Send Aid Money To Somalia?

Ralph Peters has some thoughts on recent foreign policy decisions from the Obama Administration. O'S FOREIGN FOLLIES

Our president was reluctant to authorize deadly force. Against pirates, for God's sake. Then, 24 hours after the Obama White House declared "Mission Accomplished," Somali pirates attacked another US-flagged ship.

This time, the pirates used rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns -- serious firepower.

Our response? The White House didn't send our Navy after the pirates. We're content that the attack was unsuccessful, with just some combat damage to our ship. Live and let live, folks.

Then, on Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced her solution to piracy: Send your tax dollars to Somalia in foreign aid.

That's rewarding criminality. It's tribute money. We're not asking for trouble. We're on our knees begging for it.

I'm going to be away from the keyboard most of the weekend. Have a good one!

Withdrawal Strategy from Afghanistan?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has harsh words about the nation building project that we've embarked on for the last eight years:

THE HAGUE, March 30 -- The billions of dollars spent in U.S. aid to Afghanistan over the past seven years have been largely wasted, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday.

"For those of you who have been on the ground in Afghanistan, you have seen with your own eyes that a lot of these aid programs don't work," she said. "There are so many problems with them. There are problems of design, there are problems of staffing, there are problems of implementation, there are problems of accountability. You just go down the line."

Clinton called the amount of money spent without results "heartbreaking."

Is it just me or is this shockingly candid? Doesn't one conclude that we should not go any further with this project if the last eight years was futile? We're in a time where we don't have the billions to try to see if another eight years will work. (The article sites seven years, they are rounding down, I'm rounding up.)

This was not some kind of slip up by Clinton. If I had to guess, the Obama administration is managing expectations and perhaps preparing the way for a pull out. Feed the public that it's a lost cause, blame the previous administration for the failure and get out. It might take a year or two. We'll see. I hope so.

Ralph Peters: Obama's Foreign Failures

Yesterday, I mentioned Obama's lack of street smarts when it comes to dealing with foreign governments. Today Ralph Peters piles on saying the administration "have set new records for instant incompetence."

China: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (you know that gal married to the Saudi hireling) crawled to Beijing to tell the party bosses that human rights don't matter. Our "relationship" is more important than freedom and human dignity.

Beijing's response? A staged military confrontation with an unarmed US Navy vessel; continued screw-America currency cheating; a renewed crackdown on dissidents and, yesterday, a call for a new global currency to replace the dollar.

Thanks, Hill. You're a sweetheart.

Pakistan: With viral corruption throughout and Islamist fanatics sweeping half of its territory, Pakistan's coming apart. Its Dem-adored prez tries to ban opposition parties and gut the judiciary. It has nukes and seethes with hatred of America. And Islamabad controls our primary supply route into Afghanistan, using it as an extortion tool.

Obama's response? Billions in new aid for Pak pols to pocket. We'd be better off handing the money to AIG to pay out more bonuses.

Afghanistan: Obama's Vietnam. Am I the only American who remembers that candidate Obama had a plan to capture Osama bin Laden and fix our previous "mistakes" in Afghanistan? President Obama doesn't have a clue.

Iran: Obama tried to reach out, to talk. After all, talking got him to the White House. But America-bashing is what keeps Iran's leaders in office, it's their political essence. After 30 years of fierce hostility, hasn't anyone figured out that the senior mullahs need us as an enemy? Without the Great Satan America to blame, they'd have some real explaining to do to their homies. So O got the left-hand finger.

He wanted to chat with the Taliban, too. They told him he could stick it where the sun don't shine.

He is dead on with Iran. For me, Ralph Peters' Wednesday column is always "must read." Even if I disagree with a lot of what he says.

Fatuous "Reset Button" Diplomacy

I had recently posted on Hillary Clinton's ridiculous "rest button" stunt with a top Russian diplomat.

Anne Applebaum goes beyond the stunt itself, and writes about the new thinking in diplomacy under Clinton for the Obama administration. They're going to have to think a little harder.

Nor is this true of Russia alone. Any president can legitimately call for a fresh start in his relations with the world, and none more so than the current American president, who replaces an unpopular predecessor. Sooner or later, however, Obama will also have to make difficult decisions about regimes that oppose U.S. policy for reasons deeper than dislike of George W. Bush. If Russia persists in its occupation of Georgia, do we accept that situation? If Russia uses its energy policy to blackmail Europe, do we go along with that, too?

The rest of the world is no different. It's a fine thing to open diplomatic relations with Iran or Syria—I've always thought it extremely stupid that we have no embassy, and thus no resident intelligence officer, in Tehran—as long as we remember that talking is not a solution: Sometimes more "dialogue" reveals deeper differences. It's also a fine thing for the president to issue greetings on the occasion of the Persian new year, but that might not dampen the popularity of Iran's nuclear program among both adherents and opponents of its current government. What then?

I do realize that these are early days. The traditional, deadly struggle for influence between the State Department and the National Security Council is only just getting under way, and the president has other things on his mind. But the gift of a "reset button," however translated, was not a good beginning. If this administration thinks it can transform America's relationships with Russia or anyone else with the flick of a switch and a change of rhetoric, then it is living in a virtual reality, not a real one.

Do you get the sinking feeling that Obama and Hillary don't know what the hell they're doing? (We already knew that about Joe Biden.) We've grown so used to hearing how intelligent they are, but when it comes to foreign policy they don't seem to have any street smarts or sense.

Cringe Worthy Hillary Moment of the Day

Watch her try to laugh her way out of it. The State Department couldn't find a proper translator to use the correct word? Also, hadn't the Russians already scoffed at Biden's "reset button" line weeks ago?

You heard it here first: I think Hillary is going to be fired by 2010.

UPDATE: Even without the misspelling, isn't this appallingly cheesy? She grabs his hand to push the "re-set button." This is the sophisticated diplomacy we were expecting with the Obama Administration?

Creditor China Wanting Debtor America to Kowtow

The Chinese invented the word kowtow. Now that they own a disproportional amount of US debt, they are starting let them know that they have a say in operations:

China may voice its concerns over U.S. government finances and the potential for a weaker dollar when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits China on Feb. 20, according to He Zhicheng, an economist at Agricultural Bank of China, the nation’s third-largest lender by assets. A People’s Bank of China official, who didn’t wish to be identified, declined to comment on the telephone.

“In talks with Clinton, China will ask for a guarantee that the U.S. will support the dollar’s exchange rate and make sure China’s dollar-denominated assets are safe,” said He in Beijing. “That would be one of the prerequisites for more purchases.”

(...)

“The biggest concern for China to continue buying U.S. Treasuries is that if Obama’s stimulus doesn’t work out as expected, the Fed may have to print money to cover the deficit,” said Shen Jianguang, a Hong Kong-based economist at China International Capital Corp., partly owned by Morgan Stanley. “That will cause a dollar slump.”

The big problem with the average American was that they weren't saving any money and they were over extended on credit. Joe Six Pack had a McMansion, Cherokee and BMW in the driveway. It's a microcosm of what the US government is doing. Instead of cutting up the credit card they are going on the biggest borrowing spree in history.

Watch as those US Treasury securities that the Chinese have go toxic. Imagine if the US have to default?

Annoyingly Naive "Activists"

My eyes rolled as I read this Yahoo News Item: Activists 'shocked' at Clinton stance on China rights

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Amnesty International and a pro-Tibet group voiced shock Friday after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed not to let human rights concerns hinder cooperation with China.

Paying her first visit to Asia as the top US diplomat, Clinton said the United States would continue to press China on long-standing US concerns over human rights such as its rule over Tibet.

"But our pressing on those issues can't interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis," Clinton told reporters in Seoul just before leaving for Beijing.

Why are they shocked? Let me lay it out for them:

1. Hillary Clinton does not have priniciples or ideology. She is a power vessel and will do whatever she thinks the opinion polls, and circumstances dictate. She was for the Iraq War/ she was against the Iraq War. She was pro-Nafta/ Not so pro-Nafta. To name just two. She doesn't care about Tibet, never did.

2. What is the US to do? Full scale invasion? Start World War III over Tibet?

3. The US owes a hell of a lot of money to China and is asking for more. They are in no position to tell China to do anything.

Got that?

Nation Building in Afghanistan Update: Karzai Getting the Boot

With the economy tanking, the debt levels at red alert - it's unfortunate that the new US administration has to worry about who leads a stone age country, half a world away in Afghanistan. The nation building/democratizing project is not working out and now it appears Hamid Karzai is wearing out his welcome in Washington.

Barack Obama's arrival in the White House and the wind of change sweeping through Washington could lead to the ousting from power of Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, The Independent has learnt. International support for Mr Karzai, who was once the darling of the West, has waned spectacularly, amid worsening violence, endemic corruption and weak leadership. But until very recently, diplomats insisted there were no viable alternatives even as fighting has intensified and the Taliban insurgency in the south has grown.

It didn't work out with Karzai. The real surprise would have been if it did.

Karzai officials had hoped Hillary Clinton, now the US Secretary of State, would prove their ally in White House. But those hopes were dashed last week when she branded Afghanistan a "narco-state" with a government "plagued by limited capacity and widespread corruption" during her confirmation hearing.

Clinton has been in the Senate since the Afghan War started in 2001. She waited until 2008 to make this statement? She just came to this conclusion? She was a member of the Senate Committe on Armed Services and she never piped up on this?

They are bungling their way through this. The next guy they're going to appoint in Afghanistan is going to be better? We're looking at another fours years minmum, as the new administration tries to feel its way through this. It's too bad, this is their chance to say "mission accomplished" and go home. We've rooted out the Al Qaeda camps from the country and that was the mission in the first place. Let them do their own nation building.

Banana Republic Foreign Minister

Christopher Hitchens is attacking the Clintons again. In Slate Magazine today, he underlines the huge conflict of interest with the donor list to the Clinton Foundation and Mrs. Clinton's ability to do her job if her appointment as Secretary of State passes Congress: (here)

The deal struck by the wide-eyed incoming Obama administration is that the list of donors to the Clinton Foundation will be reviewed once every year and that only the new donations from foreign states—which already include an extraordinarily large number from Gulf sheikdoms—will be scrutinized by administration lawyers. How would we react if we read that this was the rule for the Vladimir Putin government, say, or former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's regime in Germany? Before me, for example, is the report of a pledge of $100 million to the Clinton foundation's Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative by a set of companies based in Vancouver and known as the Lundin Group. The ostensible purpose of this mind-boggling contribution is stated in the usual vacuous terms of "sustainable local economies," chiefly in Africa. All I know for sure about the Lundin Group is that it does quite a lot of business in Sudan. And all I can think to ask—as perhaps some senator might think to ask—is why such a big corporate interest doesn't just donate the money directly, rather than distributing it through the offices of an outfit run by a seasoned ex-presidential influence-peddler. What do they and the other donors suppose they are getting for their money? A good feeling?

That was another no-brainer question I just asked. So let me stop insulting you, dear reader, and pose a question to which we do not have any obvious answer. Why is Sen. Clinton, the spouse of the great influence-peddler, being nominated in the first place? In exchange for giving the painful impression that our State Department will be an attractive destination for lobbyists and donors, what exactly are we getting? George Marshall? Dean Acheson? Even Madeleine Albright? No, we are getting a notoriously ambitious woman who made a fool of herself over Bosnia, at the time and during the recent campaign, and who otherwise has no command of foreign affairs except what she's picked up second-hand from an impeached ex-president, a disbarred lawyer, and a renter of the Lincoln Bedroom. If the Senate waves this through, it will have reinforced its recent image as the rubber-stamp chamber of a bankrupt banana republic. Not an especially good start to the brave new era.

This is a theme that Hitchens has been writing about lately, how utterly sordid Washington has become. It's not that there wasn't always corruption, there was, it just seems that in the last 6-12 months is nothing like we've seen in history.