Memo 3 From the OTPE

The Obama Administration’s Anti-Terror Policies and the Death of bin Laden:  

By ContraSuggest (5/8/2011)

This week’s entry was originally supposed to be the second part of an ongoing series of posts on the subject of America’s finances and the Obama administration’s economic policies.  However, the assassination of Osama bin Laden has caused such a furor, and become such a political football, that I simply had to address it.  People seem to be extremely confused about the political implications of Osama’s exit from this world, and what it says about the Obama administration’s anti-terror and foreign policy initiatives.  So let’s get right to it.

Bin Laden was an important figurehead for both al Qaeda and the worldwide Islamic-fascist movement that has pledged to destroy Western civilization and institute global Sharia.  As the progenitor of the 9/11 attacks, which he repeatedly and proudly claimed credit for, he deserved an unceremonious execution.  It was indeed a great day for America when the announcement of his death came over the wire.  Because of bin Laden’s sensitive location in Pakistan, only President Obama could give the order to commence the operation.  He did so, and I applaud him for it. 

Unfortunately, the president’s oblivious supporters don’t seem to understand that one decisive act does not an effective presidency make.  Take for instance the example of a baseball player who’s been playing for three seasons in the major leagues.  Every time he’s stepped up to the plate he has struck out.  By all counts the guy is a lousy player, and it looks as if his contract will not be renewed, and that he’ll soon be sent back to the minors.  Suddenly, midway through his 3^rd season, at a make or break point in a pivotal game, he steps up to bat with the bases loaded.  Managing to hit a grand slam homerun, his team wins a narrow victory.  Now, should we judge this player’s overall effectiveness based upon his one homerun, or should he be judged based upon his nearly three years of lousy performance?  The answer seems obvious, but many people don’t seem to get it.  For one thing, it’s argued that the analogy doesn’t hold, in that Obama’s anti-terror and foreign policies cannot be characterized as a series of strikeouts.  In actuality, the administration’s exclusive policy initiatives have been a total and complete failure. 

It’s important to note that the hunt for bin Laden was merely a continuation of the previous administration’s policy, made possible and pursued through the infrastructure, intelligence, and resources put into place by the Bush team.  This brings us to a disturbing trend in Obama’s foreign policy that has been underreported by the mass media.  Obama has been able to have it both ways; excoriating Bush-era policies while his alternatives to those policies have failed miserably; then quietly continuing the successful Bush policies, hoping that no one notices.  This insidious trend has been hidden by the intellectually bankrupt rhetoric that has constantly spewed forth from the administration and its boorish, uninformed apologists.  Lest I’m accused of leveling criticism without evidence, I offer the following examples of the president’s serial policy reversals: 

·        He irresponsibly announced the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility with no plan for the logistics of the closing.  After signing an executive order to close it, claimed that some U.S. allies were willing to take custody of some of the detainees, which never happened.  After years of vacillation on the issue, the administration finally announced that the facility would remain open.  The phony moralizing, and misreading of U.S. law sent a confused message of weakness and fecklessness to al Qaeda and our Islamic-fascist enemies worldwide

·        He excised the terms “War on Terror” and “terrorist attacks” from the administration’s public statements, instead referring to “man-caused disasters.”  When the public reacted negatively to this euphemistic, politically correct drivel, the terms “terror” and “terrorist” mysteriously returned to the administration’s lexicon    

·        He began treating the totalitarian cutthroats that run the Islamic gulag of Iran with the same diplomatic respect we treat Great Britain, downplaying Iranian human rights abuses.  Only after much criticism in the wake of the 2010 protests did Obama declare solidarity with the Iranian resistance movement

·        He foolishly decided to remove the “911 Five” from military custody and try them in civilian court, conferring constitutional rights (for the first time in U.S. history) on legally held enemy combatants; the admitted architects of the death of nearly 3,000 American civilians.  After proffering a litany of gibberish arguments to support this idiotic decision, he then announced,  in another stunning reversal, that the Five would once again be tried by military tribunals

·        He claimed that he would withdraw our troops from Iraq within a year of taking office.  Recall Obama’s campaign rhetoric: Afghanistan- good war; Iraq- bad war.  He has since pushed the timetable for withdrawal way into the future

Where he has continued the anti-terror/foreign policies of Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama has enjoyed success.  Where he has pursued his own foolhardy policies, he has failed miserably.  Examples:

·        Went on a world tour that included a stop in Cairo, Egypt, to perfect the art of sycophancy, meekly apologizing to human rights abusers for America’s largely-imagined past sins

·        Abandoned the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, erroneously labeled as torture, that garnered intelligence that prevented numerous attacks and American deaths

·        Engaged in world-wide diplomatic efforts (that he excoriated Bush for failing to pursue)

President Obama claimed that there were to be many benefits as the result of following his nuanced policies.  Those purported benefits included the following: the rehabilitation of America’s so-called tarnished image around the world; getting more cooperation from our allies to assist with our military and economic goals; to communicate to our enemies that America is not the threat that they perceive it to be.  None of these goals has been achieved.  Since Obama has taken office we’re still at war in Afghanistan and Iraq, our allies have committed nothing additional to those efforts; the mullahs still want their nuclear bomb and continue to press their boot to the throat of the Iranian people; North Korea under Kim Jong Il remains a belligerent danger; Russia continues its hegemonic ascendance in Asia and Western Europe; al Qaeda has become a threat in Yemen; and now the U.S. is militarily involved in a Libyan civil war.  What exactly is supposed to have improved on the international scene since Obama has taken office?

Obama’s masterful diplomatic efforts included entreaties to our European allies (Angela Merkel, Nicholas Sarkozy, et al).  Here are the things he requested of them, during a much publicized European jaunt, but did not get:

·        A global economic stimulus plan

·        Additional troops for Afghanistan

·        E.U. membership for Turkey

·        Help from Turkey in our struggle against al Qaeda

·        Nuclear disarmament and assistance with stopping proliferation

Despite canceling a Bush administration promise to put an anti-missile shield in the country of Poland, in order to appease the Russians, the hoped for quid pro quo of Russian help in dealing with Iranian nuclear weapons development has not materialized.  His much vaunted diplomatic skills extracted no international cooperation on any key issue. Have domestic U.S. terrorist attacks abated as a result of Obama’s so-called enlightened rhetoric and policies of tolerance toward Muslims?  The spate of attacks since he took office would suggest not:

·        An Islamic terrorist shot up a recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas

·        Major Nidal Hassan, a Muslim army psychiatrist with connections to al Qaeda, gunned down a dozen people at Fort Hood

·        Abdulmuttalab, a Nigerian rich kid who turned al Qaeda, tried to detonate a bomb on board flight 253 over Detroit

·        Faisal Shahzad, a militant Muslim with connections to al-Qaeda on the Arabian peninsula, tried to detonate a bomb in Times Square in New York City

Although delighted that bin Laden is gone for good, I am hard-pressed to find any other bright spots in the president’s anti-terror or foreign policy efforts that were not carryovers from the Bush administration.    

Post Script: A Quick Note on Osama’s Burial:

In the aftermath of the raid that took out bin Laden, the administration announced that he had been given a burial at sea in accordance with Islamic practice.  What!?  This is the way we treat the enemies that wantonly slaughter innocent American civilians?  This is the way we treat an enemy who our magnificent SEAL teams put their asses on the line to take down?  We’re dealing with sub-humans who believe that they will receive great rewards in the afterlife for murdering people in this life.  In light of this, why in the world would we be sensitive to Muslim religious burial observances for bin Laden?  Even in killing a mass-murdering cockroach, the administration is still obsessed with “not offending Muslims.”  Yet all along we’ve been told that bin Laden distorted true Islamic teachings; if so, who are we trying to not offend?  Those who practice “true” Islam purportedly don’t support bin Laden and al Qaeda anyway, so why would they be offended?  By allowing this type of feeble, politically correct, counter-tribalism, the Obama administration is aiding and abetting the very Muslim terrorists that it claims to be fighting.  The message we’re sending them: if we kill you, your fanatic religious beliefs will be validated by the observance of a traditional Muslim burial; have fun frolicking with virgins in the afterlife!  After listening to the administration’s so-called reasoning behind this, I can see no upside to it at all.  I can only characterize it as painfully stupid.  We should have fed bin Laden to the hogs!