Watchers Council Results - Betrayals Small And Large Are The Choices We're Making

This week's top Council posts, coming from an intimidating slate of nominations that mixed domestic and foreign policy issues, present a neat little juxtaposition between old-fashioned military honor at home and something less so abroad. The very top Council post came from Bookworm Room, who related several upshots from a family outing to see the Blue Angels at a fundraiser on the USS Hornet:

Despite the varied responsibilities of the people we met, all of the Blues have certain characteristics in common: First, and most obviously, they're all lovely to look at (men and women alike)... because its members are all in superb physical condition... Second, without exception, these people were gentleman and ladies in the old-fashioned sense of the term. They were kind to the children and courteous to everyone. They looked us in the eye, spoke clearly, and, despite the crowds around them, made every person feel as if he, or she, was important... Third, and this is something I tried to emphasize for the kids on the way home, the make-up of the Blue Angels shows that reputation matters... Fourth -- and this is something I've commented upon after every interaction I've had with men and women in the American military -- the Blues manifestly love their work. Each person with whom we spoke felt that his (or her) job has meaning and purpose

One of the two tied runner up Council posts, this one from Right Truth, paints a picture that some might characterize as a little bit unworthy of these men and women: our ongoing abandonment of women to sharia in the Middle East and in the AfPak. And per the non-Council post from Benjamin Kerstein at The New Ledger, Obama's betrayal of our natural friends and allies - freedom-loving people who are oppressed and besieged - goes all the way up to entire nations:

Obama's reputation in Israel might have survived... had it not been for his much-hyped "speech to the Muslim world" delivered in Cairo on June 4. Taken as a whole, the speech was simply a craven embarrassment; but the references it made to Israel could not have been more alienating and insulting had they been calculated for the purpose... Obama's speechwriters and advisors became convinced that equating the Holocaust with the Palestinian nakba (the word means "catastrophe," and Arabs use it to describe the establishment of Israel and its War of Independence in 1948), comparing Israeli treatment of the Palestinians to segregation in the United States, and pointing to the Jewish people's "tragic history" as the sole justification for Israel's existence would assuage Israeli concerns... this single speech (which everyone in Israel watched) did more to demolish Obama's credibility in Israeli eyes than any of his demands on Netanyahu ever could have.

Betraying allies, and the inevitable decline triggered by that kind of cravenness, doesn't have to be inevitable. The non-Council runner up article from Charles Krauthammer emphasizes that it's a reversible choice. Though given how our cultural bien pensants trash the complicated history of Columbus described by Council runner up The Glittering Eye, signs for a revival of national pride aren't exactly great.

References and previously after the jump...

References:
* Reputation Matters - Obama and Israel: Betrayal in the Broken Places [Watcher Of Weasels]
* Watchers Council Nominations - Who Needs Free Speech When You've Got A Post-Partisan Utopia? [MR]
* What's not to like about the Blue Angels? *UPDATED* [Bookworm Room]
* What about the women Obama? [Right Truth]
* Obama and Israel: Betrayal in the Broken Places [New Ledger]
* Decline Is a Choice [Weekly Standard]
* Columbus Day, 2009 [The Glittering Eye]