Saturday, August 8, 2009

The Sultan Of Surrender, Part 2

The American president is at it again.

Overlooked amid the raucous debate that's erupted over his proposed health care reform, Barack Obama declared that America is no longer at war with jihadis but only with Al Qaeda terrorists who, of course, are jihadis. The incompetence of the American president is astounding, yet not all together surprising.

Barack Obama is a child of the American Left, a political crowd that, at best, has a love-hate relationship with their own country. The American Left, like the international Left, has never been able to bring itself to recognize Islamic terrorism for the threat that it is. To do that would mean leftists would have to jettison their whole paradigm for seeing the world. That paradigm places the West in general and America in particular at the center of all world unrest. In short, Islamic terrorism is the West's, particularly America's, fault. So believes the world Left. And the American president is beholden to them. He is one of them.

Barack Obama is not only the president of America, he is also the commander-in-chief of the American military. As such, he certainly has access to information showing what's really going on in the world. He may really want to fight radical Islam but if so, he wants to do it while remaining true to the paradigm described above. Hence these Orwellian word games.

America is no longer fighting terrorism; she's conducting "overseas contingency operations". And she's no longer at war with jihadis, only with Al Qaeda. Why? Because only Al Qaeda attacked America on September 11, 2001, says the Obama administration. But what about those non-Al Qaeda jihadis? Does Barack Obama think they will just change their beliefs and lay down their arms if America declares she's no longer at war with them? Apparently, yes. They have to, because the Left's paradigm says they're aggressive only in reaction to American/Western provocation. If America will--let's call it what it is--surrender, the other terrorists will drop their guns and go home. War over.

When the American people elected Barack Obama they elected a far-left true believer who's ambivalent, at best, about his country. Obama would never shout, "God damn America!" as did his good friend Jeremiah Wright, but the sentiments behind those words are his guiding principle. How, then, could he possibly want America to prevail even against Al Qaeda? Answer: he doesn't. Oh, Obama will play at defense. He'll talk tough and might even take some token action here and there, but victory won't be the goal. As a good leftist, the only thing Obama believes America deserves is defeat, and he'll work overtime to deliver. It'll be disguised as diplomacy, humility, reaching out to the world community, but it'll still be ignoble, self-inflicted defeat. That's all that Obama has the capacity to give. He's no commander-in-chief; he's the sultan of surrender. And we will all pay for that one day.