Obama’s “Whack a Mole” Foreign Policy
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/obamas-whack-a-mole-foreign-policy?f=must_reads
by DR. ROBIN MCFEE September 5, 2014
Ever been to a carnival - no, not junkets on Air Force One, the circus that is the current Washington DC political scene, or the White House, but a legitimate amusement park? If you have, then you know the game - "whack a mole" where you try to hammer a little critter that can pop out of any hole on the game board with the lightning speed of a democrat taxing money out of your wallet. Whoever successfully whacks the little critter the most times, wins the game.
That was Hamas and Hezbollah popping out of tunnels in Israel. It was Viet Cong doing the same in Vietnam. It is to Obama the threats that are reproducing nearly out of control on his watch here and abroad.
President Obama, and his band of merry and not so merry men globetrotting, trying to address the myriad geopolitical crisis in the world today reminds me of that game, where each international crisis and catastrophe represents a little mole popping out of the hole. If you prefer, we could think of the elusive critter in Caddy Shack instead, given President Obama is the Golfer In Chief!
Although we are way beyond blame, given this is the 11th hour and we need solutions badly, that notwithstanding, much of the turmoil being allowed to run rampant is largely the result of inept presidential actions, part of which forced the US to become disengaged as a global force for good,
Consider the image of Barry O, John K, Uncle Joe, and the rest of the little rascals on Team Obama scampering across the US and internationally addressing crisis after crisis, made me think of children on a critter hunt at the Woodstock Fair! Unfortunately, I do not see President Obama carrying a plastic mallet in hand trying to catch, stop or kill any let alone all those pesky problems running about. He talks a good fight but seems nearly paralyzed to actually engage in one. Perhaps if ISIS were the Middle East franchise of the Tea Party, President Obama might be more willing to turn ruffian street organizer.
Not that the regular readers of FSM need to see the tally in terms of catastrophes that pockmark Obama Foreign Policy, but for those returning from vacation, there are many! Just to list a few, let us see now, there is Vlad the impaler annexing portions of the Ukraine. Just the other day ISIS beheaded another American on TV. The first time, Obama ran off to play golf. I guess it is cheaper than therapy. I digress. Then there is Libya - you know the country that was touted by our President as a friend and a major "democracy" success for Team O...hmm right up until they killed our Ambassador and his three colleagues. Things are not looking good for us there. Moving East towards the Saudi Peninsula, just the other day Egypt, Saudi, and the Emirates decided to do their own military posturing, ignoring the US in the process, cannot be sitting well with Washington. Two of the more rational players in the Middle East - Israel and Jordan - are forging energy deals without US approval. Using fossil fuels, no less! Oh the horror of it all; Obama will get back to them on replacing gas with political hot air. Israel continues to be attacked by Hamas (Iran) and the UN... more on that in the next article. Oh and our pal China, they are threatening to annex territory in the Pacific, using a growing military that we were told was not a threat. Tell that to Taiwan, Japan, and, well you get the idea. Lest we forget, the world is a dangerous place for Jews and Christians, anti-Semitism on the rise throughout the Western world, and non-Moslems in Iraq face daily threats. We have all but forgotten our vulnerable allies like Morocco, and Bahrain, which are slowly being infiltrated by radical factions trying to destabilize those strategically valuable and more moderate nations. Domestic challenges abound - Chicago becoming Dodge City or the OK Corral, and our Southern Border a 1000 mile welcome mat - well these reminded me of our leaders playing "whack a mole!"
I had to ask myself, has it really come down to this?
If you do not feel violated as an American after two citizens were beheaded at the hands of terrorists, then please check your citizenship at the door. I feel like I am relieving the Carter years - another dark era for the US.
Two US citizens beheaded at the hands of terrorists belonging to a group that received support, unwittingly perhaps, from the US and our proxies when they were fighting Assad in Syria, and the President does nothing. It is shameful. It is disrespectful for the dead, for their families. We (Obama Inc.) helped create this mess. We (the loyal opposition exhorting Obama Inc. to ‘man up') need to clean it up!
That Team Obama did not even send a senior representative to the funeral while sending all but an entourage to Missouri is shameful. The optics - atrocious. The blatant disregard for the suffering family - disgraceful.
One has to ask - did Obama, also a father, not send representatives to the beheaded journalists family because he didn't want to give the story life, since that would continue to shed light on another foreign policy failure? Alternatively, is Obama, and the JV he surrounds himself with just so vapid, so full of narcissism and so unfeeling that it never dawned on them to share some compassion with a grieving family? Did Obama not recognize that by avoiding the situation he worsened it? He comes across as a child hoping no one noticed he did not do his homework assignment or broke the vase and is trying to hide it?
Not a good way to lead or inspire a nation.
The impunity with which our adversaries are treating the US, our citizens and interests should send a chill down every US citizen, the recognition that you are on your own. During my several years in the terrorism and WMD preparedness arena, I have had cause to travel into some ‘interesting' places, often in the Middle East. The change in climate from 2001 to the present became glaringly clear when before heading to Bahrain to cover the Arab Spring rebels or revels if you will, at the Pearl, friends in various government and private security based enterprises warned me that times were different than under prior leadership (new President) and to be careful...no cavalry will come, no attention will be given to your plight, no serious efforts made to extract you, or even prevent your capture. While risk is always part of the game, knowing your government has or had your back made it a lot better than knowing Americans can have their heads lopped off for all the world to see, and our leaders run back to the golf course. This is not about political optics or partisanship - it is about putting US lives at risk when our leaders care more about their image, their legacy, their illusions and ideology than about what is morally right.
We clearly do not have a Reagan or Bush in the White House. Their foreign policy was at least in part based upon the Pax Romana - an American Citizen, like the citizen of Rome, was OFF LIMITS, lest terrible retribution occur. Were Reagan and Bush perfect in this? No, but their predilection to use cruise missile diplomacy kept more than a few bad actors honest at the table. Our nation, to paraphrase Osama Bin Laden - is now a paper tiger.
Watching the President and his foreign policy team in action reminds me of kids playing in a grown up world! Listening to Obama explain the lack of strategy, the lack of needing a strategy is stunning! Lest I be accused of saying I told you so, nonetheless remember while President Obama was telling us ISIS is the JV team, your humble correspondent and other members of the FSM team wrote about the dangerous succession to Bin Laden!
Obama's press conferences are akin to pedaling a variety of snake oil flavors with the same zeal as hucksters of old. It is a feeble attempt to salve any concerns or misgivings about POTUS' leadership on the world stage. Thankfully an increasing number of Americans are admitting to themselves what until recently their ideology had masked from their intellect - our current President, and his team, are so far over their heads in most affairs of state - domestic and foreign - that it has become a national embarrassment if not significant threat to our wellbeing, for US citizens here and abroad.
What we have is leadership in crisis, born out of a perennial form of crisis management, conducted by Team O - blithely ignorant of the reality attendant to global affairs, which he has tried to replace with the illusionary images of wishful-thinking that has been the hallmark of the current presidency.
Team O has either surrounded himself with likeminded ideologues or mere toadies who are more than happen to whistle Obama's happy tune if it will get them the corner office. For example the likes of a CIA chief who seemed unconcerned about ISIS or other emerging terrorist organizations, not to mention arrogantly dismissive of a caliphate or other threats to the homeland is reckless for an individual imbued with such a critical role in protecting US interests. Or a near silent Secretary of Homeland Security on issues related to the Southern Border, a growing link between big city gangs, international weapons cartels, trafficking terrorists into the US and collaborating on transnational crime activities that jeopardize the interests of the nation. Or the top law enforcement guy - Holder - you think he might be concerned about the growing radicalization occurring in the US, where some of our citizens are heading to the Middle East to fight for Jihad. It is only a matter of time when they will remain or return to fight on our streets. Holder seems near solely focused on white on black, instead of the "youthicide" if you will allow me to coin a phrase, and which describes the terrible loss of life with black on black shootings on the streets of Chicago. But that is not part of the Holder or Obama narrative. It makes them look bad, so it must remain unaddressed. That is not leadership. It is cowardice. Moreover, it jeopardizes lives.
Our military leadership is being degraded - from warriors to philosophers. While we can have both, and warrior poets such as Patton, Sherman and others have been able to be both sanguine and successful, today we have careerists more concerned about saying the right thing than doing the right thing. There have been a few Admirals and Generals with the courage to come out and say Iran is nuclear capable or damn near close, and that ISIS was a threat beyond imagination, from their initial emergence. That the Administration is more concerned about silencing a military advisor, or member of the Joint Chiefs or other senior Pentagon official telling the truth instead of focusing on the threat warning they are giving, speaks volumes about the sorry state of leadership we, the people, elected and reelected in 2012.
And there are still plenty of people who think President Obama is doing a good job. We, the loyal opposition who are fighting for the future of our country, and the safety of her citizens, cannot afford to be lulled into complacency and think the people will rush out and do their public duty to vote, just because current polls are repudiating the current administration. When the road and the rubber meet, the November elections will brutal, bloody, and dirty. There are too many ideologues with too much to lose if the Senate goes Republican and the House remains so. Because under those circumstances, the policies that have been so destructive to our country - the remaking of America, or unmaking of America through sweeping programs and policies designed to change forever our national identity and international influence, and the attempts to circumvent Congress that Obama has done through executive privilege will no longer be protected by a split Hill.
When Obama was first elected, I suggested his real end game was to become head of the UN. From the onset, he has sounded more like a man concerned about being liked by the world, than a man who was hired to be the leader of the free world.
Not surprisingly, an increasing number of pundits are joining me in that observation, quipping that Obama seems more like a man heading the UN, not acting like the President of the United States, with his constant qualifiers to build international responses to specific problems. Even when these problems apply almost uniquely to, and require almost exclusively the US to act, such as the beheadings, Obama near universally invokes internationalism as the answer.
At the top of the list for "moles" that need to be "whacked" are ISIS, and the porous Southern border a close second, with the attackers against Israel being third. The problem of course is simple. Obama cannot hit straight. He never seems to support the right team and punish the wrong one. He has fouled up the Middle East to the point where FUBAR seems an apt acronym. That Team Obama still does not, by the Presidents own admission, have a strategy against an adversary that has not been very stealthy in their actions or silent in their objectives over these last several months, is beyond shocking. It begs incredulity that a nation with the prodigious resources at our disposal has continued to be outplayed by "the JV" as POTUS described them - clearly they are not ‘the JV!' However, our leaders' behaviors are looking more and more deserving of a time out on the pine pony. Perhaps it is Team Obama that is the JV!
It is an old refrain, but a true one. Democracy is a participatory sport requiring each of us to be engaged as voters, as leaders, as citizens. Moreover, I would dare any American to say that the behaviors of our leaders on the world stage and at home convey patriotism, love of country or even just plain old competence. Forget about party politics - is it acceptable for an American President to sit idly by while two Americans are beheaded? Is it acceptable for an American President to support regimes, policies, and political practices that jeopardize Americans, have caused an emergence of terrorism the likes we will not have seen since 911?
Apparently, the only ball Obama has not taken his eye off is a golf ball. But in terms of global events, the dangers we face, and the perpetrators of those threats are emerging like an overpopulation of little critters, largely because Obama and his team have failed to implement strategies that could have prevented such an evolution. He did not make the hard call, and he will not make the hard call.
It looks like we the people are going to have to make the hard call - to our President, to our elected representatives, to the media, to each other. This is a critical crossroads for the USA. November 2014 and 2016 are fast approaching. What we do in two short months may determine what we leave the next generation.
Memo to President Obama - The world is a safer place with a strong USA, not a weak one.
Alas, it appears the best we can hope for from Obama over the next two years is more "whack a mole" foreign policy.
Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/obamas-whack-a-mole-foreign-policy?f=must_reads#ixzz3Cl8Lx8LM
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment