I never wondered whether Barack Obama was a Democrat. I certainly never wondered whether he was an undercover operative for the Republican Party.
But his speech on Wednesday, and the immediate disintegration of his so-called “coalition” just may cause me to reconsider.
The speech itself, was a pathetic joke. I spelled out chapter and verse of why in my real-time blog as he made it, which you can read by clicking here.
The heart of President Obama\’s speech was that a coalition of nations had been formed to fight a war against ISIS (the Islamic State In Syria) – or, as Mr. Obama chooses to call it, ISIL (the Islamic State In the Levant).
The problem? He\’s not calling it a war, and there\’s no coalition.
First off let\’s discuss the terminology.
In this latest speech, as he has done so many times in the past, Barack Obama is not calling what he is doing by its name; he is making up some new, half-assed, wordsmithed BS to describe it.
As he has done so often in the past.
Remember when terrorism was “manmade disaster”? When the jihadist attack by nidal hasan, who killed 13 at Fort Hood, Texas, was called “workplace violence”? Remember the unauthorized, unconstitutional bombing of Libya being called “kinetic military action”?
Well now we have a war on terror which President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry are calling a “significant counter-terror operation”.
What the hell is a “significant counter-terror operation”?
Is it just me, or to you get the impression that what is most important to Mr. Obama is showing us his intellectual superiority by inventing never-before-heard alternative names for things – as if he is teaching a creative writing class instead acting as President of the country?
It makes him sound absolutely ridiculous, and – based on how he appears to be regarded among other heads of state – it also makes him an international laughingstock, generating head shaking and shoulder shrugging instead of respect.
Which brings us to the “coalition” we were told about on Wednesday.
Yesterday, two of its key members, the UK and Germany, announced that they would not join the USA in bombing Syria.
And now we have this morning\’s lead story in the (predominantly pro-Obama) New York Times. Its first paragraph:
ManyArab governments grumbled quietly in 2011 as the United States leftIraq, fearful it might fall deeper into chaos or Iranian influence.Now, the United States is back and getting a less than enthusiasticwelcome, with leading allies like Egypt, Jordan and Turkey allfinding ways on Thursday to avoid specific commitments to PresidentObama\’s expanded military campaign against Sunni extremists.
So where is the coalition? Who is in it? Which countries will fight alongside u…oh, wait, didn\’t President Obama tell everyone – our enemies included – that we will absolutely not put any boots on the ground? So the real question is who will the USA promise to provide air cover for while they fight?
Any doubt about why this “coalition\’ has fallen apart before it even started?
Two weeks ago President Obama, famously, told us that after 5 1/2 years of winding down a war against terrorism, which terrorists never stopped fighting, and watching terrorism make a major comeback because it went virtually unchallenged by the world\’s last superpower, he still had no strategy for dealing with it.
This caused his poll numbers to drop through a trap door.
So suddenly, ba-da-bing ba-da-boom, he concocts a “strategy”: that we\’re going to form a coalition to fight, not a war against radical Islamic terrorism, but a “significant counter-terror operation” against….well, someone.
The result? Barack Obama has literally left himself twisting in the wind, as country after country declines to come along for the ride.
So instead of helping himself and his party politically – which, again, appears to be the real reason behind his hastily-formed “strategy” – President Obama has instead damaged himself and his party.
But, far more importantly, he has done the same to this country, and to the war on terrorism that we must fight.
