President Obama's request for war re-authorization is his best imitation of a political tight-rope walker. He must at least act as though he wishes to destroy, degrade, deflate, or denigrate ISIS, so as to appear to the vast majority of Americans like he is protecting the homeland. On the other hand, his request is laced with so many restrictions, one would be hard pressed to see it as anything but an obligatory Democrat attempt to look tough on America's enemies, that is if he even admits that we have enemies.
The president's telegraphy is laced with the seeds of failure. With its timetables, boundaries, and troop limits, it is analogous to the head coach of a football team making a pre-Super Bowl announcement that during the game his players will only run the ball and never pass and will not traverse the fifty yard line. But still somehow the coach brags that his team will annihilate their opponent.
It is hard to believe that it was only a year or so ago that President Obama called ISIS the junior varsity team. And yet this JV team has wreaked havoc in the Middle East and been able to recruit fighters, kidnap western hostages, and share video of their executions with the world, almost entirely at will. This JV team has taken control of oil fields and use the wealth therein to supply their terrorist network with almost unlimited funding. This JV team has caused the U.S. victory that was Iraq to be transformed into defeat like some sadistic magician's trick.
It has been a busy 6 years for Barack Obama, transforming the Middle East from tentative unrest to complete and utter chaos. But then chaos is the watch word of a community agitator like our president, whether it is racial and class division domestically, or the rise of radical Islam halfway around the world. Chaos, either directly created by Barack Obama or allowed to happen under his watch, is the main ingredient needed for the poisonous stew of big government.
For any intellectually honest person, the pre-Barack Obama Middle East was much more stable and peaceful than it is now. Iraq, pre-ISIS, was not perfect but was well on its way to peace and self-governance. Egypt under Mubarak was at least a stable U.S. ally, not a country that may erupt into chaos at any moment and oust the seemingly pro-Western government. Libya under Kaddafi's control had been declawed and was subdued. Yemen was not a tourist location, but it also was not a place where the U.S. had to close its embassy either. And pre-Obama Iran was against the ropes and getting very close to abandoning its nuclear ambitions.
I am not opposed to the president asking congress for re-authorization of war powers, as long as they will be used to their fullest to defeat, destroy, and decimate an enemy called radical Islam. But if this authorization is the tight rope upon which Barack Obama will perform his political dance theatrics, then I say no, no, no.
Showing posts with label National Security. Show all posts
Showing posts with label National Security. Show all posts
Friday, February 13, 2015
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
The President Phones It In
In this time of national malaise there have been two recent stories that seem to be incongruous with each other. One was the FBI Director's comments about Americans who fight along side ISIS and return to this country. The Director said that they could not keep these fighters from re-entering the United States. The other story was about an Illinois 19 year old who was stopped and arrested before leaving the country with the intent to travel to Syria and fight along side ISIS.
Does any other normal intelligent person think that these two postures by the U.S. authorities is 180 degrees out of phase? To me it is like arresting a bank robber on his way to the bank, but a robber who actually commits the crime and is heading away from the bank is given immunity by the police. And maybe the Director of the FBI has not been paying attention, but the government has been able to restrict the sale of certain types of light bulbs, compel citizens to by health insurance, and force those opposed to gay marriage to participate in such ceremonies by taking photographs or baking cakes. But are we to believe that same government can not prevent those who have fought along side our enemy from repatriating?
The Obama administration's action against ISIS to secure the safety of the United States and our allies has been analogous to a professional golfer trying to win a tournament using only his putter. The bombing missions that the administration has crowed about being so successful have been waged against the rear of the fighting, and not the front lines where the majority of ISIS fighters could be eliminated. So far we have taken out a few armored personnel carriers and a tank or two, but not much else.
God forbid we bomb too close to the Turkish border and risk upsetting that weakest of all allies. The Turks are trying to stack the deck in their favor by giving lip service to the U.S. airstrikes against ISIS, while turning a blind eye to the terrorist group. Recently, Turkish authorities ignored ISIS fighters selling their group's memorabilia in the public spaces of Istanbul. But it will only be a matter of time before the group that the Turks hate somewhat less than the Kurds, turns their wrath on them.
Meanwhile, everyone who has even an inkling of honest intellectualism can surmise that President Obama is doing the absolute minimum he can to satisfy his duty to protect the security of the United States, while keeping the lid on his radical anti-war base by "phoning it in." Problem is that with more and more American ISIS fighters returning to the United States from their terrorist education abroad, and who knows how many ISIS members taking advantage of the Obama open border policy in the South, the president's feckless and lackluster defense of this country will create a security risk long after his tenure in office expires.
Does any other normal intelligent person think that these two postures by the U.S. authorities is 180 degrees out of phase? To me it is like arresting a bank robber on his way to the bank, but a robber who actually commits the crime and is heading away from the bank is given immunity by the police. And maybe the Director of the FBI has not been paying attention, but the government has been able to restrict the sale of certain types of light bulbs, compel citizens to by health insurance, and force those opposed to gay marriage to participate in such ceremonies by taking photographs or baking cakes. But are we to believe that same government can not prevent those who have fought along side our enemy from repatriating?
The Obama administration's action against ISIS to secure the safety of the United States and our allies has been analogous to a professional golfer trying to win a tournament using only his putter. The bombing missions that the administration has crowed about being so successful have been waged against the rear of the fighting, and not the front lines where the majority of ISIS fighters could be eliminated. So far we have taken out a few armored personnel carriers and a tank or two, but not much else.
God forbid we bomb too close to the Turkish border and risk upsetting that weakest of all allies. The Turks are trying to stack the deck in their favor by giving lip service to the U.S. airstrikes against ISIS, while turning a blind eye to the terrorist group. Recently, Turkish authorities ignored ISIS fighters selling their group's memorabilia in the public spaces of Istanbul. But it will only be a matter of time before the group that the Turks hate somewhat less than the Kurds, turns their wrath on them.
Meanwhile, everyone who has even an inkling of honest intellectualism can surmise that President Obama is doing the absolute minimum he can to satisfy his duty to protect the security of the United States, while keeping the lid on his radical anti-war base by "phoning it in." Problem is that with more and more American ISIS fighters returning to the United States from their terrorist education abroad, and who knows how many ISIS members taking advantage of the Obama open border policy in the South, the president's feckless and lackluster defense of this country will create a security risk long after his tenure in office expires.
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
The New Dark Ages
One of the things that scare me about the foreign policy of isolationists like Rand Paul, is the seeming ignorance they have of history. It has never been good for the world when America withdraws its interest from what happens outside its borders. Many think that somehow the United States can exist is some geographical vacuum where no amount of evil in other parts of the world can touch our pampered little lives.
I would have surmised that this kind of thought process would have been expelled from the main stream of American thinking after fighting World War I, or even World War II. I certainly thought that the leave 'em-alone-and-they will-leave-us-alone crowd would have been relegated to the outer fringes of public discourse after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. And yet these folks persist in saying that America can not be the policemen of the world. Well, maybe not. But does that mean America should not use its influence to shape world events?
The world, especially during the last five years, has suffered from too little American influence, not too much. With Europe becoming more irrelevant each day they abandon their individual sovereignty to the intellectual elites in the European Union, and most other nations of the world having squandered their defense dividend (paid by the U.S. providing 80% of the world's security) on massive social welfare programs, there is little stopping the world from plunging into the debts of a new Dark Age, except America.
The demographics of Europe, Canada, Australia, and even some Asian countries have populations that are shrinking, not expanding. Even the U.S. has a population rate that insures static growth. The fastest growing population in the world is the Muslim one. And with an average age under 30 years old, and the rate of radicalization closing in on warp-speed, the world does not need egghead multiculturalists from the UN or the EU, but the American values of liberty, freedom, and self-rule. One would have to be the clown jewel of ridiculousness to deny that these values insure peace and justice throughout the world.
United States national security is not just about defending our borders (which even that Democrats refuse to do) but about redistribution, not of our wealth as Barack Obama aims to do, but of the values that created our wealth and political stability. There is no question that the American experiment has advanced the human condition more than any other nation throughout history. Is it not the duty of such a nation to gently, and at times more forcefully, influence world events towards the values that have benefitted mankind so greatly?
The responsibility toward ultimate peace, prosperity, and security is that of the nation that has proven its values to be superior to the ethos of despotism and essential to the propagation of the aforementioned goals. It becomes more clear with each passing day that the rest of the world passively allows itself to be swallowed in a suicide pact with multiculturalism that America virtually stands alone in the battle to keep itself and the world from plunging into the abyss of the new Dark Ages.
I would have surmised that this kind of thought process would have been expelled from the main stream of American thinking after fighting World War I, or even World War II. I certainly thought that the leave 'em-alone-and-they will-leave-us-alone crowd would have been relegated to the outer fringes of public discourse after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. And yet these folks persist in saying that America can not be the policemen of the world. Well, maybe not. But does that mean America should not use its influence to shape world events?
The world, especially during the last five years, has suffered from too little American influence, not too much. With Europe becoming more irrelevant each day they abandon their individual sovereignty to the intellectual elites in the European Union, and most other nations of the world having squandered their defense dividend (paid by the U.S. providing 80% of the world's security) on massive social welfare programs, there is little stopping the world from plunging into the debts of a new Dark Age, except America.
The demographics of Europe, Canada, Australia, and even some Asian countries have populations that are shrinking, not expanding. Even the U.S. has a population rate that insures static growth. The fastest growing population in the world is the Muslim one. And with an average age under 30 years old, and the rate of radicalization closing in on warp-speed, the world does not need egghead multiculturalists from the UN or the EU, but the American values of liberty, freedom, and self-rule. One would have to be the clown jewel of ridiculousness to deny that these values insure peace and justice throughout the world.
United States national security is not just about defending our borders (which even that Democrats refuse to do) but about redistribution, not of our wealth as Barack Obama aims to do, but of the values that created our wealth and political stability. There is no question that the American experiment has advanced the human condition more than any other nation throughout history. Is it not the duty of such a nation to gently, and at times more forcefully, influence world events towards the values that have benefitted mankind so greatly?
The responsibility toward ultimate peace, prosperity, and security is that of the nation that has proven its values to be superior to the ethos of despotism and essential to the propagation of the aforementioned goals. It becomes more clear with each passing day that the rest of the world passively allows itself to be swallowed in a suicide pact with multiculturalism that America virtually stands alone in the battle to keep itself and the world from plunging into the abyss of the new Dark Ages.
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