We are going to take a few days and discuss the track record of the Obama Presidency across several perspectives. The impetus for this discussion and review was the fact that when the world leaders and millions of French men and women rallied in France to protest and take a stand against global Islamic terrorism, this President embarrassed himself and the United States by NOT attending the gathering of world leaders in Paris. In our opinion, this was an epic fail and a missed historical opportunity.
Not only did he not attend, no high ranking member of his administration bothered to make the trip either. While world leaders of over 40 countries attended and high ranking officials of other countries made the trip, the highest ranking U.S. person was just the current French ambassador.
This snub of the French is a tremendous, and possibly historic, missed opportunity. This could have been a defining moment in the Obama Presidency where he rallied the rest of the world in its fight against global terrorism. The whole world was watching but apparently the President was back in the White House, rumored to be watching NFL football games instead of leading in Paris.
If Obama was a true leader, he could have used the commonality of the fight against terrorism to also work on other global issues. The leaders of Israel and the PLO were at the rally with a common, shared goal of fighting terrorism. What a great time in might have been of using that common objective to move onto other problem resolution opportunities.
The Russian Foreign Minister was also at the Paris rally. Why not use the common goal of fighting terrorism to talk about the Ukraine and other troubling Russian and U.S. issues? But the President missed this historic window of leveraging this common objective across most of the world.
But missed opportunities seems to be the theme of this President. Whenever an opportunity to be bold, productive, epic, and a leader arose, this President, and the administration he has put in place, has usually failed and failed miserably. Bad economic policies, divisive race politics, a failing health care reform law, a clumsy foreign affairs management history, bad management processes as a Federal government bureaucracy teeters on the edge of total incompetence, etc., this administration has not been able to get out of its own way to attain any problem resolution at all.
Given that we are comfortable calling his absence in Paris an epic fail, we are going to take a few days and see if there are other epic fails that this administration has attained. We will discuss the policies track records of this Presidency over the next few days according to the following general topics and see if the failure as epic as his absence in Paris has been repeated in other areas of governance:
Not only did he not attend, no high ranking member of his administration bothered to make the trip either. While world leaders of over 40 countries attended and high ranking officials of other countries made the trip, the highest ranking U.S. person was just the current French ambassador.
This snub of the French is a tremendous, and possibly historic, missed opportunity. This could have been a defining moment in the Obama Presidency where he rallied the rest of the world in its fight against global terrorism. The whole world was watching but apparently the President was back in the White House, rumored to be watching NFL football games instead of leading in Paris.
If Obama was a true leader, he could have used the commonality of the fight against terrorism to also work on other global issues. The leaders of Israel and the PLO were at the rally with a common, shared goal of fighting terrorism. What a great time in might have been of using that common objective to move onto other problem resolution opportunities.
The Russian Foreign Minister was also at the Paris rally. Why not use the common goal of fighting terrorism to talk about the Ukraine and other troubling Russian and U.S. issues? But the President missed this historic window of leveraging this common objective across most of the world.
But missed opportunities seems to be the theme of this President. Whenever an opportunity to be bold, productive, epic, and a leader arose, this President, and the administration he has put in place, has usually failed and failed miserably. Bad economic policies, divisive race politics, a failing health care reform law, a clumsy foreign affairs management history, bad management processes as a Federal government bureaucracy teeters on the edge of total incompetence, etc., this administration has not been able to get out of its own way to attain any problem resolution at all.
Given that we are comfortable calling his absence in Paris an epic fail, we are going to take a few days and see if there are other epic fails that this administration has attained. We will discuss the policies track records of this Presidency over the next few days according to the following general topics and see if the failure as epic as his absence in Paris has been repeated in other areas of governance:
- Transparency and integrity
- Economic policy
- Foreign policy
- Healthcare policy
- Government management policy
Foreign Policy Part 2
1) This past week, the Yemeni government, a supposed ally of the U.S.in the fight against terrorism, collapsed under the weight of a Shiite rebel force supported and funded by Iran. However, this was not supposed to happen. As late as last September, Obama proclaimed that: "This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us,while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years."
However, most of us and the rest of the world might have a different definition of "success" than the President's, based on the overthrowing of the current government this week. Even with a supportive government in Yemen, Al Qaeda's most vicious and successful branch was in Yemen.With the collapse of the government and the support they gave to Obama in fighting terrorism in general and Al Qaeda in particular, his strategy is now in tatters and an epic fail.
2)This President, and his closest advisors such as John Kerry, blatantly refuse to admit the obvious: most of the current terrorism going on in the world is being done by Islamic extremists. This does not mean that the majority of Muslims are like this, it just means that much of the terrorism is being done in the name of Islam.
However, failure to recognize a problem means that you will never resolve that problem. Consider a recent article from the Heritage Foundation that listed out recent terror attacks, all of which had an Islamic slant to them:
- December 2010: Stockholm – An Iraqi-born Swedish citizen who had lived in the U.K. carries out a suicide car bombing, injuring two and blowing himself up. Although the planned attack failed, Swedish authorities believed the terrorist intended to detonate the vehicle remotely in an attempt to kill as many people as possible during the busy Christmas shopping season.
- March 2012: Toulouse and Montauban, France – A French national of Algerian origin kills three off-duty soldiers, three Jewish children and a rabbi in three separate terrorist attacks in southern France. Before being killed by police in a shootout, the terrorist, who carried out the terrorist attack in the name of Islam, told authorities he did so in part because he was mad over France’s military role in Afghanistan.
- May 2013: London – British serviceman Lee Rigby is brutally murdered in broad daylight by two British citizens who were converts to Islam. Rigby is run over by the terrorists before being hacked to death as the murderers shouted “Allahu akbar.” Both terrorists are convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
- May 2014: Brussels – A terror attack carried out against a Jewish museum kills four. A French terrorist who had returned from fighting with Islamists in Syria and Iraq is charged with carrying out the attack. The terrorist is described by one former hostage as a “publicity-loving sadist,” whose depravity knew no bounds even prior to the attack on the Jewish museum.
- December 2014: Joue-les-Tours, France - A 20-year old French national, who is a Muslim convert with known sympathies to radical ideology, injures three after attacking police with a knife while shouting “Allahu Akbar.” He is shot and killed by police.
But this denial should not come as a surprise since this administration went years refusing to acknowledge that the Fort Hood attacks was a terrorist attack, classifying the attack as "workplace violence," an insult to those who died and were wounded. Failure to declare the obvious is an epic fail and an insult to the intelligence to the rest of us that see what is going on.
3) The relationship with China has not gotten better during the Obama administration. China has been bullying nations in its region for a number of years now, claiming territorial and island rights that other nations have long held were theirs. There have been military and diplomatic confrontations with Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, and others, with the Chinese ignoring any Obama administration pleas to play nice.
In fact, some experts are saying that relations between the U.S. and China have not been this bad in decades: "U.S.-China relations are worse than they have been since the normalization of relations, and East Asia today is less stable than at any time since the end of the Cold War," Robert Ross, a political science professor at Boston College and an associate of Harvard's John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.
So China ignores us and is not scared or respectful of us, Russia invades countries at will and is not scared or respectful of us, looks like the Obama administration has taken us back to the future with the advent of a Cold War atmosphere as a result of the bumbling foreign relations management of the Obama administration.
4) But it is not just Russia and China where the foreign affairs management of been an epic failure. By allowing the NSA to spy on foreign leaders, even those that were and are considered allies, the Obama administration ticked off a whole range of foreign leaders including such stalwart allies as Angela Merkel of Germany. You cannot spy on people and then expect them to embrace yourself or your foreign affairs policy.
The Prime Minister of Brazil was so ticked off by the spying that she cancelled herself out of a White House state dinner, a highest honor that the White House can bestow on anyone, that is how made the Obama administration made her. Time Magazine reported on how Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sirkorski truly felt about his country;s relationship with the U.S. during Obama's tenure:
In tapes obtained by a Polish magazine, Radoslaw Sikorski sued an expletive to describe his country's alliance with the U.S.
Polish magazine Wprost claims to have obtained recordings of a conversation in which Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski says that “the Polish-American alliance is worthless, even harmful, as it gives Poland a false sense of security. It’s bulls—t.
The quote is an excerpt of a longer conversation purportedly between Sikorski and former Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski that Wprost is expected to publish Monday or Tuesday, the Associated Press reports. The leaked recording comes just two weeks after President Barack Obama visited Poland.
Great, when an ally says the relationship is bulls--t, you really are an epic fail.
The following link to a CNBC news broadcast from earlier this year quite nicely summarized how erratic and non-effective the administration has been relative to all types of other countries, foes and friends alike:
From the collapse of Yemen to a new Cold War with Russia and China to ticking off many, many allies, this administration's voeign policy record can be viewed not other way than an epic fail. Today's and Yesterday's examples prove this conclusion, one could not do much worse if one was trying to encourage our enemies and piss off our friends.
This epic fail series will continue tomorrow when we switch gears to the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.
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Please visit the following sites for freedom:
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http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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