Sunday, October 26, 2008

Is America Really Going to Do This

Melanie Phillips of the Spectator took on a big question in her article, "Is America Really Going to Do This?" Are Americans assessing the merits of each candidate, or are we turning a blind eye on reality?

McCain believes in protecting and defending America as it is. Obama tells the world he is ashamed of America and wants to change it into something else. McCain stands for American exceptionalism, the belief that American values are superior to tyrannies. Obama stands for the expiation of America’s original sin in oppressing black people, the third world and the poor.

Obama thinks world conflicts are basically the west’s fault, and so it must right the injustices it has inflicted. That’s why he believes in ‘soft power’ — diplomacy, aid, rectifying ‘grievances’ (thus legitimising them, encouraging terror and promoting injustice) and resolving conflict by talking. As a result, he will take an axe to America’s defences at the very time when they need to be built up. He has said he will ‘cut investments in unproven missile defense systems’; he will ‘not weaponize space’; he will ‘slow our development of future combat systems’; and he will also ‘not develop nuclear weapons,’ pledging to seek ‘deep cuts’ in America’s arsenal, thus unilaterally disabling its nuclear deterrent as Russia and China engage in massive military buildups.

McCain understands that an Islamic war of conquest is being waged on a number of diverse fronts which all have to be seen in relation to each other. For Obama, however, the real source of evil in the world is America. The evil represented by Iran and the Islamic jihadists is apparently all America’s fault. ‘A lot of evil’s been perpetuated based on the claim that we were fighting evil,’ he said. Last May, he dismissed Iran as a tiny place which posed no threat to the US -- before reversing himself the very next day when he said Iran was a great threat which had to be defeated. He has also said that Hezbollah and Hamas have ‘legitimate grievances’. Really? And what might they be? Their grievances are a) the existence of Israel b) its support by America c) the absence of salafist Islam in the world. Does Obama think these ‘grievances’ are legitimate?


When the right begins to talk about Obama's unsavory connections and ideology, the first thing that the left does is to point out that we should be talking about the economy. While we can all agree that the economy is a priority one, how can we disconnect a leader's plan for economics from his plans on foreign policy, ethics and even morality. Can we have a successful economy if America's policies are affecting not only the way we view the world but the way we are viewed by the world? Can we be successful economically if we allow our defenses to recede? Can we be successful as a country if we allow the ideology of our president to erode the foundation of our country—the principles of our Constitution? The American people can rely only on the character of a man to ensure that he will institute and fight for all that he promises. Can Americans put that trust in Barack Obama, or are they better served to entrust the country's leadership to John McCain?

Phillips writes:

Obama dismisses the threat from Islamism, shows zero grasp of the strategic threat to the region and the world from the encirclement of Israel by Iran, displays a similar failure to grasp the strategic importance of Iraq, thinks Israel is instead the source of Arab and Muslim aggression against the west, believes that a Palestinian state would promote world peace and considers that Israel – particularly through the ‘settlements’ – is the principal obstacle to that happy outcome. Accordingly, Obama has said he wants Israel to return to its 1967 borders – actually the strategically indefensible 1948 cease-fire line, known accordingly as the ‘Auschwitz borders’.

Obama would thus speak to Iran’s genocidal mullahs without preconditions on his side (the same mullahs have now laid down their own preconditions for America: pull all US troops out of the Middle East, and abandon support for ‘Zionist’ Israel) but has said he would have problems dealing with an Israeli government headed by a member of Israel’s Likud Party ...

Obama assumes that Islamic terrorism is driven by despair, poverty, inflammatory US policy and the American presence on Muslim soil in the Persian Gulf. Thus he adopts the agenda of the Islamists themselves. This is not surprising since many of his connections suggest that that the man who may be elected President of a country upon which the Islamists have declared war is himself firmly in the Islamists’ camp.

Phillips references an article by Daniel Pipes that outlines Obama's connections to "extremist Islam."

... Obama's connections and even indebtedness, throughout his career, to extremist Islam. Specifically, he has longstanding, if indirect ties to two institutions, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), listed by the U.S. government in 2007 as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-funding trial; and the Nation of Islam (NoI), condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for its "consistent record of racism and anti-Semitism."
  • The Khalid al-Mansour connection: According to former Manhattan Borough president Percy Sutton, Al-Mansour "was raising money for" Obama's expenses at Harvard Law School. Al-Mansour, a black American (nĂ© Don Warden), became advisor to Saudi prince Al-Walid bin Talal, CAIR's largest individual donor ...
  • The Mazen Asbahi connection: The Obama campaign's first Muslim outreach coordinator resigned after it came to light that he had served on the board of a subsidiary of the Saudi-sponsored North American Islamic Trust, with Jamal Said, another unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Hamas funding trial. Asbahi has ties to CAIR's Chicago and Detroit offices, to the Islamic Society of North America, yet another unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas funding trial, and to other Islamist organizations.
  • The Minha Husaini connection: The campaign's second Muslim outreach coordinator has an Islamist background, having served as an intern in the Muslim Public Service Network. Immediately upon her appointment by Obama, she met with a group of about thirty Muslims including such notorious figures as CAIR's Nihad Awad; the Muslim American Society's Mahdi Bray, who has publicly supported the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups; and Johari Abdul Malik of the Dar Al-Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church, Va., who has advised American Muslims: "You can blow up bridges, but you cannot kill people who are innocent on their way to work."
[...] That Obama's biography touches so frequently on such unsavory organizations as CAIR and the Nation of Islam should give pause. How many of politicians have a single tie to either group, much less seven of them? John McCain charitably calls Obama "a person you do not have to be scared [of] as president of the United States," but Obama's multiple links to anti-Americans and subversives mean he would fail the standard security clearance process for Federal employees.


Americans must ask themselves, if they care about the economy, how Obama's leadership brings about "change" for good. His tax cuts for the middle class are in line with what John McCain is offering. A key difference in the two plans seems to lie in the fact that Barack Obama will issue tax credits. Many middle class Americans—a large force behind Obama—fail to understand what that means. It's a check from the government based solely on your tax bracket, family makeup and other qualifications for "credits." It is not a "refund" of tax paid. It is not a check issued based on whether you've even worked. It is a simply a redistribution of taxes from those who pay them—including the middle class—to those who do not. When Obama says he is for the middle class, he is for redistributing income of working middle and upper class individuals to those in poverty in order to elevate them to the middle class. He is for everyone being the middle class.

Do economy and ideology run in parallel or are they intertwined? Joe Biden feels it's patriotic to pay more taxes. To counter, perhaps it's patriotic to understand how Obama is going to help our economy as well as our country before we decide to vote.

John McCain has pledged his support to make the economy his top priority, to continue to improve education, to invest in alternative energy sources, to help all Americans while upholding our country's Consitution and our security. We cannot have a successful country or economy without good leadership—leadership with conviction and a promise—for change—that we can trust.

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