DEFENSELESS
MichaelConnelly.Viviti.com
Since President Obama gave his rather tepid State of the Union address the pundits have spent a lot of time talking about his apparent disconnect with the American people over the economic problems facing this country. He talked about jobs, and the economy, but for the most part he spent his time proposing new Federal spending (he called it investing) that will just add to the already out of control deficit. I personally agree with many commentators who saw this as a campaign speech rather than a true State of the Union address.
However, what struck me as the most worrisome aspect of the speech was not so much what Obama said, but what he didn’t say. In a sixty-two minute speech he waited until the last few minutes to even mention foreign policy and national security and when it did, he seemed to find the subject quite boring and mundane.
While members of our armed forces are fighting and dying in Afghanistan and elsewhere every day to defeat the terrorist enemies who want to destroy us, the whole thing was just briefly and casually mentioned by our Commander in Chief. He did thank our troops for their sacrifices, while at the same time reassuring our enemies in Afghanistan that we will began withdrawing our troops later this year. I’m sure the applause among the Taliban and al-Qaida leaders who were watching the speech was much more enthusiastic than any applause by our members of Congress.
In fact, the President seemed most enthusiastic when he mentioned the fact that the don’t ask and don’t tell policy regarding gays in the military had been repealed. This was wildly applauded by the progressives in the room, but the men in command of the American military sat stone faced and silent in front of the President. They know how much damage doing something like this in the middle of a war is going to have on the morale of our troops.
The President also paid scant attention in the speech to the fact that Iran will soon have nuclear weapons and that the North Koreans, who already have such weapons, are acting crazier and more belligerent than ever. Hi overall plan for these countries is to continue to beg them to “play nice.” His speech also pointedly ignored the fact that China is rapidly increasing the size of its military and now has a stealth fighter as well as missile technology that can destroy our aircraft carriers. However, he touted the passage of the START treaty with Russia that lowers our defenses against nuclear attack while doing nothing to limit the Chinese.
At the same time, Obama has ignored the fact that our enemies such as Iran, Libya, and Venezuela are deliberately forcing up the price of oil in order to damage our economy. We are presently buying half of our oil from countries that have no love for us, yet the only thing Obama said about this crisis in the speech was that he plans on ending tax breaks for domestic oil companies and spending more on vague and unspecified “clean energy.” When coupled with his refusal to issue new drilling permits the outcome will mean that soon we will be producing less than one-third of the energy we need and the price of a gallon of gas could easily reach $5.00 by next year. This is a threat not only to our economy, but our national security.
Finally, does anyone recall the President even mentioning the chaos on our border with Mexico? He made one vague reference to working with both parties to secure our borders, but he ended that with another apparent push to grant amnesty to those who have already broken our laws and entered our country illegally. The fact is that the violence among the Mexican drug cartels is spilling over into our country and Americans are dying in the crossfire. While this is happening there is growing evidence that hundreds of illegal aliens from nations that support Islamic terrorism are also entering our country.
Obama’s response to this is to decrease our border security and allow many entry points to be unpatrolled by both State and Federal authorities. However, he is prepared to make one bold move. His administration will soon be proposing new gun control laws that will limit the rights of law abiding American citizens to purchase weapons to protect themselves and their homes. It will have no effect whatsoever on the ability of the drug cartel soldiers and the terrorists to acquire weapons, but it will make the progressives happy.
The bottom line is that our country is being rendered defenseless by the people who are charged in the Constitution to protect our nation and its people. As a result, the violence on our borders will increase and our enemies will be encouraged to increase their efforts to attack us around the world and on our own soil. I’m afraid that this could be become a very dangerous year for the people of the United States. However, to our President I say this: While you may continue your elitist attitude of speaking down to us like we are uneducated rabble, we know exactly who we will hold accountable in 2012.