By Doug Patton
When the topic is using our military to keep the American people safe, this president seems downright bored, but the prospect of using troops to ride to the rescue of a foreign neighbor makes him animated beyond all reasonable proportion. When he speaks of our intelligence services, one would think he was speaking about the enemy; but when the issue is redistributing our wealth and dictating every aspect of our daily lives, he is positively giddy.
Army psychiatrist/Muslim terrorist Nidal Hassan shot up Fort Hood, Texas, and Obama told us not to "jump to conclusions." His first formal statement on the subject was preceded by a "shout-out" to someone in the audience before he could get around to talking about the worst domestic act of terrorism on American soil since 9/11.
Obama’s hand-picked commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, told him last August that deploying forty thousand additional troops was essential to avoiding failure in Afghanistan. After ignoring those recommendations for three months
— while he tried in vain to administer life support to an unconstitutional health care bill the American people never wanted — our ditherer-in-chief decided to follow the course leading to failure by sending thirty thousand troops instead.Once he had finally made his decision, Obama went to West Point for a presidential dog-and-pony show, using academy cadets as his props. He was trying to look tough and cool in the face of adversity. Instead, he just looked indifferent. In fact, his speech was so dispassionate it put some of the cadets to sleep.
When the al Qaida-trained underwear bomber tried to kill three hundred Americans on Christmas Day, Obama dithered some more, letting his hapless Homeland Security Secretary tell us that "the system worked." By the time he actually got around to saying something about the incident, the terrorist had lawyered up and the decision had already been made to try him in civilian court. He mouthed the words, "the buck stops with me" as he spoke of "systemic failures," but the meaning was clear: "it’s the CIA’s fault."
Now, the Anointed One has latched onto the plight of the people of Haiti, millions of whom have been victimized by a corrupt government, a virtually nonexistent infrastructure and a severe lack of capitalism
— all of which contributed to making the recent earthquake a catastrophe. Like the ill-prepared victims of Hurricane Katrina, who had been trained to look to government for their salvation, the poor Haitians — especially the children — have been devastated beyond their ability to even comprehend what is happening to them.President Obama has pledged $100 million in U.S. Government aid for the relief effort, but we all know it will be much more. Of course, because of Washington ineptitude, we don’t currently have that money; so in order to make good on the billions we are promising to pour into that destitute nation, we must go, as usual, hat in hand to China to borrow it.
No authority is given to the president
— or Congress — to create a national health care program. Nothing gives him the right to interfere in our lives and our commerce. He has no legal power except that which is granted him by the people and their Constitution. Yet Barack Obama seems to believe that he has the right to meddle in the lives of his own citizens and to save the world from every tragedy that befalls it. This is a man who has little interest in his actual constitutional duties, but who is gleeful at the prospect of interfering in the lives of Americans or acting as superhero to the globe. Someone needs to break the news to him that he is neither the savior of humanity nor the president of the world.Doug Patton is a former speechwriter and public policy advisor who now works as a freelance writer. His weekly columns appear in newspapers across the country and on various Internet websites, including Human Events Online and GOPUSA.com, where is a senior writer and state editor.
