The most rudimentary example is, of course, the pistol in the desk drawer: revealed in Act I, and then in Act II, the gun is used to kill someone.

For an intensive workshop in cinematic setups and payoffs you should screen the Back to the Future series, where setup and payoff are elevated to an entirely new level.

It’s kind of fascinating, watching Obama construct the setup for his Afghanistan policy. He follows a familiar dramatic structure:

1. Anguished self-reflection, all quite public in order to display nobility of character.

2. Striking out at supporting players—Generals Petraeus and McChrystal—for their disloyal behavior.

3. Floating ideas through the court jester, Joe Biden, regarding an alternate—i.e. losing—policy in Afghanistan. The fool is allowed to speak the truth in order to maintain plausible deniability, but actually designed to prepare the great unwashed for a series of radical policy shifts.

It’s all very Will Shakespeare.

But of course this is all a set-up for Obama to do nothing for as long as possible, which is, by the way, doing quite a bit. Inaction on the part of America and her allies benefits the Muslim terrorists by giving them time to recruit, raise funds, regroup, train, and conquer more real estate.

Obama’s next move will be to deploy a few extra troops to Afghanistan, just enough to claim that he’s in the fight, but not enough to shatter his liberal base.

However,  as the body count rises and the tactical and strategic situation in Afghanistan deteriorates, Obama will, in slow motion, bring the troops home, thereby surrendering to radical Islam. And, according to the Democrats, rescuing us from a Vietnam like quagmire.

The blowback will be massive.

1. The Islamists will—rightly—declare victory over the Crusader infidels.

2. Radical Islam will point to a failure of Western resolve in the face of imperial Islam. The propaganda value of this claim cannot be overstated.

3. The Taliban will swallow the entire country and a reign of Islamic terror will spread like the Black Plague.

4. Rapidly, Afghanistan will devolve into a terrorist and drug cartel state, sending out death squads to Europe, North Africa and America.

5. Emboldened, the Taliban will set their sights on neighboring Pakistan, a failed nuclear state ripe for picking. India will be compelled to act or face a nuclear Taliban—dirty suitcase bombs will proliferate—and their non-state Islamist allies, including Iranian proxies. Hamas and Hizbullah.

6. America’s allies will view Obama’s America as an unreliable ally and draw away from America’s orbit.

7. Obama’s fetish for sitting down, in community organizer mode, and yapping away with totalitarian regimes signals massive naivete and weakness. Hence, the Taliban, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela will stomp all over this administration like a rug. The number one rule of geo-politics is: weakness invites aggression.

Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

During the 1930s, Neville Chamberlain pursued a policy of appeasement that brought Europe to its knees before Adolf Hitler.  Even as Hitler planned his domination of the globe, the British Broadcasting Company banned Winston Churchill, Hitler’s leading political opponent, from the radio.  Even after the beginning of World War II, the BBC censored Churchill, considering him too inflammatory in his description of the Germans.

Today, as Britain gradually kowtows to Islamofascism in the form of domestic acceptance of shariah law and radical Muslim rallies, they seek to censor Michael Savage in the same way they censored Churchill.  By placing Savage on the same list as representatives of Islamic terrorists and Neo-Nazis, the Brown government has attempted to draw moral equivalence between those groups that speak out against Chamberlain-esque appeasement of Islamofascism, and the appeasers and Islamofascists themselves.  This moral equivalence is utterly false, and worse, it is dangerous not only to free speech values but to the continued freedom of the West against those who would seek to enslave it.  Brown will be listed in the history books alongside Chamberlain as an appeaser of tyranny and Savage will be listed alongside Churchill as an advocate of liberty.

Today’s Gordon Brown-led British government is as appeasement-oriented as its 1930s predecessor:

· According to the Telegraph, just last week the leader of the radical Islamofascist group Hizb ut-Tahrir held a rally in London in which he called on his followers to support “jihad” against Israel.  Four years ago, Tony Blair promised to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir from Britain.

· According to the Telegraph, last month the British government, led by Brown, was forced under pressure to deny entry to Ibrahim Moussawi.  Until Conservative opposition arose, the Brown government had been prepared to admit Moussawi to speak at the University of London.  Moussawai describes suicide bombers as “martyrs” and calls Jews “a lesion on the forehead of history.”

· According to the The Sunday Times (September 14, 2008), “Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.  The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.”

“Considering the historical position of past liberal British administrations, radio personality Michael Savage finds himself in the best of historical company with Winston Churchill, based on the position that the Gordon Brown government has taken towards Savage today,” said a spokesman for Talk Radio Network.  “Winston Churchill claimed that in the years leading up to World War II, he was banned from the BBC for a period of up to eight years.  He was put into political exile where he was labeled ‘an extremist’ at a time his voice and free speech was needed most.  This attempt at marginalizing Savage and Savage’s free speech is no less egregious than what Churchill experienced in the hands of Chamberlain’s government.  It simply validates how history does repeat itself when history’s lessons are not learned by leaders of the modern age.

“The American way is sustained by the lynch pin of freedom of speech.  TRN’s position towards all of its hosts is that of the classical liberal who says, ‘even though I might disagree with you completely, I will fight to the last breath to defend your right to speak freely.’  Sadly, the Brown government veers away from this, abandoning Britain’s principles and departing from the position of its own people.”

France has long held the title coveted by liberal socialist as the European country that most loves kowtowing to dictators and terrorists. France has been at the top of the heap without a serious challenge since the beginning of World War I. Their long history of puckering up for despots from the Kaiser to Kadafi made them a powerhouse. Their willingness to lay down their culture and country to the recent flood of immigrants from the Middle East made them seem unbeatable.

The French had recently become blasé about their position even to the point of banning the hijab in public schools and electing a conservative government. Even with these signs of weakness no serious challenges were seen to be arising.

Then two weeks ago, out of the blue, formerly sixth place Spain finished a shrewd and quietly conceived campaign to topple the long recognized champs. This coup was accomplished in three steps. First, the election in 2004 brought to power a far left wing party who promised to withdraw from Iraq, work for unity with Islamic fundamentalists, and make amends for the Spanish Civil War. The terrorist assured the election of these Spanish Euroweenies when it bombed trains in Madrid and allowed the Spanish to quake in their collective pants all the way to the polls.

Second, after the election of the leftist government the Spanish legislature passed a law which allowed the judiciary in Spain to indict anyone, for anything, anywhere. With this framework in place the Spanish were ready to strike. Judge Baltasar Garzon, long time anti American activist began to indict American officials for “crimes against humanity.” With that final maneuver Spain jumped to number one in the rankings moving France to number two for the first time in over ninety years.

The French have promised to mount a comeback as soon as they are attacked by Germany again or figure out the whole bathing thing.