ANOTHER RETREAT – AT 8:06 A.M. ET:  It is getting very disturbing.   Each day seems to bring more news of still one more American retreat in foreign policy.  Obama knows that the congressional elections are seven months away, and that he will probably lose a number of seats.  He has seven months to run wild without much fear of congressional opposition.  And he is running wild.

Yesterday, he announced a new doctrine governing the use of nuclear weapons.  It tries to influence the world by setting a good example.  That's nice.  Question:  When has any nation ever changed its policies because of an American "example"?  Nations act in their interests, and they probe for weakness.  The probes don't have to go very deep these days to find American weakness.

Now, this morning, we learn something else:

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's advisers will remove religious terms such as "Islamic extremism" from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said.

The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war and currently states: "The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century."

The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the United States talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education.

That shift away from terrorism has been building for a year, since Obama went to Cairo, Egypt, and promised a "new beginning" in the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world. The White House believes the previous administration based that relationship entirely on fighting terror and winning the war of ideas.

COMMENT:  May I just point out that Barack Hussein Obama Jr. has been in office for a year and a third, and has "engaged" the Muslim world.  As Johnny Carson used to ask, "Notice the difference?"

Apparently, we will no longer be permitted to mention who we're fighting, or even why.  Only a child will think that these changes will make any positive difference at all.  Indeed, their immediate effect may well be to discourage the democratic forces astir within the Islamic world.  If the United States won't tell the truth, who will?

Some say that Obama has done some positive things in defense policy, like strengthening our commitment to Afghanistan.  Nonsense.  He couples that move by announcing to our enemies that we'll start to leave Afghanistan in 2011.  Hey, Adolf, don't sweat it.  We bomb today, we'll be out of Germany tomorrow.

So remember, we're fighting the enemy from nowhere.  And if strikes us again in the United States, he has no name.  Let's get with the program.

April 7,  2010