Obama – Dreams of Which Father?

There are basically two kinds of people in this world.  Those who learn from their mistakes and those who don’t.  Everyone has successes and failures.  But it is the response to failure that really counts.  People who learn from their mistakes are the ones most likely to succeed.  For example Thomas Edison was not exactly the smartest person trying to develop an electric light bulb.  He just did the most experiments.  Finally, one of them worked.  But there is another kind of person, that does not learn from their mistakes.  These people go through life bitter, disappointed and angry.    Because they are not able to recognize their own mistakes, they are doomed to blame others.   Sometimes there are entire classes of people like this.  They are often referred to as a victim class.  The victim class expends most of its energy at expressing anger toward the people they blame for their failures in life. 

While doing some recent research it became obvious to me that the biggest victim class of all is the Islamic World.  Anyone who studies history quickly learns that virtually all of the major achievements in art, music, education, science and industry have come from the West for hundreds of years.  The Islamic world is well aware of this.  They are envious of the success of the West.  But, it goes beyond simple envy.  It has morphed into hatred.  Some of the most important leaders in the Islamic world believe that their culture and history was stolen from them.  They view the West as an evil force that used its military power to dominate the Islamic world, take its culture and history and use it against those who created it.  This was bad enough, but then the West discovered oil.  They plundered the oil from the Islamic world and used it to become even more powerful while their citizens became fat and wealthy.  That is why they hate us so much.  They consider themselves the ultimate victim class and we are the ultimate villains. 

The following speech was given [T1] on Radio Islam by Iman Khamenei on April 21, 2001.  This was about 4 ½ months prior to 9-11. 

http://radioislam.org/khamenei/message.htm

He believes that wealth of the Islamic world has been plundered:

Today the wealth of the Islamic world is plundered. The precious sources of intellectual and cultural heritage are hidden by the propaganda of those who attack Islam. Under the false propagation of cultural attacks, young talents and minds are taken out, or their energy is wasted in political and military conflicts. Carelessness and moral irresponsibility are spread to people’s lives, education and sports, using the most advanced means of communication.

This is not just envy of Western prosperity, it is a conviction that this prosperity was gained by the plundering of the Islamic world.

Read the following article by Charles Krauthammer with this world view in mind:

The fruits of weakness

By Charles Krauthammer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/20/AR2010052003885.html

Nor is this retreat by inadvertence. This is retreat by design and, indeed, on principle. It’s the perfect fulfillment of Obama’s adopted Third World narrative of American misdeeds, disrespect and domination from which he has come to redeem us and the world. Hence his foundational declaration at the U.N. General Assembly last September that “No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation” (guess who’s been the dominant nation for the last two decades?) and his dismissal of any “world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another.” (NATO? The West?)

Just a few days ago, at the nuclear arms summit, Obama said the following:

“It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them,” Obama said. “And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.” 

Some of us have wondered why Obama has apologized for the U.S. all over the world.  Most of us are proud of our country.  We are proud of our prosperity.  We are proud of our freedom.  We are proud of our military strength that has been used to spread freedom and democracy around the world.  We make no apology for success and we cannot understand a President who does not understand that.

But Obama clearly does not share that view.  It is becoming increasingly apparent that he is embarrassed by our military strength.  He considers our military superpower status to be a burden.  He does not believe that any nation can or should try to dominate another nation.  He does not appear to believe that the American way of life is in any way superior to other world views.  Perhaps this explains why he has hesitated to even bring up human rights violations.  It explains why he warms up to people like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, while he ignores and insults our allies like Great Britain and France.   He has ignored the subjugation of women in the Islamic world.  He demands that we support the right of people to follow Islam, but has never suggested that the Islamic world tolerate the freedom to consider Christianity, or any other religion other than Islam.  But perhaps it is more than not wanting the U.S. to dominate the world.  Perhaps he believes, as does Iman Khamanei, that our military strength itself is unacceptable because it obtained by unjustly plundering the Islamic world? 

It does not end with military superiority.  Obama is also embarrassed by our economic superiority:

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h-wpxs1Re-8vx2Zk5xnYygW1W67w

Most of us are proud to live in a country where the American dream is a real possibility.  We love the fact that ordinary working people can afford to buy that SUV, they can afford to eat as much as they want and they can afford to keep their homes at a comfortable 72 degrees all the time.  Obama, on the other hand, finds this disgusting:

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,”

Obama is implementing a strategy that he admits will result in skyrocketing energy costs:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kerry-picket/2008/11/02/obama-energy-prices-will-skyrocket

Obama:  “When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal…under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket…even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad, because I’m capping greenhouse gasses, coal power plants, natural gas…you name it…whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retro-fit their operations.”

Obama says that he is doing this to protect us from global warming.  But perhaps the real reason is that he believes that the United States has unfairly exploited the rest of the world to obtain that American lifestyle.  He is embarrassed by our prosperity.  This also is consistent with the opinion of Iman Khamenei.  The following excerpt is from the same speech cited previously:

The resources of the people are turned to increasing the wealth of inimical oil companies and treasuries. The enemies get fatter each day, while in the heart of the Islamic world and in various parts of Asia, Africa and Europe, the lashes of cruelty of the are felt by millions of Muslims.

We do not know Obama’s core values.  We know virtually nothing about what the man really believes.  The only thing certain is that his personal background is very different from that of most Americans.  Because of that, we must try and determine his core values by his studying his decisions. Regardless of his motivation, Obama’s policies are rapidly reducing the strength of our military.  His economic policies are also quickly bringing the American lifestyle more in line with the rest of the world.  What is the real impact of refusing to drill for oil, refusing to build nuclear power plants and banning the use of our coal resources?  Although Obama is naïve and inexperienced, even he must understand that there is no chance that wind, solar and biotech sources of energy can supply enough energy to support the American lifestyle.  The result of his energy policy will be to make foreign oil more and more valuable.  While our lifestyle and economy declines, the oil rich Islamic world will prosper.  I would hazard a guess that Iman Khamenei would consider this to be a good result.

TDM


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