Obama's Corrupt and Immoral Abuse of the Military
By Jonathan Keiler
Barack Obama's decision to send
American special forces to Syria is
not only hypocritical, but also a corrupt and immoral abuse of his powers as
commander-in-chief.
This is not a comment on his
circumvention of Congress, which is something that most modern American
presidents have done at one time or another with respect to military
engagements abroad. Rather, in Obama's case – uniquely in American
history – we have a president who puts Americans in harm's way for no evident
reason other than personal political calculations.
The insertion of fifty U.S.
special-forces troops into Syrian peril, whether to serve as
"non-combatant" advisors or something more, has been undertaken
without any reasonable hope of meaningful military success or of advancing
American interests. It is simply a political ploy, so obvious that no
right-thinking American, on the right or the left, ought to countenance it,
including the military officers charged with executing the mission.
Were this Obama's only foray into
meaningless and dangerous military policy, it might be excused as a rookie
mistake or a well-meaning misapplication of power. But Obama has been
president for seven years, and he has consistently abused the American military
in ways that violate accepted principles of warfighting and application of
power. In Afghanistan, Obama senselessly
surged American forces and sent soldiers and Marines into some of the
toughest fights of the war, with haphazardly selected force levels and without
any plan or commitment to stick it out or produce a victory. The deaths
and maiming of thousands of American troops in Afghanistan during Obama's watch
is a stain on his presidency.
Obama's more recent decision to
maintain a residual
American force in
Afghanistan, again with a randomly chosen strength suited to political
calculations rather than military necessities, shows that, like an absolute
monarch, he has learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
In Libya, leading from behind, Obama sent
American aircrew to arbitrarily bomb that country without serious consideration
for the consequences, either long-term or short. The result was the
murder of an American ambassador, those charged with protecting him, and a
scandal that would have, in an honest administration, resulted in the removal,
for cause, of the secretary of state.
In Iraq, Obama squandered a hard-won
military victory. With the stroke of a pen, heroic troops, including
thousands of fallen, who fought in a just war, saw their efforts discounted and
their accomplishments destroyed. Military members are willing to
sacrifice. What is harder is accepting that sacrifices are in vain.
That profound error of military and
diplomatic policy in Iraq was made only to advance Obama's personal political
agenda. Backfiring, this policy has so embarrassed the president and his
party, and so destabilized the Middle East, that Obama, at the urging of
advisers, announced the dispatch of the special forces troops and the
redeployment of aircraft to bases in Turkey.
But this effort is without military
justification or merit. Obama is going through the motions to deflect
political criticism of his leadership. Special forces troops and air crew
will put their lives at risk to cover for the president, with little or no
chance of making any meaningful difference in the military/political disaster
that is Syria. Their dispatch, without sound military rationale, is
corrupt and immoral.
In this, Obama is arguably worse than
the most cold-blooded captains who have shed the blood of their men in history,
or even in fiction. These men, real or imagined, who engaged in seemingly
senseless fighting, in vainglory or out of a misguided sense of martial
responsibility, at least, despite flaws of character or stupidity, also pursued
goals out of national interest, seeking victory.
Generals in World War I sent millions
to their deaths in what today appear like senseless charges into no man's land,
but for the most part, these men, while often befuddled, unimaginative, and
callous, acted in legitimate pursuit of national goals, and in the belief that
national and martial honor was at stake. At Normandy, Dwight Eisenhower
sent thousands of young men to their doom at Omaha
Beach, but he did so out of military necessity, and the resolve to make
good the terrible losses of the first waves, in the firm belief that what he
was doing was both practically sound and morally right.
Many more men died in one day at
Normandy than have been lost in all the military operations carried out under
Obama's leadership. Yet none of those men died in vain, or for the
parochial political benefit of a narcissistic politician. Most Americans
would doubtless agree that it is better that many men die in a just cause,
well, righteously and professionally pursued, than a few for nothing.
Under Obama, we have had none of the former – only the latter.
Even Obama's one righteous military undertaking,
the raid the killed Osama bin Laden, is tainted by politics. Many such
commando raids have taken place over the years, yet none that I can think of
have been so associated with the political leader in power at the time, as
opposed to the brave men who actually accomplished the mission. From the
day the White House announced the raid, the mainstream media and Democrat
operatives proclaimed that Obama, not the Navy SEALs who were actually there,
killed Osama bin Laden. Shortly after the raid Obama, announced, "We
got him," quite as if he had been there with Navy
Petty Officer Rob O'Neil as
bin Laden went down.
Compare the Wikipedia page on the bin
Laden raid to that of Israel's famed Entebbe rescue operation. In the bin Laden entry,
the first participant listed is Barack Obama. In the Entebbe entry, the
Israeli participants are limited to the military commanders who led the raid,
not the prime minister at the time. Try almost any other similar
operation. The Gran Sasso raid that freed Mussolini doesn't list
Hitler. The SAS raid that
liberated the Iranian embassy in
London doesn't list Margaret Thatcher. Only Obama, uniquely, it seems,
among leaders in such situations, gets treated as an actual participant.
Obama has a tendency to micromanage
military operations – fifty commandos here, a few sorties there. He also
thinks he's smarter than his own generals. But at least other such
figures actually wanted to win a war. Obama doesn't want to do even
that. He just wants to win political points.
This brings us to the final question:
at what point will America's generals say "enough"? Even some
of Hitler's officers, on pain of death, could be pushed only so far from their
professional training and honor before they resigned, or else got themselves
fired, or shot, or hung by piano wire.
Our military officers are sworn to defend the country and the Constitution, not
the commander in chief. When will they resign in protest?
==============================
http://www.americanthinker.==============================
Much is owed the men who sacrificed their all at Benghazi. This is especially the case concerning uncovering the truth in getting to the answers to the critical questions of the families of "THE BENGHAZI FOUR". It is our absolute intent to leave no stone unturned as we seek to uncover the TRUTH concerning the cover-ups and lies surrounding the national tragedy of Benghazi that occurred on Sept 11, 2012, or any other pertinent matter that affects U.S. national security and the well-being of our great nation."
==============================
SOS is not in a position to evaluate the reliability of the preceding report. We offer it as a possible explanation for the events associated with the information or theories put forth in the article. We continually evaluate the veracity of any information that we forward, and encourage anyone who has factual data that will confirm, support or refute what is contained herein to contact us.
DONALD HANK WRITES:
The group Special Operations Speaks distributed the flyer appearing below my commentary, which laments the heartless murder of Ambassador Stevens and 3 others in Benghazi, a crime that they correctly lay at the feet of our administration. However, they ignore the underlying cause. I wrote to the leader of the group and told them that they were ignoring the bigger issue of the US military being used for 50 years to support the Saudis’ Wahhabi religion and he told me he thought this was probably outside their purview. Yet it is central to their interests and the interests of the American people whom they are called upon to protect and serve.
Here is my email to the group:
QUOTE from your flyer:
"The result was the murder of an American ambassador, those charged with protecting him,..."
Yes, this is true and it reflects the thinking of military men analyzing the results of military action in terms of a governmental hierarchy of importance, with the ambassador at the top followed by those charged with protecting them. However, each military person, like each of you, is also a human being with sentiments and values that differ very little from those of ordinary Americans. From this perspective, the lives of the innocent people whose throats are slashed by ISIS are no less important than the lives of these personnel that you mention below.
You understand that it is immoral to send men into harm's way without a clear cut goal that involves a benefit for the people of the US.
Yet, this whole tragedy of the Obama presidency from the standpoint of the military also serves an even higher purpose, namely, teaching America the value of morality per se in military decisions. You all know that what Obama has done is highly immoral and you illustrate that in the article below addressing a presidential decision that needlessly caused the deaths of American personnel. Yet this endangering of personnel, which is a priority issue for the military, cannot be separated from the loss of life elsewhere, outside of the military who are tasked with protecting that life. (Nor does the fact that several presidents have excluded Congress from this decision excuse such an unconstitutional practice. Their actions have led us to this tragic point).
The petrodollar agreement entered into between Nixon and King Faisal in 1973 is still in force today. However, a mounting body of empirical evidence shows that the US side has gone far beyond the original intent of only protecting the Saudi family and oil fields. It is clear that our military actions throughout the world are in fact being conducted for the purpose of supporting not only the Saudis but in fact helping them spread their Wahhabi gospel, in the clear knowledge that Wahhabism is the heart and soul of ISIS, a group intent on eliminating Christians and other minorities, including even Shiites, from the entire Middle East.
Since America is a majority-Christian country, it is not only immoral and distasteful for our government to support a religion that sullies our values and kills people with whom Americans identify and sympathize but it is in fact a serious violation of our First Amendment, which imposes separation of religion and state. Our tax money and the lives of our troops are being wasted on the support of a religion. For the purposes of the Constitution, it does not matter what that religion is, but from the standpoint of morality, it is unacceptable to support a religion that causes non-believers to be killed and persecuted and their churches burned, as we have witnessed in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Kosovo. Further, though you downplay the exclusion of Congress from important military decisions, pointing out that other presidents have set this precedent before Obama, this exclusion of Congress is one of the main reasons that such disastrous decisions are being made constantly and you need to acknowledge this.
Your group must therefore acknowledge not only the harm to high ranking personnel such as Ambassador Stevens and lower ranking personnel at places like Benghazi, resulting from grievously remiss decisions taken by the administration, but also, to an equal degree, the profoundly immoral and unconstitutional strategic decisions to go to war in the first place when such is not in America’s interest.
These higher level decisions are more important than even the immediate decision that caused the deaths of the American personnel at Benghazi because these higher decisions -- such as the horrendous decision to overthrow Ghadaffi's peaceful and secular regime in the first place, in order to stay on the good side of the Saudis, who will not tolerate a secular regime in the Muslim world -- are the underlying reason that Ambassador Stevens and his cohorts died.
They, along with thousands of minority members in the Middle East, died to please the Saudis and hence induce them to keep propping up the petrodollar -- a futile effort in view of the rapidly increasing use of the Chinese yuan in international trade settlements.
Unless your group is willing to courageously challenge these higher level decisions and actions of our government, no meaningful or lasting results will be obtained as a result of your endeavors.
Best,
Don Hank
No comments:
Post a Comment