Reality has a way of intruding, interfering with political hopes
and ambitions. The realities of the past week in Egypt and Libya
are so clear that they have propelled at least a few European
liberals to what they surely regard as an ugly realization that
challenges one of liberalism’s most precious dogmas.
Since the beginning of the Cold War, liberals here and abroad
have always wanted to cut the American superpower down to size.
America, in their view, should submit its foreign policy to the
learned guidance of its betters among the EUnuchs and the UN. The
U.S. should be made to reform, to end its unilateral exercise of
power, to drop its cowboy attitude and work harder to get along
with its adversaries.
Now they have what they wanted: an American president who has
consistently worked to limit American power and has submitted our
foreign policy to the judgment of the EU and the UN. Obama went to
war in Libya at the request of France and after his first defense
secretary said there was no American national security interest in
play. He — and his second defense secretary — emphasized that the
action was undertaken pursuant to authority granted by the UN, not
by our Congress. He bows to foreign kings and emperors, insists on
decimating the Pentagon’s budget and “leads” from the rear.
Last February Obama said, “One of the proudest things of my
three years in office is helping to restore a sense of respect for
America around the world, a belief that we are not just defined by
the size of our military.” Liberals all over the world should be
celebrating the fact that America is withdrawing from its
superpower role. Everything is working out just as they’ve wanted,
right?
Well, not so much. America’s withdrawal has created a vacuum
part of which is being filled by radical Islam. In the past week,
there have been riots and attacks on American targets in more than
twenty nations.
Now there is a small glimmering of recognition that maybe, just
maybe, the world needs the American superpower.
This week’s issue of the devoutly liberal Economist
magazine contains the first recognition of the problem the liberals
have created. Insisting that the “Arab spring” is broadly moving
that part of the world to democracy, an Economist editorial declaims
that in the “many years” it will take for the Arab nations to
become democracies, “America will remain essential to
progress.”
The Economist opines: “Libya’s relative success was
largely thanks to American firepower at the start of the campaign
against the Qaddafi regime.… America is needed to put more pressure
the Gulf monarchies it supports to loosen up their political
systems.” It calls for more American financial aid, contingent on
economic reform, which it says “could make a huge difference.”
In the same issue, another Economist article calls for
American airpower to establish a no-fly zone over Syria to suppress
the regime’s use of its own airpower and give the Syrian rebels a
chance. But only, of course, after we get UN permission to risk
American lives and pay the costs.
Why doesn’t France do it or, better still, Saudi Arabia, which
has hundreds of combat aircraft and capable pilots? Because they
fear Syria’s allies — Iran and Russia — more than they care about
what happens to Syrian people. They want us to take the risks.
What Economist revealed is what liberals here and
throughout Europe have always denied: if America doesn’t project
its power in its own interests and those of our allies, no one else
will. We are a nation indispensable to their freedom as well as
ours.
The events of the past week prove redundantly that the world
will descend into war and chaos if America continues along Obama’s
path of retreat from leadership and opposition to evil.
Obama is, to coin a term, the unleader. His diplomacy consists
of rhetoric unsupported by the threat of military action. And that
rhetoric is aimed more at changing our — and our allies’ —
behavior than that of our enemies.
Israeli pleas for support against Iran are met with gauzy
assurances of our solid support but nothing more. Hillary Clinton
has said that we have no time limits for diplomacy to work on Iran.
Just yesterday, Obama’s UN ambassador, Susan Rice, said on Fox
News Sunday that the only way to end Iran’s nuclear weapons
program is for Iran to decide to give it up. Diplomatic efforts
have never succeeded in changing the Iranian regime’s behavior, and
won’t now.
Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons since the regime took
power in 1979. Yesterday, on Meet the Press, Israeli Prime
Minister Netanyahu said that Iran is six months away from having
enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb. Unending diplomacy
won’t lengthen that time.
We learned last week that Obama has failed to attend more than
half of his daily intelligence briefings. Policy unsupported by the
best intelligence is mere guesswork. Obama’s policymaking is
ideological, independent of facts, a willful ignorance that borders
on criminal negligence. Disorder, indecision, and increasing danger
of a huge war are the results of Obama’s unwillingness to lead.
The attacks on our Cairo embassy and the Benghazi consulate are
prime examples. Intelligence community sources confirm that we had
intelligence warnings of the attack on the Cairo embassy that
preceded the event by several weeks. Several reports say that
Libyan security officials warned of the Libya attack days before it
happened. Some of that information had to filter into the
president’s daily briefings. What did Obama ignore and when did he
ignore it?
In these cases, real leadership — at a minimum — would have
taken steps to protect our diplomatic outposts by withdrawing
personnel or reinforcing our security forces. Neither Obama nor
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took those actions. Now, the
Sudan has refused us permission to reinforce security at our
embassy. But Obama won’t pull our people out.
American leadership might not have prevented last week’s
attacks, but it could have prevented the assassination of our
ambassador to Libya and the deaths of the three men who accompanied
him.
Iran is proceeding with its nuclear weapons program in another
Obama-created vacuum. Obama has refused to even meet with Netanyahu
to discuss possible action against Iran. Obama and his allies
insist that we have drawn a “red line” against Iran by saying that
we wouldn’t tolerate Iran having nuclear weapons.
What that means is that we won’t take any action against Iran
until it has developed — and, possibly, deployed — nuclear
weapons capable of destroying Israel. Given the gaps in our
intelligence community’s ability to penetrate Iran, Obama won’t
know if it has actually built nuclear weapons until well after the
fact. A real American leader would prevent that from occurring, not
promise to react to the event when it happens, when it will be far
more costly in blood and treasure to face.
What has dawned on Economist’s editorial writers won’t
be recognized by our media before the November election, or perhaps
for years to come. It goes too far to challenge the most basic
liberal ideology for anyone here to take notice. But what comes
after?
Thomas Cahill, in his How the Irish Saved Civilization,
provides the answer. On the last day of December 406, the Rhine
froze solid, creating a bridge for hundreds of thousands of
barbarians to flood into Rome. Rome had fallen from its superpower
status long before the city fell to the barbarians. The gradual
abdication of the only superpower of its day left a vacuum that was
filled by chaos for more than a thousand years.
The world moves at a much faster pace now than it did then. The
November election will be our choice between remaining the only
superpower defending freedom or leaving the world — and our
interests in it — to whatever forces choose to fill the vacuum
Obama is creating.
