Not in their actions - but in their inaction - are most men judged. Such will be the fate of our departing President
Syria is a humanitarian disaster that America should have prevented. Half of million people slaughtered and 12 million displaced, flooding Europe and America with refugees who deplore our way of life. Obama’s foreign policy has been delusional, even after Syria mockingly crossed his "red line" by using chemical weapons on their own people…he did nothing. Then he retreated even further, allowing Russia to dominate the region…just like they did in Georgia and the Crimea and the Ukraine.
Obama’s wishful thinking about the “JV Team” has been even worse. Orlando, Boston, Paris, London, Madrid, Istanbul, San Bernardino, Nice, Berlin: the US and our allies are under constant attack by Radical Islamic Terrorists with zero pushback. To add insult to injury, Obama shamefully refused to support Israel in the UN for the first time in our history, providing a capstone of his policy of helping our enemies and punishing our friends. It’s currently US policy that Europe and America should import millions of Muslim immigrants, but Jews are not allowed to live in Jerusalem.
FDR demanded nothing less than total victory in WWII. Truman leveraged our triumph into sweeping reforms that transformed our former enemies into trusted friends. Reagan and Bush the Elder defeated the Soviets without firing a shot. “Peace through Strength” provided 50 years of stability in which global war has not been seen again.
Clinton had the same opportunity after the Berlin Wall fell down. For over a decade, America enjoyed unprecedented military technological superiority and world-wide good will. Clinton could have enacted global reforms to ensure the world remained peaceful. Instead, he let foreign affairs wander aimlessly and squandered our "peace dividend" by drastically shrinking our military. Giving missile technology to China was bad enough - not updating our planes and our ships was even worse. Our Air Force is flying airplanes that are 60 years old, our Navy is the smallest it’s been in a century, and our Army is 20 times smaller than it was during WWII. We did nothing about Rwanda, a massacre that claimed nearly a million lives. We did nothing about Al Qaeda. The result? A terrorist attack on September the 11th that was worse than Pearl Harbor.
There's no denying Bush 43 should have fought a better war, drawing out what should have been a short campaign into a decade-long quagmire. But at least he knew he was in a war: at least he kept the country safe. Obama pretends there isn't a war, allowing Islamic Terrorism to breed into a 30-nation catastrophe that brings death to our allies and our homeland.
America fights best when our objective is nothing short of victory. The US won WWII in 3 years and WWI in less than 2 years, yet we've been in constant war for nearly two decades with little to show for it. It’s high time America seeks total victory, like Washington and Jackson and Lincoln and Teddy and FDR and Reagan.
"Men cry 'peace, peace' but there is no peace: the war has already begun." When America does not lead – when we show weakness abroad – rogues and tyrants fill the void, reeking chaos and misery and epic loss of life.
Belton is a Republican from District 112, serving in the Georgia House of Representatives.
