emptybill, did you post this because you agreed with it, or because you found it ridiculous?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "emptybill" <emptyb...@...> wrote: > > The Alien in the White House The distance between the president and > the people is beginning to be revealed. By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ > <http://online.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=DOROTHY+RABINOWITZ&byli\ > nesearch=true> > The deepening notes of disenchantment with Barack Obama now issuing from > commentators across the political spectrum were predictable. So, too, > were the charges from some of the president's earliest enthusiasts about > his failure to reflect a powerful sense of urgency about the oil spill. > > > > There should have been nothing puzzling about his response to anyone who > has paid even modest critical attention to Mr. Obama's pronouncements. > For it was clear from the first that this presidentsingle-minded, > ever-visible, confident in his program for a reformed America saved from > darkness by his arrivalwas wanting in certain qualities citizens > have until now taken for granted in their presidents. Namely, a tone and > presence that said: This is the Americans' leader, a man of them, for > them, the nation's voice and champion. Mr. Obama wasn't lacking in > concern about the oil spill. What he lacked was that voiceand for > good reason. > > > > Those qualities to be expected in a president were never about rhetoric; > Mr. Obama had proved himself a dab hand at that on the campaign trail. > They were a matter of identification with the nation and to all that > binds its people together in pride and allegiance. These are feelings > held deep in American hearts, unvoiced mostly, but unmistakably there > and not only on the Fourth of July. > > > > A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of > identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He > is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because > he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological > class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do > with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe. > > > > One of his first reforms was to rid the White House of the bust of > Winston Churchilla gift from Tony Blairby packing it back off > to 10 Downing Street. A cloudlet of mystery has surrounded the subject > ever since, but the central fact stands clear. The new administration > had apparently found no place in our national house of many rooms for > the British leader who lives on so vividly in the American mind. > Churchill, face of our shared wartime struggle, dauntless rallier of his > nation who continues, so remarkably, to speak to ours. For a president > to whom such associations are alien, ridding the White House of > Churchill would, of course, have raised no second thoughts. > > > > Far greater strangeness has since flowed steadily from Washington. The > president's appointees, transmitters of policy, go forth with singular > passion week after week, delivering the latest inversion of reality. > Their work is not easy, focused as it is on a current prime > preoccupation of this White Housethat is, finding ways to avoid any > public mention of the indisputable Islamist identity of the enemy at war > with us. No small trick that, but their efforts go forward in public > spectacles matchless in their absurdityunnerving in what they > confirm about our current guardians of law and national security. > > > > Consider the hapless Eric Holder, America's attorney general, > confronting the question put to him by Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas) of > the House Judicary Committee on May 13. > > > > Did Mr. Holder think that in the last three terrorist attempts on this > soil, one of them successful (Maj. Nidal Hasan's murder of 13 soldiers > at Fort Hood, preceded by his shout of "Allahu Akbar!"), that radical > Islam might have played any role at all? Mr. Holder seemed puzzled by > the question. "People have different reasons" he finally answereda > response he repeated three times. He didn't want "to say anything > negative about any religion." > > > > And who can forget the exhortations on jihad by John Brennan, Mr. > Obama's chief adviser on counterterrorism? Mr. Brennan has in the past > charged that Americans lack sensitivity to the Muslim world, and that we > have particularly failed to credit its peace-loving disposition. In a > May 26 speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Mr. > Brennan held forth fervently, if not quite comprehensibly, on who our > enemy was not: "Our enemy is not terrorism because terrorism is just a > tactic. Our enemy is not terror because terror is a state of mind, and > as Americans we refuse to live in fear." > > > > He went on to announce, sternly, that we do not refer to our enemies as > Islamists or jihadists because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate > tenet of Islam. How then might we be permitted to describe our enemies? > One hint comes from another of Mr. Brennan's pronouncements in that > speech: That "violent extremists are victims of political, economic and > social forces." > > > > Yes, that would work. Consider the news bulletins we could have read: > "Police have arrested Faisal Shahzad, victim of political, economic and > social forces living in Connecticut, for efforts to set off a car bomb > explosion in Times Square." Plotters in Afghanistan and Yemen, preparing > for their next attempt at mass murder in America, could only have > listened in wonderment. They must have marvelled in particular on > learning that this was the chief counterterrorism adviser to the > president of the United States. > > Long after Mr. Obama leaves office, it will be this parade of > explicators, laboring mightily to sell each new piece of official > reality revisionismJanet Napolitano and her immortal "man-caused > disasters'' among themthat will stand most memorably as the face of > this administration. > > It is a White House that has focused consistently on the sensitivities > of the world communityas it is euphemistically knowna body of > which the president of the United States frequently appears to view > himself as a representative at large. > > It is what has caused this president and his counterterrorist brain > trust to deem it acceptable to insult Americans with nonsensical > evasions concerning the enemy we face. It is this focus that caused Mr. > Holder to insist on holding the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in lower > Manhattan, despite the rage this decision induced in New Yorkers, and > later to insist if not there, then elsewhere in New York. This was all > to be a dazzling exhibition for that world communityproof of Mr. > Obama's moral reclamation program and that America had been delivered > from the darkness of the Bush years. > > > > It was why this administration tapped officials like Michael Posner, > assistant secretary of state for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. > Among his better known contributions to political discourse was a 2005 > address in which he compared the treatment of Muslim-Americans in the > United States after 9/11 with the plight of the Japanese-Americans > interned in camps after Pearl Harbor. During a human-rights conference > held in China this May, Mr. Posner cited the new Arizona immigration law > by way of assuring the Chinese, those exemplary guardians of freedom, > that the United States too had its problems with discrimination. > > > > So there we were: America and China, in the same boat on human rights, > two buddies struggling for reform. For this view of reality, which > brought withering criticism in Congress and calls for his resignation, > Mr. Posner has been roundly embraced in the State Department as a > superbly effective representative. > > It is no surprise that Mr. Posnerlike numerous of his kindhas > found a natural home in this administration. His is a sensibility and > political disposition with which Mr. Obama is at home. The beliefs and > attitudes that this president has internalized are to be found > everywherein the salons of the left the world overand, above > all, in the academic establishment, stuffed with tenured radicals and > their political progeny. The places where it is held as revealed truth > that the United States is now, and has been throughout its history, the > chief engine of injustice and oppression in the world. > > > > They are attitudes to be found everywhere, but never before in a > president of the United States. Mr. Obama may not hold all, or the more > extreme, of these views. But there can be no doubt by now of the > influences that have shaped him. They account for his grand apology tour > through the capitals of Europe and to the Muslim world, during which he > decried America's moral failuresher arrogance, insensitivity. They > were the words of a man to whom reasons for American guilt came > naturally. Americans were shocked by this behavior in their newly > elected president. But he was telling them something from those lecterns > in foreign landssomething about his distant relation to the country > he was about to lead. > > > > The truth about that distance is now sinking in, which is all to the > good. A country governed by leaders too principled to speak the name of > its mortal enemy needs every infusion of reality it can get. > > > > Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board. >