Shocker: Obama's Not Gonna Do Nothin' About Suspected NoKo Arms & Nukes Smuggling Ship

You're all very surprised, I know. This is so uncharacteristic of Obama.

The United States will not use force to inspect a North Korean ship suspected of carrying banned goods, an American official was quoted as saying Friday.

An American destroyer has been shadowing the North Korean freighter sailing off China’s coast, possibly on its way to Myanmar.

Defense Undersecretary Michele Flournoy met with South Korean officials in Seoul on Friday as the U.S. sought international support for aggressively enforcing a U.N. sanctions resolution aimed at punishing Pyongyang for its second nuclear test last month. The North Korean-flagged ship, Kang Nam 1, is the first to be tracked under the U.N. resolution.

North Korea has in response escalated threats of war, with a slew of harsh rhetoric including warnings that it would unleash a “fire shower of nuclear retaliation” and “wipe out the (U.S.) aggressors” in the event of a conflict.

As Ed's post recounts, Obama sought "tougher sanctions" against North Korea after they started shooting off missiles and detonating A-bombs like Dr. Strangelove with a bad case of priapism. The tougher sanctions, of course, were tough in language but not in action (Russia and China did not allow affirmative language permitting NoKo ships to be boarded and searched).

So as written they were a nullity, and only had teeth at all if the US President were willing to exceed the authority actually granted.

And of course Obama is not willing.

Like I was saying yesterday.

Obama's men will now fight behind the scenes to get this off of newspapers' front pages interior pages, and the media will bow to him and suppress the story.

Because his foreign policy is not to handle foreign policy crises in a way that benefits the US. To benefit the US, he'd actually have to engage with the policies and set himself up for both possible failure and likely loss of support from the hard left. Better to not engage at all -- engagement helps the US, but it hurts Obama. And that's really no contest, is it?

Obama will "solve" each and every foreign policy crisis by merely attempting to reduce coverage of them to an absolute minimum. It's a reverse ostrich technique -- if he sticks everyone else's head in the sand, they don't see the danger, so they're "safe." Or at least they are encouraged to believe they are.

Update: Pro-democracy movements in other Muslim countries find Obama inspiring threatening.

The frustration comes against a backdrop of deep-rooted skepticism among pro-democracy activists that U.S. policies under President Obama will help transform the region, despite his vow to engage the Muslim world in a highly publicized speech here last month. Some view Obama’s response to Iran’s protests, muted until Tuesday, as a harbinger of U.S. attitudes toward their own efforts to reform their political systems. The Egyptian government, they note, is a key American ally, and U.S. pressure on Egypt for reforms began subsiding in the last years of the Bush administration.

“When Obama does not take a stance, the very next day these oppressive regimes will regard this as a signal. This is a test for his government,” said Ayman Nour, a noted Egyptian opposition politician who was recently released from jail. “If they can turn a blind eye to their enemy, they can turn a blind eye to any action here in Egypt.”

No, but seriously, let's all credit Obama's empty words in his Cairo Speech as igniting the torch of freedom the world over. Let's not look at his lack of tangible action at all. It's words that count, not deeds. We all know this.

Dictators and terrorists the world over agree with Denny Green's assessment.

posted by Ace at 02:23 PM

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