Obama gets four "Pinocchios" for dissing Rutherford B. Hayes...

...from the Washington Post:

It’s bad enough for one president to knock another one for not being on Mt. Rushmore, but it’s particularly egregious to do so based on incorrect information.

We went back and forth over whether this error was worth three or four Pinocchios. We nearly decided on three Pinocchios because Obama used the phrase “reportedly” and because others have said this before him. The Encyclopeadia Brittanica reference especially gave us pause. That’s a legitimate, but not infallible, source. But then we remembered it took only a phone call to a real historian to find out the truth.

Our final ruling was swayed in the end by this: The president in particular has a responsiblity to get historical facts correct, and in this case he got them completely backwards. Obama mocked Hayes for “looking backwards...not looking forwards.” In reality, Hayes embraced the new technology. He should be an Obama hero, not a skunk.

Hayes is dead and buried, but he deserves an apology.

Don't mess with "His Fraudulency."

Ironies.

According to the PJ Tatler.

Barack Obama has now been responsible for firing more cruise missiles than all other Nobel Peace prize winners combined.


He’s still in 2nd place for number of Arab deaths caused (and 3rd place for Muslim deaths) behind Yassir Arafat and Mikhail Gorbachev.

Obama discovers that to Anti-American protesters all Americans look alike.

Leftists protest Obama's visit in Rio.

So much for the American president's strategy of triangulating himself between foreign countries and his nation.  Whether he likes it or not, he's one of us.

Lord Jim.

Two days ago, Barry Rubin - director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal - pondered the possibility of Mubarak not stepping down from power as the script called for.

Speaking of having someone competent in power, this brings us to the question of U.S. policy. I can’t get the story of “Lord Jim,” the great Joseph Conrad novel, out of my mind. The main character is a professional sailor who is one of the officers aboard a broken-down freighter carrying hundreds of poor Muslim pilgrims from the East Indies to Mecca. The ship hits something and a storm is approaching. The crew decide, without checking properly, that the ship is going to sink. They panic and take to the lifeboats, betraying their duty and leaving the Muslims on board to die.


But the ship doesn’t sink at all and the passengers are rescued by a passing naval vessel. The crew is put on trial and disgraced, losing their licenses. The humiliated young man can only restore his honor by acts of great bravery, which is the rest of the novel.

Within hours of the start of Egypt’s crisis, Barack Obama panicked and took to the lifeboats or, to use the contemporary phrase, was ready to throw the regime under the bus. Here, I’m not judging on a basis of human rights, national interests, morality, or anything else: I’m just stating a fact. In a world that, at least outside of Western Europe, favors strong leaders, Obama came off as more Wayne Newton than John Wayne.

And:

So how is Obama going to look if the ship stays afloat?


After all, this is an American government that a few days ago “ordered” Egypt’s government to go, starting “now,” even starting “yesterday.” One of several bad decisions was a failure to distinguish between Mubarak and the regime. These people still don’t realize what they did wrong:

Privately counseling the Egyptian elite to get rid of Mubarak might well have worked; publicly yelling at them to disband themselves was asking them to commit suicide. Obviously, they were not likely to do so.

Perhaps the most interesting single sentence spoken by anyone during this crisis was when Mubarak said that Obama doesn’t understand Arab culture. What did he mean? Here’s my interpretation:

In Western society, you can compromise and make concessions so that your opponent or potential partner says: What a great person! He’s so reasonable. I, too, will make concessions and we will have a win-win solution!

For decades naïve Westerners have been trying to apply this to the Middle East. It doesn’t work. The more you concede the more the other side concludes you are weak. The more you give, the more they take. Appetite grows with the feeding.

And there's more. If people think that the other side is stronger, is winning, and you are losing credibility, more and more of them will join that other side out of opportunism or survival.

This is precisely what's happening in the Middle East. As the United States apologizes and makes unilateral concessions, people are attracted by Iran's posing as the "strong horse," ranting, roaring, threatening, and killing. If you throw some of your friends under the bus (Lebanese moderates, Iranian and Turkish oppositionists, Israel, southern Sudan?, etc.), many others will get on the bus.

Then there is this observation from today:

I've never seen anything like this Egypt crisis to demonstrate how ignorant the Western experts are about the Middle East.


When the general who announced that there would be a dramatic announcement said, "This ends tonight," he was referring to the disorders and demonstrations, not to Mubarak.

Remember the most important sentence of the crisis: When Mubarak said that Obama doesn't understand Egyptian (Arab) culture. Mubarak believes that you don't yield ground or they cut your head off. You show you are tough and they back down.

That is the mentality we are seeing. There may be an outbreak of violence right now. But don't think the army didn't know that and must have some plan to deal with it. Because this was the equivalent of Gary Cooper, Charles Bronson, or Clint Eastwood saying, "You want it? Come and get it!"

Before this is over, there's going to be a lot of blood in the streets of Cairo.