We Certainly Don’t Want To Alarm Anyone
By Gregory J. Welborn
drugs times; font-size: 16px;”>Where the President spends his time is important – as much for what he’s actually doing as for the message it communicates to the world. In the same vein, what the President says is equally important for the message and tone it delivers. While there have been plenty of examples of this particular president’s tone deafness to what Americans and the larger world audience need to hear, the White House’s most recent pronouncements communicate a level of detachment and disinterest which is dangerous.
In response to a question about the wisdom of the President’s aggressive fund raising trips while much of the world seethes in war, White House Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri responded that changes in the President’s fundraising schedule “can have the unintended consequences of unduly alarming the American people or creating a false sense of crisis”.
Ukraine
If that’s meant to be reassuring, it missed the mark by a wide margin. It assumes, presumes and postulates that we shouldn’t be alarmed right now; that things are going swimmingly enough that he can spend half a week jetting up and down the west coast to attend fundraisers. But anyone who can read a newspaper – heck even those who don’t read but just watch T.V., even with the sound off – can see that the world is spinning out of control toward dangerous shoals. If ever the winds of another world war were blowing, they are now.
Putin’s Russian separatists have seized control of eastern Ukraine and are so confident in the security of their booty and the unlikeliness of facing any serious consequences that they shot an unarmed, fully loaded commercial airline out of the sky with a SAM. Hamas and Israel are engaged in a serious ground war. Hamas shows so little contrition about having started the whole damn thing that it makes economic “demands” before it entertains any cease fire. ISIS has consolidated its control over roughly one-third of another nation state, whose sovereignty we paid dearly in lives and treasure to protect. Syria’s Assad basks in the glorious pomp and ceremony of his inauguration for yet another term as murderer-in-chief. Boko Haram still holds “our girls”, continues to kill people in
Hamas Rockets
Nigerian villages, and just exploded two bombs which killed 75 more people. Most troubling about this little fraternity of thugs is their willingness to wantonly kill fellow Muslims and specifically target other Muslim leaders. Their willingness to take on other offshoots of the broader Al Qaeda community tells us that Al Qaeda has not been defeated and has now gone beyond metastasizing. Al Qaeda’s resurrection under our current president has prompted competing terrorist organizations to take bolder steps in their own attempts to lay claim, through intimidation and murder, to territory for their own mini nation-states and fiefdoms.
My question to the President is how much more needs to happen on your watch before we should be alarmed? One of the great civilizing accomplishments in human history is on the verge of being reversed. It took centuries for the world to “civilize” enough to eliminate right-of-conquest as a legitimate means by which land is simply taken or carved out from another nation. Even as we civilized and came to the adoption of this unique Judeo-Christian moral value, it was clear that at least one “moral” nation would have to be strong enough to enforce the ban. The moral ban, after all, was not on war. The ban was on unjust war – on the use of force to take that which does not belong to you. War was not banned, nor can ever be, because military action is sometimes the only means by which a moral nation can enforce a civilizing norm on those thugs and tyrants who would seek to conquer and plunder their neighbors.
ISIS
When war becomes unthinkable, or when the moral nation on whose shoulders a just world order rests shirks from its responsibilities, then evil fills the void and the right-of-conquest regains its allure as an affective political strategy. President Obama is the leader of one such moral nation who has made clear he does not believe in his own country’s morality, let alone its moral call to duty, does not intend to bear the responsibility which is his alone to bear right now, and cannot think of a legitimate reason to pursue any war to the logical conclusion of defeating an immoral, evil enemy.
Mr. President, the furthest thing from your mind should be any concern about creating a false sense of crisis or alarm. There is no other earthly power on this globe which can, nor, sadly, any constellation of lesser earthly powers willing to, right the world order. The world is spinning out of control, thousands are dying and whole people groups are being subjugated. Europe has lost its nerve, depending too heavily on Muslim immigrants for much of its basic labor and on Russian for its energy. It will not confront evil; witness the muted reaction to the downing of Malaysian flight 17 – strong words but little action. Europe will not defend Ukrainians, Syrians, Jews, Muslims or Africans. I doubt they’ll even defend themselves.
It is time for the United States of America to resume the role which only it can fill. The world needs a moral leader up front and confident, not detached and in the rear. Right now is the time to step up to the plate. If you can’t do it, please get the hell out of the way; maybe Biden’s got it in him, or John Boehner. Right now we don’t seem to have a leader; let’s hope we have some bench strength. So, right now seems like a pretty good time to be alarmed!
About the author: Gregory J. Welborn is a freelance writer and has spoken to several civic and religious organizations on cultural and moral issues. He lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife and 3 children and is active in the community. He can be reached [email protected]mail.com
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