Chris Adamo
Disastrous foreign policy reflects a disastrous presidency
By Chris Adamo
The "unexpected" nature of the pandemic of chaos throughout the Middle East is really no different than any of the other unanticipated problems now confronting the Obama Administration. Certainly, the $831 billion dollar "stimulus" of early 2009 should have had the nation's economy humming by now, with Main Street thriving on account of all the new businesses, hiring those unemployed people, and giving them Cadillac health-care coverage in the process. Just as certainly, Barack Obama's flowery but empty platitudes of "hope and change," the fake Greek columns where he accepted the Democrat nomination for the White House, and the self-adulation of those willing to elect him should have sufficed to buoy the nation beyond its economic doldrums, especially when buttressed by those dollars now flowing so freely from Washington.
To the surprise of the "experts" however, the United States is drowning in a sea of red ink (with the manufacture of red ink being outsourced figuratively, and perhaps also literally, to China). The national debt has now topped $16 trillion, and is still climbing. The cost of every wonderful entitlement program from food stamps to Social Security is ballooning, yet the revenues needed to maintain such programs are just not coming into the national treasury. Despite all of the pronouncements of one "recovery" after another (Starting in the summer of 2009, and then repeated each year thereafter), the economy is as stagnant as it was on the day of Barack Obama's inauguration. No doubt this is because greedy business owners refuse to spread the wealth. Somehow, things just are not working out as promised.
With total indifference to the suffering and deprivation of the Heartland, he and his wife regularly jet to high dollar vacation locales while the peasantry folk watch from a respectful distance. Eventually, they will recognize that it is their lot to gratefully rejoice at the prospect of being handed shovels with which to embark on their new careers. This is the not-so-dazzling reality behind the "chicken in every pot" subsistence that somehow supplanted the founders' vision of a people unshackled and empowered to engage in the "pursuit of happiness."
Undaunted, the liberal political establishment and its media parrots still sing the praises of Barack Obama's "historic" term in office. But if he truly regards this era as a resounding success, why did he not quantifiably make that case at the Democrat National Convention rather than merely disparaging Mitt Romney? And why did he instead champion the ongoing cultural rot under the phony premise of rallying and leading the opposition to that mythical "war on women"? Certainly, the accelerated unraveling of the fabric of society, to which his policies have contributed, tells a far different and much more tragic story. And women are among its casualties.
Internationally, America was ostensibly redeemed for all of its past wrongs by the mere fact that a majority of its population had voted for Obama. Better still, he was willing to engage in that infamous bowing and groveling to every tin-horn despot on the world stage, while apologizing for the former moral deficiencies of this nation which, by virtue of his position at the helm, have now been atoned. Henceforth, people everywhere should love us and congratulate us for our determination to operate from a position of self-imposed weakness. So should anyone really be surprised that reality has upset this dream, and the forces of brutality and oppression in less civilized regions are seizing the occasion to assert themselves against our country?
The real tragedy of our current plight reaches far beyond the horror of a murdered United States Ambassador and members of his staff, or the outrage of a black Islamist flag being raised over the American Embassy in Cairo, after Old Glory was torn down a desecrated by a seething mob of angry Muslims. Rather, it is that this is the inevitable manifestation of the "Arab Spring," which was aided and abetted through criminally warped U.S. policy, based in weakness and appeasement, among societies that admittedly never liked us and never will but were reasonably restrained by a respect for our strength, back when we had the resolve to use it.
However, instead of waking up and working to secure the safety of American citizens and shoring up our international standing, the current administration is focused primarily, if not exclusively, on political damage control. Having endeavored to save face after the sudden implosion of its flower-child/Woodstock diplomatic approach, its attention was frantically redirected to Mitt Romney's criticism of the Obama Administration and the State Department, as if Romney's words alone posed a more dire threat to the security of America than the virulent hatred of the Islamists.
Ever since, "official reports" from the Administration amounted to an embarrassing succession of fabrications, all of which are clearly intended to convince the public that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have enjoyed stellar successes in their Middle Eastern relations, only tarnished by a few random and uncoordinated acts of violence. September 11, the date of these "spontaneous" anti-American protests, was purely coincidental. The real bone of contention was an anti-Muslim video, posted on YouTube. Only after more than a week has the White House suggested that the attacks might have been the coordinated and premeditated work of terrorist organizations including al Qaeda.
Meanwhile, the projection of weakness and appeasement continues. In what can only be properly characterized as creeping Sharia in America, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the producer of the video, has been roundly condemned before the marauding foreigners by his own country's government, and was subsequently apprehended for "questioning." In total abandonment of their sworn duty to protect his free speech and expression, the Administration and its surrogates denounced not the rioting bands of Islamists, but Nakoula, in the harshest of terms. Is this how they intend to refurbish and improve American/Islamist relations that, we were told, should have blossomed under the leadership of Barack Obama?
Just how does the public castigation of Nakoula really impact the time-honored freedoms of speech and religion once enjoyed by every American? In essence, those entrusted to protect and uphold his rights have decided that he somehow abused and forfeited them by going on the attack against Islam. It is noteworthy that they never make this case against the anti-Christian "artwork" which is so prominent among America's counterculture. All too often it is even subsidized, meaning that taxpayers are forced to foot the bill for blasphemous such displays.
Secondly, though the government harassment of Nakoula is clearly being perpetrated to impress upon those militant Islamists that they have friends in high places in the U.S. government it is also intended to send a stern and not-so-subtle message to the rest of America. Islamic states demand that any disparagement of them and their religion be suppressed, and the Obama administration intends to comply. Americans who cross the line by offending the Muslim world do so facing the likelihood of retribution from our leaders as well.
No doubt, it is believed at the highest levels of the U.S. government that these exhibitions of liberal enlightenment will usher in a golden age of mutual respect and understanding among the nations of the world, just as the collectivist domestic policy is still expected to eventually create a socialist utopia within our shores. Unfortunately, reality is slow to impress the idealistically blind. If the devastation on Main Street over the past four years is not sufficient to persuade these committed leftists, it is hardly likely that the venomous anti-American attitudes of the "Arab Street" will infuse common sense into their thinking either.
© Chris Adamo
September 20, 2012
The "unexpected" nature of the pandemic of chaos throughout the Middle East is really no different than any of the other unanticipated problems now confronting the Obama Administration. Certainly, the $831 billion dollar "stimulus" of early 2009 should have had the nation's economy humming by now, with Main Street thriving on account of all the new businesses, hiring those unemployed people, and giving them Cadillac health-care coverage in the process. Just as certainly, Barack Obama's flowery but empty platitudes of "hope and change," the fake Greek columns where he accepted the Democrat nomination for the White House, and the self-adulation of those willing to elect him should have sufficed to buoy the nation beyond its economic doldrums, especially when buttressed by those dollars now flowing so freely from Washington.
To the surprise of the "experts" however, the United States is drowning in a sea of red ink (with the manufacture of red ink being outsourced figuratively, and perhaps also literally, to China). The national debt has now topped $16 trillion, and is still climbing. The cost of every wonderful entitlement program from food stamps to Social Security is ballooning, yet the revenues needed to maintain such programs are just not coming into the national treasury. Despite all of the pronouncements of one "recovery" after another (Starting in the summer of 2009, and then repeated each year thereafter), the economy is as stagnant as it was on the day of Barack Obama's inauguration. No doubt this is because greedy business owners refuse to spread the wealth. Somehow, things just are not working out as promised.
With total indifference to the suffering and deprivation of the Heartland, he and his wife regularly jet to high dollar vacation locales while the peasantry folk watch from a respectful distance. Eventually, they will recognize that it is their lot to gratefully rejoice at the prospect of being handed shovels with which to embark on their new careers. This is the not-so-dazzling reality behind the "chicken in every pot" subsistence that somehow supplanted the founders' vision of a people unshackled and empowered to engage in the "pursuit of happiness."
Undaunted, the liberal political establishment and its media parrots still sing the praises of Barack Obama's "historic" term in office. But if he truly regards this era as a resounding success, why did he not quantifiably make that case at the Democrat National Convention rather than merely disparaging Mitt Romney? And why did he instead champion the ongoing cultural rot under the phony premise of rallying and leading the opposition to that mythical "war on women"? Certainly, the accelerated unraveling of the fabric of society, to which his policies have contributed, tells a far different and much more tragic story. And women are among its casualties.
Internationally, America was ostensibly redeemed for all of its past wrongs by the mere fact that a majority of its population had voted for Obama. Better still, he was willing to engage in that infamous bowing and groveling to every tin-horn despot on the world stage, while apologizing for the former moral deficiencies of this nation which, by virtue of his position at the helm, have now been atoned. Henceforth, people everywhere should love us and congratulate us for our determination to operate from a position of self-imposed weakness. So should anyone really be surprised that reality has upset this dream, and the forces of brutality and oppression in less civilized regions are seizing the occasion to assert themselves against our country?
The real tragedy of our current plight reaches far beyond the horror of a murdered United States Ambassador and members of his staff, or the outrage of a black Islamist flag being raised over the American Embassy in Cairo, after Old Glory was torn down a desecrated by a seething mob of angry Muslims. Rather, it is that this is the inevitable manifestation of the "Arab Spring," which was aided and abetted through criminally warped U.S. policy, based in weakness and appeasement, among societies that admittedly never liked us and never will but were reasonably restrained by a respect for our strength, back when we had the resolve to use it.
However, instead of waking up and working to secure the safety of American citizens and shoring up our international standing, the current administration is focused primarily, if not exclusively, on political damage control. Having endeavored to save face after the sudden implosion of its flower-child/Woodstock diplomatic approach, its attention was frantically redirected to Mitt Romney's criticism of the Obama Administration and the State Department, as if Romney's words alone posed a more dire threat to the security of America than the virulent hatred of the Islamists.
Ever since, "official reports" from the Administration amounted to an embarrassing succession of fabrications, all of which are clearly intended to convince the public that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have enjoyed stellar successes in their Middle Eastern relations, only tarnished by a few random and uncoordinated acts of violence. September 11, the date of these "spontaneous" anti-American protests, was purely coincidental. The real bone of contention was an anti-Muslim video, posted on YouTube. Only after more than a week has the White House suggested that the attacks might have been the coordinated and premeditated work of terrorist organizations including al Qaeda.
Meanwhile, the projection of weakness and appeasement continues. In what can only be properly characterized as creeping Sharia in America, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the producer of the video, has been roundly condemned before the marauding foreigners by his own country's government, and was subsequently apprehended for "questioning." In total abandonment of their sworn duty to protect his free speech and expression, the Administration and its surrogates denounced not the rioting bands of Islamists, but Nakoula, in the harshest of terms. Is this how they intend to refurbish and improve American/Islamist relations that, we were told, should have blossomed under the leadership of Barack Obama?
Just how does the public castigation of Nakoula really impact the time-honored freedoms of speech and religion once enjoyed by every American? In essence, those entrusted to protect and uphold his rights have decided that he somehow abused and forfeited them by going on the attack against Islam. It is noteworthy that they never make this case against the anti-Christian "artwork" which is so prominent among America's counterculture. All too often it is even subsidized, meaning that taxpayers are forced to foot the bill for blasphemous such displays.
Secondly, though the government harassment of Nakoula is clearly being perpetrated to impress upon those militant Islamists that they have friends in high places in the U.S. government it is also intended to send a stern and not-so-subtle message to the rest of America. Islamic states demand that any disparagement of them and their religion be suppressed, and the Obama administration intends to comply. Americans who cross the line by offending the Muslim world do so facing the likelihood of retribution from our leaders as well.
No doubt, it is believed at the highest levels of the U.S. government that these exhibitions of liberal enlightenment will usher in a golden age of mutual respect and understanding among the nations of the world, just as the collectivist domestic policy is still expected to eventually create a socialist utopia within our shores. Unfortunately, reality is slow to impress the idealistically blind. If the devastation on Main Street over the past four years is not sufficient to persuade these committed leftists, it is hardly likely that the venomous anti-American attitudes of the "Arab Street" will infuse common sense into their thinking either.
© Chris Adamo
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