Teleprompter gives 44 the wrong info on arms control

The Nuclear Illusionist

Obama's 'moral authority' won't deter Tehran or Pyongyang.

"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something."

So declared President Obama Sunday in Prague regarding North Korea's missile launch, which America's U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice added was a direct violation of U.N. resolutions. At which point, the Security Council spent hours debating its nonresponse, thus proving to nuclear proliferators everywhere that rules aren't binding, violations won't be punished, and words of warning mean nothing.

AP

Treaties never stopped a downpour.

Rarely has a Presidential speech been so immediately and transparently divorced from reality as Mr. Obama's in Prague. The President delivered a stirring call to banish nuclear weapons at the very moment that North Korea and Iran are bidding to trigger the greatest proliferation breakout in the nuclear age. Mr. Obama also proposed an elaborate new arms-control regime to reduce nuclear weapons, even as both Pyongyang and Tehran are proving that the world's great powers lack the will to enforce current arms-control treaties.

There's no doubting the emotive appeal of Mr. Obama's grand no-nukes vision. Ronald Reagan shared a similar hope, and in recent years these pages have run a pair of news-making essays by George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Sam Nunn positing such a diplomatic goal. They probably gave Mr. Obama the idea. But the Gipper understood the practical limits of arms control in delivering such a world, and Messrs. Shultz and Kissinger are hard-headed enough to know that global rogues must be contained if we are going to have any hope of a nuclear-free future.

Mr. Obama recognized this rogue proliferation threat in his Prague address, but to counter it he offered only more treaties of the kind that are already ignored. OK, not merely more treaties. Two days earlier in Strasbourg he also vouchsafed the power of his own moral example.

"And I had an excellent meeting with President Medvedev of Russia to get started that process of reducing our nuclear stockpiles, which will then give us a greater moral authority to say to Iran, don't develop a nuclear weapon; to say to North Korea, don't proliferate nuclear weapons," Mr. Obama said, implying that previous American Presidents had lacked such "authority."

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Seriously, you couldn't come up a better policy innitiative than to jump into weapons reduction? Stick with the job at hand...the economy. When everything is working again, then go after something new to f$@k up. Quit trying to be buddy-buddy with Russia, don't you remember how well they worked for GWB? They're just going to stab you in the back and make you look like a fool for trusting them.

Hypocracy Meter : 0 of 10

Stupidity Meter: 8 of 10

Strength of Spine: 2 of 10 - nearly spineless