On Tuesday, American ISIS hostage Kayla Mueller was confirmed dead. The next day the U.S. evacuated its embassy in Yemen, the country President Obama cited “as an American success in fighting terrorism.” Yet, Obama has reacted to it all with “alarming lassitude and passivity.” Charles Krauthammer via the New York Daily News,
Russia pushes deep into eastern Ukraine… Iran extends its hegemony over four Arab capitals — Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and now Sanaa.
And America watches. Obama calls the policy “strategic patience.” That’s a synonym for “inaction,” made to sound profoundly “strategic.”
Take Russia. The only news out of Obama’s one-hour press conference with Angela Merkel this week was that he still can’t make up his mind whether to supply Ukraine with defensive weapons. The Russians have sent in T-80 tanks and Grad rocket launchers. We’ve sent in humanitarian aid that includes blankets, MREs and psychological counselors….
Why no anti-tank and other defensive weapons? Because we are afraid that arming the victim of aggression will anger the aggressor.
Such on-the-ground appeasement goes well with the linguistic appeasement whereby Obama dares not call radical Islam by name…
Obama’s Christians-have-sinned dismissal of the West’s moral standing is not new, however. It is just a reprise of the theme of his post-inauguration 2009 confessional world tour…
The purpose and the effect of such an indictment is to undermine any moral claim to American world leadership. The line between the Washington prayer breakfast and the Ukrainian grief counselors is direct and causal. Once you’ve discounted your own moral authority, once you’ve undermined your own country’s moral self-confidence, you cannot lead.
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