The Great Destroyer

Obama followed the same careless pattern in his commitment to try international terrorists in American domestic courts, and he achieved the same pathetic results when the government got al-Qaeda terrorist Ahmed Ghailani convicted on only one of 285 charges for the 1998 African embassy bombings.¹ Without acknowledging any egg on his face, Obama announced in March 2011 that the government would resume using military commissions to prosecute terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, though he remained committed to closing the detention center.²

And for all his previous posturing over Bush-era policies providing for the unlimited detentions of terrorism suspects, he reversed course here, too; in March 2011 he tacitly conceded the government’s authority to such detentions by issuing an executive order calling for periodic reviews of these cases, reneging on his 2009 promise to work with Congress on the issue.³

Even though his order was an about-face, Republicans objected to Obama granting more rights to terrorists and imposing more obstacles to prosecuting them. “The Gitmo detainees already enjoy unlimited access to attorneys and are able to take full advantage of the federal courts,” noted Congressman Tom Rooney, a former Army JAG Corps member. “We do not need to create yet another layer of review so that their lawyers can drag their cases through endless litigating during this time of war.”⁴

To the chagrin of his leftist base, Obama conceded total defeat on the unlimited detention issue on January 2, 2012, when he signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which formalized our right to imprison terrorism suspects indefinitely without charge or trial. Obama claimed he signed the bill “despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.”⁵

Despite Obama’s bluster about secret detentions, the administration secretly detained Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a Somali terror suspect, for two months on a U.S. Navy ship and, without formal charges or affording him an attorney, extensively interrogated him. Perhaps the administration wanted to have it both ways, avoiding the use of Guantanamo but hypocritically denying Warsame a lawyer and withholding his rights to habeas corpus on a Navy ship at sea. Then, showing total policy incoherence, the administration transported Warsame to New York for trial in a civilian criminal court. “The administration has purposefully imported a terrorist in the US and is providing him all the rights of US citizens in court,” observed Senator Mitch McConnell.⁶

Maybe Obama had his way in the end over Guantanamo; while he may not have succeeded in shutting it down, his administration treated its detainees to a $750,000 taxpayer-funded soccer field. The U.S. military created the field—part of a new recreation yard—at Camp 6, which holds some 80 percent of the facility’s 171 prisoners. Soon the prisoners would also get a walking trail and exercise equipment.⁷

Just as he chafes under constitutional limits to his domestic authority, Obama seems to lament that the Constitution does not vest the president with unfettered power over foreign policy. At one point he bemoaned that it would be much easier to be president of China. As one official explained, “No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.”⁸

When Congress frustrates his foreign policy agenda, Obama often circumvents it administratively, through executive orders, or just by outright ignoring it and behaving as though he occupies the sole seat of power in Washington. In marked contrast to President George W. Bush, who ordered the invasion of Iraq only after it was authorized by Congress, Obama initiated military action against Libya without so much as consulting Congress, much less getting its approval. This snub was all the more remarkable in that Obama went through strenuous efforts to secure the endorsement of the Arab League and the UN for the Libya operation—suggesting he values their approval above that of Congress or the American people.

Shockingly, the administration later admitted this is, in fact, its guiding philosophy. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, in a March 2012 hearing before the Armed Services Committee about possible U.S. military action in Syria, declared, “Our goal would be to seek international permission, and we would come to the Congress and inform you, and determine how best to approach this, determine whether or not we would want to get permission from the Congress.”⁹

Obama’s unauthorized Libyan action was all the more outrageous considering Vice President Joe Biden had threatened in 2007 that if President Bush “takes this nation to war in Iran without congressional approval, I will make it my business to impeach him.”¹⁰ Obama himself, in a 2007 interview with the Boston Globe, declared, “The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Around the same time, his future secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, proclaimed, “I do not believe that the President can take military action—including any kind of strategic bombing—against Iran without congressional authorization.”¹¹

Concerning Libya, the White House couldn’t seem to decide when, to what extent, or on whose behalf we should intervene. Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton described Obama’s Libya policy as “incoherent” and illustrative of “the failed approach to national security issues characterizing his administration from the outset.” His objectives, said Bolton, “have been unclear and contradictory, and they have shifted over time. He started by declaring that the use of force was to protect Libyan civilians—not to topple Col. Gadhafi. Today, however, the obvious military objective is the removal of the Libyan leader but, apparently not to admit it publicly, and to accomplish it slowly and ineffectively.”¹²

As Obama’s unspecified action in or above Libya got underway, people began to ask whether we were engaged in a war there. The question elicited a laughably evasive answer from the White House, as national security advisor Ben Rhodes declared, “I think what we are doing is enforcing a resolution that has a very clear set of goals, which is protecting the Libyan people, averting a humanitarian crisis, and setting up a no-fly zone. Obviously that involves kinetic military action, particularly on the front end.”¹³

Obama claimed intervention in Libya was necessary to prevent a bloodbath in Benghazi and to forestall genocide. Curiously, those factors didn’t guide his policy in Iraq; in response to concerns that his efforts to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq could result in genocide and ethnic cleansing, he retorted, “If that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now—where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife—which we haven’t done. We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done. Those of us who care about Darfur don’t think it would be a good idea.”¹⁴

Some argued Obama was grossly exaggerating the humanitarian threat in Libya to justify military action. “Despite ubiquitous cellphones equipped with cameras and video, there is no graphic evidence of deliberate massacre,” noted Alan J. Kuperman, professor of public affairs at the University of Texas. “Nor did Khadafy ever threaten civilian massacre in Benghazi, as Obama alleged.” His “no mercy” warning of March 17 applied only to rebels, said Kuperman, who pointed to a New York Times report that Gaddafi promised amnesty for those “who throw their weapons away.” Even Human Rights Watch proclaimed that Gaddafi was “not deliberately massacring civilians, but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government.”¹⁵

Reports later emerged that Obama had been so determined to intervene in Libya that he rejected his top lawyers’ legal advice on the operation. The New York Times’ Charlie Savage found that Obama ignored the warnings of Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, that U.S. military participation in the ostensibly NATO-LED air war would amount to “hostilities,” thus giving Congress a role in the affair via the War Powers Resolution. Incorrigibly, Obama searched for someone to provide legal validation for his action, eventually hearing what he wanted from White House counsel Robert Bauer and State Department legal adviser Harold H. Koh—famous for his advocacy of transnationalism—that the operation fell short of “hostilities.”¹⁶

Obama was hell-bent on intervening in Libya, and for reasons that didn’t immediately meet the eye. In a March 2011 interview with CNN, Doug Feith, under secretary of defense for policy for President George W. Bush, theorized about Obama’s motives:

The only way to make the President’s behavior comprehensible is to recognize that he has a larger strategic goal than just the outcome of Libya. While the rest of the country is focused on Libya’s future, the President is focused on fundamentally changing America’s role and standing in the world. Libya, for him, is simply an occasion for undertaking a radical reformulation of 70 years of American foreign policy.

At least since the U.S. entered World War II, there has been a view of the United States as a leading power, a democratic power, a country that acts boldly in its own interests. I think President Obama does not believe that’s the role America should play in the world.¹⁷

That same week, I had come to a similar conclusion in my syndicated column:

Obama’s animating foreign policy passion is that America has been an international bully that needs to be brought down to size. He couldn’t wait to confess America’s “arrogance” and “dismissiveness” to foreign nations on their soil. He gleefully told the Muslim world in his Cairo speech how wonderful and peaceful Islam is and how much it has contributed to America. He made clear that he doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism when he said it is no different from Greek or British exceptionalism.

Though he couldn’t have planned for the unforeseen events in Libya, when they happened, a light bulb eventually went off in his head, signaling that this was his moment to practice what he’d been preaching and to demonstrate how America has changed under his leadership. His primary goals are neither to oust Gadhafi nor to rescue the Libyan rebels for humanitarian reasons, for if ousting an evil dictator or protecting his victims were the motivation, he would have intervened in any number of other places.

His apparent vacillation and indecisiveness must be viewed in the context of his overarching goal: to change America’s approach from “unilateralism,” which it never was, to radical, deferential multilateralism replete with ceding our sovereign decisions to international bodies—and to change our image.¹⁹

Interestingly, in his March 21 letter advising Congress of the Libya campaign, Obama cavalierly insisted his action was consistent with the War Powers Resolution. Ackerman and Hathaway expected Obama at least to assert a legal concoction to get around the act’s requirements, pretending that we’d ended our involvement under the act because NATO had nominally taken the lead on April 1. But, as they said, “it is sheer fiction to suggest that we are no longer a vital player in NATO’s ‘Operation Unified Protector,’” especially because “an active-duty American officer remains at the top of NATO’s chain of command.” The authors concluded, “If nothing happens, history will say that the War Powers Act was condemned to a quiet death by a president who had solemnly pledged, on the campaign trail, to put an end to indiscriminate warmaking.”²¹

Sure enough, a few days later Obama sent a letter to congressional leaders telling them the U.S. role in Libya was now so “limited” that it didn’t require congressional approval. Yet despite his obvious attempt to downplay the level of U.S. involvement, his explanation of U.S. actions since April 4 didn’t sound so limited. These, Obama said, included “non-kinetic support” such as “intelligence, logistical support, and search and rescue assistance”; aerial assistance in suppressing and destroying air defenses; and since April 23, strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles against “a limited set of clearly defined targets.”²²

Ultimately, the administration claimed its Libya actions were “consistent with the War Powers Resolution” because U.S. operations did “not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces.” Despite its expressed support for the Libya operation, the Wall Street Journal editorial board commented, “That evasion has been ridiculed in Congress, and rightly so.”²³ In addition, indications arose that the U.S. role was significantly greater than the administration was admitting. For example, the Air Force Times reported on June 30 that “Air Force and Navy aircraft are still flying hundreds of strike missions over Libya despite the administration’s claim that American forces are playing only a limited support role in the NATO operation.”²⁴

Congress, by an almost three-quarters majority, approved a nonbinding resolution to notify Obama that unless he explained his unauthorized action in Libya, he would face consequences. “He has a chance to get this right,” said House Speaker John Boehner. “If he doesn’t, Congress will exercise its constitutional authority and make it right.” Obama speciously argued that he had complied with the War Powers Resolution because he had supposedly consulted with Congress—never mind that the act requires congressional approval.²⁵ John Bolton marveled at Obama’s disinterest in explaining or defending his actions, a failure by which Obama “risked a self-inflicted political wound that could have undermined our national security policy in many other international arenas.”²⁶

Senator John McCain, who had supported Obama’s Libya policy, strongly criticized his high-handed refusal to seek congressional approval. “I think what the president did was he brought this whole issue to a head now because of this, really, incredible interpretation that we are not necessarily—that the War Powers Act does not apply to our activities in Libya,” said McCain, adding unequivocally: “We are engaged in a conflict.”²⁷

John Bolton noted the obvious—that affording a “swaggering, international bully boy” like Russia a big role in mediating the conflict and in shaping post-Gaddafi Libya would amount to a “massive humiliation for the Western alliance.” Of further concern to Bolton and many others, neither America nor its NATO allies had done anything to strengthen pro-Western voices in Libya and help them come to power instead of some new rogue regime.²⁸

Stanley Kurtz suggested a rationale for Obama’s inexplicable policy: R2P. “Obama’s willingness to cede so much to the Russians reflects the fact that he is far less interested in achieving and enforcing regime change in Libya, than in using this intervention to advance the utopian plans of his hyper-internationalist advisers,” Kurtz said. By ceding Russia de facto control over Libyan oil and gas resources, Kurtz argued, Obama would avoid sending in U.S. troops while “bolster[ing] the development of a post-American world order—with an R2P-enforcing U.N. exercising a larger military role.” While that would enhance Russia’s ability to bully Europe, Obama, according to Kurtz, was “less concerned about those sorts of strategic considerations than about advancing the vision of a world policed by a U.N. freed of U.S. domination.”²⁹

It’s hard to conceive that the administration helped to oust the Libyan regime without any plan for preventing terrorists from seizing its weapons. But at the end of September, ABC News reported that after Gaddafi’s downfall, Libya descended into lawlessness as fighters—including some from al-Qaeda—poured into the country. “Amid this lawlessness, thousands of Libyan surface-to-air missiles that could potentially shoot down civilian aircraft disappeared,” ABC reported. The White House said it would expand a program to secure and destroy Libya’s huge stockpile of these missiles, but at the time the U.S. State Department had only one official on the ground in Libya, along with five contractors who were experts in “explosive ordinance disposal.”³⁰

ABC News reported that U.S. officials and security experts were concerned that missing heat-seeking missiles could end up in terrorists’ hands. Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch said he’d seen people driving off with truckloads of missiles from weapons facilities when he visited Libya in March 2011, and then again in September. “Every time I arrive at one of these weapons facilities, the first thing we notice going missing is the surface-to-air missiles,” he explained. “I myself could have removed several hundred if I wanted to, and people can literally drive up with pickup trucks or even 18 wheelers and take away whatever they want.... In Libya, we’re talking about something on the order of 20,000 surface-to-air missiles. This is one of the greatest stockpiles of these weapons that has ever gone on the loose.” Chillingly, Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism advisor, said, “I think the probability of al Qaeda being able to smuggle some of the stinger-like missiles out of Libya is probably pretty high.”³¹

Less than a month later, ABC News reported that some of these missing missiles had turned up near the Israeli border. The Washington Post said many of the stolen missiles had been sold in Egyptian black markets and that their price had dropped from $10,000 to $4,000 due to the abundant supply. Most of the missiles were shoulder-fired, had a range of two miles, and would pose a threat to Israeli helicopter and planes on either side of the Israel-Gaza border.³²

It wasn’t until mid-October 2011 that the administration began a campaign to track down these missiles, sending fourteen contractors with military backgrounds to Libya and planning on sending dozens more. Meanwhile, Libyan rebel groups and civilians had carried off an unknown number of these weapons. As the Washington Post’s Mary Beth Sheridan reported, one rebel fighter, Essam Abu Bakr, said he watched groups of rebels throw “crates of grenades and missiles into trucks ‘as though they were sacks of sugar.’ ‘I’m worried,’ he said. ‘Loose weapons are everywhere.’”³³

It was hardly comforting to discover that these Obama administration-backed rebel forces ransacked entire villages, leaving ghost towns in their wake, and administering brutal beatings. “They chased us with guns and knives,” testified one victim. “They brought me to a house and beat me with electrical cable to make me confess I worked for Gaddafi, even though I told them I never carried a gun.”³⁴ The rebels also slaughtered some fifty-three Gaddafi supporters and buried them in a mass grave in Gaddafi’s hometown.³⁵

Quite contrary to the administration’s assurances that it was supporting democratic forces, Libya’s post-Gaddafi interim leader, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, declared that Libyan laws in the future would have Sharia—strict Islamic law—as their “basic source.” Proving he meant business, he immediately lifted a law banning polygamy because it conflicted with Sharia, and also announced that future bank regulations would ban the charging of interest, as mandated by Sharia.³⁶ In Benghazi, where the Libyan revolution erupted, al-Qaeda planted its flag alongside the Libyan rebel flag atop the city courthouse.³⁷

The opportunistic Obama administration, ignoring all these horror stories, changed its tune once Gaddafi had been ousted. After previously downplaying the U.S. role to avoid triggering the War Powers Resolution, the administration began to boast that it had been leading the operation all along. Although some administration supporters had described the U.S. role as “leading from behind,” Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called that a “whacked out phrase.” “We led this thing,” she bluntly declared. “We put teeth in this mandate.”

This must have been news to the British and French, who had been frustrated by the administration’s vacillation back in March, when they couldn’t get Obama to join them in a resolution to establish a no-fly zone over Libya. But the administration wasn’t satisfied with support merely from our European allies; it wasn’t until the Arab League got behind the no-fly zone that it began taking an active role. Displaying utter incoherence, the administration explained that it based our Libyan action on the UN mandate calling for the protection of civilians, which it “did not conflate” with “regime change as part of the military mission.” As writer Marc Thiessen trenchantly summarized, “Got that? We did not lead from behind, we led. But our goal was never to help the overthrow of Qaddafi. But now that he’s gone we’re claiming credit. Now that’s ‘whacked out.’”³⁸

In January 2011 a mob of Egyptians took to Cairo’s Tahrir Square, demanding Mubarak step down. After initially supporting Mubarak, President Obama seemingly shifted course, expressing dismay at Mubarak’s refusal to step down and chiding the Egyptian government for failing to put forward a “credible, concrete and unequivocal path to democracy.” But Mubarak defied Obama’s calls to resign, provoking a cutting observation from Britain’s Guardian: “Mubarak’s response offers further evidence of the US’s slow decline from its status as superpower to a position where it is unable to decisively influence events in Egypt, in spite of that country being one of the biggest recipients of US military aid.” The paper also ridiculed the administration’s vacillation, saying it had “shifted from solidly supporting Mubarak, to suggesting he should go now, only to back him at the weekend to remain in office until the autumn—a decision that secretary of state Hillary Clinton reversed hours later when she threw US support behind [Egyptian Vice President] Suleiman.”³⁹

As Obama slowly settled on a policy of encouraging Mubarak to leave, a fundamental question lurked beneath the heady events: Did the Egyptian people themselves want to oust Mubarak? Certainly a mob in Cairo’s streets was clamoring for it, yet it was unclear to what extent that sentiment spread past Tahrir Square. Two Ukrainian bloggers who were passing through Egypt wrote, “We visited Egypt and studied the situation in detail, on the ground. Having talked with hundreds of residents of Cairo and other Egyptian cities, we came to a definite conclusion: a nationwide uprising against Mubarak does not exist.” Most of the Egyptian people, according to the bloggers, did not support the anti-Mubarak factions, whose rebellion, the Ukrainians argued, was limited to just one area of Cairo.⁴⁰

Why would Obama support the overthrow of Mubarak when this would likely bring to power the Muslim Brotherhood, an anti-American group of Islamic fundamentalists seeking to create a worldwide Islamic caliphate? Perhaps it was because Obama didn’t have a particularly negative view of the Brotherhood, an 84-year-old organization that, according to the New York Times, “virtually invented Islamism.”⁴¹ Although the Brotherhood’s entire raison d’etre is to spread Islamism, Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, told the House Intelligence Committee, “The term Muslim Brotherhood is an umbrella term for a variety of movements; in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.”⁴²

In damage control mode, the administration later tried to “clarify” Clapper’s inexplicable distortion, releasing a statement that read, in part, “To clarify Director Clapper’s point, in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood makes efforts to work through a political system that has been, under Mubarak’s rule, one that is largely secular in its orientation. He is well aware that the Muslim Brotherhood is not a secular organization.”⁴³

It’s hard to see how the administration could credibly claim this was a clarification as opposed to an outright retraction. In any case, the statement hardly satisfied administration critics. John Bolton called Clapper’s comment “perhaps the stupidest statement made by any administration in U.S. international history.”⁴⁴ British reporter Nile Gardiner commented, “Clapper’s remarks were a bizarre whitewash of the organization, and yet another embarrassing gaffe by an Administration that increasingly specializes in them.”⁴⁵ Denouncing Clapper’s “willful stupidity,” National Review terrorism expert Andrew McCarthy wrote, “This is the Muslim Brotherhood whose motto brays that the Koran is the law and jihad is its way. The MB whose Palestinian branch, the terrorist organization Hamas, was created for the specific purpose of destroying Israel—the goal its charter says is a religious obligation. It is the organization dedicated to the establishment of Islamicized societies and, ultimately, a global caliphate. It is an organization whose leadership says al-Qaeda’s emir, Osama bin Laden, is an honorable jihad warrior who was ‘close to Allah on high’ in ‘resisting the occupation.’”⁴⁶

It was later reported that U.S. officials met with members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party once Mubarak was ousted. The administration denied this was a break from previous U.S. policy, though in the past such contacts were limited to actual members of the parliament.⁴⁷

In November, reports surfaced that the U.S. State Department was training anti-Western Islamist political parties in Egypt in polling, constituent services, and electoral preparations. William Taylor, the State Department’s director of its new office for Middle East Transitions, responded to the reports with a classic non-denial denial. “We don’t do party support. What we do is party training.... And we do it to whoever comes,” he said. “Sometimes,” he added, “Islamist parties show up, sometimes they don’t. But it has been provided on a nonpartisan basis, not to individual parties”—as if providing support indiscriminately excused them from supporting anti-American groups.⁴⁸ This perversion was no surprise to those familiar with this administration’s leftist ideology. Indeed, Taylor said the United States would be “satisfied” if fair parliamentary elections resulted in a victory for the Muslim Brotherhood—which is exactly what happened in Egypt, as the Brotherhood and the even more radical Salafist sect later won a combined 70 percent of the seats in parliament.⁴⁹

Naturally, the Brotherhood’s victory only encouraged the Obama administration to step up its “engagement” efforts. In April 2012, the administration hosted a Muslim Brotherhood delegation in Washington that met with White House staffers and national security officials.⁵⁰ According to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, to smooth its entry into America, the State Department prohibited U.S. customs officials from subjecting the Brotherhood delegation to standard inspection checks for visitors from Egypt, and even prevented the secondary inspection that would have been standard for one Brotherhood member implicated in a child pornography investigation.⁵¹ As Andrew McCarthy reported, shortly after the delegation’s visit, the Obama administration announced it would give $1.5 billion in aid to the new Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Egyptian government, representing $1.3 billion in military assistance and an additional $200 million in economic aid.⁵² Obama would do so despite congressional opposition.⁵³

As his administration dutifully set about whitewashing the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama seemed unconcerned by the rising persecution of Christians in Arab Spring nations. For example, when Egyptian soldiers massacred Coptic Christians protesting the burning of a church, the White House issued a statement reeking of moral equivalence. Declining actually to condemn the massacre, which it only referred to in vague terms, it called for restraint from both the victims and the perpetrators. “The President is deeply concerned about the violence in Egypt that has led to a tragic loss of life among demonstrators and security forces,” said the statement. “Now is a time for restraint on all sides so that Egyptians can move forward together to forge a strong and united Egypt.”⁵⁴

As it was warming up to the Muslim Brotherhood, the administration backed off its previous support for the Egyptian military. The problem was that after Mubarak’s overthrow, Egypt’s military rulers faced a choice of either holding quick elections, which the highly organized Brotherhood would surely dominate, or postponing elections and prolonging the transitional period, raising the likelihood that the military would seek to retain power for itself. Fearing the military could become abusive, the White House in November 2011 urged it to relinquish control “as soon as possible.” This was in stark contrast to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s praise for the military just two months before as an “institution of stability and continuity.”⁵⁵

Whether you gauge Obama’s Egypt policy by the country’s progress toward a stable democratic society, its attitude toward the United States, or its intentions toward Israel, it has been a major failure. Notwithstanding his call for Egypt’s regime to step aside, Obama, in his new FY2013 budget, proposed more money for Egypt at the very time ascendant Muslim Brotherhood leaders were becoming more belligerent toward Israel and even threatening to attack the Jewish state. Hosni Mubarak may have been a repressive leader, but for three decades he was friendly to the United States, kept the peace with Israel, and helped maintain stability in the region. But by helping to empower Islamist revolutionaries under the pretense that they are democratic forces, Obama has jeopardized regional stability as well as Israel’s security.

In another indication of the failure of Obama’s diplomacy, in January 2012 the Egyptian government criminally charged forty-three NGO workers, including at least sixteen Americans, with illegally using foreign funds to stir unrest in Egypt. Some of the accused had already left the country or found shelter in the U.S. embassy, but the others were detained, including Sam LaHood, son of Obama’s transportation secretary Ray LaHood. In what seemed to be a personal insult to Obama, LaHood was arrested one day after Obama had contacted Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, the head of Egypt’s regime, to urge him to permit NGOs such as LaHood to operate freely.⁵⁶ Finally, after being held for more than a month, on March 1, 2012, the detained Americans were allowed to leave Egypt upon putting up bail in excess of $300,000 each.⁵⁷

Before their release, in response to congressional warnings that the U.S. would cut off aid to Egypt unless the detainees were let go, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood sent the United States a clear message: “What was acceptable before the revolution is no longer.” If we suspend the aid, they warned, Egypt would sever its peace treaty with Israel. “We have been told that fear of losing U.S. aid will constrain Egypt,” noted Middle East expert Barry Rubin. “But we are now seeing that this simply isn’t true. What happens when the Egyptian government helps Hamas fight Israel?”⁵⁸

It’s astonishing that this administration could have pretended the Muslim Brotherhood would usher in a more democratic, peaceful, or America-friendly Egypt. As Investors.com reported, Obama was aware of the Brotherhood’s propensities while he was engaging with them, including their threats to revoke Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel. He was also aware, as revealed by embassy cables and other intelligence, that Egyptians were highly sympathetic to the Brotherhood and its belligerence toward Israel. And Obama certainly knew it after the Brotherhood dominated Egypt’s parliamentary elections, yet still asked Congress for $800 million more in his budget to prop up the “Arab Spring” countries. As Investors.com editors wrote, “The real scandal is that Obama appears to have engineered the Brotherhood’s ascendancy. It’s no coincidence he invited the Brotherhood to his 2009 Cairo speech over the objections of Mubarak, who had outlawed the group.”⁵⁹

The administration’s outreach to Islamists was not confined to Egypt. In March 2012 in Tunisia—another “Arab Spring” country where Islamists have filled the vacuum left by an ousted autocrat—thousands of secular Tunisians demonstrated against Obama’s close cooperation with the Islamists of the ruling Ennahda party. “People here are against the United States helping Ennahda,” said Tunisian journalist Ashraf Ayadi. “All Americans who come here are against the Islamists, but the American government is supporting them. I wish we had a good, modern, respectful Islamic party. I’m a Muslim and I’m proud of it, but I’m not proud of this party.”⁶⁰

As the so-called Arab Spring spread through Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, and Syria, dewy-eyed western optimists had high hopes for a radical democratic explosion in the Middle East. Obama mostly welcomed these rebellions, calling for Mubarak’s resignation in Egypt and providing military assistance to the rebels in Libya, blind to indications that the uprisings would likely empower rulers even more repressive, Islamist, and anti-American than their predecessors.

“The Arab Spring is an unshackling of Islam, not an outbreak of fervor for freedom in the Western sense,” observed Andy McCarthy. The Islamists, he noted, may well use democracy as a train to take them to their destination, which “is the implementation of sharia.” That, said McCarthy, is “the undeniable trend in Egyptian society” and “in such basket cases as Libya, where each day brings new evidence that today’s governing ‘rebels’ include yesterday’s al-Qaeda jihadists, and in Yemen.” While Obama and the European Union are deluded into believing democratic elections will bring peace, stability, and more “progressive” societies, added McCarthy, once these Islamist regimes are in power, “they are sure to make virulent anti-Americanism their official policy and to contribute materially to the pan-Islamic goal of destroying Israel.”⁶¹

Obama’s solicitous policy toward the Islamists of the Arab Spring complements his markedly ingratiating attitude toward Muslims in general, an approach he introduced, in grand fashion, with his fawning Cairo speech of June 2009. This attitude runs through his whole administration, including his national security officials. Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan described violent extremists as victims of “political, economic and social forces,” and said that “jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community,” though he admitted “there is nothing holy or legitimate about murdering innocent men, women and children.”⁶² In a speech on national security at NYU in February 2010, Brennan wistfully praised Islam for the “tolerance and diversity which define [it],” and said he “came to see Islam not as it is often misrepresented, but for what it is . . . a faith of peace and tolerance and great diversity.” He even used the Arabic term “Al Quds” for Jerusalem.⁶³

Indeed Obama and his administration constantly go to great pains to show their deference and admiration for Islam. These displays include:

• Obama launching into an impassioned paean to the “great religion” of Islam, whose adherents, he said, overwhelmingly believe in “peace and justice and fairness and tolerance,” when asked by a student in Mumbai about jihad. The city had been the site of a jihadist massacre just two years earlier in which more than a hundred people were killed.⁶⁴

• Obama drawing a link in his Passover message of April 2011 between the suffering of Jews in Egypt and the Muslim uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.⁶⁵

• The Justice Department scuttling numerous terror-related prosecutions, reportedly outraging some of the prosecutors and FBI agents involved.⁶⁶

• The administration granting U.S. citizenship to three people convicted of crimes in terrorism-related cases.⁶⁷

• Obama revoking the ban on photos of coffins of U.S. soldiers, but refusing to publish the Osama bin Laden death photos for fear of offending Muslims.⁶⁸

• The administration sanitizing all references to “radical Islam” and the “War on Terror” from our national security documents.⁶⁹

The administration’s relentless PR campaign to win the hearts and minds of Muslims prompted Senator Joe Lieberman to warn, “The administration’s fear of offending Muslims will hurt the U.S. war against terrorism.” The administration, said Lieberman, “still refuses to call our enemy in this war by its proper name: violent Islamist extremism. To call our enemy ‘violent extremism’ is so general and vague that it ultimately has no meaning.”⁷¹ To Lieberman’s point, Vice President Joe Biden, in an interview with Les Gelb of Newsweek/The Daily Beast, insisted, “Look the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests.”⁷²

With Biden’s statement, the administration, again, consciously made a stark break from pre-Obama America, as if to say that the America that initially invaded Iraq is not the America they represent. “The most outrageous thing about this statement is Biden’s conceit that he and Obama are ‘ending the war we did not start,’” Max Boot aptly observed. “Obama and Biden are the two most senior elected officials of the U.S. government. The U.S. government as a whole made a decision to intervene in Iraq, and it is the height of irresponsibility for one administration to think it can abandon with impunity the commitments made by its predecessor, whatever it may think of those commitments.” What made Biden’s assertion even more preposterous was that “Biden himself was part of the majority in both Houses who voted to go to war.”⁷³

The administration has habitually sent these reckless signals to the world, such as when we were contemplating military intervention in Libya. At that time, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton faced questions from the House Foreign Affairs Committee about why we were not at least threatening to use force to protect our own citizens from danger arising from the Libyan turmoil. Amazingly, Clinton told the committee that the administration didn’t want to raise “alarm bells around the region and the world that we were about to invade for oil. If you follow, as we follow, all of the websites that are looking at what’s happening in the Middle East, you see a constant drumbeat that the United States is going to invade Libya to take over the oil—and we can’t let that happen.” Apparently feeling the need to assure Congress and the world, Clinton declared, “Well, we are not going to do that.”⁷⁴

Thus, the administration based certain important national security decisions on crackpot allegations found on foreign and leftist websites that the United States invades countries to steal their oil.

When it’s not indulging anti-American sentiments, the Obama administration seems to feel driven to create them. For example, in Mumbai, India, in November 2010, Obama gratuitously portrayed his countrymen as ignorant, prejudiced rubes. “I want to be honest,” he told his audience. “There are many Americans whose only experience with trade and globalization has been a shuttered factory or a job that was shipped overseas. And there still exists a caricature of India as a land of call centers and back offices that cost American jobs. That’s a real perception.”⁷⁵

Zogby further reported that “President Obama’s favorable ratings across the Arab World are 10% or less,” which is remarkable in view of his pained efforts to ingratiate himself in the Middle East. As Michael Prell observed in the Washington Times, “After he promised to restore America’s international reputation, not only does the Arab world hate America more under Mr. Obama than it did under President George W. Bush, it even hates Mr. Obama personally, more than it detested the swaggering unilateralist cowboy from Texas.”⁷⁶

Furthermore, the administration’s approach to the Middle East peace process—largely consisting of pressuring Israel to stop building settlements and even to halt construction of new apartments in certain parts of its capital city of Jerusalem—has been a complete bust, as the Palestinian Authority refuses even to negotiate directly with the Jewish state until it meets Obama’s ill-conceived demands.

Recall that the Democratic establishment and President Obama routinely derided the alleged warmongering of President Bush, and the mainstream media published an almost daily casualty count in Iraq. But in 2010, U.S. deaths in Afghanistan rose 57 percent from 2009 and were triple those of 2008. Indeed, total deaths in that country in 2010 exceeded the number of deaths for the previous seven years of the war combined. In light of all that killing, it’s no wonder that in Afghanistan, as in most of the rest of the Muslim world, President Obama has failed to make the United States more popular: only 43 percent of Afghans viewed us favorably at the beginning of 2011, compared to 83 percent in 2005.⁷⁷

Aside from his failure to win popular acclaim abroad, Obama has failed to endear himself to foreign leaders, despite his vaunted willingness to talk with America’s enemies. Although his many overtures to Iran have met with ridicule and the mullahs continue developing nuclear capabilities, he and his administration still pander like a smitten suitor; American diplomats drew attention in September 2010 when they declined to join Canadian diplomats in walking out during a speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the UN.⁷⁸

In Iraq, despite having proudly boasted of opposing the U.S. invasion from the outset, Obama’s diplomatic magic has also backfired. When Obama and Vice President Biden presumptuously urged President Jalal Talabani to resign and allow Iyad Allawi to replace him, they came up empty-handed, embarrassing themselves and harming our relations with our new ally in the process.⁷⁹ Likewise in Pakistan; Army General Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the British media, “[The average Pakistani who] doesn’t know the United States, doesn’t read about the United States or just watches something on television about the United States, at that level, [the relations] are probably the worst they’ve ever been.” And, he said, the relationship between the U.S. government and the Pakistani government is “on about as rocky a road as I’ve seen.”⁸⁰

Despite multiple overtures, Obama is also continually rebuffed by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who even rejected Obama’s designated ambassador to Caracas.⁸¹ In addition, Chavez has announced he would host a founding conference of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). Claiming the gathering would “change the history of the continent,” Chavez made it clear against whom the conclave was aimed. “For centuries, they’ve imposed on us whatever the North [e.g., the United States] felt like imposing on us!” the dictator thundered. “The time of the South has arrived!” As the Latin American Herald Tribune noted, the conference is intended to counter-act the Organization of American States, a regional grouping that, unlike CELAC, includes the United States.⁸²

Meanwhile, Obama continues to alienate our stalwart ally Israel, seeming to view the prospect of an Israeli pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear weapons program as a bigger threat than the program itself.⁸³ Moreover, not only has he pressured the Israelis to make even more unreciprocated concessions to the Palestinians, he also gratuitously insulted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; after French President Nicolas Sarkozy called Netanyahu a liar during a G20 summit in November 2011, Obama, not realizing their conversation was being captured on microphone, replied, “You are sick of him, but I have to work with him every day.”⁸⁴

Ironically, Obama hasn’t even managed to capitalize on his mistreatment of Israel to improve relations with the Palestinian Authority. To the contrary, after adopting Obama’s own conditions for re-starting talks with Israel, the PA abandoned negotiations and instead, ignoring the administration’s pleas, sought statehood recognition directly from the United Nations.

Even outside the Middle East, Obama has mangled foreign policy across the board. While placating our enemies, Obama has often been thoughtlessly offensive to our allies, particularly Great Britain. The UK Telegraph’s Nile Gardiner wrote a piece in 2010 highlighting “President Obama’s top ten insults against Britain,” and he updated the list in 2011 and in 2012. Included among the slights were “siding with Argentina over the Falklands,” “calling France America’s strongest ally,” “downgrading the special relationship” between the U.S. and Britain, “supporting a federal Europe and undercutting British sovereignty,” “betraying Britain to appease Moscow over the New START Treaty,” “placing a ‘boot on the throat’ of BP,” “throwing Churchill out of the Oval Office,” “DVDs for the Prime Minister,” “insulting words from the State Department,” and “undermining British influence in NATO.”⁸⁵

“During the Bush presidency relations with Japan, China, India, Mexico, Colombia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Great Britain (to name just a few countries) were better than they have been during the Obama years,” observes writer Peter Wehner. He also notes that our relations with France and Germany have chilled under Obama, since both nations’ leaders are skeptical about Obama’s commitment to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and both view the United States as less than a reliable partner in the Eurozone crisis.⁸⁶

Wehner catalogued Obama’s many failed campaign promises on foreign policy, concluding, “What one finds are extravagant promises, from a stronger and more sustained partnership with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Japan, India, and China . . . to ending our dependence on foreign oil, to deepening our engagement to help resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, to closing Guantanamo Bay; to meeting (without preconditions) Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during Obama’s first year in office; to renewed respect for America in the Muslim world; to rapid economic growth in order to maintain our military superiority.”⁸⁷

Heritage Foundation foreign policy experts also note that the Obama Doctrine—“one in which the White House engaged with enemies and undercut allies, apologized for American exceptionalism, and favored the ‘soft power’ of treaties and international organizations” in order to recast America’s image—has yielded “disastrous results.” Syria, they say, is another example. Hoping to engage Bashar al-Assad, Obama soft-peddled his criticism of Assad’s violent crackdown on anti-government protestors. After that, “Syria ordered the attack on the U.S. embassy in Damascus, threatened the U.S. ambassador, and to date has killed more than 7,500 Syrians who are standing against the autocratic government.”⁸⁸

Consider also the administration’s policy toward one small country: Honduras. As recounted in Crimes Against Liberty, the Obama administration worked to undermine the democratically and lawfully elected government in Honduras and supported the lawless dictator Manuel Zelaya, who was eventually exiled from his own country after attempting to illegally extend his term in office. The administration’s bizarre support for Zelaya against the expressed will of the Honduran people, Congress, and Supreme Court was wholly inconsistent with its professed support for democracy, though not with its strange affinity for leftist dictators. Only after it was clear that the Honduran people would not yield to the administration’s bullying did it begin to change course. Finally, the administration belatedly voiced approval of Honduras’ democratically elected president, Porfirio Lobo.⁸⁹

But it soon became apparent that Obama’s team had not really given up on Zelaya. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, revealed that the administration was engaging in backchannel efforts to pressure President Lobo to drop a case against Zelaya for misappropriating government funds and falsifying documents, and to allow Zelaya to return to Honduras from exile in the Dominican Republic. In a letter to Arturo Valenzuela, the assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, Ros-Lehtinen wrote, “I am gravely concerned by reports I have received regarding efforts by U.S. officials to pressure the Government of Honduras to absolve former President Manuel Zelaya of the criminal charges he faces in that country and ask, within all applicable rules and guidelines, that if these reports are accurate, the State Department immediately cease exerting such undue influence over duly elected Honduran government officials acting in accordance with Honduran law.”⁹⁰

The administration was unmoved, hailing a later agreement backed by Venezuela that allowed Zelaya to return to Honduras without being prosecuted and with the freedom to engage in politics. “Hugo Chavez’s handprints are all over this deal,” Ros-Lehtinen declared, warning that the accord opened the door for Chavez to work with Zelaya to undermine Honduran democracy. “It is regrettable and incomprehensible that Honduras continues to be bullied into indulging the incessant demands of Manuel Zelaya and his ALBA cohorts.”⁹¹

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton not only called the signing of the agreement a “great day” for the Honduran people, she praised the Chavez regime for helping to realize it. As if claiming vindication for the administration’s original support for Zelaya, Clinton issued a statement saying, “Thanks to the help of the Colombian and Venezuelan governments, this agreement paves the way for the reintegration of Honduras to the Organization of American States and gives Honduras the opportunity to pursue national reconciliation and end its isolation from the international community.” Chavez, as is his wont, praised the agreement as “an example of the value of the resistance of the people.”⁹²

So what explains Obama’s support for Zelaya? Two released WikiLeaks cables from the U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, suggested that the administration backed him despite being fully aware that he was a threat to Honduran democracy. In a cable, Charles Ford, U.S. ambassador to Honduras, told his successor Hugo Llorens, “Ever the rebellious teenager, Zelaya’s principal goal in office is to enrich himself and his family while leaving a public legacy as a martyr who tried to do good but was thwarted at every turn by powerful, unnamed interests.... His erratic behavior appears most evident when he deliberately stirs street action in protest against his own government policy—only to resolve the issue (teacher complaints, transportation grievances, etc.) at the last moment.” Ford noted that Zelaya had a “sinister” side and that he was surrounded by “a few close advisors with ties to both Venezuela and Cuba and organized crime.” Ford also plainly indicated that Zelaya could not be trusted, saying, “I am unable to brief Zelaya on sensitive law enforcement and counter-narcotics actions due [to] my concern that this would put the lives of U.S. officials in jeopardy.”⁹³

The Wall Street Journal’s Mary O’Grady theorized that the released cables suggest Obama supported the lawless Zelaya regime as a means to improve U.S. relations with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. “The U.S. knew Mr. Zelaya was a threat to democratic Honduras but had decided the country should tolerate his constitutional violations in the interest of realpolitik,” wrote O’Grady. “Practically speaking, Hugo Chavez was the man to please.”⁹⁴

Consider, for example, the prisoner swap that the Obama administration undertook with Russia in July 2010. In exchange for the U.S. freeing the Anna Chapman spy ring and sending them back to Russia, the Kremlin sent to the West four accused espionage agents. However, not all of the Kremlin’s prisoners were actually spies. For example, Igor Sutyagin was a researcher for the USA Canada Institute who had been in detention awaiting trial for over four years and then in prison for six years following his railroaded conviction. He had even been acquitted by a lower court, but was convicted by a higher court in Russia’s notoriously corrupt judicial system, a trial Amnesty International denounced for being politically motivated. Yet instead of referring to Sutyagin as a political prisoner, the Obama administration accepted Russia’s narrative in characterizing the deal as a spy swap.⁹⁵

Some have rightfully criticized this transaction as an illustration of the erroneous thinking behind Obama’s reset policy and, by extension, Obama’s entire approach to foreign policy. “The only thing releasing all of these deep-cover Russian intelligence officers within a matter of days is going to teach Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, an old KGB officer, is that Obama is a pushover—overly focused on making sure not to offend Russia,” observed CNN’s Gene Coyle. “Aside from sending the wrong political message, the quick swap also tells the leadership of the Russian government and the SVR, its intelligence service, that there is really no downside to being caught carrying out espionage in America.”⁹⁶

The hasty prisoner exchange was bad enough, but there is no better example of Obama’s relentless pandering to Russia than on the issue of arms control. On that topic, Obama has displayed unfettered enthusiasm for placating Russian demands even though, as former U.S. arms control official Paula DeSutter argues, the Russians “have violated every agreement we have ever had with them.”⁹⁷

This record casts a troubling light on our recent New START deal with Russia. The deal earned the cautious support of a number of conservatives, anxious to secure some kind of nuclear agreement with Russia and presumably weary of appearing to oppose Obama on every issue. Those reluctant supporters should have become suspicious when Obama tried to get the treaty ratified during the Senate’s lame-duck session in late 2010. He finally succeeded in getting it approved, effective February 2011.

In his typical crisis-mode style, Obama presented ratification as a matter of utmost urgency. He attempted to persuade Republican Senator Jon Kyl to withdraw his opposition by promising to spend an additional $4 billion on nuclear programs. But Kyl, realizing the promise was illusory—and indeed, Kyl later noted that Obama’s revised spending plans effectively eliminated that funding—didn’t take the bait.⁹⁸ He and other opponents were concerned by the severe restrictions the agreement would place on U.S. missile defense and by the treaty’s weak verification measures. As Heritage Foundation nuclear arms and foreign policy experts noted, the treaty’s preamble is a vague “Trojan Horse” that links strategic offensive and defensive weapons and would allow the Russians to withdraw if they perceive the United States to be expanding its ballistic missile defenses.⁹⁹

While Russia had less negotiating leverage than the United States, the terms of the treaty gave it a decided advantage—permitting it to expand its nuclear arsenal while we agreed to downsize ours. Opponents concluded the treaty would leave Russia with a clear advantage in tactical nuclear weapons while gaining the United States little in exchange. And the deal was not just disadvantageous with respect to Russia; opponents also believed it was imprudent to engage in substantial disarmament at a time when rogue nations and terrorists could be getting closer to acquiring nuclear capabilities and other dangerous regimes already possess them.

In his anxiousness for Russia to agree to New START, Obama even agreed to share with the Russians sensitive information concerning the UK’s Trident submarines, which are an integral component of Britain’s strategic deterrent—this, despite Britain’s objections and the opinion of defense analysts that it would undermine Britain’s policy of strategic ambiguity about the size of its nuclear arsenal. Duncan Lennox, editor of Jane’s Strategic Weapons Systems, said that Russia wants “to find out whether Britain has more missiles than we say we have, and having the unique identifiers might help them.”¹⁰⁰

This was not the administration’s first major concession to the Russians. On the seventieth anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland, it slapped Poland and the Czech Republic in the face by rolling over to Russian demands that we scrap Third Site missile defense plans in those countries. According to leaked WikiLeaks cables, Obama cancelled the anti-missile shield mainly in hopes of earning Russia’s support for UN sanctions against Iran.¹⁰¹

Showing it was hardly satiated by the concessions in the New START treaty, in March 2011, Russia made the preposterous demand that it be provided “red button” rights to a new, scaled-down missile defense system the United States has proposed for Europe, essentially insisting on a joint role in operating our own system. “We insist on only one thing,” Russia’s deputy prime minister Sergei Ivanov told Hillary Clinton, speaking about the missile system. “That we are an equal part of it. In practical terms, that means that our office will sit for example in Brussels and agree on a red-button push to launch an interceptor missile, regardless of whether the missile is launched from Poland, Russia or the UK.”¹⁰²

With this, Obama officials finally encountered a demand so outrageous that they rejected it. In November 2011, vindicating the prior warnings of the Heritage Foundation, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev threatened to withdraw Russia from the New START treaty if the United States proceeded with the anti-missile system, even threatening to deploy short-range missiles aimed at U.S. missile defenses sites in Europe. This dire warning, it should be noted, concerned a defensive missile shield focused on a threat from Iran, not Russia.¹⁰³

But it turns out Russia had nothing to worry about. In another accidental “hot mic” incident, Obama told Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on March 26, 2012, “On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved, but it’s important for him [Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin] to give me space.... This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”¹⁰⁴ So Obama wants the Kremlin to know that more “flexibility” is on the way, but since Americans will oppose it, he needs to wait until after his presumed re-election.

Obama gave Medvedev this assurance about a month after more news emerged sure to please the Kremlin: the Obama administration was weighing options to unilaterally cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal by up to 80 percent. At the height of the Cold War during the 1980s, our nuclear arms peaked with some 12,000 strategic warheads. Our numbers have since dropped below 5,000 in 2003, and our current treaty limit is 1,550 deployed strategic warheads. According to the Associated Press, Obama is considering three options: reducing the number of our deployed strategic nuclear weapons to 1,000 – 1,100, to 700 – 800, or to 300 – 400. That last option would reduce us to levels we haven’t had since 1950, during the early phase of the Cold War.¹⁰⁵

Obama has not only compromised our missile defenses with New START and those of our allies around the globe, he would also curtail deployment of additional ground-based interceptors (GBIs) at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California—and he has already nixed ready-to-deploy missile defenses with the cancelation of the Air Force’s Airborne Laser program whereby converted 747s with high-intensity lasers could destroy enemy missiles in their “vulnerable boost phase.”¹⁰⁶

All these concessions on arms control come on top of potentially devastating cuts to our conventional forces. At the beginning of 2012, Obama announced a new military strategy to include $487 billion in cuts over the next decade. Our military troop strength will be cut by 27,000 for the Army and 20,000 for the Marines, while our naval strength has already fallen from 429 ships in 1991 to 287 today.¹⁰⁷ “This budget strategy is a road map of American decline,” columnist Charles Krauthammer argued. “It is going to reduce our capacity. It does exactly what the president had said he was not going to do, which is it will adapt our capacity and our strategies to fit a budget.... It will make it extremely hard to carry on the role we have for 70 years.”¹⁰⁸

Although Russia hasn’t been capable of rivaling the United States in space militarization—which is why the Kremlin has been determined ever since the Reagan era to keep us from developing our own space assets—we face increasing competition from China. According to investigative journalist Omri Ceren, Beijing has “no interest in even pretending to reciprocate limitations on space development.”¹⁰⁹ That is especially problematic considering the Obama administration is bent on foregoing our pursuit of space militarization irrespective of China’s activity. Eli Lake, an expert in geopolitics for the Washington Times, reported that the Obama administration is trying to establish international rules for space launches and satellite operations that skeptics warn will compromise our ability to deploy military systems to shield satellites from space weaponry being developed by China and other nations.¹¹⁰

While the administration has so far been resistant to sign treaties with Russia or China limiting space weaponry, it has signaled a willingness to enter into agreements aimed at reducing space debris that could collide into satellites, including acceptance of the European Union’s draft Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities. The administration insists this would not compromise our national interests in space or limit our research. Yet some fear it could unintentionally limit our deployment and development of satellites that track orbital debris and other satellites. Peter Marquez, former National Security Council director of space policy for President George W. Bush and for President Obama, said it could also lead other states to set limits on U.S. defenses in space. Additionally, “it leaves open the door... for the United States to be forced to disclose the nature of its intelligence collection activities and capabilities from orbit.”¹¹¹

Others, such as Rick Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, are concerned that such deals do not adequately account for the Chinese threat to U.S. satellites. “One gets the impression from this document [a U.S.-French agreement to share space debris data] that the Obama administration simply wants to ignore the Chinese threat in hopes it will just go away,” said Fisher. “There is apparently no consideration for developing U.S. active defenses for space that would more effectively deter China.”¹¹²

Republican officials are also dubious about the administration’s stated willingness to adopt the EU code of conduct for outer space activities. In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, thirty-seven Republican senators wrote, “We are deeply concerned that the administration sign the United States on to a multilateral commitment with a multitude of potentially highly damaging implications for sensitive military and intelligence programs (current, planned or otherwise) as well as a tremendous amount of commercial activity.” The senators pressed for an explanation as to what impact the code of conduct would have on “the research and development, testing and deployment of a kinetic defensive system in outer space that is capable of defeating an anti-satellite weapon, such as the one tested by the People’s Republic of China in 2007.”¹¹³

The concern is that given his approach to arms control, Obama is moving forward with these seemingly innocuous agreements that could in fact severely restrict our anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) capabilities in lieu of entering into formal agreements that would require Senate approval. As one congressional staffer said, “There is a suspicion that this is a slippery slope to arms control for space-based weapons, anti-satellite weapons and a back door to potentially limiting missile defense.”¹¹⁴

These developments should be of significant concern since China appears to be advancing its space arms and defense technology programs. In 2006, China reportedly used an ASAT that effectively blinded a U.S. satellite, and in 2007, used one to destroy one of their own satellites. These incidents, among others, prompted then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates to conclude that China’s pursuit of ASATs was designed to enhance their power and marginalize ours. More worrisome, especially in view of our exploding national debt and increasingly vulnerable position with China as one of our principal creditors, is China’s clear unwillingness to reciprocate any commitments we might make to limit space arms exploration. While the State Department has been negotiating with the EU on language in the Code of Conduct, and the U.S. and Russia are at least discussing the prospect of framing some mutual understanding on space-based activities, China has reportedly declined even to discuss the issue.¹¹⁵

Further, in 2010 alone, China launched fifteen satellites, marking the first time since the Cold War that any nation has equaled the number of American launches.¹¹⁶ And in November 2011, the China National Space Administration achieved an unmanned satellite rendezvous and docking with a prototype space station module. This docking marks a key step toward China’s goal of launching and operating a manned space station in Low-Earth Orbit.

While China is rapidly enhancing its space capabilities, President Obama has unilaterally dismantled ours. The U.S. shuttle program is finished without a successor in the wings. Experts have noted that China will probably have a fully operational space lab, and possibly a space station in earth’s orbit by 2020—the same year when our International Space Station could be decommissioned, which would leave China with the sole capability of hosting a permanent human presence in space, thus posing a serious threat to America’s national security.¹¹⁷

Even as he disarms America, Obama is accepting or even promoting the spread of military weapons, military-related technology, and nuclear power throughout the world. For example, it’s a little-known fact that the Obama administration is selling huge amounts of weaponry to foreign governments, not all of them reliable U.S. allies. Indeed, the administration is revamping arms export rules to relax oversight of U.S. arms sales. Author Peter Schweizer points to the “stunning statistic” that the Department of Defense last year informed Congress of its plans to sell some $103 billion in weapons to overseas buyers, when the average yearly sales between 1995 and 2005 were $13 billion. Presently, almost half our arm sales are to the volatile Middle East. Schweizer speculates that Obama is increasing arms sales to stimulate the U.S. economy, which he calls “a cynical and dangerous approach to arms sales,” given the increased risk such sales involve.¹¹⁸

Jeff Abramson, deputy director of the Arms Control Association, calls these sales “an Obama arms bazaar.” The centerpiece of this bazaar shocked many observers: in 2010, the Obama administration struck a mammoth, $60 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. The deal, the single largest arms sale to a foreign nation in our history, would equip the Saudis with a fully modernized and powerful air force.¹¹⁹

In addition to arming certain foreign countries to the teeth, Obama made it clear he has no objection to Venezuela developing nuclear energy. In October 2010, following dictator Hugo Chavez’s consummation of a deal with Russia to build Venezuela’s first nuclear power plant, Obama said, “Our attitude is that Venezuela has rights to peacefully develop nuclear power.” Even Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was probably surprised that a U.S. president would be so easily persuaded of the benign intent both of Russia’s presence in Venezuela and of the development of nuclear power there; Venezuela, after all, is an oil powerhouse that—like Iran—hardly needs nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Venezuela has also purchased more than $4 billion of weapons from Russia and agreed to allow Russia more access to its oil fields.

Furthermore, the same week Obama selected General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to serve as his top outside economic adviser,¹²⁰ GE announced it would sign a joint-venture agreement under which it would share its most advanced airplane electronics with China’s state-owned Aviation Industry Corp. of China. The deal prohibits the use of this technology for military purposes, but as Investors.com editorial writers noted, “China’s disrespect for intellectual property rights is legendary,” as is its “ability to hack into and retrieve information from computer systems worldwide.”¹²¹

That same week, Obama announced an agreement with China to increase cooperation on nuclear security. The deal involves the formation of a jointly financed nuclear security center in China, which would provide training to improve security at nuclear facilities and accounting of nuclear materials. It also calls for the sharing of nuclear detection technology, though most of that technology and expertise will be provided by the United States.¹²²

China was eager to benefit from our technology, but they have shown no interest in sitting down to arms reduction talks, which is unsurprising, since Obama’s enthusiasm for reducing our nuclear arsenal gives them little incentive to bargain. When Defense Secretary Gates invited the Chinese to arms talks in January 2011 while in Beijing, they said they’d consider it. John Tkacik, a China expert and former State Department official, interpreted this response to mean, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” He added, “For the past 20 years, we’ve given the Chinese information briefings and tours of our military facilities without demanding any reciprocity. And, as a result, we haven’t gotten any reciprocity.”¹²³

Meanwhile, China is aggressively enhancing its arms capabilities. Its own government reports show that it is continuing with its pattern of double digit defense spending increases, with a jump of 11.2 percent in 2012.¹²⁴ It is deploying the Dong Feng 21D, a mobile missile capable of destroying aircraft carriers; has launched its own aircraft carrier; and is flight testing the J-20, a fifth-generation stealth fighter. But the United States, notwithstanding the ongoing War on Terror and its overseas commitments, is drawing down its own capabilities irrespective of any international arms deals, largely due to the Democrats’ spending priorities and their ambivalence toward America’s global military supremacy.

In 2009, America’s air dominance was significantly diminished when it terminated the F-22 Raptor, replacing it with the F-35 Lightning, which is behind in production and riddled with cost overruns. Defense Secretary Gates had capped the U.S. F-22 program at 187 aircraft—instead of the planned 332—on the assumption that China would be slow to deploy advanced fourth-generation fighters and that Russia wouldn’t produce a fifth-generation aircraft until the distant future.

But it’s already clear that the administration miscalculated, to the United States’ detriment. The Chinese Air Force has since purchased from Russia 176 fourth-generation fighters comprising 100 advanced SU-30s and 76 SU-27s. China has now deployed more than 300 other fourth-generation fighters and is helping to finance Russia’s development of the T-50, a fifth-generation fighter, which supposedly incorporates stealth technology.

All this severely undermines Gates’ rationale for prematurely scrapping the Raptor. Obama and the Left’s insistence on reckless defense cuts, instead of tightening our domestic spending belt, is also ominous for the F-35 Lightning, with which the administration is replacing the Raptor. These cuts could reduce the size and scope of the already-strained F-35 program, which would put enormous pressure on the already strained F-22 Raptors’ workload.¹²⁵

Contrary to their bitter resistance to the smallest cuts in domestic spending, President Obama and his Democratic colleagues in Congress seem eager to make major defense cuts—in keeping with their view that the key to diplomacy is proving to the rest of the world how peaceful we are. The Budget Control Act of 2011 established the so-called supercom-mittee to find $1.2 trillion in cuts (meaning reductions in spending, not actual cuts) lest an automatic sequester trigger mandatory cuts in domestic and military spending, in equal measure. The Democrats thus forced a deal whereby the defense budget would be reduced dollar for dollar with the domestic budget, though defense only constitutes 20 percent of the budget.¹²⁶

It’s not as though we are so far ahead of other powers militarily that we can afford to trim away some perceived surplus. Australian military analysts and Rand Coproration have conducted wargaming to assess the likely outcome of war between the United States and China over the disputed Taiwan Strait. Rand produced an extensive simulation projecting that although the U.S. would enjoy a 6 to 1 kill ratio over Chinese aircraft, we would nevertheless lose the conflict. Even if every U.S. missile destroyed an opponent, enough attackers would survive to destroy our tankers, as well as our command and control and intelligence-gathering aircraft. Andrew Davies, program director for operations and capabilities for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told Aviation Week, “The silver-bullet platforms are fantastic . . . where a small number of them can completely overwhelm a relatively small power.” But against China, a small, high-tech force might not be so formidable, he warns.¹²⁷

Of course, our difficulties will mount the more China ramps up and we scale down. “I would say that the military balance is undoubtedly shifting as China’s military expands faster than other regional nations,” says Admiral Robert Willard, chief of U.S. Pacific Command. This is not mere alarmism, but a warning for us to reverse this trend before it reaches a dangerous point. As Max Boot cautions, it’s not that China will attack us tomorrow, but “the risk of conflict goes up when China has less respect for our deterrent capacity. And with the Obama administration and many lawmakers pushing for even steeper defense cuts than those already announced, China’s estimation of our deterrent capacity can only go down.” ¹²⁸

Likewise, Lieutenant General David Deptula, once the top intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force and also an F-15 pilot, warns that “for the first time, our claim to air supremacy is in jeopardy.” America, he says, is “dangerously ill-prepared to stop the gap-closing efforts of China and Russia.” He estimates that within a decade, Russia and China will have airframes compatible to the F-22. Not only are they catching up to us on that aircraft, the latest production of which we have now cancelled, but the majority of our front line combat aircraft is aging without replacements, he said. Making matters worse, there is “a global revolution to modernize air defense systems,” and Russia and China are building and deploying better surface-to-air missile systems that could eventually overwhelm our fighter aircraft. Deptula cautions, “When taken in total, our potential adversaries can create a nearly impenetrable box that our legacy fighters cannot enter, thus denying us our air supremacy.” ¹²⁹ This combination of factors along with others, he says, makes Gates’ sanguinity “foolish at best.”¹³⁰

During his short time in office, President Obama has shown a disturbing lack of concern for our national security based on his flawed ideology and his much greater interest in advancing his domestic agenda. His misguided priorities and their destructive consequences were starkly revealed in reports that Department of Energy Inspector General Gregory Friedman discovered that the rush to distribute $3.5 billion in stimulus funds to the DOE’s Smart Grid Investment Grant Program (SGIG) may have compromised, rather than enhanced, our national security. “The issues we found were due, in part, to the accelerated planning, development, and deployment approach adopted by the SGIG program,” the IG’s report said. “We also found that the Department was so focused on quickly disbursing Recovery Act funds that it had not ensured personnel received adequate grants management training. Without improvements, there remains a risk that the goals and objectives of the Smart Grid program may not be fully realized.”¹³¹

Indeed, Obama’s reckless approach to national security is strikingly evident in his slashing of our military strength across the board, an unprecedented policy during wartime. As the Telegraph’s James Corum argues, although Obama presents many of these reductions as cost-cutting moves, his real agenda is doubtless to downsize America’s dominant military role in the world.¹³² Obama adheres to the leftist worldview that America is often a harmful, bellicose force in the world because of, among other things, its opposition to the “progressive” global agenda. The leftists’ theory, being discredited in real time before our very eyes, is that if the United States disarms, other nations will follow suit.

To the contrary, Obama’s unilateral initiatives have only emboldened our enemies and rivals. Meanwhile, as Islamists ascend to power via the Arab Spring uprisings, his administration panders to the Muslim Brotherhood and even whitewashes their Islamist agenda, again displaying the naïve conviction that foreign governments and political parties will act according to our goodwill gestures instead of their own interests. The Brotherhood, for its part, is perfectly open about where its interests lie: in creating a worldwide Islamic caliphate. No U.S. engagement campaigns or outreach efforts will change that. So they’ll continue to pocket Obama’s aid packages and partake in his political training programs, but he should not be surprised when they continue to make good on their vow that “what was acceptable before the revolution is no longer.”

“SERIOUS RESERVATIONS”

“I WILL MAKE IT MY BUSINESS TO IMPEACH HIM”

GADDAFI NEVER THREATENED CIVILIAN MASSACRE

“A RADICAL REFORMULATION OF 70 YEARS OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY”

THE KINETIC PIECES ARE INTERMITTENT

A “MASSIVE HUMILIATION FOR THE WESTERN ALLIANCE”

THOUSANDS OF SURFACE-TO-AIR MISSILES DISAPPEAR

“WE LED THIS THING”

“A NATIONWIDE UPRISING AGAINST MUBARAK DOES NOT EXIST”

“PERHAPS THE STUPIDEST STATEMENT... IN U.S. INTERNATIONAL HISTORY”

THE ARAB SPRING: “AN UNSHACKLING OF ISLAM”

“THE HEIGHT OF IRRESPONSIBILITY”

“U.S. FAVORABLE RATINGS ACROSS THE ARAB WORLD HAVE PLUMMETED”

ELSEWHERE AROUND THE GLOBE

THE “RESET” WITH RUSSIA

“A BACK DOOR” TO LIMITING MISSILE DEFENSE

ARMING THE WORLD

“THE MILITARY BALANCE IS UNDOUBTEDLY SHIFTING”