How NOT to Defend America

By Alan Caruba

Does anyone believe that we don’t live in an increasingly dangerous world; one in which nuclear weapons are proliferating and worldwide Islamic terrorism threatens our nation and others?

The first months of the Obama administration bode ill for the safety of the United States. Calling on the United Nations to rebuke North Korea for what North Korea has always done, fire off missiles and test atomic bombs, is as useless a response as could be imagined. Consider this approach in light of the administration’s cuts to a much-needed missile defense system for the homeland.

Organizing a serious inspection system of every ship entering or leaving North Korean waters would go much further to reducing its ability to ship its weapons to others with bad intentions. Is it an act of war? Is routinely using U.S. national holidays to demonstrate its belligerence a signal of their intentions? They have already said they do not intend to abide by the 1953 armistice agreement.

What has been Iran’s response to President Obama’s extended hand of friendship? They have sent their warships into international waters, although it can be argued they want to protect the oil tankers on which their economy depends. They have tested new longer range missiles, making it clear they can now target Israel and others in the region. They continue to work on developing nuclear weapons.

In a recent commentary, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy, warns that the Obama administration has dispatched a diplomat to Russia to negotiate a new bilateral treaty to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with the possibility of reducing by as much as a third of what is left of our arsenal of nuclear weapons. You can bet the Kremlin is delighted with this prospect.

In another move, Gaffney warned that the Obama administration wants to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that was rejected by a majority of the Senate a decade ago. The treaty would permanently prohibit the U.S. from underground nuclear testing. Good news for North Korea, Iran and every other nation that wants to threaten us.

At the same time, while babbling endlessly about “energy independence”, we live in a nation that sits atop vast reserves of coal and oil. Since the 1970s, however, successive administrations have taken steps to ensure that we can neither mine, nor drill for any of it.

Not a single new oil refinery has been built in the U.S. since those years when the oil industry had windfall profits taxes imposed and other measures that deterred the prospect of domestic exploration and development.

We have a President who is on record opposing the building of any new coal-fired plants to provide for our growing need for more electricity and has rescinded any exploration for oil or natural gas reserves along our vast continental shelf.

Thanks to the environmental organizations the United States has allowed ideology to trump common sense regarding our energy needs and the arms agreements the Obama administration is pursuing would leave us unable to fulfill our obligations to the many nations that depend upon our nuclear umbrella to protect them.

The Obama administration has a Transportation Secretary who wants the government to “coerce” everyone to abandon automobiles in favor of mass transit and bicycles.

We have an Energy Secretary who says the answer to a non-existent global warming is to paint the roofs of all buildings white to reflect the Sun’s radiation.

The administration has a science advisor who wants to shoot soot or something else into the atmosphere for the same purpose.

We have an Environmental Protection Agency Director and an environmental advisor to the President who believe that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” instead of a gas that is vital to all life on Earth.

We have a Congress that is contemplating a ludicrous Cap-and-Trade bill that would impose a tax on the emission of carbon dioxide on all energy producers and users for the purpose of deterring global warming at a time when the Earth is now ten years into a cooling cycle. It would destroy an already fragile economy.

As General Motors and Chrysler ready themselves for bankruptcy and huge downsizing measures, the Obama administration has imposed a new standard for gasoline use in automobiles that will require that they be smaller and more dangerous. Nor is there any indication that Americans want to purchase or drive such models.

A recent Rasmussen telephone survey revealed that 75% said that finding new sources of energy to reduce our dependence on imported sources of energy should be the goal of our government.

And, finally, we have a President who has rather casually said that the nation has run out of money.

Does any of this suggest that Congress and the White House have abandoned anything that resembles common sense? Has the unconstitutional looting of the national treasury done anything other than to debase and devalue the dollar? Are we less safe now that we no longer have the robust national security policy of the past eight years?

The Obama administration, in concert with Congress, is seeking to disarm the nation at the very time we need to expand our military capabilities. The same administration is seeking to impose “global warming” mandates and restrictions that threaten our economy.

Ideology, whether it is about the environment or about national security, endangers our nation at every turn.