Violating His Oath Of Office?

from The American Spectator:

The Obama Watch


Violating His Oath of Office?

By Peter Ferrara on 8.25.10 @ 6:09AM



"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."



That is the oath of office taken by President Barack Obama, and every other President of the United States, as provided in Article II, Section I of the Constitution. The question I want to ask is can you "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," without "preserving, protecting, and defending" the United States?



President Obama's Iran Disgrace



President Obama was so self-satisfied during the 2008 election with the avowed brilliance of his innovative Iran policy of "talking" to Iran about their nuclear weapons program. He accused President Bush of stupidly thinking he was punishing the Iranian government by refusing to talk to its leaders. President Obama was going to deliver peace in our time by talking to Iran "without preconditions," even going so far as to engage in "tough diplomacy" if necessary to convince Iran to terminate its nuclear weapons program.



Michael Ledeen pointed out in the Wall Street Journal at the time that every Administration all the way back to Jimmy Carter had "talked to Iran," with no good ever coming from it. President Carter had engaged in "tough diplomacy" for over a year to free the American diplomats seized as hostages by the pirates running Iran. The Iranians finally did release them, at the precise moment of the Inauguration of Ronald Reagan, who seemed to be willing to do more than "tough diplomacy."



At the very time that candidate Obama was preening all over the country regarding his hot new idea of "talking to Iran," the newspapers were filled with reports of what "carrots" then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was going to offer Iran in the next round of talks on its nuclear program. That never amounted to anything either.



Yet lots of yuppie voters were nevertheless fooled into thinking that the fresh, young Obama had indeed come up with a promising new approach, overlooked by the stodgy Bush/McCain curmudgeons.



It was obvious to thinking people at the time that "talking to Iran without preconditions," and "tough diplomacy," were never going to amount to anything. What would the American negotiating response be when told that the nuclear program was necessary to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth," and kill all the Jews, as Iran's fascist dictatorship had in fact already stated publicly?



All those brilliant yuppies voting for Obama apparently did not know that the name of the country was changed from the historic "Persia" to "Iran" to claim that it was, in fact, the original source of Hitler's Aryan race.



So, now, almost two years later, what has come of President Obama's brilliant strategy of "talking to Iran without preconditions"?



When the Iranian people rose up in protest against the stealing of a sham election by the country's fascist dictatorship, President Obama sagaciously withheld even rhetorical support, to curry favor with the ruling Islamic theocracy in the vain hope of a nuclear deal. As the mullahs' Brown Shirt henchmen began murdering protesters in the streets, President Obama stood idly by, offering nothing of significance in their support. Even Jimmy Carter supported human rights. That is why President Obama's foreign policies are the worst, most unprincipled, most un-American in our nation's history.



Not to worry, though. President Obama had another trick up his sleeve. He yielded to the Russian demand to cancel the deployment of missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, after America's newly liberated allies in those countries had suffered the political costs of agreeing to them. Those missile defenses would have been strategically located as advance defenses for America, as well as for Europe, from the threat of Islamofascist nukes. But President Obama's apologists assured us that this ploy would win Russian pressure on Iran to end its nuclear program, and Russian support for serious sanctions if that pressure failed.



But just last weekend, there were the Russians in Iran, loading the nuclear fuel rods into the Bushehr nuclear reactor. This provides the Iranians with a second route to nuclear weapons, based on the plutonium produced by the Bushehr plant, in addition to the uranium enrichment now produced by hundreds of Iranian centrifuges. Papa Joe Ahmadinejad announced that this was just the first of 10 such nuclear plants.



Even Amy Carter Knew Better



During the 1980 Presidential debates, President Carter explained that he had asked his daughter Amy what was the most important issue of our time, and even she understood that nuclear proliferation was the top concern. The spectacle of the President of the United States seeking international strategic advice from his 12 year old daughter drew nationwide peals of laughter.

But even the 12-year-old Amy Carter would be a strategic giant in this Administration. That includes the miserable failure of our esteemed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who Washington insiders are already advancing as the future savior of the Democrat party.




As Arthur Herman reports in the August 19 New York Post, nuclear proliferation is now spreading to Syria. Herman writes:



Last week, the Obama Administration woke up to the fact that Syria has been steadily working on a nuke-weapons program. It is considering asking the United Nations to investigate -- even though Syrian dictator Bashir Assad has been blocking the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency from investigating suspected nuclear sites for years. Sorry: It's not the United Nations that holds the key to keeping Syria from becoming the next Iran. It's the United States -- and it's time to realize American decline has consequences.



This represents another disastrous Obama Administration foreign policy failure. As Herman further explains:



Ironically, just five years ago, Assad's vicious, unpopular regime seemed on the ropes. It had been chased out of Lebanon by the democratic 'Cedar Revolution' and stood in international disgrace for its links to the assassination to Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. President Bush had slapped firm sanctions on Damascus…. Syria looked isolated and vulnerable. Then came President Obama to the rescue.



President Obama lifted sanctions and reopened the American embassy in Damascus, restoring diplomatic relations with no punishment for Hariri's murder. Then, in April, he sent as his emissary Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry to "dialogue" with the Islamofascist dictator. Now, in August, we have the results of this "tough diplomacy."



President Obama's knock-kneed Middle East policies are leading to nuclear proliferation throughout the region. In self-defense, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt maybe even Jordan and smaller oil rich Gulf states will now develop their own nuclear weapons, reversing President Bush's true diplomatic coup in convincing Libya to drop its nuke program, which resulted from the demonstration of force in Iraq.



Nuclear War in the Middle East?



Israel is now surrounded by Iran's Islamofascist allies. Hezbollah sits on its northern border rearmed with 45,000 Iranian missiles, many of which can now reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. To the east lies Hamas in Gaza, also rearmed by Iran and sworn to Israel's destruction. Soon Iran will be armed with nukes, with Syria on the way.



The Obama Administration's response is more "tough diplomacy." It has arranged for early September talks between Israel and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas. But just as it was obvious that Obama had no prospect of sweet talking Iran out of its nuclear program, it is obvious that these talks have zero prospects of achieving peace.



That is because the Palestinians have given every indication that they do not want peace with Israel. They are committed to Israel's destruction. The only Palestinians willing to even talk about peace are those being paid by the U.S., with a leader who has already announced his retirement, kept even in partial power only by that U.S. funding.



This is nothing new. While Israel has repeatedly accepted a two-state solution, it is the Palestinians who have long rejected that. George Will points out that all the way back in 1936, when the British Peel Commission proposed an Arab/Jewish partition of British administered Palestine, the Palestinians responded with a violent revolt.



When the United Nations proposed a partition plan on November 29, 1947, Israel immediately accepted. The Palestinian response came on November 30, when Israel was attacked, Will writes. In late 2000, when Israel accepted a Clinton Administration brokered deal that gave the Palestinians almost everything they had asked for, the Palestinians responded with the Intifada killing more than 1,000 Jews. Israel is a democracy, and no elected government could survive giving away more than that 2000 deal, which, indeed, already gave too much.



And even if Abbas did agree to a deal on behalf of the PA, that would just engender another attack on Israel, as in 1936, 1949, and 2000. First from Hamas, then when Israel responds, from Hezbollah, with the PA canceling the agreement on the grounds it cannot deal with an Israel killing Palestinian attackers. And if Israel presses on to looming victory, then from Iran and Syria, possibly then with nukes, claiming the Israeli self-defense as justification.



The Jews are not going down to a second holocaust without fighting back. Their nuclear counterattack would have to be aimed at taking out their enemies once and for all.

Needless to say, this literal hell on earth would be the greatest failure of diplomacy and foreign policy in world history. Don't underestimate the social, political and cultural changes such a cataclysm would produce, starting within America.




But this is not the worst case outcome of the Obama Administration's "tough diplomacy." Papa Joe Ahmadinejad has told cheering crowds of Iranian Islamofascists to imagine a world without America. "I tell you this is possible," he told them. Ending America as we know it would be possible by firing one second rate missile off a boat on the East Coast, and one off a boat on the West Coast, each carrying a nuke that would explode miles up in the atmosphere. On our present course, Iran will soon have the technology to do precisely that.



This would create an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that would fry all electronics on the American mainland below. Instantly, America would be back in the pre-industrial, horse and buggy, agricultural, mid-19th century, more than 100 years behind the rest of the world.



Or maybe "suicide" bombers would just take out an American city.



These are the risks the Obama Administration is taking on your behalf, with its "tough diplomacy," and apparent willingness to "learn to live" with a nuclear Iran. Social, political and cultural change, indeed.



Regime Change



America's first line of defense against these risks lies not in our own national defense, which President Obama is increasingly standing down. It lies with those unarmed Persian patriots whom the theocracy's fascist Brown Shirts have been murdering in the streets.



For as Michael Ledeen explains in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, the Iranian theocratic regime is hanging on by its fingernails. Ledeen writes, "Iran's leaders have lost legitimacy in the eyes of the people, are unable to manage many of the country's problems, face a growing opposition, and are openly fighting with one another." He concludes, "Very little of this news reaches a mass Western audience, and one wonders to what extent Western governments understand what is going on. If they do, their failure to support the democratic revolutionaries is all the more lamentable."



Yet, the Obama Administration has openly sneered at all talk of regime change and supporting the revolutionaries. This is a disgraceful abandonment of America's own longstanding values, as well as its national defense interests.



But would regime change without destruction of the Iranian nuclear program be enough? Even top opposition leaders have praised that nuclear program in the past, and have been involved in threatening Israel, if not America as well.



Clear-eyed American national defense would involve U.S. military action to take out the Iranian nuclear program by air and sea. Not every nuclear facility needs to be destroyed to hopelessly disrupt the nuclear program for now. This would be combined with massive covert arms and financial support for the democratic revolutionaries, including various ethnic minorities in longstanding revolt. That would bring down the collapsing mullah theocracy in short order. With its Iranian props gone, Syrian regime change would be low hanging fruit. The Palestinians may then well be willing to negotiate a lasting peace.



But this is going to require regime change in America first. The American people have the power to accomplish that on a timely basis this fall. But that requires an election result that will knock the Washington establishment to its knees. Social, political and cultural change, indeed.



Peter Ferrara is director of entitlement and budget policy at the Institute for Policy Innovation, a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute, a senior fellow at the Social Security Institute, and general counsel of the American Civil Rights Union. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.