These Days, It Isn’t Just Americans Suffering from Obama’s Failure
I’ve watched our president with great interest over this last week. I have to admit a good amount of trepidation about being critical of any commander-in-chief during a time of war: it’s typically liberals undermining our troops and berating the president during a military fight. On the other hand, the president insists we aren’t at war in Libya, so I guess that gives clearance.
President Obama projects timidity and indecision at home and abroad: he’s afraid of the optics of America dropping bombs on another Islamic country; he waited too long to get on TV to explain his actions to the American people. And it seems all of this foreign policy work is a distraction from his desire to remake America.
He’s gone out of his way to try and please everyone, including his re-election staff, and in so doing he has managed to unite the Tea Party and the radical left in opposition to his war in Libya.
What this president has done to us here at home is bad enough, but Obama’s lack of leadership on the world stage could spell international chaos.
The moment Libyan rebels started dying, the president should have moved an aircraft carrier group off Libya’s coast. Recall: we were fresh off the Egyptian revolt, and other Middle Eastern strongmen were finding protesters in their streets. The moment the slaughter started our forces should have been there to introduce stability. The show of force would have reassured allies and sent an unmistakable message to any thug dictator that American air power was minutes away if they decided to slaughter civilians.
The president should have publicly denounced the bloodshed immediately, and reminded Gaddafi about 1986. The last president to directly confront Gaddafi — Ronald Reagan — chose swift and decisive leadership, and Gaddafi was marginalized for over three decades. Had Obama acted instead of dithering for nearly a month, lives would have been saved, the no-fly zone may not have been necessary, and the leadership debacles that followed could have been avoided.
In an interview with the Boston Globe, the Senator Obama was very clear about what he thought the limits of the president are in ordering military action: “The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,” Obama said when it was speculated that then-President Bush might attack Iran.
Does Gaddafi pose an imminent threat to our nation? And what was Obama thinking going to the United Nations and the Arab League but not Congress? Even President Bush asked for and got resolutions for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And just in case there was any ambiguity on the subject, in 2007, Joe Biden was crystal clear about what he thought the fate of a president should be if he takes America’s armed forces into combat without congressional approval:
Of course, the VP was referring to a Republican president. If one didn’t know any better, one might think Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden play politics with national security. They were right then, or they are right now — it can’t be both.
The secretary of state, not the president, went on TV to declare the war in Libya was being handed over to NATO. I can almost see President Obama slapping his hands together and declaring: “Well that’s done, what’s next?” Comically, the administration is trying to tell us and the world that America is no longer in the lead. As Charles Krauthammer rightly pointed out, the United States leads NATO, so the idea that America’s involvement in Libya is over is laughable. The only mystery that remains: does President Obama believe that, or does he just think we’re that easily manipulated?
From the administration that renamed the “war on terror” an “overseas contingency operation,” we have the “kinetic military action.” This White House staff really does think Americans and the rest of the world are stupid. We can’t call it socialized medicine … let’s call it the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. And we can’t call Libya a war …
This administration is all talk and no substance. They think all you have to do is just rename a problem, and it goes away. It’s a grotesque abdication of responsibility and folly beyond words. These people live by the code: “perception is reality.” But they don’t realize America is getting a clarified perception that people in this White House haven’t a clue about what they’re doing.
On MSNBC back in December, the nation got a glimpse into how the president’s own party views him. Veteran Democrat senators revealed to Scarborough and company that they know President Obama doesn’t grasp what’s happening:
Now, this ideologue president is proving just as inept on the national stage as his secretary of state warned us he would be. World affairs is not an intellectual exercise in some debate class: committing a nation to military action is as real as it gets. And this president, lacking leadership and a moral compass, has set out to please everyone, and has in turn angered everyone.
That’s what happens when you don’t stand for anything. The outlook for mankind is grim when America doesn’t lead in the world. Since Obama’s election, emboldened tyrants have been on the march, and freedom has been in full retreat. For now the United States remains the lone superpower, equipped to stand for individual freedom and liberty around the globe. If only we had a president who felt comfortable carrying that mantle.
Stop with the Obama does not stand for anything. He is a man of the left who stands for income redistibution and sameness (“progressives” call it equality). Obama also stands for global reparations to all “people of color.” He believes the constitution does not constrain him and, if congress or the courts will not give him what he wants, he will do it by executive fiat (i.e., regulation or order). He does not believe America is a good country but he believes by making it weaker and more equal (i.e., sameness) to other countries, it can be good. He supports and helps pay for other countries to develop their energy (i.e., Brazil and New Guinea) but shuts down our energy production. He stands for same-sex-marriage, though he lied about that to help get him elected. He believes in black-liberation-theology as proven by attending the Reverand Wright’s racist church for over 20 years. He believes that some people make too much money and the government should put an end to it. He believes in a one-payer government run healthcare system. He thinks energy prices “must necessarily skyrocket under [his] cap and trade plan” and anyone who builds a coal fired power plant “must go bankrupt.” He believes that civil rights laws are only to protect “people of color” and voting rights laws are only to protect “his people.” He believes that President Bush should be impeached for the exact same thing he just did in Libya. He was an admitted communist in college. He resents the fact that he was raised by white people (e.g., his grandmother was a “typical white person”). He believes that you can bargain with evil and, at the same time, does not believe evil exists. He believes in using the crisis formerly known as global warming to bankrupt our nation. He believes that $3.7 trillion dollar bugets are too small. He believes that $500 billion deficits under Bush were too big but his $1.6 trillion is just right. He stands for a lot. Most of it bad.
exactly!
the sooner it becomes generally realized that obama’s lefty universe is an alternate universe the sooner we can deal with the sickness rather than constantly question the symptoms
the wormhole to the statist universe needs to be flooded and purged like a molehole in your backyard
Very well put.
President Obama couldn’t immediately react to Qaddafi’s brutal suppression. After all, he and his minions have spent the last three years telling the entire Arab world that whatever they do is OK by him, because all their problems are our fault, anyway. Qaddafi took him at his word, is all.
Obama finally reacted (in a very Clintonian/Kosovo way) when it became obvious to him that the American people weren’t on board with his hands-off attitude. Because first and foremost, he dreams of being in charge, and that reaction could abruptly end his reign (in November of 2012, to be exact). But he also wants to keep Qaddafi afloat, to please his supporters on the left who still think Moammar is the Jimmy Dean of the “Erase Israel From The Map” crowd. Hence, his “kinetic action”, and inability to explain exactly why our forces are being committed to a campaign with no clear objective, no actual policy, and very little in the way of planning.
Obama is trying to keep a foot in both camps on this one. And as Len Deighton once observed, when you do that, they tend to build the barbed wire right through you. (Funeral in Berlin, 1964.)
clear ether
eon
“Does Gaddafi pose an imminent threat to our nation? And what was Obama thinking going to the United Nations and the Arab League but not Congress? Even President Bush asked for and got resolutions for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
These are all points that Obama failed to address in yesterday’s speech to the nation. And for Obama last night to take a shot at Bush, saying that regime change was the wrong way to go in Iraq, was childish and petty. At least Bush knew what he wanted to do and what the objective was. How can Obama possibly say that we do not want regime change, but at the same time say that “Gaddafi must go?” And supportuing “rebels” with aircraft, bombs, and missiles to take over the rest of the country doesn’t sound like a “No-Fly Zone” operation to me. I know that Obama thinks we’re all dumb, but please, please Mr. President, do NOT patronize us and humor us and treat us like little children. That’s no way to build support for fighting A WAR, not a “kinetic military action.”
No one outside of the US Democratic party believes Obama/Clinton anymore. It was only a short time ago that Obama was the darling of the Muslim world bitch slapping Bibi and his stiff necked people, today the saudis, Baharanis……. wouldnt trust Obama as far as they could fling him. It is almost as if Obama cannot miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity(following in the footsteps of the once adored and much missed Arafat). Here is a funny thing to consider, what did Mubarak, Khadaffi, Ben Ali and the Yemini Prez have in common???? They were all fighting Al Kaida. Who is Obama backing as the ‘peoples choice’ at showdown time Al Kaida…. Over here in Israel we are all dumbfounded every time Obama or a high ranking member of his administration opens his or invariably her mouth, what a pack of losers. The international street cred of the US is tanking, over here I cant think of a person I know who doesnt think of Obama as a wanker!!!
DMGold,
Most Americans don’t know what a whanker is, but all the same, you are being way to kind to that, made in kenya, looser and his motley crew of low lifes that helped get him elected.
I think our liberals are starting to wonder why they voted for him, not all mind you, but a lot more then might be thought, to doubt their actions.
He will be go down in history as a joke, a large buffoonish joke.
That is and we should all act, as not to be called the least effective society ever.
The last paragraph is very wise and true. We have to get rid of Obama.
Astounding how the Powers That Be will allow this inept gallery in the Administration to continue…
If impeachement is brought to the fore in the next four months maybe Joe Biden might call it by another name to make himself look good, such as…(fill in!)
Election correction?
Changing of the guard?
No more on-the-job training?
Democrats in charge, Part II?
The real question is: will this bumbler manage to fumble the entire world into war before he gets voted out in 2012?
Yawn. The world is suffering. Too bad.
They hate us. They get off on hating us. Now let them get off on their own dysfunction.
I’m supposed to feel bad about them now?
My compassion is limited to us now. And Israel.
Obama. The ultimate international cluebat.
The U.S. shouldn’t be in Libya, period. It isn’t Obama who doesn’t stand for anything, it’s the Republicans and pseudo-conservatives. They have no domestic agenda, largely because they are paralyzed by the issue of race and fear of the media, and they try to cover their failings, Galtieri-style, with support for military adventures abroad. An aircraft carrier off the Libyan coast? What about the coasts of Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain? Do you support that too or are you just using Libya as a cheap prop in the increasingly sleazy American political game? “American air power was minutes away if they decided to slaughter civilians”, when did that become a conservative principle? Is it minutes away from the Congo?
When Texas goes Democrat (and it will), you’re through. That’s a good example of how the crooks at the top of the Republican Party didn’t take care of business domestically while they squandered the nations blood and money playing the Great Game (a 43% increase, THAT’S FORTY-THREE PERCENT, in Hispanics during W’s decade). And make no bones about it, the Republican and “Big C” Conservative leadership understands very well that traditional America’s time is up, they are playing a completely cynical end game strictly for their own benefit.
The majority of Texans are conservatives. Why? Because Conservatives are individualist. We have no desire ourselves, and thus little understanding of others desire for POWER over people. Islam, Communism, the Greens and other leftist ideologies are all about POWER of the “elite” few over the masses. All these ideologies are based on untruths, and are nothing more than huge Con Games. Suckers, like you Henry, make up the bulk of their supporters.
I totally agree! They see the end coming! They are stuffing the pockets and makeing plans to ride out the great democratic tax and spend era.
We are already at the beginning of World War III, in case you haven’t noticed. The forces of radical Islam are consolidating their power in all of those toppling Mideast regimes, and it won’t be long before they have the strength, force of numbers, and vast oil wealth to challenge us directly. Meanwhile, the inept fool in the White House continues to make one fatally stupid mistake after another. I don’t know about you, but he’s starting to creep me out. Are these dangerous presidential missteps actually the result of incompetence, or is there another agenda at work here?
Yeah, and wouldn’t it be just too convenient if we came under attack when most of our miltary was over in the Middle East?
How many gangbangers and criminal illegals will Uncle Sam want for the draft, ya’think?
Oh, right, this would be a job for the bitter clingers. Got it.
Everything we needed to know about Barry was evident before he was elected, he hasn’t contradicted any of it. We now sit around watching and yelling like it is some kind of football game but this purple lipped, jug eared, undocumented, henpecked halfrican is a clear and present danger to individual freedom, finance, democracy and world stability. We may not make it to the next election without things becoming irretrievable. The dude must be forced out, Trump is on the right track.
We all know that it will be American Patriots who will respond when the nation calls. Gee I wonder if I’ll be considered “too old” at 62, since even at that advanced age I’d volunteer if needed. What really is frightening is that Barry, being the slick politician and word smith that he is, will somehow find a way to turn the Libya debacle into his advantage and use it to get re-elected in 2012.
http://cristinarad.blogspot.com/2011/03/on-libya-no-fly-zone.html
The following is what a wrote to a liberal-progressive whose trying to agree with the Libyan no-fly-zone but not with Iraq. Their Hypocrisy make me so sick.
You support enforcing the Libyan no-fly-zone but did not support enforcing the Iraqi no fly zone? The Irony. You should know if you support the Libyan No-fly zone by defualt you have supported regime change and nation building because that is how all of this is going to end. Even Obama admited that was pretty much the out come he really wanted to see in Libya last night in his wrongheaded speech. They aren’t going to leave Qaddafi in power, so get that fantasy out of your head. FYI: America already has Marines on the ground in Libya. Don’t believe me? http://www.onenewsnow.com/Security/Default.aspx?id=1316884
Let’s look at some facts for why you’re a hypocrite and neo-con at heart…
(With Bush2 in Iraq and even Clinton’s NATO action in Bosnia and Herzegovina there was long debates before hand with Obama there was no debate.)
1.)Obama did not have Congressional Approval.
1a.) Bush did have Congressional Approval.
2.) Obama tried International Diplomacy
2a.) Bush tried International Diplomacy
3.) Obama had U.N. approval. 3a.)Bush had U.N. approval. 4.) 2003 invasion of Iraq was backed by 40 countries, while only 15 have backed Obama’s Libyan mission. Infact,Romaina was on the ground in Iraq.
I also don’t get your argument that because France started this war in Libya that makes it ok even though the USA will have to finish the fight they picked.That doesn’t make everything peachy. Not to mention, the Arab league has now traded on America and NATO forces as soon as civilians were killed, and Germany pulled out. 5.)Gaddafi has oil and killed his own citizens. 5a.) Saddam had oil and killed his own citizens. Why the hypocrisy? Saddam was far worse than Gaddafi could ever dream of being to his people. Are you saying you’ve never thought it possible that the Islamist Rebels might do some ethnic cleansing themselves? Don’t think it possible? Let’s give you a little history lesson shall we: The U.S. has a long, complicated, and dark history of arming rebel groups around the world. On December 6, 1984, as the U.S. increased its funding to anti-Soviet Afghan rebels to tens of millions of dollars in weapons and supplies, CIA Director William Casey wrote in a classified memo, “Unless U.S. policy is redesigned to achieve a broader attack on Soviet vulnerabilities it cannot restore independence to Afghanistan.” The next year, he got a quarter of a billion dollars, all quietly siphoned out of leftover Pentagon budgets by secret Congressional authorization. In the search to spend that money, a CIA officer wrote in another classified memo, “analytically, the best fighters – the best organized fighters – were the fundamentalists.” The memo concluded that the best such fundamentalist fighter and target for U.S. funding was one Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a brutal mujahideen commander who would later join the Taliban, with which he is still battling the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan. There was also our support for the anti-communist militias in Argentina and Honduras led us to directly train some of the fighters that later evolved into outright death squads. Nixon-era CIA operations in Chile helped Augusto Pinochet’s takeover by military coup, which later ended with Pinochet’s arrest as a war criminal for the mass murder and torture. The Nicaraguan contras, whom we armed in the 1980s to terrorize the Marxist government, instead terrorized civilians, whom they tortured and killed in large numbers. The U.S.’s support for the rise of the Khmer Rouge, remembered for their genocide of nearly 2 million Cambodians, is more ambiguous and complicated. At the very least, they enjoyed tacit U.S. tolerance as long as they fought Communist Vietnam. The most common outcome of U.S.-funded rebellions has been to create instability and violence that, whether in the form of intractable insurgencies or low-level sectarian fighting, tends to last far longer than whatever political conflict they were meant to resolve. The flood of arms – particularly the easy-to-use, impossible-to-destroy, grimly effective Kalashnikov rifle variants – make weapons so prolific and so cheap that terrorism, criminal gangs better armed than the police, and militias of every political and religious stripe are all but impossible to stamp out. By the time that CIA funding dries up, young men who have made their living for years fighting on the American dime have no other way to support their family than killing for hire. Wealthy, extremist sheikhs and would-be sheikhs on the Arabian Peninsula are always happy to write checks in pursuit of their Islamist dreams, as they have done in support of Afghan and Pakistani militants for decades. Violence begets violence, instability begets instability, and the U.S. tactic of arming rebels has been incredibly successful at fomenting both, but has done little to end either, often creating problems far outsizing those we originally meant to solve. 6.)How was Libya a actual threat let alone a immediate threat to Us? Libya was taken off the state sponser of terrorism list. Ironically, Libya gave up its WMD program after witnessing the invasion in Iraq. Our strategic national interest is non-existent: Libya has far less oil reserves, supplying only 2% of the world’s oil, and does not have the ability to threaten shipping lanes like Iran. 6a.)Saddam was a state sponsor of terrorism and wanted everyone to think he still had a WMD program. The latter of which with the power of hindsight we now know everyone wrongly bought into. Not to mention, In the 90′s he burned his oil wells. 7.) If the crux of the issue is about a government brutalizing its own citizens, why hasn’t Obama sent troops in to Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, Chechnya, Burma, Uzbekistan? Or if it is about human rights and democracy, then why hasn’t Obama launched and attack on China, North Korea, Nepal, or Cuba? Why Libya? Why not Iran, a country that has called for the execution of opposition leaders? Why not Saudi Arabia, a country that has sent its military to crush the determination of its people in Bahrain? What is the standard and reasoning? You can do all the Monday morning quarterbacking you want now, but in 2002-03, the United States considered Iraq a national security threat. Is Libya currently considered a threat to the United States? As I already pointed out the answer is No. 8.)It would be heartening to think that Qaddafi’s opponents are Western-style democrats-in-waiting, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, a Libyan rebel leader, recently revealed that the ranks of the rebels include jihadists who fought American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is consistent with the findings of American military researchers that Libyans, many with ties to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIGF) that has roots in the breakaway parts of eastern Libya, made up the second-largest cohort of foreign fighters in Iraq, after Saudi Arabia. The military’s West Point academy reports that while the LIFG is not officially affiliated with al-Qaeda, the two organizations share an “increasingly co-operative relationship.” Is it the “aspirations” of such allies that the U.S. is in Libya to defend? 9.)Our actions in Libya have cost us BILLIONS already. You support the NATO actions in Libya then you go tell the Romanian president to waste your countries billions on fighting it. 10.)Joe Biden, when he was a candidate in December 2007, said that if President Bush had gone ahead to attack Iran without congressional authorization, that he would move to impeach him. President Obama said the president doesn’t have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation… My reading of the Constitution is consistent with the people who are now president and vice president.Obama lied people died.
My solution is very simple: Do nothing. Let them fight their own civil-war. Non-action is not immoral when our interests are not threatened in any way shape or form. The Criss/Obama/Bush doctrine of sacrificing our-selves for others has to stop or these wars which bleed us of our treasure and get our fellow citizens killed will be perpetual.
Hopefully, some in the Republican Political College are continuing their major soul-searching right this minute for ways to prevent the Democrats from snookering us yet again in 2012. See what empty “charisma” as the major qualification for winning votes has wrought in the person of our present Commander-In-Chief?
So, we should, each of us, realize that that Part I of our dual problem is removing ourselves from ground combat in these three ugly wars…..which really are right this hour combined as one being Western Civilization’s very survival against encroaching, infiltrating Islam…..and that Part II is the immediate need to prevent the decline of our economy while at the same time being very, very thoughtful about who we vote for in 2012. These blend together subtly.
Consider also that the Chinese and Russians are very coy, waiting and standing in the wings, ready to adjust their tactics after they see who wins our Presidency. They’re both “User And Taker” nations, not “Contributor” nations for the world’s good.
All of the above emphasize the vital need to prevent ostrich-Liberals from winning the Presidency and Congress in 2012.
See what’s at stake in the most critical coming election cycle?
Nearly killed and frozen to death by these savages. Their unconstitutional effort to paying gross injustice to enforce what were once the laws of the American people, now nothing but repealed nonsense. You can’t even side with laws against child molesting without being sentenced to death by Barrack.