The Redhunter

Hackers have taken over the website of the sentencing commission of the Department of Justice and gleefully distributed confidential material found on it. Now they have posted it to servers and will release the encryption keys unless the administration yields to its demands.

Iran, a third rate power, contemptuously assuming a tone that once only America could use, has just announced it "would consider any attack on Syria an attack on itself". It is daring Washington to try to overthrow Syria, daring Obama to take it on almost as if it suspects he will never attempt it.

North Korea, not content with threatening to target the US with its ballistic missiles, is now threatening South Korea. If young Kim fears Obama he is not showing it.

The US government has gone months without catching a single individual linked to the attack on its North African diplomatic installations. ...

President Obama is anxious to negotiate with the Taliban in Afghanistan, eager to end campaign he once called the war of necessity whether victorious or not. Indeed the word "victory" has been expunged from his lexicon. His aides have already hinted that the war against al-Qaeda is now essentially over whoever won....

It is a vacuum everywhere. The US government is being treated like a toothless, contemptible thing. It is easy to see why. The US government has been bankrupt for a long time. Obama's home state of Illinois has had its credit rating trashed to the worst in the country.

Of course there's a vacuum: "Leading from behind" is designed to create one, whether it's authors know it or not. And it is the actions of the Obama Administration that have let to our being treated as toothless and contemptible.

What Fernandez didn't mention is that a neo-terrorist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, has taken over the most populous nation in the Middle East. No one knows where it will all lead, but at least for now the bad guys are in charge. And in a move almost designed to show that we approve of the new regime, the Obama Administration is giving - free of charge - F-16s and Abrams main battle tanks to the new government.

Think the situation in the Middle East can't get worse? Saudi Arabia could be the next domino to fall to the Islamists. As described in the link, the country is a "house of cards" full of radicals and governed by a gerontocracy that makes the Brezhnev-era Soviet Union look like a bunch of teenagers. Money oil, and radicals. What could go wrong?

The U.S. could live without Saudi oil, but Europe, China, India, and Japan couldn't. Imagine a cut off of that oil and the chaos that would create. We could have multiple military interventions that would make the Eight-Nation Alliance that went into China during the Boxer Rebellion look like child's play.

I always thought that if we stuck it out in Iraq we'd come out ahead, and I think that events will show I was right. Fernandez elaborates on why:

An American force in Iraq could indirectly cast its shadow on Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran. But a decision was made to reverse the position entirely; to put America's ground force in Afghanistan where it was landlocked by Pakistan, Russia, and Iran. From surrounding them America went to being surrounded.

As for successor regimes, well that's the point isn't it? Obama pulled out without ensuring a successor regime in Iraq. He didn't even think he needed one for Libya. And as for Afghanistan, talks are under way with the successor regime. It is the Taliban. What is the successor regime for Syria and who will ensure it?

Japan and Germany were occupied for 10 years following the Second World War until a successor regime was good and emplaced. This was the standard method for stabilizing a country for all of the Cold War -- until Obama decided he could up stakes and try something new.

Maliki could have been our Shi'ite. And if we didn't like it we could have changed him with the means at hand. But where are the means. I would be pro-Teheran if I were Maliki. What consequences need I fear? Iran is right across the border and America is -- where?

We're nowhere, that's where. Oh technically we're in the region, but everyone knows we have no will do do anything.

I don't have time to find the links but I know I said time and time again on this blog that an American force in Iraq, coupled with an even halfway friendly country, would be a huge influence for the better in the region. And I also know I said a zillion times that it takes years to get it all put in place and get it right and that you'll stumble several times along the way... but like Japan and Germany it would be worth it.

Where it it all headed? Mark Steyn is right when he says we're not going to collapse all at once, or be conquered in some grand battle, but rather we're on a long slow slide to bankruptcy, decline and irrelevancy. Fernandez puts it this way:

It's heading, perceptibly now toward a total system failure. What happens when health care premiums triple as they are reported to be heading that way? At some point there are too many irons in the fire and some of them melt.

There's no closure. Everything is fake, even the singing of the national anthem. There's an initiative a week and nothing comes of the initiatives of the last week. Reality has imitated art. The pillars are now truly styrofoam and the greek god addressing the assembled heroes may just standing in front of a cardboard temple.

This is horrible. Of course things won't fall apart quite so abruptly. There's a lot of ruin in a country. But how much longer can it go on?

Sure, as Fernandez goes on to say, no one is going to invade the U.S. and occupy us, but that's not the point. Rather, the perception of American weakness will make everything we try to do more costly. People/nations will stop listening to us or paying attention to our carriers. The dollar will become just one more currency, which will hurt American businesses and thus our economy. And the world will become a more dangerous place.

And Obama, with his soon-to-be secretary of defense Chuck Hagel, will no doubt cut defense even more. What could go wrong?

But all of this is ok to American liberals, because we have unlimited abortion, free contraception, universal healthcare, and gay marriage! And now we're going to get rid of the scary looking guns!