Obama Runs Away from the War on Terrorism
By Alan
Caruba
“You may
not be interested in war, but war may be interested in you.” -- Leon Trotsky
If you
think about the presidents who we remember and honor the most, it is those who
faced war and rallied the nation to victory. Our first president, George
Washington, sustained the Revolutionary War for eight long years against
daunting odds, including a Continental Congress that often provided little
support for the men under his command that were fighting to create a new, free
nation.
Washington’s
reputation in war and peace is the reason that the Constitution designates the
President as Commander-in-Chief. He was so highly regarded for his conduct of
the Revolution that the Founders concluded that future presidents had to be
free to wage war, but only after Congress declared that a state of war existed.
America,
however, has not formally passed a declaration of war since WWII and then
because it had been declared against us first. Since then wars have often been fought
under the sanction given by the United Nations as was the case in the Korean
conflict and the two Gulf wars, an erosion of our national sovereignty.
Lincoln is
revered for having preserved the Union during the bloodiest conflict this
nation ever fought. Franklin D. Roosevelt earned his place in our history for
mobilizing the nation prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, assisting Great
Britain prior to entering the World War II, and then pursuing an aggressive
policy to defeat the Axis nations.
Quite a
few of our presidents gained fame in various conflicts, from Washington to
Grant to Eisenhower. Other presidents presided over wars both long and short.
In a
speech on May 23, given ironically at the National Defense University,
President Obama did his best to run away from war. His opposition to the war in
Iraq, his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, and his efforts to close
Guantanamo will likely be seen in the same way as the Clinton policies of the
1990s when Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States on behalf of al
Qaeda and subsequently attacked the World Trade Towers twice, in 1993 and on
September 11, 2001. Weakness always encourages aggression.
In an
application of magical thinking, at the height of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan the entire U.S. military was instructed not to use the term “global war on terrorism”, replacing it instead
with “overseas contingency.” The Obama administration has refused to identify
the May 22nd murder of a British soldier on the streets of London by an Islamist as terrorism.
Obama
spent his first term and now his second insisting that al Qaeda has been
defeated despite ample evidence that it has not. He has never ceased to
downplay any event that suggests we and the rest of the world are not engaged
in a war with radical Islam.
The
Benghazi scandal arose out of an effort to claim and cover-up that the
attack was “spontaneous” and the result of an anti-Islam video despite the fact
that it occurred on September 11, 2012. Earlier, an attack on soldiers based at
Fort Hood was declared “workplace violence.” The bombing in Boston was glossed
over as a criminal act, not a terrorist act of war.
The
absurdity and the danger of not describing the many instances of the Islamic
jihad is a failure of major proportions and not being willing to take
preemptive action against its perpetrators suggests it will grow, not diminish,
and not cease to threaten the homeland and the world.
In a
scathing May 24 analysis of his speech, “President Obama is Tired of Fighting Terrorism”, the Heritage Foundation said that “even as new fronts in the war on
terrorism sprang up, the Administration continued to argue that it was winning”
despite the Benghazi attack, despite the Boston bombing, despite the attacks in
Afghanistan. Time and again Obama has said that the assassination of Osama bin
Laden marked the end of al Qaeda and that the isolated drone attacks have
reduced its ability to wage jihad. It has not, but Obama proposed scaling back
the use of drones.
“The war
of ideas,” said Heritage, “was completely banned from the Obama lexicon.
Islamist terrorism became ‘violent extremism.’ Terrorism became ‘senseless
violence.’ In 2011, however, Obama shifted course dramatically."
"More than dumping the war of words, the White House signed off on a new counterterrorism strategy that amounted to running away from Iraq and Afghanistan as quickly as possible and limiting the offensive campaign to whacking top-level al Qaeda with drone strikes”, noting that “The new strategy was bound to fail, fighting the last war while al Qaeda evolved into a global insurgency that has spread from Pakistan to Nigeria.”
"More than dumping the war of words, the White House signed off on a new counterterrorism strategy that amounted to running away from Iraq and Afghanistan as quickly as possible and limiting the offensive campaign to whacking top-level al Qaeda with drone strikes”, noting that “The new strategy was bound to fail, fighting the last war while al Qaeda evolved into a global insurgency that has spread from Pakistan to Nigeria.”
The Heritage analysis concluded that
Obama “is sick of fighting. Unfortunately, America’s enemies are not.”
The
buildup of the paramilitary strength of the Department of Homeland Security and
its identification of patriots, veterans, and others critical of the
Administration has led many Americans to believe it now exists less to protect
Americans than to institute plans to impose a dictatorship.
Obama’s
fear of attacks at home and conflicts abroad was reflected in his speech.
“Unless we discipline our thinking, our definitions, our actions, we may be
drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant presidents
unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation
states.”
His
Administration has already “defined” Islamic attacks to the point of not
calling them Islamic attacks. His concern and reluctance to use the powers of
the presidency to protect the nation ignores the new nature of war with a
stateless entity called al Qaeda. Indeed, he wanted his war powers scaled back!
In his
speech, Obama said “This war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history
advises. That’s what our democracy demands.”
The
Islamic jihad began in the seventh century and has not ended since then. Our
democracy and the future of Western civilization depends on conducting a war to
end the current aspects of it until today’s Muslims conclude that jihad as a
religious duty is too painful to pursue. That’s how this war will end.
© Alan
Caruba, 2013
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