Obama Endangers our National Security

Russia is getting stronger militarily and is threatening its neighbors

The unilateral concessions that Obama has granted Russia have endangered our national security. Soon after his election, Obama gave in to pressure from Russia and did not deploy the antimissile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic that President George W. Bush had negotiated with those two nations. In essence, Obama abandoned all of Eastern Europe to Russia’s sphere of influence which went against our national security interests and those of the European Union. Obama acted in this situation without asking Russia for a “quid-pro-quo” or something in return. It is no surprise that Putin wanted Obama to win in 2008 and was delighted when our weak president was reelected in 2012. Why? He believes Obama will give in on missile defense and continue to use “flexibility” to eliminate our nuclear arsenal. The Russian ruler also believes that Obama would not lift a finger to help the former republics of the Soviet Union.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Russia invaded the sovereign country of Georgia and annexed half of that country. The United States vigorously complained over the Russia’s aggression to that a small nation but did nothing about it. Both President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain had strong words against Russia regarding this unprovoked military invasion against the small nation. However, Senator Barack Obama, who was on vacation in Hawaii, did not criticize Russia. Senator Obama said that hostilities had to end and negotiations must begin between Russia and Georgia. But what was there to negotiate when Georgia had been completely devastated? Putin knows that Russia can continue to push Barack Obama, our weak president.

David M. Herszenhorn wrote an article entitled “Russia Putting a Strong Arm of Neighbors” in The New York Times on October 23, 2013. The reporter explained that Russia is bullying some of the countries that were formerly included in the Soviet Union in an effort to force them to join Russia’s customs union with Kazakhstan and Belarus. In November 2013, the European Union plans to offer political and trade accords to several ex-Soviet republics. To prevent that from happening, Russia is putting strong pressure on its neighboring countries. Dmitry O. Rogozin, the deputy prime minister of Russia, warned Moldova, a landlocked nation of 3.6 million people between Romania and Ukraine and the poorest country in Europe, that it would be a “great mistake” to seek closer ties with Europe. At the conclusion of a visit to Moldova, Rogozin said, “We hope that you will not freeze.” Moldova, like most of the European countries depend, on Russian gas for heat.

The reporter pointed out that the strong pressure being placed on the former Soviet republics is not directed at Moldova alone. In August 2013, Russia suddenly stopped all Ukrainian imports at the border for closer customs inspections. A Russian official said that import restrictions from this country could become permanent if Ukraine, as expected, signs agreements with the European Union. The Russian official said that such a move would be “suicidal.”

The immense pressure put on Armenia by Russia was effective. In September 2013, Armenia declared that it would join Russia’s customs union, even though it had worked for years toward various agreements with the European Union.  Russia is also putting pressure on Lithuania, a country that had already joined the European Union. In October 2013, Russia banned milk and other dairy imports from this small Baltic country. A couple of years ago, Russia stopped sending gas for a few days in the middle of the winter to Ukraine and other European countries in an effort to show its power over all of Europe.

Recently, the Russian Duma, or legislature, approved a budget to increase spending on nuclear weapons by 50% over the next three years. Russia is also increasing the size of its armed forces and improving and modernizing its weapons. The Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, who has stated that the worst thing that happened in the 20th century was the disintegration of the Soviet Union, has been trying to bring back the former Soviet republics into its fold.

On August 1, 2013 Russia defied the United States and granted asylum to Edward Snowden, the NSA´s leaker and spy. Putin ignored Obama´s repeated requests to return Snowden and to our nation to stand trial for stealing many important secrets which have damaged our national security, as explained by present and retired government officials. Many U.S. allies have been incensed about the spying by NSA of their nations and even the telephone calls of the head of states in Europe and Latin America. Some of them are working with the United Nations to stop the NSA’s spying on their nations.

Obama’s request to Dmitry Medvedev, while meeting with him in South Korea, to ask Putin to give him “flexibility” and “space” until reelected was most troubling. After his reelection, the president announced that he would enter into an unconstitutional informal agreement with Russia to further cut our nuclear arsenal. Obama desires to completely eliminate our nuclear arsenal while reducing drastically the Pentagon’s budget. His own former Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, stated several times that those severe cuts would endanger our national security. Before he retired, Panetta stated “that the United States would be left with a force that suffers low morale, poor readiness and is unable to keep with potential adversaries. It would invite aggression.”

Since sequestration became effective at the beginning of March 2013, $55 billion was cut from the Pentagon annually for the next 10 years. This massive cut represents 10% of the entire Pentagon´s budget. The U.S. Navy would be reduced from 286 ships to 230 ships, leaving our Navy the size it was in 1915! The U.S. Army would be reduced from 569,000 to 426,000 soldiers. The 1990 fighter aircraft of the U.S. Air Force would be reduced to 1512. The size of U.S. Marine Corps would also be cut. Millions would lose their employment in defense-related industries and this will increase unemployment in the nation.

President Obama has lowered the morale of our military by declaring war against religion and Christianity in violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution that guarantees the freedom of religion. He recently retired nine high ranking armed forces generals and admirals. The President has instilled fear among officers in the military who have had the audacity to criticize his policies.

Obama has also allowed the purging of any criticism of Islam from the training manuals used by the military. Moreover, he has appointed members of the Muslim Brotherhood to review the manuals used by our armed forces, the FBI, the CIA, and the Department of Homeland Security. All of these actions taken by the president put at risk our national security by not allowing government officials to describe clearly the threat that the United States faces from the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic terrorist organizations at home and around the world. The president has allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to impose information suppression on many agencies in his government, which is their first step to conquer our nation.

Governor Romney stated during his presidential campaign that he was planning to increase defense spending by $150 billion a year in order to make our armed forces stronger and more capable of protecting us from our enemies. China and Russia are drastically increasing their defense spending and modernizing their armed forces, Iran continues to enrich uranium in order to build nuclear bombs, North Korea continues to build nuclear weapons and improve its missiles, and al-Qaida and other terrorist groups continue to get stronger, obviously, this is not the time to cut the Pentagon’s budget and disarm unilaterally.

Al-Qaeda is alive and getting stronger and Obama downplays this threat

On August 2, 2013, the United States gave the unprecedented order to close 21 embassies and consulates in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Cautionary travel advisories were also issued for Americans traveling during the month of August 2013 to those countries. Four days later, the State Department ordered non-essential personnel at the United States embassy in Yemen to leave the country. It also advised all Americans to leave Yemen.

A United States Air Force airplane was sent to Sanaa, Yemen´s capital, to pick up around 90 Americans from our embassy and bring them back to our nation. The State Department´s list of extended closings of embassies and consulates included Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Libya, Djibouti, Sudan, Madagascar, Burundi, Rwanda, Mauritius, Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Iraq, and Mauritania.

The shutdown of such a great number of consulates and embassies was instigated by an intercepted secret message between al-Qaeda chief Ayman al Zawahri, who lives in Pakistan, and Nasir al Wuhayshi, the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen, regarding credible plans for a major terrorist attack. In May 2012, AQAP sent a suicide bomber and killed more than 100 military cadets at a rehearsal for a military parade in Sanaa.

The United States has been conducting targeted drone attacks in Yemen for several years. However, AQAP remain strong in the southern part of that nation. Recently, four al-Qaeda members were killed when a drone fired a missile their vehicle. Another drone attack on August 7, 2013 killed seven terrorists in Yemen. The latest attack was the fifth in Yemen in the last two weeks.

On August 4, 2013, United States Representative Michael McCaul, Republican from Texas and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told CBS News the following regarding the threat posed by al-Qaeda: “I must say this is probably one of the most specific and credible threats I have seen since 9/11 and that´s why everybody´s taking it so seriously. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called it extremely significant.”

United States Representative Peter King, Republican from New York and previous chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, stated, on the same day that intelligence officials believe an attack is most likely to occur in the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East, but “it could be in Europe, it could be in the United States, it could be a series of combined attacks.” Americans who believed the president´s erroneous and misleading statements that downplayed the threat of al-Qaeda must have been shocked by the unprecedented closing of so many embassies and consulates throughout the world.

On August 1, 2013, White House spokesman, Jay Carney, tried to distance the president from the optimistic language of the recent past. Carney pointed out that the administration had made clear that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was of particular concern since it had demonstrated a willingness to participate in serious attacks.

Jay Carney was covering up for the president and other members of his administration for their failure to alert the nation of the immense threat that al-Qaeda represents. It is known now that al-Qaeda is not only growing in Yemen but al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups are playing a major role in the civil war in Syria. Al-Qaeda fighters are creating havoc in Iraq. Another affiliate of al-Qaeda almost overran Mali in  Africa. This poor country was saved by troops from France, while President Obama provided logistical support. Al-Qaeda is also active in Algeria and other countries in North Africa. Other terrorist groups are active in Nigeria and other African countries.

The associate director of the RAND Corporation International Security and Defense Policy Center, Seth Jones, recently testified in Congress that the United States should view the threat of al-Qaeda as a long term struggle similar to the Cold War. This was the exact opposite of what the president has been saying over the past two years.

The government of Yemen was upset about the evacuation of their embassies by the United States and Great Britain. On August 6, 2013, the foreign ministry of Yemen issued the following statement: “The decision by the United States and Great Britain to evacuate their embassy staff serves the interests of the extremists and undermines the exceptional cooperation between Yemen and international alliance against terrorism… Yemen remains strongly committed to the global effort to counter the threats of al-Qaeda and its affiliates.”

Unfortunately, in Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and other Middle Eastern countries al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups have infiltrated the police and the army. Thus, it is very difficult  to rely on local security forces to protect our diplomats, as it happened in Benghazi when Libyan security forces melted away just before the terrorist attack that killed the ambassador and three others.

During the months of August 2013, the Yemeni army surrounded foreign embassies, government offices, and the airport with tanks and troops in Sanaa as well as strategic cities at the entrance to the Red Sea. One of our drones flew over Sanaa for most of the day, according to a foreign reporter.

Who are these two al-Qaeda principal leaders who were responsible for the closing of embassies and consulates from northern and eastern Africa to south Asia?

Ayman al Zawahiri

Ayman al Zawahiri, current leader of al-Qaeda was born in Maadi, Egypt on June 19, 1951. His family was from the upper class and many were doctors and scholars. At the age of 14, al Zawahiri became part of an Islamist group. He graduated from Cairo University in 1974 as a medical doctor and four years later received his masters in surgery.

In 1979, al Zawahiri joined the radical Islamic jihadists who were fighting in Afghanistan to resist the Soviet Union’s occupation of that country. He became  second-in-command to Osama bin Laden. In 1998, al Zawahiri was indicted in the United States for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa. During that same year, he formerly merged his terrorist organization, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, into al-Qaeda, and issued a joint statement with Osama bin Laden. The following year he was sentenced to death in absentia in Egypt for killing 62 tourists.

Al Zawahiri is believed to have been the operational brain behind the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States. One of his wives and two older children were killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2001. Al Zawahiri went into hiding after the United States forces overthrew the Taliban. In 2001, he published a book explaining the ideology of al-Qaeda entitled Knights under the Prophet´s Banner. In 2006, a U.S. airstrike in a Pakistani village near the Afghan border, where it was believed that al Zawahiri was hiding, killed 18 villagers.

After the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011, al Zawahiri became the head of al-Qaeda. Al Zawahiri has a very close connection with Nasir al Wuhayshi, the chief of al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula (AQAP). As explained earlier, an intercepted message between the chief of al-Qaeda to the leader of al-Qaeda´s affiliate in Yemen, in which al Zawahiri issued the order for al Wuhayshi to launch an attack against the United States, led to the closing of many embassies and consulates around the world.

Nasir al Wuhayshi

Nasir al Wuhayshi was the private secretary for several years of Osama bin Laden. On September 11, 2001, al Wuhayshi was still working as private secretary for Osama bin Laden and was working closely with his second-in-command, Ayman al Zawahiri. In 2009, in a merger between two offshoots of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, al-Qaeda became stronger. Nasir al Wuhayshi has now become second-in-command to al Zawahiri. Al-Qaeda is expanding from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region to the Arab world and Africa.

Al Wuhayshi fought in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. He fought at the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001 before he was able to escape across the border into Iran. The Iranian authorities arrested him. Later, Nasir al Wuhayshi was extradited to Yemen in 2003. Al Wuhayshi and 22 other al-Qaeda terrorists were able to escape through a tunnel from a high-security prison in Sanaa in 2006. Among the terrorists who escaped the high-security prison were Jamal al Badawi, the main suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole, and Qasim al Raymi, the military commander of AQAP. Recently, al-Qaeda terrorists have been very successful in planning many prison escapes throughout the world.

Nasir al Wuhayshi and his terrorist fighters were able to revive al-Qaeda in Yemen. The group began to publish a magazine, The Echo of Battle, which assisted them in spreading its jihadist message. AQAP planned to blow up an airplane over the city of Detroit. The group enlisted Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian who had studied in Yemen. The Nigerian terrorist tried unsuccessfully to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear while on board of a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit in December 2009. President Obama was criticized at the time because he did not interrupt his Christmas vacation in Hawaii and returned quickly to the White House to handle the situation. The would-be terrorist confessed to the terrorist plot and was given a trial and sentenced to four life terms by a federal court in Detroit.

Another terrorist plot planned by AQAP was discovered in October 2010. The group was hiding bombs in printer cartridges and shipping them to the United States aboard cargo planes. Fortunately, the bombs were found when the planes were making stopovers, one in Great Britain and the other one in Dubai. The terrorist who created the bombs was Ibrahim al Asiri, a most dangerous member of AQAP. His expertise in making bombs could bring down a Western airline carrier or conduct a major attack upon the United States or our allies.

AQAP´s spiritual leader, the U.S.-born imam Anwar al-Awlaki, was responsible for radicalizing U.S. Army major Nidal Malik Hasan. The Islamist major later shot and killed 13 U.S. soldiers and injured many other soldiers in Fort Hood, Texas. Al-Awlaki was killed by a U.S. drone missile attack in Yemen in September 2011. Hasan was sentenced to death by a military tribunal in the United States for his cold-blooded assassinations.

Al Wuhayshi´s AQAP is an extremely dangerous terrorist group which presents the greatest direct threat to our national security. AQAP has been able to recruit Arab fighters returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. This terrorist group killed six Western tourists and attacked the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa. During this attack, 10 Yemeni guards and four civilians were killed. AQAP has also carried out attacks in Saudi Arabia. It has a very strong presence in southern Yemen.

According to John Brennan, AQAP has more than 1,000 members and is growing in strength. The instability in Yemen has helped this terrorist organization to grow and  capture territory in this country.

The Obama administration has been downplaying the immense threat of al-Qaeda to our national security

The global closing of embassies and consulates and the terrorism alert were inconsistent with the Obama administration´s portrayal of a decimated and weakened al-Qaeda. For more than two years, President Barack Obama and members of his administration have been downplaying the great threat presented by al-Qaeda to our national security.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta stated in July 2001 that he was “convinced that we were within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaeda.” During the 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama boasted that “al-Qaeda was on the run” and that “al-Qaeda is on its heels.” Obama also said during the campaign that “the truth is that al-Qaeda is much weaker than when I came into office.” The president knew that his assessment was not true but it helped him win his reelection. Marxists always believe that the end justifies the means and that using deception to achieve their goals is acceptable.

President Obama gave a speech at the National Defense University in May 2012 and said that the “core of al-Qaeda is nearly defeated even though Americans are still threaten by terrorists.” The president pointed out that the broad global threat has receded. He demanded a “broad drawdown of the war on terrorism, including scaling back drone attacks and revisiting the congressional resolution that said the country of perpetual war footing.” In his State of the Union address in February 2012, President Obama stated that “al-Qaeda is a shadow of its former self.”

During the presidential campaign vice president Joe Biden said again and again that “Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.” Like President Obama, Vice President Biden was saying that after a Navy Seal team killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, al-Qaeda had been decimated. Both President Obama and Vice President Biden were knowingly misleading the nation in an effort to be reelected.

Hannah Allam and Lesley Clark of the McClatchy Washington Bureau wrote an article entitled “Alert is a signal al-Qaeda still strong,” which was published in The Miami Herald on August 6, 2013. The reporters pointed out that counterterrorism analysts were dismissive of the president´s optimism regarding the decimation of al-Qaeda. “It’s called politics. They know it’s not true. The movement has grown over the past two years. Its ideology is thriving,” explained Aaron Zellin of the Washington Institute for Near East policy.

President Barack Obama and several members of his administration were irresponsible in deliberately giving erroneous and misleading assessments of the threat of al-Qaeda for political purposes.  A responsible president, who is Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces, does not mislead the American people with regard to national security issues.

Death by thousand cuts, the successful strategy of jihadists

Islamic jihadists have been waging an asymmetrical warfare against our nation and the West for many years in order to slowly destroy our economy and that of our allies. Unfortunately, they are being successful. Osama bin Laden stated in his October 2004 address to our country that by involving the United States and its allies in draining wars, al-Qaeda was destroying them economically. Bin Laden pointed out that al-Qaeda (with our help) “bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat… We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.”

The Boston Marathon Russian jihadist brothers built two homemade bombs with two pressure cookers, pipes, nails, and firecrackers that cost them less than $100. The young Islamic terrorists detonated them on April 15, 2013 killing three people and wounding 264. The explosion resulted in around $20 million in medical costs to treat the wounded and property damage. The authorities then shut down the metropolitan area of Boston for one day while looking for the two brothers costing an estimated $333 million in losses.

Jeremiah Jacques wrote an article entitled “Death by Thousand Cuts” in the July 2013 issue of The Philadelphia Trumpet magazine. The author pointed out that “from a simple cost-benefit perspective, even failed terrorist attacks are spectacularly successful at draining America economically.” He explained that the “disparity between the cost of terrorists carrying out attacks and the cost of nations trying to defend against them is staggering.”

Al-Qaeda spent approximately $500,000 on the 9/11 attacks while America went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan at a cost of over $3 trillion. The expected future costs of providing medical care and disability payments to wounded veterans from those two wars are expected to be between $2 and $4 trillions. While the United States bled economically, Russia and China increased their spending on their armed forces and modernized their weapons. China also improved its infrastructure while ours has deteriorated.

Anwar al-Awlaki stated in March 2010 the following: “How much more can the U.S. Treasury handled? 9/11, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then operations such as that of our brother Umar Farouk, which could not have cost more than a few thousand dollars, end up draining the United States Treasury of billions of dollars… For how long can the United States survive this war of attrition?” Al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn stated on the same month that “even failed attacks bring major cities to a halt, cost the enemy billions, and send their corporations into bankruptcy.” A spokesman for al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula said that “attacking the enemy with smaller but more frequent operations will bleed the enemy by death of thousand cuts.”

There is no question that the cost of terrorism is immense. The efforts of our nation to defend against domestic and international jihadist attacks are a tremendous drain on our economy. For example, the estimated annual cost of the full-body scanner program at airports is $1.2 billion and the annual cost for the United States Air Marshall program is the same, $1.2 billion. The estimated amount that our country has spent on homeland security since 9/11 is $1.1 trillion.

Some analysts believe that the success of the Boston bombings in inflicting financial pain to our nation may accelerate the shift from spectacular attacks to smaller strikes executed by domestic terrorists. The difficulty in defending our country from jihadist attacks is that the aggressors seldom strike the same way twice. The War on Terror, like the Cold War, will continue for many years to come. It is a war of attrition. The irresponsible claim by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden during the 2012 presidential campaign that al-Qaeda had been decimated did a disservice to our nation. Al-Qaeda is alive and getting stronger in the Middle East and Africa.

It is crucial for our nation to quickly improve our economy so that we can endure the drain of financial resources brought about by Islamic terrorists and continue to spend funds to protect Americans. Our nation needs to be strong enough to tolerate the strategy of jihadists of “death by a thousand cuts” and still survive and prosper.

Unfortunately, President Barack Obama´s economic policies have failed miserably in restoring our prosperity and reducing unemployment to an acceptable level. At a time when our nation needs to be united so that we can fight our enemies, the president is dividing us along racial and social class. The president´s  irresponsible annual deficits, which have increased the national debt to almost $17 trillion, the very devastating budget cuts to the Pentagon, the printing of money out of thin air by the Federal Reserve that will soon create hyperinflation, and the culture of dependency that he has created have all made our nation a weaker superpower. President Obama has allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate his government making it more difficult to fight jihadist in our nation and abroad. Barack Obama is not the president needed by the United States in the difficult times that we live in.