I'm weary of reproducing Daniel Greenfield's poignant but lengthy pieces here. Maybe I should just suggest that everyone should go to his website/blog and read every word he's written. LOL!
His last two blog posts are 'must-reads'.
Obama's Last Stand
Democrats do not have a great track record in the White House. The number of Democratic presidents who have won second terms is small and becomes much smaller with the second half of the 20th Century. Unlike Congressional shifts which reflect regional politics more than a national referendum, the Presidency is a referendum on the usages of the nearly unlimited power of its holder.
The Democratic strategy has been to substitute iconography for competence and their iconic presidents have invariably been men of dubious character. FDR rode to power on the coattails of the Roosevelt name, after conducting a smear campaign against Teddy Roosevelt’s son who would have been the natural candidate.
Once in power, FDR assembled a grab-bag of bad ideas from European Socialists and Fascists and employed a small army of writers and artists as propagandists to lionize his programs. Marginally competent, Roosevelt the Second cultivated an aristocratic paternal air, surrounded himself with experts and programs to create public confidence...
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2012/10/obamas-last-stand.html
The Illogic of Empire
The British Empire may have made a mess of the Middle East but at least it knew what it wanted to do with it. That is more than can be said for our latest round of aimless fumblings in the region. Our latest project to flip Syria from the Shiite into the Sunni column might at best balance out the time we flipped Iraq from the Sunni into the Shiite column, but that just means we're moving territories back and forth between two groups that hate us equally.
Our accidental empire was built on 20th century rhetoric that depicted a world caught between the forces of freedom and tyranny. Naturally we were on the side of freedom. And we are still on the side of freedom, even if it's the freedom of Egyptian and Syrian Islamists to persecute Christians. Over the years our freedom crusade has worn thin and now we are left with the tawdry task of liberating the majority to persecute the minority. A majority that will thank us for it with more terrorist attacks.
The idea that introducing free and open elections to the Muslim world will restructure its governments in alignment with our freedom agenda is naive. More naive than the British thinking that processing a few future Arab monarchs through Sandhurst and Oxford would accomplish the same thing...
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-illogic-of-empire.html
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