Last month--and for about a two year period before that--we had "the race to the White House" in full tilt while we now seem to be experiencing "the race from the White House," similarly hectic. (Don't know about you, but I am getting winded from all these races!) While President-elect Donald Trump is busily engaged in a "victory lap" of sorts in celebration of the "Miracle Of November 8 That Salvaged The United States From Certain Ruin"--or, according to CNN's own "Last Angry (black) Man," Van Jones, that day was, as he referred to it, "Whitelash!--President Obama is desperately making an attempt to salvage what remains of his so-called "legacy." And doing a rather poor job of it, too.
The most recent example, on Tuesday, December 6, at MacDill Air Force Base, of this President's "Chicken Little" approach to publicly advising, mentoring, scolding, and sometimes tutoring President-elect Donald Trump, is the shallow and patently inaccurate assessment of the current state of the war on terrorism Obama put forth rather presumptuously as testament to his own effectiveness as Commander-in-Chief in fighting it. The facts do not bear out his soapbox preaching on how we must "... embrace Muslims to defeat terrorism," or "The United States of America is not a country that imposes religious tests as a price for freedom," and his way-off-the-mark claim that "we are breaking the back of ISIL." (He is the only American I have heard refer to ISIS as ISIL.) Most significantly--and most wrongly--perhaps the most off-course of all his unsound observations was, "If we stigmatize good, patriotic Muslims, that just feeds the terrorist narrative."
Of course, all of this diatribe, all of this malarkey, all of this blarney is directed at President-elect Donald Trump in response to Trump's hardline approach to terrorism, terrorists, and Syrian refugees--as well as other of what Obama considers unwarranted belligerence on Trump's part. While Obama is nonconfrontational, reserved, sheepish, and tentative, Trump is ballsy, bold, and brash.
The irony in this comparison is that I think Obama wishes he could be more like Trump whereas Trump wishes he were as genteel and laid back as Obama.
Despite the president's admonition against doing so, no one has ever mentioned any attempt to stigmatize anyone. What is of concern to most Americans as potential victims of terror attacks are these Middle East refugees flocking to our country as a perilous and unfettered result of our failed immigration policies--and the president's own careless and ill-thought-out policy to admit hundreds of thousands of Syrians to our country--and the threat some may pose to Americans wherever they live. Limiting the numbers and even the ethnicity of immigrants is the right of any nation. It is part and parcel--indeed, the very basis--of the concept of sovereignty. The main consideration against allowing countless refugees to flood our shores--from anywhere, but especially from the Muslim countries of the Middle East region that is a hotbed of radical Islamic ideology--is first and foremost, and must always be, the safety of our own citizens.
Our national security is at stake. Indeed, your life, my life, our families' lives, our friends' lives--everyone is a potential target now. Accept it! Unless we recognize the threat and act accordingly, the front lines of the war on terror will be drawn at our doorsteps in the very near future, if not already there! Despite even the most stringent selection and vetting precautions, the potential exists--no, is imminent--for terrorists to slip by our immigration screening, not to mention illegal entry through our porous borders, and enter our country intent on bringing a "Paris" to New York City. Or Los Angeles. Or a city near you.
No one has said that every Muslim is a terrorist.That is surely not the case, but all the terrorists we read or hear about in the world today, certainly all those who have done and intend to continue to do us harm, are Muslims. It wasn't Irish Catholics who flew those three deadly "missiles" into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania on 9/11, killing more than 3000 innocents; it wasn't Protestants who set off pressure cooker bombs in Boston, Massachusetts, during the marathon on April 15, 2013, killing 3 and injuring 140 others; it wasn't Baptists who murdered 5 members of our military in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July, 2015; it wasn't a Lutheran couple who destroyed Christmas for most all of us--and killed 14 innocent attendees of an office meeting and Christmas party on December 2, 2015, in San Bernardino, California; it wasn't a Jewish man who slaughtered all those young revelers in Orlando, Florida, on June 12, 2016, leaving 49 people dead and 53 wounded. No, in each case--and numerous other instances of mayhem here in the United States--it was radical Islamic terrorists, most of whom immigrated to this country. Need I continue?
As Mark Krikorian, Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies, testified at the hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, on November 19, 2015:
A wise man once said "The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils." Halting refugee resettlement from the Middle East would be just such an act of statesmanship... The president and members of Congress must necessarily put the interests of the American people before the interests of foreigners... If, nonetheless, we decide as a matter of policy to devote resources to humanitarian refugee protection... then we should base our decision-making on two principles: 1) Such policies must not pose a threat to the American people, and 2) the funds taken from the people through taxes for this purpose must be used to the maximum humanitarian effect.In discussing the costs to taxpayers of bringing in the refugees, something politicians avoid addressing to us, Krikorian points out that the better solution is to provide for them there in their own environment, close to where they came from, especially since it costs twelve times as much to resettle a refugee in the United States as it does to care for the same refugee in the neighboring countries of first asylum. Mr. Krikorian sums his argument up thusly: "Given these limitations on resources, I submit that it is wrong-morally wrong-to use those resources to resettle one refugee here when we could help twelve closer to their home."
Speaking at the Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, Florida, on Tuesday, December 6, to an audience of mostly special operations troops-the most tasked component of our military conducting the fight against terrorists worldwide and responsible for "knowing our enemy" intimately--Mr. Obama delivered what is thought to be his final speech on the war on terrorism in a manner that was perceived as an oblique prompt for Mr. Trump about "what we're fighting for."
Listening to his address, I could only sit in a state of disbelief and in a state of utter frustration at his stubbornness, a haughty trait that he has refined over his time in Washington, D. C., and his failure--even after eight years in the White House--to fully comprehend the most basic tenets of Islamic terrorism, jihad, and the Muslim religion's stated intent on world domination. My disparity with, and disgust for, President Obama's inconsistent assessment of his having been a highly effective Commander-in-Chief, a respected world leader, and president of what should be the most active, most effective nation in the world in the battle against the scourge of radical Islamic terrorism--whether they live in your hometown, anywhere, USA, or the bowels of their "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria--is becoming increasingly obvious, as is the case with many others.
I would suggest Mr. Obama look in the mirror to see what the true picture really is: That he has been a feeble and weak-willed President/Commander-in-Chief, has provided insufficient and incompetent leadership to our military, has paid scant attention to the threat to our nation preferring his own liberal agenda at home, and refuses even to utter the phrases "Islamic terrorism" or "Islamic terrorists." His intransigence is becoming more apparent the closer he gets to the end of his term. As he says himself, he is not running for election again so "Full speed ahead! Damned the torpedoes!" He now, either knowingly or as a result of his increasingly immoderate self-image and his inflated sense of self-importance at having been a President of the United States for two terms, reveals more and more of his true nature, gives us a clearer insight of his inner soul and ethos, every time he speaks in public. It is an in-your-face arrogance that bugs the hell out of me.
How About you?
Most damaging of all has been his protracted "war" on our nation's military services--and the men and women in uniform--as witnessed by his tampering with established traditions, imposing morale damaging change for change sake, and denigrating war fighting capabilities by social engineering policies such as doing away with "don't ask, don't tell" as a rule against openly gay activity in uniform, opening up all combat positions to women as if the military is a civilian corporation where the government can regulate "equal opportunity" and the like. The final--and most obtuse, least logical--social engineering boondoggle (blunder may be a better term)--was the allowing of transgender individuals to join and openly serve in all branches at all ranks in our military. To add insult to injury, the military will even assist their change of sex medical needs at no cost--at the expense of other military personnel needing those scarce medical services!
Secretary of Defense Carter pulled a political slight-of-hand by announcing this new and drastic policy change on late Thursday afternoon before the July 4th weekend. It was barely covered in the news on Friday, and next to lost in the shuffle by Monday and Tuesday. The vast majority of active duty military are appalled at his, and Obama's, absurdity. Count the retired military as well. They are even more aghast. But all know that he did not come up with this "brilliance" or the other catastrophic and radical changes to our military on his own. President Obama, with his ill-begotten ideology on equal rights and justice, imposed these destructive ideas and, being the despot that he is, would accept no dissent on any of them though advised by the admirals and generals against most all of them. But still, he somehow considers himself a courageous, dashing, and superb Commander-in-Chief. That is the biggest joke in the entire military!
In the light of day, it is robustly clear that President Obama is on a "victory tour" of his own---a veiled attempt to leave office with a positive popularity rating among Americans, and to preserve the waning remnants of what he hoped would be a sterling, unimpeachable claim to a legacy for the ages, a solid foundation for historians to positively evaluate his presidency and not be too harsh on him--if that is now at all possible. Quite accurately and appropriately, the speech at MacDill on how to fight terrorism "the right (Obama) way" was characterized by Jack Hellner on the distinguished website American Thinker. Jack wrote a bog entitled, "Obama praises Obama's policies for 'breaking the back' of terrorism."
I cannot improve on the observations of Senator John McCain on Barack Obama's race to the finish of his eight year term of office by publicly patting himself on the back at every opportunity, and by misleadingly insinuating a victory he neither has earned the right to appropriate for himself, fails to truly understand the requirements of, nor has come even close to winning anything against--yes, those words he loathes, banned from being uttered in the White House corridors since the day he moved in--radical Islamic terrorists. His stubborn stance is compounded as evidenced by his "come hell or high water" insistence that he, and only he, knows how to wage battles of this nature--the rest of us are dumb-struck "infidels" of sorts.
The feisty McCain said it best when he categorized Obama's bloviating speech--and to members of our military no less who know better--as:
President Obama's speech was nothing more than a feeble attempt to evade the harsh judgment of history... But to the American people, our emboldened enemies, and our dispirited allies, his legacy on counter-terrorism is unmistakably clear: a disastrous withdrawal from Iraq, the terrorist rampage of ISIL, an indecisive approach to the war in Afghanistan that has empowered the Taliban, and an indifferent approach to the carnage in Syria on which our terrorist enemies have thrived. No rhetorical conceit will alter history's verdict.
Major Dennis Copson is a retired United States Marine, veteran of
the Vietnam War, and is a resident of Oceanside, California. He is a
freelance writer and editor.
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