Standing Up Against Evil Appears Not To be In Obama's Playbook - It May Cost Him Dearly

As Obama refuses to meet with any and all liberty seekers and continues to bow to any and all tyrants we can hardly comprehend what this man is all about. It strikes us as strange and we gasp at his lack of understanding that Americans hate tyrants from Chavez to Putin to the Chinese government cracking down on dissidents. We stare unbelieving at his amazing lack of response to the brave uprising against tyranny in Iran. It leaves us bewildered, aghast and wondering - WHO IS THIS MAN LIVING IN OUR CHERISHED WHITE HOUSE? We don't know completely yet but I think a picture is forming as it does slowly when a negative is developed in the dark room. The form is slowly being etched out. And the final proof will not be a man of much substance...maybe even a man with no principles but with an exceptional power lust.

...The December headlines remind us that we have no shortage of these nasty regimes. In China, the government sentences Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison for writing a letter calling for legal and political reforms. In Iran, security forces fire on citizens marching in the streets. In Cuba, pro-government goons intimidate a group of wives, mothers and sisters of jailed dissidents—with President Raul Castro characterizing these bullies as "people willing to protect, at any price, the conquests of the revolution."

In all these cases, the cry goes up: Where is the president of the United States?

For a man whose whole appeal has been wrapped in powerful imagery, President Obama appears strikingly obtuse about the symbolism of his own actions: e.g., squeezing in a condemnation of Iran before a round of golf. With every statement not backed up by action, with every refusal to meet a leader such as the Dalai Lama, with every handshake for a Chavez, Mr. Obama is defining himself to foreign leaders who are sizing him up and have only one question in mind: How much can we get away with?...

One of the leading critics of President Ford's decision was Ronald Reagan. In his own time as president, Reagan met with dissidents. He quoted Solzhenitsyn often. And when he so famously upset the establishment by referring to the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," Reagan no doubt recalled that night in 1975 at the AFL-CIO dinner—when Solzhenitsyn had referred to the Soviet Union as "the concentration of world evil."

Reagan set a tone that hit the Soviets in their most vulnerable spot: their lack of moral legitimacy. In retrospect, we can more easily see that Reagan's willingness to give voice to freedom-loving dissidents only increased his leverage as president as he dealt with the Soviets and their allies. (Obama Puts The Dis In Dissidents - WSJ)