Give the Devil His Due

April 12, 2015

As I watch events unfold in this country and around the world, I become more and more convinced that President Obama is far too underestimated and underrated. Of course, my saying this is not in any way meant as an expression of admiration or praise, but rather is intended more as giving the devil his due.

I believe Obama deserves a lot of credit. He promised to fundamentally transform the country and, unfortunately, he has kept his word. But why think small when he can do much more damage by fundamentally transforming the world. And, for this too, he seems to be on a clear path to success.

How has he done it, you may ask? Well, I am afraid, his ingenuity has been very effective. He started off by dividing America. Instead of building on the momentum we had in becoming an even more united "United States", he exploited our differences. He successfully flipped us upside down. Hard work and resulting success are now frowned upon. The more successful a person is, the more they are to be stigmatized. How hard a person has to work or the sacrifices they have to make to become successful has become irrelevant. At the same time, shifting to a sense of entitlement has replaced hard work. Equal opportunity has been transformed into equal results. It no longer matters whether a person works 70 hours a week, week after week, year after year to become successful. The person who is capable but who does not work should be entitled to all of the same benefits. In fact, the hard-working people have been told that they need to step up their game so that those who do not work or do not want to work hard can have equal results. To summarize, Obama has redefined the American dream from working hard and supporting your family to having others do it for you.

Building on his socialist momentum, and benefitting from Democratic control of both houses of Congress, it was not hard for Obama to impose Obamacare on the land. He abrasively told hard-working people that it is only fair and the right thing for them to pay for the birth control of everyone else. It did not matter that providing health care to some meant that many others who had it would lose it and that everyone else would pay more. Lies had become so common that they became expected and were accepted. "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Period", "If you like your health care plan you can keep your health care plan" and "Your health insurance rates will go down" were just some of the many lies made to the people.

Religious rights, once held sacred in this country, have come under increasing attack. While once appreciated as separating us from tyrannical countries that suppressed religious rights, the freedom to pursue religious beliefs has been demonized. Freedom of religion has been transformed into freedom from religion. The push for diversity and inclusion has come to exclude religiously-observant people. Constitutional gun ownership rights have been fought continuously. But the fight has been aimed at innocent people, not gangs, drug lords, criminals or the mentally-challenged. Advocates for abortion have pushed for those rights to be permitted at later and later stages. The cries for tolerance have become demands by the most intolerant people. Today in America, it is acceptable, even honorable, to say vote for me for president because I am black. Vote for me for president because I am a woman. But do not dare to say vote for me because I believe in the American dream of old, for I am a hard-worker and am successful.

Inevitably, it is no longer sufficient for the hard-workers to simply support the rest of the country. They have been asked (actually required) to spread the wealth beyond our borders and those outside the borders have been welcomed to come here to partake of the wealth. Of course, they could come here legally or illegally, it does not matter, and anyone thinking otherwise is labeled as a racist. In fact, for adhering to certain fundamental American principles, the Tea Party has been branded as terrorists. Even though Obama has repeatedly promised to secure the border problem, his only real actions have been to encourage illegal immigration and to try to single-handedly legalize illegals. Although in the past he admitted he could not take the latter step unilaterally, he has become brazen enough to act without Congress. Acting unconstitutionally by bypassing Congress using a pen and phone certainly qualifies as transforming the country. Give the devil his due, he has openly declared his intentions to use his pen and phone to bypass Congress on a host of issues.

Obama also always openly sides with certain racial and ethnic minorities. This too has helped divide the country as he has consistently taken their side regardless of the facts and circumstances. The law enforcement community is now frowned upon. The hard and dangerous work of law enforcement personnel is ignored. Ignored at least until there is an incident involving a dispute as to whether law enforcement acted properly. Then they are no longer ignored, but instead have to overcome the presumption of guilt to prove they acted properly. There are no tears shed, nor are there words of anguish spoken, when the victims are members of law enforcement. That is quite understandable as such tears and words do not have a place in dividing or fundamentally transforming the country.

The treatment of law enforcement is entirely consistent with the treatment of our military. Our terrific military, once a source of tremendous pride, has become an object of scorn. Obama has successfully reduced the levels of readiness of our branches of the military to alarmingly low levels. Levels that are causing great consternation among top military brass. The pride once felt for our military patriots has been redirected to certain minority groups in our country and to certain foreign countries. As charitable as he has been with funding for illegal immigrants and lower income communities, Obama refuses to show any generosity to our servicemen and women. In the fundamentally transformed America, it is the soldier who is a deserter that "serves with honor and distinction". It is for such a soldier that Obama is willing to negotiate with the enemy and free five radical Islamic terrorists. But military personnel who truly served with honor and distinction and are being held captive against their will are forgotten and discarded. He was silent on a jailed marine in Mexico. As expected, that marine was eventually freed without the expense of having to release any terrorists. And Obama drools over Iran while a marine languishes in one of its worst prisons. He certainly has delivered on his promise of change, so give the devil his due.

Obama has repeatedly expressed disdain and disgust for interrogation methods that were previously in effect and has even threatened prosecutions. This is far too ignored. The audacity of threatening such action against Americans who were trying to keep our country safe after 9/11. Those involved should have taken that threat seriously as the independent DOJ has proven to be not so independent. The DOJ has been quite predictable as to where it stands and whether or not it would take action in a particular case. One only needs to look at where Obama stands on a particular issue. Scandals can be ignored. It is now acceptable to use independent agencies to target political opponents. This is certainly a country that has fundamentally been transformed.

Lies, scandals, turmoil. I believe the American people are shell shocked. As if they are not reeling enough from all of the domestic agitation, they now have to embrace Obama's aggressive international offensive. Interestingly, he is following the same pattern. Everything is being flipped upside down.

Obama recently extended warm and sincere new year greetings to Iran, our biggest enemy and the largest state-sponsor of terrorism. Of course, he does not acknowledge such terrorism so there should be nothing wrong with serenading them with Auld Lang Syne. Maybe it is because he removed Iran and Hezbollah from the list of terrorists that he is putting out the red carpet to welcome them to the world community. Obama says only the warmest and nicest things about Islam and refuses to acknowledge, much less condemn, radical Islamic terrorism. Instead, he views global climate change as the biggest threat to civilization. Another effective distraction.

Obama is vocal about expressing his discontent with Christians and Jews, especially our close ally, Israel. And he has done so repeatedly. Obama recently condemned the prime minister of Israel for making statements that are innocuous to America in appealing to his constituents before an election. Statements that pale in comparison to the egregious statements made by Obama and his Administration in connection with elections in our country. Incredibly, Obama chooses to defend the venomous calls of "death to America" and other hostile threats from the "Supreme Leader" of Iran as simply coming from a leader who is appealing to his constituents. He condemns Israel for being skeptical of a peaceful two-state solution even though it does not have a partner for peace, but is not troubled by IS and other radical Islamic terrorists threatening Americans on U.S. soil. He blatantly lied to Jews and Israel when he claimed Jerusalem would always be the undivided capital of Israel, but now looks to impose its division with the Palestinians. He claims to be insisting on protecting the rights of all religions. The only rights that need to be protected in Jerusalem are those of Jews and Christians. It is appalling that in Israel, today, Muslims have authority over the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, and use that authority to restrict the rights of Jews. But this is only part of Obama's larger lie of imposing a false peace on Israel and jeopardizing its future. Somehow, while making these false claims about Jerusalem, Obama stays silent as IS destroys religious sites at will. The devil has chutzpah, so give him his due.

Middle East experts keep pointing to the map to show the expanding dominating influence of Shia Iran on one side of the terrorist spectrum and Sunni IS on the other. Now, admittedly against what would be expected, suppose that those two terrorist groups unite to speed up the process of establishing the Islamic caliphate. This would be just temporary; they will reckon with each other when the time comes. Take a fresh look at the map. How much more frightening does it become? Now add nuclear weapons to the picture. Ultimately, it comes down to this. Instead of having a president who acknowledges this grave threat and is doing everything in his power to fight it, he is actually emboldening and empowering both Iran and IS, which is no small feat. While he is doing that, he also is trying to eliminate the obstacle that Israel poses to the caliphate. For someone that genuinely protects the rights of some, and pretends to protect the rights of many, he is blatantly casting Israel and the region's Christians to the slaughter.

Obama cannot be as bad at negotiating a deal as he is trying to lead everyone to believe. Again, people believing this would be both underestimating and underrating him. It would mean the sitting President of the United States does not understand the concept of leverage in negotiating an agreement. Or of negotiating from a position of strength instead of a position of weakness. One should not be fooled for a split second. In proving that Obama understands full well when he is negotiating with leverage and from a position of strength, one need look no farther than his interactions with Israel. To get the Israelis and Palestinians to sit together at the negotiating table, he unconscionably insists that Israel free convicted Palestinian terrorists and murderers. Yet, he has the gall to acknowledge that there are innocent incarcerated civilians in Iran and Cuba, but demands nothing from those countries, countries who are obviously dealing (or were dealing) from a position of weakness, and is prepared to cave to their demands. To Cuba, which I not so boldly predict the President will remove from his fantasy list of terrorist groups, Obama makes a ludicrous statement about not wanting to pay any more attention to history. Here I will be bold and say that one of the main reasons Obama has so easily transformed our great country and the entire world is because we are ignorant or chose to turn a blind eye to history. But the Jewish people have a history that is too long and painful for us to make that mistake. We know it all too well and cannot and will not ignore it, whether the devil likes it or not.

In public, Obama has deliberately surrounded himself with stooges to help further his cause. It is amateur hour at the State Department. John Kerry found himself as Secretary of State for a reason. Criticizing your fellow American soldiers in war also will earn you many points with Obama. Harf, Psaki (before her new role). Where do these people come from? White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest has one problem. He is not a good speaker. That could be a slight problem given his role. In his defense, it is almost like he is trying to convince himself first, before he comes out with his statements. You get the feeling he is thinking to himself, do I really have to say this, as the words are leaving his mouth. But this is what Obama wants the public to see. He tries to mislead the people into thinking and claiming he is incompetent. But that, at least on his level, is hardly the case. He is supported by closer, more competent and, therefore, more dangerous administration officials on a more private basis.

Fundamentally transforming the country, at the current time, means taking more aggressive unilateral action. It means acting by pen and phone more frequently and more drastically while bypassing Congress. I am tempted to say more desperately too since he only has a couple of years left in office. But fundamentally transforming the country also could mean staying in office for more than two terms. Lying or creating a ruse to stay in office would not be at all surprising. Of course, this also would give him more time to finish fundamentally transforming the world. He is doing quite the job at that so far. Let's give the devil his due.