Friday, January 17, 2014
From: Gary L. Bauer
Obama’s Harvest
Barack Obama took office promising to fundamentally transform America. While his domestic agenda has gotten most of the attention, Obama has had a considerable impact on America’s foreign policy as well. For example:
- During a speech at the Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., yesterday, Canadian Foreign Minister Brian Baird said this regarding the Keystone pipeline: “If there’s one message I’m going to be promoting on this trip, it’s time for Keystone right now. It’ll go further — the time for a decision on Keystone is now, even if it’s not the right one. We can’t continue in this state of limbo.”Baird is right. Canada won’t wait forever. It has a lot of oil it needs to sell, and the Chinese desperately want it. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter to Canada whether the pipeline goes south or west. But it matters a lot to our national security.The less oil we import from the Middle East, the better. Approving the Keystone pipeline should be a no-brainer, but this administration has delayed a decision for five years, holding our national security interests hostage to environmental extremists. And now our friends and allies to the north have lost their patience.
- Sir Hew Strachan, an Oxford professor of military history and a top foreign policy and military advisor to the British government, has some scathing comments about Obama’s leadership. Specifically, Strachan believes Obama is “chronically incapable” of developing a coherent military strategy, adding “Obama has no sense of what he wants to do in the world.” Strachan called the handling of Syria “crazy,” saying the talk of red lines had “devalued the deterrent effect of American military capability.”
- Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon made headlines this week for his blunt comments about Secretary of State John Kerry, and by extension Barack Obama’s approach to Israel. Kerry has made ten trips to the Middle East, trying to force the Israelis into a peace deal with the Palestinians, who still refuse to merely recognize Israel’s right to exist. Ya’alon blasted Kerry for “acting out of misplaced obsession and messianic fervor.”But there was more. Kerry’s proposal was “not worth the paper it’s written on. …It contains no peace and no security,” Ya’alon said, adding, “The only thing that can ‘save us’ is for John Kerry to win a Nobel Prize and leave us in peace.”Sadly, more and more Israelis, on the left and the right, share Ya’alon’s view that the United States is increasingly unreliable, and that perhaps it is time for Israel to disengage — not from the peace process — but from America.
Canada. Great Britain. Israel. These are America’s best friends and allies. If that is what top officials in these key nations are saying about America today, just imagine what our enemies must be thinking.
Wolf Fighting For Freedom Abroad
Yesterday we got another reminder of why Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), who recently announced that he would not seek reelection this year, is irreplaceable. While budget battles and Obamacare dominate the headlines, Rep. Wolf continues to call attention to the scourge of religious and political persecution abroad.
Under the congressman’s leadership, a hearing was held yesterday on Capitol Hill highlighting the plight of prisoners of conscience. Among the witnesses at the hearing was Natan Sharansky, a Soviet Jew who spent years in a gulag for his activism on behalf of human rights. After an intense public campaign, he was released and permitted to emigrate to Israel, where he became a member of the Knesset and served as deputy prime minister.
Sharansky told members of Congress yesterday that his Soviet jailers would mock him, saying, “You are in our hands. If you disappear, no one will notice.” But Sharansky believes he was freed because people around the world who cared about freedom, cared about him and did everything they could to make sure others knew about his plight.
Rep. Wolf hopes that similar movements can help stop Christian persecution and free political prisoners held in China and in many Muslim countries today.
Even as he winds down his time in Congress, Rep. Wolf is not going quietly. He remains committed to fighting for human dignity, and doing all he can to give voice to those suffering in the shadows around the world. Because of leaders like Frank Wolf, they will not be forgotten.
Wasting Your Money
The Obamacare embarrassments keep piling up. After months of tweaks and hundreds of millions of your hard-earned tax dollars, the glitchy Obamacare website, healthcare.gov, still doesn’t work properly.
In fact, it is still so bad that the administration recently announced that it has hired yet another company, Accenture Federal Services, to take over the project. And how much more is this virtual monument to big government incompetence going to cost you? At least another $90 million.
Remember, folks, the website should be the easy part.
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