On January 7, 2015, the satirical newspaper ‘Charlie Hebdo’ was stormed by jihadists in Paris, France. The siege ended at a Jewish kosher supermarket with a total of 17 deaths over three days. An attack at a cultural center in Copenhagen on February 14 was probably intended to kill Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks but took the life of 55-year old documentary film maker Finn Norgaard instead.
The second attack in Copenhagen on February 9 resulted in the death of a security guard at a downtown synagogue. ISIS has boasted of the beheading of 21 Coptic Christian Egyptian men on a beach in Libya. The US and other countries fled their embassies in Yemen recently. The lives of thousands of Christians in Nigeria are at risk by Boko Haram.
Recently Russia announced that they will be testing an intercontinental ballistic missile called the RS-26. Iran has sent a satellite into space. North Korea shot several missiles into the Sea of Japan. Pakistan recently tested a short-range missile. While our missile defense trends downward, Putin solidifies Russia’s increasing conquest of Ukraine, ignoring the cease-fire agreed to by representatives of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine.
We are living in a world where nations are preparing for war or killing people and destroying buildings and infrastructure. Pope Francis condemns the atrocities of Islamic terrorists and President Obama held a White House summit on ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ on February 19 with an unidentified group.
Words without actions by both Pope and President will almost certainly go unheeded by ISIS terrorists. Awakening his vast knowledge of history, the President kindly reminded us of ‘The Crusades’ of a millennium ago.
In 2009 President Obama withdrew plans for placement of missile interceptors in Poland and X-Band radar in the Czech Republic. He didn’t inform officials in either Warsaw or Prague, letting them absorb the information from press releases, planning to replace defensive systems for Poland and The Czech Republic with the ‘Russian Reset.’
Apparently Mr. Obama had a vision that he and President Putin would get together with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the problems of conflict, combat and conquest would disappear by overwhelming Mr. Putin with his dynamic persona.
As aptly stated by Thomas Sowell, “Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.”
When thinking of effective government versus defective government, it is unclear why the Pentagon has increased its civilian personnel by 7% while uniformed military forces have been reduced by 8%. These civilian increases are surprising considering that the President demanded cuts in military spending of $100 billion in 2010 through ‘efficiency improvements.’
Each added worker in the DOD is doing predictably less and receiving more in pay and pensions and healthcare benefits. Workers are involved with process, not results. These are people that are not accountable, can’t be fired, receive a step increase each year and probably a rise in the GS scale every couple years.
Here are some excerpts from an article written by Thomas Sowell just this month (February):“We will be lucky to get through the remainder of President Obama’s term in office without a major catastrophe from which we may or may not recover. Iran has announced repeatedly that it plans to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. It was painfully ironic to hear Ms. Rice tell us that the danger we face today is not as serious as the dangers we faced in World War II. Anyone who has actually studied the period that led up to WWII knows that the Western democracies followed feckless policies remarkably similar to those that we are following today. In a nuclear age, we may not have time to let reality finally sink in on our leaders and wake up the public to the dangers.”
Writer’s notes: Thomas Sowell was born in 1930 in Gastonia, NC, raised in Harlem, NYC and served in the USMC during the Korean War. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago. He has taught at several leading universities in the USA and is currently a Senior Fellow at The Hoover Institution in Stanford University. Dr. Sowell’s writings can be found on the Internet and in books that he has authored.
– Dick Baynton
