Obama Abroad Again

President Obama punched back at the Republicans over the New Start Treaty with his address to the nation on Saturday. He even singled out Senator Kyl as a culprit. Besides the worthy goal of down-sizing our nuclear arsenal, President Obama stressed that failure to ratify the treaty would jeopardize Russian cooperation on Iran and its facilitation of American troops and equipment to Afghanistan. Of course, it would make the United States look like chumps and diminish the country's influence abroad, which Republicans either neglect to think about in their venegeance against Obama or simply don't care. Obama invoked literally every living Republican favoring the treaty and even the dead President Reagan. Senator Lugar did his part on television interviews stressing the urgency and importance of this treaty.

Retired General Egan, who was the deputy commander of U.S. nuclear forces, lashed out at conservative saying that they have literally no respect for the military. He claimed that all the brass and the majority of retired brass favor this Treaty and that it was clear that conservatives no longer trust the armed forces.

Since Day One, conservatives accused President Obama of neglecting our allies in Europe. They even attacked this treaty early on as precluding the implementation of the missle defense program--the famed Star War project. Of course, this was not true. Then they accused President Obama of neglecting to modernize our nuclear arsenal, which is doubly not true with the allocation of $85 billion to this task.Then the accusation was that were abandoning Eastern Europe. This weekend all of the East European governments urged the U.S. Senate to ratify the treaty.

Is there some secret to the fact that conservatives have ignored the recent news of the United States' successful covert action smuggling tons of uranium and plutonium out of Kazakhstan--enough to make hundreds if not thousands of nuclear weapons? So far I have only read analyses by the left.

At the NATO meeting in Lisbon, most observers talked about the agreement to start withdrawing troops in 2011 and eventually handing over the security of the country in 2014. Sadly, this would mean the United States would be at war in Afghanistan longer than the Soviet Union was. Sadder still is the poll that found that the vast majority of Afghanistan don't know what 9/11 is or what the war is about in the first place.

If you think the United States should be diplomatically engaged, it's useful to note that NATO with the help of the Obama Administration over the past two years has finally produced their first mission statement about the 21st century after ten years with none. This doesn't get the headlines but these things used to matter.

Also, as the Drudge Report reminds us, Russia might be participating in the missle defense system, something Ronald Reagan actually promised them years ago.

While debating the future of Afghanistan with Hamid Karzai, the United States and the European Union met to discuss the global economic situation and continued plans to reach a new DOHA agreement on trade this coming year. From the major media--crickets.

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the absolutely disasterous Asian trip of President Obama, Steven Chu, our Energy Secretary, is following up with both Japan and China on joint programs to develop alternative energy technologies. And that failed free trade agreement with South Korea should be coming along within the next month, even though the delay robbed President Obama of the final feather in his hat on the Asian trip.

North Korea always seems to act out when everyone else is getting all the attention. For opaque reasons, they escorted an American professor around several hundred more centrifuges as if bragging about a new phase in their atomic program. This weekend American diplomats were dispatched to notify Japan, South Korea and China of the new threats.

One disturbing undercurrent to President Obama's trip to Europe has been the renewal of concerns by NATO states that he is not investigating the admissions of torture by former President Bush and Vice President Cheney. The United Kingdom has already decided to compensate British citizens detained and tortured at Gitmo and the conservative Mayor of London strongly hinted that George W might want to forego a book tour in the United Kingdom because he would be subject to arrest for warcrimes. The Mayor even linked George W. Bush with General Augusto Pinochet, who was arrested in London for war crimes and money laundering. Only last week conservative Prime Minister Cameron denied Bush's claim that torture saved the lives of thousands of Londoners because waterboarding produced inavluable intelligence.

While President Obama is repairing relations in Europe, the legacy of George W lives on--organized crime gangs in Scotland have now adopted waterboarding as their technique of choice in their war with rivals over the drug trade. They did this with specific reference to the United States. Apparently, a rival gang leader was waterboarded and gave up the location of a cache of stolen drugs. So maybe we should relay this to Marc Thiessen as evidence that torture works.

President Obama now is looking at ways to meet his commitments made to the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change. Now that cap and trade is permanently dead and over half the House Republicans are on record disbelieving climate change, President Obama has ordered the EPA to seriously monitor carbon emissions and has focused on expediting clean energy alternatives and electric cars through the executive branch.

Finally, Happy 90th Birthday to Stan "The Man" Musial, who had a career batting average of .331.

It rains diamonds on Neptune.