By: Col. Tom Snodgrass (Ret.)
Right Side News
Obama Is Failing In The Areas Of National Security, Foreign Policy, And Economic Policy
A Clueless Government
Never in modern American history has a president been as inept in all of the most important facets of presidential responsibility as has President Barack Obama. Not even did the legendarily incompetent President Jimmy Carter fail as widely and seriously as Obama. The problem is that Carter’s damage has now already been realized and passed, while many of the disasters from Obama’s malfeasance are still in gestation.
National Security
The most dangerous Obama failing in national security is his denial of the existential danger of Islamic jihad. Obama’s denial is inexplicable in the face of the irrefutable imperialist-jihadist aggression mandated in Islam’s sacred book, the Quran, in Islamic jurisprudence, the Sharia, and in the compilation of teachings and practices of Muhammad, the Sunna, all three of which command conquering the entire world for Islam. Obama’s unexplainable willful blindness and deliberate distortion of the “peaceful nature” of Islam has led to his contemptible handling of the Arab Spring and the attendant Benghazi fiasco.
Obama’s “Arab Spring,” also known as the “Islamic Winter,” is a manifestation of his willful blindness. The Arab Spring has had horrendous and wide-ranging aftereffects whose consequences have not yet been fully realized in Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, and Mali. Obama has claimed credit for the Arab Spring, and the Arab Spring has displaced the governments of former U.S. allies and opened the way for anti-U.S. Islamist forces, including the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, and various Salafist jihadist organizations, to take power across the Islamic world.
Furthermore, as a result of Obama’s pretence that the Arab Spring had calmed the violence in Libya, the State Department denied increased security forces requested by the U.S. Ambassador, Chris Stevens. Consequently, an al-Qaeda affiliate in Libya was able to mount successful attacks on two U.S. Government facilities in Benghazi, killing Ambassador Stevens and three other American officials. Rather than admit that he had misjudged the situation in Libya, thus opening the way for these successful jihadist attacks, Obama and his regime minions set about to fabricate and disseminate a false story on national television, deceiving the American people about the identity of the perpetrators and the motive for the attacks. In the same timeframe Obama went before the whole world at the United Nations to knowingly lie and blame the four American deaths on a U.S. resident exercising his constitutional 1st Amendment right to produce an Internet video critical of Islam. According to Obama’s lie, this obscure video provoked a spontaneous Muslim mob assault on U.S. facilities and American government officials, while obscuring the truth that the Benghazi attack was a planned Islamic jihadist operation. Obama’s lie has now been completely exposed as a total fabrication. But Obama has still not been held officially responsible for purposely deceiving the nation and the world.
Since the U.S. Constitution, Section 2, Clause 1 charges the president with the responsibility of military Commander-in-Chief, Obama’s deliberate misrepresentation the Islamic threat to America is grave dereliction of the first and foremost presidential duty to defend the Constitution and the American people against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
In keeping with Obama’s suspicious denial of reality concerning the increasing and menacing danger of Islam, the president has consistently opposed taking a hard line imposing punishing sanctions against the Iranians mullahs to deter their pursuit of nuclear weapons. Furthermore, Obama has actively attempted to dissuade Israel from taking effective measures to defend their nation against Iranian nukes. Obama’s failure to take a strong stand against Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons is fostering a disaster in the offing that will be directly traceable to Obama’s malfeasance.
Recent analysis has indicated that Obama’s dereliction in confronting Iran about their acquisition of nuclear weapons is even more serious than originally thought. The president’s disregard of the potential threat of Iranian nukes appears to spring from underestimating the damage that the Iranians could inflict directly on the U.S. homeland. It has long been assumed that the Iranians could not miniaturize and weaponize a nuclear warhead that would be small enough to fit on an ICBM that could reach the continental U.S., that would be hardened enough to survive reentry into earth’s atmosphere, and that still would be able to pack enough destructive power to actually produce meaningful damage that would justify the tremendous expense of creating the weapon. What this non-innovative U.S. thinking presumed was that the range limit to any Iranian missile attack would end at northern Europe. But this unimaginative intelligence threat estimate of Iranian capability did not factor in the potential of a nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) weapon delivered by a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS), which would be modeled on the Soviet-developed FOBS system of the 1960s. The background of FOBS is:
During the Cold War, the USSR experimented with a secret weapon, the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS), that used an ICBM like a Space Launch Vehicle to put a nuclear warhead into orbit, like a satellite. Instead of using the ICBM to lob the warhead on a more accurate arcing ballistic trajectory, flying along the shortest range to target, like an artillery shell, the FOBS lofted the warhead into a “fractional” or partial orbit, sacrificing accuracy for limitless range.
FOBS could reach any nation or threaten any target anywhere on Earth.
However, in addition to Iran, North Korea now also successfully launched a large enough satellite into space to carry an EMP nuclear payload into a FOBS orbit profile. The background of EMP is:
A . . . EMP warhead is a nuclear weapon specially designed to produce an enormous burst of gamma rays that generates an extraordinarily powerful electromagnetic pulse, capable of destroying even the best protected electronics, thereby paralyzing military forces and blacking out power grids and collapsing critical infrastructures everywhere–across an entire nation the size of the United States.
It is an established fact that Iran and North Korea have been actively collaborating in nuclear and missile technology development for many years. Therefore, it can be assumed that when one attains an EMP-FOBS capability, it will be a shared capability. There are two very important points about the Iranian and North Korean EMP-FOBS threats that have not been explained to the American people. First, both the Iranian and North Korean ICBM threats have been downplayed because the assumption was that neither could develop inter-continental range missiles accurate enough with sufficient throw-weight to pose meaningful threats, but using ICBMs to launch FOBS space vehicles negates the necessity for pin-point accuracy and massive throw-weight – all that is required is that the missile be able to put a warhead in orbit. Furthermore, because the EMP warhead is optimally detonated at an altitude of 500 km, there is no need for a heavy heat-shield to protect the warhead on reentry, thus decreasing missile thrust and technological engineering requirements. Second, the small kiloton yields of North Korean nuclear tests to-date have been derided as not a threat to U.S. targets, but an EMP weapon does not require a high yield detonation to be effective. So, the American public has not been honestly informed that two avowed enemies have the potential for Assured Destruction strikes on the U.S. homeland, and instead the president has characterized the state of the world as “the tide of war is receding” and there is “peace in our time.” Obviously, Obama is deliberately misleading Americans about the dangers facing them.
In the same vein of downplaying the Islamic threat, Obama has selected two individuals to assume the critical portfolios of Secretary of Defense and Director of the CIA who are undeniable Islamophiles. In fact, the new SECDEF, Chuck Hagel, who is characterized as “dim-witted,” is a favored speaker on the Arab-Muslim lecture circuit because of his open support of Hezbollah and Hamas, two of the world’s most deadly jihadist terror organizations! While the DCIA nominee, John Brennan, has actually asserted that “jihad” is a “holy struggle” in the Islamic religion, in spite of the fact that Islamic law, the Sharia, specifically states that “Jihad means to war against non-Muslims”!
Moreover, an FBI veteran has stated that Brennan secretly became a Muslim when he was stationed in Saudi Arabia with the CIA as a result of being recruited to convert to Islam by Saudi intelligence operatives. While this charge is yet to be verified, it is definitely a cause for concern because of the dangerous potential consequences for U.S. security if true. In summary, Obama, a bona-fide jihad denier, wants to put two other bona-fide jihad deniers in charge of leading our defense effort to protect America from jihadist terrorism and internal Islamic subversion of the U.S. Government!
After eight years of combat, 4,487 deaths, and at least $758 billion spent in the Iraq War, Obama abandoned all American sacrifices by implementing a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops, opening this strategically situated country to domination by fanatical Iranian Shia jihadists. Obama’s apparent motivation for this strategic idiocy was his cynical desire to appease his leftist anti-war political base. Unfortunately Obama’s conduct of the war in Afghanistan is just as abysmal. Obama ran for office proclaiming that the Afghan War was the “good war” which was so important that it must be won. But instead of adopting an effective war-fighting strategy, Obama continued the already failed nation-building policy in the baseless belief that Islam can be reformed and will renounce jihad in favor of democracy. As a result of Obama’s incompetent choice of a senseless military strategy, 70% of the U.S. military fatalities in this Afghan conflict have occurred on Obama’s watch with nothing to show for this terrible price.
Also, it is reported that Obama intends to make additional deep cuts in the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, while Iran, North Korea, Communist China, and Russia are all embarked on programs to expand their nuclear forces! An impressive group of American generals, admirals, diplomats, and former DOD and CIA officials have sent a letter to Obama stating:
In our professional judgment, born of decades of experience with national security policy and practice, America’s “Triad” of nuclear-armed land-based and submarine-launched missiles and bomber-delivered nuclear weapons has promoted strategic stability and discouraged proliferation. Steps that raise uncertainty about the viability, reliability and effectiveness of our deterrent will have the opposite effect.
According to published reports, you are considering further, draconian and perhaps unilateral cuts in the numbers of nuclear weapons in our arsenal. We respectfully recommend that this plan be abandoned in favor of the fulfillment of commitments you made at the time of the New START Treaty to: modernize all three legs of the Triad; ensure the safety and deterrent effectiveness of the weapons with which they are equipped; and restore the critical industrial base that supports these forces.
Doing otherwise will put our country, its allies and our peoples at ever- greater risk in a world that is, far from nuclear-free . . . . .
When Obama’s denial of the existential danger posed by Islam, which has been incorporated into his national security policy (for example, calling the Ft Hood jihadist massacre “work place violence”), refusal to confront the Iranian and North Korean EMP-FOBS threats along with his failure to inform the American public about them, desire to put jihad deniers in charge of countering the Islamic jihadist war against us, unnecessary retreat from Iraq after America’s expenditure of enormous amounts of blood and treasure there, squandering of American lives in Afghanistan for no apparent purpose, stated intention to foolishly disarm the U.S. by cutting the number of our nuclear weapons in pursuit of the delusional goal of eventually having zero nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal, are all added together, the only conclusion is that Obama is an unmitigated failure in his conduct of U.S. national security.
Foreign Policy
It is difficult to know where to begin when detailing Obama’s foreign policy failures. For instance, Operation Fast & Furious was actually a covert plot to discredit the U.S. 2nd Amendment by supplying “assault” weapons from American gun stores to Mexican drug cartels in order to create the impression that more restrictive U.S. gun control laws were needed when these weapons were increasingly implicated in murders in Mexico and U.S. Border States. So, while Fast & Furious was actually an illegal domestic political scheme by the Obama regime to subvert the U.S. Constitution, it has had a very negative impact on our foreign relations with Mexico because it has resulted in hundreds of Mexicans murdered by Fast & Furious weapons.
Another monumental Obama foreign policy failure was the “Russian reset,” which was orchestrated by Obama’s maestro of ineffectiveness, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. With much pomp and ceremony Hillary presented a gift-wrapped “reset button” to the Russian Foreign Minister, in March 2009. But as an ominous omen of the incompetence of the Obama regime, instead of “reset,” the Russian word on the hooky button gizmo actually read “overcharged!” Obviously a regime so bungling that they can’t correctly translate the one word they have made the centerpiece of their amateur stunt is doomed to failure. The failure has been manifested in Russian refusal to enforce economic sanctions against Iran, in not cooperating to force Bashar al-Assad to step down from his Syrian dictatorship and cease his mass murder, and in Vladimir Putin’s cancellation of the partnership to dismantle unconventional weapons, to name but a few of the many Russian rebuffs of the Obama-Clinton “reset.” Now, Obama has replaced the ineffectual SECSTATE Clinton with the pompous buffoon, John Kerry, who the Russians completely ignored in his first foray into international diplomacy, totally humiliating him.
But that’s not all. In addition to the Fast & Furious fiasco, there are increased Chinese Communist maritime threats against the U.S., Japan, and a host Southeast Asian nations like the Philippines; there are the Chinese Communist cyber hacking and thefts of U.S. national security and industrial secrets; there are the ruptured diplomatic relations with Israel; there are the diplomatic betrayals of Poland and the Czech Republic in the unilateral cancellations of anti-missile installation agreements; and there is the significant decrease of U.S. favorability in Muslim nations since Obama took office. In view of all of the foregoing, again the only conclusion is that Obama is an unmitigated failure in his conduct of U.S. foreign policy.
The Six Trillion Dollar Man
Obama’s economic policy failure is closely intertwined with his national security failure because, to quote the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, the national debt is “the single biggest threat to our national security.” In less than four years of Obama’s first term, the national debt increased an unbelievable $5.4 trillion! And yet Obama has continued unwaveringly with his economy-destroying policies of ever-increasing social-welfare entitlement spending and higher taxes on job creators. This astonishing quote Rep. from Kevin Brady, R-Texas, vice chairman of the Joint Economic Committee and member of the House Committee on Ways and Means, is almost impossible to comprehend, “Under President Obama’s stewardship, the national debt has grown by more than $4 billion per day, $170 million per hour, $2.8 million per minute and more than $47,000 per second.”
When Obama’s social-welfare expanding, high taxation, anti-economic growth financial policies, are considered along with the latest staggering U-6 total unemployment rate of 15.4%, the foolish “green energy” failures like Solyndra, the never-ending anti-carbon campaign of Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, and the financially unsustainable “Obamacare,” once more the only conclusion is that Obama is an unmitigated failure in his conduct of U.S. economic policy.
Conclusion
Considering the appalling results of Obama’s national security, foreign, and economics policies all together begs the question, if Obama were attempting to undermine the U.S., what would he do differently?
Col. Thomas Snodgrass, USAF (retired) served over a year in Peshawar, Pakistan working with Pakistani military intelligence, and he was variously an Intelligence Officer or an International Politico-Military Affairs Officer in assignments in six other foreign countries during a thirty-year military career. Additionally, he was awarded a year’s educational sabbatical teaching and writing as an Air Force Research Associate at the Center for Advanced International Studies, University of Miami, Florida. He has taught history at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Arizona, for ten years after his military service.
