Ain’t Too Proud to Beg
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To the kooks, America is like an ex-boyfriend who shows up at 2:00 a.m. unannounced and drunk, bursting through the door, smashing up the joint, and then leaving you alone, weeping, shaking, and on the phone to the cops. Of course, America is the cops, so it’s unclear who would take the call. But after believing that America has busted up the global joint for decades, the kooks wanted America begging for forgiveness for perceived past injustices. In 2008, before he had even formally locked up his party’s nomination for president, Obama decided he wanted to give a speech in Berlin, Germany, and at the Brandenburg Gate no less. German chancellor Angela Merkel found Obama’s audacious Brandenburg Gate request “odd” and suggested that he give his speech at the Victory Column instead. In reality, an Obama speech in Germany was fitting, since Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels hailed from Deutschland.
It was there, in Berlin, months before he was even elected president, that Obama got the apology ball rolling: “I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.”
There’s the word “perfected” again. I’m not sure delivering that particular message in Germany, which started two world wars in its desire to “perfect” itself, was particularly wise. I’m sure the German people loved watching an American presidential candidate echo the sentiment of the Übermensch seeking to create a utopian state. The president of the United States—the commander in chief—explicitly and openly apologizing for America would be the most powerful symbol of the New American Humility. It would let the rest of the world know that we’re now a gentle giant who’s so sorry for the ruckus we’ve caused. We’ve screwed up the world and we’re here to beg forgiveness. We hope you’ll be kind enough to bestow it.
As soon as he entered office, Obama continued the international Apology Tour, complete with roadies and groupies.
Obama told the French that the United States had failed “to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world” and that we’d displayed “arrogance” and been “dismissive” and “derisive.” I suppose the statute of limitations is up on the fact that America rebuilt Europe after Hitler destroyed it.
Obama told the Germans that “the (economic) crisis began in the U.S. I take responsibility, even if I wasn’t even president at the time.” This was a way of appearing to accept responsibility while really placing it elsewhere. Classic kook.
Obama appeared on Al Arabiya television and flatly declared that America “dictates” without considering “all the factors involved.” He continued: “Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect.” (There’s that notion of “perfecting” again.)
At the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, he told the world that the United States had been “dictatorial” and “disengaged,” and he went on to say: “But I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership. There is no senior partner and no junior partner in our relations.” Then, after listening quietly to anti-American Marxist thugs like Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega bash the United States, Obama asked all of Latin America for forgiveness for failing to carry out “sustained engagement with our neighbors.” He also palled it up with Chávez, accepting a book and mini-lecture from him. “Adios, amigo!” he called to ol’ Hugo, who then returned to Venezuela to land some great nuclear deals with Russia, China, and Iran. In Prague, he declared that America had “a moral responsibility to act” on arms control because we were the only nation that had ever “used a nuclear weapon.”
There were some reports that he thought about also apologizing to the Japanese for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima during World War II, although the White House denied it.
In Cairo, Obama legitimized Muslim grievances against the United States, vastly overstated the number of Muslims in America, hyper-exaggerated the role of Islam in American history, suggested that the war in Iraq was an unjustified act of aggression by the United States, apologized for the CIA’s role in a 1953 coup in Iran, and invoked “resistance” as a euphemism for Palestinian terror.
In Turkey, Obama blamed the United States for the “strain” in “many places where the Muslim faith is practiced. Let me say this as clearly as I can: the United States is not at war with Islam.” He went on to beg for Muslim absolution of America’s sins.
In early 2012, after some of our military personnel in Afghanistan seized some Korans that were being used by jihadis to communicate extremist messages, another group of American personnel inadvertently burned them, setting off violent Afghan protests that killed several U.S. troops. Obama’s first impulse? To convey to Afghan president Hamid Karzai his “deep regret” and “sincere apologies” for the incident. A few days later, Obama defended his apology by saying that it had helped to “calm things down.” After that, even more Americans were killed.
After the successful drone strike that had killed American-born Islamic terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, Team Obama called the family of Samir Khan, a top al-Qaeda propagandist who was also killed in the attack. To apologize. The call went like this: “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Khan. This is President Barry. I’m really sorry I evaporated your al-Qaeda son’s body with a Hellfire missile. I’ve instructed the Department of Defense to send both of you an Amazon.com gift card.”
In fact, Obama was so obsessed with “healing” relations with the Muslim world that he enlisted an entire government agency to help carry it out. The weird thing was that the agency he chose was the National Aeronautics and Space Agency. In early 2010, Obama announced that he was killing NASA’s $100 billion “Constellation” program to return Americans to the moon. What he didn’t say was that he directed NASA to use that money instead to “find ways to reach out to dominantly Muslim countries,” as NASA administrator Charles Bolden put it. When asked to explain Obama’s new directive, Bolden described it as outreach to “nontraditional partners,” particularly nations that don’t have established space programs, such as Indonesia. Under Obama, NASA’s mission was no longer space exploration. Out with the romantic heroism of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Jim Lovell, and even the fictional Major Tony Nelson. In with the pathetic groveling of third-tier diplomats. Astronauts from Houston to Cape Canaveral were heard grumbling, “What the @$%&! just happened?”
Obama went on to bow to Saudi king Abdullah, with some suggesting that he actually bent to kiss his ring. He also bowed to the Japanese emperor, who looked more than a little perplexed by the sight of an American president prostrating himself. These acts were graphic symbols of the moral and power equivalence Obama was cultivating—as well as of the American decline he was speeding along.
Other top Obama administration officials carried out their own Apology Tours. After we scored a seat on the joke known as the UN Human Rights Council, our ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, bent over backward to tell that anti-American body that “we have not been perfect ourselves,” a statement that put us in the same category as other council members with such sterling human rights records as Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Cameroon.
In China, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the United States must take responsibility for being the top emitter of greenhouse gases. In Indonesia, she said that our policy of sanctions against Myanmar had failed. In the Middle East, she blurted out that the Bush policy of isolating the Iranian regime had not convinced it to relinquish its pursuit of nuclear weapons. In Mexico, she declared that it was America’s big appetite for drugs that was largely driving the narcotics-related violence there. In Sweden, she asked the National Bikini Team, “How many of you have slept with my husband?”
One of her top lieutenants, Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner, told the professional human rights violators in the Chinese government not to worry about their human rights rec
ord because ours was just as bad.
Obama touted his approach at the G-20 summit in London in April 2009: “I would like to think that with my election and the early decisions that we’ve made, that you’re starting to see some restoration of America’s standing in the world.” Obama was right. They only chant “Death to America” in the Gaza Strip every other hour now, instead of every hour, like they did under George W. Bush. He later put a finer point on the one-world gobbledygook that he first advanced in his 2008 Berlin speech. During a 2010 address at West Point, Obama reemphasized his commitment to shaping a new “international order” in which he’d invest America’s power and prestige in global institutions.
With apologies all around, the stage was set for the building of that new world order, in which America would relinquish world leadership to those generally anti-American “global institutions” and see to it that the traditionally solid relationships with allies and clear-eyed approaches to enemies were shattered. Big Daddy was punishing America, forcing her to sit in the corner wearing a dunce cap, while he community-organized the rest of the world to take our place.
“You Like Me! You Really Like Me!”
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On October 9, 2009, the Norwegian Nobel Committee jumped the shark. It announced that it was awarding its coveted Nobel Golf Prize to President Barack Obama for his “extraordinary efforts on the back nine.” That’s a prize he may have actually deserved. No, that day the Nobel Committee announced that it was bestowing the world’s most prestigious award, the Nobel Peace Prize, to Obama for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
In other words, for not being George W. Bush.
In a spasm of politically correct white guilt, the committee did what the International Olympic Committee did not: reward Obama for being, well, Obama. Just days before the Nobel Committee let the world know that they were idiots as well as leftists, Obama jetted to Copenhagen, Denmark, to lobby the IOC to award the 2016 Olympics to Chicago. With Oprah in tow, Barry made his case and begged the IOC. Michelle referred to their participation on the taxpayer-funded European junket as a “sacrifice.”
In the end, the IOC was impressed with neither Obama’s “sacrifice” nor the Queen of All Media, because they awarded the Games to Rio de Janeiro instead.
Being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, however, was, the logical result of Obama’s International Apology Tour. As the New York Times put it in their editorial about the prize: “Countering the ill will Mr. Bush created around the world is one of Mr. Obama’s great achievements in less than nine months in office. Mr. Obama’s willingness to respect and work with other nations is another.” Who better for the Euro-kooks to honor and the Times to celebrate than an American kook who was moving American decline along so nicely? They gave him the prize based on his own campaign slogan of “hope,” but “hope” is neither a strategy nor an achievement. But, hey, the award has been given to Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and Yasser Arafat over the years, so who are we to judge?
The whole episode was so bizarre that even some of Obama’s most devout supporters were left wondering, “What the @$%&! just happened?” If Obama had had any respect for the prize or sense of personal decency, he would have either declined to accept it until he had accomplished something substantive or he would have accepted it on behalf of the United States military. Instead, he accepted it for himself and couldn’t suppress a Sally-Field-at-the-Oscars faux humility: “I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage.” Other recipients had done things like founding the Red Cross, implementing the Marshall Plan after World War II, and signing the Camp David accords. But Barry’s big accomplishment for world peace in 2009 was simply drawing breath.
Actually, the Nobel Committee should have taken a page from the playbook of Arizona State University, which in April 2009 decided against awarding Obama an honorary degree when he spoke at commencement that year. ASU spokeswoman Sharon Keeler said, “It’s normally awarded to someone who has been in their field for some time. Considering that the president is at the beginning of his presidency, his body of work is just beginning.” The folks at ASU should’ve received the Nobel Prize for Common Sense.
A year and a half later, after Obama had ordered the military surge in Afghanistan and had begun combat operations in Libya, leftist gadfly Michael Moore tweeted, “May I suggest a 50-mile evacuation zone around Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize?”
Politico asked some members of the Nobel Committee if they had any regrets awarding the Peace Prize to such a Bushian warmonger. Thorbjørn Jagland, the committee’s chairman, replied, “He got the prize for what he did. Not for what he did afterwards.” And Geir Lundestad, the committee’s secretary, replied: “The Nobel Peace Prize is no declaration of sainthood. And no American president will ever be a saint.” Nice.
What the Nobel Committee liked about Barack Obama was the idea of Barack Obama, a young, biracial multilateralist who wasn’t going to be merely the president of that horrible United States but more like a president of the world. They believed he’d make their sacred “one world” vision a reality. He’d be, in former ambassador John Bolton’s phrase, the first “post-American” president. So he got a Nobel Prize for filling the fantasy of European leftists that he’d lead them to their promised land of global redistributionism and one-world government. They hope for it still. And after their decision, there was no stopping the Obama Cult of Personality once the Man Behind the Curtain had a Nobel Peace Prize swinging from his neck.
The Kinetic Military Action Against Man-made Disasters
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On May 26, 2009, Obama created a shadowy, four-person national security team known as the Global Engagement Directorate (GED), which sounded like it came straight from goofy spymaster Basil Exposition in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. In an official White House announcement, Obama bestowed the new GED with a vague mission “to drive comprehensive engagement policies that leverage diplomacy, communications, international development and assistance, and domestic engagement and outreach in pursuit of a host of national security objectives.” (Imagine if President Bush had created such a sinister-sounding secretive group, reporting only to the president, with such ambiguous goals. Chris Matthews would’ve experienced male menopause on national television.)
The directorate set out immediately to whitewash the terminology of Islamic terror and radicalism. Under President Bush, the National Security Strategy stated: “The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.” An accurate and true statement, but far too politically incorrect for Team Obama. The GED moved to sanitize the vocabulary surrounding the global war on Islamic terror, expanding the effort to soften the rhetoric first begun in the latter years of Bush’s presidency. The virus of political correctness infected the way in which Obama and his fellow kooks spoke about the enemy and in how they dealt with it.
Islam? Islam? Bueller? Anyone?
On May 4, 2010, investigators made an arrest in an attempted car bombing in New York City. Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani native–turned–naturalized U.S. citizen, was taken into custody. He was naturalized in 2009 (when Team Obama was busy scratching “Islamic terror” from the lexicon), and shortly thereafter he made a trip to Peshawar, Pakistan, a hotbed of Islamic terrorist activity and recruitment.
In the countless early stories about his arrest, not one mentioned his faith. We were left to deduce that he was a Muslim by his Pakistani ethnicity and name, although I’m sure plenty of leftists assumed someone named Faisal Shahzad could very easily be an Irish Catholic priest from Boston, a Scandinavian dairy farmer from Wisconsin, or a Pennsylvania Dutch Amish Mennonite.
This suicidal inability to call the enemy what it is comes straight from the top. Obama doubled down on Bush
’s late-stage wimpiness and will not go anywhere near placing the words “Islam” and “terror” together. His administration has contorted itself into all kinds of politically correct gymnastics to avoid making the connection, going so far as to term acts of terror “man-made disasters,” the fight against terrorism “combating violent extremism,” missions fought abroad “overseas contingency operations,” and the wars themselves “kinetic military actions.” When an Islamist tries to cut someone’s head off, Obama calls it a “close shave.”
These euphemisms for Islamic terror are dangerously counterproductive. Obama refused to speak the truth about the motivation of Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who referred to himself as a “soldier of Allah” and became obviously radicalized before shooting to death thirteen fellow Americans and wounding many more in the name of Islam. Nor would Obama make the Islam and terror connection with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian Muslim who tried to detonate a bomb aboard a Northwest flight and rain hundreds of bodies over Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009. Obama refused to “jump to conclusions” about what propelled them to try to kill Americans … although he had no problem “jumping to conclusions” about Sergeant James Crowley of the Cambridge Police, who he declared “acted stupidly” in the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates without knowing the full story.
In terms of pure idiocy about the Islamic threat, however, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s comment before Shahzad’s arrest took the cake: “If I had to guess … this would be exactly that. Homegrown. Maybe a mentally deranged person or someone with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health care bill or something.” Bloomberg was kept apprised of the investigation in real time but would not acknowledge the truth. When Shahzad’s identity was made public and it was clear that he was not a deranged Tea Partier, CNN then helpfully theorized that he might have acted out of frustration after having suffered the indignity of home foreclosure. CBS and the Associated Press seemed equally mystified by what may have driven Shahzad to want to blow up Times Square: “Faisal Shahzad’s Motive Shrouded in Mystery,” blared their headline. Of course, Shahzad’s real motivation—Islamic jihad—appeared nowhere in their article. Tea Partiers were smeared as violent, crazed maniacs, but actual violent, crazed maniacs were getting a free pass.
What the (Bleep) Just Happened? Page 24