Krauthammer Tells Us What the Establishment Media Ignored or Avoided About Obama's European Adventure

April 10th, 2009 12:21 PM

Krauthammer0409As was usually the case during Bill Clinton's presidency, the ascendancy of Dear Leader Barack Obama means that we will often have to consult the output of center-right commentators, and of course the Media Research Center and its affiliates, to cut through the establishment media's puffery to pick up even the most basic pieces of news.

Charles Krauthammer's column today in the Washington Post on the results of Obama's just-completed European Adventure is one such raw news source.

I have bolded items in the excerpt below that represent news that was either not reported or vastly under-reported by what's left of the establishement media (there are even more examples at Krauthammer's full column):

In his major foreign policy address in Prague committing the United States to a world without nuclear weapons, President Obama took note of North Korea's missile launch just hours earlier and then grandiloquently proclaimed:

"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response."

A more fatuous presidential call to arms is hard to conceive. What "strong international response" did Obama muster to North Korea's brazen defiance of a Chapter 7 --"binding," as it were -- U.N. resolution prohibiting such a launch?

The obligatory emergency Security Council session produced nothing. No sanctions. No resolution. Not even a statement. China and Russia professed to find no violation whatsoever. They would not even permit a U.N. statement that dared express "concern," let alone condemnation.

Having thus bravely rallied the international community and summoned the U.N. -- a fiction and a farce, respectively -- what was Obama's further response? The very next day, his defense secretary announced drastic cuts in missile defense, including halting further deployment of Alaska-based interceptors designed precisely to shoot down North Korean ICBMs. Such is the "realism" Obama promised to restore to U.S. foreign policy.

..... He wanted more NATO combat troops in Afghanistan to match the surge of 17,000 Americans. He was rudely rebuffed.

He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing.

From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea.

And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One!

The bolded items have generally been reported in at best vague terms, if at all, while the media horde has almost unanimously declared Obama's European Adventure an unqualified success. The reality is quite the opposite -- The specifics Krauthammer notes make it clear that President 'Prompter is courting danger (Obama may not think so, but history says he is) and failing to defend our interests, up to and including survival as a nation.

Although Rush is right when he points out that his popularity has generally climbed regardless of who is in office, there's little doubt that center-right talk radio is also helping to fill in the information void the establishment media is creating, seemingly deliberately, around Dear Leader. There are also of course the center-right blogs that are around now to pick up the slack.

We shouldn't have to work so hard just to get the basics, but like it or not, it's the reality.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.