OPINION:
THE MANCHURIAN PRESIDENT: BARACK OBAMA’S TIES TO COMMUNISTS, SOCIALISTS AND OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN EXTREMISTS
By Aaron Klein with Brenda J. Elliott
WND Books, $25.95, 271 pages
Where is the House Committee on Un-American Activities when we need it?
For decades, the hate-America left pounded away with the unrelenting theme that all of our investigating committees and agencies that exposed the enemies within must be silenced, defanged or abolished.
“The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists” lays bare all the reasons for the pathological zeal with which that ultimately (mostly) successful wrecking-crew operation was pursued: The probes kept pointing to step-by-step infiltration of constituencies that favored the Democratic Party.
That some of the most effective congressional efforts to ferret out traitors in our midst were conducted by Democrats only added to the fury of the militant left.
In “The Manchurian President,” we have a compendium of the result (to date) of the left’s mission - started in the 1930s, accelerated in the ’60s and realized in the ’70s. In the ensuing decades, those who wished our country no good forged ahead full bore, or, as one of them (a mainstream-media journalist) is quoted as saying out loud: “I’m going to bore from within.”
There is so much information in this damning indictment of the huge influence our enemies and their dupes have inflicted on government policies (and the results thereof) that a reviewer should not be surprised at having to grasp at the basics of where to begin. But here goes.
First of all, the title: Unlike the movie “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962 with Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury or 2004 with Denzel Washington and Jon Voight), this book does not claim Barack Obama was brainwashed into becoming an assassin for the Communist Party or a sleeper agent for an international weapons manufacturer. Rather, the real-life “Manchurian” story is “that of a powerful politician whose true past has been intentionally obscured, and who has become a vehicle for implementing a hidden radical agenda.” All of that is to be found in these pages, precisely and painstakingly documented.
As of this writing, only one official in the Obama administration has fallen victim to exposure for his potential to create mischief. But unless you had watched Glenn Beck on Fox News or followed the writings of Trevor Loudon or Cliff Kincaid, you would have awakened one morning in the midst of Labor Day weekend 2009 (when many were at the beach or some other location for an end-of-summer fling) and wondered, “Van Jones? Never heard of him.”
That is because the establishment media turned a blind eye to Mr. Jones, Mr. Obama’s “green jobs” czar, and chose to ignore information in the thick file on his past. You did not know that a self-proclaimed communist was working at the White House at a high level of policymaking. The explanation was that Mr. Jones was let go because he had signed a petition accusing President George W. Bush of “deliberately allowing 9/11 to happen.”
From that you would not have known, and in fact may be learning for the first time, thanks to the authors, the following:
c That Mr. Jones was a leader and founder of a communist revolutionary organization, STORM, describing itself as having “a commitment to the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism.”
c That Mr. Jones had said he “spent the next years of my life [the ’90s] working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary.”
c That Mr. Jones had boasted to an interviewer that his current environmentalism was really a means to fight for a redistribution of wealth - or “class justice,” as he worded it. This would tend to legitimize the likening of the “environmental” movement (or “global-warming” hype) to a watermelon: green on the outside, red in the inside.
Nor would you have known that Mr. Jones “reportedly was screened by a top Obama adviser,” and (again if you relied on the establishment media) you most certainly would not have known that “crucially, Jones is just one of scores of radical White House officials with agendas that may be far different from what they are made to appear.”
That wording typifies Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott’s care not to overstate their case, apparently believing it is better to go in the reverse direction and understate it. For, as the book’s title proclaims, Barack Obama has been guided and educated and has immersed himself in the company and causes of communists, socialists, Islamist radicals and bomb-throwers (literal and otherwise) far beyond anything previously imagined of a president of the United States. And that caliber of activist has followed him into the White House.
For example, it is in these pages that we learn of the communist-linked backgrounds of such senior advisers as David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, the deep association with Louis Farrakhan’s bigoted Nation of Islam, the left extremist crafters of Obamacare and previously undisclosed details about the president’s ties to terrorist Bill Ayers. No shrinking here from naming names.
If there is one legitimate criticism of this book, it is regarding parts of its structure. “Obama’s Top Guns Exposed,” for example, would have given the volume a stronger start as Chapter 1 rather than as Chapter 10. It also could have used a concluding “wrap-up” chapter.
One can go through the nearly mind-numbing recitation of names, dates and places and possibly be tempted to say - OK, so what does all this prove? But there is not one “smoking gun,” just lots of them adding up to an overall smoking gun that is nothing short of gargantuan.
“Guilt by association” is an irrelevant factor here. This is a view of the world Barack Obama has absorbed all of his life and whose top policymaking threatens the downfall of the United States. How much worse does it need to get than that?
Columnist Diana West reported on Townhall.com that major news organizations refused to review this book, with refusal notes describing it as “absolute crap,” “ridiculous crap,” “sensational rubbish” and “Get a life.” Ah, yes. The wonderful inquiring media minds that want to know - up to a point.
Wes Vernon is a Washington-based writer and veteran broadcast journalist.
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