Land of the Fake Red Lines, and the Home of the Empty Threats

It seems that the President of the United States has had an issue keeping his word on, well, pretty much every damn thing he says.  From his signature Healthcare law to military action. 

We have all heard the famous line with his healthcare law “If you like your plan, you can keep it,” he said the same thing about our doctors too.  Here is a video with President Obama stating so, Keep Your Plan.  Years later in 2014 he admits in an interview with WebMD that some people will have to change plans and/or doctors in a manner to save money.  Here is a video with President Obama admitting people will have to change doctors, Change Doctors. 

This is just showing the beginning of his lie spectrum.  Now I am going to get into what is really hurting our Country’s reputation.

When Syrian President Bashar Assad spoke of the use of chemical weapons on his own people, President Obama stated that if he did so, it would cross a “red line for us” and might trigger a U.S. military response. You can review a timeline of the Syrian controversy here Red Line Timeline.  As we have all seen, nothing was done militarily by the United States even after Assad had used chemical weapons on his citizens, including women and children.

President Obama has said so many things that he has not come thru on, issues that involved both foreign and domestic people.  The President not following through on the Syrian President as he said he would even after a verified chemical attack, show great weakness in his leadership and on the United States as a country.  The world laughs at the U.S. now, we do not have any respect left for us.

President Putin of Russia has realized how meaningless that President Obama’s red lines, warnings, and threats of military action are.  Whenever Putin invaded Crimea, it was a test to see if anyone in the world would do anything about it.  Other than a few sanctions and frozen assets, nothing has been done.  Putin is not worried about either of these and Russia is self-efficient enough to support itself for a good while.

There are currently tens of thousands of Russian troops bordering eastern Ukraine, and I am betting that Putin will move into eastern Ukraine and take it over as he did Crimea. Putin has an end game in his mind and is definitely not worried about any type of military intervention from the U.S.  It looks like to me that Putin is going after his Soviet Union and rebuilding the Russian empire.

The United States is a world power and a world leader; at least we used to be.  We grew an empire in the late 19^th to early 20^th century, and with that empire came an understood respect.  Most people and countries did not like and respect us because we were nice.  Respect comes from fear and understanding boundaries.  Several countries found that out the hard way. Today, countries are calling our leaders’ bluff and wiping out what respect we have left.  If this keeps happening, it won’t take long for a country to try our limits and move in on us.  According to history, a World War is about due.

The moral of this blog is that our country is not being lead by a strong leader.  We are becoming the person that no one believes anything that they say because they never do as they say that they would.  We have fought hard for what we have, and loved ones have did while doing so.  It has also taken hundreds of years to get to where we are.  When people see that red, white, and blue flying high in the sky, they should get a feeling of a strong, bold, and uniform country that will do whatever necessary to protect its land and citizens.

Obama and Foreign Policy

On March 7^th, 2014, Reihan Salam wrote an article in National Review Online titled “The Agenda.”  In speaking to the American citizens, Salam asks if the Crimea crisis has anything to do with President Obama. 

While the author reviews some of President Obama’s interactions with foreign altercations within the last decade, he claims that Obama does not hold his ground very strongly, nor does the President portray clear, solid, and confident decisions when it comes to foreign affairs.  The author writes, “Though the president came out in favor of an armed intervention after (contested) allegations of the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons against opposition forces, he seemed ambivalent about the idea, and he abandoned it relatively quickly.” 

Salam also leans toward the idea that Obama is an antiwar politician, despite what Obama says in the following.  “In a 2002 address, Obama argued that to oppose the Iraq War was not to be “anti-war” as such, but rather to be opposed to “a dumb war … a rash war.”  More of the authors evidence of Obama being an antiwar politician includes the facts that the President opposed the Iraq War, was eager to free the United Stated from its involvement in the new Iraqi state, being keen to place a firm time limit on the presence of United States military forces in Afghanistan, he has been willing to negotiate directly with the Iranian government without actively consulting United States allies in the Arabian Gulf, as well as supporting an armed intervention during the Libya crisis only after the French and British had already intervened.

Obama is more concentrated on domestic issue rather than foreign policy, and indeed we have plenty of domestic issues at hand.  I’m not suggesting that this is a bad thing, however, if foreign nations become unstable and do not balance themselves out in a timely manner, it will effect other nations and U.S. allies as well, in turn, directly effecting the United States, and if a world power (United States) does not act as a world leader, someone will step up to the plate and down we move on the hierarchy. 

One can only hope for peace among all nations for so long, if there are no positive changes then the leader must regulate accordingly.

I do believe that the Crimea crisis involves the President’s foreign policy and the United States as a whole, especially with Russia, at a minimum, breaking international laws.  I agree with attempting to defuse the situation diplomatically before utilizing military force as we have up to this point, however, it looks like Vladimir Putin has a different end game in mind. 

I agree with the author on the account of Obama not holding his ground very strongly, or portraying clear, solid, and confident decisions when it comes to foreign affairs.  I find the author to be credible, he used factual statements when talking on theses points, and when mentioning anything of speculation on his part, he states it so.