America Besieged
April 11, 2014 by Frontpagemag.com 1 Comment
Fighters of al-Qaeda linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant parade at Syrian town of Tel AbyadEditor’s note: Below are the video and transcript of the panel America Besieged at the Freedom Center’s West Coast Retreat, held at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, California from March 21-23, 2014:
Larry Greenfield: Only two U.S. presidents in modern times never wore the uniform of the United States, draft dodger Bill Clinton and the current commander in chief, who repeatedly called our troops “corpse-men.” In 2008, when the completely inexperienced Barack Hussein Obama ran to the far left edge of the Democratic Party, with a single foreign policy idea and constituency, anti-war, and won his nomination and then beat a long-time senator from the Armed Services Committee, a Navy veteran and honored POW, John McCain, we knew we were going to be in for a rough time in global affairs.
Obama told 200,000 cheering Berliners he was a citizen of the world. And then he told the American people that the U.S. was not particularly exceptional and that he would make us more popular, perhaps, by using what the 2004 Democratic candidate, John Kerry, now the secretary of state, called a global test for U.S. action and leadership. Early signs in the first term were not promising: offense to the British with the removal of the bust of Winston Churchill from the oval office, a gift after 911, apology tours and mugging with the likes of Chavez, pandering to Arabie with lies about the Muslim role in the founding of the U.S., bullying of Israel, dismissal of allies, such as the Poles and Czechs, missile defense. Essentially, the Obama Doctrine: hug thugs and offend our friends. For this, the lovely lefties of Europe gave Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, which he shares with the godfather of modern terrorism, Yasser Arafat.
The first term saw red lines, unenforced reset buttons, dithering, leading from behind, moral equivalency, failure to complete missions, alliances ignored, withdrawal. The second term has been far worse, including the Benghazi disaster. I’ll leave it to our distinguished panel to document the current state of international crises and concerns and the readiness of the U.S. military and public to engage in a dangerous world under Barack Obama.
Michael Ledeen: Last night, listening to Glenn Beck, I said to myself well, this is a great routine, and what’s great about it is that it’s upbeat, is that the bottom line is we can win this thing if we just do the right things. So, I thought to myself why should I join the chorus of doom and gloom as we always do? These panels, we always pound our chests, and we always say oy, oy, things are terrible and things are getting worse and then, probably, they’re going to get worse, still.
So, I thought I would try to lift your spirits a little bit this morning and start by giving Larry his glasses back just to show that we’re really on good terms.
Okay. Let’s look at the Middle East for a minute. You all know all the bad news from the Middle East. We get it all the time. Man, we’ve analyzed it to death. By now, if you look at the polling on Iran, which is my particular compulsive obsession or obsessive compulsion, whichever it is, the American people know perfectly well all about Iran, and they’re quite well oriented on Iran. They think Iran’s a big enemy, they don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons, they know Iran’s the world’s biggest supporter of terrorism and on and on. So, they would like to see us have better policy toward Iran, and so do I, and we’re not going to have it under this president or this administration. It’s not going to happen.
Why? Because we have with Obama the first not post-American president, we have the first anti-American president. And, and it is very hard for people around the world to come to grips with the fact that we have twice elected a president who does not like America and does not like Americans. And he says that, it’s no secret, he believes we are responsible for most of the world’s basic problems, and so the way to cure the world’s basic problems is to rein us in, is to deprive us of the capacity to act. And so a weaker military and so a weaker economy and so don’t support Freedom Fighters even verbally, et cetera, et cetera. So, he’s done this now for, what is it, going on six years, and the results are clear. Our enemies are encouraged, our friends tend to be discouraged and so forth, and yet, that’s the good news, of which there’s quite a lot if you look at the world from the standpoint of our enemies.
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