Obama's Weakness

By Alan Caruba

It is one of those coincidences that is, at the same time, so odd and so apt that it requires analysis.

Both Osama bin Laden of al Qaeda and Jed Babbin, editor of Human Events, have come to the same conclusion about President Barack Hussein Obama and virtually on the same day.

When two such disparate individuals, separated by half a globe, conclude that Obama has rendered himself “powerless”—bin Laden’s word and “weakened”—Babbin’s description, you have to take notice.

Commenting two days after the 9/11 anniversary, bin Laden redundantly blamed America’s relationship with Israel for attacks and promised that “all we will do is continue the war of attrition against you on all possible axes,” during an 11-minute video that showed a still photo with a voice-over.

Babbin calls Obama “the incredibly shrinking president”, who has become weakened in his first eight months in office by domestic objectives to the point that he has taken his eye off the ball when it comes to international threats “at least as old as bin Laden’s 1996 fatwa of war against the United States.”

Babbin worries that Obama is clueless regarding the impending Iranian goal of producing enough fissionable material to make its own atomic bombs and nuclear tipped missiles. He reminds readers that, in June, Obama’s Cairo speech “green-lighted Iran’s nuclear program by saying, ‘I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not. No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons.'”

Translation: The U.S., under Obama’s administration, will do nothing to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power. “Weakened by anger and naivete,” says Babbin, “Obama is incapable of dealing with Iran. On Iraq and Afghanistan, the news is no better.”

Bin Laden is of the same opinion! Noting that Obama retained Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense from the Bush administration, bin Laden said, “Reasonable people knew that Obama is a powerless man who will not be able to end the war as he promised.”

It must really suck to be President of the United States and have bin Laden and Jed Babbin, along with two million folks who showed up on September 12, tell you they think you’re an idiot and a weakling to boot.

A third voice requires our attention and it is Dore Gold, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations from 1997 to 1999. Dr. Gold has a new book, “The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West.”

Dr. Gold takes the U.S. and Western nations to task for their long and tepid response to Tehran’s openly declared intention to become a nuclear power.

Iran’s Mamoud Ahmadinejad has made no secret of the fact that he wants to “wipe Israel from the map” and one of its ayatollahs has mused that Iran could afford to lose a million or more of its people to achieve that goal.

Dr. Dore warns that, “Few understand the significance of the moment the world is facing. A nuclear Iran involves the merger between radical Islam and nuclear weapons technology,” adding that “a nuclear Iran will be able to offer a protective, nuclear umbrella over al Qaeda or any group, allowing it to strike with impunity.”

“In short, says Dr. Dore, “a nuclear Iran will totally alter the international security environmental, setting the stage for a new scale of terrorist threats that the world has not yet witnessed.”

A lot of people find reasons to deplore Israel, but I suspect they will be greatly relieved if that tiny nation does what a great power like the U.S. won’t do.

Unless Iran’s nuclear facilities are destroyed, no American, no European, no Russian, no Chinese, and no one in the Middle East will be safe from the chaos Iran’s leaders want in order to bring about the return of the Twelfth Imam, a mythical Shiite figure.

You cannot talk to or negotiate with people who are crazy.