In 1949, the Department of War and the Department of Navy were consolidated under a new name, The Department of Defense. The Secretary of Defense is appointed by the President with the consent of Congress. The United States has built a defensive behemoth in the air, on the ground and on the seas.
This mammoth assembly of weapons, technology and uniformed personnel has had a strong hand in world conflicts, arresting those tyrants that would interrupt the flow of peaceful commerce and seek conquest. It is noteworthy that we have a Department of Defense, not a Department of War.
However, our colossus of defense has somehow got confused with the colloquy of endless, sometimes pointless, talk. Verbal communications have shown up in the form of ‘summits’ and endless lectures, secular sermons and negotiations. There is an old saying that ‘talk is cheap’ and that axiom is proving to be true.
In his address to the Coast Guard Academy graduates in New London, CT. on May 20 the Commander-in-Chief told the cadets and the world that denying climate change is negligence and dereliction of duty. In his Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery, the President said “today is the first Memorial Day in 14 years that the United States is not engaged in a major ground war.”
Is it possible that someone is tampering with his teleprompter or is Mr. Obama that callous and indifferent? Ramadi, Iraq just fell to ISIS insurgents defiling the memories of those valiant U.S. Soldiers, Marines, Navy Seals and Iraqi Security Forces who fought the 2nd Battle of Ramadi from May to November 2006 to take back the city.
As indicated in past words of hypnotic imagery, Mr. Obama visualizes the world the way he dreams it, not the way it exists for those brave men and women who do the fighting while we read about blood spilled and tears shed by Gold Star Mothers.
Sure, global warming is important but where is the link between national security and melting ice caps? Where is the direct connection between cyclical climate change and military readiness? Is this simply a dodge to take our senses off the wicked actions of Islamic terrorists that the U. S. and other leading nations accept as prosaic?
Entire villages are being annihilated by ISIS terrorists. Christians are being slaughtered at random. Boko Haram is kidnapping school children. Those who stand by a crime scene in silence and inaction must share guilt and shame. Nations who relinquish the responsibility of helping the vanquished may be spurned when help is needed from former allies.
Couples who are raising families while working in factories, those who operate ’dozers and backhoes, the men and women who pay their taxes and vote deserve better. We are wasting time dickering with Iran. They are negotiating for released sanctions, not abandoning their nuclear program. Common sense tells us that they will have nuclear weapons capability to threaten Israel and the world within a few months or a year.
The real pact that must be sealed between nations is the ban by any country of deploying a nuclear device against their own or any other people. It is analogous to placing faith in a rattlesnake to assume that Iraq will refrain from developing nuclear weapon capability; consummate folly.
Resolution of the dilemma of turmoil in the world is complicated. There is the UN debating society that is ensconced in the UN building on the Hudson River in NYC. There is the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. where the fount of liberal conjecture is distributed. There is the Capitol Building where the U.S. Congress develops a plethora of diagnoses for local, regional, national, international and intergalactic problems. There are no solutions here but some deliberations coalesce into bills and become law. Other world leaders are busy with their own security and economies.
The next President of the United States must have a towering intellect, an unshakable determination to achieve amenable goals, accept plaudits and disparagement with equanimity and disregard the impotent acolytes who abide polls and political correctness. World peace may be unachievable but world war is unconscionable.
