With apologies to Louis Armstrong, it is not a wonderful world any longer. Today, it's a strange and dangerous world where reason and humanity have largely been replaced by fanaticism and treachery.
Leading the league in villainy are the Iranian mullahs and their chief enabler, the Russian tyrant Putin. While America, Britain, and France are desperately trying to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, Russia has announced it does not want to threaten the mullahs with economic sanctions.
According to the Associated Press, Putin says that talking about sanctions could scare the Iranians and be counterproductive to negotiations. Of course, negotiations with Iran have been going on since Hammurabi was running around, so this sounds a bit insincere.
Putin also says we should "compromise" with Iran. Let's see, how would that work? Perhaps the Iranians could promise to destroy only half of Israel. Maybe the mullahs could only finance and train Hezbollah and let Hamas go elsewhere.
This Putin is some piece of work. For years he's been arming Iran, and even sends them components for missiles. He does this because he knows Iran causes the USA and Israel much grief and he likes that. President Bush's response was to take Putin to his ranch for some barbecue. President Obama's response has been to remove some defensive missiles from Eastern Europe that Putin doesn't like.
Looks like old Vlad has our number.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is the latest American official to visit Russia and she told Nightline, "I'm very pleased by how supportive the Russians have been in what has become a united, international effort [against Iranian nukes]."
This is just dumb. Russia is doing everything it can to make sanctions impossible. I understand that Secretary Clinton has to be diplomatic, but come on—the USA is getting its rear end kicked here.
By the way, I am nominating Putin for the Nobel War Prize next year, a brand new category.
In Afghanistan the situation is almost as bad because the countries of continental Europe are missing-in-action. Only Holland and Denmark allow their troops to conduct offensive combat operations. Large NATO nations like France, Spain, and Italy refuse to confront the terrorists.
They love President Obama in those countries, but the love is shallow. He's asked Europe for more military help to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, two dangerous entities. Europe gives the president a double cheek kiss and does nothing, even though Great Britain has shamed them by sending 500 more troops to the Afghan theatre.
Many in the world despised President Bush for acting alone in fighting the war on terror. President Obama has promised to change the unilateral approach and seek consensus in defeating the bad guys.
So how's it going so far, Mr. President?
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