Obama Is Not Who We Are
By Clarice Feldman
AmericanThinker.com
The Washington Free
Beacon
has put together a video montage of
Obama using his catchphrase, “it’s not who we
are” 46 times.
The video editor, David
Rutz, observes:
Not unlike his
warning to political opponents that they may be on
the “wrong side of history,” the expression is
useful in its ability to shut down conversation and
seize a moral high ground, however imaginary.
Obama has deployed the term
to convince the country of his rightness on
immigration, Obamacare, education, national security
and not voting for Mitt Romney, among other
important issues to his presidency.
I don’t recall him using it
a 47th time after the San Bernardino slaughter,
though
his statement seemed to suggest the actual
victims were the terrorists, who had magically,
mysteriously (Islam not mentioned) become
radicalized, suggesting it was somehow our fault.
Since there is little
flexibility in his thinking, “not who we are” is
likely to be used even more to delegitimize his
opponents as his term in office runs down, his
popularity sinks, and he becomes ever more desperate
to stifle mounting criticism.
No matter how many times
it’s used, it is a weak debate trick to muzzle his
opponents by suggesting that no true American could
possibly disagree with his point of view.
Allow me to turn the tables
and point out some of the multiple instances when
Obama’s actions are not what we are. I know there
are many others, but these stand out in my mind
right now.
1.
Dissing Allies and embracing Enemies
If you're a Brit, your head
is spinning. It's not just the personal slights to
Prime Minister Gordon Brown -- the ridiculous 25-DVD
gift, the five refusals before Brown was granted a
one-on-one with The One.
Nor is it just the symbolism
of Obama returning the Churchill bust that was in
the Oval Office. Query: If it absolutely had to be
out of Obama's sight, could it not have been housed
somewhere else on U.S. soil rather than
ostentatiously repatriated?
Perhaps it was the State
Department official who last year denied there even
was a special relationship between the United States
and Britain, a relationship cultivated by every U.S.
president since Franklin Roosevelt.
And then there was Hillary
Clinton's astonishing, nearly unreported (in the
United States) performance in Argentina last month.
She called for Britain to negotiate with Argentina
over the Falklands.
Instances of his disrespect
for Israel are legion.
Here’s but one example:
It appears that someone in
the administration is trying to preempt Prime
Minister Netanyahu’s criticism of an imminent and
highly problematic deal with Iran that will
guarantee the Islamic Republic’s position as a
threshold nuclear power,” the official said. “It is
a transparent attempt to discredit the messenger
instead of dealing with the substance of his
criticism.”
The November 24 deadline for
talks between the world powers and the Islamic
Republic is looming, and Jerusalem has voiced
concern that the Iranians may be allowed to retain
nuclear threshold capabilities.
The Atlantic’s
Jeffrey Goldberg on Tuesday quoted a senior official
as saying about Netanyahu, “The thing about Bibi is,
he’s a chickenshit.”
The good thing about
Netanyahu is that “he’s scared to launch wars,”
Goldberg quoted the official as saying.
[snip]
Goldberg, considered well
connected in the White House, said that over the
years Obama administration officials have described
the prime minister as “recalcitrant, myopic,
reactionary, obtuse, blustering, pompous and
Aspergery.
2. Repeated
unconstitutional acts.
Two years ago at Forbes Ilya
Shapiro noted the
10 top such acts. Since then there have been
more.
Shapiro’s list notes these:
Delay of Obamacare’s out-of-pocket caps; Delay of
ObamaCare’s employer mandate; Delay of Obamacare’s
insurance requirements; Exemption of Congress from
Obamacare; Expansion of the employer mandate penalty
through IRS regulation; Political profiling by the
IRS; Outlandish Supreme Court arguments: Recess
appointments; Assault on free speech and due process
on college campuses.
Most of these transgressions
are self-explanatory or well-publicized, but you
might have now forgotten or overlooked the Supreme
Court arguments to which Shapiro refers. Let his
explanation refresh your recollection: “Between
January 2012 and June 2013, the Supreme Court
unanimously rejected the Justice Department’s
extreme positions 9 times. The cases ranged from
criminal procedure to property rights, religious
liberty to immigration, securities regulation to tax
law. They had nothing in common other than the
government’s view that federal power is virtually
unlimited. As a comparison, in the entire Bush and
Clinton presidencies, the government suffered 15 and
23 unanimous rulings, respectively.”
3. Constant executive branch overreaching.
In addition to the
unconstitutional actions of the president, he has
engaged in numerous acts of overreaching. The
Committee for Justice
lists 25 such acts. In addition to those noted
by Shapiro, this publication reminds us of these:
refusal to build a fence along the Mexican border as
required by law; authoring over 21 executive orders
that restrict 2d Amendment rights; the
administration’s Fast & Furious Operation, which
clearly was designed to create gun crimes and
further erode the Constitutional right of citizens
to bear arms -- and failure to dismiss Eric Holder
when his attorney general refused to testify before
Congress about it and was held in contempt;
overreaching regulations and mandates by his EPA,
Department of Justice, IRS, FCC, EEOC, Department of
Energy, and department of Interior. Some of the most
serious wrongdoing includes:
18.Without Congressional
approval, Obama gutted the work requirement for
welfare recipients passed by Congress and signed
into law by President Bill Clinton.
19. In the bailout of
General Motors and Chrysler, Obama illegally
shortchanged bond holders in favor of Labor Unions,
despite U.S. bankruptcy laws that specify that bond
holders be first in line to be paid back.
20.Eager to use the killing
of Osama bin Laden for political gain, Obama exposed
the identity and method of operation of the Navy
SEALs team that conducted the operation in Pakistan,
thus exposing its members to a lifetime of risk
because they have been targeted for assassination by
Islamists. A short time after Obama exposed the Navy
SEALs' method of operation, 22 SEALs were shot down
and killed in Afghanistan. It is a violation of law
for the President or any American to reveal
classified military secrets.
21.President Obama
established an extra-constitutional top secret "kill
list" of people (including Americans) who can be
summarily killed on sight – presumably by drones --
without due process. Once on Obama's kill list, an
American citizen can be targeted and executed on the
opinion of a single government bureaucrat. That's
not how our legal system is supposed to work.
22.Obama Administration
officials twisted the arms of defense contractors to
not issue layoff notices in October of 2012 so as to
avoid causing bad news for Obama right before the
election -- even though federal law (the "WARN Act")
requires such notices. Not only is this a violation
of the WARN Act, it's also an unlawful use of
federal officials for campaign purposes.
24.President Obama
intervened militarily in Libya in 2011 without the
Congressional approval required by the War Powers
Act.
23.Obama knowingly lied to
Congress and the American people about the killing
of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other
Americans in Benghazi, Libya. The president and his
representatives repeatedly said an anti-Islamic
video sparked a spontaneous uprising in Libya that
resulted in the killings even though Obama knew that
the attack was a well-planned military-style assault
by al Qaeda on the anniversary of September
I’d add to this lengthy list
his inexplicable trade of a Bergdahl, a deserter,
for 5 known jihadis in Gitmo, an act which endangers
all of us and undercuts military discipline when we
most need it. And don’t forget, as we go to press
Secretary Kerry is negotiating a climate change
agreement which has no Congressional approval, even
though treaties must be approved by it, in the same
way he negotiated a one-sided unsigned deal with
Iran which was never received Congressional
approval.
4. In his public actions he has undermined the rule of law.
For example, jumping in
prematurely on the side of Trayvon Martin, Professor
Gates, Black Lives Matter protestors, Michael Brown,
and others, including Clock Boy, before the facts
which exonerated the police actions were known.
5. He has honored
thugs and ignored victims of racial and terrorist
violence.
Even in his honorific role,
he has expressed contempt for most of America. To
give
but two examples:
President Obama did not send
a White House representative to attend the memorial
Mass on Sunday for James Foley, the American
journalist beheaded by the Islamic State militants.
The president did, however,
send three White House aides on Monday to attend the
funeral for Michael Brown, the 18-year-old black
male who was fatally shot by a police officer in
Ferguson, Missouri, CNS News reported.
He continues this pattern by
not sending a single representative to San
Bernardino to meet with the victims’ families or to
participate in any memorial there. Instead his
attorney general warned of a backlash against
Moslems (which has not occurred) and threatened in
vague terms the First Amendment rights of those who
spoke out against Moslems. Members of his party
went to a radical mosque in the DC area to show
their support for Moslems
"The Democrats set to attend
include Reps. Don Beyer (D., Va.), Joseph Crowley
(D., N.Y.), Betty McCollum (D., Minn.), Eleanor
Holmes Norton (D., D.C.), and several Virginia state
lawmakers, according to the New York Times."
To really rub it in, the
head of Homeland Security
held a press conference with an Imam linked to
the Moslem Brotherhood and Hamas.
6. He has gone out
of his way to insult the religious sensibilities of
traditional Christians and Jews.
He has done so in every way
at his disposal -- from regulations on ObamaCare to
ceremonial functions -- even turning
the annual Hanukah celebration at the white
House into
a pro-Moslem event.
Consider the fact that
Obama’s inaugural address abroad was “A New
Beginning,” delivered in Cairo in 2009 – a contrite
appeal to the Muslim world for forgiveness and for
partnership. Go back and listen as Obama waxes
eloquent about “hearing the call of the azaan” as a
youth in Indonesia, and about the historical
achievements of Islamic civilization in algebra and
architecture. This is Obama speaking from the
recesses of his soul.
Consider Obama’s refusal to
even mutter the words “Islamic extremism” or
“jihadism,” and to connect terrorism to Islam. I
think that this is because Obama doesn’t believe
that Western (or Judeo-Christian) civilization is
any better than Islamic civilization, and thus he
refuses to tar Islam with terrorism.
Speaking to the National
Prayer breakfast in Washington on February 5, Obama
said: “Before we get on our high horse and think
this [ISIS beheadings, sex slavery, crucifixion,
roasting of humans, etc.] is unique to some other
place, remember that during the Crusades and the
Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the
name of Christ.”
This is tantamount to saying
that the West is rooted in immorality, and that it
is time for other, no less moral and possibly more
moral, powers to emerge -- specifically, Islamic
powers. It is equivalent to saying that the
denouement of America and rise of an Islamic
superpower will elevate world politics to a better
sphere.
It is like saying that
America sanctions a seismic shift in the global
balance of power in favor of Islam.
Undoubtedly, Obama’s claim
that this or that is not who “we are”, depends on
the meaning of “we.” Maybe some smart journalist can
ask him.