It is now apparent there has been a terrible misunderstanding regarding the election held last November. Barack Obama thought he was running to be the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary and believes this is the position he holds at this time. It may also explain why he is seldom in the Oval Office.
He obviously has no clue that he is actually the President who's primary duty is to be the Commander in Chief of the military and has an obligation to answer questions from the press when American ships are being hijacked and Americans are being held hostage.
This terrible misunderstanding came to light this week when Obama was asked about the hijacking and hostage situation during a press conference.
When reporters asked the president directly about the incident on Thursday, he demurred. Instead, he stayed on his message of the day, saying: "Guys, we're talking about housing right now."
Amazing! Can you imagine President Bush getting away without making any statement at all about a situation like this?
Of course you can't blame him for not wanting to talk about foreign policy issues after his recent apology and appeasement tour overseas.
Consider the following from the April 10, 2009 article from Charles Krauthammer:
In his major foreign policy address in Prague committing the United States to a world without nuclear weapons, President Obama took note of North Korea's missile launch just hours earlier and then grandiloquently proclaimed:
"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response."
A more fatuous presidential call to arms is hard to conceive. What "strong international response" did Obama muster to North Korea's brazen defiance of a Chapter 7 --"binding," as it were -- U.N. resolution prohibiting such a launch?
The obligatory emergency Security Council session produced nothing. No sanctions. No resolution. Not even a statement. China and Russia professed to find no violation whatsoever. They would not even permit a U.N. statement that dared express "concern," let alone condemnation.
Having thus bravely rallied the international community and summoned the U.N. -- a fiction and a farce, respectively -- what was Obama's further response? The very next day, his defense secretary announced drastic cuts in missile defense, including halting further deployment of Alaska-based interceptors designed precisely to shoot down North Korean ICBMs. Such is the "realism" Obama promised to restore to U.S. foreign policy.
And what about the goals of his trip overseas that was so important he needed 500 people to go along... did he accomplish any of them?
Our president came bearing a basketful of mea culpas. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.
And what did he get for this obsessive denigration of his own country? He wanted more NATO combat troops in Afghanistan to match the surge of 17,000 Americans. He was rudely rebuffed.
He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing.
From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea.
And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he'll have to leave his swim buddy behind.) The Austrians said they would take none. As Interior Minister Maria Fekter explained with impeccable Germanic logic, if they're not dangerous, why not just keep them in America?
When Austria is mocking you, you're having a bad week. Yet who can blame Frau Fekter, considering the disdain Obama showed his own country while on foreign soil, acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray mediating between his renegade homeland and an otherwise warm and welcoming world?
In other words, he accomplished nothing of substance on this trip which is eerily similar to what he has accomplished in his entire life other than getting elected to office.
To make sure I'm not mistaken on this let me double check....
Military Officer with Distinguished Career? NO
Military Service at All? NO
Inventor? NO
Founded a Company? NO
Executive in Money Making Business? NO
Executive in Government? NO
The question now is, who will be willing to tell the man he is President, not the HUD Secretary, and may have to actually at least answer some questions when American ships are being hijacked in international waters and Americans are being held hostage?
My guess is that once they load the teleprompter with some focus group approved phrases in this regard perhaps he will have something to say.
And of course if the ship Captain is released unharmed Obama will be praised as having "handled" the situation in a heroic fashion. If not, it was somebody else's fault...... who knows, maybe he just inherited this situation from the Bush administration.... yeah that's it, he inherited this awful situation and it was not his fault, there was nothing any human being could have done, even the smartest hero in the world, Barack Obama, in this situation.
J. Cogburn
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