Conflict of Interest
3 August, 2009
If you have both an Obama sticker and a "Support Our Troops" ribbon on your car, remove one of them. I don't care which one.
I know a lot of you lefties out there would like to think you can be both an ardent supporter of Obama <i>and</i> a patriotic American who stands behind your armed forces. You can't. The Democrats do not support the armed forces of the United States. Ideologically, they view the US military as one of the primary forces of evil in the world. They view American military might as a liability and would prefer that the US military not be used at all, unless it is used for global charity missions in which we help other countries but have no real national interest or stake in the conflict.
Obama, in particular, is one of the most anti-military figures government has had to offer during his very brief Federal career. During his 150 days in the US Senate prior to becoming president, Obama supported troop withdrawal deadlines attached to funding for the war in Iraq. Anyone with any military sense at all understands that if you set a withdrawal deadline for troops, irrespective of what's actually happening in the conflict, you're handing the enemy victory. Your enemy knows that he must merely outlast your forces until that magic calendar date, and then, well, gosh, your folks just leave.
In May of 2007, Obama (along with Hilary Clinton) was one of only 14 senators to vote against a 120-billion dollar funding package for the Iraq war and a smattering of unrelated topics. Much more recently, Obama did his best to kill the F-22 fighter, saying he would veto any spending bill that included funding for the plane (over the objections of Pentagon officials). Obama has repeatedly sided with terrorists over the interests of the United States, expressed in his desire to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay (moving dangerous terrorists into this country), while his Assistant Attorney General has claimed those terrorists (captured on battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan) have Constitutional rights. Under Obama, the Department of Homeland Security declared anyone whose political affiliation is in opposition to Obama, especially veterans of the US Military, is a potential domestic terrorist.
Obama's projection of weakness abroad has serious ramifications for US foreign policy and military action, emboldening our enemies while tarnishing the image of the United States as a superpower. Obama does not believe in American exceptionalism -- and it shows. His minions have worked hard to further this outlook. In Munich, Vice President Joe Biden gave a foreign policy speech criticized as "one of the weakest projections of U.S. leadership on foreign soil in recent memory," a speech that was at once "confused, apologetic, over-conciliatory, and remarkably lacking in substance" while "heavy in platitudes" and most definitely "not the voice of the most powerful nation on earth."
(In an astonishing succession of acts hostile to freedom around the globe,
Obama has supported the would-be dictator Manuel Zelaya in Honduras,
refused
(at least when it mattered) to speak up in support of Iranian
protestors fighting for democracy, and ignored the National Endowment
for Democracy when that group honored the leaders of Cuba's
pro-democracy movement.
The President and his political lackeys have repeatedly
refused
to discuss ideology and repeatedly lied about their own political
goals, as a brittle Barack Hussein Obama takes to the airwaves
constantly to browbeat the American people and whine about criticism of
his policies.The President's protests about everything from the implications of his socialized medicine
scheme to the impact of his handshake with Venezuelan dictator Hugo
Chavez are beginning to ring hollow. Even allegedly
"mainstream" news sources are now recognizing that Obama lied when he claimed he
would not raise the taxes of middle-class Americans "by a
single dime.")
Under
George W. Bush, leftists in the United States succeeded in redefining
patriotism as criticism of the President (and of the war
effort).
They tried to have it both ways, too. Tired of being tarred
with
the brush of anti-Americanism for protesting the US Military and its
actions abroad, they tried to claim that you could support the troops
but oppose their mission. This is obvious nonsense.
You
cannot claim to be supporting our military men and women while telling
them, simultaneously, that their mission is based on lies, that they
are fighting an illegal and immoral war, and that they are essentially
war criminals operating as puppets of a corrupt president.
You
cannot support the troops and protest the troops' operations.
It
simply is not possible.
Couple this general incompatibiltiy with support for Obama specifically, and you have redoubled the ideological conflict. At every conceivable turn, Obama has demonstrated his hatred and contempt for the US Military and those who serve in it. Support for Obama and support for our troops is mutually exclusive.
So, as I said, take one of those off your car. I don't care which one, but choose one and do it. Stop lying to me.
Stop lying to yourself. >>