward the more populist ground that we can’t turn our backs on our seniors—and will hope to pick up their votes.

In other words, Obama’s going to appeal to emotion as a way to avoid making tough choices. We’ve been over ad nauseum the trillions in new spending Obama keeps calling for (speaking of which, did you hear we have to double federal conservation spending?), so it’s hard to imagine many people other than left-wing ideologues taking a good look at Obama’s credibility on the issue without laughing.

George W. Bush staked his reelection on the rationale that “you don’t change horses midstream.” Obama’s will be something akin to “so much more to get done.” A second term gives the president significant leeway to move beyond fear of re-election, and Obama’s team will woo the party base and valuable donors with a new list of wants: Immigration reform that is fair and works. Energy and climate policies that actually have teeth. Gun control that makes sense and solves perennial problems.

That’s a good message for motivating diehard leftists who’ve thus far been underwhelmed by Hope ‘n Change, but as a general election message, promising a hard leftward shift is riskier. Have they forgotten 2010, the healthcare town halls, and the rise of the Tea Party movement already?

When Republicans hammer Obama by pointing out that Washington is more dysfunctional than ever, the president’s team will hit back with a simple message: patience. Campaign volunteers will be given a list of ways Obama has made Washington more open and transparent, like posting White House visitor logs online, speedier responses to Freedom of Information Act requests, and the administration’s Open Government Directive. But the big change doesn’t happen in two years. In fact, they’ll say, it takes more than four.

I’d love to see Obama run on transparency, given that it’s one of many, many campaign promises he’s broken since taking office. As for the “give me time” argument, there’s some truth to it, but in order to make it stick, you need to have something to show for your efforts, something that suggests things have at least been headed in the right direction. And on that score, Obama comes up short.

Most of Stone’s analysis alludes to the perennial question, “are you better off now than you were four years ago?” And while that’s valid and important, I’d like to suggest that there’s another question, related yet distinct, that none of these points speak to, but Americans should ask themselves just as seriously: are you freer than you were four years ago?

The top headlines this morning read (and I paraphrase):  Obama performs ultimate act of redistributing your wealth-donate now! Followed by:  Obama wants a billion?  WE can give YOU 4 TRILLION in 2012!

The political attitude towards money is priceless–until it involves your dwindling bank balance.  The Obama Campaign’s “official introduction” into the 2012 campaign (a race that some would say he’s been running since November 3, 2008) makes no official statements, yet illustrates his political platform very clearly: “All of you who are still unemployed, those of you who are now in the midst of fighting a third Middle Eastern war without Congressional approval, and all of you who sent an overwhelming majority of Republicans to Congress in November because you didn’t like my NCAA draft picks: Give me your money so that I can have the biggest campaign bankroll EVER.”  No wonder Obama viewed former Press Secretary Gibbs’s $172,000/year salary as “modest”: This President needs One BILLION Dollars to raise his self-esteem.

You can’t totally blame the guy.  After all, his Presidency has been an abject failure in the eyes of anyone whose politics are right-of-socialist.  The Administration has been busy waiving the white flag of truce when it comes to the illegitimacy of their firstborn son, Obamacare.  After being ”shellacked” in the 2010 mid-terms, Obama and his press team worked hard to reform his image; in 2008, it was Lincoln, but 2010′s election results clearly proved that the first Republican was old news.  It was time for someone newer, hipper, fresher.  And, all of a sudden, the MSM covered Obama’s reclamation of the Bush-Era Tax Cuts like white on rice while his team refashioned our most left-wing President to date into the most Conservative of political figures, President Ronald Reagan.  Their staunch efforts even garnered Obama a Photoshopped pose with Reagan on the cover of TIME.

Going into 2011, it seemed as if Obama would be in the clear.  He may have stunk at listening to the will of the people when it came to health care, but hey, all you Republican-loving Independents out there:  This man found his inner-Reagan!  It’s smooth-sailing from here …straight into Libyan territory.  If Obama’s tacit support of the Egyptian socialist rebels wasn’t enough, the tipping point came with everyone’s favorite African dictator: Moammar Gadhafi.

You can almost hear the Obama team’s situation-room discussion now: Reagan had a pivotal Gadhafi moment during his Presidency!  This is sweet!  This is our Pearl Harbor moment!  Forget two-terms — amendments are outdated anyway — this is going to seal us in the White House for life!  True to their postmodernism, the Obama team got the players right, but the game very, very wrong.  Reagan’s quarrel with Libya involved one key element that our current conflict does not:  A “sense of direction and confident purpose.”  We have yet to know who these anti-Gadhafi rebels are, let alone what their goals for the new Libyan government might be.  Moreover, if we’re trying to use oil as an excuse to engage in international military action, why is President Obama trying so desperately to re-focus the American eye on “green job” production and consuming less oil?

Try as his new Press Secretary might, he can’t distract the MSM from the fact of Libya and the reality that, as gas prices rise to $4/gallon, telling Americans to cut their oil consumption doesn’t really cut it.  Especially not when you’re spending your days playing golf, charting your March Madness picks, and flying to Brazil in your diesel-fueled jet in order to encourage a foreign nation to reap the benefits of their natural resources while curtailing America’s ability to do just that.  But it’s ok: While Brazilians are awash in the billions of dollars environmental distaster that is offshore drilling, the American economy will be booming thanks to green jobs.

That’s right: The President’s biggest move towards job creation this year so far has been to sink $2.3 billion deficit-dollars into jobs that revolve around, as Glenn Beck so aptly put it: Wind, Solar, and cow farts.  Moreover, as Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute points out, governments don’t “create jobs”:

“All the government can do is subsidize some industries while jacking up costs for others. In the green case, it is destroying jobs in the conventional energy sector—and most likely in other industrial sectors—through taxes and subsidies to new green companies that will use taxpayer dollars to undercut the competition. The subsidized jobs ‘created’ are, by definition, less efficient uses of capital than market-created jobs.”

That’s right, America: The President that has redistributed your jobs overseas (and sent you overseas to fight someone else’s battle for the sake of the “international community”) needs your money.  Why?  Because he’s taken billions of your dollars already and that’s just not enough.  2008′s slogan was all about hope and change — and, quite frankly, I don’t think we need much re-wording.  In 2012 I, for one, am hoping for some more change, and for a change, I’d like to put it in my own pocket.

I was born to Jehovah’s Witness parents. When I became a teenager, I began to question that worldview. At the age of 17, I disassociated from the religion and went my own way. Over the years which have followed, my paradigm has developed according to newly acquired knowledge and experience. It continues to develop. I hope it never stops developing.

Due to this background, I have a tremendous respect for the humility required to reconsider a publicly established position in light of new evidence. David Horowitz recently did so in a post denouncing nation-building. He expressed well-informed doubts regarding the prospect of democracy in the Middle East.

This prompted a response from former NRB contributor John Guardenao. It takes Horowitz to task for changing his mind.

Intellectuals or eggheads are known to be politically promiscuous, especially in their youth; but anti-Islam militant David Horowitz may have set a new low for political infidelity.

(…)

“I allowed myself to get swept up in the Bush-led enthusiasm for a democratic revolution in the Middle East,” Horowitz writes. “But whatever I wrote about the war in support of the democracy agenda, inside I was never a 100% believer in the idea…”

Oh, brother. Is this the best Horowitz can do? The man is 72 years old! Yet he would have us believe that, when he was younger (in his 60s, mind you,) he got seduced by Bush’s enthusiasm for democracy. But now, presumably, he’s older, wiser and less susceptible to romance!

Actually, Horowitz claimed possession of new information which rationally affected his opinion. That’s called critical thinking.

I remained on board until the Beirut spring began to wither and got off when election results in Gaza came in and put a Nazi party into power. That spelled the end of my neo-conservative illusions.

Pretty straight forward, no?

We’re left to wonder what premise Quardiano is promoting here. Is there some value in intransigence? Is there virtue in holding stubbornly to a position only to save face or dodge criticism?

Gardiano goes on to describe how he differs with Horowitz over the prospect of democracy in the Middle East. That’s fine. We can certainly debate the merits of opposing positions. However, debate seems rather pointless when we start from the premise that no amount of evidence will persuade.

Unfortunately, such a premise is not surprising coming from Gwardino. His relationship with NRB ended last year when he refused to produce evidence to support dogmatic claims regarding “moderate Islam.” He clung to his position despite witnesses and reams of evidence to the contrary.

This is the difference between real intellectuals and mere posers. The former are primarily concerned with truth, while the latter are preoccupied with how they are perceived. The priority of truth above image enables one to reconsider their position, while the priority of image above truth motivates self-conscious intransigence. Which is more embarrassing?

The Left has been atwitter in the wake of President Obama’s Libya speech, seizing upon his assertion of America’s “responsibility to protect” as evidence of a heartfelt belief in American exceptionalism. Of course, what has made America exceptional has been its political and economic liberty, not some esoteric calling to police the world. That said, the topic prompted Salon’s Glenn Greenwald to question whether America is exceptional at all.

The pervasiveness of this exceptionalism isn’t really surprising. It’s a common human desire to believe that one is special, unique, better than all others. Few people aspire to ordinariness. We view the world — physically and mentally — from our own personal perspective, and are inherently situated at the center of it. As tribal beings, we naturally believe that our customs and the beliefs with which we were inculcated from childhood are superior to Theirs. Personally, I’ve never understood how the following thought doesn’t obliterate — or at least severely dilute — the conviction of one’s exceptionalism:

The probability that I happened to be born in the greatest country on Earth — or, even more so, the greatest country ever to exist on Earth in all of human history — is minute. Isn’t it far more likely that I believe this because I was taught to, rather than because it’s true?

Consider the premise. Greenwald speaks of probability, as if the assertion of American exceptionalism were a bet before the flop, as if we don’t know whether the country we live in is any different from any other. This is reminiscent of the infamous Obama quote where the notion of American exceptionalism was compared to British or Greek exceptionalism, a tribal conceit, like the boasting of dueling sports fans.

Such comments are indicative of a troublesome worldview which ought to be rejected and shunned. It includes social constructionism and moral relativism. According to these notions, there is no objective truth, and therefore no inherent or absolute value. America is not exceptional among nations. Its people merely feel that way. So too do the people of Britain, Greece, and every other nation. None have any higher claim to greatness than another.

The reason this view is troublesome should be obvious. It does not regard the liberty and prosperity which result from the American way of life as greater than the despotism and stagnation which result from many others.

The notion of American exceptionalism is not a boastful romantic hope or ill-informed bet subject to probability. It is an analysis of results. It’s looking at your hand, once the betting is done and the cards are flipped, and knowing it is the best.

The perversion of objective American exceptionalism into some sort of esoteric higher calling, now termed the “responsibility to protect,”  has visited us before under another name – manifest destiny. Then, as now, it was used to justify war and propagate the notion of an American mission to enforce our values through might.

If this sounds similar to claims from the Left, take note. There is a crucial difference between condemning America in the Reverend Jeremiah Wright sense, pointing to expansionism absent any context as evidence of an overriding evil, and acknowledging it as a thread in a much larger tapestry. Frankly, the Left’s tendency to focus upon America’s history of expansion highlights the hypocrisy of this moment. After all, what is the “responsibility to protect” if not a modern retooling of the old expansionist claim. They are savages, and we shall force them to be like us.

We must untangle the truth of American exceptionalism from the notion that we must remake others in our image. It is not a conceit to look at cultural results and judge ours objectively superior. It is a conceit to imagine we may or can coerce those results from others. More, it presents a cogitative dissonance. The results of liberty cannot be forced. Is that not obvious?

The past two-plus years of Barack Obama’s presidency have been simply mind-boggling. In just 26 short months, we’ve seen a president tour the world apologizing for America’s power and might. We’ve watched as the government took over one-sixth of the nation’s economy. We’ve witnessed an economic recovery that has needlessly been extended by Keynesian theory in action. It’s almost surreal to see the Obama administration at work.

But there’s nothing quite so mystifying right now as Obama’s military action in Libya. I’ve been in a constant state of confusion since the fighting in Libya began. Why are we stepping in? What are our interests there? We’re OK with getting rid of Qaddafi (however you spell his name today), but that’s not our reason for acting. President Obama is willing to cede our leadership role in the matter to others — including France! — yet, as always, we’re doing the bulk of the heavy lifting. Our economy is in crisis, yet we’re spending hand over fist to fight a war with no clear objective.

And now there’s even talk of arming Libyan rebels who may have ties to al Qaeda. You read that right. FrontPage Magazine reports this fact. As NewsReal Blog’s own David Swindle put it so well:

There’s actually a debate in this country — and in our government’s leadership — about whether we should arm the barbarians who attacked us on 9/11. Just sit for a moment and let that fact sink in.

Sure, Libya has been a thorn in our side for many years. Yes, Qaddafi’s a madman and ought to be removed from power when the time is right. But the fact of the matter is that waging war in Libya right now, with the opposition forces that are in place, is dangerous and irresponsible. And that’s not even to mention the fact that the way in which Obama has gone about prosecuting the war is unconstitutional.

Yet one can’t help but notice the way the Left has fallen all over itself to defend this war. That’s right: the very same folks who heartily condemned Bush’s war on terror have become the staunched defenders of Obama’s war. From the administration, to the mainstream media, to the blogosphere, the Left has made a point of defending this military intervention in Libya. It’s both pathetic and embarrassing. Here’s a list of the Top 5 Leftists who most embarrassed themselves with their pathetic defense of Obama’s war in Libya.

We’ll start with one administration flack forced to play inane word games…

According to a Quinnipiac University poll of registered voters released Wednesday, President Barack Obama’s approval ratings have reached a new low at 42%. His disapproval rating was 48%. Half of those surveyed for the poll do not think that the president deserves a second term in office.

On the “O’Reilly Factor” last night, Bill O’Reilly posited that Obama’s declining poll numbers reveal Americans’ doubts about his leadership skills and where he is leading our country. Here are just a few examples of Obama’s leadership failures:

• Obama spent the first two years of his presidency on his signature issue – Obamacare – and pushed through a government-centric solution that the majority of Americans don’t want.

• Obama has led the country much further into debt, to the tune of $5 trillion of added deficits since he took office.

• Obama wasted precious time in addressing rising unemployment, relying on his failed stimulus program while the unemployment rate has risen during his administration. In fact, he has put thousands more Americans out of work with his moratorium on most drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. And reducing this country’s oil supply when prices at the gas pump have doubled during the Obama administration is hardly a good idea.

• Obama’s budget proposal for the 2012 fiscal year was an abdication of leadership. It raised spending and taxes, with no clear path towards real deficit reduction. It avoided entirely the issue of entitlements. Obama did not endorse any of the major elements of his own deficit commission’s deficit-reduction plan.

• Obama failed to crisis manage the Gulf oil spill by not proactively directing coordination of the timely use of maximum federal resources to help stem the spill and clean up the huge ensuing mess. In fact, his administration got in the way of those states such as Louisiana that were trying to  take care of the problem themselves.

• Obama has subjected national foreign policy decisions to the ‘global test’ of United Nations approval. He promised to address America’s “priorities” in the UN and warned that not following “the United Nation’s demands” (sic) would make “all people less safe.”

• Obama took months to respond to the military’s request for additional troops in the Afghan war and then, when he finally announced his decision to add 30,000 troops in December of 2009, he simultaneously talked about a withdrawal timetable.

• Obama failed to speak out forcefully in support of the dissidents in Iran who were being killed, beaten and tortured by the thugs ruling the Islamic Republic of Iran.

• Obama wavered from initial support for Egyptian President Mubarak, to wait-and-see, to finally pressuring Mubarak to leave. His administration can’t figure out how much to support the Muslim Brotherhood’s participation in a new Egyptian government, but is willing to give the radical Islamist group, which founded Hamas and has just recently told the Egyptian people to prepare for war against Israel, the benefit of the doubt.

• Obama dithered for weeks before following France and the Arab League into the United Nations-approved military intervention in Libya. Now that we are involved, Obama is unable or unwilling to clearly define the mission and criteria for success that will allow the United States to cease its active military involvement.

Beyond these specific examples, President Obama has failed to convince many Americans that he truly believes the United States is an exceptional country with a noble purpose. He tried in his Libya speech Monday night to invoke his understanding of American exceptionalism as the justification for his belated decision to use military force against Qaddafi. However, he has made apologies abroad for America on several occasions. For example, in France of all places, he said:

there have been times America’s shown arrogance

Most Americans want a president who leads by making firm decisions with moral clarity and common sense and who puts his country first. Barack Obama has failed this leadership test.

Joseph Klein is the author of a recent book entitled Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations and Radical Islam