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I’ve decided to put myself out on a limb and make some predictions about what’s likely to happen after President Obama leaves office.
First, I think he will be a one-term president.
Second, after he leaves office he will not be able to keep his mouth shut about the policies and actions of his successor, whoever it is, Democrat or Republican. He does not have the class to leave the stage to the next man (or woman). And if the next president is a Republican, Obama will simply not be able to contain himself.
Obama is the only president I can recall who directly attacked specific media outlets, such as Fox News, and there is little doubt that he will continue to do so from the seemingly unassailable perch of a “former president.”
Based on Obama’s performance to date, it appears that a great many fixes will be necessary to right America’s ship of state after he leaves office. The obvious premise of this commentary is that many of the actions taken by his administration are bad for America and the next president will see the need to change, correct or just plain reverse them when Obama is no longer in charge. Consider the following, among many others (in no particular order):
Foreign Policy: Israel, Iran, China and Russia. The United States will have been put into a position of strategic weakness by Obama’s policies that will probably linger for some time to come. We are already seeing adverse consequences in the conduct of North Korea, Palestine, Iran, Syria, Turkey and Russia, among others. The recent incident in Israel of the attempt to break the blockade of arms intended for Hamas in Gaza is a glaring example. The primary reason for the increased strength of America’s enemies has been the weakness demonstrated by Obama and his administration. Without him in control, that will probably be changed. Unfortunately, Iran will have “the bomb” by then and it will be increasingly difficult to counter their aggressive meddling in the Middle East. And, if they attack Israel, all bets will be off.
Health Care: Recent polls indicate that over 60% of the public now favor repealing Obamacare. That can’t happen while he is still in office, even if the Republicans regain control of Congress in November, unless they win a veto proof majority. Unfortunately, however, chances are that won’t happen after he is out of office either, because the new bureaucratic structure created by the president’s health care bill will have been put in place and will probably be too difficult to completely reverse or eliminate.
The Courts: Obama has consistently appointed liberal judges to the judiciary, including the Supreme Court. Given the young ages of his appointees, we will probably be forced to live with his choices of liberals for an entire generation. But, perhaps of greater importance are his appointments to the federal judiciary in general, where dozens of lifetime appointments of liberal judges have also been made to lower courts.
The War on Terror: Whether Obama’s successor is a Republican or perhaps a more conservative Democrat, America’s response to terrorists will likely be more aggressive and the term “terrorist” will be probably be restored to common parlance to describe the nature of the struggle.
Homeland Security: After Obama and Janet Napolitano depart the scene, if the next president is a Republican, we are likely to see a stronger policy for protecting our borders. 60% of Americans in general and over 70% of Arizona residents support the state’s recent bill regarding illegal immigrants. However, passing comprehensive immigration reform is likely to continue to elude Congress and the next administration for some time to come.
Guantanamo Bay and Enemy Combatants: If Obama has not closed Guantanamo by the time he leaves office, it may not be closed at all. He has been unable to implement his decision to close the facility and, at this point, many if not all the remaining prisoners will be hard core terrorists that other countries will probably not be willing to accept. The new administration will likely proceed to try them in military tribunals, and those who are not acquitted or executed will be imprisoned for life in federal facilities.
Expansion of Government: Obama’s intrusion into the free market has been unprecedented. In spite of having taken control of the banking industry, General Motors, Chrysler, and AIG, along with much of the health care industry (by virtue of Obamacare), I believe much of the president’s quasi-nationalization of industry will be reversed.
Energy (coal, oil, gas, nuclear): If the next administration is Republican, look for some loosening of restrictions on the development of all sources of energy, including oil, in spite of the recent disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Politically Correct Policies: Political correctness will continue to hamstring our society for many years to come and will probably not be changed to any great degree by the next administration, Republican or Democrat.
Taxes: A Republican administration will cut taxes, although not as much as many people would like, and the tax cuts are likely to be targeted to stimulate economic growth, rather than straight across-the-board reductions in rates. If a Democrat succeeds Obama in office, a VAT tax will probably be adopted.
Deficit Spending: A Republican administration will not necessarily curtail the out-of-control spending that has been the hallmark of Obama’s program, but the chances for some reductions in spending will be better.
Inflation: Due to the cumulative excessive spending of prior administrations plus the out-of-control spending of the current administration, there will be a continued risk of high rates of inflation for a number of years, regardless of which party gains control of Congress and the White House.
Just for fun, you might try making some of your own predictions.
The latest question being debated in the media is, “Can we kill an American who is working for al Qaeda overseas?” It may be rhetorical, but it clearly demonstrates the confusion in America today about our status, that is, whether we are at war or not?
The nation is divided over the issue. If we are at war, why aren’t we trying war criminals in military tribunals as opposed to giving them the same rights that our citizens enjoy in civilian courts?
The Bush administration seemed to be clear that we are at war, and that enemy combatants should be tried in military courts. However, although Guantanamo Bay was established as the place to hold people who were picked up on the battlefield or otherwise captured and known to be terrorists, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, in the eight years following the World Trade Center attack, the government never completed the job of updating our laws to deal with such prisoners.
Most of the public seems to believe we are at war and that it is a war on terrorism. However, the Obama administration apparently does not agree.
This leads to confusion and weakens our nation’s defenses. Obama’s position that the word “terrorism” is not to be used by his administration and being unwilling to acknowledge that we are at war is directly at odds with his authorization to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan and his approval of attacks by military drones in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The confusion is further exemplified by the administration’s handling of incidents like the Fort Hood shooting, promising to close Gitmo without thoroughly considering the consequences, and moving the trials of Khalid Sheik Mohammad and the Christmas Day bomber to civilian courts. For the most part, the reasoning behind these decisions is not clear and the public appears to strongly object to them.
Article One, Section Eight of the U.S. Constitution says, “Congress shall have power to…declare War,” so perhaps the question should be, “Why not declare war al Qaeda and any other group that attacks us?”
We seem to be overlooking the fact that Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States in August 1996. His declaration was published in a London based Arabic language newspaper and followed a long list of attacks on U.S. properties and personnel overseas dating back to 1979, when Iran took U.S. embassy employees hostage. It continued from there with the 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon and a succession of other attacks thereafter, the most notable of which were the attacks on the World Trade Center in September 2001 and the attempt to bomb a Northwest Airlines flight from Copenhagen to Detroit on Christmas day 2009.
So, what’s the problem? Are we at war or not? And, if we are, why don’t we formally declare war and move on from there? The obvious question is, “against whom?” There is no easy answer to this, but how about starting with al Qaeda and any nation or group that gives them support or allows them to use their territory for training and staging attacks on other nations?
As for declaring war, that’s the province of Congress, not the president, so why not move the process directly to the legislature where the issue can be openly debated, regardless of what the president may want? Ultimately, the decision is up to them, not him.
My guess is that the American people would strongly favor debating and settling this issue once and for all. We should eliminate any confusion about holding enemy combatants until the war ends and trying them in military tribunals or civilian courts, or killing an American who is openly waging war against his own country.
I know it’s a complicated and confusing issue, but no more than many others that are taken up by Congress. Let them get everything out on the table for all to see and discuss, then decide – so we can go forward with a clear understanding of the alternatives, good and bad, which hopefully would unify the nation behind a single, clear-cut policy.
The problem with the current situation is that it allows our enemies, al Qaeda, Muslim fundamentalists and others, such as Iran, to capitalize on our confusion and adapt their strategy accordingly, while we can’t seem to agree on how to respond.
As long as we continue to allow our enemies to exploit our vacillation and indecision, there are sure to be more attempts to attack our homeland, some of which are bound to succeed. To succeed, they only have to be right once, while to prevent them we must be right 100% of the time.
I believe we should push Congress to debate the issue and vote up or down for an open declaration of war on our enemies.
President Obama’s inaugural address received glowing accolades from many Americans and criticism from others. I wasn’t impressed. However, my criticism is not based on his rhetoric or style so much as the content of his speech. Following are just some of the things he said that concern me:
PRESIDENT OBAMA: “That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood…Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.”
Whose “collective failure”? The fault lies with our politicians, who have steadily expanded the role of government in the economy and have been unwilling to restrain spending. The public is responsible only in the sense that they have repeatedly elected politicians who do not understand economics and whose primary interest is getting re-elected.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: “…the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history, to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.”
Are all Americans childish, or only those who do not agree with Obama?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: “But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions – that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
No one seems to know what President Obama thinks the country should look like. Before I start remaking America, I want to know what it means. So far, his vision doesn’t seem to include fiscal restraint. With something on the order of two trillion dollars of new spending in the offing, I don’t intend to be led somewhere I know is wrong.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: “The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act – not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.”
It’s hard to know where to begin with this litany of ambitious goals. Who knows what any of this means, except perhaps his health care prescription, which he seems to think should be some form of nationalized health care. This is a formula for a health care disaster. Socialized health care has never worked as promised in any society, generally downgrading the quality of care and causing rationing.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”
This is a repudiation of the use of torture and the presumed abuses of the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA). However, our new President does not offer any alternative to protect the nation? He has already signed an Executive Order to close Guantanamo – without having the slightest idea of what to do with the prisoners there and without any agreements with other nations to take them.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: “…our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.”
The idea that we can be protected from our enemies by the “justness of our cause” or “the tempering qualities of humility and restraint” is simply naïve. Try telling this to the Israelis. Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran believe just as strongly in the “justness” of their cause, which is the extermination of the Jews.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: “With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet.”
This sounds like another nuclear treaty in the making. The question is, with whom? Are Russia, China, India or Pakistan going to give up their nuclear weapons? Or Iran, if and when they get them? As for “the specter of a warming planet,” evidence has been mounting that the theory of global warming is being challenged by a large number of highly credible experts. If the President takes the nation to a “cap and trade” program, it will increase costs and disrupt the economy with little or no result, including putting our coal industry out of business.
At the risk of being pilloried as another negative, nay-saying conservative, my take on President Obama’s inaugural address is that it was long on platitudes and short on substance. The most important message he conveyed to me is his intent to turn America into another socialist state. Having the U.S. become more like France, Italy, Sweden, Denmark and other socialist countries is not my idea of progress or “change” that I think is good.
A recent headline, “War Crimes Investigation Requested,” in the “Santa Barbara News Press,” caught my attention. What’s this about, I wondered, thinking it was probably another attempt by the World Court to assert its authority as the official arbiter of law throughout the world. To my surprise, the story was not about the World Court but about the German courts, where a complaint has been filed by lawyers who noted that “the point was simply to increase the pressure on top (American) brass they say are culpable. German federal prosecutors said they would examine the case.”
But culpable of what? Abusing prisoners at U.S. detention facilities in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that’s what.
How did this complaint come to be filed in a German court? The Germans don’t have jurisdiction over the U.S. military and American officials do they? Apparently, according to them, they do. As a matter a fact, German law provides for prosecution of war crimes that may actually occur in other nations. A 220-page lawsuit has been filed under the provisions of a German law, naming 13 U.S. officials, including Donald Rumsfeld, the former Secretary of Defense.
How’s that for chutzpah? Germany, the nation that gave us the Holocaust, has now set itself up as a world court, with authority to try anyone for war crimes that are committed anywhere in the world.
The claim is that Secretary Rumsfeld “personally ordered and condoned torture.” One of the leading witnesses is U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the former commander of all U.S. military prisons in Iraq, who was relieved of her command and demoted over the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Bagdad.
In a classic example of the pot calling the kettle black, Gen. Karpinski claimed she wanted to “be a voice for my soldiers.” Really. Of course, there’s no payback involved, is there?
If there is a legal case in this situation at all, shouldn’t it be heard in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or the International Criminal Court (ICC), not in a German court?
The ICJ website states that the Court’s role is “to settle in accordance with international law the legal disputes submitted to it by States, and to give advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by duly authorized international organs and agencies.” So, it appears they don’t qualify as the venue to hear cases involving “crimes against humanity.”
However, the International Criminal Court was established as “a permanent tribunal to prosecute, ‘crimes against humanity’.” (WorldNetDaily, April 11, 2002), so why isn’t this particular case being tried there?
The United States “lodged strenuous objections to the ICC,” and the U.S. Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee refused to release the treaty for a vote for a number of reasons, including:
Concerns that crimes of aggression were not defined, which would make various U.S. military operations open to prosecution, which would include such acts as injury to a population’s ‘mental health’ in the definition of “crimes against humanity”
U.S. citizens would be denied the guarantees of our Constitution.
A U.S. president could conceivably be prosecuted by the court for engaging in military activity without first seeking approval from the U.N.
World events in the near future could find the U.S. and its citizens at the mercy of a panel of judges from non-Western nations, or of nations that seek to extort favorable trade agreements from the U.S.
The treaty is not entered into “among parties in agreement, but is instead a new, and many believe dangerous, species of an international instrument that subordinates all nation states in the world to the rule of the United Nations’ court.”
The ICC can prosecute whenever it deems a nation’s courts have failed to prosecute its own violators of ‘human rights’.
So, now German law makes it possible to prosecute someone in Germany for “crimes against humanity” that may have been committed elsewhere. For example, Human Rights Watch (hrw.org) recently reported, “Survivors of torture and the May 13 massacre of unarmed protesters in Andijan, Uzbekistan, filed a case on Monday in Germany calling for the prosecution of Zokirjon Almatov, Uzbekistan’s Minister of Internal Affairs, for crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said today. Almatov is in Germany receiving medical treatment.”
This, at least, makes some, albeit limited, sense. That is, trying someone who is in Germany for crimes that may have been committed elsewhere. Although the fact that the individual involved is not a German citizen still makes the application of their law questionable in my mind.
Furthermore, the case in question (against U.S. leaders) makes it appear that it is an effort by the Germans to unilaterally apply their laws so as to extend their authority over citizens of other nations who may have committed crimes elsewhere around the world. It almost looks as though they are trying to use their legal system to gain the ascendancy over other nations that they failed to achieve in WWII.
Nice try. Having failed to conquer Europe at gunpoint, are they now, some 60 years later, attempting to become “king” of the world by the simple act of passing a law? Not just a law that applies to German citizens, but to anyone who commits “crimes against humanity” anywhere in the world. Where did they get the authority to do this? If they try our citizens in absentia, will they then attempt to have them extradited to Germany?
Isn’t it about time for Americans to stand up and start telling those nations that attempt to unilaterally exercise authority over us to take a hike? If they can pass laws to extend the jurisdiction of their courts over U.S. citizens for acts that were not committed on German soil, how about our doing the same thing?
I can think of a lot of people who should be tried for “crimes against humanity” who are not U.S. citizens and have committed the most heinous crimes imaginable in other countries. How about going after them?.
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