11 November 2014 –

Let’s do it the right way! 

The midterm elections are over.  If you heard the President’s response, only one-third of America has spoken.  But, that one-third’s voice has been loud.  Republicans now control both houses of Congress, over thirty of the governorships, and sixty-seven of the ninety-nine state legislative bodies.   If ever there was a time for Republicans to govern courageously, now is it. 

Since Election Day, the spectrum of political punditry has been predicting various types of future governance.  From The Blaze, National Review, and Fox News to The Huffington Post, National Public Radio, and the major networks, experts and politicians are prioritizing things that Congress and/or the President should do to “get things done” and “help America get back on its feet.” 

The jaded pessimist in me says that such blather is only hides the cyclical electoral battle to control the multi-trillion dollar business called our federal government.  Such talk reminds of me of a similar game we played in the Air Force.  When the Inspector General team regularly showed up on base to delve into, inspect, and grade everything we were doing, they would officially say,”We’re here to help you.”  The local commander would officially respond, ”And, we’re glad that you’re here.”  Save me from those in authority who intrude in my life and call it help. 

   

The naïve optimist in me says that the Republicans’ “bills-to-pass list” for the upcoming session is well thought out and should mitigate the top strategic threats to the safety and prosperity of the United States: our national debt; our porous borders; and our dependence on dubious, foreign energy sources.  The President and top Democrat legislators will see the wisdom of going to the center and will work with the majority to mitigate those threats and get things done.    

The old man in me says that long-term stability does not derive from rapidly passed laws or self-serving executive orders, no matter how pressing political requirements are at the time.  Stability and security result from our keeping the governance process within the strict constraints clearly written in the Constitution.   It’s the U.S. Constitution that makes this country exceptional, not the brilliance, ambition, or popularity of our leaders.  It’s the U.S. Constitution that pragmatically enables the freedoms and natural rights of U.S. citizens—rights and freedoms eloquently expressed in the Declaration of Independence.  Therefore, responsible leaders must operate the mechanisms of governance only under the rules laid out in America’s seminal document.  Right now, neither political party has had a stellar record in that regard.

It takes a lot of focus, faith in our exceptional system, and moral courage to not succumb to the enticements of political power.  Alas, the President, a constitutional lecturer no less, has consistently preferred to get what he wants through unconstitutional executive orders rather than by honoring the articles, sections, and clauses in the Constitution that clearly delineate and limit his power.  Senator Harry Reid, as Senate Majority Leader, has abetted the President’s corruption by refusing to respect the intent, specific duties, and limitations of Senate prerogatives, as outlined in Article I of the Constitution.  Legitimate constitutional governance has ground to a halt in recent years as power flowed into the Executive Branch. 

  

Both Republicans and the President are now in the hot seat.  Controlling the House and the Senate for the next two years gives Republicans the chance to not only to get things done, but also to scour the corruption that has smelled up the Executive Branch and the Senate for the last six years.  For starters, Republicans must pass the first budget in six years and put it and other constitutionally required bills on the President’s desk.  No more continuing resolutions to exacerbate profligate spending.  It then will be up to the President to veto bills or work with Congress to create bipartisan governance.  Congress’s acting within its constitutional limits will coerce the President to do the same.  The President must accept and share in the benefits of Republican-driven governance or officially veto and be solely accountable for rejecting laws that would limit our debt, staunch spending, stop our immigration and border crisis, simplify our tax code, bring trillions of dollars back to the United States, and help us become the world’s top energy producer and exporter. Acting within Constitutional limits will work in the Republicans’ favor, for the benefit of all. 

Finally, the Constitution, who we are as Americans, demands that the process work that way.  Republicans must show the moral courage to trust that our exceptional system will produce stability and strength in society. Governing this way is true reform.  Governing this way is true hope and change.  Governing this way is the exceptional thing to do.  Anything else is politics as usual. 

29 October 2014 –

What we are really thinking

When I was the US Air Force Attaché to China, my wife and I lived in downtown Beijing.  We entertained diplomats from around the world and worked extensively with them and our Chinese hosts on all sorts of diplomatic and military issues.  Because we had information the Chinese government wanted, our apartment was bugged with audio and video sensors, our car had a GPS tracker on it, and I was followed virtually everywhere I went in the country.  My wife and I got used to the environment and  never talked about anything of importance while in the apartment or car, or near any Chinese.  We were there to do our diplomatic job, and we accepted the dictatorial Chinese state as the arena in which we did battle.  

  

The Chinese government’s intrusion extended to all aspects of our lives, including church.  Ours was not one of the country’s officially recognized denominations.  We could not invite Chinese citizens to worship with us, give them pamphlets, or even answer their questions about our faith or Christianity in general.  On a weekly basis, our pastor clearly stated these rules over the pulpit.  We rendered unto Caesar what was Caesar’s.

All the members of our congregation knew our services were electronically monitored to ensure we complied with government rules.  After all, it was a Communist dictatorship with 500,000 people in its security services who did nothing but monitor all communications within its borders.  Only our silent prayers were not subject to government scrutiny. 

There is an old Chinese saying:  Zai lin, chuang hei.  The direct translation is “toward the neighbors, dark windows.”  To the Chinese, whose natural and human rights have been suppressed for millennia by warlords, emperors, and Communist autocrats, it provides sage advice:  “Don’t tell anybody what you’re really thinking.”   In a dictatorship, this often is the only way to survive. 

I rejoice daily that our Constitution protects us from such government intrusion when we worship, speak privately or in the press, when we assemble, or petition the government for redress of wrongs.  The expression of our thoughts is constrained only by our ability to express them, not by the government.  Not by the federal government.  Not by the state government.  Not by the city government.  No government official can use legal mechanisms such as subpoenas to intimidate American religious congregations to quit calling a sin a sin, to quit public or private efforts to redress government wrongs, or to insist we pray only silently and away from others.  That is unconstitutional, and it is wrong. 

Five pastors’ names appeared in the City of Houston’s recent subpoena to turn over sermons which were thought to contain statements about the sins of our city leaders as well as information on how these religious leaders are trying to petition to redress the wrongs of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO).  Pastors Steve Wriggle, Herman Castano, Khan Huynh, David Welch, and Ms. Magda Hermida spoke out boldly and refused to back down.  They are heroes in my book. 

In a press conference on Tuesday, 28 October, these pastors, including Reverend Bill Owens and others from the Coalition of African American Pastors, declared that this issue is as much about civil rights as were the marches and demonstrations some of them participated in more than four decades ago.  These brave Americans forced a suppressive, local government to honor the Constitution and to respect First Amendment protections for all Americans. 

On Wednesday, 29 October, because of the efforts of the “Houston Five” and others, Mayor Parker’s office withdrew the subpoena. 

These pastors’ moral courage inspires me as much as has any physical courage I saw in my three decades of military service.  May God bless these pastors, their congregations, and all who are willing risk everything to protect Americans’ rights and freedoms.  I echo the “amens” we spoke so freely during the press conference.  We can do that in this country.  We can do that in Texas.  We can do that in Houston. 

After all, we Americans can tell people what we are really thinking.  

16 October 2014 –

An Apology Is In Order

I must apologize for my final statement in yesterday’s column about Houston Mayor Annise Parker.  According to the official City of Houston website, she is only fifty-eight years old.  Therefore, she is not an ”Ole Gay Mayor.” 

Yesterday, I explained my view on how we should use personal passion to express our own rights and reasoned tolerance to examine others’ expression of their rights in the public forum.  This helps create a peaceful, ordered society where legitimate rights can be accommodated. 

Today, I want to posit how Mayor Parker’s personal passion for lesbian, gay, bi-and-transgender (LGBT) causes combined with her lack of reasoned tolerance for others’ rights to create an embarrassment for her as the leader of Houston government. 

Personal passion is essential to define and maintain one’s rights in society.  In that vein, I defend Mayor Parker’s constitutional right to say during the city council debate in June that the now-passed, non-discrimination ordinance was a “personal” matter.  This ordinance contains, among other clauses related to sexuality and gender identity, a statement that would allow self-described, transgender men and women to use any public restroom of their choice.  Public expression of support for such radical change in society is Mayor Parker’s right.   

     

But, when the Mayor, the Executive Officer of the City of Houston, publicly declared that her bill was a reflection of her personal mores, she legitimately invited conservative and religious groups to declare not only her bill, but her personally, as morally offensive.  Those are the rules of the game.  Welcome to the fight, Mayor Parker!

Mayor Parker’s second mistake was to not conduct a clear-headed assessment of others’ rights—the First Amendments rights of people and groups whose opinions are diametrically opposed to hers—when she fought to defend her position.  Mayor Parker should have exercised reasoned tolerance by writing her city ordinance with constrained scope and wording.  I would say that Mayor Parker failed to do so.   

She may still have survived the political storm if she had not tried to subpoena Christian pastors’ sermons on homosexuality, gender identity, or the Mayor herself.  Up to that point in this saga, reasoned and tolerant people may have concluded that Mayor Parker was using the political process to encode her passionately-held view of sexuality in a city ordinance.  In return, Christian-based political groups were using the same political process to produce overwhelmingly large petitions to require the ordinance be put on a city-wide referendum.  The political process was playing out with vigor in the public forum.  But, the game changed when the subpoena was issued.    

Many Houstonians are deeply religious Christians.  They hold traditional views of marriage, sexual relations, and public displays of sexuality.  Many believe that God defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman and that sexual activity is sanctioned only within the bounds of that institution.  To them, all sexual activity outside of such a marriage, including homosexual acts, is a sin.  They also see the public use of restrooms by those who aren’t of the same sex as deeply offensive.  Their views are religious tenets of their faith in God.  Expressing such tenets of faith has been and is fully protected by the First Amendment.  This protection has consistently covered public expression as well as sermons and discussions within a religious congregation. 

Mayor Parker either did not understand the universal legitimacy of the religious, speech, and redress of grievances rights in the First Amendment or she allowed her supporters to intolerantly dismiss them.  Either way, the buck stops with her.

Apparently, the Mayor’s supporters wrote, then made public, a subpoena for some of Houston’s more vocal Christian pastors to turn over any sermons dealing with homosexuality, gender identity, or Mayor Parker herself.  Their response to the obviously illegal subpoena went national within hours.  Pastors publicly refused to comply.  Protestors gathered outside city offices.  Pundits had a field day.  Quickly, city attorneys and the Mayor herself backed off; they said that the subpoena’s wording was obviously too “broad.” 

It seems to me that the Mayor’s passion for LGBT causes clouded her and her supporters’ reasoned tolerance of others’ rights of expression.  This has put her into an embarrassing and politically damaging predicament.  What’s worse—or better, depending on your personal beliefs—is that the subpoena may have condemned her pet ordinance to the dustbin of public opinion and her personal credibility to the narrow hallways of her most ardent supporters. 

A lesson learned. 

15 October 2014  –

Of Course We Disagree. 

I regularly correspond with a friend I met while working together in the US embassy in Beijing, China.  He is passionate and well-reasoned when he expounds on the human condition.  His views occasionally may not line up with mine; but, because of his virtues mentioned above, I associate with and learn from him. 

Recently, my friend sent me a pamphlet by Paul F. Boller, Jr., “To Bigotry No Sanction,” which highlights George Washington’s critical role in “establishing the ideals of religious liberties and freedom for conscience…for Protestants, Catholics, and Jews—and for Deists and free thinkers as well—firmly in the American tradition.”  I recommend its thirty-six pages to anyone who wants to understand constitutionally guaranteed rights as well as to construct a guide to exercise those rights in public forums.   In George Washington’s example—in my friend’s example—I find the keys to protecting our personal rights while sustaining a free and functioning society. 

Examining and expressing our constitutionally guaranteed rights always should be a meditative, thorough process.  Also, we should never lie to ourselves about the rights we have or how to express them; there are plenty who will later to lie in the political arena. 

When we examine, then express, our rights, we must recognize that we almost always do so with passion.  When we pray at our bedside, in the pew, or on a trout stream in the Rockies, we do so with passion.  When we write letters to the editor, talk with friends, and instruct our political leaders, our passion inspires and punctuates the communication.  We instinctively straighten our backs when we demand security in our homes.  Our eyes well up with tears when we confirm in our souls that God, not any government, gave us our rights.  Expressing, defining, and protecting our personal freedoms is an emotional experience.  Without that passion, history shows that personal freedoms—however magnificent they may be—atrophy and are supplanted in the public forum by imposed manifestos on societal governance. 

Fervent advocates of Americans’ personal freedoms are legendary.  Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Paine have emblazoned freedom’s passion in many minds.  Their fiery speeches and actions announce exactly what I have told my children during difficult times in their lives:  Welcome to the Fight!  The passion of the fight defends and sustains what would otherwise be trampled and killed in a godless world.    

But, when and how should I “fight” for my personal rights?  I have learned that it also is my obligation, as a responsible citizen, to ensure that my discourse and my interaction in the public forum—in defense of my rights and liberties—not devolve into acrimony.  Passionate expression of a person’s or a group’s rights well defines the different parts of a pluralistic society.  That said, however, the larger society must function for the benefit of all.  Here is where tolerance and reason, not passion, are the necessary virtues.  In a free, yet ordered, society, a calm, clear-headed assessment of others’ rights, in order to determine how to accommodate all citizens, is just as important as passionate adherence to one’s personal code.  All life’s experiences tell me that such an assessment must be the product of reasoned tolerance. 

I like classic liberalism’s description of tolerance:  My neighbor can do what he wants—as long as it doesn’t scare the horses.  I recognize that most things my neighbors do don’t abridge my rights or detract much from the quality of my life.  But, when their actions do rub against me and mine, my definition of how my neighbors “scare the horses” must be a clear, passionless, assessment.  Reasoned tolerance demands a constrained scope and wording of my conclusions.  Otherwise, opportunistic foes will use my emotion to ridicule my arguments for their advantage.  

   

A reasoned, tolerant approach to others’ views of personal freedoms improves the political process.  Importantly, it impels all to clearly tie their political assertions and demands to constitutional principles and obligations. When discussions of rights and freedoms are so framed, they reveal rather than hide an argument’s constitutional weaknesses.  Only by being tolerant of other, well-delivered opinions can I learn more about who wants and who doesn’t want to sustain individual freedoms in society.  Only by reasonably accommodating others’ rights can we all better protect our rights.  

  

That’s all fine and dandy.  But what about the politicians who abuse others’ constitutional rights and processes in order to maintain their power?  Tomorrow, I will try to follow the philosophy above to contend that Houston’s Ole Gay Mayor “just ain’t what she used to be, ain’t what she used to be, ain’t what she used to be”…not so long ago. 

11 September 2014 –

Thirteen years ago today. 

11 September 2001, Incirlik Air Base, Turkey.  I was the Director of Intelligence for Operation NORTHERN WATCH.  We flew combat missions to enforce the military no-fly zone over Northern Iraq, a hold-over operation from Operation DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM more than ten years before.  Saddam Hussein still ruled Iraq, but we restricted what he could do militarily against opponents in his country and the region. 

Our mission was straightforward, our working conditions and quarters were good, Turkish food was magnificent, and the Brits and Turks we worked with were competent and professional.  In fact, we invited them all to our July 4^th festivities.  In return, the Brits invited us to a Benedict Arnold birthday party.   We flew our mission as was expected of the best air forces in the world.

 

Then, in one day, the world turned upside down. 

I was in the senior staff’s weekly security brief when a sergeant ran into the room, turned on the TV, and yelled that we had to see something.   We watched the airliner fly into the second World Trade Tower.  Everyone in the room went stiff and silent.  Our commander then calmly conducted a contingency planning meeting for what could be our new mission.

The death and destruction in New York, the Pentagon, and the field in Pennsylvania were horrible; we American Airmen in Turkey didn’t dwell on it.  We immediately got to work to begin again serving our country in a crisis.  We quickly went from patrolling Iraqi airspace to facilitating the movement of thousands of men and women, and billions of dollars of equipment, weapons, and supplies through Turkey to Central Asia in preparation for combat operations in Afghanistan.  We knew who and where the enemy was, and we were fixin’ to kill’em.    

The forces of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM, many of whom flowed through Turkey, quickly crushed the Taliban’s and Al-Queda’s ability to export terrorism out of Afghanistan.  In doing so, we lost fewer than thirty Americans in Afghanistan from November 2001 to February 2002.  Flush with success, the Bush administration thought it could also use our military to nation-build on a fault line between civilizations that has never yielded to being a cohesive nation.  Another 530 Americans were killed from March 2002 to the end of 2008 in the Bush administration’s pursuit of an unrealizable goal. 

Since then, in an even more tragic waste of life, the present administration has doubled down in fruitless nation-building.  Since 2009, nearly 1,700 more Americans have been killed in a “country” that looks and acts the way it did in 2001.  All this under the wrong strategy for the wrong place at the wrong time, and using the wrong instruments of national power.    

The administrations’ strategies in Iraq have been a faulty and tragic waste of American lives.  We didn’t have to invade Iraq and topple the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003.  Not because Saddam Hussein was a good guy; no, he truly deserved to die.  But, shouldering the inevitable responsibility for nation-building in a state with artificial borders and intractable cultural and religious divides would be next to impossible with the military forces allocated.  Correctly, our leaders in 2007 bet that a surge of additional forces would establish enough stability in the country’s critical regions and within its governing mechanisms to create potential for future nation-building.  Sadly, that lengthy process cost over 4,200 American military lives and more than 3,400 American civilian contractors’ lives. 

After 2009, the present administration abandoned its responsibilities in Iraq and wasted another 500 American military lives.  Its rejection of prior commitments, inattention, and deficiency in leadership showed the world that it could not be trusted. This has led directly to the burgeoning war with ISIL.   

 A lot has changed since the first 9-11, thirteen years ago.  But as I have mentioned, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  The world is still a bad place.  We still have implacable enemies who kill Americans in horrifying ways.  But, our military men and women still know who the enemy is and know how to kill him.  They continue to stiffen their resolve, train and plan, and then show the moral and physical courage to rise to any occasion. 

Our leaders must display that same decisiveness and courage that they ask of the Americans who execute their plans.  Only then will these “leaders” prove themselves worthy to visit the graves of the fallen.  

8 September 2014 -

1300 years of jihad

History should teach us about the present.  As a ten-year-old, I was mesmerized by the accounts of Lewis and Clark’s 1804-06 expedition back and forth across Montana.  The rest of their epic journey across the continent was largely irrelevant to a boy who viewed Montana alone as God’s country, the center of the universe.  As I grew, I learned that differing historical beliefs, cultures, and geography greatly influenced movements of peoples and civilizations.  I realized I needed to catch up.   

   

As an Air Force intelligence officer, I analyzed the relationships among world events and peoples, their geography, religions, languages, ethnicities, cultures, economies, historical successes and failures, and immediate aspirations.  After thirty-five years of analytic effort, I came to agree with the truism: “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” 

 

The “progressive” belief that modern nations will abandon allegiance to the factors above and embrace a one-world view is fantasy.  Modern civilization has given us vaccines, flush toilets, and a way to check e-mail in a fast-food restaurant in Singapore.  But, it has not changed the way most people identify with something greater than themselves, pray, or sacrifice for family and community.  And, modern “progressive” thought has had little success at all in resolving strife among peoples. 

A 1,300-year war is being waged between Christian and Islamic civilizations.  Since the 8^th century, the history of the Middle East and South Asia, almost all of Europe, and much of Africa, has played itself out in battles between these two sets of ideology.  Of course, within each civilization there have also been wars among different nations, peoples, and religious sects.  And, even in recent times, those intra-civilization struggles have been heavily influenced by the potential intrusion of other civilizations. 

The current fighting in Iraq and Syria is a skirmish in the latest jihadi terrorists’ offensive in this centuries-old war.  A resurgent Islam, modernized and enabled by petrodollars, has taken the initiative in this war between civilizations by paying for the creation of western-based jihadist networks that are attacking the Christian West.  The new twist now is that many of those who align themselves with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the Levant (ISIL) jihadists will return to the western countries they came from, prepared to attack their countrymen in the name of radical Islam. 

The pool of potential killers is large.  Local unrest in, and the withdrawal of European colonizers from, Islamic regions have created significant Moslem minorities within the bulwarks of western civilized nations such as Britain, France, Germany, Canada, and the United States.  It is within these communities that many of the ISIL radicals are being trained, are operating, and will continue to operate.  ISIL is the vanguard of a radical Islamic enemy spreading to other-than Muslim countries, an enemy that is controlling the events of today’s war.  Western leaders must now try to blunt this latest enemy campaign originating in jihadist madrasas and training camps in their own cities.  

   

It is no surprise that we in the West have no solid allies in the Islamic civilization who will help us regain the initiative in this war.   Saudi Arabia, for example, is asking the U.S. to help them squelch the latest version of jihad in Iraq; at the same time it continues to fund the creation of radical jihadists in its worldwide network of fundamental Wahabbist Islam schools.  Iran is allowed to flit in and out of nuclear negotiations with the U.S., at the same time never denying that it wants to destroy the United States and Israel, dominate the region, and establish Shia Islam as the ruling force wherever Moslems live.  Even Turkey, a long-neglected U.S. ally, is fomenting radical Islam.  Turks, Arabs, Persians, and Kurds may all distrust and try to dominate each other, but they all certainly distrust and often hate the West more.  Our strategic enemy is not ISIL; it is the intolerant civilization that spawns and nurtures violent religious movements within itself and then selectively launches these movements against the West in the larger war.    

 

Our leaders must admit that their vision of a let’s-hold-hands-and-sing-kumbaya world ain’t gonna happen.  The world’s religious and cultural history clearly warns otherwise.  Instead, our leaders need to rally western civilizations around an unambiguous message and a well-defined strategy that will protect traditional western interests. 

The message—the vision—is one of protecting individual freedom, religious tolerance, the sanctity of the lives and property of citizens, and the sovereignty of borders. 

The strategy is first to destroy ISIL, Al-Queda, and their fellow henchmen with certainty and decisiveness.  The weapons used and the timing and tempo of the war are operational concerns and do not need to be made public.   Then, our leaders must coerce—militarily, economically, and diplomatically–radical Islamic leaders into stopping their expansionist campaigns. 

Our leaders must regain the initiative in this centuries-old war, a war that will continue long after they are gone from the scene.  They owe that much to the future of our civilization and the people they are part of.  

28 August 2014 -

Inattention or inability; the outcome is the same

During the year I attended Air Force War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, AL,  we discussed how successful national foreign policy strategy must be based on a clear national vision of what America should be in the world, what our compelling interests are, and how determined we are to protect those interests.  Since World War Two, successful presidents have prioritized our compelling national interests based on the circumstances of the era; but because they followed the same general decision-making structure, most of the successes have been bipartisan. 

At War College, we discussed at length how a workable international strategy, to include the military portion, must tie objectives specifically to the presidents’ vision and doctrine.  The military then builds a number of operational plans—campaign plans—to help achieve those objectives if called upon.  Overall military manning, training, and equipment levels are then funded to successfully execute those plans.

   

The national command authority, guided by an engaged president and supported by our intelligence community’s assessments of world events, constantly reviews, adjusts and refines the nation’s vision, doctrine and national strategy.   In turn, our military’s operational plans and structure are adjusted to meet our nation’s response to world events.  The key to success in international affairs is constant engagement in the professional process, and faithful adherence to its proven methods of decision-making.  As they say in the business:  the plan is nothing; planning is everything. 

In the last twenty years, thousands of senior military officers and civilians have been trained in our military and diplomatic strategic-level schools.  Thousands of Americans now in the military and State Department can build a legitimate diplomatic/military/economic strategy to reinvigorate alliances, to defeat Islamic jihadists, to stop Russian and Chinese adventurism in Eastern Europe and the Far East, to stop Iran’s nuclear program, and to coerce despots everywhere to rein in their challenges to U.S. interests.  This high level of expert strategic and operational planning has been the hallmark of U.S. international success since World War Two.  Not to give planners something to base their efforts upon is foolhardy and dangerous, and has been a singular point of failure of a number of administrations. 

Today the failure rests with the President.  In six years, he has not produced a clear vision or any kind of international doctrine that could enable strategic planners to build worthwhile plans.   

No doctrine.  No strategy.  No military or diplomatic focus.  No bipartisan support.  No way to determine success.  

The proof is obvious.  The president half-heartedly led and then abandoned wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Regional peace has completely evaporated and U.S. interests have been quashed in both regions.  Mr. Obama’s  earlier, pointless bombing campaign in Libya was well executed, but the unintended consequence of getting rid of Gadhafi was Islamic power mongers taking over.  The debacle in Benghazi resulted from these jihadists’ rise to power. 

The President’s lifeless leadership in NATO has allowed Turkey to drift toward radicalism and to abandon its role as a moderating influence in the Levant.  He shamelessly abandoned Eastern Europe to its own devices, inviting Russia’s President Putin to seize the Crimea and dominate Eastern Ukraine.  In the Far East, the President’s lack of support for our Asian allies allows China to treat the South China Sea as its sovereign lake.

Finally, the President’s inability to recognize that the massive migration of illegal immigrants across our southern border is a strategic threat to the sovereignty of the United States shows that he simply does not understand what is vital to U.S. long-term interests. 

The President has plenty of expert strategic and operational analysts and planners throughout our military and diplomatic departments to help him succeed on the international level.  They really want to help the President to succeed; it is part of their professional ethos.  Most of his political opponents also want him to succeed as our Commander-in-Chief and as the international representative of our sovereignty.  But, without a clear vision of what national interests need to be protected and why, strategic plans will go unwritten, allies will seek their own counsel and way forward, and determined enemies will rush into the international power vacuum. 

Worst of all, when, without vision, doctrine, or a well-constructed strategic plan, the President decides to hurriedly put “boots on the ground,” our soldiers will die. 

And for what?