Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Obama's Failures

If you've read any of my posts on our national security or foreign policy disasters, you know I'm no fan of Obama in this vein.  Simply put, he has put us all in danger.  At one point I thought maybe it was only incompetence, but really I've been thinking that there is something more.  Something more sinister and something more pathetic.  I'm not remotely reluctant to look at the writings of other, more articulate authors than me and post them here.  That is especially true when someone nails a thought that I've had pinging around in my brain for awhile but couldn't pin it down.  Such is the case with the latest article by Victor Davis Hansen on his blog.  It is called "The Timid Generation" and you can read it here. 

Here's the quote that really resonated with me:
President Obama hinted that he might someday retaliate against North Korea in a “proportionate” fashion. Would our grandparents have warned Japan that after Pearl Harbor we might conduct a similar raid against Tokyo Bay? Was the U.S. response that in fact followed, and flattened Japan, “disproportionate”? What happened to the idea that wars are prevented by creating deterrence — or the notion that aggression is unwise because the response will certainly be unpredictable, if not disproportionately severe?
I know I'm an old guy and have certain views.  But those views have been shaped by a lot of years of seeing both good and bad (and sometimes dangerous) things being done by our leaders.  In the foreign policy arena, failure seems to have been more prevalent than we'd all like.  And Obama is easily the king of failure.  I used to think Carter was the worst, but he doesn't hold a candle to Obama.  I truly have never seen a leader who consistently does not do what he says he's going to do and even more amazingly, get a pass from the people.  It is beyond me how anyone could remotely think that his foreign policy initiatives (such as they are) are anything but a complete disaster.  And it's one thing to address these failures in a blog post or as an intellectual exercise, but the truth is that we as a country will have to live with them for a long time.  Or they will overwhelm us.

No comments: