Amateur Hour at the State Department

It was not enough that State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki engaged in downright silly hashtag diplomacy with Russia last week…

The world stands #UnitedforUkraine. Let’s hope that the #Kremlin & @mfa_russia will live by the promise of hashtag
— Jen Psaki (@statedeptspox) April 24, 2014

Now she has cited as reputable sources . . . the Daily Kos and Think Progress.  Hacktastic.

This is the sort of amateurism that has taken over the State Department under Obama, Hillary, and Kerry.  It is amusing, yes, and I guess I should be lighthearted about it. 

But I do not know whether laughter or utter fright is the appropriate response.  Hillary’s foolish negligence has already cost four lives at Benghazi.  And now State acts this way as the Russian bear lunches on the Ukraine?

The Kremlin surely must be laughing.

Another Obama Administration Failure to Prevent Terrorism

Late Friday, the FBI released a statement that shows the Obama Administration has once again exercised inexcusable negligence and failed to prevent terrorism:

…in early 2011, a foreign government asked the FBI for information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The request stated that it was based on information that he was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.

In response to this 2011 request, the FBI checked U.S. government databases and other information to look for such things as derogatory telephone communications, possible use of online sites associated with the promotion of radical activity, associations with other persons of interest, travel history and plans, and education history. The FBI also interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev and family members. The FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government in the summer of 2011. The FBI requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from the foreign government.

So this foreign government (Russia?) contacted the FBI and told them the older Tsarnaev brother was a radical Muslim and was traveling overseas to join “underground groups”.  Tamerian was not a U. S. citizen.

So why the heck did we allow him back into the country?  And why was he not questioned when he later began posting jihadist videos on YouTube?  Again, he wasn’t a U. S. citizen.  By that time, he was an obvious candidate for deportation if not worse.

Of course, Obama himself did not make these decisions.  And micromanaging FBI investigations and DHS decisions is not his role.  But it happened under his watch and was influenced by his leadership.

(To be fair, the Russians failed in this episode as well.  Putin, a former KGB agent, cannot be happy about it.)

This episode is hardly in isolation.  The Obama administration has looked the other way in other cases of terrorism.  Benghazi was a spontaneous protest against a dumb YouTube video, remember?  The truth, of course, is that our people in Libya warned Washington about the danger and begged for more protection . . . and got less instead.  And Ft. Hood was “workplace violence.”  There were abundant warning signs beforehand in that case as well.  This attitude of negligence beforehand and head-in-the-sand afterwards has trickled down through the Obama administration . . . with deadly consequences.

Although I was on to this failure early on twitter (All the more reason to endure my rantings there.), I am now far from alone in my concern.  Although I do not think he called out Obama, Former CIA Director Jame Woolsey called the Boston Bombing “a government failure” on CNBC this morning.  No reasonable person can now question that the ball was dropped.  Strange how often that happens on poorly led teams.

Even in his strangely detached post-arrest statement, Obama spoke as if the motives behind the Boston bombing were still a mystery.  They are not at all.  The main motive is Jihadist Islam. 

Combine those brands of Islam with the Obama administration’s negligence, and you get Benghazi and Boston.

Gorbachev Still an Atheist

I reported here, citing a Telegraph story, that it “appears” Mikhail Gorbachev has become a Christian. Well, it now appears that appearances were mistaken, that he’s still an atheist.

I’m sorry about that . . . in more ways than one.

I will now write on the blackboard a hundred times, “I will not trust the Telegraph’s religion reporting.”

Gorbachev’s Faith and God’s Providence

After his visit to the tomb of St. Francis, it appears the last Soviet Union President, Mikhail Gorbachev, is a Christian.

This comment from Peter Robinson is particularly interesting:

Whenever Ronald Reagan would mention his suspicion that Mikhail Gorbachev was a secret believer, everyone on the White House staff would scoff, thinking the president naive. When I had the opportunity to speak to Gorbachev a couple of years ago, however, I found myself concluding that Reagan had been onto something after all. Why, I asked, had Gorbachev refrained from putting down the revolution of 1989, just as Khrushchev had put down the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and Brezhnev had put down the Prague Spring of 1968? "Because of something I shared with Ronald Reagan," Gorbachev replied. "Christian morality."

God was behind the peaceful bringing down of the Iron Curtain and of the old Soviet Union more than we knew.

Putinocracy

I’m almost out the door to head to London, but I wanted to bring this to your attention.

Russia is no longer a democracy. It’s back to the bad old days under KGB spy Putin.

It’s time we stop treating Russia like a legitimate democracy.