In scanning and reading through the 90 or 100 emails I receive each day, things that others think I should see and read, I find some to be of interest, and some\u2026 not so much.\u00a0 However, on occasion, I find myself downloading something truly special\u2026 something that adds a great deal to our understanding of the world we live in.\u00a0 Such was the case with an article by Richard Fernandez, published by the Belmont Club on May 11, 2014.\u00a0 The article is titled \u201cThe Day Obama\u2019s Presidency Died<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n
In comparing the death of the Obama presidency to the end of World War II in the Pacific, Fernandez writes, \u201cAlmost nobody in Japan heard about the Battle of Midway (June 4-7, 1942) until after the war (three years and three months later).\u00a0 The Emperor Hirohito, upon hearing of the debacle, ordered a comprehensive cover-up.\u00a0 The wounded were isolated on hospital ships.\u00a0 All mail was censored.\u00a0 Surviving enlisted men and officers were held incommunicado until they could be shipped off to distant battlefields, from where it was hoped they would never return.\u00a0 The sunken ships themselves were gradually written off over the course of the war until their loss blended in with the general demise of the imperial fleet.\u00a0 To coordinate this effort, Hirohito created a special office of cabinet rank (not unlike Obama\u2019s stable of czars).\u201d<\/p>\n
He suggests that, \u201cIf the U.S. had not won World War II, Midway would never have existed in Japanese history.\u00a0 The average man, of course, read nothing in the papers, heard nothing on the radio, saw nothing in the newsreels.\u00a0 But perceptive Japanese \u2018felt\u2019 something momentous had happened though they could not identify its cause.\u00a0 Its impact, though denied in the press, shuddered through the whole imperial fabric.\u00a0 From that day forward, events seemed to take a downward trajectory.\u00a0 Only after the war did the Japanese know the root of their misfortunes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bringing the impact of the Battle of Midway closer to home, and comparing the failures of the Japanese high command to the too-numerous-to-mention failures of the Obama presidency, Fernandez quotes Cohen and Gooch, authors of Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy Of Failure In War<\/i> (Free Press 1990), who suggest that \u201call military failures fall into three basic categories: failure to learn from the past, failure to anticipate what the future may bring, and failure to adapt to the immediate circumstances on the battlefield,\u201d\u00a0an event known as catastrophic failure.\u00a0 In such an occurrence, the result is usually a disaster of such scope that recovery is impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reading those words, it was immediately evident that, in more ways than one, the Obama presidency falls into the category of \u201ccatastrophic failure.\u201d\u00a0 With each passing day we are confronted with examples of multiple failures in which Obama and his people have failed to learn from past history, have failed to anticipate the disastrous consequences of their actions, \u00a0and have failed to adapt to unforeseen events in the political arena.<\/p>\n
Arriving in the Oval Office in January 2009, with little or no practical experience in any field of endeavor, Barack Obama invariably saw himself as the smartest man in the room\u2026 maybe in the entire country.\u00a0 His pre-election speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and his post-election speech in Cairo provided a brief glimpse into what was to become his disastrous foreign policy.<\/p>\n
Someone in the Obama entourage must have read a chapter or two of Sun Tzu\u2019s The Art of War<\/i>.\u00a0 Sun Tzu is quoted as saying, \u201cTo win 100 victories in 100 battles is not the acme of skill; to subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.\u201d\u00a0 As Fernandez explains, \u201cObama\u2019s advisers persuaded him that it would be possible to \u2018turn\u2019 America\u2019s enemies by taking control of them instead of fighting them\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
But how was that to be accomplished?\u00a0 As Fernandez explains, \u201cInstead of relying on the regular military, the Obama administration would take over the most dangerous jihadi<\/i> groups through intelligence agencies.\u201d\u00a0 It was theorized that, \u201cThrough this mechanism, (Obama and his team of leftist theorists) would become their patrons and cement the relationship with diplomatic deals with their Gulf funders.\u201d\u00a0 Drones and hunter killer squads would be used to create a fast-track career path for favored jihadis\u2026<\/i> American agents\u2026 to rise within the jihadi<\/i> ranks.\u00a0 In time, the U.S. would own the jihad<\/i> and \u201cneuter\u201d it from within.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, of course, there had to be a genuine political component, as well.\u00a0 A bone needed to be thrown to genuine Muslim aspirations.\u00a0 Why not give the Muslim Brotherhood Egypt and hand over Syria to al-Qaeda?\u00a0 And why not use American diplomatic muscle to force a deal between Palestine and Israel?\u00a0 That way, al-Qaeda could have their own countries and presumably be satisfied with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fernandez concludes that the scheme had a certain \u201csuperficial attractiveness.\u201d\u00a0 It sounded \u201cwildly daring, incredibly smart,\u201d and its creators must have felt like \u201cCortez on a peak in Darien.\u201d\u00a0 They would likely think to themselves, \u201cBoy, are we cool to have thought of this\u2026\u201d The only problem with the scheme was that, as Fernandez suggests, it could never be sold to an American public who had already lost so many of their sons to fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.\u00a0 And it could never be sold to \u201ccrusty old guys\u201d who\u2019d see it as a \u201ccrazy-assed\u201d scheme.<\/p>\n
The solution to their quandary?\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t tell anyone and conduct a secret foreign and counter-terrorist policy which, when it succeeded, could be unveiled as proof of Obama\u2019s genius.\u201d<\/p>\n
Being the na\u00efve and inexperienced neophytes they are, Obama and the members of his inner circle failed to remember the lessons of Neville Chamberlain and Chiang Kia-shek.<\/p>\n
In 1938, with Adolph Hitler flexing his military muscle in Germany, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain traveled to Munich with the intention of appeasing Hitler with diplomatic niceties.\u00a0 Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement of 1938, ceding the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, and returned to England, proclaiming \u201cpeace for our time.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a speech before parliament that could have been written by Barack Obama\u2019s speechwriters, Chamberlain said, \u201cThe real triumph is that it has shown that representatives of four great powers can find it possible to agree on a way of carrying out a difficult and delicate operation by discussion instead of by force of arms, and thereby they have averted a catastrophe which would have ended civilization as we have known it\u2026 It is my hope and my belief, that under the new system of guarantees, the new Czechoslovakia will find a greater security than she has ever enjoyed in the past\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Less than a year later, Hitler invaded Poland and a great world war ensued.\u00a0 Between September 1939 and May 1945 more than 60 million people, 2.5% of the world population, lost their lives.<\/p>\n
Following World War II, the Chinese Civil War between the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek and the communist forces of Mao Zedong resumed.\u00a0 Hoping to bring an end to the conflict, President Truman sent Ambassador Averill Harriman to China with an offer the nationalist Chinese could not refuse.\u00a0 If Chiang refused to take the \u201cagrarian reformers,\u201d as the communists were referred to, into his government, the U.S. would cut off all military and economic aid.<\/p>\n
The Chinese refused, the U.S. cut off aid, and the communists took control of the Chinese mainland.\u00a0 Chiang Kai-shek escaped to the Island of Formosa (Taiwan), along with some 2 million nationalists, where they have lived under constant threat of invasion ever since.<\/p>\n
Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri<\/a>, bin Laden\u2019s mentor and second-in-command, have sought to restore the Islamic caliphate that has not exercised real power since the 13th<\/sup> century, and which formally ended in 1924 upon dissolution of the Ottoman Empire<\/a>.\u00a0 Zawahiri believed that once the caliphate is re-established, Egypt would become a rallying point for the rest of the Islamic world, leading the jihad<\/i> against the West.\u00a0 Zawahiri wrote, \u201cThen history would make a new turn, God willing, in the opposite direction against the empire of the United States and the world\u2019s Jewish government.\u201d<\/p>\n Like Chamberlain and Harriman, Obama is convinced that, by the mere force of his personality, he can charm the Russians, the North Koreans, the Iranians, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban into doing his bidding.\u00a0 He consistently fails to learn from the past, fails to anticipate the ultimate outcome of his policies, and fails to deal with current circumstances in a wise and prudent way.\u00a0 He has set the United States onto a downward trajectory from which it may be impossible to recover, and were it not for the fact that American presidents are limited to two 4-year terms, the Obama foreign policy might well represent the giant step forward toward the worldwide Caliphate that radical Islam has been pursuing since the 6th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 Left to his own devices, Barack Obama would be all but certain to get us all killed.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Fernandez has it right.\u00a0 Of all of the Obama scandals arrayed before us, it is the Benghazi debacle that will be Obama\u2019s Battle of Midway, the \u201cpoison pill\u201d of his presidency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In scanning and reading through the 90 or 100 emails I receive each day, things that others think I should see and read, I find some to be of interest, and some\u2026 not so much.\u00a0 However, on occasion, I find … Continue reading