You might be 'dithering' if the Europeans show more guts

Like Jeff Foxworthy's signs that you might be a redneck, you might be "dithering" while Afghanistan burns if even the Europeans are more committed to that war than Obama is. Jamie Fly at The Weekly Standard blog points out this absurdity in NATO Defense Ministers and UN Official Back McChrystal Before Obama

Now, just as the president is publicly agonizing over what the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan should be, some European leaders seem willing to consider making increased commitments to Afghanistan. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is considering increasing the size of the German contingent in the country when the deployment’s mandate is renewed later this year, something that is nothing short of amazing given how publicly unpopular the German presence in Afghanistan is. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced last week that he was sending an additional 500 troops to the country.

These increased commitments appear to be based on a recognition that a properly resourced counterinsurgency effort is the only way to achieve success in Afghanistan. The New York Times reported yesterday that “NATO defense ministers gave their broad endorsement Friday to the counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan laid out by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.” Kai Eide, the UN special representative for Afghanistan attended the meeting and said “additional troops are required,” also telling the defense ministers that “this cannot be a U.S.-only enterprise.”

...The White House took offense at Vice President Cheney’s statement this week that the president was “dithering” on Afghanistan. Friday’s NATO defense ministerial should put this issue to rest -- even the Europeans have acted with more fortitude than our president.

Thank God for Dick Cheney and Fox News. They keep pointing out the obvious truths about our "dithering" President. Sooner or later, the voters will realize the emperor has no clothes. I'm just praying a miracle will happen and Obama will finally do the right thing and not leave our troops in Afghanistan twisting slowly in the winds of defeat.

A small victory in Florida; a huge retreat in eastern Europe

Victory! Sanity broke out in a courtroom in Florida yesterday proving once again that God is in His Heaven listening to the prayers of His saints here on earth. The two Florida school officials charged with the heinous offense of saying grace over a meal on school property -- with no students present -- were found not guilty by the judge. Even the Anti-Christian Lawyer's Union spokesman in Florida had to agree that the judge made the right ruling in applying the law.

Two rural northern Florida school officials were found not guilty of violating an injunction against praying in school, a Florida judge ruled late Thursday in a contentious school prayer case that spurred a reaction from Congress earlier this week.

Hundreds of people waiting in the rain outside of a federal courthouse in Pensacola cheered just after 7:30 p.m. when U.S. District Judge Margaret C. "Casey" Rodgers ruled that Frank Lay, principal of Pace High School in Santa Rosa County, and his athletic director, Robert Freeman, didn't intentionally violate her order to not offer prayers at school-sponsored gatherings.

"We're very pleased," said Mathew Staver, spokesman for the Liberty Counsel, the Orlando-based legal group that represented the two men. "We'll now focus on getting the underlying order set aside or overturned by a higher court."

Glenn Katon, director of the Florida American Civil Liberty Union's religious freedom project, said the judge "made an honest evaluation of the facts and applied the law."

But the battle goes on. My prayers now will continue to be that the ACLU will join ACORN in the dustbin of history, along with the Communists. And speaking of commies, guess who's on the rise again? Communism in Russia may be officially dead, but the raw naked power for evil underlying the defunct Communist regime is not only alive and well, but won another round yesterday.

And guess who handed over the victory on a silver platter? President Barack Hussein Obama abandoned the missile defense shield plans for eastern Europe yesterday, effectively allowing the Russians to resume work on erecting the Iron Curtain the eastern Europeans tore down in 1989.

Wesley Pruden of The Washington Times (who unlike our rookie President and like me is old enough to actually remember the bitter lessons of the Iron Curtain and Communist rule of eastern Europe) spells out what this historic action of retreat by an American president means.

Barack Obama looked Thursday to the lesson of Hiroshima. Sometimes one bomb won't do it. Nagasaki had to follow to "reset" relations with Japan. Six decades later, the Apology Bomb the president dropped on Moscow during his visit last May didn't do it, either. He had to drop another one Thursday.

When Mr. Obama, eager to "reset" relations with Russia, decided to abandon arrangements carefully worked out by the previous administration to base missile defense sites in the Czech Republic and Poland, he dropped amends the size of the H-bomb. Surprise was so important he only told the Czechs and Poles about it in a midnight telephone call so they wouldn't read about it first in the morning papers.

Then, while the Czechs and Poles were marinating in the bitter juices of double-cross and humiliation, the president made the official announcement on the 70th anniversary of the Russian invasion of eastern Poland, the first fruit of the infamous Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939. To be fair, Mr. Obama may not have been aware of the history - important to the Poles, but to a community activist from Chicago, not so much. This president is about sweet talk, not history. Maybe the young president-to-be was home with a tummy ache the day his high-school history class learned about World War II, the Cold War that followed, why that history is so important to the Poles, or why Americans revere Winston Churchill, or the fact that America is made up of only 50 (not 57) states. You can miss a lot by playing hooky.

Accusing a president of selling out an ally is a lot more serious than merely accusing him of lying, impolite as that may be, but the Czechs and the Poles can be forgiven if they think "sell-out." What's scary about this is not how it was done but that it was done at all, that the president and his men (and women) were acting in well-meant good faith. Said the White House: "We ... welcome Russian co-operation to bring its missile defense capabilities into a broader defense of our common strategic interests."

Never before has an American president put the defense of the country's "common strategic interests" in the hands of an unreliable rival's "defense capabilities."

Those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. And as G.K. Chesterton said, before you tear a fence down, it's best to ask "Why it was erected there?"

The eastern Europeans took matters into their own hands after 75 years of Communist rule and tore down the Iron Curtain. President George W. Bush led the way to getting the Czech Republic and Poland into NATO and started the process of building a missile defense shield that would deter primarily Iran with it's growing nuclear ICBM capability, but also future Russian evils.

Ask Georgia and the Ukraine about future Russian evils. Georgia has already been invaded by the Russians and the Ukraine is staring down the muzzles of Russians tanks today. And history is getting ready to repeat itself as BHO becomes the Chamberlain of our time, appeasing the Russians. But I'm sure BHO has no idea who Neville Chamberlain was, the prime minister of England who appeased a dictator named Adolf Hitler, green-lighting his launch of World War II.

Take two minutes of your time to consider how important this issue is for our national security.