Comfortably encamped in his ten acres, seventeen bedroom humble abode, in a lower class neighborhood called Martha’s Vineyard, our President Obama, in between campaigning and playing golf, handles the multiple crisis erupting around the world. It is a fact that every president deserves, and takes multiple vacations. It is also true, that with the available technology, decisions can be made from wherever our leader is. What bothers many of us is the image of detachment, and the difference between the rhetoric of “income inequality”, and “the dreaded one percent” and his actions, as it is obvious that he enjoys living among the very rich.
From Africa, through Europe, and in the Middle East our world is in turmoil. In the absence of a coherent foreign policy, we have to define his responses as reactive, limited in scope, and without a long term vision. In Iraq, where he falsely took credit for a withdrawal agreement that was made by Bush, and now blames Al-Maliki for his failure of completing a Status of Forces agreement, Obama ignored the danger posed by the terrorist group ISIS, pledging now that our country will not allow a Caliphate to exist, another red line. When faced with the humanitarian disaster of tens of thousands of refugees starving in Mt. Sinjar, northern Iraq, he ordered limited air strikes in order to allow an escape route for these poor people.
Today an incredible statement from the administration said that a rescue mission was now unlikely as “they were fewer people and with better conditions than expected”. Maybe humanitarian missions and human suffering should be measured like golf, and in Obama’s vision they are now below “par”. Well, then we should inform the UN, Europe, and Kurdish officials of that fact as they are declaring their highest level of emergency, not only in Iraq, but also Syria, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic. Our modern Nero continues to be oblivious of the dangers that faces us. With the recent declarations of the prior Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and other prior administration officials who have come out of Obama’s closet, it is becoming clear that our President ignores the advice of his military and foreign policy experts, following exclusively what is politically convenient in the short term. Unfortunately, what they think will increase the enthusiasm of their voting base, also gives a signal of weakness to the Islamic extremists, and further motivates the expansionist ambitions of the ex KBG member, Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
We can only hope that his golf game has improved!
