Dangerous World for Obama: Five Places Obama Will Be Tested

The Five Obama Foreign Policy Tests:
Obama's Not Even Sworn In Yet But
Russia, Terrorists, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran
Have Started the Testing of Obama

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Americans were assured that the world couldn't wait until the election of a President Obama--and it was true. The world didn't wait until Obama officially takes office on January 20 to start testing the former junior senator from Illinois.

Joe Biden called it during the presidential campaign: Within six months, Barack Obama will be tested by countries around the globe if he won. [Joe Biden: Elect Obama and We’ll Have an International Crisis]

The Mainstream press didn't address Biden's comments much--other than feature numerous campaign spokesmen "clarifying" Biden's remarks. Obama's lack of experience or credentials wasn't a topic for polite MSM conversation: it was much more pleasant to write about what "Change" really meant.

Within hours of Barack Obama winning the 2008 election, Russia announced it was putting missiles next to NATO countries. This wasn't the only wake-up call for the new administration. There are other countries and groups seemingly lined up to see what the United States' response will be to global challenges.

We've picked out four of the earliest ones.

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• Test #1: Russia and Europe
  
  From Obama's First Diplomatic Test:
  
  

  The day after Obama's election, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev publicly threatened to deploy missiles near the borders of two NATO allies to counter the Bush Administration's plans to install antimissile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Russian announcement, rolled out during an elaborate ceremony, was timed to put one of the most contentious issues between Moscow and Washington on Obama's table right away. Obama and his advisers took it as an intentional provocation aimed at testing the President-elect.

  
  
  TIME then makes an amazing statement: "In fact, Obama's biggest challenge lies not in the tone he takes with the Russians but in the substantive policy choices he makes."
  
  What is this? Won't "acting presidential" pacify the Russians? It certainly worked on the American Mainstream Media during the election. It seems a little late in the game for TIME to talk "substantive policy choices" after the election.
  
  Unlike the MSM, Russia will not be swayed by a confident Obama style only. Like their invasion of Afghanistan during Jimmy Carter's term, the Russians will be watching U.S. responses and adjusting their policy accordingly.
  
  
  
• Test #2: Iraq and Afghanistan
  
  Obama ran a relentless campaign against George W. Bush--who wasn't a candidate. But Obama will find that it was Bush's surge policy--in stark contrast to Obama's plan to beat a hasty retreat--that carried the day in Iraq.
  
  From early indications, Obama will roughly follow the Bush agenda for Iraq; no doubt disturbing his anti-war supporters who helped him secure the Democrat nomination. It's been quiet in Iraq the last several months: some want to declare victory.
  
  But the incoming Obama administration may be tested by all parties in Iraq, including the Iraqi government.
  
  Al-Qaida seems detested, dejected and defeated, but they may be lying dormant. They will monitor developments and American policy and look for any openings to test the new president.
  
  Afghanistan is a different matter.
  
  The Afghan central government is corrupt; NATO allies--with the exception of Britain--are not much good once shooting starts; and, the Taliban appears to be getting stronger as the war wears on.
  
  It's promising that during the campaign, Obama did support the war in Afghanistan. So, cutting-and-running is probably not his first option from the opium capital of the world.
  
  Obama has also said that he recognizes the situation in Afghanistan is worsening. What actions will he take in response?
  
  
• Test #3: Biological and Nuclear Terror
  
  From Panel Fears Use of Unconventional Weapon:
  

  An independent commission has concluded that terrorists will most likely carry out an attack with biological, nuclear or other unconventional weapons somewhere in the world in the next five years unless the United States and its allies act urgently to prevent that.
  
  In a report to be released this week, the Congressionally mandated panel found that with countries like Iran and North Korea pursuing nuclear weapons programs, and with the risk of poorly secured biological pathogens growing, unconventional threats are fast outpacing the defenses arrayed to confront them.
  
  “America’s margin of safety is shrinking, not growing,” the bipartisan panel concluded.

  
  
  Pakistan is a particular area for concern, with terrorists with an eye toward causing death and destruction likely to come from that U.S. ally. It's suspected that the Mumbai terrorists came from Pakistan, where they likely trained and prepared.
  
  “Pakistan is an ally, but there is a grave danger it could also be an unwitting source of a terrorist attack on the United States — possibly with weapons of mass destruction,” the report said.
  
  
• Test #4: India and Pakistan
  
  ABC News called Mumbai "Obama's first foreign policy test". From Mumbai: Obama's First Foreign Policy Test:
  

  American officials believe the terrorists may be Pakistani extremists bent on turning the disputed Kashmir region along the border with India into a separate Islamic state.
  ...
  As Obama continues to work with the current administration to prepare for a seamless transition, history shows that foreign policy and national security cannot be put on hold during presidential transitions.

  
  
  Mumbai was seen by some, including Melanie Phillips, as another battle in the worldwide Jihad now being fought.
  
  One wrong move and the world could witness the first nuclear war between the countries on the Indian subcontinent.
  
  
• Test #5: A nuclear armed Iran
  
  Iran is not going to change its headlong pursuit of nuclear weapons--or its reasons for acquiring them--because of pleasant talk, smiles and handshakes. The Islamic Republic respects one thing: power.
  
  What actions will a President Obama take?
  
  Hopefully, they'll be wiser than the policies of ex-president, Jimmy Carter.
  
  From Obama's First Foreign Policy Tests
  
  

  Successive, Democratic and Republican U.S. administrations have appeased the Islamists in Iran, starting with the catastrophic Carter administration, which secretly assisted the Islamist overthrow of the pro-U.S. Shah, a modernizing monarch, in a craven, cynical attempt to curry favor with the Ayatollah Khomeini.
  ...
  China Confidential analysts believe that Iran's Hitlerian maniac-in-chief, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (whom President-elect Obama has offered to meet in face-to-face talks) is determined to announce a major nuclear breakthrough in time for this February's 30th anniversary celebrations of the Islamic Republic.

Five tests for President-elect Obama.

The world will be watching to see how he scores.

Americans hope he gets a passing grade.


by Mondo Frazier
image: dbkp file

Joe Biden Helicopter Ride From Hell

“If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where Bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me. Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are.”
--Joe Biden, addressing the National Guard, Baltimore 9-22-08




If life hands you snow, have a ball.


Joe Biden Gets to Ride in a Helicopter

Joe Biden told an audience of National Guardsmen about his the time his helicopter got "forced down" while traveling in Afghanistan--and also got to reference John McCain's "Gates of Hell".

It all started yesterday when Joe Biden was addressing attendees of a National Guard conference in Baltimore. The Democratic nominee for vice president recounted a harrowing experience when he was “forced down” over the mountains of Afghanistan.

“If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where Bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me,” Biden said. “Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are.”

"So there I was...Surrounded on all sides by snowballs!"


Biden has substituted "experience in telling a tall tales" for "experience with an actual American enemy" before.

“[T]he superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan where my helicopter was forced down…John McCain wants to know where Bin Laden and the gates of Hell are? I can tell him where. That’s where Al Qaeda is. That’s where Bin Laden is. It’s not in the country of Iraq.”

Biden's helecopter was caught in a snowstorm.

Jimmy Orr, Christian Science Monitor, points out, "In both retellings of his story, Biden seemed to have left out the part that it was a snowstorm that forced his chopper down, leading some to think that he was implying that it was brought down by hostile forces."

The McCain campaign reacted to Joe Biden being Joe Biden.

“Biden’s exaggeration of his Afghan helicopter ride is no surprise and reminds us of his daily assignment to embellish and fashion a record for Barack Obama where one simply does not exist,” said McCain spokesman Ben Porritt.

Leftie blogs wonder why rumors continue to fly about Joe Biden being replaced on the ticket in an "October Surprise".

Supposedly, Biden's "health" will be used as an excuse for giving him the heave-ho. His past history with brain aneurysms has been cited as a possible excuse.

But, it might not be that difficult to ease Biden off the ticket.

Maybe, it will snow.


by Mondo

Afghanistan: Teen Morally Forced to be Suicide Bomber

Afghanistan: Teen Describes Madrasah Effort To Make Him A Suicide Bomber

KABUL/PRAGUE -- Ever since he was caught three months ago in Afghanistan's Khost Province trying to carry out a suicide attack, 14-year-old Shakirullah has been pondering how he went from childhood in Pakistan to imprisonment in Kabul as an international terrorist.

But Shakirullah's childhood in the rugged mountain region near the Afghan border came to a dramatic end last fall when his family sent him to a religious boarding school -- the nearby Salib madrasah in South Waziristan -- to receive instruction from conservative Islamist clerics.

The boy says teachers had taught him the Koran for half a year, then gave him an explosives-packed suicide vest and took him across the border into Afghanistan.

Shakirullah was picked up before he could blow himself up near U.S. troops, a mission that minders at his Pakistani madrasah assured him would bring him eternal life.

He is now being held at a facility run by Afghanistan's national intelligence service -- a detention center that keeps the teenager separated from older Taliban fighters, hardened criminals, and convicted murderers.

To read the rest of this Babba Zee multi-media extravaganza, "14 year old Afghani makes it out of Pakistani Pyrotechnic Institute in one piece". [YouTube has pulled one of the videos originally used in the piece!?!]

by Babba Zee
Sources:
* 14 year old Afghani makes it out of Pakistani Pyrotechnic Institute in one piece
* Afghanistan: Teen Describes Madrasah Effort To Make Him A Suicide Bomber

Taliban Behead 7-year-old and Grandmother

Another Muslim extremist beheading

The Taliban demonstrates what happens when they are in charge of an area.

More news for those insist that the War in Afghanistan impinges on the 'traditional ways of the people living there'.

Taliban militants have beheaded an old woman and her grandson accused of spying for the US military, officials said.

The shocking executions took place in Uruzgan's Dihrawud district, said provincial police chief, Juma Gul Himat. The militants accused the woman of spying for government and NATO forces.

Militants stopped the pair yesterday as they were walking to their home in south-central Uruzgan province, Himat told AFP.

"Our investigations and findings from the area say they were accused of spying and were shot in front of other people," he said, adding the boy was aged seven.

He said they had been accused of "spying for Americans."

One other account speaks of the doomed pair "being beheaded", but doesn't mention if it happened before or after they were killed.

Taliban hanging around waiting for another victim

There was no reported independent confirmation of the police account.

The incident came as a civilian car hit a freshly planted land mine in southern Afghanistan, killing six people and wounding six others.

The blast ripped through the car as it traveled on a road outside the town of Tirin Kot, in Uruzgan province, a ministry statement said.

"This mine was possibly planted by the enemy," it said. Afghan officials refer to the Taliban and other militants as "the enemy."

Militants usually attack foreign and Afghan troops with mines and other roadside bombs, but most of the victims in such attacks have been civilians.

The incidents follow a Monday roadside blast on a NATO convoy in eastern Afghanistan that killed two soldiers and wounded three others, the alliance said in a statement.

Some people say the 'ancient ways are best'.

Tell that to a grandmother and her 7-year-old grandson, their heads now separated from their bodies.

by Mondoreb
[images:dailymail]
Source: Taliban Behead Grandmother and Grandson, 7



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

More Bad News From Afghanistan: For the Mainstream Media

More bad news from Afghanistan--for Old Media.
[hat tip: Awa Puhi & Pat]

No matter how the mainstream media tries to dress it up, the news coming out of Iraq these days is mostly of the good variety. Deaths down, more territory secured and more Iraqis lining up behind what they can increasingly see is the strong horse: the United States military.

So what's the big mainstream story? Deaths in Afghanistan are up. Newsroom inhabitants at CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC, the NY Times and other outposts in the once-monolithic liberal news empire can come out from under their beds. It's not that bad. The reason is simple for anyone who studies both the Afghan situation and Congress: ineptitude.

A look behind the statistics from Christian Lowe at the Weekly Standard:

IT'S TRUE THAT INSURGENT violence is on the rise in Afghanistan, with a surging Taliban taking up tactics first used against U.S. forces in Iraq, including suicide bombs, improvised explosive devices, and vehicle-borne IEDs. Afghan civilians and national security forces are being killed in greater numbers this year than any year since the 2001 invasion. According to an Afghan diplomatic source, 700 civilians have been killed so far this year--some in poorly-targeted U.S. bombing raids--but a large proportion of those have been the victims of insurgent attacks.

The other side of the story is quite different, however. Along with the rise in Taliban--and to some extent, al Qaeda violence--has come a sharp increase in the number of insurgents killed by Coalition (mostly American and Australian) troops and Afghan security forces. The Afghan diplomat said about 3,500 Taliban have been killed this year, and several top commanders captured.

The U.S. commanders on the ground in Afghanistan don't see the same situation as big US media outlets.

"In this type of war, when you mass against forces like us . . . without firepower, we're able to destroy them quite easily and we've shown that over the last six to seven months," said Col. Thomas McGrath, the American commander in charge of training Afghan security forces near Kandahar. "They're bringing in cohorts of young men who really don't know any better and it's been a colossal failure for them."

Rats! Another gloomy war storyline shot to hell. What's a reporter to do? When everything you've learned the last 40 years about spinning the news to the liberal viewpoint turns out not to be working, what's to be done?

Besides commiserate with like-minded colleagues around the Perrier cooler?

Years from now, coverage of the two fronts in the War on Terror will be a textbook case of the factors that sped the demise of Big Media. When there are other outlets for people to turn to for news, they can comparison shop. News consumers are increasingly turning away from the Old Media.

The way the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been covered by Old Media is just one more reason more of them would rather switch.

by Mondoreb



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