A month ago, the heroic leaders of Eastern Europe got down on their knees and begged Obama not to renege on George W. Bush’s promise to give them a missile defense system and not to give in to Russian threats and remonstrations, which were obviously designed to keep the former Soviet slave states within Russia’s imperial reach. Having seen Russian tanks rolling into Georgia, who can doubt that the Putin regime has long-term goals of reacquiring the “sphere of influence” that brought so much terror and loss of life to Eastern Europe just a few decades ago?

Source.

With the financial means to exert meaningful influence on the international stage now significantly compromised by out-of-control domestic spending programs, combined with this administration’s apparent desire to apologize for past “American imperialist sins”, historical Western allies do have reason for concern.

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Update: Eastern European concerns go unheard:

WARSAW, Poland – Poles and Czechs voiced deep concern Friday at President Barack Obama’s decision to scrap a Bush-era missile defense shield planned for their countries.

“Betrayal! The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back,” the Polish tabloid Fakt declared on its front page.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski said he was concerned that Obama’s new strategy leaves Poland in a dangerous “gray zone” between Western Europe and the old Soviet sphere.

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If you haven’t already done so, you really should read this book.

David Horowitz recently turned 70. Below is a video from his birthday celebration and “roast”. There are some excellent clips of some of his admirers that spoke at the dinner, but hearing him speak of his own journey is certainly the highlight:

The following point cannot be stressed enough; whilst the U.S. remains in Afghanistan, economic and social development will not occur much beyond current levels. This in turn means that the Taliban, as a broad-based movement of poor farmers and lower clergy, is the face of anti-imperialist resistance in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future.

To put it another way, if we, as avowed anti-imperialists, intend to wait around for a resistance movement that agrees with us on every issue, including the need to fight the oppression of women, gays, racial and religious minorities, etc., we’ll be waiting a long time. The Taliban is the resistance in Afghanistan and we must support it, critically, but unreservedly.

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In previous posts I have wondered out loud about the silence of the left on issues of women’s rights and democratic reform in the middle east and elsewhere, and I have always maintained that the real struggle of the radical left is not about easing the plight of women and the oppressed; rather it is focussed on fighting against imperialism. These “revolutionaries” are truly blinded by their devotion to that very destructive cause, and I’m pleased to see that at least one of them has fessed up.

h/t to Terry Glavin and to Kate.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which revealed not only the economic failures of the totalitarian socialist state but also the censoring, imprisonment, and even execution imposed on it’s own dissenters, the left has had to turn elsewhere to find a “struggle” to champion. The latest socialist poster boy is Hugo Chavez.

Judy Rebick writes:

I am not crazy about Chavez cadillio style of leadership but Venezuela is alot more democratic than Canada. … As you will read in Transforming Power, we should be studying Venezuela to see how we can deepen our democracy but instead in a throw back to the cold war, our media paints Chavez as a autocratic and a right-wing populist manipulating the people. I’ve been to Venezuela and the people there understand exactly what they like and don’t like about Chavez.

Iran’s rigged presidential election of June 12, 2009, has given rise to a very odd phenomenon. Some supposedly leftists and progressives in America have adopted the view that the Iranian election was not rigged. They believe that the Iranian reformists have not been honest about the election (they say the reformists knew they would lose). They allege that the demonstrations in Iran against the rigged election are mostly the work of Western intelligence agencies stirring up trouble. In taking such a position, these so-called leftists and progressives have firmly sided with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

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The “very odd phenomenon” observed by Sahimi is not terribly surprising. As I have argued, the radical left is not motivated by the ideals of democracy and human rights – they are fighting capitalism and American Imperialism. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”, and the left is willing to turn a blind eye to the people of Iran in the administration of this fight.

But even before Thursday’s vitriolic statements from North Korea, American officials said they were more focused for now on inflicting pain on North Korea than on luring it back to the bargaining table.

“We are not interested in half measures,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We have no desire to pursue protracted negotiations that will only lead us right back to where we have already been.”

Mrs. Clinton said the North Koreans had been intransigent in their public statements during the conference. Other senior American officials said the tone of the North’s statements was openly hostile.

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In his recent posts he has taken his criticism even further, once again reflecting critically on adherents of his own left-leaning political views:

“I am going to ask Chomsky why the US left appears to have a soft corner for some of the most brutal murderers of Muslims—the al Qaeda and the Taliban,” says Fatah. “Would he have remained silent if the victims of the Taliban had been Americans? I will suggest to him that part of the Left that seems unable or unwilling to slam the misogyny and homophobia of the jihadi radicals, is practicing a racism of lower expectations that places Muslims as less than human.”

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But alas, the intention of this post is not to heap more praise on Tarek – even though his work deserves praise. Rather, I wanted to draw attention to one of Tarek’s recent remarks, quoted in the National Post. The article itself is worth a read, but it was this that caught my attention:

“The racist right will talk about these things to frighten people about immigrants. The liberal-left has abandoned its responsibility to fight medievalism. And nobody wants to talk about what is really happening here.”

Tarek, many of us here on the right are talking about this issue, and I must question why you denigrate the credit for this discourse by claiming the right is motivated only by racism and a desire to curtail immigration. Is it not conceivable that there are some values that we share, and that we might be as passionate about them as you are? Values such as individual freedom, gender equality, and political self-determination? Why are you able to claim noble motivations for your position, while the right is demonized, accused of being motivated by racism?

Not only is the “racist” stereotype you are perpetuating offensive to right-leaning folks like myself, but it damages the cause you have so bravely fought for.

While rejecting any compromise in Iran’s nuclear dispute with the international community, Ahmadinejad had said that the government would adopt a tougher stance toward the West during his second presidential tenure and force it to accept Iran’s positions.

Source.

Now Al-Qaeda has threatened China over it’s treatment of the Uighurs in the past week:

A group called al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQM) is threatening attacks on the 50,000 Chinese workers in Algeria, according to a report prepared by international risk consultants Sterling Assynt and revealed in the South China Morning Post Tuesday.

The Chinese government is taking its first threat from Osama bin Laden’s deadly network seriously. Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters: “We will keep a close eye on developments and make joint efforts with relevant countries to take all necessary measures to ensure the safety of overseas Chinese institutions and people.”

Clearly, these new threats of terrorism from al-Qaeda are unrelated to past acts of American Imperial aggression, so I am very curious to see how the radical left will respond to this new conflict.

We’ve seen in the past that demonstrations of outrage by the left have usually been reserved for conflicts that involve America or Israel, while they turn a blind eye to more universal issues such as freedom of speech, human rights, and gender equality. (Is it just me, or has the left been completely mum on the recent developments in Iran?)

Perhaps this time the left will side with the right – but since there’s no opportunity for America-bashing, I’m not holding my breath.

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It’s interesting that, while I’m highlighting the hypocrisy and the double standard displayed by the left, Tarek Fatah, in the National Post takes aim at the double standard of the Muslim world.

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Related: From an article in The Hamilton Spectator, November 27, 2008, Tahir Aslam Gora writes:

Ironically, writers such as Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Taslima Nasreen and Irshad Manji are the targets of these so-called leftists as well. These are the writers who have claimed their liberation from Islamic suffocation by putting their lives at risk. But they never get recognized by the hard-core left, which doesn’t behave any differently than fanatic Islamic clerics.

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In a related article, Clifford May writes:

Ask those on the left what values they champion, and they will say equality, tolerance, women’s rights, gay rights, workers rights and human rights. Militant Islamists oppose all that, not infrequently through the application of lethal force. So how does one explain the burgeoning left-Islamist alliance?

Source.

Obama said he preferred to stick to a diplomatic approach to North Korea, after its nuclear and ballistic missile tests, but said that would work only if the communist nation was willing to engage in serious talks. He made no mention of a military option, but suggested he sees a limit to the effectiveness of diplomacy.

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Raymond Ibriham writes in Words Matter in the War on Terror:

Knowledge is inextricably linked to language. The less accurate words are, the less accurate the knowledge they impart; conversely, the more precise the language, the more precise the knowledge. In the war on terror, to acquire accurate knowledge — which is pivotal to victory — we need to begin with accurate language.

Now, don’t get me starting on the term human rights.

Update: We can also add global warming to the list of language being cleansed. Hat tip to Kate.