By Victor Davis Hanson in PJ Media
Everything that Barack Obama touches seems to turn to dross. Think
of it for a minute. He
inherited a quiet Iraq (no American combat deaths at all in
December 2009). Joe Biden bragged of the calm that it would be the
administration’s “greatest
achievement.” But by pulling out all U.S. peacekeepers — mostly for a 2012
reelection talking point — Obama ensured an ISIS
wasteland. He put his promised eye on Afghanistan at last, and we have lost
more soldiers there than during the Bush administration and a Taliban victory
seems likely after more than a decade of lost American blood and
treasure. The message seems to be that it is better for Obama to have his
eye off something than on it.
Remember those threats to Syria? After the U.S. threatened and
backed off, the violence only escalated and spilled into Iraq.
Libya was no paradise under Gadhafi, but it is now Mogadishu
on the Mediterranean. Not even the president’s supporters believe
that he told the truth about Benghazi. Reset with Russia green-lighted Putin,
as he sized up Barack Obama as a lamb waiting to be eaten. The Bowe
Bergdahl-for-five-terrorists swap (likely illegal) is not headline news only
because dozens of
scandals since have eclipsed it, and the likely deserter is apparently still
kept incommunicado, lest he speak in the fashion of his father at the earlier
White House press conference. I don’t think Bergdahl is a model for future
negotiations with the Taliban.
Israel? We never have been more estranged from the Jewish state.
Open mic outbursts against Netanyahu define our true policies. The terrorist
state run by Hamas is now a partner for peace – tunnels,
missiles, syringes, handcuffs and all. Did outreach to
Hamas lessen or spike violence?
Did the “special relationship” with the Islamist Recep Erdogan
lead to regional calm, and does it still exist?
The war on terror? Obama has derided most anti-terrorism
protocols, even as he kept some Bush-Cheney policies — to the incoherent point
that no one has any idea what the U.S. is doing. Jihad a personal odyssey?
Muslim Brotherhood largely secular? Major Hasan’s murdering mere workplace violence?
Outreach to Islam NASA’s primary mission? Remember overseas contingency
operations and man-caused disasters? In the Obama war on terror,
waterboarding three architects of 9/11 is our
“folks” torturing their “folks”; but
judge/jury/executioner drone strikes that blow up 2,000-plus suspected (not
confessed) terrorists — and anyone in the general vicinity when the missile
hits — are far more moral. Out of sight, out of mind.
When CIA Director John Brennan speaks, we all assume he
is not telling the truth, as in the past. Whatever
the DC dictate is at the present, Brennan makes the necessary immoral
adjustments.
Past cabinet heads? No one knows exactly the circumstances under
which Lisa Jackson, Hilda Solis — and even David Petraeus — left their offices.
Iran and the bomb? Look to red lines in Syria for an example of
how our Iranian threats will work out. One cannot distinguish parody from
Obama’s Iranian policy. We worried more about sanctions hurting Iranians than
forcing them to comply with non-proliferation promises.
The world sort of likes the new reduced profile of the U.S. This
is especially true of Russia, China, and Iran, as they fill the regional voids.
The weaker we become, the more likely Obama is popular overseas, and the more
likely the Left applauds his new global likability.
In the Obama view, millions do not like Israel, Britain, or any
pro-American Western democracy, and so applaud his new corrections.
At home? Obama has wrecked our healthcare system. Every promise
about the Affordable Care Act proved an outright lie. No one can define
Obamacare or explain how it is supposed to work. In fact, no one really even
tries any more.
The budget? Obama’s legacy is $8 trillion more in debt, chronic 6%
to 7%-plus unemployment as the new norm, and the idea that trillion is the new
billion, as a $600 billion annual deficit is proof of fiscal responsibility and
sermons on “growing inequality” reflect Obama’s record of creating record
inequality. Zero percent interest rates ensure Wall Street zillionaires, the
impoverishment of the once thrifty middle class — and the idea that saving
money is stupid, owing it and not paying it back smart.
Students and college? One trillion dollars in collective debt buys
a politicized college education to put twenty-somethings in a job market where
60% of newly minted BAs find jobs. Student debt is the new
housing bubble, but at least a roof is more valuable for a time than a sociology
degree.
The Border Patrol? It no longer exists. No one believes crossing
illegally into the U.S. is a crime, and so there is no need for a law
enforcement agency. Everyone is a DREAM-er; doubt
that and you are a
racist. To the extent the Border Patrol is not a parody of itself, it is
a social services agency designed to facilitate illegal entry into the
U.S. La Raza and the Chamber of Commerce, not Congress, set immigration
policies.
The IRS? It too is ruined. It has become a Third-World extension
of a partisan regime that hounds out political enemies. Ditto EPA, which mostly
finds ways to circumvent Congress to punish successful companies and to pursue
green statutes that Congress has no desire to pass.
NASA? We beg our enemy Putin to ferry us into space, as the
director brags that the chief mission of the agency is now Muslim “feel good”
outreach. Eric Holder has so politicized the Justice Department that we
nonchalantly assume that racial matters determine to what extent Holder decides
to enforce or ignore a law. Holder’s legacy is that John Mitchell now looks
moral in comparison.
And the law? In some sense, we are in French revolutionary times.
The ACA, immigration statutes, environmental laws — they all simply no longer
exist. The law is what the president deems the public wants or what he believes
is socially useful.
Race? We have become so inured to Trayvon Martin as Obama’s
might-have been son, the stereotyping police, the “typical white person,” “my
people,” “a nation of cowards,” “punish our enemies,” etc., that such
polarization from on high is normal. Divide and conquer is the new old
politics. After Obama won a decisive victory in 2008 that transcended race, we
were suddenly told the world of the old white guy was over — ad nauseam — and
race became essential, not incidental, to those who had proclaimed a need to go
beyond race. In truth, the race fixation was not about justice, but raw power,
the pathway to obtaining it and the mechanism for keeping it.
The presidential style? We assume that every Obama speech is an
exercise in the use of the first-person pronoun. Every tired emphatic (“let me
be perfectly clear,” “make no mistake about it,” “in point of fact,” “I’m not
kidding”…) is proof of just the opposite. Equivocation, not clarity, is the
goal of an Obama speech. In lieu of candor, there is always a macho brag that
proves empty; always a straw-man, Emmanuel
Goldstein-style enemy whom we are supposed to hate collectively; always some
clueless clinger, devious capitalist, old Tea Party guy, or carbon polluter who
is the source of all our problems. We assume that when the president gets off
the teleprompter his speech will be incoherent and laced with “uh uh uh” — as
the press gushes that it is Lincolnesque.
Obama is a community organizer in endless search of a war to
distract from the reality that he is Icarus
falling with melting waxen wings. Without drumming up an old white guy
war against women, against Latinos, against children at the border, against the
environment, against gays, against blacks, against mom and apple pie, our Obama
is what he always was — a smooth version of Rev. Wright, a community organizer
whose bullhorn could not deliver a crowd.
The press? But there is
no press. Long ago it became
a ministry of information and decided that Obama was
the rare gift to enact a so-called progressive agenda. If or when there is a
non-liberal president, we will be told golf is aristocratic time-wasting, that
mention of race is hatred, that tampering with the IRS, NSA, or any other
agency is an impeachable offense, that ignoring enforcement of the law is
treasonous, that $300 billion deficits are ruinous, that junketing to resorts
is frivolous, that bombing without the approval of Congress is amoral, and that
the teleprompter is proof of vapidity.
Our culture? Cool is
all that matters. Outsource, offshore, speculate, crony capitalism — just do it
with Birkenstocks and shades. If you are hip, rules melt. Nerds like Al Gore
are cool and so seek to dodge new capital gains taxes, profit
from oil-rich dictatorships, and offer snake-oil
nostrums to the crises they hype as they lecture us about our selfish
carbon-spewing sins. The key to understanding a John Kerry, Al Gore, Warren Buffett,
or Bill Gates is that they are cool, and thus seek to avoid the property,
capital gains, or inheritance taxes that they urge be hiked on everyone else.
The Obama cultural legacy is that it does not matter what you do, only how
coolly you do or describe it. Appear hip, and greed is forgiven. Buy a ticket
to a $35,000 Obama fundraiser, wear something hip, and sound cool, and you are
a progressive egalitarian. Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Wall
Street learned that con long ago.
The president enjoys a 40% popularity rate and thus has
institutionalized a new facet of American political life: redistributionist
policies such as Obama’s guarantee that 4 out of 10 Americans will always stay
supportive and that abroad most will like what the U.S. is becoming. That is
the real Obama legacy: there are no politics any more, just an endless class
war between patriotic progressives and counter-revolutionary clingers.
Everything our un-Midas touched turned to stone.
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