Posted on 06/16/2014 4:06:39 AM PDT by markomalley
Mark Helprin, author, journalist, and military-affairs instructor, was being interviewed by Frank Gaffney, hawkish defense expert, when Helprin summed up in one sentence what I hear so many people say to me in coffee shops and after church and at the park and in the grocery store: Everything that made us what we once were is under attack.
Part of the attack is cultural, with radicals running our colleges, anti-competitive nonsense peddled in our elementary schools and playgrounds, filth dominating the entertainment industry, traditional faith sneered at (and increasingly disfavored by public policy), and the idea of American exceptionalism (along with appreciation for its constituent parts) denied from the Oval Office itself.
And our president a particularly virulent manifestation of this kind of ideology, said Helprin is leading the assault. Barack Obama acts lawlessly, makes choices alien to the American tradition, denigrates achievement, tramples religious liberty, encourages our borders to be massively and illegally overrun, and burdens us with unfathomable public debt. And, of particular and rightful interest to Gaffney and Helprin even though too little of the public thinks it important Obama has aggressively overseen what Gaffney called the hollowing out of the United States military.
Reductions in force, cancellations of weapons programs, and mistreatment of our armed personnel and veterans: All have been adjoined to a foreign policy that A) is usually feckless and B) on those few occasions when it is energetic, aggressively undermines traditional American interests and allies.
All of which has resulted, as we read recent headlines, in what might best be described (apologies to P. J. ORourke) as all the trouble in the world.
So, while our internal fabric is fraying, our national interests and our safety are suddenly under serious assault everywhere we look. Barack Obama threw away our victory in Iraq, for example, and most Americans do not yet realize just how serious a disaster is unfolding. With two major Iraqi cities having fallen not just to insurgents but to outright terrorists, there is serious risk that the government might fall to what one writer accurately called the best-funded, best-equipped terror group in history. What could ensue is not just massive instability in the region, but a witches brew of horrendous outcomes ranging from increased Iranian power to a regime of al-Qaeda allies who directly threaten Israel and harbor murderers planning terrorism against the United States.
Meanwhile, although most of the American media has moved on from concern with Vladimir Putins provocations in Ukraine, the horrors continue there, too. This, after Obama assured Putins diplomatic valet back in 2012 that he could provide more flexibility to Russia after he was reelected.
The Taliban rejoices about its victory in exchanging an American deserter for five vicious terrorists. Syria is a mess, with a terrorist-sponsoring, chemical-weapons-using dictator fighting against al-Qaeda allies while whatever moderate forces that once had hopes there are now nowhere to be seen. (Red line, indeed.) Afghanistan is rapidly being abandoned to the same fate as Iraq. Iran keeps developing nuclear capacity, and nuclear-armed Pakistan remains a haven for terrorists as well.
Al-Qaeda affiliates are ascendant in the African continent, including in a Libya left destabilized in part because a confused Obama dithered while Moammar Qaddafis regime hung by a thread. That Obama dithered even more, and maybe just slept, while an ambassador and three other Americans were killed there, and then led an administration-wide effort to lie about it and illegally withhold documents about it, provides a horrific coda to his original bumbling during the anti-Qaddafi uprising.
Egypt and Turkey, American allies for decades, now teeter on the edge of various forms of chaos. The Palestinians form a unity government without renouncing Hamass desire for what amounts to a new Jewish genocide and Obama actually approves of the HamasFatah accord!
And the problems arent confined to the usual trouble spots such as the Middle East and southwest Asia. Without much notice, Venezuela is also a total mess. American relations with Brazil and Mexico are problematic as well. Finally, across the Pacific, Obama certainly hasnt done any better than any other president at handling North Korea, while China aggressively militarizes and rattles its saber.
The litany could continue. Not only is the Obama administration not taking the lead for American interests, and not only is it failing utterly at leading from behind, but the reality is even worse: Everywhere we look, the United States is getting kicked in the behind and, perversely, sometimes Obama seems to relish it.
All of which means we may soon be backed into a corner, one from which we need a strong military in order to escape. (Senator Rand Paul, ye of the aggressively ignorant defense and diplomatic views, take note.)
But the United States Navy can boast only a decades-low 281 active ships, 37 fewer than we had before 9/11 and a whopping 313 fewer than the Reagan-era peak. Worse, the American capacity to ramp back up quickly, if needed, has seriously eroded. As Helprin told Gaffney: Heres the key factor: . . . We have, now, six major shipyards capable of building ships of the line, first-class warships. China has a hundred major shipyards [Helprins vocal emphasis]. . . . China has that capacity [to overwhelm the rest of the world in ship production], and we have abandoned ours deliberately.
Thus, Americas traditional strengths are terribly imperiled abroad while not just eroding, but being chipped away at, from within. Everything that made us what we once were is under attack. People feel it. They see it. They understand it. They fear it. And, in hushed tones, they talk about it.
This is the ongoing legacy of Barack Obama. The question is, as long as he is president, how do we stop it from happening?
The homo president has Satan’s backing.
Revelation 13:4
And they worshipped the dragon who gave power unto the beast; and they worshipped the beast, saying Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?
Absolutely.
I John 2:18 Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.
20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.[e] 21 I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. 22 Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichristdenying the Father and the Son. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
Agreed and who gave him access to the DHS database and why?
That’s a serious national security breach given his allegiances, background, and history.
You know a lot of scholars have said that the AntiChrist will come from Europe but 0 sure fits the bill and his sugardaddy, Emporer and Dr. Evil Soros is from there and seems to hover over there a lot. If he’s not the AC he’s definitely paving the way for him.
I always thought this skit in the movie "Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail" was very clever comedy but now I am close to believing that the peasant Dennis was actually right.
Help, help! We're being oppressed!
That ^^.
But, for some reason, those on the left, at least those who support ‘rats to feed their own sense of righteousness,
vehemently deny that the left and the democrats’ primary goals are anti-Christian.
They still fear the consequences of lifting that veil.
America really is in very deep trouble.
Ted Cruz has to bring Helprin on board as a speechwriter/advisor.
They would complement each other remarkably.
yup, we got our money's worth alright ..
<><> Obama acts lawlessly, makes choices alien to the American tradition, denigrates achievement, tramples religious liberty, encourages our borders to be massively and illegally overrun, and burdens us with unfathomable public debt.
<><> Obama has aggressively overseen what Gaffney called the hollowing out of the United States military. Reductions in force, cancellations of weapons programs, and mistreatment of our armed personnel and veterans...
<><> All have been adjoined to Obama's foreign policy that A) is usually feckless and B) on those few occasions when it is energetic, aggressively undermines traditional American interests and allies.
=================================================
Perfectly sums up the peculiar Obama mindset---honed in the streets and gutters of gangland Chicago, and elsewhere.
It is an article of faith in those minority communities that all US laws, our rules and regs, our traditions, morals and mores were fashioned by evil, white men specifically to subjugate minorities and deprive them of the same opportunities white Americans were given.
When Oprah shocked us----saying white people must die to eradicate inequality, she underlines that belief. Jamaican entertainer Harry Belafonte also urged Obama to kill white people.
Ergo, Obama religiously believes he can and should ignore US laws. Unfortunately Obama has the power to do as he believes.
Nope, none of this is a surprise. The only thing that will be surprising is how far we will have to fall until we've had enough.
The only things to do have been to pray and get out of the way, while preparing for life in the new America.
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Maybe I’ve just become too pessimistic because, even absent Obama, I don’t see how we aren’t headed toward inevitable massive dysfunction.
Elections cannot do that.
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