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After months of indecision and delay, President Obama will finally announce his strategy for Afghanistan.  While he has made his decision, there are still some things the president must continue to do, most notably: remind the American people of the importance of victory in Afghanistan. On an RNC conference call with reporters today, former Senior Advisor to U.S.-led Coalition in Iraq Dan Senor said:

Because he took so long on this process, he is clearly educated about it.  In fact, I would venture to say he has become an expert, and I clearly think he owns the decision in a way he may not have been if he had made it quite quickly.  In that sense, I think it is very important to be constantly educating, setting realistic expectations for the American people, informing them, explaining what is going on and what is important, and what the stakes are.

In August, President Obama told the American people that Afghanistan “is a war of necessity.”  During the campaign, he said “this is a ... more

It looks more and more like that’s exactly what the Obama Administration wants. Despite the U.S. not being a member of the International Criminal Court, the ICC’s top prosecutor believes he has jurisdiction over U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and is currently “investigating” NATO and U.S. troops for possible war crimes. What’s more troubling is that this comes shortly after the Obama administration, for the first time, agreed to attend ICC court meetings as an observer.  And on top of that, in August, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed “great regret” that the U.S. is not yet a signed member of the ICC.

There’s a reason former administrations strictly avoided the court. The Bush and Clinton administrations both considered the ICC to be a, “seriously flawed institution.”  That conclusion seems entirely appropriate as American troops in Afghanistan, under the jurisdiction of the ICC, would be eyed with the same suspicion as members of the terrorist organization Al Qaeda as well ... more

When it comes to Latin America, President Obama’s misguided policies continue a trend of courting adversaries “while smacking allies.” Case in point: Honduras.

In June, the Honduran Supreme Court issued an arrest order for the country’s president, who had “breached the constitution” by trying to illegally rewrite the country’s election charter.  The arrest order and subsequent removal of the president was approved unanimously by “Honduras's political institutions, including its congress and Supreme Court.”  But instead of siding with these democratic institutions, the Obama Administration sided with Latin American leftists in Cuba and Venezuela by condemning the act, calling it a “coup” and calling for the ousted president to be reinstated. 

Many are starting to take notice of President Obama’s mishandling of this situation.  As The Los Angeles Times editorializes today, “The bungling of the Honduran crisis has further damaged U.S. credibility and caused a rift with strategic ... more

President Obama is apparently not going to wait for his Democratic majorities in Congress to crush our economy with a national energy tax. He’s moving ahead without them. After backroom deals in the House, postponement in the Senate, and threats to ignore both houses of Congress by instituting economically harmful EPA regulations, it looks like the Obama Administration may have found a new way to move closer to enacting their job-killing “cap-and-trade” scheme. The Wall Street Journal reports that White House “officials indicated that the administration is prepared to offer a provisional target for cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.”

The New York Times explains why Obama is willing to completely ignore Congress to set greenhouse gas emission reduction targets before the UN climate change meeting in Copenhagen next month:

The lack of consensus in Congress puts Mr. Obama in a tricky domestic and diplomatic bind. He cannot promise more than Congress may eventually deliver when it ... more

After almost compete silence on the issue of human rights during his trip to Asia, Obama will speak tonight during the second annual Robert F. Kennedy Center For Justice & Human Rights awards ceremony at the White House.  But despite his oratory, the President’s track record on human rights is deeply troubling: since taking office, the Obama administration has failed to make human rights a priority.  The magazine, Der Spiegel, notes that unlike past administrations, President Obama skirted human rights issues, ignoring the repressive actions of the Chinese regime, while in Asia.

The White House did not even stand up for itself when it came to the question of human rights in China. The president, who had said only a few days earlier that freedom of expression is a universal right, was coerced into attending a joint press conference with Chinese President Hu Jintao, at which questions were forbidden. Former US President George W. Bush had always managed to avoid such press ... more

Well that didn’t take long.  Less than two weeks after the Obama Administration announced it would give alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed the benefit and public spectacle of a civilian trial in New York City, it's clear that President Obama and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, forgot to consider the law of unintended consequences.  Obama and Holder, in the haste of trying to score political points with the Left,  appear to have neglected restrictions on the use of German evidence in the trial, leading Germany to send a legal team to prevent the use of this evidence in court.  Deutsche Welle reports:

A legal team is going to New York to prevent the use of evidence provided by Germany in seeking a death penalty…. Germany, which does not have a death penalty, provided evidence for the trial on the condition that it could not be used to support a death sentence.

This may have missed Attorney General Holder’s attention, as last week he commented “I do not see any legal ... more

The Obama team is already on defense about the lack of accomplishments from the President’s failed Asia tour, so they are returning to their traditional standby answer of lashing out at the Bush administration.  Before even leaving for Washington, the Obama Administration accused President Bush of failing to lead on critical issues in Asia.  Not only is the White House trying to rewrite the impact of Obama’s trip to Asia, they are also trying rewrite the Bush Administration’s strong record on foreign policy issues in the region, claiming, “American leadership was absent from this region for the last several years.”

As one of our Founding Fathers, John Adams, once said, “facts are stubborn things.” They are indeed, and they speak for themselves: 

• In 2008 President Bush signed the landmark United States-India Civilian Nuclear Agreement, “a key foreign policy priority for both the Indian and US governments” that left a “significant and unprecedented legacy.”
  
  
• Indian Prime Minister ... more
  
  

White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod must be on cloud nine right now; or at least his head is.  Yesterday, Axelrod spoke about President Obama’s town hall in China, saying "The fact is that he had the first-ever town-hall meeting in China -- broadcast in Shanghai, streamed on our website, a text of which was on their website and widely read.”  However, a quick glance at Obama’s predecessors’ trips to China reveals that there was nothing “unprecedented” about this meeting.  As Josh Gerstein of Politico reports: 

• When President Bill Clinton visited China in 1998, he took questions from Chinese students while visiting and speaking at Peking University (Beida). The following day, Clinton fielded questions from a radio audience as part of a call-in talk show in Shanghai.
  
  
• And when President George W. Bush visited China in 2002, he also took questions during a speech at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

And, as The Washington Post reported Monday, “virtually every aspect of the ... more

Welcome Back, Mr. President

President Obama must be thrilled to get back to the White House tonight: it’s been a long week abroad.  We were told President Obama would “rely heavily on oratory and personal popularity to try to boost U.S. influence” on his trip, but unfortunately for Obama, his eloquence and charm did not translate into results.  As Mike Allen of Politico writes:

President Barack Obama returns from his maiden Asian swing with none of the concrete accomplishments that White Houses typically put in place before big trips, setting up a stark test for his idealistic theory that the United States should act more like a wise neighbor than a swaggering superpower.

And The Washington Post noted President Obama will return with no foreign breakthroughs.

But is his biography-as-diplomacy approach beginning to show its limits?  Obama does not fly home with any big breakthroughs or any evidence that he has forged stronger personal ties with regional leaders.

But leave it to the ... more

Last night, the White House announced that President Obama will not make any decisions about Afghanistan before Thanksgiving. Despite his promise over two years ago to act with “proper regard” to the advice of his military commanders and his statement on the campaign trail that Afghanistan was a “war that we have to win,” President Obama has repeatedly ignored the advice of his top commanders on the ground.  A quick review: 

• 8 Months Ago: President Obama announced a new “smarter and comprehensive” Afghanistan strategy in March, saying "America must no longer deny resources to Afghanistan."
• 6 Months Ago: President Obama fired the top commander Afghanistan in May, and replaced him with Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
• 3 Months Ago: President Obama again said Afghanistan “is a war of necessity” in August.
• 2 Months Ago: General McChrystal submitted his Commander’s Assessment, stating that without more forces, Afghanistan “will likely result in failure.”
• 1 Month Ago: General McChrystal made ... more