I believe that G-d wants everybody to be free. … And that's been a part of my foreign policy. In Afghanistan, I believe that the freedom there is a gift from the Almighty. And I can't tell you how encouraged I am to see freedom on the march.

Well, The Guardian reports that freedom is now on the retreat for half the population of Afghanistan:

Hamid Karzai has been accused of trying to win votes in Afghanistan's presidential election by backing a law the UN says legalises rape within marriage and bans wives from stepping outside their homes without their husbands' permission.

The Afghan president signed the law earlier this month, despite condemnation by human rights activists and some MPs that it flouts the constitution's equal rights provisions. …

Senator Humaira Namati, a member of the upper house of the Afghan parliament, said the law was "worse than during the Taliban" [emphasis, The Stiletto]. "Anyone who spoke out was accused of being against Islam," she said. …

Soraya Sobhrang, the head of women's affairs at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said western silence had been "disastrous for women's rights in Afghanistan".

"What the international community has done is really shameful. If they had got more involved in the process when it was discussed in parliament we could have stopped it. Because of the election I am not sure we can change it now. It's too late for that."

Clearly Bush failed in securing democracy for the Afghans. Will our troops now be put to the task of helping Karzai subjugate women? As an American and a feminist, The Stiletto finds this mission untenable – and cynical.

A year ago, leftie political cartoonist Ted Rall questioned both the prevailing Dem assumption - which Barack Obama completely bought into - that Afghanistan is the "good war," and that it is even winnable. Given Karzai’s willingness to contravene the Afghan Constitution by confiscating the freedom of his country’s women and other recent developments, both remain open questions - even with Obama’s proposed surge, which Green Beret-turned-journalist Michael Yon criticizes as being too little, too late:

Like George Bush before him, Obama seems to be trying to win the Afghanistan-Pakistan war on the cheap while minimizing political risks. …

In Afghanistan (now AfPak), we have wasted nearly the entirety of seven years. We have allowed the enemy to control the clock, and they have used that time to build an increasingly powerful resistance.

Even if Obama realizes his military goal to “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan” - a big “if” - Afghanistan will still be another Islamic republic and its women will never see “the promise of a better future.” Obama says he is undertaking AfPak because “the United States of America stands for peace and security, justice and opportunity.” Unless women’s rights are promoted and protected as Afghanistan is stabilized militarily, politically and economically, our troops can, at best, win peace and security – but at the expense of justice and opportunity.

† Clinton Goes To China: Leon Wieseltier The New Republic's literary editor asks “Is it really possible that in a Democratic administration the championship of human rights and the promotion of democracy will no longer figure conspicuously in the foreign policy of the United States?”:  
 

Oh, the stirring words will be spoken; the stirring words are always spoken. But in the absence of policies one may be forgiven for not being stirred by words. And so far even the language has been wanting in ardor. Idealism in foreign policy is so 2003. After all, the opposite of everything that George W. Bush believed must be true. He overreached abroad and underreached at home, so we will underreach abroad and overreach at home. Myself, I am for overreaching and overreaching. And so I remain chilled by Hillary Clinton's froideur in Beijing, by her artful impersonation of Brent Scowcroft. "We pretty much know what they are going to say," she offered in defense of her ritualistic syllables about China's persecution of its dissidents. …

When the Chinese foreign minister told Clinton that we should "continue to hold human rights dialogues on the basis of equality and mutual respect," he was speaking sinister nonsense. In this matter China is not our equal, it is our inferior, and we cannot respect them without disrespecting ourselves. …

We will talk with Iran. We will talk with Syria. We will talk with the Taliban, or with some of it. We will talk, sooner or later, with Hamas. …

There are only so many tyrants and terrorists we can engage before we stain our principles, before the politesse becomes repulsive. … Liberal realism is either a betrayal of liberalism or a betrayal of realism. 

† Obama – Not McCain - Will Be Bush III: New York Times: In a July 2002 column, Helen Thomas proclaimed: "The imperial presidency has arrived. On the domestic front President Bush has found that in many ways he can govern by executive order. In foreign affairs he has the nerve to tell other people that they should get rid of their current leaders."

Never mind that historian Arthur Schlesinger coined the phrase to describe FDR's extra-legal and unconstitutional actions during the Great Depression and WWII and applied it, in particular, to Bush predecessors Lyndon Johnson (who sent troops to the Dominican Republic and to Vietnam without Congressional approval) and Richard Nixon (who, among other things, bombed Cambodia without Congressional approval). 

Shortly after Bush's re-election The New York Times complained, "The administration’s assault on some of the nation’s founding principles continues unabated." 

Libs and their MSM mouthpieces don't like to think of Dem presidents as being imperial, imperious or impetuous, so it will take a lot more than President Barack Obama making hiring and compensation decisions for Fortune 500 companies instead of directors and shareholders, and they will be slow to recognize the administration's "unprecedented market intervention," as Politico puts it, for what it is:

He is the most powerful player in American business today. ...

Obama’s move to oust the CEO of GM and put Detroit on notice that he is prepared to let icons of American industry fail if they refuse to bend to his will was a calculated attempt to send a message, said an official often consulted by the administration. And that message was unmistakable: In any business-government partnership, Obama himself expects to play the dominant role. ...

Taken alone, the moves are remarkable. Taken together, they amount to a major exercise of presidential power - the imperial presidency applied to the economy to a sweeping degree not seen in decades.

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: The New York Times reports that owners of boats that are underwater are literally putting them under water, as did Brian Lewis of Seattle who could not find a buyer willing to pay $28,500 for his boat, Jubilee:

The bad economy is creating a flotilla of forsaken boats. While there is no national census of abandoned boats, officials in coastal states are worried the problem will only grow worse as unemployment and financial stress continue to rise. …

Some of those disposing of their boats are in the same bind as overstretched homeowners: they face steep payments on an asset that is diminishing in value and decide not to continue. They either default on the debt or take bolder measures. …

The owners cannot sell them, because the secondhand market is overwhelmed. They cannot afford to spend hundreds of dollars a month mooring and maintaining them. And they do not have the thousands of dollars required to properly dispose of them. …

While there are no reliable national statistics on boating fraud, Todd Schwede, an insurance investigator in San Diego, said the number of suspicious cases he was handling had roughly tripled in the last year, to around 70.

Lewis sank his boat by drilling a two-inch hole in its hull then tried to collect insurance on his loss. He pleaded guilty to insurance fraud.  

† A Court Of Law, Not Of Justice: Contending that he's entitled to judicial immunity for all decisions he made from the bench, former Luzerne County (PA) Judge Mark Ciavarella is seeking to dismiss a lawsuit by the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center on behalf of hundreds of children who were sentenced to private detention centers, reports The Associated Press.