I'm no admirer of Barack Obama, but he is the President of the United States, and it's disquieting to see how tamely he submits to then insults of such creatures as Hugo Chavez and the Iranian mullahs.

Since the first hours of his presidency, Obama and his foreign policy team have been making conciliatory statements with the object of luring Iran into negotiations. And the mullahs who run the Islamic Republic have repeatedly spit in Obama's eye. Each and every American overture has drawn a contemptuous response from Tehran. Nothing daunted, though, the President and his people keep trying. They really do seem to believe that if they're nice enough and patient enough, the mullahs will come around.

Yesterday, after a one-day "trial," a US citizen of Iranian origin was convicted of espionage and sentenced to eight years in prison. There's no doubt that the charges against Roxana Saberi are bogus. Quite clearly, this is the Iranian regime's way of testing the Obama Administration. How badly does the US president want talks—badly enough to abandon an innocent American citizen to the dubious mercies of a brutal dictatorship?

Evidently. Faced with this blatant Iranian provocation, Obama denied that Saberi was a spy—and left it at that. As for our tough-as-nails Secretary of State, the redoubtable Hillary Clinton, she professed herself "deeply disappointed." Not as disappointed as Roxana Saberi, I'll bet—but still, one must feel the SecState's pain. Why won't these mullahs just listen to what Obama and Hillary and everybody on the US side have been saying? Don't they understand where the US government is coming from?

But that's just the trouble, Hillary. They have been listening. And the understand you and the man you work for all too well.

Posted by tmg110 at 7:42 PM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 21 April 2009 8:09 PM EDT

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Here's a useful resource for those who may agree with Barack Obama that the Iranian regime can be sweet-talked out of its desire to (1) obtain nuclear weapons and (2) accomplish the destruction of Israel. Some samples:

"They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets."

"Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury."

"Israel is a rotten, dried tree that will be annihilated in one storm."

"The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land. As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map."

That was President Ahmadinejad of Iran. Barack Obama implies that when he says things like this, we shouldn't take him at his word. Of course, the United States is a long way from Iran, so maybe it would be easier to go along with Obama's supine policy. But suppose your were a Jew living in Israel? How would you feel about Ahmadinejad's threats in that case?

Posted by tmg110 at 8:38 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 21 April 2009 8:10 PM EDT

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President Obama's persistent embrace of the world's most loathsome tyrants and despots began as a distasteful spectacle. But his chummy little encounter with the Mussolini of South America, Venezuela's own Hugo Chavez, we have moved on into the realm of farce.

Indeed the whole Summit of the Americas, where the encounter took place, was a farce. There sat Obama, bland and passive in the face of yet another bash-America hatefest. Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Mary Anastasia O'Grady remarked sarcastically: "If President Barack Obama's goal at the fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago this weekend was to be better liked by the region's dictators and left-wing populists than his predecessor George W. Bush, the White House can chalk up a win."

Probably the Obama Administration does think that receiving compliments from a lowlife thug like Hugo Chavez constitutes progress. But if you can judge a person by his enemies, George W. Bush, who was reviled by Chavez, comes out looking a whole lot better than the Chicago Messiah.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:18 AM EDT

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While President Obama's Department of Homeland Security wrings its hands over the (largely nonexistent) threat of radical right-wing domestic terrorism, the FBI has been busy pursuing actual domestic terrorists, e.g. fanatical animal-rights activists. Daniel Andreas San Diego is a 31-year old computer specialist from—where else?—the People's Republic of Berkley, California. The FBI has added him to its "Most Wanted" terrorist list; he's wanted for the 2003 bombings of two corporate offices in California.

Hmmm, now what are the odds that San Diego is a disgruntled Iraq War vet with a Second Amendment fetish and a grudge against Barack Obama…?

Posted by tmg110 at 8:10 AM EDT

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Over the weekend I happened to catch a Fox News interview with military commentator Ralph Peters, who pointed out something about the repugnant DHS “right-wing extremism” report that I overlooked. While the Obama Administration is super-solicitous of our Islamofascist enemies, rebranding their terrorist attacks as “man-caused disasters” and the war on terror as “overseas contingency operations,” it isn’t at all shy about smearing its domestic critics (veterans explicitly included) with the words “terrorist” and “terrorism."

Posted by tmg110 at 9:26 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 21 April 2009 8:10 AM EDT

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It's easy enough to show that President Obama's domestic policies are the economic equivalent of the Flat Earth Theory. The estimable Charles Krauthammer does it here, and there's no arguing with his conclusions. Barack Obama's policies will drive this country's economy over the cliff. Why don't the American people see this?

Well, though I'm not the first to observe that most Americans are ignorant of economics, the point bears emphasis. But ignorance of economics is merely the entry argument. It makes possible people's fatal belief that they want it badly enough, can get something for nothing—healthcare, for instance.

Barack Obama knows well how to harp on those strings of ignorance and desire. What he doesn't know (as Krauthammer makes clear) is how he's ever going to make good on all the promises he's made. And what he doesn't know will hurt not only him, but us.  

Posted by tmg110 at 8:51 AM EDT

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Quite aside from the gross insult that it offered to American veterans, there's a lot to criticize in the Department of Homeland Security's recent report on the "right-wing extremist terrorist threat." Nine pages in length, it offers nothing in the way of evidence to support its conclusions. And now it turns out that agency bigwigs rushed the thing into print despite concerns raised by the its own civil rights division.

I believe that DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano allowed the report to be released in an attempt to intimidate and stifle criticism of the Obama Administration and its policies. Given progressivism's long record of treating even the slightest dissent from its orthodoxies as evidence of "fascism" and "Nazism," this strikes me as a perfectly reasonable conclusion.Especially in view of the report's brevity and lack of supporting evidence for its outrageous conclusions, I see no reason why Obama and his people should be given the benefit of the doubt on this one.

But if that was the Administration's motive, it backfired badly.  Napolitano comes off looking like a ham-handed doofus, while Obama's energetic backpedaling makes him appear weak, wavering and indecisive—again.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:16 AM EDT

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Remember when "dissent was the highest form of patriotism"? Apparently that bromide no longer holds good now that the sainted Obama graces our nation's executive chair.

Progressives' reaction to yesterday's "Tea Party" tax protests have been nothing short of hilarious. Here's a typical specimen, from one Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, who blubbered that the protests were "despicable" and shameful." I'd never heard of Rep. Schakowsky, but her barely coherent rant convinces me that the poor woman must be as dumb as a box of rocks.

In another corner of the progressive fever swamp, various bottom feeders including David Schuster have been getting their jollies by chattering on about "teabagging" in a heavy-handed attempt to mock the protests. (For the benefit of those who have led a sheltered existence, a definition of "teabagging" is available here.) I don't know, Dave. I 'd have expected a Clinton apologist like you to be a tad more hesitant about making oral sex jokes…

Posted by tmg110 at 7:41 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 16 April 2009 8:02 PM EDT

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Posting about Thomas Heggan and Mister Roberts put me in mind of another writer of the same generation who died before his time: C. M. Kornbluth. He began writing for the science fiction pulps as a teenager during the 1930s. By the time he was cut off by a heart attack in 1958 at the age of 34, Kornbluth had a dozen novels and more than 50 short stories to his credit, and was generally acknowledged to be one of science fiction's major talents.

I believe that if anyone were to ask me how to write a short story, I would advise him to go off and read Kornbluth's mordant tale of time travel and medical malpractice, "The Little Black Bag." From its first sentence ("Old Dr. Full felt the winter in his bones as he limped down the alley.") to its utterly heartless conclusion, this story holds the reader by the scruff of the neck and rubs his nose in the realities of the human condition. It would be a literary crime of the first order to give away the plot; suffice to say that a marvelous medical bag from the future falls into the hands of a drunken old reprobate and thereby hangs the tale.

Anyone who cares for good writing will find in "The Little Black Bag" an adroit demonstration of the possibilities of the English language. Kornbluth never puts a foot wrong. Whether he's describing the alcoholic fantasies of old Dr. Full or the perverse wonders of the twenty-fifth century, he makes his improbable story improbably convincing. And he leaves us with the conviction that if a medical bag from the future ever did appear in our world, the results would not be very different from those portrayed in his story.

As you might expect, "The Little Black Bag" has been much anthologized. The best place to read it, though, is in His Share of Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction of C.M. Kornbluth, which will also give you the pleasure of discovering this writer's many other terrific stories. Oh, and if you think you don't care for science fiction, then I know for a fact that you've never spent any time with Kornbluth.

(Historical footnote: C.M. Kornbluth served in the US Army during the Second World War, and was awarded the Bronze Star for heroism during the Battle of the Bulge.)

Posted by tmg110 at 6:48 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 16 April 2009 7:29 PM EDT

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As the greatest generation passes from the scene, this is a good time to read (or reread) some of the classic novels of the Second World War. I've been doing just that over the past year or so, and this morning I have a recommendation for you.

Mister Roberts is perhaps better known as a movie—a very good movie—starring Henry Fonda, Jimmy Cagney and Jack Lemmon. But the movie was based on a book: Thomas Heggan's novel of the same name. Published in 1946, it was an instant bestseller. Adapted for the stage, it became a Broadway hit and won a Tony award in 1948. The movie followed in 1955 (with Fonda reprising his Broadway role as Lieutenant Roberts); later there was a TV series and a made-for-TV movie. But it all began with the novel—and what a great novel it is.

Heggan based Mister Roberts on his own experiences as an officer on a US Navy supply ship in the Pacific during the war. The book is best described as a comedy of naval manners. Its portrayal of the officers and crew of the USS Reluctant, a group of men consigned to the backwaters of the Pacific theater, performing an unheroic but necessary task, is a salutary reminder that the war was won not only by the Audie Murphys and George Pattons and Bull Halseys, but by the guys behind the fronts who delivered the fuel and food and ammo, repaired the weapons of war, typed up the paperwork and answered the phone.

Mister Roberts is also a very funny book—one of the handful I own that has the power to make me laugh out loud. The Captain's precious palm tree, the Scotch-making session, Ensign Pulver's bomb-construction project, the Doc's consultation with Seaman Lindstrom—but I won't spoil your pleasure by describing these episodes. Just take my word for it, they're hilarious.

Thomas Heggan died in 1949—a probable suicide. But his novel lives on, and it is in its light-hearted, humorous, ultimately serious way a fitting tribute to the men who fought and won the Second World War.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:23 AM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 16 April 2009 7:32 PM EDT

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