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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review April 21, 2009 / 27 Nisan 5769

Peace Through Weakness

By David Limbaugh


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Observing the Obama administration's approach so far to the war on terror is somewhat reminiscent, if you'll accept the crude analogy, of watching Panamanian boxing legend Roberto Duran's rematch against American boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard. Duran was within his rights to say "no mas" and quit, but it didn't keep him from losing.


But here the analogy breaks down. While Duran could avoid further Leonard blows by quitting, a nation under attack by a warring force cannot prevent further attacks against itself simply by declaring an end to hostilities. Yet that's precisely what the Obama administration appears to be doing in the war on terror, most recently with its outrageously reckless public release of classified Justice Department memos on the legality of CIA interrogation techniques used on enemy prisoners.


Democrats ceaselessly complained about the Bush administration's allegedly misguided approach to the war, contending it was too broad (Bush should have focused almost exclusively on al-Qaida in Afghanistan), that he engaged in cowboy diplomacy, and his treatment of enemy prisoners was inhumane.


Deny it if you choose, but the gravamen of these complaints was that the United States, in many ways, was the bad guy, the aggressor nation that attacked Iraq without provocation or justification, was inflicting gratuitous "collateral damage" on Iraq and its people, and routinely — and as a matter of policy — was brutalizing and torturing enemy prisoners in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and everywhere else our heartless authorities could get their hands on them.


During the campaign, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama embraced these themes wholesale, saying we'd alienated other nations with our unilateralism, stirred up the Arab street against us, and become a virtual terrorist recruitment factory.


Democrats even argued, straight-faced, that our "torture" of terrorist detainees could imperil Americans POWs, as if their beheadings were responses to our slapping. They said we could change all that by reversing course and extending a hand of friendship, peace and cooperation to other nations, particularly those of the Muslim world.


The unmistakable corollary of these complaints against United States policy was that if we'd just quit being so arrogant toward the rest of the world and mean to our enemies, er, criminal defendants, we could bring this war to an end. Or, at least, we could diminish the terrorists' resolve by removing apparently legitimate complaints they have against us and retarding their recruiting efforts.


It really does sound fantastic and silly that anyone could really believe that the United States has brought terrorist wrath upon itself by doing anything other than, perhaps, nobly allying with Israel. It's even more ludicrous to entertain seriously the notion that if we'd just start being nicer, we could improve our international image and make ourselves safer, especially when you consider that being nicer entails lowering our guard and playing into the enemy's hands on a number of fronts.


But this is precisely the kind of silliness that is driving Obama's foreign policy. From the get-go, Obama has been apologizing to the world for the "arrogance" and brutality of the United States; bowing before, kissing and warmly accepting America-bashing books from foreign kings and dictators; flirting with nuclear disarmament while rogue nations rush, undeterred, to join the nuclear club; contemplating serious defense budget cuts across the board, which could jeopardize essential weapons systems; insisting that we cashier war terminology by substituting "overseas contingency operations" for "war on terror" and "man-caused disasters" for "terrorist attacks"; and now releasing internal CIA memos detailing enhanced interrogation techniques, which have demonstrably prevented attacks and saved lives.


Obama pretended to agonize over his decision to release the memos over the objections of his own intelligence officials, but there is no excuse for the damage it will do to our national security by neutralizing the future use of these procedures and inviting "the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened our intelligence gathering in the past," in the words of former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and ex-CIA Director Michael Hayden. Making it worse, we got nothing in return except for Obama's selective nod to "transparency," as if it's prudent to be transparent with classified intelligence involving our national security.


It is axiomatic that ideas have consequences, a theme being played out by the Obama administration's turning a blind eye to the magnitude of terrorist evil and seeing a rough moral equivalence between beheadings by terrorists and aggressive American interrogation techniques to extract lifesaving information from terrorists.


Commentators who believe Obama only released the "torture memos" to appease his bloodthirsty, Bush-hating, leftist base, which would be bad enough, are missing the point that Obama shares his base's beliefs. Obama is commander in chief, and his guiding foreign policy doctrine is "peace through weakness."

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David Limbaugh, a columnist and attorney practicing in Cape Girardeau, Mo. Comment by clicking here.


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