Stir The Pot

A couple of weeks before he travels overseas, yet again, to attend the global-warming summit in Copenhagen -- using two Boeing 747's, and a third 747 in close proximity for emergency communications, and a couple of C-17 military transports for his multiple limosine entourage -- it's being reported that President Obama's first state dinner attracted a bevy of Hollywood A-listers, big-money fundraisers and Washington power brokers to fete Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It was held under a "big top" tent erected on the White House's South Lawn.

The president and first lady opted to hold the lavish dinner not in the State Dining Room, which holds only 140 or so people, but outside in the barn-sized tent with clear panels that highlighted the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.

The weather that evening was recorded as cool and damp -- temperatures were reported at between a high of 53 degrees F and a low of 48 F, with 3/10 inch precipitation. Presumably, the tent was climate controlled, since first lady Michelle Obama wore a sleeveless gown and shawl.

It would be interesting to see an infrared photo of the heat signature of the tent. It probably looks like a small nuke.

The party in power, when it was out of power, supported it before they opposed it. Running on, among other things, the promise of winning this war because it had been neglected and because it was the war we should have been fighting all along, they were swept into power. Almost immediately, members of that party began opposing the war again, and demanded we leave.

Two months into his term, the new president announced a strategy to win the war, and appointed an experienced general to tell him what was needed to achieve his goal. The general told him that he needed 80,000 troops to do it right, but he could get by with 40,000 troops, if he could get them immediately. The media immediately began reporting that the general was asking for "up to" 40,000 troops, implying that he could do it with even less. While waiting for an answer, the fighting in Afghanistan ramped up as it has done every spring, and American casualties began to rise.

Five months after his strategy announcement, while on his way to Copenhagen to shill for Chicago to be the host for the Olympics, the president met with his general, who was wondering where his troops were. He was told that his request, and the entire strategy, were under review and that the president was "very close" to making a decision.

The president decided to rethink his strategy because his allies in the agitprop press were unwittingly undercutting him with the nightly mantra of those killed in Afghanistan, and reporting that the war was becoming unpopular again. It was probably due to an old habit they couldn't break from when they covered the previous administration. They were also reporting how corrupt the Afghan government was, and the president began to wonder aloud if theirs was a government or country worth committing to and fighting for.

Not wanting to be outdone by the corruption in the Afghan government, Congress began to get into the act as well. Having passed into law the largest spending bill in the history of the world, they began wondering aloud how the war would be paid for. After running on a platform of not raising taxes on the middle class, they began to call for a "war tax" to be paid for by the rich. The middle class suddenly shrank from those making up to $250,000 annually to those making up to $30,000 annually. Even as they decried the cost of the war, Congresspersons stuffed thousands of costly pet projects into the Defense budget they were proposing, many of them unrelated to defense and not wanted by the military.

The president decided to call on the coalition of NATO forces, hitherto unrecognized as even existing by his party when they were out of power, to increase their troop commitments as well. Every few weeks, his administration claimed he was "very close" to a decision on how many American troops to commit. In the meantime, one NATO member was already increasing combat troop strength, and criticizing the president for "dithering" on what had previously been announced as an immediate concern.

The president announced more strategy sessions with his sitcom writers at the White House, each time announcing that he was "very close" to making a decision. Finally, on Thanksgiving week, 8 months after his original strategy announcement, he announced that he had made his decision and was "very close" to announcing it publicly.

Unwilling to make the announcement at the White House, the scene of the crime, he decided to divert attention away from his sitcom team, who announced he was "very close" to making the announcement at the United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, in between his trips overseas. This was in keeping with his apparent inability to stay in Washington more than a week at a time, while calling on the rest of us to reduce our carbon footprint.

It's also in keeping with one of his pronouncements on the most recent legs of his World Apology Tour. After bowing and scraping to the Emperor of Japan and the leader of the Chinese Communist state, he told American troops stationed overseas that they made a really great photo-op backdrop.

That should be of great comfort to the men and women of the Armed Forces, and their families. It should also be tremendously gratifying to those on whom the "war tax" will be levied.

Some months ago, I published a blog about the SEALS of the Maersk Alabama rescue. In that post, I foretold of the consequences for the officer in charge if something had gone wrong, and also of the second-guessing that would occur even though the mission was successful. That's why this story struck home when I heard it.

"Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy's elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral's mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers. . . . ."

Our Commander-in-Chief is bowing to foreign royalty.

Not just a little waist dip or head nod that could quickly be spun as "not really a bow" by his aides and willing accomplices in what passes for the press today. This was a full-fledged, from the waist, head-down-in-submission bow.

Worse, it occurred in the same week that the president had at least gone through the motions of honoring America's war dead. Yet within days, he's bowing to the Emperor of Japan!

In doing so, he demonstrated a marked lack of respect and insensitvity toward the hundreds of thousands of US veterans (and their families) who fought, suffered, and died at the hands of the brutal Imperial Japanese Forces, after our country was attacked. Veterans who liberated dozens of Asian countries -- including Indonesia -- and millions of Asian people from the "Greater Southeast Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" of rape, slavery, systematic brutality and murder, and wholesale pillage.

That's outrageous! It's insulting not only to our Pacific War veterans, but to all the Asian peoples who were dominated by racist Imperial Japan. That ranks right up there with Holocaust-denying!

The significance of bowing is that one exposed one's neck to a ruler to indicate fealty to the point of offering one's life. Acceptance of that fealty meant that you got to keep your head, at least for the time being. One's life could always be forfeit at the whim of a ruler, which was why bowing was required at every meeting with the ruler. It was no accident that the chopping block required one to kneel or to prostrate oneself as the last act before being beheaded.

It was also no accident that Americans were forced to kneel when Imperial Japanese officers beheaded them for refusing to bow in subjugation.

Americans stopped bowing to other mortals after signing the Declaration of Independence. The cessation of bowing implied a repudiation of the Divine Right of Kings, and a recognition that the fundamental rights to Life and Liberty came not from man or government. Not bowing was an observance of equality among men. That egalitarianism was further established in the title of Mister President, a reminder that leaders come from the people and are elected -- and rejected -- by the people, and not by lineage or dynasty.

Can Mr. Obama really be so ignorant of history? Can his Department of State really be so inept at protocol? Can his close advisors really be so jarringly insensitive toward segments of our population who have earned the right to be honored?

Or are there other subtleties at work? He bows to Arab royalty, he bows to Japanese royalty, but he doesn't bow to British royalty. Why the distinction? Is it because 233 years after declaring independence from Great Britain, it is still a sensitive point for Americans -- or is it because British royalty is white?

A reminder, Mr. Obama. Great Britain was the first Western country to abolish slavery almost two centuries ago, and the United States fought a great civil war a couple of decades later to accomplish the same end. Yet the Imperial Japanese government was still practicing it on a massive scale until American and British forces defeated it just a couple of generations ago. Japan's departure from barbarism and brutality, and acceptance of democracy, was imposed on it by Americans and Brits, not by the Emperor of Japan.

Our "imperial wars," as the Jeremiah Wright/Bill Ayers fringe of the American Left loves to describe them, pale in comparison to others. Instead of being ransacked and plundered, most of our "victims" found themselves better off when we left than when we "invaded." The exceptions were when the seeds of democracy didn't take root, and they resorted to their old ways of despotism, dictatorial regimes, and failed experiments in socialist thuggery. Japan's prosperity, while owing much to their culture, work ethic and homogeneous society, would be impossible today without the democratic form of government they were given by the Western Powers.

American taxpayers ought not to have to continue footing the bill for Mr. Obama's World Apology Tour, and it's ever-widening carbon footprint. There is a positive side to strength and world prestige, and there are other ways to display it and use it. It doesn't require arrogance, saber-rattling and bombast, but it certainly doesn't require bowing and scraping.

Civility, sir, not servility!

As our elected leader, Mr. Obama ought to recognize that he is our public servant by choice -- his choice to run for office and convince the American public that he was competent to lead on a world stage. Instead, he misrepresents our country and its ideals by bowing and apologizing, and insults our veterans and our history. His appalling inability to understand and effectively use our country's leadership role is on world display, and it will have significant negative consequences for our future.