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July 5, 2009

More disquieting facts come to light about Obama

The more I learn about Barack Obama, the more disquieted over where he is taking America I become. And that applies to not only his domestic policies but also his foreign policies.

As Jennifer Rubin writes at Commentary, Barack Obama has been getting it wrong on the threats we face and on disarming America for 25 years:

Those who suspect the president is engaged in a bit of dangerous self-delusion and denial about certain unpleasant realities regarding the threats from rogue states won't be heartened to read that his current non-proliferation fetish stems, at least according to the New York Times, from his college infatuation with the nuclear-freeze movement. Apparently, youthful Obama did not focus on the results from Ronald Reagan's refusal to buy into the fantasies of liberals -namely the fall of the Soviet Empire. That lesson has entirely eluded now-president Obama. Is it any wonder his critics find his posture fraught with peril and entirely out-of-touch with the threats we face?

As the Times reports:

"This is dangerous, wishful thinking," Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, and Richard Perle, an architect of the Reagan-era nuclear buildup that appalled Mr. Obama as an undergraduate, wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal. They contend that Mr. Obama is, indeed, a naïf for assuming that "the nuclear ambitions of Kim Jong-il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be curtailed or abandoned in response to reductions in the American and Russian deterrent forces."

In the interview, the president described his agenda as the best way to move forward in a turbulent world.

"It's naïve for us to think," he said, "that we can grow our nuclear stockpiles, the Russians continue to grow their nuclear stockpiles, and our allies grow their nuclear stockpiles, and that in that environment we're going to be able to pressure countries like Iran and North Korea not to pursue nuclear weapons themselves."

But what is naïve, of course, is to think that Iran and North Korea will be impressed by our disarmament efforts. No consideration is given, just as none was given by the nuclear-freeze crowd a generation ago, to the possibility that disarmament will only embolden our adversaries and confuse our allies. But apparently Obama's worldview has not matured much since his Columbia days:

Posted by Richard at July 5, 2009 8:47 AM

• More disquieting facts come to light about Obama - Jul 05, 2009