Required reading

Two rather depressing pieces this time, both of which concern Obama's foreign policy. The first is by Ralph Peters, who analyzes Obama's various foreign policy (mis)adventures around the globe. In fairness to Obama, his policy on Iraq has been pretty decent, but Peters chronicles the other major issues -- Iran, China, Russia, etc. -- and finds Obama's actions the product of a "terrifying naivete." Money quote:

By comparison, the Carter administration is starting to look like a model of manly strength, courage and patriotism.

The second is by the Weekly Standard's Reuel Marc Gerecht. Aptly titled, "The Return of Weakness," it deals specifically with Obama's naive (at best) efforts at improving relations with the vile mullahocracy running Iran.

Much of Obama's outreach could be chalked up as harmless if the stakes weren't so high. The truth: The administration knows that it will probably fail to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon through diplomacy or sanctions. The only sanctions that could conceivably pull the regime to the negotiating table, freeze its nuclear program, and allow for inspections of its closed nuclear sites would be energy related. Stopping the export of gasoline to Iran (which cannot refine enough for its domestic market) could have a devastating effect on Iran's economy and public morale. But neither the Obama administration nor the Europeans like the "big stick" approach. In other words, the nuke is coming.

[...]

The Obama administration now runs the risk of appearing weak in its dealings with Tehran. Whether through mirror-imaging or conflict avoidance, it has set the stage for an embarrassing denouement. Unless Washington can convince itself, and then the Europeans, to implement draconian sanctions, Iran will get its nuke. Once that happens, the appeasement (or engagement) reflex will come powerfully into play. The Islamic Republic's appetite to push its newly obtained strategic advantage could prove irresistible.

The clerical regime has never abandoned its ecumenical outreach to Sunni militants. American success, or more likely failure, in Iraq or Afghanistan could be a powerful spur to Iran to strike. State-supported terrorism, which would be both denied and nuclear-protected, could come ferociously back at us. It was a truly nervy move for Damascus, Tehran's closest Arab ally, to have the North Koreans build a uranium-processing plant (the one the Israelis bombed in September 2007). But then, terrorist-supporting "rogue states," by definition, do nervy, unexpected things.

It is useful to remember what has motivated the Iranians to talk in the past: fear. Fear that the Islamic revolution would collapse brought Khomeini to the negotiating table with Iraq in 1988. And, most tellingly, there is 2003, when Tehran made an overture--how serious is unclear--to the United States via the Swiss ambassador in Tehran. To state the obvious: After the fall of Saddam Hussein, Tehran was terrified that President Bush might eliminate another member of the "axis of evil," the one that had just been discovered to have a massive underground uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz. It was fear, not "mutual respect," that provoked some within the clerical regime to reach out to Washington.

Severe tension in foreign affairs is often salutary. Although it is out of fashion to say so, American hard and soft power in the Muslim Middle East has been mostly a force for good. For much of the last 30 years, U.S. power has helped to check Iran's revolutionary potential and offered a seductive alternative to the mullahs' spirit-crunching theocratic state.

But if you believe that the US is not a force for good, you're not going to want to use that power.

This is where leftist pacifism and "multiculturalism" puts real American lives in danger.

(h/t: Power Line)