Victor Davis Hanson: Hillary should have realized the obvious much sooner...

...and should jump ship before it's too late...

In one of my blogposts on MySpace, I said with great conviction, that I would ne-VUH, EVUH vote for Senator John S. McCain. I could not understand how he was so successful in the Republican primaries last year, especially since a majority of conservatives had shown him very little respect. I continued to be dumbfounded as my first prediction, second, and subsequent favs had all dropped out due to McCain's seemingly unstoppable machine. I was also watching the Democratic primaries, and hoping that Hillary Clinton would emerge victorious against one weak-willed candidate and a weaker-willed Glass Joe. If Hillary Clinton had won the Democratic primary, I'd vote a Democrat for president for the first time since 2000. Well, it was not to be and we had the fortune (or misfortune, depending on how you look at it) of having a media anointed "maverick" compete against the media anointed "Golden Child."

I joked with my coworkers that I'd be placing my finger next to Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate for president, until Sarah Palin was named John McCain's running mate. Her speech at the Republican National Committee made me feel great to be an Amurican, in stark contrast to Barack Obama's, which apologized to the rest of the world for having been born in Amurica. I voted for Sarah Palin and her running mate in the hopes that her conservatism would keep McCain from further destroying his conservative bonafides. Again, my sinister plan was thwarted and Barry-O was victorious. I thought his choice to keep Robert Gates as SECDEF was a very good move, and would seek to provide him cover against conservatives who thought he'd foul up our successes on the "war" front. I also respected, and applauded, his choice to make former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, his Secretary of State. To me, she comes across as an advocate for strong national security, and an advocate for a tough, but smart, foreign policy. So far, from what it seems, and as Hanson reiterates, Clinton's mark on the office is being impeded by Obama's Apology Tours and the incessant number of policy czars and roving ambassadors, whose role usually fall to the Secretary of State.

I believe this move by Obama, outside of his effort to fool the electorate into believing he's a moderate, was to stymie another primary challenge from Clinton in 2012. I believe that if Obama's ratings continue to drop, he will have to do more than marginalize Clinton to prevent a more moderate Democrat from besting him in the primary. It is becoming clearer to the electorate that the moderate Obama they supported, is not the Obama occupying the White House. So far, it seems even liberals are willing to dump Obama, according to Ed Schultz, but not because they agree with Republicans, but that Obama The Liberal isn't being liberal enough.

Beneath all the hype surrounding ObamaCare, there is an issue on which conservatives seem to agree with Obama. His prosecution of the War on Terror in the Afghan theater is supported by more Republicans than Democrats, according to a February 2009Gallup poll. Democrats, on the other hand, now believe Afghanistan is not worth fighting anymore, which is not what we heard from liberals' wailing about Iraq. Between their calls for Operation Iraqi Freedom supporters to enlist, liberals repeated the charge that BushCo had taken their eyes off the ball by invading Iraq. While I think it's over the top to accuse liberals of being wimps on terror, it does seem that their opposition to Iraq lie in the fact that they opposed an issue because Bush supported it.

I was dogged in my support of Iraq and I will remain dogged in my support of Afghanistan. The more we keep the terrorists wondering if today will be their last, the safer our nation. The situation in Iraq looked bleak before President Bush announced the surge, and since then, the situation has remarkably improved. The same will occur in Afghanistan. Things get worse before they get better.

Have a great day...

Democrats: We're strong on terror, just like the Republicans...

...we're actually timid when it comes time to prove it...

Most Obamabots agree that the president has marked a sharp contrast to the bungling, keystone cop-like, Bush Administration. They have this mindset that because the Bushites actually took the terrorists at their word, they were being unfair to the terrorists. We were called on by liberals to understand their plight and moderate our rhetoric to appease the terrorists, and this way, they would go home and leave us the hell alone. Oh, and that our opposition to appeasement was inherent in racism (almost forgot that one...). On the campaign trail, Obamessiah called Bush foreign policy "dumb" and "made us less safer," (another instance where crazy lefties' theories were aired by Democrats) even though terrorist plots were being stopped by our Justice and Defense Departments. Upon his first day in office, Obama pledged, with Secretary of State Clinton's acknowledgement, that the US would engage in "smart power," who's first mission was to quell tensions in Russia (and we all know how that turned out...lol!).

So far, the Obama foreign policy of "smart power" has been anything but. From his slow-footed response to the Iranian regime's crackdown on protestors, condemning Israel while appeasing Arab governments that sponsor terror groups, to siding with a power grab in Honduras, the president is showing that he's more adept at being a grievance monger than being an actual leader, or a rebuttal against a policy he declared "dumb." Debra Burlingame, sister of late pilot Charles "Chic" Burlingame of Flight 77 fame, which crashed into the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, writes an article in the Wall Street Journal about "Shoe Bomber" Richard Reid's latest attempt to continue his jihad against the United States. In 2007, Reid filed a lawsuit against the United States claiming that the Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) violated his First Amendment rights to freedom of religion. SAMs are rules that are put in place against an inmate that would prevent him from corresponding, communicating, or contacting others when those actions pose a serious risk of bodily injury or death to others.

It should be no secret that terrorists do not cease their jihad once they enter prison. In fact, one of the reasons why Lynne Stewart sits in prison is because she violated a directive put in place against Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, that he be prevented from communicating, corresponding, and contacting members of his terror group, a move David Cole of The Nation called a "stretch," and "an indication of how far things got in the 'War on Terror'" and equating the Justice Department to the terror groups. It is clear that Stewart was abetting her client, and not just a naïve woman who was caught at in the wrong place at the wrong time, as liberals claimed about John Walker Lindh, Yasser Hamdi, and José Padilla. While in prison, terrorists conduct prayer meetings in languages not understood by their English-speaking correctional officers. The Justice Department, in 2008, dismissed Reid's claim, and cited another terrorist, Mohammed Ajaj's similar disdain for the safety of the US.

In the discussion of Obama's not-to-well-thought-out move to close GITMO, several of his supporters latched on to the fact that no prisoner has escaped from SuperMax in Colorado. They don't note, however, the constitutional problems this move would cause, and I seriously doubt the ACLU will cease coddling terror suspects if they moved within the borders of the United States. The executive order was clearly designed to pander to the fringe element on the Left, you know the one that doesn't make policy for Democrats, to close GITMO. To be such a "smart man," the president clearly isn't thinking, on this, or other matters.