The twilight of America

The twilight of America

By Melanie Phillips

I think this is what is called a slam dunk.  Barack Obama has now proposed filling the three positions in the US administration most concerned with the security of the nation and the defence of the free world, those at State, Defence and the CIA, by three men who have all taken up positions which can only strengthen those who threaten the security of America and the survival of the free world.

Obama proposes to instal as Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel. Six years ago, Senator Hagel refused to sign a letter pressing the European Union to declare the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia, which has bombed US targets and killed and kidnapped Americans and other westerners, a terrorist organisation. He repeatedly voted against sanctions against Iran, opposing even those aimed at the Iranian Revolutionary Guards which had orchestrated bomb attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq.

He gave vent to primitive anti-Jewish conspiracy theory by moaning that ‘the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people here’ (in Washington DC). He has also made comments about gay people which are deemed to be ‘homophobic’. No matter – not even this most lethal of accusations from his own support base has deflected Obama’s intention to appoint him.

Next, Obama proposes to make John Brennan head of the CIA. Brennan – who unlike the rest of the English-speaking world is said to refer to Jerusalem only by its Arabic name, al Quds -- has consistently downplayed, misunderstood and sought to appease Islamic terrorism and extremism.

In 2008, Brennan wrote in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science:

‘A critical step toward improved US-Iranian relations would be for US officials to cease public Iran-bashing, a tactic that may have served short-term domestic political interests, but that has heretofore been wholly counterproductive to U.S. strategic interests.’

 In 2010, Brennan said this about Hezbollah:

 ‘There is [sic] certainly the elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern to us what they’re doing. And what we need to do is to find ways to diminish their influence within the organisation and to try to build up the more moderate elements.’

Anyone ever heard of a ‘moderate’ Hezbollah member?

In another twist, Brennan faces publicly expressed hostility from the left who claim that he has supported the CIA’s interrogation tactics which included waterboarding – a claim he denies. No matter – not even this visceral reaction from his own support base has deflected Obama’s intention to appoint him.

Then there is Obama’s pick for Secretary of State John Kerry, who came home from Vietnam a decorated war hero and then turned viciously against the military and the exercise of American power.

Like Hagel, Kerry has been a supporter of Syria's President Assad. In 2010, Kerry met Assad and called Syria ‘an essential player in bringing peace and stability to the region’. Name an enemy of civilised values – Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Castro in Cuba – and you find Kerry urging engagement with them or, as he did with FARC, the Colombian narco-terrorist group, claiming they have ‘legitimate complaints’. Last year Kerry praised Egypt’s ruler Mohamed Morsi for ‘protecting fundamental freedoms, including women’s rights, minority rights, the right to free expression and assembly’; shortly afterwards, Morsi assumed dictatorial powers (later modified under pressure) and his forces were beating up opponents in the street.

These three men, Hagel, Brennan and Kerry, are all examples of post-Vietnam demoralisation syndrome – the deeply pessimistic belief that America cannot and should not fight to defend its security and values anywhere in the world; that if bad people are defeated in war only worse people will ever take their place; and that therefore the best strategy for America is to buy them all off, pull up the drawbridge and retreat into a self-delusional isolation.

These are people who are the living embodiment of civilisational exhaustion and decline. In any healthy society, they would be considered marginal, third-rate figures characterised variously by moral spinelessness, stupidity and knuckle-dragging prejudice. Yet not only has Obama put such people forward to manage the security of America, at a time when Iran  is racing to build its nuclear bomb and Islamic radicals are destroying lives and freedom across the world and making headway into the west -- in part because of the policies of Obama himself; even more stunningly, the American liberal media, along with timid or ideologically partisan US Jewish leaders, remain silent about these astoundingly destructive appointments because it is Obama who is making them.

No wonder Iran is purring that it looks forward to a new and closer relationship with the US. It thinks that now it will have a clear run to producing its nuclear bomb -- the weapon which not only threatens genocide against the Jewish people who these three treat with such contempt and worse, but threatens the American people and the free world with the civilisational jihad that this trio so obtusely refuse to acknowledge for the mortal threat to life and liberty that it actually represents.

If these three appointments are confirmed, Obama will have removed the last vestiges of independent thinking from his security and foreign policy team and honed his administration to deliver his uninterrupted vision for changing the geopolitical balance of the world. The fear is that, against the pivotal threat of our time, this will entail failing to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear capability while putting the screws on Israel to abandon its own nuclear arsenal. Thus the genocidal aggressor will be empowered, while its principal putative victim will be left defenceless --and the west will belatedly wake up to the fact that it is in a war it cannot win.

Beyond terrifying. Beyond belief.

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