I'm utterly baffled by our president's insistence on projecting the image of American weakness. I don't think he is a truly stupid, but so far he's doing very well as a pinch hitter while we wait for a real idiot to come along. Two Wall Street Journal columns comment on Obama's turn to nuclear disarmament in the face of North Korean provocation. First the lead editorial:
'"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something."
So declared President Obama Sunday in Prague regarding North Korea's missile launch, which America's U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice added was a direct violation of U.N. resolutions. At which point, the Security Council spent hours debating its nonresponse, thus proving to nuclear proliferators everywhere that rules aren't binding, violations won't be punished, and words of warning mean nothing.
Rarely has a Presidential speech been so immediately and transparently divorced from reality as Mr. Obama's in Prague.'
Well, at least the reporters were impressed by Obama's excursion through Fantasy Land -- according to Bret Stephens anyway -- which doesn't say much for today's mainstream reporters. You've got to wonder, just what is it that Obama had hoped to accomplish.
'It's also worth considering just what a new round of arms control is meant to accomplish. In his speech, Mr. Obama painted it as a matter of setting an example to the wider world.
But as the journalist Walter Lippmann observed in 1943, the disarmament movement of the interwar years only proved "tragically successful in disarming the nations that believed in disarmament." Mr. Obama himself noted that "some countries will break the rules" of nuclear nonproliferation, adding that "That's why we need a structure in place that ensures when any nation does, they will face consequences."'
What about the non-state players like al Qaeda? What consequences will they face if they successfully set off a nuclear bomb in lower Manhattan? Which they would most assuredly love to do. Exactly how will nuclear disarmament deter al Qaeda? What's the theory behind that?
We've entered a time warp. It's the Carter administration all over again. But this time it's worse. It's a much more dangerous world.
