Discrediting? Only in academia are you not disqualified from a posh tenured position on a campus if you lament not having eviscerated more people and property with dynamite. Rather, it's grounds for a promotion.
The disturbing thing is that intellectual thugs like Ayers are precisely the types of dirtbags that Obama hung around with in college. In Dreams from My Father, Obama recounts that he consciously connected with all the radical students to "avoid being mistaken for a sellout." Obama hung with the "Marxist professors," "structural feminists," and the "punk-rock performance poets" who got exercised about "neocolonialism," "Eurocentrism," and "patriarchy,"10 which are all leftist buzzwords for overthrowing America as a world power.
And in a recently discovered op-ed that Obama penned at Columbia for a student magazine, he took aim at our country's culture of "militarism" and advocated nuclear disarmament. The title of the piece said it all: "Breaking the War Mentality."11 As the New York Times put it, Obama "agitated for the elimination of global arsenals holding tens of thousands of deadly warheads" and railed against what he called "the relentless, often silent spread of militarism in the country" amid "the growing threat of war." In the article, Obama profiled two peacenik groups, Arms Race Alternatives and Students Against Militarism, which helped lead efforts to incorporate "peace, disarmament, and world order" into Columbia's curriculum to shift America from its "dead-end track."
Fast-forward to today. Now president, Obama is seeking to establish global coalitions that start the path to a "nuclear-free world." Obama has also cut back on developing missile-defense systems home and abroad that can protect America from rogue regimes; he wants America to decrease its weapons stockpile and wants to play patty-cake with Iran and North Korea to beg them, pretty please with sugar on top, to halt their nuclear ambitions.
At a forum sponsored by MTV and MySpace during the campaign, Obama explained to the young audience how he'd handle Iran:
I'm going to tell them, "Should you develop a nuclear weapon, it's going to set off an arms race in the Middle East. You have to stop funding terrorist activities." But I'm also going to offer them some carrots and say to them, "But you know what? If you stand down on the nuclear issue, then potentially you could be admitted to the World Trade Organization. You can potentially have a greater economic benefit. Ultimately, at some point, we may be able to set up normalized diplomatic relations."12
Obama added that having these types of conversations would send a signal to Iran and the rest of the world that America is "listening" and not just "telling them what to do."13
Such rhetoric sounds nice, but it's why Obama had egg all over his face when it was revealed just eight months into his presidency that Iran had built an undisclosed, second nuclear facility. Obama's gullibility borders on willful negligence. It's one thing to be stupid, it's another thing to turn a blind eye to facts and overwhelming evidence.
The mullahs in Iran have made it clear that they seek the destruction of America. They don't want diplomatic relations; they want worldwide domination. Such hatred for us is driven by their interpretation of Islam. "Death to America" chants are common enough to be almost like a greeting for many of them. In fact, what type of meaningful diplomatic overtures can Obama legitimately expect from Iranian rulers who don't blink an eye when it comes to brutalizing their own people? We saw exactly that when the "supreme leader" of Iran ordered his Basij force to club, shoot, and ax to death young people protesting Iran's staged and fraudulent election.
North Korea is similar. Kim Jong Il has made it crystal clear that he seeks the West's annihilation, and he stymies every attempt by the United Nations to curb his weapons programs. Obama prefers to "negotiate." Meanwhile, back in the real world, we take our enemies at their words and view their actions as a middle finger to sane diplomacy. As military analyst Frank J. Gaffney commented, "If the implications were not so serious, the discrepancy between Mr. Obama's plans and real-world conditions would be hilarious. There is only one country on earth that Team Obama can absolutely, positively denuclearize: Ours."14
It's as if Obama wants to say to North Korea and Iran, "Now, fellas, I know you say you want to destroy Western civilization, but I think you're just misunderstood. I know you really don't mean what you say." Um, B.H.O., when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declares that the Holocaust was "a false pretext to create Israel"15 and that attacking them is a "national and religious duty," or that a world without America is "attainable," what type of negotiations could you possibly bring to the table without brute force and fierce sanctions? Especially when Ahmadinejad says that Iran has its own "war preparation plan" for "the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization."16
Obama seems not to care. After all, he fancies himself the "apologizer in chief." Such moral equivocating is insane and morally loathsome. Worse, it's downright dangerous. But why should this surprise us? If Obama Zombies would have taken their earbuds out of their ears long enough to actually research and listen to this man, they would have known just how radical he truly is.
* * *
EIGHT DAYS AFTER 9/11, Obama wrote an op-ed for Chicago's Hyde Park Herald in which he argued that Americans needed to have compassion for those who had just slaughtered our brethren:
The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.17
Obama kept with the same meme when addressing the MTV/MySpace presidential forum, specifically tailored toward youth. In it, he was asked this question via an interactive instant message: "The current administration has significantly affected global opinion about the United States. How do you hope to change the global opinion of our nation, and what are the most impor- tant American principles that you feel should be emphasized if you get a chance to represent the United States globally?"18 The Washington Post reporter who conveyed the instant message followed up with this: "What's the face that we need to put out for the world?"
Obama's answer: "Mine."
That was fitting with the line the campaign fed us that only someone with a "multicultural" background can bring peace and harmony to the world, which coincided with hilarious rhetoric that he'd heal the planet and bring everyone to suddenly like America.
But Obama continued in the forum, addressing how he would handle our "plummeted" standing in the world:
A couple of things I would do very specifically. I would double foreign aid because I want to send a message that we are concerned about other people, we're not always just talking about our agenda. We want to build schools around the world to teach math and science instead of hatred in America.
Reality check: The Muslim fanatics that have waged and are waging war against us did not do so because of poverty. Dropping rice and beans from the skies along with Hooked on Phonics les- son plans won't curb terrorism. As columnist Mark Steyn has pointed out,
There's plenty of evidence out there that the most extreme "extremists" are those who've been most exposed to the west--and western education: from Osama bin Laden (summer school at Oxford, punting on the Thames) and Mohammed Atta (Hamburg University urban planning student) to the London School of Economics graduate responsible for the beheading of Daniel Pearl. The idea that handing out college scholarships to young Saudi males and getting them hooked on Starbucks and car-chase movies will make this stuff go away is ridiculous--and unworthy of a serious presidential candidate.19
During the MTV/MySpace forum, Obama gave us a taste of liberals' curious logic. He told the kiddos that we must quash "the genocide in Darfur" because "it's the right thing
to do." But then in the next breath, he declared that "we've got to end this war in Iraq" by "focusing on diplomacy." Let's see if I got this one right: Intervene in some remote African country that has no national security relevance at all, but abandon Iraq, where the U.S. military is killing al-Qaeda operatives and other terrorist cells by the thousands (19,000 terrorists killed and more than 25,000 detained, just so you know20).
It's easy to be a liberal. It's easy to say you'll pull out of war and restore diplomacy and make everything better. Never mind that America finally went into Iraq after a decade of "diplomatic" sanctions from the United Nations. Obama paints a world that doesn't exist. Moreover, being a superpower, a world leader, means that other countries may not like you, that other countries may not support your actions. But that's American leadership: we lead and do not follow. Quite frankly, it's a good sign when terrorist states don't like what you're up to. That means you're doing something right.
One reason Barack and his ilk push to disarm America is that they view this country through the prism of the Vietnam War. They view America as constantly walking in sin, in need of redemption. On several occasions, B.H.O. has sought to apologize to foreign audiences for the actions of the nation that made him the most powerful man on the planet. By the Heritage Foundation's Nile Gardiner's count, Obama begged for forgiveness to "nearly 3 billion people across Europe, the Muslim world, and the Americas."21
Where do you think Obama delivered this whopper? "In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."22 In Strasbourg, France, last April. Yes, yes: Obama apologized to the French for haughtiness! The French!
Obama's apologies to the Muslim world, a common favorite of his, are even more menacing considering the fact that the terrorist threats we face today are coming from radical Islamists--not Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Sikhs, atheists, but radical Muslims.
In an interview with Al Arabiya, Obama said, "My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect. But if you look at the track record, as you say, America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there's no reason why we can't restore that."23
Or how about our illustrious leader standing in the Turkish parliament apologizing for slavery and torture:
Every challenge that we face is more easily met if we tend to our own democratic foundation. This work is never over. That's why, in the United States, we recently ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. That's why we prohibited--without exception or equivocation--the use of torture. . . . The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history. Facing the Washington Monument that I spoke of is a memorial of Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed those who were enslaved even after Washington led our Revolution. Our country still struggles with the legacies of slavery and segregation, the past treatment of Native Americans.24
Obama even seems hell-bent on exalting Islam at the expense of facts and evidence. As Alex Alexiev, an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute, pointed out, it's amazing how wrong Obama is on the history of Islam, especially since he has an unlimited resource of researchers, fact checkers, and experts on call all the time. Regarding Obama's Cairo address, Alexiev observes,
Obama touted Islamic contributions to music (an art form prohibited among the devout) and printing (regarded by the mullahs as the devil's invention, and not available to Muslims until three centuries after Gutenberg), and his preposterous promotion of Saudi King Abdullah, ruler of the most religiously intolerant country on earth, as a champion of "interfaith dialogue."
More telling still are Obama's historically inaccurate portrayals of Muslims as being at "the forefront of innovation and education," and his blaming colonialism and the Cold War for their falling behind. In fact, Muslims have not been at the forefront of anything since ijtihad (reason) was declared un-Islamic ten centuries ago and replaced by blind obedience to reactionary sharia dogma, which, in turn, ushered in a cultural and intellectual stagnation that is yet to be overcome.25
As commander in chief, Obama has a duty to present America in the best possible light, not to bring up every misgiving of the past. Our human rights record is unmatched worldwide, but Obama's vision of a flawed America blinds him from realizing this. He does not believe that America is special and unique in its virtues. At the G-20 conference in Europe, a reporter asked Obama if he subscribed to the idea of American exceptionalism. He replied, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."26 In other words, No, nothing exceptional, America is like any other country. Big deal. Shoulder shrug.
During the Summit of the Americas, Obama sat idly and even took notes while Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega ripped the United States as a terrorist and imperialist nation. When asked about Ortega's diatribe, Obama said, "It was 50 minutes long. That's what I thought."27 At another point he jokingly said, "I'm very grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was 3 months old."28
Way to defend your country, champ.
The left rejects American exceptionalism because they want to put big bad America in its place by disarming us to give other countries around the world leverage to counterbalance our power. But don't take my word for it. Leading leftist "intellectual"--and I use that word sparingly for the left--Deepak Chopra wrote an article for the Huffington Post called "Can We Stop Being a Superpower, Please?" In it, Chopra shows the left's true intentions for America.
"It's been roughly 20 years since the fall of the Soviet Union," he grieves, "which means that the U.S. has experienced two decades of being the world's sole superpower. The experience hasn't been positive." His beef? The "enormous waste of resources involved in being a superpower," for starters. "Has the Stealth bomber justified its staggering cost? Has the nuclear submarine, Polaris missile, Titan missile, not to mention Star Wars? Most of these weapons haven't seen the slightest use. Billions of dollars have been spent on a defense system that is protecting us from a foe who long ago neutralized its threat."29
Forget the fact that having a strong military arsenal is for defensive and preventive measures. After all, it's not like we have crazy regimes around the world who seek our death and destruction. Nah.
Folks, as the saying goes, when you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail. We live in dangerous times. Peace is an anomaly. But Chopra, like his fellow lefties, naively believes that "peace is achieved by being peaceful, no matter what the military-industrial complex claims to the contrary."30
Sadly, young people are prime consumers of Obama's and the left's moral equivocating. The concepts of "right" and "wrong" are a blur to them. Political correctness--the fear of offending liberal orthodoxy--already handcuffs us from speaking our mind on basic Christian principles, including marriage and sexuality--a la the blond bombshell, Miss California. But the PC stranglehold also has deleterious effects on our understanding of how real the terrorist threat is.
In two national surveys conducted by Barna Research Group, young people were asked if they believe that there are "moral absolutes that are unchanging or whether moral truth is relative to the circumstances." Seventy-five percent of those ages 18-35 answered the latter.31 This notion of "if it feels good do it" no doubt gut-checks us from saying that Rachel Maddow looks like a dude, but that's far less serious than moral relativism allowing us to define Islamic terrorism, the spade of which Obama will not call as such. Instead, liberals demur each time conservatives mention the constant specter of terrorism.
During George W. Bush's last State of the Union address, for instance, the College Democrats over at Brigham Young
University decided to mock the president by taking a shot of alcohol every time he used the words terror, enemy, and evil.32
Grandmaster liberal bloviator Keith Olbermann typified the idea that conservatives hype terrorism when he said this on the air at the 2008 Republican National Convention:
. . . 9/11 has become a brand name. A Republican campaign slogan. Propaganda of the lowest form. 9/11 has become 9/11 with a trademark logo. "9/11 TM" has sustained a president who long ago should have been dismissed, or impeached. It has kept him and his gang of financial and constitutional crooks in office without-- literally--any visible means of support. "9/11 TM" has made possible the greatest sleight-of-hand in our nation's history.33
Similarly, on student reactions to 9/11, Professor Patricia Somers of the University of Texas found that students she interviewed worried that retaliation for the terrorist attacks would result in the death of more innocent Americans. Moreover, her subjects feared that members of the American Muslim community would be wrongly targeted. One student complained that "patriotism blinds people to what's really going on." Others said the "cheering for America as if it were a football team" sickened them.34 The patriotic mood of the country at the time, according to Somers's respondents, was "hypocritical and false," while others were alarmed that Americans got caught up in the moment of "waving a flag." Instead, in the words of a USA Today story on Somers's work, the post-9/11 campus environment settled for "blood drives, community service, and group hugging."35
According to liberal authors Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, young people are more inclined to "group unity" than to unilateral action. That influence, they argue, was cemented into the hearts of millions of Millennials from their childhood days of watching Barney! "They all solved their problems by the end of the half hour, and they all accept one another,"36 the duo concluded. That's right, folks. We're the Barney Generation. And only to liberal ears would that be cause for celebration. Good grief. I'd hope to think that the big purple dinosaur is not why younger Americans are more blinded about Islamic terrorism. The terror organization Hamas, by the way, has its own cartoonish character. But "love" and "unity" are not themes of the show. Nope: It's a Bugs Bunny look-alike who declares, "I will eat the Jews!"37 Not a joke.