Several people over the last few weeks have asked me to deliver on the downtownster promise to not just write about the City State of Downtown Los Angeles—my world of preference. But to weigh in on larger matters from the downtownster, sophisticated, urban perspective. Downtownster has a political section without a single post; the words to come will rectify the vacuous plight of our political section and no doubt raise a few brows. And since the idea is to look at the larger world around our little island why bother with LA’s own half a billion dollar budget shortfall—the President is abroad.
The President boarded Air Force One for London to attend the G-20 summit last week. The media celebrated as if the fact that President Obama is not President Bush was in itself the solution to all that troubles mankind. President Obama made it clear that his goal was to convince the other members of the G-20 to spend more on their own economies, in effect adopting the Obama Economic Doctrine of spending one’s way out of financial crisis.
Since this is my first blog on the subject or in the political category for that matter let me digress with the following:
I’m a Reagan Republican who has not in good conscience been able to vote in the last several elections. I did not vote for, or against, Barack Obama, but did and still do question the credentials that qualified him for the job of President of the United States. And yes, I’m aware that he was a community organizer for a few years and a politician for several thereafter. I believe that it is generally accepted that he had no significant achievements in either endeavor, other than being good at getting elected and certainly eloquent when reading a speech. And please let’s be clear, he does not write his own speeches.
I will say this; I like President Obama, in that he seems like a nice guy who loves his family. And let me make this perfectly clear, I’m rooting for him to succeed. I disagree with him on how to handle almost every issue but I sincerely hope that he is right and I’m wrong—although I doubt this to be the case. The President is a product of an entitlement system and culture that I have always held in disdain. He, because of his unusual family background, was given help by the system—I was not. I grew up doing backbreaking labor after school to earn money and then fighting on the streets of East LA to keep it. The point being, I see things from a different perspective than President Obama because we come from different worlds and I acknowledge this.
The members of the G-20 are hard men that see the world the way I do. So, I was not surprised that they smiled at the President’s attempts to present a humble America that just wants to be a country among countries. And then they smiled when he asked them to start spending money that they don’t have on their own economies—and then they said, “NO!” but with a smile. And the media here in our country tried to make this sound okay, by focusing on the ipod the President gave to the Queen or the fact that the First Lady gave the Queen an inappropriate hug. What nobody seems to want to say is that these little embarrassments are nothing but indicative of the real embarrassment. The President failed completely to win over the G-20 to his way of thinking. Rightly or wrongly he failed and this should be a serious topic of conversation.
The G-20 fiasco was followed by a meeting of NATO that was so profoundly disturbing that it should make every American forget about “it’s the economy stupid!” Literally, while President Obama was calling for nuclear disarmament North Korea was violating yet another UN resolution by firing a long-range missile over our ally Japan. It won’t be long before North Korea will have a missile that will reach California. So to put it simply, North Korea already has nuclear weapons and soon will have the capability to deliver them on the Golden State. Or more probably will sell these weapons to terrorists who will do so. Remember how you felt when you heard about 911—it couldn’t happen, but it did. That’s how it’s going to feel when a terrorist organization delivers a nuclear attack on our country—but a thousand times worse. We’re going to wake up one morning, if we’re not in the blast radius, and it will have happened. And much like just locking the cockpit doors the people we’ve charged with the safety of our country will be acknowledging that we should have eliminated the threat—
I’ve met some of the players on the world-stage; they’re not the reasonable, compassionate, people that our President and we would like them to be. So what are we to learn from this dismal failure of a trip abroad? First, call it what it was—a failure. Learn from it. Being liked is great, but it’s results that matter. If our country asks our European allies to send troops to Afghanistan and they say, “no” we should make it clear that our ongoing military support of Europe is the bargaining chip on the table. We maintain 50,000 troops in Germany alone. Maybe it’s time that the Germans protect themselves against the Russians or the French against the Germans? How long would it take until they were all back at it? Isn’t that why we’re really there? It’s time for Europe to pay up—
Iran is lying when they insist that their nuclear program is for peaceful purposes—this fact is known to every intelligence agency in the world. Negotiations and sanctions have done nothing to stop the Iranian efforts. President Obama’s overtures to Iran have been absolutely rebuffed. Why? Because they do not care whether it’s President Bush’s threats or President Obama’s smile and charm their goal is to achieve a nuclear weapon. The only way that this threat is going to be eliminated is through military action. If the President plans on honoring his campaign promise to not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon—he should stop the rhetoric and get down to the reality—there will be a war waged on Iran. Or there will be an Islamic fundamentalist country with a nuclear weapon. If America does not act the Israelis probably will and again it is hard to imagine that America will not have to be involved in such a conflict.
North Korea will continue to build its’ nuclear arsenal and missile delivery system. The only way to end the threat posed by North Korea is military action—a top North Korean General has said that there is no doubt in his mind that there will be a war with the United States. It is implausible to think that Japan, the world’s second largest economy, is going to restrain itself much longer against the North Korean threat and much like the case with Israel the United States is going to have to act to not only eliminate the threat to our ally, but to our own country as well.
Am I war mongering? No. Like most Americans I’d like nothing more than peace with Iran and North Korea. Frankly, I find Kim Jong-il kind of whacky and fun—I’d like to have a drink with him if he wasn’t building weapons that threaten my country’s existence. And Ahmajinidad, even the Germans have reassured him there was a holocaust in which they killed six million Jews—and still I have a lot of respect for his religious convictions, that would be the ones that don’t involve the killing of people like us. But the President’s trip in juxtaposition to world events makes Neville Chamberlain seem shrewd.
American’s like to enjoy good times together. Recently the times got a little too good and we all got a little soft—OVER! Politicians who think they need to baby us should be voted out of office in mass. Compulsory military service needs to be reinstituted (The Draft) and our country needs to do what it didn’t do with the financial crisis or Ben Laden for that matter—ACT. Mr. President stop talking, shaking hands, smiling. Your only real job is to protect our Country, so tell Iran and North Korea to do as they’ve been told or destroy them. Now that’s real CHANGE!
Great article. You seed to send it to President Obama and the LA Time. Keep up the great writing.
Wow! I am glad that not everyone shares these views. The fact that Obama was elected clearly shows that people had enough of the “hard” politics of the past. Past when the individual rights were not respected under the Constitution, when the invasion of Iraq did not achieve anything besides hugely increasing military budget, when Americans were hated not only by Islamic fundamentalists but by our allies in European countries. The idea that military action is a panacea is scary. Unfortunately, America is on the brink of bankruptcy, but even if it were not, we simply cannot send troops to every country possibly developing or wanting to develop nuclear weapons. Sometimes public as well as behind scenes diplomacy has more success. Cold war should teach a lesson. USSR was destroyed from within when people simply stopped believing in state’s own ideology. But you gave me a laugh in a piece about american troops protecting Germany from Russians. I am sure Germans would laugh too.
I disagree with almost every points here, other than that – great article.