OPINION:
President Obama’s dithering on the world stage makes Americans vulnerable everywhere. When crazed Islamic radicals can get away with murdering and possibly raping a U.S. ambassador, none of our citizens are safe on any spot of the globe. When a president is too weak to defend his people, they become targets. This invites bad actors to go after us.
With U.S. embassies under siege in more than half-a-dozen countries, the Russians sending submarines to patrol our coast in the Gulf of Mexico, Iran escalating its nuclear-weapons program, and China challenging U.S. dominance in the Pacific and elsewhere, there is no question whether or not Mr. Obama’s foreign policy is a success. It is not; his lack of global leadership and vision is an abject failure and is encouraging political mayhem in every corner of the planet. The real question isn’t if Mr. Obama is a failure but whether this disaster and the resultant chaos are due to incompetence or by design.
Dinesh D’Souza’s “2016: Obama’s America” gives some hints. That wildly popular documentary begins with a reminder that one of Mr. Obama’s first curious acts as president was returning a bust of Winston Churchill that had been a gift to the White House from the British government. This snub had millions of Americans and Brits scratching their heads. What did this new, young president with the unusual name have against the aristocratic prime minister who stood up to Hitler and shamed, badgered and begged a reluctant America into the European theater during World War II?
The answer didn’t materialize right away because many of us focused on the wrong line of Sir Winston’s curriculum vitae. What Barack hates most is that Churchill had been secretary and undersecretary for the colonies, a grudge Mr. Obama carries from his father, who was from Kenya, a British colony. Typical of leftists, the current U.S. president’s worldview believes today’s and yesterday’s empires and superpowers owe recompense to the little countries for imperialism, injustice and other supposed slights. This is why fanaticism gets a free pass in the Middle East and North Africa, the center of so much trouble.
Mr. Obama’s revisionist mindset is based on blaming contemporary victims. It’s important not to overlook that this week’s uprisings weren’t coordinated on some random day of the year. These Muslim goons are celebrating the carnage of Sept. 11, 2001, when the United States was successfully attacked by al Qaeda, killing thousands of innocents. Booming across the mobs are variations of the same chant, “Obama, Obama, there are still a billion Osamas.” This affront puts Mr. Obama between a rock and hard place by exposing his hypocrisy. One of his most consistent political tenets is pandering to Islam, but he’s trying to get re-elected by bragging about the Osama bin Laden takedown.
The suicidal results of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy are there for all the world to see in the smoldering ruins of our Libyan consulate in Benghazi and the American flags burned by Islamists all over the place. It’s not so hard being president when times are good, but it’s a different story when the falafel hits the fan. The current chaos could escalate rapidly because it’s an opportune time for evildoers to test the Obama administration and see what they can get away with. This precarious posture is frightening for our country because there is already more on this president’s plate than he can handle.
Brett M. Decker is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. He is coauthor of the new book “Bowing to Beijing” (Regnery, 2011).
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