Wednesday, January 22, 2014

This is not your Grandfather’s Democratic Party.


"In the Spring of 2011, National Security Council staffer Samantha Power sent emails to top Pentagon officials. Her emails contained GPS coordinates in Libya. She demanded that the Pentagon launch immediate air strikes on top of these coordinates, no questions asked. Power, you see, had friends in NGOs on the ground in Libya looking to borrow American might for a moment or two.

Her emails were ignored at the Pentagon. But her cavalier and hasty email demand that American airmen be launched on a dangerous mission to benefit her friends might seem incompetent and reckless.

But like so much about the age of Obama, Republicans mistake leftist ideology for incompetence. In the five decades-old orthodoxy of the foreign affairs left, pilots in supersonic jets with laser guided missiles are most appropriately used in small ways, and to serve small causes. To radicals like Power, American might should be used for their political ends, and the old conventions on target selection, chains of command and strategic aims are obsolete.

Some in America still can’t understand why President Obama’s policies and his nominations are so radical. It doesn’t make sense, you think, for him to pick extremist nominees who would have radical skeletons that would have disqualified them in any other administration. They also can’t understand why he continues to lurch left on almost every foreign and domestic issue.

It isn’t 1990 anymore, and leftist radicalism is a prerequisite for jobs in this administration, not a disqualifier. Leftist radicalism is the administration’s reason for existence.


This is why Obama chose John Kerry as Secretary of State.

Kerry first distinguished himself as a stooge for America’s enemies. In his first campaign for Congress, Kerry said, “I’m an internationalist. I’d like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations.” He even travelled to Europe to hold talks with North Vietnamese Communists while American soldiers were dying in Vietnam. His views about American power didn’t moderate over the years, as he continued to aid America’s enemies. Now he is Secretary of State.

History never stops turning the soil and what seemed impossible not long ago is always possible. Had you brought up fears in 2005 that the federal government would take over General Motors, shut down coal plants, destroy secured creditor rights of Chrysler bondholders, or taken over the health care system, polite company would have moved to the other side of the room. “Couldn’t happen here,” would have been the response."

1 comment:

  1. Yes who could have ever imagined that the year 1984 wouldn't happen until the year 2009.

    ReplyDelete