Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Courting Catastrophe

To some of us, it has been obvious for years that self-professed liberals hold the United States in disdain. And that their collective heart harbors a dangerous, wildly irrational soft spot for many of the world’s murderous dictators, for no other reason than those dictators share their anti-American views.

For us, it has also been obvious that Barack Obama is their political dream come true, not because he is an even-tempered, open-minded centrist – but because he is so good at getting votes by making people think that’s what he is.

In reality he’s a hard-line leftist out to dismantle this country and everything it stands for. It’s hard to say anything is the last straw with this man, because every week he throws out dozens more with no end in sight. As soon as you catch one straw and start to do something about it, he’s already tossed several more past you while the MSM shut their eyes and sing his praises.

However, the biggest straw may have been last week’s release of documents pertaining to the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” to get information from terrorists.

That Obama released the documents in a redacted state – i.e., having blacked out the parts that describe the techniques’ outcome – is proof that he is hiding something important.

That he portrayed the documents as evidence of his predecessor’s administration running wild – when in reality they show that the administration was taking extreme care to ensure the safety of those being interrogated – is proof that their release is a scandal.

That he portrayed the documents as evidence of the administration operating afoul of the law – when in reality they show that extreme care was being taken to make an ethically informed decision about where tough tactics end and torture begins, precisely because there was no law defining that line – is more proof still.

But above and beyond scandal, the release of the documents signals to our enemies that we are willing to tie our own hands when combating them – and it signals to our friends that we are not trustworthy (why should they cooperate with us when we let the bad guys know even our own secrets?) – and it signals to our intelligence operatives that they can not trust their leaders (how can we expect them to do their jobs when they know they can get prosecuted later for doing them in a way that was legal at the time?). Therefore, Obama’s release stands a better-than-average chance of going down in history as an act of sabotage against the safety and security of the American people.

Here is just one thing that resulted from enhanced interrogation techniques: They got Khalid Shiekh Mohammed to reveal information that allowed us to stop terrorists from carrying out a plot to blow up the tallest skyscraper on our West Coast (L.A.’s Library Tower). So, by casually abandoning the techniques and broadcasting their abandonment, it is evident Obama has made a decision that putting us at risk of such atrocities is an acceptable price to pay for playing kissy face with the world’s governments and liberals.

American citizens were taken hostage by Iran in 1979. Following that, attacks against Americans by Islamic terrorists occurred every two or three years like clockwork...until George W. Bush came to power. Now, it is more than 7½ years since 9/11 and there has been no attack that entire time. It would strain credulity for anybody to argue that Bush’s decision to take the battle to the terrorists and preside over implementation of enhanced interrogation techniques didn’t have anything to do with that.

Since Barack Obama has demonstrated that he is not willing to do what’s necessary to combat civilization’s most clear and present danger, we should not be squeamish about saying this: The next time mass numbers of Americans are slain by terrorists, he will, to a certain degree, be responsible for their deaths.

I am not the first person to say these things, but I am adding my voice because the chorus must be made as loud as possible for us to have any effect on the direction our government takes.

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