In another sharp sell-off, capital markets process what too many refuse to accept — America can only lead the world forward, tame threats posed by some rising nations and vanquish radical Islamists, starting soonest with the presidential inauguration in January 2017.
Until then, we will stew in a dangerous, bipartisan muddle of our own making, absorbing body blows while struggling to remain united as a force for good.
Peering through the “fog of war”
For too long, it has proven tough to discern where lies stop and truth begins in evaluating the course of America’s progress as a nation.
Forget the unfiltered propaganda and victory talk now emanating into mainstream media channels from the appeasement wing of the Democrat Party.
With winter fast approaching, Barack Obama already stands exposed as a naked emperor, who cannot restore his tattered credibility. Our leader and his inept team fail to identify America’s true enemies or rally this country’s steadfast friends. As a result, America is neither respected, nor feared, nor trusted.
Furthermore, America, Europe, Japan, and the extended Western alliance share common problems: We consume too much imported energy, our populations are skewed to the senior cohort and grow too slowly, we have piled up too much external debt, and we do not spend enough money effectively on our military forces.
If alliance leaders ever actually studied thought-leaders such as Machiavelli, they surely have forgotten these words: “All armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.”
Ignorance and arrogance are a combustible cocktail — yet it is these qualities that already modify President Obama’s actions, particularly across the Middle East and in relations with such rising superpowers such as China and Russia, not to mention allies such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Israel.
How can America and the West eventually recover to win?
Resetting the reset with Russia
Sentient humans in consequential nations understand that Mr. Obama and his team squandered realistic hope of working constructively with Russia — this will be a job for the next American administration.
Seizing Crimea is certainly behavior that America and alliance partners should challenge — that said, Vladimir Putin sees the profound danger inherent in Europe’s gravely flawed “Union” — one that does not avail itself of combination benefits or wean coddled populations from an unchecked propensity to borrow and waste sums that will prove enormously difficult ever to repay.
Pushing Russia away, into billions of rising arms inside China, India and other eastern nations, seems a course that is precisely opposite to American and European strategic interests.
As happened in the last World War, Russia must be converted from enemy to ally.
Rejecting our “fear of fighting” against jihad
Americans are starting to understand that we must win a contest against an inherently flawed, yet addictive strand of thinking — that an all powerful God might task followers of one religion to kill others and take their worldly possessions.
Our common enemy is not simply one charismatic leader, several groups of male and female followers, or even one or more nation-states. Our enemy is the ideology that animates radical Islamist terror networks.
Rather than confronting brutal reality, politicians in both parties today sell us, yet again, on waging a kind of “zipless war” against terrorism where close reading of our coalition’s muddled objectives lead you to conclude: “No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone.”
This approach is unadulterated rubbish. America and the West need to provoke, enable and ensure a lasting Reformation of Islam, one that will prohibit killing those who choose to reject any religion.
Winning the peace
After 2016, when the Western alliance eventually achieves decisive military victories wherever these are needed, it will then take decades to cement a lasting peace, as happened for a time, following victory in World War II.
After 1945, America flourished rebuilding Western Europe and Japan upon pre-existing foundations. This will not happen in North Africa and the Middle East, absent energy. Most of these nations do not have an industrial or technological base.
What they do have is sizeable populations skewed to the youth segment that are already larger and growing much faster than similar segments in America, Europe and Japan.
These young people (and our own) face imminent futures where machines, relentlessly growing in power and ceaselessly dropping in cost, will replace human labor even as the human population increases.
Politicians must stop inciting concern over ill-defined problems such as “climate change” and address dangers that actually threaten the civilized world, here and now.
Without meaningful and productive work, frustrated and idle people will dedicate themselves to unrelenting war.
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