Why our anti-war president went to war ~ By Jack Cashill

Unlike Iraq in 2002, Libya in 2011 is anything but a "no-brainer" for the president of the United States, especially this one.

Military intervention, especially if short and successful, typically raises a president's stock, and Obama can count on his unprincipled minions in the media to support whatever course he takes.

What Obama cannot count on is the hard left. Bellwether Rep. Dennis Kucinich, for instance, is already planning an amendment to defund military action in Libya.

Nation of Islam honcho, Louis Farrakhan, flat out blasted the president. "Who the hell do you think you are?" he asked of Obama on Chicago radio.

This all I need to say, and it is actually a quote from Jack's great column: "For those friends of yours with short attention spans, please share this two-minute animation, which sums up our involvement in Libya."



RELATED STORY:
Ayers affirms he wrote Dreams from my Father ~ By Jack Cashill (3/24/11)


Why our anti-war president went to war

JACK CASHILL

By Jack Cashill

March 24, 2011 ~ 1:00 am Eastern

© 2011

The first time John Drew met Barack Obama, the fashionably dressed, 19-year-old Obama had just disembarked from a friend's "sleek, expensive luxury car."

Drew, Obama and friends then spent the evening discussing anti-colonialism and the imminent Marxist revolution. Although Drew was already in process of shedding these enthusiasms, Obama may never have.

There is something else, however, that Obama has not outgrown, and that is his paradoxical fondness for the trappings of success. Everyone who has known him well knows how ambitious Obama is.

In the skies over Libya, arguably for the first time, President Obama's political ambitions and his anti-war, anti-colonial politics have butted heads in a way that cannot easily be finessed.

"It is indeed his war," John Kass writes bitingly in the Chicago Tribune. "He started it. He gave the order to launch the missiles over the weekend. And now the man who ran for president as an anti-war candidate owns his very own war."

Obama is new to this kind of conflict. For the first 20 years of his adult life – at Occidental, at Columbia, at Harvard, in Chicago – his radical politics only greased his ambitions.

It was not until Obama raised his political sights in 2002 that he began to understand that something might have to give.

In the retelling, the day of reckoning came on Oct. 2, 2002, at an impromptu rally staged by the Chicagoans Against the War in Iraq.

Here, State Sen. Obama gave a speech second in career importance only to the 2004 DNC keynote. This was the speech that enabled his handlers to position him on the credibly sane left flank of naifs like Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, "who took the president at his word" and voted for the war in Iraq.

In the orthodox Obama canon, this was his "Lion King" moment, the occasion on which his principles triumphed over the demands of politics.

At Rick Warren's Saddleback Forum in 2008, Obama would tell the audience that protesting the war was his most "gut-wrenching decision," largely because of its "political consequences."

Obama's official 2008 website attested to the anguish. "As a candidate for the United States Senate in 2002," the website claimed, "Obama put his political career on the line to oppose going to war in Iraq."

This, of course, was all nonsense. Chicago Tribune reporter David Mendell, in his valuable 2007 biography, "Obama: From Promise to Power," offers a useful corrective.

At the time, as Mendell relates, Obama was keen on taking a shot at the U.S. Senate in 2004. He envisioned as his base of support blacks and lakefront liberals, the former for their votes, and the latter for their money.

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Rick Warren does it, again ~ By Joseph Farah

By Joseph Farah Posted: July 03, 2009 1:00 am Eastern © 2009 While millions of other Americans will be celebrating Independence Day weekend, Rick Warren, often called "America's Pastor," will be serving as the keynote speaker for a Saudi-backed Muslim group that promotes a radical strain of Wahhabi Islam in about 80 percent of U.S. mosques. I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of Rick Warren's bad judgments. This time Warren will be schmoozing with the Islamic Society of North America, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood – just as are al-Qaida, Hamas and most other Muslim terrorist organizations. ISNA puts on a façade of moderation, yet, according to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, it "convenes annual conferences where Islamist militants have been given a platform to incite violence and promote hatred." After Hamas leader Mousa Marzook was arrested in 1997, ISNA raised money for his defense. He was eventually deported. ISNA condemned the U.S. government's seizure of the financial assets of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad after Sept. 11. Brigitte Gabriel combats politically correct notions about the "religion of peace" in "They Must be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How we Can Do It" "I think ISNA has been an umbrella, also a promoter of groups that have been involved in terrorism," explains Emerson. "I am not going to accuse the ISNA of being directly involved in terrorism. I will say ISNA has sponsored extremists, racists, people who call for jihadagainst the United States." I could go on with many more details about ISNA. Suffice it to say it is no friend of Christianity and no friend of America. So what is Rick Warren doing speaking at the group's national conference? I don't know what Warren's agenda is. He would probably say he doesn't have one. But I can tell you the effect of his appearance – it is designed to disinfect and rehabilitate a group that is dangerous and subversive to U.S. national security. But it should surprise no one, at this point, that Rick Warren will be there. One of the first times I ever wrote about Rick Warren was in 2006 when he took an equally misguided trip to Syria to meet with dictator Bashar Assad and praise him for his pleasant treatment of Christians. Syria was then and remains today one of the world's leading state sponsors of Islamic terrorism. Almost every terrorist group in the world maintains offices there. Nevertheless, Rick Warren said, while in Syria, that the country "does not allow extremism of any kind." Less than a week after Warren's absurd proclamations in Syria, a Christian leader in Lebanon, former President Pierre Gemayel, was assassinated in the streets of Beirut. Everyone in Lebanon knows who killed him – the Syrian government. As I wrote at the time, "it is imperative that Christians – and especially Christian leaders – have discernment about evil in our world. And true, unadulterated evil is what you have running Syria today. The government led by Bashar Assad, who met with Rick Warren last week, is anti-American, anti-freedom, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish and pro-terrorist. "Rick Warren should know this. Yet, he has placed himself in a position of apologizing and excusing the government in Damascus, one of the most evil on the face of the earth. ..." [CONTINUE READING]

Rick Warren Snuggles Up to Pro-Terror MPAC

Pastor Rick Warren, the “new age fundamentalist” preacher picked by Obama to deliver the invocation at his inauguration, gave a speech last night to the new age radical Islamic front group MPAC. Just hours after the 9/11 attacks, MPAC co-founder Salam Al-Marayati told an LA talk radio audience that the state of Israel should be a prime suspect. read more at little green footballs | digg story, submitted by Zacktopia

An open letter to Rick Warren, from Joseph Farah

This column is adapted from a letter Joseph Farah wrote to Rick Warren last week about his agreement to offer the invocation at the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama on Jan. 20. In this letter, Farah focuses on just one of Obama's evil policies, (though there are dozens more we should consider): No restrictions on abortion, as in killing babies, as in Obamacide.

read more | digg story

Blogging on the Purpose of Christmas

Looking for bloggers wanting to do a 3-week study on the purpose of Christmas. It's simple. Start by getting Rick Warren's book, The Purpose of Christmas, then listen this coming Saturday (Dec. 6, 2008) to the study's opening message by Saddleback Church's Pastor Rick. Meet you at the post: Blogging on the Purpose of Christmas! read more | digg story, submitted by scroogereport

Do You Have a Safety Net?

"Life’s tough times and tragedies are inevitable – each of us will face them. But we don’t need to go through them alone. We need God’s safety net to help hold us up through these difficult times." ~ Rick Warren, "Purpose Driven Life"

So, what is God's "safety net"? My friend Alexander put up this quote from Warren's book, "Purpose Driven Life" on his blog recently. While we always need God walking along with us through our lives, sometimes it also takes other people just to help us stay focused and get through those difficult times. God puts those people in our lives for a reason. A very SPECIAL reason! He works through each of us.

No, when we have those inevitable difficult times, we must not go through them alone. Just remember that if someone you know needs a friend, someone to talk to, even if they are whining, by you being there for them, that whining will eventually be turned around to being encouragement to handle their struggles. YOU could be your friend's safety net, just by being there for them.

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