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Friday, December 13, 2024 - 08:24 PM

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

First Published in 1994

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF
UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

Our country’s foreign policies included the Monroe Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, both bold and clear assertions of national purpose. Our Presidents sent ships to fight the Barbary Pirates off “the shores of Tripoli” at the dawn of the 19th century and we saved the world by winning both world wars in the 20th century. Now our country is reduced to having James Taylor sing “You’ve got a friend” in an absurd and juvenile effort at foreign policy aimed to make amends to our oldest ally France. France, without whose assistance we would not have prevailed in our Revolutionary War, was subjected to further indignity from terror by the tone deaf incompetence of the Obama administration.

“Tout est pardonne,” was the message Sec. of State John Kerry delivered at a press conference in Paris on Friday, January 16th, 2015. He had come just a week too late to demonstrate American “sincere condolences” for the murders of more than a dozen people in the Charlie Hebdo Muslim terrorist massacres. Obama, along with anyone else from his administration, skipped the march against terrorism that drew more than 3 million people along with more than forty representatives of other countries. How sincere can he pretend to be?

So James Taylor’s soothing words led the way to redemption…“When you’re down and troubled and you need a helping hand….” Don’t call Obama, he is too busy doing other important things, like playing golf or pandering to his progressive followers with issues like giving free community college to every illegal alien that wants it. People are being murdered by terrorists for exercising the freedom of speech we champion, but Obama wants us to turn our attentions to the local campus book store.

In 2013 the nation of Mali in Africa was being overrun by an Al Qaeda cell and France requested a helping hand from America to save its former colony. Obama refused assistance, which only amounted to lending the French a few C-17 cargo planes so they could put French boots and equipment on the ground. The French found a way without us but so much for Obama/Taylor’s promises that, “Winter, spring, summer or fall, all you have to do is call and I’ll be there, yeah, yeah, yeah, cause you’ve got a friend.” With friends like Obama, who needs enemies?

Obama will go down in our history as the President most indifferent toward foreign affairs, and at a time when those matters required our constant attention. As Winston Churchill put it, “The price of greatness is responsibility … one cannot rise to be in many ways the leading community in the civilized world without being involved in its problems….”

But not this President, song lyrics notwithstanding, “Just call out my name, and you know where ever I am I’ll come running.” But, of course, if you actually want and need American help, then you are on your own. The list of spurned people and nations that needed and asked for our help is long and growing longer…in addition to France and Yemen, the Kurds, Syrians and Ukrainians among them. And let’s see how many young girls did Boko Haram kidnap this week, after slaughtering their parents?

It is devastating to this country that this President and his inner circle of political lackeys are comfortable pretending that the enemies of America have not scored any wins on his watch. And anyone who does not understand the inertia that continues to pick up speed with Iran’s nuclear weapon pursuit or radical Islam’s murderous campaign to establish a Caliphate and the Sharia law that comes with it, well, you must be wearing those progressive rose-colored glasses not to see that.

Obama is destroying the good will that we have earned among the community of nations with our countless acts of kindness and generosity over the course of our history. Such acts happened because when the cry went out for a friend, America answered the call. Obama, however, believes we should recuse ourselves from the world stage, leaving a void of epic proportions.

Those chickens will come home to roost sooner rather than later. We can’t embolden our enemies with a policy of appeasement without setting in motion a chain of events. Winston Churchill, again, “Wars are not won by evacuations.” The problem is that Obama believes that, “The tide of war is receding.” That opinion is made out of whole cloth; there is no evidence which suggests that war is diminishing.

Among other things, the world wants Obama to define “friend.”

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David W. Thompson is a former State Representative in Alaska. He was a Township Administrator in New Jersey until he recently escaped. He has also been an Adjunct Professor at several colleges including Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, NC. A graduate of Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pa. and the JFKennedy School of Government, Harvard University, he now resides in Easley, SC.