What the (Bleep) Just Happened?

by Monica Crowley

  In the words of Panetta, “The Department of Defense will face devastating, automatic, across-the-board cuts that will tear a seam in the nation’s defense.” And yet, Obama fought hard to get this precise outcome.

  Obama wants the defense cuts. He wants the military decimated. He wants us more vulnerable. After all, less money for the Pentagon means more money for his domestic projects. He only rushes to cut things vital to our survival. A hollowed-out military also fits his bigger agenda: if we can’t project power, we can’t continue to be a superpower.

  Our allies in the region see the major U.S. defense cuts at the same time they see the Chinese increasing their military budget by 10 percent or more each year for the last twenty years. Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, and others are pacing the floorboards as they desperately seek our reassurance about continuing U.S. protection. Obama’s answer to the increased Chinese naval bullying was to send Hillary Clinton out to wave around the UN Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which so imperils U.S. sovereignty that the Senate won’t ratify it.

  At an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in late 2011, Obama toughened his stance a bit, citing a “slight improvement” in the value of the Chinese yuan but claiming it wasn’t nearly enough. He also scolded China to behave more responsibly in addressing strategic and trade challenges. “Now they’ve grown up,” he said, “and so they’re going to have to help manage this process in a responsible way.”

  No they don’t. In fact, the Chinese—whose culture is millennia old—took particular umbrage over Big Daddy’s use of the phrase “grown up.” “The U.S. intends to solve economic problems by exerting political pressure on China. Such a mission is hollow and ultimately doomed to failure,” the state-run Global Times said in an editorial that also accused the United States of “over-confidence.” They continued, “Maybe the U.S. should learn to accept the reality of a multi-polar world and change its mentality.”

  The global community organizer isn’t playing well in China, where they have repeatedly told Big Daddy to take a hike. China knows that Obama is stuck between a Barack and a hard place: when Obama tried a unilateral move in response to China’s currency manipulation and slapped a steep 35 percent tariff on Chinese tires in 2009, the Chinese remained unmoved; more severe tariffs would certainly spark a devastating trade war and are therefore unlikely. The Chinese also know that multilateral moves through institutions such as the World Trade Organization are slow and also unlikely.

  Furthermore, the Chinese know that they’ve got essentially a free hand on human rights as long as Obama is in office. In 2009, Hillary Clinton turned her back on victims of Chinese oppression when she gave a speech that suggested we’d look the other way on human rights as long as we could deal productively on economic and strategic issues. The Chinese subsequently ramped up their policy of jailing, torturing, and killing democracy advocates, ethnic minorities, and Catholics, among others. By early 2011, Clinton had backed off from her “see no evil” position. Obama, however, has utterly failed to take on the Chinese on the issue. I was in the room in Beijing in 1993 when President Nixon blasted the Communist leadership on human rights. Their only counterargument was a lame point about the need to control over one billion people. Nixon wasn’t having it, and neither should Obama. Human rights are the one area in which we actually do have some leverage with the Chinese, and yet Obama has been an AWOL moral warrior.

  The shadow boxing occurring between Washington and Beijing has been carefully managed by both sides, but with the economic, diplomatic, and military competition ratcheting up, we face the increasing danger of direct conflict. China isn’t about to stop spreading its wings simply because Big Daddy has lectured them to act like “grown-ups.” Who’s on first? Hu’s on first on many issues, and he knows it. If this next century is going to be a Pacific century, we ought to have a president who makes sure that it’s an American Pacific century and not a Chinese Pacific one. Ultimately, we may be on a collision course with China, and Obama may have to make a tough call: direct confrontation or appeasement. Appeasement is his natural comfort zone, and the Chinese know it.

  Señor Alinsky on the Border with a Corona and Chaos

  * * *

  Welcome to Cinco de Cuatro!

  —Barack Obama to the Mexican ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan, attempting to mark Cinco de Mayo on May 4, not May 5, 2009

  Midmorning, March 27, 2010: Rancher Robert Krentz was working on his property. He had taken his all-terrain vehicle out to tend to fences and water lines on the 34,000-acre cattle ranch in southern Arizona that had been in his family since 1907. Krentz was known as a good soul, someone who would always assist people in need, including the hundreds of illegal aliens who would break into the country via his property. He’d often take care of those who were sick or exhausted and provide water to them because, as he told PBS, “that’s just my nature.”

  That particular morning, Krentz radioed his brother to say that he had come upon an illegal alien and was going to offer him assistance. Krentz was supposed to meet his brother at noon, and when he didn’t show up, the brother called police, who launched a search of the rugged desert terrain.

  Twelve hours later, a state police helicopter found Krentz slumped over in his vehicle, the engine running and the lights on. He had been shot to death. His dog lay next to him, critically wounded by another bullet. Days later, the dog’s ashes were spread about the ranch along with Krentz’s.

  Tracker dogs followed the tracks of the killer back into Mexico, fifteen miles to the south.

  Late night, December 14, 2010: U.S. border agent and former marine Brian Terry was on duty with several fellow border agents. Using thermal binoculars, they monitored the remote desert area of Peck Canyon, a notorious drug-smuggling corridor north of the Arizona-Mexico border. At about 11:15 p.m., the agents noticed movement. One of the agents determined that at least two of the five illegal aliens were carrying rifles. A grand jury indictment later indicated that the five illegals were armed with at least two AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifles and were “hunting” border agents like prey, with the intent to “intentionally and forcibly assault” them. The indictment said that at least two of the illegals carried their rifles “at the ready position” and were “patrolling the area in single-file formation.”

  The agents identified themselves in Spanish as police officers and ordered the illegals to drop their weapons. When the illegals refused, two agents used their shotguns to fire “less than lethal” beanbags at them. One of the illegals then opened fire, shooting Terry in the back. Two of Terry’s fellow agents returned fire, hitting Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, who later admitted that all five of them were armed to the teeth. The four other drug smugglers fled the scene.

  Terry fell to the ground immediately, bleeding profusely from his punctured aorta. “I’m hit,” he cried. “I can’t feel my legs. I think I’m paralyzed.” He died within minutes.

  Two AK-47 assault rifles found at the scene came from the Obama administration’s Fast and Furious gunwalking operation.

  Either the United States is a nation of laws, as the Founders intended, or we’re a banana republic. Either rule of law and the respect for it prevails, or we’re a nation of capricious, politically driven decisions that puts the ambitions of men over the sovereignty of the country.

  Diluting American power and sovereignty is what Obama’s border and immigration policy is all about: flood the zone, and watch America the exceptional melt away. If Obama’s goals are realized, America will look more like the United States of Yugoslavia. And we know well how that hellhole turned out. Oh, that’s right; it doesn’t exist anymore. Barry’s goal is to turn America into a Balkanized polyglot mess, devoid of a national creed or purpose.

  When Jimmy Buffett sang about Mexico, it was a much more idyllic place than it is today. Over the past several years, drug cartel and illegal immigrant violence along our southern border has exploded. According to the Mexican government’s own
estimate, over 47,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón launched a military offensive against the cartels in late 2006. Mexican smugglers have become far more aggressive on the U.S. side of the border, as many of the major drug cartels now use former Mexican soldiers, police, and other law enforcement personnel to protect drug kingpins and their henchmen headed into the United States. Many drug lords have targeted U.S. Border Patrol agents and state and local police, offering bounties of up to $50,000 per killing. The cartel brutality has created a state of near–civil war in Mexico, with the military mobilized to support law enforcement in combating the mass killings, beheadings, and kidnappings of judges, journalists, elected officials, noncorrupt law enforcement officials, and civilians. That violent upheaval, coupled with the endless flow of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens across our unenforced border each year, has created a war zone from San Diego to the Gulf of Mexico.

  In early September 2010, Secretary Clinton acknowledged the obvious, saying that the drug cartels operating in Mexico, in Central America, and at the border were beginning to look like an “insurgency,” and that Mexico was “looking more and more like Colombia looked twenty years ago, where the narco-traffickers control certain parts of the country.”

  Within twenty-four hours, Obama slapped her down. He told the Spanish-language magazine La Opinion, “Mexico is a vast and progressive democracy, with a growing economy, and as a result you cannot compare what is happening in Mexico with what happened in Colombia 20 years ago.” Upon hearing this very public dis by her boss—a man she nearly beat for the Democratic nomination—Hillary said, “What the @$%&! just happened?”

  The real reason Obama slammed Hillary’s argument? If it were allowed to stand, then Obama would have to actually do something to enforce the southern border. Obama doesn’t take much action to secure the border because he needs the chaos it engenders.

  The more illegals trespassing into the United States, the better: more votes for him and his party, more drain on essential services such as schools, hospitals, and police, leading to demands for ever-bigger government and the spending to support it, and more diluting of American power and exceptionalism. The chaos of a wide-open border hits all redistributionist goals in one efficient swoop. Muchas gracias, Señor Alinsky!

  Indeed, illegal immigration creates two distinct forms of chaos craved by the kooks: economic and criminal. According to a 2011 study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), illegal immigration now costs federal, state, and local taxpayers about $113 billion per year. Approximately 75 percent of that cost is borne by the states. You and your family paid $1,117 in taxes in 2011 to support illegal aliens. Fifty-one percent of Mexican immigrant households use one major welfare program, such as food stamps, Medicaid, school lunches, the Women, Infants and Children Program, and subsidized public housing, and 28 percent use more than one. The cost to educate the children of illegals? Fifty-two billion dollars.

  The crime statistics involving illegal aliens—although notoriously difficult to measure—show an even darker side to the problem. The illegal population is roughly 12 million, although it’s nearly impossible to get an accurate count. Of those, 57 percent are estimated to come from Mexico and 24 percent come from other parts of Latin America. The rest are from other parts of the world. While all commit the crime of entering the country illegally, once here most do not go on to commit other crimes. But those who do cause significant harm to America in terms of violence and the costs of criminal prosecution and incarceration. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, 40 percent of all sentenced federal offenders were Latinos, and of those, 72 percent were not U.S. citizens. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that there are about 225,000 noncitizens in the nation’s jails, while the Federal Bureau of Prisons reports that 26.4 percent of inmates in federal prisons are noncitizens. The estimated cost to incarcerate them is about $2 billion just in federal prisons alone.

  The unenforced border also invites international terrorism. The 9/11 Commission Report warned that “the challenge for national security in an age of terrorism is to prevent the very few people who may pose overwhelming risks from entering or remaining in the United States undetected.”

  Terrorist suspects with known ties to Hamas and Hezbollah have been arrested after crossing the border; many of these suspects have been known to work with the most violent Latin American gangs, including Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Los Zetas (which was implicated in the 2011 arrest of two men tied to the Iranian government in a terror plot to have been carried out on U.S. soil). According to the Department of Homeland Security, in 2010 alone, 663 people arrested along the southern border were from countries designated as “special interest” for their support and export of terrorism, including Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, and four other countries that have been designated by the State Department as state sponsors of terror—Cuba, Iran, Syria, and Sudan. We’re strip-searching Gramps at the airport while half the Taliban strolls into Nogales.

  Nothing generates the kind of sustained economic, criminal, and national security chaos as widespread and unchecked illegal immigration, which is the most basic reason it’s embraced by the kooks. When confronted with its human and economic costs, the leftists invoke their patented emotional arguments: Who among us wants children of illegals to starve or to go without medical care or an education? After all, it’s not their fault they were brought to this country illegally. As for their parents, well, they’re just here looking for work and their home countries are basket cases, so can you really blame them for coming here? This is why we need a path to citizenship, amnesty of different kinds, and the Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act), which would offer permanent legal status to illegals, up to age thirty-five, who arrived here before age sixteen, if they have no criminal record and completed either two years of college or service in the military. In fact, when Congress rejected the DREAM Act in mid-2011, Obama issued an implicit executive order for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, lawyers, and others to exercise “prosecutorial discretion” for these illegals.

  Show “compassion,” they say. We can’t help it if America is so awesome that they want to come here, and as for that border, well, you know, it’s so long and stuff that we really can’t enforce it even if we wanted to. This is the kook attitude that has gotten us to the point where the illegal immigration chaos on the border and around the nation has cost us all in lives and treasure. As with the terrorism issue, the leftists frame illegal immigration as a problem with America as the root cause, and because only they understand that root cause, they’re best suited to lead us. It’s a setup to seize ever more power.

  In late April 2010, one state had had enough. Arizona, which bears the biggest brunt of the violent crimes, drug trafficking, kidnapping, vandalism, trespassing, and harassment associated with illegal immigration, got a new law on its books. Passed by the legislature and signed by Governor Jan Brewer, SB 1070 prohibited the harboring of illegal aliens and made it a state crime for an illegal to commit certain federal immigration crimes. Its most controversial provision required a police officer to verify a person’s immigration status with the federal government when, in the course of a traffic stop or other legitimate contact, the officer came to a “reasonable suspicion” that that person was here illegally.

  The law was concurrent with the federal immigration laws, didn’t violate or trump federal law, and was only needed because the federal government was either unwilling or unable to enforce federal law. Since 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that states may act on immigration as long as those laws don’t run up against federal laws and as long as Congress hasn’t explicitly forbidden those state laws. Even the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit—the most kook appellate court in the nation—upheld Arizona’s 2007 law making it illegal to knowingly employ illegal aliens. SB 1070 fit the criterion for being legal and ethical.
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  Predictably, however, the leftists went berserk. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, among other far-left groups, called it unconstitutional; others screamed that it was “bigoted,” “racist,” and “un-American”; and Alinskyites organized protests and handed out Mexican flags. Isn’t it interesting how if your state decides to pass a law legalizing same-sex marriage, the Left loves it, but if that same state wants to crack down on illegal alien lawbreakers, then it’s evil? To the Left, states should have some rights but not others. To the Left, states such as New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts are all considered forward-looking gay paradises … but Arizona is run by a modern-day Eva Braun named Jan Brewer who’s turning it into a fascist superstate. Funny, I thought they liked fascism. Just remember, if you’re a state pushing for Harry and Dick to get married, that’s okay. But passing a law to deport an illegal alien drunk driver? You’ve got issues.

  The president—whose job it is to protect the border and defend the sovereignty of the nation—then weighed in on the law, calling it “misguided.” He ordered the Justice Department to examine it to determine its constitutionality. Attorney General Eric Holder took a look, all right—at his boss’s agenda and his own leftist politics—and decided to sue Arizona over the law, which Holder later admitted he hadn’t read before filing suit, despite the fact that the law itself was just a few pages long. (Does anyone in this administration ever read any legislation before they either criticize it or sign it into law?)

  The law was supported by Arizona’s police associations, 70 percent of Arizonans, and over 60 percent of all Americans. But Obama, Holder, and the kooks whined that it would create a police state that would violate the “civil liberties” of illegal aliens. Obama and Holder cited the problem of having a “patchwork of immigration laws” across the nation. And yet, none of the state laws ran afoul of the federal laws, and there wouldn’t be a need for the state laws if Obama, Holder, and crew did their jobs in enforcing the federal laws in the first place.