I would have said that Barack Obama is not just “in denial” but living in a bubble of his own making. If one needed an example to illustrate a “clear and present” danger, there couldn’t be one better than the advance of ISIS and the lack of resistance from the Iraqi Army. It is the danger of advancing barbarism and the lack of resistance from the “civilised” world represented by the US and its allies. The risk now is greater than that imagined to be posed by Saddam Hussain’s imaginary WMD. It is greater than the risk posed by Gaddafi in Libya.
And instead Obama is blathering on about the imaginary immediacy of the imaginary risk of imaginary global warming. “An immediate risk to our national security ….and we need to act now” he proclaims. He stopped just short of ordering air strikes against global warming.
Senator John McCain on Sunday attacked the president for citing climate change as a threat to national security, suggesting that the Obama administration’s focus on environmental issues was detracting from the fight against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.
The comments by the Senate armed services committee chairman were part of a rotating blame game over the Memorial Day weekend about who is responsible for recent gains by Isis fighters, who last week took control of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra and the Iraqi city of Ramadi.
“There is no strategy, and anybody who says there is, I’d like to hear what it is,” McCain said, appearing on CBS News. “Because it certainly isn’t apparent. Right now we are seeing these horrible reports, in Palmyra, they’re executing people and leaving their bodies in the streets.
“Meanwhile the president of the United States is saying that the biggest problem we have is climate change.”
In a commencement address at the US Coast Guard Academy last week, President Barack Obama said climate change posed an “immediate risk”.
“I’m here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security,” Obama said. “An immediate risk to our national security. And make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country. And so we need to act, and we need to act now.”
Bolton was just as blunt, accusing the White House of being in denial.
White House officials are “in denial” about the threat posed by Islamic State fighters in the Middle East, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said Sunday.
“They just simply will not acknowledge that ISIS is a threat,” Bolton told Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace. “I think they’re blinded by their own ideology.”
Bolton said countries in the region, such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, “need American leadership” to fight the rising extremist movement that has swallowed up cities in Iraq in recent weeks.
“Are we really saying we are going to put American security in the hands of the Saudi defense ministry?” Bolton said.
And the spin doctors are out again to divert attention from the lack of US strategy and instead to blame the Iraqis. The Iraqis are now nothing more than what has been created by the US. If they lack the will to fight it is because the US “divide and rule” policy has sapped their will to fight. And the artificially created Iraq, without the Shia element will always be incomplete. But to bring the Shia into a position of strength – and thereby favour Iran – is ideologically impossible for Obama. He is stuck with his religious commitment to Saudi Arabia. Maybe that will change when the nuclear deal with Iran has to be struck.
On Sunday the US defense secretary, Ash Carter, blamed the fall of Ramadi, in Anbar province west of Baghdad, not on a lack of American commitment but on Iraqi forces, who he said lack the “will to fight”.
“What apparently happened is the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight,” Carter told CNN. “They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force. That says to me, and I think to most of us, that we have an issue with the will of the Iraqis to fight [Isis] and defend themselves.”
The simple conclusion I come to is that merely stating that he has a strategy does not mean that Obama actually has any strategy. His actions (or lack of action) actually demonstrate that he does not.
Tags: Barack Obama, global warming, ISIS
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