When Will the Democratic Party Grow Up and Seriously Address National Security?

On conservative talk shows, defenders of President Obama have frequently asserted that it is too soon into the term of the new administration to fairly judge the policies and performance of our President. Well, nearly a full year has elapsed since the Obama administration took office and we’ve now all had plenty of chance to “give Obama a chance.” The oft-repeated mantras that “It’s too soon to tell” and “It’s all George Bush’s fault” won’t hold beer any longer. If his plummeting poll numbers are any indication, many who fell for Obama’s neatly packaged utopian vapors of hope, change, and transformation are finally starting to emerge from their media-induced slumber. And, while many of us could easily predict that the shallowness residing at the core of Barack Obama would soon lead to a precipitous disillusionment, the speed with which that is taking place is actually quite breathtaking.

Despite what European Socialists may think of us, Americans are not entirely stupid. While the well-oiled hype machine of the Left-biased news media and the air headed Hollywood crowd helped to induce the large scale brain freeze that got Obama elected, as his serious failures of policy have mounted and the significant impact of those failures is felt, no amount of propaganda will suffice to resurrect the messianic fervor that once surrounded the heady days of Obama’s campaign. Daily some new facet of the administration’s incompetence (at best) and fecklessness (at worst) is displayed, and increasing numbers of those who initially fell under his thrall are awakening to the profound danger Obama’s Presidency poses to both world peace and our American way of life.

Despite the Left’s inability to speak the word “evil,” the world has always had some very bad people who delight in bringing misery to others. Add to them the corrupting influences of power, religious fanaticism, or monetary gain, and the result is a toxic brew that must be fought by people of good will in every generation. Evil exists in every age and simply morphs from one guise into another. Now that Nazism and Communism have largely been vanquished, the greatest evil has manifested itself in Islamism. Make no mistake, those evil people are watching carefully as the Obama administration lurches between its ruinous domestic agenda (the government health care takeover, cap and tax, quadrupling the deficit, etc.) and its catastrophic foreign policy decisions (legitimizing thugs like Chavez, abandoning the missile defense of Eastern Europe, dithering for months over the decision to send troops to Afghanistan, appeasing Iran, etc.) This weak indecisiveness projected by the Obama administration is perceived around the world as a sign of America’s renewed vulnerability and it is not a coincidence that soon after castrating our intelligence forces, (is our Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, truly as brain-dead as she appears?) Muslim fanatics have become reenergized and are beginning to probe our defenses again. We have been kept safe for the past eight years due solely to the dedication of those charged with protecting us and thanks to their extraordinary show of resolve and might, Islamists have, until now, been cowed. However, Al Qaeda and their ilk can see we are no longer serious about maintaining our national security. Had we been, monstrous events like the Fort Hood Jihadist and the Christmas Day airliner attack would not have taken place. Both events had ample warning and could have easily been prevented were it not for the systemic rot of political correctness and the corrosive impact of incompetent leadership.

What will it take for our President, his administration and the Far-Left-commandeered Democratic Party to grow up and seriously address issues of national security? Increasingly, it has become apparent that children have been elected to govern us. These children maintain a stubborn belief that they can force the world to conform to their fantasies just because they wish them to be true. (If we simply extend the hand of friendship and/or grovel sufficiently, the Jihadis will like us and leave us alone.) In light of the sober reality of hundreds of crazed Muslim killers lined up in Yemen to blow themselves to pieces, is there no one in this present administration with the grown-up sense to advise that the “reset button” be pushed to return us to proven policies of the Bush years – policies that demonstrably kept us safe? Or is the hubris of Obama, Biden, Holder, Napolitano, Pelosi, et al so overwhelming that they are willing to sacrifice American lives for the sake of clinging to their naive ideas about human nature and the existence of evil in the world?

I hope the former takes place, but I’m not holding my breath. More than anything else, the 2008 election proved that whom we elect has consequences. Not once during the run-up to that election did Democrat candidates mention the subject of Islamic terror in their debates, while it was discussed in every single one of the Republican debates. That said a lot. It underscored the fact that the feelings-based, childish worldview of the Left makes it impossible for them to understand what it takes to protect American citizens. Now, in the immortal words of President Obama’s mentor and spiritual counselor, Jeremiah Wright, “the chickens are coming home to roost” as the consequences of voting children into office are becoming painfully apparent. Our first chance to begin to undo some of the damage will come in 2010. I just pray that enough Americans awaken in time.