This is What Declining American Power Looks Like
writes
Benny Huang —
Emperor Nero was said to have played
the fiddle while Rome burned; Barrack Obama was busy working on his golf
game while Iraq did the same. According to his press secretary Jay
Carney, the
president was fully engaged in that whole Iraq thing while he chipped and putted his way across Porcupine Creek, an exclusive golf club.
And maybe that’s where he should have been. I don’t know.
… A little known fact about Obama is that he has fired more hellfire missiles that any other Nobel Peace Prize winner!
So he isn’t afraid to pull the trigger and make bad guys die. Yet
despite using drones like playtoys, Obama’s presidency marks an American
retreat. I’ll leave that up to the reader to determine whether that’s a
good thing or a bad thing. I know some conservatives and some liberals
who can agree that sitting out the next global conflict would be just
what the doctor ordered.
Where did it all begin? If I had to put a finger on it, I would say
that it began in April of 2009 when, in the midst of his world apology
tour, Mr. Obama bowed to the Saudi king. American presidents have not
traditionally bowed before foreign leaders. We fought a revolution so
that we wouldn’t have to. Though he lied and said that his obvious bow
was not a bow, liberals pooh-poohed the whole thing, and pretty soon he
was bowing to the Emperor of Japan, the president of China, a robot, and
probably the bellhop at his hotel.
The message was clear: We’re not the same superpower we once were. We have been humbled.
Then he began making deep cuts to the military, which is usually a
popular thing to do when most people have been deluded into believing
that the military receives more funding than welfare programs or
education, a preposterous lie. Proposed personnel cuts would reduce the
Army in size to a number not seen since 1940. The future of the A-10
Thunderbolt, every infantryman’s best friend, is uncertain due to budget
cuts. Long-held garrisons in Europe are being closed.
Not surprisingly, the bad guys of the world are misbehaving. In
Egypt, a “pro-democracy” movement that looked suspiciously like a
pro-Shariah law movement swept Hosni Mubarak, an American ally, from
power. Russia tore away a piece of its neighbor, the Ukraine, without
any fear of reprisal from the US or NATO. In Syria, Bashar Assad defied
Obama’s “red lines” and (likely) used chemical weapons against his own
people. In Iraq, a fledging force of Islamists is routing the Iraqi Army
and taunting the United States.
This is what it looks like when the world’s only superpower decides it’s going to get in touch with its inner self.
American fingers have been plugging holes in too many levees for far
too long. We’ve held back the North Koreans from attacking their
southern cousins, but for how much longer? How many small former
satellite states will Putin decide to invade? What’s to prevent China
from taking Taiwan? If the Iranians create a worldwide economic
catastrophe by blockading the Strait of Hormuz, who will stop them?
Not us. No one is afraid of big, bad America anymore.
It’s clear that the United States has been overextended. In every
corner of the world, wherever there is a conflict, the United States
picks a side and attempts to influence outcomes using hard or soft
power. No other country takes foreign policy to such extremes. Never in
the history of the world has one country attempted to do so
much—pledging to defend nations such as Japan, Taiwan, and Germany,
using its navy to fight piracy and keep the world’s shipping lanes open,
battling the narcotics trade, and responding to humanitarian disasters.
We do it all!
Whether we can keep doing it is doubtful. Besides the fact that we’re
in debt, the young people of our nation, like most of their peers in
post-industrial nations, aren’t joining the military in droves.
Yet we should not forget that the news we’re hearing now about the
resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, about ISIS in Iraq, and about a
truculent Russian Federation, are really stories about declining
American power. This is what happens when Team America: World Police
decides to turn in its badge.
