OBAMA THE MILITARY STRATEGIST – AT 11:30 A.M. ET:  Wesley Pruden, who takes no prisoners, bluntly assesses our new nuclear-weapons strategy, as declared by President Obama.  Obama yesterday ridiculed Sarah Palin's criticism of the strategy as coming from an unqualified person.  As compared, to say...?  From The Washington Times:

America will survive the Obama administration, though it might test the limits of the patience of the divine providence that has protected our republic so far. The president, who no doubt means well, wants to give us all a cheap thrill. That's the most generous explanation of his adventure into nuclear policy.

The Democrats mock Sarah Palin's credentials for venturing into anything more serious than moose hunting, but their man's lengthening record in dealing with the rest of the world gets scarier and scarier.  His banging his head on the floor to bow deeply enough to foreign kings and potentates was infuriating, but relatively harmless, like his apology tour of the Middle East to reassure Islamic red-hots that we understand that crashing airplanes into skyscrapers and blowing up innocents are just the rituals of a religious cult that we have a duty to better understand.

Told you.  No prisoners.

Now he's getting into seriously important territory. His Nuclear Posture Review, revealed this week, sets out for the first time that the United States "will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons [nations] that are party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty" - even if in answer to chemical, biological or cyber attacks.

Yeah.  We're all smiles.

But presidents before him understood the value of discretion and secrecy. Why tell prospective enemies what, exactly, you'll do in such circumstances? Such reticence would be difficult for a president in love with the sound of his voice, confident in his ability to make a speech so pretty that it would melt the hearts of the vilest villains.

And...

Mr. Obama told the New York Times that the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or the NPT, will not only reduce the American nuclear arsenal, but "outliers" like Iran and North Korea "should see that over the course of the last year-and-a-half we have been executing a policy that will increasingly isolate them so long as they are operating outside of accepted international norms."

All this sounds very nice, and impressive to the editorial board of the New York Times and various think-tank "experts" who put their faith in paper promises, but that treaty hasn't changed much in the world where the rest of us live.

Hmm, we've noticed.

But the worst of what Mr. Obama's latest feel-good initiative will do is to make him still smaller in the eyes of the enemies that he thinks the United States doesn't have. These adversaries, who may be evil but aren't dumb, will conclude that they're not dealing with a president so much as a community activist who wandered into the White House on a nation's naive whim.

Wonderfully stated.  And finally...

We've avoided World War III so far largely because the United States has been the ultimate guarantor of the security of most of the Free World. This guarantee worked for 70 years because the Free World believed that the United States meant what it said. Now Mr. Obama would eliminate that trust and dismantle the guarantee. It's more of his vision of a Little America, neutered and pacific, like the neutered and pacific little nations of Europe. Some thrill.

COMMENT:  That says it.  But it will take a new president to reverse course.  This one is convinced of his own wonderfulness, and is sure that the rest of the world is merely misunderstood. 

Go dig that shelter.

April 10, 2010