America The Weak
by Ralph Peters [author, novelist]
If Sen. Barack Obama is elected president, our republic will survive, but our international strategy and some of our allies may not. His first year in office would conjure globe-spanning challenges as our enemies piled on to exploit his weakness.
Add in Sen. Joe Biden - with his track record of calling every major foreign-policy crisis wrong for 35 years - as vice president and de facto secretary of State, and we’d face a formula for strategic disaster.
Where would the avalanche of confrontations come from?
* Al Qaeda. Pandering to his extreme base, Obama has projected an image of being soft on terror. Toss in his promise to abandon Iraq, and you can be sure that al Qaeda will pull out all the stops to kill as many Americans as possible - in Iraq, Afghanistan and, if they can, here at home - hoping that America will throw away the victories our troops bought with their blood.
* Pakistan. As this nuclear-armed country of 170 million anti-American Muslims grows more fragile by the day, the save-the-Taliban elements in the Pakistani intelligence services and body politic will avoid taking serious action against “their” terrorists (while theatrically annoying Taliban elements they can’t control). The Pakistanis think Obama would lose Afghanistan - and they believe they can reap the subsequent whirlwind.
* Iran. Got nukes? If the Iranians are as far along with their nuclear program as some reports insist, expect a mushroom cloud above an Iranian test range next year. Even without nukes, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would try the new administration’s temper in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf.
* Israel. In the Middle East, Obama’s election would be read as the end of staunch US support for Israel. Backed by Syria and Iran, Hezbollah would provoke another, far-bloodier war with Israel. Lebanon would disintegrate.
* Saudi Arabia. Post-9/11 attention to poisonous Saudi proselytizing forced the kingdom to be more discreet in fomenting terrorism and religious hatred abroad. Convinced that Obama will be more “tolerant” toward militant Islam, the Saudis would redouble their funding of bigotry and butchery-for-Allah - in the US, too.
* Russia. Got Ukraine? Not for long, slabiye Amerikantsi. Russia’s new czar, Vladimir Putin, intends to gobble Ukraine next year, assured that NATO will be divided and the US can be derided. Aided by the treasonous Kiev politico Yulia Timoshenko - a patriot when it suited her ambition, but now a Russian collaborator - the Kremlin is set to reclaim the most important state it still regards as its property. Overall, 2009 may see the starkest repression of freedom since Stalin seized Eastern Europe.
* Georgia. Our Georgian allies should dust off their Russian dictionaries.
* Venezuela. Hugo Chavez will intensify the rape of his country’s hemorrhaging democracy and, despite any drop in oil revenue, he’ll do all he can to export his megalomaniacal version of gun-barrel socialism. He’ll seek a hug-for-the-cameras meet with President Obama as early as possible.
* Bolivia. Chavez client President Evo Morales could order his military to seize control of his country’s dissident eastern provinces, whose citizens resist his repression, extortion and semi-literate Leninism. President Obama would do nothing as yet another democracy toppled and bled.
* North Korea. North Korea will expect a much more generous deal from the West for annulling its pursuit of nuclear weapons. And it will regard an Obama administration as a green light to cheat.
* NATO. The brave young democracies of Central and Eastern Europe will be gravely discouraged, while the appeasers in Western Europe will again have the upper hand. Putin will be allowed to do what he wants.
* The Kurds. An Obama administration will abandon our only true allies between Tel Aviv and Tokyo.
* Democracy activists. Around the world, regressive regimes will intensify their suppression - and outright murder - of dissidents who risk their lives for freedom and justice. An Obama administration will say all the right things, but do nothing.
* Women’s rights. If you can’t vote in US elections, sister, you’re screwed. Being stoned to death or buried alive is just a cultural thing.
* Journalists. American journalists who’ve done everything they can to elect Barack Obama can watch as regimes around the world imprison, torture and murder their foreign colleagues, confident that the US has entered an era of impotence. The crocodile tears in newsrooms will provide drought relief to the entire southeastern US.
Sen. John McCain’s campaign has allowed a great man to be maligned as a mere successor to George W. Bush. The truth is that an Obama administration would be a second Carter presidency - only far worse.
Think Bush weakened America? Just wait. ExileStreet
courtesy NY Post / copyright 2008 NY Post
Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World.”
Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of 19 books, as well as of hundreds of essays and articles, written both under his own name and as Owen Parry. He is a frequent columnist for the New York Post and other publications.
October 21st, 2008 at 4:36 am
It’s not that Obama will be a great President. Maybe he will not even be a good President. But any man in the White House must be superior to the closet Nazi George W Bush who may not even understand that he is a would be Nazi, a fumbler who has wrecked America’s moral authority, committed acts that would have any other world leader facing charges for war crimes; has turned the the American dream a fairy tale for Americans and made it a farce for people outside America’s boundaries; who has bankrupted the nation with a misguided and criminal war, while fattening up his corporate cronies. Whether Bush is Dick Cheney’s numbnuts, a black hearted criminal or a witless turd kicking Texas farmer I cannot say.
To replace Bush with the pandering opportunist, mean spirited John McCain, an man who has proven he is without principle, a collaborator whose political colors change like the images in a kaleidoscope will accelerate America’s decline. Americans do not see what is plain to the rest of world, the United States is in a nose dive. No one in the West desires this. The free world depends on a vision of a free America and not the Orwellian police state the Bush administration has seeded. The world stands in dismay that American leadership appears today to be the final, fatal act of American hubris.
I say Obama all the way, at least until the Republicans understand that what America needs iis real leadership and not the leadership of greedy, low life political opportunitists like Bush and McCain.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:55 am
Clearly you know nothing about the Bolivian situation. Evo Morales was freely elected in a democratic process as president. That is democracy, whether you like the outcomes or not. The minority of people in Santa Cruz that are violently conducting racially motivated attacks against the indigenous population are self proclaimed white power. And although provoked Evo did nothing violent and called no one in as your misleading paragraph indicates.
Not only was Evo freely elected into office, but in his brilliance he had a referendum to confirm that he still had support and he won across Bolivia with numbers that any American president would be happy with.
Democracy is people selecting their government, not the US placing a puppet government there. That, my friend, is imperialism. Out of respect for democracy, please don’t use the term interchangeably with imperialism.
November 9th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Obama has already expressed a desire to attack Pakistan. The Muslim fundamentalists would wait while Obama weakens Pakistan’s government. Afterwards, they would move in and take over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Now you have Terrorists with nuclear weapons, and you know they won’t think twice about using it.
Obama thinks he can “talk” to leaders of totalitarian nations. Well, I’ll like to see him succeed. The fact is, Obama is an extremely naive individual. The only way these dictators would get along with America, is for America to quit policing the world. If America does that, Russia would re-constitute the USSR by force. Iran would attack Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. With such chaos in the middle east, watch as the price of crude oil shoots up to $300/barrel.
Putin would love to see high gas prices, therefore, he’d give Iran a hand hand in creating chaos.
An America-free world would be a disaster. Anybody who thinks otherwise is deeply mistaken.