The Systematic Dismantling of a Secure America
By Janet Levy
AmericanThinker.com
The emotionally charged
toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad's Firdos Square on April
9, 2003 was an ephemeral moment of unity for Americans applauding the
defeat of a tyrannical regime and an enemy of the free world. The rapid
victory over Saddam by U.S. forces reinforced, for Americans and the
world, America's military supremacy as a force for good against evil. At
that time, our nation appeared to uphold Woodrow Wilson's pre-World War
I proclamation to "make the world safe for democracy."
Fast-forward to April 6, 2010, when
Barack Obama informed the world that the United States would no longer
function as a global superpower buttressed by nuclear weapons as a
deterrence to war. With one unanticipated public statement from the
putative leader of the free world, the security held by the doctrine of
Mutually Assured Destruction vanished from the American arsenal, and
confidence in America's ability to defend its citizens vaporized.
Obama's proclamation of unilateral nuclear disarmament nullified
America's willingness and ability to defend itself and its allies at a
critical juncture in history when worldwide nuclear proliferation
abounds.
Americans are fully aware of the
peril inherent in Obama's commitment "to seek the peace and security of
a world without nuclear weapons." With nuclear-armed rogue nations like
North Korea starving and enslaving their own populations and Muslim
countries encouraging and celebrating the martyrdom of their children,
the implementation of a non-preemptive, nuclear-disarmed American
security policy is pure folly.
While Obama's latest statement is
certainly responsible for making the United States less secure, American
security has been in jeopardy since before the 9/11 attacks. For quite
some time, our nation's leaders have failed to properly identify the
enemy and declined to prosecute acts of treason, meanwhile appeasing the
enemy with special privileges and dispensations. Obama's recent actions
have further jeopardized our security by his granting of constitutional
rights to enemy combatants, imposing restrictive battlefield standards,
placing budgetary restrictions on our military, and reaching out to
America's enemies while abandoning its long-term allies.
The first step in any national
security strategy is to clearly identify the enemy, study its ideology
and tactics, and develop an appropriate strategy to target and destroy
it. Basic military policy and common sense dictate that victory can be
achieved only by first knowing your enemy. During World War II, the
nation knew we were fighting Nazis and made no distinction between
radical Nazis and moderate Nazis. Our responsibility was to kill the
enemy, protect the country, and emerge victorious, not to ferret out any
"good" Nazis or abide by stringent demands to protect the civilians of
an enemy nation.
Today, Americans are not told that we
are waging war against Islamic jihadists who want to destroy us,
establish an Islamic government, and replace our Constitution with
shari'ah law. Instead, we are told that we are fighting a war against
"terrorism." Rather than focus on an enemy with a specific identity or
characteristics, we are waging war against a strategy. The media
reinforces this delusion with nebulous terminology that confuses and
distracts us from a very real threat.
Actions taken by our leaders
reinforce the delusion. Six days after 9/11, President George W. Bush
spoke to a Muslim audience in Washington, D.C. about the "hijacking of a
great religion" by "terrorists." He didn't connect for the public the
ideology with the actions -- jihadists being the most devout followers
of Allah's word, or Islam. Bush actually referred to "Islamofascism"
once in his second term but confused the message by later appeasing
Muslims with statements proclaiming that terrorist acts don't represent
Islam.
"I believe that Islam is a great
religion that preaches peace," he affirmed in 2007. The statement
signaled that six years after 9/11, government officials were still not
intimately familiar with the Koran and unaware that over 63% of the
Muslim holy book comprises hate speech toward non-Muslims. The Bush
administration failed to educate the public about the enemy's ideology.
When Obama took office, his
administration further obscured the problem and intensified the
confusion about the enemy. No longer was the United States fighting a
"Global War on Terror," but the very word "terrorism" was replaced with
the absurd term "man-caused disaster." Words such as "jihad,"
"caliphate," "mujahedeen," and "Islamist" were banished from the
official vernacular. Last week, the Obama administration announced that
words such as "Islamic extremism" would be removed from the U.S.
national security strategy documentation in consideration of the
feelings of Muslim nations. This latest policy represents a dramatic
shift from the Bush Doctrine, which referred to the "struggle against
militant Islamic radicalism" as the greatest threat of the century.
During World War II, Americans faced
up to threats against this country with certainty. They knew that
treason was a disloyal act toward one's government that sabotaged
national security. Those who jeopardized the security of the country by
aiding and abetting or consorting with the enemy were prosecuted to the
full extent of the law. Today, acts of treason are tolerated and viewed
in the context of political protest. In 2002, Hollywood actor Sean Penn
visited U.S. enemy and al-Qaeda supporter Saddam Hussein. Penn later met
with other vocal, anti-American leaders, traveling to Iran to interview
Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro,
and to Venezuela to confer with President Hugo Chávez. Penn even called
for prison terms for those who criticize the Venezuelan dictator.
During the 2003 U.S.-led coalition
forces invasion of Iraq, Americans served as human shields to prevent
U.S. military action. Recently, the American Civil Liberties Union
photographed CIA interrogators and placed them and their families in
grave danger by showing the photos to senior al-Qaeda terrorists at the
Guantánamo Bay detention camp. Lawyers on U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder's staff who previously defended GITMO detainees are now,
incredibly, prosecuting detainees with no ethical alarms raised about
potential conflict of interests. All these actions that place American
security in jeopardy and sabotage our ability to defend American
interests are viewed with insouciance rather than grave concern.
It would have been
inconceivable during World War II to have invited Hitler or Mussolini to
visit the United States. However, during the Bush presidency, Iranian
leader Ahmadinejad, sworn enemy of the U.S. who has publicly called for
"death to America," was permitted to speak at Columbia University and be
a guest on a prime-time TV talk show. Such misguided actions continue in
the Obama administration. This week, Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the
founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic supremacist organization,
will be on a four-city speaking tour with the permission of Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton. Ramadan, who was prohibited from entering the
country during the Bush administration, lionizes his grandfather, Hassan
al-Banna; works for the Islamic Republic of Iran by hosting a weekly
television show; and has donated to terrorist causes, including Hamas.
This significant and perilous change in American policy signals that we
are facilitating the stealth attempt to Islamicize and dominate our
nation.
Following 9/11, several Muslim
organizations, some linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, complained about
being targeted by counter-terrorism efforts, charged that they were
victims of "Islamophobia," and asserted that the War on Terror is really
a "War against Islam." Imams at prominent mosques and leaders from the
Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) -- an unindicted
co-conspirator in the trial over illegal funding of at least $12 million
to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas -- actively worked to repeal
the Patriot Act and urged Muslims to refrain from cooperating with FBI
investigations. In fact, Muslim cooperation with law enforcement was
termed nonexistent by a ranking member of the House Homeland Security
Committee, Congressman Peter King, who noted that he knew of no
investigations in which Muslims had been helpful.
The head of the Muslim
Public Affairs Council, Salam Al-Marayati, told a conference of Muslims
in 2005 that Muslim-Americans should be defining
counter-terrorism policy in the U.S. He also urged Muslims to reject any
effort to spy on each other, implying that the first allegiance of
Muslims is to the Muslim community, not law enforcement. The response of
law enforcement and government agencies to charges of anti-Muslim bias
has been not to infiltrate the Muslim community with undercover
operations and demand cooperation, but to increase Muslim recruitment
for counterterrorist investigations, to institute Muslim sensitivity
programs, and to establish community partnerships with Muslim community
leaders.
A case in point is that immediately
after 9/11, President Bush became the first American president to host a
White House Iftar dinner, an evening meal when Muslims break their fast
during the observance of Ramadan. The dinner became an annual event, and
soon after, all U.S. embassies and the U.S. State Department began
hosting Iftar dinners. In 2006, to the consternation and shock of
customs agents, a senior Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official
gave CAIR officials a thorough behind-the-scenes tour of U.S. Customs
screening and security operations at Chicago's O'Hare airport, the
nation's second-busiest. This was in response to CAIR complaints that
Muslim travelers were being "unfairly" targeted, even though the
nineteen hijackers who flew planes into buildings on 9/11 were all
Muslims. Recently, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration
manual was mysteriously posted on the internet, while special scrutiny
of individuals from fourteen previously targeted Muslim countries has
been eliminated from TSA procedures.
When Obama took office, he made
several well-publicized attempts at outreach to the Muslim world which
included his first official speech, a conciliatory tribute to Muslims in
Cairo blaming America for "strained" relations with the Muslim world; a
first phone call to Abu Mazan, the head of the Palestinian Authority;
and a much-publicized bow to Saudi President Abdullah. In January,
instead of attending a scheduled congressional hearing by the House
Committee on Homeland Security, Obama's DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano
spent two days privately meeting with a select group of Muslims
organizations, three of which are directly tied to the Muslim
Brotherhood. In the meeting, Napolitano briefed members of the extremist
Muslim organizations on DHS's counterterrorism programs and arranged for
regularly scheduled information-sharing meetings in the future.
The military and judicial tools for
fighting the war against Islamic terrorism on the battlefield were
fairly restrictive during the Bush presidency and have become even more
so since Obama took office. Official policy in Afghanistan and Iraq
dictates that civilian casualties are to be avoided at all costs, and
the stated goal is public support. Under Obama, soldiers face a number
of restrictions. These include a proscription against firing in the
direction of gunfire if a person is not visible, a prohibition against
shooting unarmed individuals even if they are seen setting up an IED
(improvised explosive device), a requirement to issue verbal warnings
and warning shots before initiating a deadly shot, limited authorization
to use heavy weapons and conduct air strikes, the necessity to determine
if a shot aimed at them actually places them in danger, and other
limitations on their effectiveness as soldiers. Obama has mandated that
enemy combatants have the same legal protections under the U.S.
Constitution as U.S. citizens. Terrorist detainees will now receive
constitutional rights such as due process and the right to an attorney,
be read their Miranda rights to counsel, be permitted to bar involuntary
admissions, and they could be tried by juries as "innocent until proven
guilty" defendants in U.S. federal courts. For the first time in our
nation's history, those who committed acts of war against the United
States and were captured on the battlefield are given rights under the
U.S. Constitution rather than being tried by internal military
commissions. Instead of war being about victory over an enemy, it is now
about criminal litigation.
Further, Obama's
recent policy of nuclear disarmament has placed the United States at
considerable risk. By signing the Strategic Arms Reduction
Treaty with Russia, the largest nuclear arms
reduction treaty in our history, Obama is significantly reducing our
nuclear deterrence capability in the face of an increasingly dangerous
world with threats from Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China. Obama has
committed to a perilous policy of not responding to biological and
chemical attacks with nuclear weapons, reducing long-range nuclear
weapons, and ruling out modernization of our nuclear arsenal while
accepting a nuclear Iran under the guise of its fulfilling energy needs.
Obama joined world leaders from 47 nations this week as they began a
summit on nuclear terrorism and security, with the Iranian threat
conspicuously absent from the agenda. Although Iran's leaders have
publicly called for "death to America" and threatened to wipe Israel off
the map, Obama has extended a hand and insists on dialogue with the
tyrannical regime. He has been determined to work toward engagement
while Iran continues to flout international law, provide support to
terrorist groups abroad, enlarge its uranium-enrichment capabilities,
and torture and kill its own citizens.
In a little over a
year, the Obama administration's pattern of reaching out to our Islamic
enemies and shunning our allies has been extended in new directions.
Obama sided against democratically elected Roberto Micheletti in
Honduras in favor of Manuel Zelaya, the puppet of Venezuelan Communist
tyrant Hugo Chávez, who had violated Honduran law and the constitution
to set himself up as president for life. In a surprise move, the White
House has ordered American troops to march in the Red Square to salute
Lenin's tomb on Russia's Victory Day, commemorating their triumph
against Nazi Germany. Obama has failed to confront the Kremlin about
Russian bombers that have been buzzing Alaska and overflying the United
Kingdom. The Obama administration has sent envoys to Syria and made
overtures to Assad despite Syria's deep ties to Iran, their involvement
in international terrorism, and their stonewalling of investigations
into their nuclear program. In addition, the Obama administration has
been negotiating with the Taliban to reestablish their power in
Afghanistan and recently issued an apology to Libyan despot Muammar
Gaddafi for statements Gaddafi deemed offensive in support of Western
ally Switzerland.
Meanwhile, the Obama White House
policy toward U.S. allies has been marked by antipathy, slights, and
censure. While Israel, America's long-time ally and the only democracy
in the Middle East, was chastised by the administration for building
apartment units in its capital city and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu
was snubbed, the continuous suicide and rocket attacks by Hamas and
Arab-Palestinians escaped mention. Obama is determined to unilaterally
create a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital despite
Israel's objections. He has suspended U.S. military sales and proposed
sanctions against Israel if the country targets Iran's nuclear reactors
as part of a legitimate action to protect its citizens. Early in his
term, Obama ungraciously returned a bust of Winston Churchill to the
United Kingdom and gave Queen Elizabeth an iPod containing his political
speeches. Recently, Hillary Clinton went so far as to interfere in
Britain's policy as a sovereign nation by demanding that the United
Kingdom negotiate with Argentina on the Falkland Islands dispute.
Lately, Obama has been pressuring India, which has suffered from decades
of Hindu persecution and death by Pakistani Muslims, to resolve its
conflict with Pakistan while providing the terrorist haven with a
$7.5-billion aid package.
We have come so far
afield of the Reagan doctrine of "peace through strength" that our
country is almost unrecognizable. The world has become less safe because
of our failure to name the enemy and effectively prosecute a war against
them, internationally and inside our own borders. We have downgraded our
nuclear capabilities and our ability to respond to attacks and assist
our allies. As American power recedes, the vacuum is filled by rogue
totalitarian states that have no compunction about using weapons of mass
destruction and mass genocide. The Pax Americana, a world peace enforced
by American military power and the willingness to use it, may be
precipitously coming to an end.