TOBY PETZOLD

Among the many bizarre and inexplicable things Joe Biden said in last night’s debate, I nominate his brief history of modern Lebanon as the shiningest example:

When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”

Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.

Has Biden gone mad? I ask this sincerely. Does he have some sort of organic brain disorder that would compel him to make such demonstrably untrue claims? Unbelievable. Read Michael J. Totten’s incredulous response:

What on Earth is he talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in an alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one.

Nobody – nobody – has ever kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Not the United States. Not France. Not Israel. And not the Lebanese. Nobody.

Joe Biden has literally no idea what he’s talking about.

Moreover, I have never once heard anything about Obama calling for NATO intervention in Lebanon. When did such a thing happen? When the Second Lebanon War broke out in the summer of 2006, was Obama really calling for NATO to keep the peace in Lebanon? Call me crazy, but I think that’s utter nonsense.

Needless to say, Big Media is far too busy fellating Obamachrist to question Biden’s hallucinatory account. Equally needless to add, although I must, is that such claims, had they been made by Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin, would have drawn derisive howls from such miserable fluffers as David Gergen and Anderson Cooper and the other Leftist craphounds at CNN. Did the anti-American reporter Michael Ware manage to raise an eyebrow at the news that we evicted Hizballah from Lebanon? Doubt it.

In a just world, Biden’s remarks would be regarded as even weirder than Gerald Ford’s claim in his 1976 debate with Carter that there was no Soviet domination of Poland.

But this isn’t a just world.

Since Obama and his surrogates concede that he has no foreign policy experience to run on, they are obligated to say that he has the “right judgement” instead, which is a subjective dodge. But since the legend of this superior judgement is almost always invoked with regard to the War for Iraq, aren’t journalists obligated to ask Obama why he believes a non-decision about a war made almost six years ago constitutes a relevant and timely demonstration of his “right judgement”? He can’t keep going back to that well when his actual decisions about Iraq have subsequently been proven wrong.

Obama may think that he will lead us and the world into a new age of unicorns and rainbows, but he is a dumb bastard to not understand that Presidents inherit real circumstances and accomplished facts. We went into Iraq for more reasons than weapons of mass murder. It’s way past time for him and the godforsaken dolts who support him to acquaint themselves with some of those causes.

Barry, when the only thing that would validate your position on the War for Iraq, insofar as you could be said to have one, is the sudden escalation of violence there, particularly aginst our troops, it would be best for you to come to terms with reality and tell the hippies in your party to shut up and sit down. The war is won —if we choose to leave there on terms that serve our wider strategic interests in the region. If we withdraw in such a way that reawakens the hostile elements in Iraq just because you want to keep to some arbitrary date (a “date certain,” indeed), then you will have squandered what has been won at great cost for mere political purposes. Nobody oughta give a damn what your anti-military/anti-war party says about what Iraq really is and what we’re accomplishing there because all Iraq has ever been to you is a fundraising cause. Lots of Democrats supported the war in the beginning because Iraq had been festering for years. Even Bill Clinton knew Iraq was a danger —and officially endorsed regime change in Iraq as the policy of this country. But you’re to the left of them all. You’re supposedly better than them all because of your “superior” judgement —but that’s garbage and you know it. Right now, because of your lack of judgement and your lack of integrity, you are allowing yourself to be bullied by the anti-war Left for fear of offending them when you know that we have succeeded in Iraq. Your judgement is apparently inferior to those you have long insulted as incompetent. What are you going to be saying to the troops? Are you going to look them in the eye and tell them that they haven’t accomplished anything and that their sacrifices have been for naught? Do you have any optimism to share with a country thats democratic and free market future owes itself to our efforts there? I doubt it. But you’ll be sure to dispense platitudes like the soft soap of your ideology. The Eurofreaks will eat it up and the nauseating propagandists travelling with you will coo and moan at your every utterance, but maybe there’s just enough of us still here in America who won’t buy your lies and are ready to call you on them every time.

So, let’s have it, tough guy. Let’s see you shock and awe the Democratic Party with the news they haven’t bothered to hear —which is that we have succeeded in Iraq and have made a better world possible because of it. But let them down easy, Barry. You’re finally going to have to say something that matters. Don’t flub your lines.

By saying that the now-infamous New Yorker magazine cover depicting him and his wife as Muslim terrorists is offensive to Muslims, isn’t Barack Obama basically calling for a jihad against the infidel? Muslim terrorists and their Leftist sympathizers have a difficult time with ironic cartoons, so what he is doing is reckless.

I still don’t understand how people can say Obama is any more a Christian than a Muslim. He obviously had no real connection to Christianity prior to making the purely political choice of joining the ultra-racist Trinity United Church of Christ, so how is it wrong to doubt his word? His word has become worthless on dozens of major issues, so what is the deal here? Because he was baptized? So what? I was baptized, too, but I would never lie to the people around me and claim to be something I am not.

Obama should never have reminded Muslim nutjobs that they should be offended because now they —and the stupid hippies who support this absurd campaign of his— will turn to violence.

McCain knows how to use Obama’s support for terrorist civil rights:

Let me be clear, under my administration Osama bin Laden will either be killed on the battlefield or executed. Senator Obama’s failure to comprehend the implication of the Supreme Court decision he embraced and the historical precedent of Nuremberg raise serious questions about judgment and experience and whether Senator Obama is ready to assume the awesome responsibilities of commander in chief.

Now that Obama’s changed the game on campaign finance, it won’t be enough for McCain to be right on the facts; Big Media will bury that stuff every time. He will, in addition, need to scandalize Obama’s brand. If he doesn’t do it himself, others who love their country just as much will need to stand up and keep neo-Marxism and identity politics out of the White House.

What happened to all of the Democrats’ tough talk on making the President cry uncle on the War for Iraq? I don’t know, but opposing the war there must not be as important as it used to be:

WASHINGTON, June 16 (Reuters) - Democrats in the U.S. Congress, who came to power last year on a call to end the combat in Iraq, will soon give President George W. Bush the last war-funding bill of his presidency without any of the conditions they sought for withdrawing U.S. troops, congressional aides said on Monday.

Lawmakers are arranging to send Bush $165 billion in new money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, enough to last for about a year and well beyond when Bush leaves office on Jan. 20.

What’s changed their minds? Is it the same thing Obama doesn’t want to have to acknowledge, but must, anyway?

Don’t forget that the War for Iraq has made us safer. International jihad was drawn to Iraq because we made that country the primary venue for taking on the Great Satan. After five years of fighting our best and bravest, what is the opinion of martyrdom now? As they continue to reject al-Qaeda and even Osama himself, the Muslim world is beginning to see that Uncle Sam’s judgements are altogether righteous.

ABC’s Jake Tapper recently asked Barry Obama (emphases mine):

The Bush administration says, no matter what people think about other programs, other policies they’ve initiated, there has not been a terrorist attack within the U.S. since 9/11. And they say the reason that is, is because of the domestic programs, many of which you opposed, the NSA surveillance program, Guantanamo Bay, and other programs.

How do you know that they’re wrong? It’s not possible that they’re right?

Notice that Obama never answers the question:

Well, keep in mind I haven’t opposed, for example, the national security surveillance program, the NSA program. What I’ve said that we can do it within the constraints of our civil liberties and our Constitution.

TAPPER: They disagree, though.

OBAMA: Well, but the fact that they disagree does not mean that they’re right on this. What it means is, is that they have been willing to skirt basic protections that are in our Constitution, that our founders put in place.

And it is my firm belief that we can track terrorists, we can crack down on threats against the United States, but we can do so within the constraints of our Constitution. And there has been no evidence on their part that we can’t.

And, you know, let’s take the example of Guantanamo. What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks — for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated. 

And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law all around the world, and given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, “Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims.”

So that, I think, is an example of something that was unnecessary. We could have done the exact same thing, but done it in a way that was consistent with our laws.  

Remember how the elites howled when Bush the Younger referred to terrorists in the days after the atrocities of 11 September 2001 as “these folks”? Remember how that was inappropriate and cowboyish? Well, now such constructions are acceptable because someone else is making them.

And when you look at how Obama evades Tapper’s question, he does so by dashing into the thicket of the Bill Clinton-John Kerry approach to America’s defense in the post-Cold War world: these terrorists can be handled through the judicial system. And why is that? Because anti-war liberals apparently believe that American Constitutional jurisprudence extends itself throughout the world and even into our combat theaters. Mo may be Mirandized —even though Mo would slash a hippie’s throat as soon as he would mine.

So where do liberals come by this imperialist belief in the United States Constitution? I have no idea. That they do, though, is an indication of their essential childishness. These are not the spiritual descendants of Wilson or FDR or Truman making the world safe for democracy or making us an arsenal of such a world; these are incoherent people, now isolationists and then, some other day, globalists. These miserable hippie bastards deem America’s military sacrifices only worthwhile if there’s no discernible strategic interest at stake. They do not support the troops because they cannot understand the value in winning the War for Iraq. They also do not support the troops because they reflexively charge anyone who supports the war, but has never served, as a chickenhawk who deserves the punishment of military service himself. You could ask Obama this very hour whether this war should have been waged and he would say no because he has never been anything more than a gainsayer on that point. He believes that that is his answer and trump card in one. That he has supposedly opposed the war from the start is asserted to be the final proof of his superior judgement and, yet, neither part of that equation is true. When does he have to start making sense? Shouldn’t it have happened by now —or is the intoxication of charisma too much for such concerns?

When I read about the Supreme Court’s decision today regarding our detainees at Guantanamo Bay, my first reaction was not that of anger but of great pride that our civilization is shaped by such institutions. This 5-4 decision is a tribute to our forefathers’ ingenious belief that there must be brakes on any excess of efficiency or even of the coherency of The State. That is to say, our government was designed with a deliberate flaw that compels us to constantly defend against what some ideologues really want: the perfected Union. 

That said, I am surprised to learn that a homicidal Muslim of Arab extraction —born in the manure of the dysfunctional Middle East and desiring nothing but martyrdom through jihad— is entitled to the same rights as I am under the Constitution of the United States of America. Liberals and anti-Americans who applaud this decision today ought to be asked whether such an expansion of American rights to non-Americans and unlawful combatants isn’t really just more of the same unconscious imperialism that pervades all their thoughts. That is to ask, if hippies think America’s Constitution belongs to the world, then why don’t they get on board with the rest of what that entails? The Danelaw must be respected —from Baghdad to Islamabad, by God!

Drudge links to this report about Muslim women in Europe (and presumably elsewhere) who are choosing to surgically restore their hymens:

Gynecologists report that in the past few years, more Muslim women are asking for certificates of virginity before marriage.

That trend in turn has created a demand among cosmetic surgeons for hymen replacements, which, if done properly, they say, will not be detected and will produce tell-tale vaginal bleeding on the wedding night. The service is widely advertised on the Internet; there are medical tourism packages to countries like Tunisia where the procedure is less expensive.

“If you’re a Muslim woman growing up in more open societies in Europe, you can easily end up having sex before marriage,” said Hicham Mouallem, a doctor in London who performs the surgery. “So if you’re looking to marry a Muslim and don’t want to have problems, you’ll try to recapture your virginity.”

What a pathetic commentary on Islam —and dhimmitude— in Eurabia. If you “don’t want to have problems”? What problems? Oh! You mean problems like a young woman getting kicked to death by her own father and brothers because she was seen talking to an infidel? That happened recently in Iraq, but we hear about the Mohammedans’ sharia-approved murder all the time throughout what once was Europe.

It’s interesting that the term “honor killing” has passed by that very form into the public discourse without any question or qualification. Is it a literal translation of something the Prophet said? Doesn’t it appall the Western Left? Or are they too sure of Bushitler’s crimes against humanity to ever stop and consider what sort of enemy we are really facing as a civilization?

David Wright with ABC News was saying earlier that Obama’s policy is to not deal with Hamas because they’re not heads of state, but a terrorist group. Hmm. A very tough line to take, one would think.

But then it is also Obama’s position that, as President, he would meet with the leadership of Iran and Syria and presumably other terrorist-sponsoring states without preconditions?

Does the man who wishes to lead these 57 United States not understand that Hamas is a tool of Iran and that Iran is the actual problem?