Crimes Against Liberty

by David Limbaugh

  Tellingly, the 86-page report did not once mention the shooter, Major Nidal Hasan, by name, or make any reference to his strong Islamic faith. As Time magazine asked, “The Fort Hood Report: Why No Mention of Islam?” Time’s Mark Thompson wrote, “The apparent lack of curiosity into what allegedly drove Hasan to kill isn’t in keeping with the military’s ethos; it’s a remarkable omission for the U.S. armed forces, whose young officers are often ordered to read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War with its command to know your enemy.” Yet the heads of the review, former Army Secretary Togo West and the Navy’s former top admiral, Vernon Clark, simply refused responsibility for investigating Hasan’s motives, claiming, “Our concern is with actions and effects, not necessarily with motivations. . . . We certainly do not cite a particular group.”

  Whether it was a matter of the politically correct culture or of a top-down edict from the White House to whitewash Islam lest Obama’s theories of appeasement be compromised, one thing is for certain: this type of willful denial is suicidal to our homeland security and represents a mindset toward Islamist terrorism that is perhaps even more reckless than our pre-9/11 orientation.

  The administration’s report, according to Thompson, lumped in radical Islam with other fundamentalist religious beliefs and, contrary to all evidence, even asserted that “religious fundamentalism alone is not a risk factor,” and that “religious-based violence is not confined to members of fundamentalist groups.” These people may be fooling themselves, but they’re not fooling the American people, or even less, adequately protecting us. Thompson noted that many believe this attitude means that the lessons of 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq, “where jihadist extremism has driven deadly violence against Americans, are being not merely overlooked but studiously ignored.”39

  As a further striking example of the administration’s mentality, Eric Holder compared Osama bin Laden to mass murderer Charles Manson40—as if the al Qaeda leader is just another maniac, with no particular affiliation or motivation worth discussing. Another example was the government’s acceptance of a UN decision to send some 6,000 Somali refugees from Uganda to the United States in 2010, despite our recession, the ever growing national debt, and the even grimmer reality that these refugees are reportedly turning into jihadist fighters throughout many cities in the world. The reason they are being moved is even more ominous: their failure to integrate with other refugee groups.41

  The administration goes to great pains to narrowly describe our enemy—when it will even concede having an enemy—as only “al Qaeda and its affiliates,” thus ignoring the inconvenient fact that many branches of Islamist terrorists beyond the al Qaeda network are warring against us. The administration also refuses to acknowledge that jihadists can operate independently, without direct orders from some hierarchical authority and without affiliation with al Qaeda or any other outside group. The Washington Times cited the example of Lloyd R. Woodson, who was arrested on January 25 in rural New Jersey with “a cache of weapons, body armor, a map of a military installation and jihadist personal effects.” Most Americans, argued the Times, “assume the situation is terrorist-related. The Obama administration said otherwise.”42

  Does anyone remember all the Democratic posturing and handwringing following the 9/11 attacks over the Bush administration’s failure “to connect the dots?” Here we have not just a failure, but an adamant refusal.

  Still, there are a few individuals in the administration who do suspect jihadists can become self-radicalized. Defense secretary Robert Gates, in announcing the Defense Department report on the Fort Hood shooting, admitted, “Military supervisors are not properly focused on the threat posed by self-radicalization and need to better understand the behavioral warning signs.”

  Walid Phares, author and terrorism expert, warned it is ideology that is behind the radicalization. But our government is reluctant to recognize that for fear of “theological entanglement.” Phares wrote, “Washington disarmed its own analysts when bureaucrats of the last two years banned references to the very ideological indicators that would enable our analysts to detect the radicalization threat.” Ironically, he said, the very fact that Hasan “fully displayed the narrative of Jihadism” is why he “was not spotted as a jihadist.”43

  In April, Congressman Hoekstra voiced his concern that the administration was withholding information on the Fort Hood attack. But Defense secretary Gates denied it, claiming, “What [is] most important is the prosecution, and we will cooperate with the committee in every way with that single caveat—that whatever we provide does not impact the prosecution. That is the only thing in which we have an interest.”44 Considering this massacre was an act of war by a jihadist, one would think the administration would be interested in the factors behind Hasan’s radicalization, his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki and any other Islamists, and other relevant information. It takes a stunning willful blindness to believe the government’s only interest should be in criminal prosecution.

  THE NO-NUKE COMMITMENT

  On the campaign trail, our appeasement-oriented president, in addition to vowing not to weaponize space and to cut investments in “unproven” missile defense systems, said he would “slow our development in future combat systems,” and in pursuing his goal of a world without nuclear weapons he “will not develop new nuclear weapons.”45

  For once Obama has been true to his word, as he has been hell-bent on unilaterally disarming the United States of its nuclear arsenal. He doesn’t present it as unilateral, but given the absence of verification measures with the Russians in his recently signed START agreement, it might as well be. In early April, Obama announced he was reformulating our nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons. The New York Times reported that “for the first time, the United States is committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.” His strategy, of a piece with his naïve fantasy that being kind to terrorists will tame them, was to make nuclear weapons obsolete by incentivizing nations not to develop them. Apparently, our scaling back of our own nuclear deterrent would encourage them not to do so.

  Amidst charges that the policy was recklessly destructive to our national security, the administration claimed it has carved out exceptions for certain rogue states like Iran and North Korea, and reserved the option of reconsidering the use of nuclear retaliation against a biological attack. Obama announced this “Nuclear Posture Review” just over a week before he signed the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia in Prague.46 In that treaty, Obama agreed with Russia to reduce our nuclear arsenal by historic amounts: nuclear warheads would be reduced by one-third and the missiles and other delivery vehicles would be cut in half. Senators from both parties called the agreement troublesome .47 Obama also disclosed details about the size and scope of our atomic stockpile—5,113 nuclear warheads—as part of his campaign to get other nuclear nations to be more forthcoming, which he believed would improve his bargaining position against Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capabilities. Once again, Obama’s recklessly childlike naïveté was on full display.

  Retired Army lieutenant colonel Robert Maginnis, a national security expert, warned that by reducing our nuclear umbrella, Obama could prompt other nations that have relied on us to produce their own arsenal—the opposite of his stated intent. Meanwhile, Russia gets the deal of a lifetime: we unilaterally reduce our nuclear stockpile to equal Russia’s, and they get to save money by reducing a stockpile they can scarcely afford anyway. It also leaves Russia with thousands more tactical nuclear weapons than we have. Former Czech president Vaclav Havel had warned Obama we should not make too many concessions to Russia based on a narrow understanding of Western interests48—but as with almost every other issue falling within his ideological orbit, Obama knew better.

  It soon
became apparent that the administration and Russia had dramatically different interpretations of the treaty’s stipulations on missile defense. The White House released a fact sheet on March 26, 2010, saying the agreement “does not contain any constraints on testing, development or deployment of current or planned U.S. missile defense programs.” But Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on April 6 that Russia would opt out of the treaty if “the U.S. build-up of its missile defense strategic potential in numbers and quality begins to considerably affect the efficiency of Russian strategic nuclear forces.... Linkage to missile defense is clearly spelled out in the accord and is legally binding.”

  In an April 8 fact sheet, the State Department affirmed the U.S. position, but on April 21, State’s new fact sheet showed considerable movement toward Russia’s interpretation, proclaiming, “The New START Treaty does not constrain the United States from deploying the most effective missile defenses possible.” While this may sound definitive, experts believe there is a big difference between the administration’s initial position that the treaty “does not contain any constraints on testing, development or deployment of current or planned U.S. missile defense programs,” and its new view that the treaty “does not constrain the United States from deploying the most effective missile defenses possible.”49 And the revised fact sheet is certainly a far cry from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement that “nothing in the treaty will constrain our missile defense efforts.”50 It’s just more smoke and mirrors from an administration whose chief, President Obama, has repeatedly expressed his disapproval of America’s pursuit of robust missile defense systems.

  In May 2010, as Obama was puffing himself up over his progress toward a nuclear free world, we were treated to a real-time, bird’s eye glimpse of the “success” of that policy as well as his strategy of engagement. Just as Obama and Russia were agreeing the United States should disarm, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke in New York at the beginning of the UN conference reviewing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Ahmadinejad openly defied the United States and the entire world, going so far as to advocate America’s suspension from the UN. The Wall Street Journal’s editors put it quite poignantly: “The truly humiliating spectacle is the sight of the world’s leading powers devoting a month to updating a treaty designed to stop nonproliferation even as Mr. Ahmadinejad makes a mockery of that effort before their very eyes.”51

  Anyone who thinks Obama is a conventional, pragmatic politician should take a hard look at his national security policies. He certainly does not want America to suffer another terrorist attack, but his slavish adherence to ideology results in policies that make that horrifying outcome much more likely. These policies flow naturally from a worldview that holds America responsible for many, if not most, of the world’s ills. Because we are historically a brutal exploiter of other nations, in Obama’s view, the animus terrorists hold toward us is at least somewhat deserved. Therefore, by apologizing to the world; by treating captured terrorists better and sympathizing with their grievances; by refusing to acknowledge any connection between Islam and Islamic terrorism; and by unilaterally reducing America’s strategic defense capabilities, Obama believes he is making America safer by proving our new good will under his enlightened, benevolent presidency.

  Judging solely by the string of terrorist attacks—both successful and unsuccessful—that have occurred during his presidency, however, the terrorists seem unimpressed by his overtures and sycophancy. Tragically, Obama doubtlessly interprets this result as an indication he has not taken his appeasement policies far enough.

  CONCLUSION

  In July 2010, I came across a heartbreaking post on Free Republic , a popular conservative forum visited by thousands upon thousands of patriots every day. The author wrote,In the 55 years of my life as a proud citizen of the United States of America, this is the first time I’ve felt that a president of our country holds his fellow Americans and the United States in contempt. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such an overwhelming feeling of rejection as I do with this administration. It’s as though everything that I was raised so proudly to hold dear and true has been denigrated. Every single day we hear something else that is a slap in the face of every patriot. I pray that we will see relief in November because I know that I’m not the only American who feels the frustration. It is unimaginable to me what might happen if we cannot find some relief in November.

  It seems to me these sentiments are now widely held in this country. My friends and acquaintances, and even strangers I meet during my travels, often don’t want to talk about politics anymore. Some say they can’t bear to watch the news because of Obama’s daily assaults on all we hold dear. And yet he continues, deliberately and unapologetically, to force his abject will on the nation.

  This book has meticulously documented Obama’s efforts to systematically undermine America’s founding principles and its heritage of liberty in his quest to transform our economy and very form of government. The facts speak for themselves, as does Obama’s destructive record.

  For all his posturing about bipartisanship and his openness to all ideas, this book has shown just how partisan, close minded, and determined he is to implement his agenda at any cost. And it has detailed the deplorably corrupt and high-handed tactics he has used in the process.

  Obama doesn’t listen to the people; he brazenly ignores our wishes, indeed our pleas, that he cease and desist from his reckless course. But far from showing the normal concern a politician—even a statesman—would have toward his own rising unpopularity, Obama moves forward at double-time pace, never looking back and never revealing the slightest inkling of self-doubt—an alleged trait of President George W. Bush that earned him the Left’s everlasting contempt.

  In his monomania for socialism, Obama will brook no challenge. In response to the miserable results of his economic charlatanism, he maintains things would have been much worse without his initiatives. And after he failed to keep his grandiose promises to improve American diplomacy, he gave us more of the same: weak-kneed engagement and Chamberlainesque appeasement. In the meantime he continues to insult and sell out our allies and coddle our enemies, as Iran races unimpeded to cross the nuclear threshold.

  Does it worry him that America is in decline under his leadership? Obviously not, as he voices contempt for American exceptionalism and pledges to rectify our allegedly unfair consumption of the world’s resources. In fact, one can’t help but notice that a declining America actually meshes with his ideology quite well.

  His colossally wasteful stimulus and mortgage bailout packages, along with his foisting nationalized healthcare on this nation, are just the beginning. He is hell-bent on passing a cap and trade bill that will further destroy our prospects for economic recovery and future growth. His plan to boost taxes, including a possible VAT, is also on the front burner, and we shouldn’t be surprised if he ultimately tries to enact a wealth tax whereby he taxes not just our income and sales transactions, but our constitutionally protected private property. Many reasonably fear their pension funds are vulnerable and ripe for the taking. If that happens, you can be sure the debt-exploding Obama will insist he’s doing us a favor by confiscating our life’s earnings to rectify the debt crisis for which he himself is largely responsible. Small businesses and producers everywhere wait in anxiety for the next series of shoes to drop from the socialist centipede of Obama’s agenda.

  If all this weren’t bad enough, his “urgent” push for comprehensive immigration reform has just gotten underway. Expect this initiative to be loaded with more than the normal amount of demagoguery and populism, as this supposedly post-racial president plays the race card on steroids en route to decimating the rule of law and what remains of America’s unique culture.

  Some maintain Obama is intentionally wreaking havoc on America as part of a Cloward-Piven or Alinskyite strategy to manufacture a crisis in order to destroy the nation as we know it and rebuild it in a socialist image. Others argue
Obama just believes so deeply in socialist dogma that he is impervious to the manifest evidence of its failure. Regardless of which scenario may be correct, the outcome would be the same.

  Americans, even former skeptics on the right side of the aisle, should now understand how committed Obama is to his far-left agenda. They should finally grasp how far the Left is willing to go when they’re in power. Their talk of moving past divisive partisanship is a veneer designed to cover their radical designs. They are precisely the opposite of what they hold themselves out to be: freedom loving, compassionate, pro-economic growth, bullish on America, democratic, tolerant, and compromising.

  America is in a dangerously rapid nosedive under Obama’s navigation. The key to our delivery from this systematic assault is for the American people to understand Obama’s extremist agenda, to get engaged, and to do everything we can to peaceably remove him and his supporters from office at election time and replace them with constitution-revering, liberty-loving public servants who respect the rule of law.

  No matter how bleak conditions look now, we have reason for optimism, as the American people, like no other people in world history, love and appreciate the liberty bestowed upon us by our founding fathers and preserved by the blood of our patriotic ancestors.

  God bless America.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to thank everyone at Regnery Publishing with whom I’ve had a wonderful working relationship. I especially want to thank Marji Ross for her continued support and confidence and for her wisdom in all aspects of the publishing business. I am also indebted to Harry Crocker for always being there from the beginning through the conclusion of every project. His encouragement, advice, and creative ideas are always first rate and invaluable. Also, I am very grateful to Jack Langer, the primary editor of the book, for his 20/15 vision, his insight, his extraordinary wordsmithing, and his temperament, which made this a thoroughly painless and enjoyable process.