Well apparently a president can’t just make new lows for respect of American moral authority in one single term and then let it go at that.
Nope.
Apparently after getting stiff-armed by our ideological enemies once in the first Obama term- turning his back on American values and getting called out on it- the administration felt the need to demonstrate crumbling American might and values by going back to that well early in the second term too.
During the first term, we suffered the embarrassment of the Chinese Communist who publicly lectured Obama about straying away from capitalism and taking on too much debt.
“China, the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt,” reported Reuters in 2011, after S&P downgrade U.S. government debt, “took the world's economic superpower to task for allowing its fiscal house to get into such disarray. It also revived its calls for a new stable global reserve currency to replace the U.S. dollar, gaining a sympathetic ear in the United Kingdom.
"The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone," said China's official Xinhua news agency at the time.
The president of the United States once, not long ago, stood up to Communism when they tried to take over South Korea- in this he was sustained by the whole world.
Historically-speaking it wasn’t too long ago that President Ronald Reagan seized the moral high ground by demanding that the Russians tear down the Berlin Wall. In fact, it was 26 years ago yesterday, as my friend Katie Pavlich points out.
Today we’re left with the president being lectured to by Chinese Communists regarding reckless spending; and, after being lectured to by Chinese Communists, in return, all Obama can offer the rest of the world is a lecture of his own about the people trusting the government.
“If people can’t trust not only the executive branch, but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process, and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here,” Professor Obama said in his newest lecture standing behind banner promoting and IRS-NSA joint open house and retinal scan event.
One of those calling Obama out for B.S. was Mr. Privacy himself.
In a second-term reprise, Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin in return lectured his pal Obama about “privacy.” The lecture comes in the wake of a number of snooping scandals including the IRS targeting of conservatives, the NSA spying scandal and the general Chicago-style thuggery practiced by the Obama mob.
"I can tell you that, at least in Russia, you cannot just go and tap into someone’s phone conversation without a warrant issued by court,” Putin told state press organ, Russia Today’s Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan.
“That’s more or less the way a civilized society should go about fighting terrorism with modern-day technology. As long as it is exercised within the boundaries of the law that regulates intelligence activities, it’s alright. But if it’s unlawful, then it’s bad.”
Putin questioned how well American intelligence agencies “are controlled by the public.”
But his comments went even further, hitting Obama on policy areas no less relevant if less controversial.
Putin questioned how arming Al Qaida in Syria is helping combat Islamic terrorism worldwide. It’s a question that Americans have asked as well as the Syrian rebellion falls further under the control of Islamic extremists.
“On Wednesday,” reported the Associated Press, “activists said Syrian rebels battled Shiites in a village in the country's east, killing more than 60 people, including civilians. Earlier this week, a 15-year-old boy was executed in public by Islamist rebel fighters in the city of Aleppo for taking the Muslim Prophet Muhammad's name in vain.”
And Obama wants to give those guys weapons?
Wasn’t that the mistake Obama and Hillary made in Libya?
Widespread reports say that U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed by an Al Qaida-led terror attack in the northeastern city of Benghazi, was on a mission to recover hand-held, point-and-shoot, surface to air missiles in Libya, capable of taking down U.S. airliners. The administration armed the rebels with such weapons despite warnings by the C.I.A. of the risks involved.
[Note: Jim Geraghty at NRO has an excellent review of the arms snafu in Libya.]
Getting past the idiocy of arming people who we fought in Afghanistan, there is the little matter of not cleaning up the mess they made in Libya.
“What do you have there now?” Putin said about Libya while pointing out that Libya had a relatively high level of affluence under Gaddafi. “There is a war of everybody against everybody among various tribes, there is war for resources, and, I’m afraid, if we go the same way in Syria, there will be same havoc in Syria that we’re now witnessing in Libya.”
Don’t get me wrong.
Putin’s a bloody dictator with a past in the KGB bureaucracy.
But even liberals would agree that this wasn’t the Hope and Change that they believe in.
And it’s a sad state when we have to rely on China and Russia to point it out.