Analyst's note: Absolutely must see this stunningly direct insight from various known individuals providing careful consideration regarding Mr. Obama, about the institutions of this United States, and, most important, about ourselves.
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Ebola and Obama
The president’s official reassurances about the virus and other dangers have become worthless.
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is both a danger in itself and a wake-up call for Americans — about President Obama, about the institutions of this country, and, most important, about ourselves.
There was a time when an outbreak of a deadly disease overseas would bring virtually unanimous agreement that our top priority should be to keep it overseas. Yet Barack Obama has refused to bar entry to the United States by people from countries where the Ebola epidemic rages, as Britain has done.
The reason? Refusing to let people with Ebola enter the United States would conflict with the goal of fighting the disease. In other words, the safety of the American people takes second place to the goal of helping people overseas.
As if to emphasize his priorities, President Obama has ordered thousands of American troops to go into Ebola-stricken Liberia, disregarding the dangers to those troops and to other Americans when the troops return.
What does this say about Obama?
At a minimum, it suggests that he takes his conception of himself as a citizen of the world more seriously than he takes his role as President of the United States. At worst, he may consider Americans’ interests expendable in the grand scheme of things internationally. If so, this would explain a lot of his foreign-policy disasters around the world, which seem inexplicable otherwise.
Those critics who have been citing Barack Obama’s foreign-policy fiascoes and disasters as evidence that he is incompetent may be overlooking the possibility that he has different priorities than the protection of the American people and America’s interests as a nation.
This is a monstrous possibility. But no one familiar with the history of the 20th century should consider monstrous possibilities as things to dismiss automatically. Nor should anyone who has followed Barack Obama’s behavior over his lifetime, and the values that behavior reveals.
A few critics who, early on, sensed something un-American, if not anti-American, in Barack Obama, succumbed to the idea that he was not a native-born citizen. That claim blew up in their faces.
Nor was birthplace crucial anyway. People born overseas have put their lives on the line to defend America, and scientists who escaped from Europe in the 1930s played a major role in creating the nuclear bomb that made the United States a superpower. Conversely, the country’s most notorious traitor — Benedict Arnold — was born on American soil.
Whatever the reason, or combination of reasons, that led to President Obama’s foreign-policy disasters around the world — with the crowning disaster of all, a nuclear Iran, looming on the horizon — it cannot be a simple lack of knowledge or experience. Various former members of the Obama administration are telling the same story, of information and advice from knowledgeable and experienced officials being ignored by this vain and headstrong man.
Back in the 18th century, Edmund Burke pointed out that, whatever the institutions of government, most of the outcomes of what it does “must depend upon the exercise of the powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state.”
What did the American voters know about the prudence and uprightness of this untried man they elected president, as a result of his glib rhetoric and his racial symbolism? It is not just bad luck when a reckless gamble turns out disastrously.
No one knows at this point how big the Ebola danger may turn out to be. But what we do know is that official reassurances about this and other dangers have become worthless.
The erosion of Constitutional government over the years has become, under the Obama administration, a deluge of arbitrary edicts and defiant lawlessness protected by a grossly politicized Department of Justice.
It may be time to consider reorganizing the institutions of government, so that high officials who try to reassure the public about medical crises are not officials who serve “at the pleasure of the president.” Nor should the attorney general, whose duty is to enforce the laws, be part of an administration whose law-breakers the Justice Department can protect from prosecution.
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The Free Syrian Army, Our ‘Moderate Islamist’ Ally, Continues to Ally with Al-Qaeda in Syria
At the Long War Journal, Caleb Weiss reports on how the Free Syrian Army is continuing to ally with al-Qaeda’s affiliates in Syria.
The Free Syrian Army has recently allied with Islamist rebels fighting in al Harah, a town in the southern Syrian province of Deraa. Elements from the Free Syrian Army coordinated their efforts with the Islamist Syrian Revolutionaries Front, the Islamic Front, and the Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria, to take the al Harah Hill and the surrounding town.
The report and accompanying video are worth your time.
The FSA, or course, is the “moderate Islamist” rebel force President Obama — supported by Beltway Republicans – is having the United States arm and train (in “moderate” Saudi Arabia) in the expectation that they will become our ground force against the Islamic State in Syria. This is, shall we say, problematic:
(a) The FSA is only really interested in fighting the Assad regime and has consequently been more than willing to confederate with any jihadists who share that goal; and
(b) al-Qaeda affiliates and allies continue to push a truce with the Islamic State in which the jihadists would suspend their intramural feud in order to focus on their common enemies – mainly the United States and the West, but also Assad and his Shiite backers, Iran and Hezbollah.
In short, we are maneuvering into a conflict in which many of the people we are training will eventually join with our Sunni enemies while our half-hearted aerial bombing campaign inures to the benefit of our Shiite enemies.
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Dr. Edwin Vieira: Self-governance is NOT a spectator sport
