150 Reasons Why Barack Obama Is the Worst President in History (7 page)

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Authors: Matt Margolis,Mark Noonan

Tags: #Nonfiction

BOOK: 150 Reasons Why Barack Obama Is the Worst President in History
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Why did these companies get so many of our tax dollars? Apparently, the Obama Administration doesn’t want us to know how these companies are selected, as the agency that awards the loans, the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO), hasn’t made their selection criteria public. So much for oversight and transparency. According the Office of Management and Budget, as many as 43 percent of the Obamacare co-ops are projected to fail.
190

 
Foreign and Military Affairs

 

At the G20 Summit in London, England, Obama’s first international summit of his presidency, he was asked about previous comments he made regarding America’s “diminished power and authority” over the last decade. He was hardly humble in his explanation on how to solve that problem. He said, “I would like to think that with my election and the early decisions that we’ve made, that you’re starting to see some restoration of America’s standing in the world.” 
191

Despite coming into office with virtually no foreign policy experience, Obama foolishly saw himself as the universal answer to the world’s problems with the United States.

But his vanity and naiveté would come back to hurt him. Between alienating our allies, kowtowing to our enemies, and taking many opportunities to apologize for America’s actions, this lack of experience showed, and ultimately hurt our country’s standing in the world.

62.
Hurting our Special Relationship With Britain

Since the American declaration of war against Imperial Germany in 1917, Britain has been America’s most consistent and staunch ally around the world. While there have been differences, when the United States found itself in difficulties we could always rely upon the support of Britain. This friendship is sealed not just with long standing ties and the fact that Britain is the mother country of the United States, but by blood shed on the battlefields of liberty around the world in the past century.

In spite of this long-standing friendship, almost as soon as Obama took office, he set about cutting ties by offering insults to our British friends.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks upon the United States, the British government loaned to the United States a bronze bust of Winston Churchill as both a pledge of British friendship and an invocation of resolve in the face of adversity. This bust of the greatest Briton of the past century—and the first foreigner ever accorded honorary American citizenship—stayed in the Oval Office during President Bush’s term. Weeks after taking office, Obama had packed up the bust and sent it back to Britain.
192

And the insults didn’t stop there.

Obama has made a series of gaffes and insults at the expense of ally.

In March of 2009, Obama gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown a most lackluster presidential gift: a box set of classic American films. This uninspired gift managed to be doubly insulting since the discs were incompatible with British DVD players.
193

Obama also repeatedly snubbed Prime Minister Brown throughout the year, at one point forcing Brown to settle for an impromptu chat in a kitchen at the United Nations building.
194

In May of 2011, while a guest at Buckingham Palace, Obama continued toasting the Queen as the orchestra began playing “God Save the Queen.”
195
A major faux pas on his part, that left a thick air of awkwardness in the room.

Because of the continued deterioration of America’s relations with Britain during Obama’s presidency, in March of 2012, a panel of British lawmakers wanted to end the “special relationship” with the United States because the phrase is no longer an accurate description of reality.
196

White House officials are also reportedly dismissive about the “special relationship,” and the British press is far less adoring of Obama’s every move. According to the London
Telegraph
, “the reality right now is that in the White House’s eyes Britain is not so much ‘special’ as rather annoying.”
197

Obama had clearly seen the special relationship with Britain over when he boldly declared, “We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people.”
198
Obama sure found a great way to insult Britain and their sacrifices made in support of America, particularly in recent years in fighting the War on Terror.

63.
Betraying Poland

To say that relations with our ally Poland have gotten worse under Obama is an understatement. Obama
played golf on the day of the funeral
of the Polish President, First Lady, and nearly 100 senior officials who died in a plane crash. When he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to a Polish resistance fighter, he caused much outrage by calling a Nazi death camp a “Polish death camp.”
199

But these were hardly his worst offenses to our ally Poland.

On September 17, 2009, Obama, a longtime opponent of missile defense, killed plans for joint missile defense with Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries, once under Soviet rule, still fear Russia today. Obama had pledged support for the program just six months earlier.
200
According to Dr. Paul Kengor, author and political science professor at Grove City College, “Obama’s action was a shocking betrayal of these two allies, and it was done to mollify Vladimir Putin and the Russians.” According to Kengor, Obama couldn’t do such a thing without adding insult to injury:

Poles and Czechs were stunned. But Poles especially were aghast at the timing of Obama’s decision: It came exactly 70 years to the day—September 17, 1939—that Stalin’s Red Army, in compliance with the Hitler-Stalin Pact, invaded Poland. The Soviets thereby joined the Nazis in assaulting Poland and starting World War II. Among other calamities for Poland, such as the Katyn Woods massacre, this joint attack made possible the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz. Poland somehow survived, but its Jews did not.

Back then, too, in September 1939, Poland was virtually defenseless, and Uncle Sam didn’t help.

This time, in September 2009, Poles and Czechs were asking for something much simpler: a U.S. commitment to the joint missile-defense system that America had promised under its previous president. No American troops were requested, no American tanks, planes, rifles, bullets, grenades. Only a defense system.

President Obama reversed that promise on September 17, 2009.
201

It is also fitting that Obama’s infamous hot mike moment with Russian President Dimitri Medvedev (when he told him he’d have more flexibility to accommodate Russia’s demands on the issue of missile defense) came almost 29 years to the day after Ronald Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983.

Obama’s misguided attempts to “reset” relations with Russia have come at the expense of a close ally and our own national security.

64.
Double Talk on Lockerbie Bomber Release

On July 25, 2009, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, was released from prison on compassionate grounds. Al-Megrahi was dying of prostate cancer. He was also responsible for the deaths of 270 people, and naturally there was plenty of outrage. Of those 270 victims, 189 were Americans. Barack Obama denounced the decision. A year later, in a joint press conference at the White House with the British Minister, Obama reiterated that sentiment:

I think all of us here in the United States were surprised, disappointed, and angry about the release of the Lockerbie bomber. And my administration expressed very clearly our objections prior to the decision being made and subsequent to the decision being made. So we welcome any additional information that will give us insights and a better understanding of why the decision was made.
202

But, less than a week later, it was revealed that the Obama administration had secretly advised Scottish ministers to free the Lockerbie bomber rather than jail him in Libya.
203

Not only did Al-Megrahi receive a hero’s welcome upon returning to Libya, he lived for another two years, much longer than the short few months expected when he was released.

65.
Ignoring Christian Oppression

Early in his presidency, Barack Obama delivered a speech at Cairo University in Egypt declaring “a new beginning” with the Muslim world. Since his promise to mend relations with the Muslim world, he has been extremely vocal against any slights made against it. When a Florida pastor made headlines in 2010 for burning a Koran, Obama was quick to issue a statement condemning the act.
204
When Korans were burned by NATO troops at a U.S. Airbase in Afghanistan, Obama quickly offered an apology.
205
And of course, after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Obama publicly apologized for a little-seen film on YouTube that was “insulting to Islam.”

If Islam is insulted, even by private U.S. citizens, Obama has shown his due diligence in apologizing for it. While there’s nothing wrong with Muslim outreach (even though it hasn’t been particularly successful) Obama has shown far less interest in being an advocate for oppressed Christians around the world:

In Indonesia, Muslims are forbidden to even acknowledge Christmas.
206

In Algeria, a Christian convert was sentenced to five years in prison for sharing a Christian CD with a Muslim.
207

In Sudan, Christian villages were bombed during Christmastime by the country’s own military.
208

In Pakistan, a 14-year-old Christian girl was kidnapped, raped and tortured for eleven days, and forcibly converted to Islam. When her family finally recovered her, the local Imam declared that if she didn’t live in accordance to Islam, she and her family would pay the price. The remaining Christians in the village were warned to leave immediately and that their homes would be burned.
209

In Nigeria, a band of Islamists invaded a Christian church on Christmas Eve, murdering six people, including the pastor, before setting the church on fire.
210

In Iraq, Ayatollah Ahmad al-Hassani al-Baghdadi, on live television, essentially issued an invitation to all Muslim men to rape Christian girls and women at will, ruling that all Christian females were “concubines” of Muslim men.
211

Under the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, Coptic Christians in Egypt have been slaughtered, with only tepid acknowledgement by Obama, but no action.
212

Christian oppression in Muslim countries is very real, and has been on the rise since the Arab Spring, which Obama lauded in a speech in February 2011. In that speech, he said, “The question before us is what role America will play as this story unfolds.”
213

So, what role has America played in protecting oppressed Christians living in those countries? None at all. In fact, Obama sees countries like Egypt as a
success
story of his foreign policy.
214

66.
The Global Apology Tour

When Obama first became president he went on what was dubbed by some as the “Global Apology Tour.”
215

While in France in April 2009, Obama said that in America there is “a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world,” and said America “has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”
216
A week later, while speaking to the Turkish Parliament, Obama claimed America is still “working through some of our own darker periods in our history,” citing slavery and segregation as legacies we
still
struggle with.
217

At the Summit of the Americas later that same month, he did concede that America has played a key role in promoting peace and prosperity, but that “we have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms.”
218

There are many similar examples, all proving Obama’s negative view of America and its history. That he went onto foreign soil to trash his own country is inexcusable and beneath the office of the presidency.

67.
Now Obama Can be Flexible With Russia

A reelected president doesn’t to face voters again. This means he can be more willing to go his own way without worrying about electoral consequences. Obama unwittingly revealed his lack of concern with America’s interests when a hot microphone caught him telling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev he’d have “more flexibility” to deal with the more controversial issues between the two countries (like missile defense) after the presidential election.
219
If Obama is truly looking out for the best interests of his country, he shouldn’t have to wait until
after
the election to avoid the consequences of his actions.

68.
Trips To Tyrannical Regimes

Shortly after winning his second term, Obama make a trip to Burma and Cambodia – two nations long run by brutal, tyrannical regimes. People who care about human rights were appalled by the action. Even though Democrats rarely have the courage or the conviction to criticize Obama, several House and Senate Democrats, including Senator Dick Durbin from Obama’s home state of Illinois, criticized Obama’s actions in a letter to the White House.

By taking a strong and public stand in support of human rights and democracy during this first-time visit by a U.S. President to Cambodia, your words would encourage and embolden the Cambodian people and send a clear message to the entire region about American values and expectations, particularly in the wake of the Arab Spring. However, failure to speak out will serve to undermine America’s narrative of support for Asian democrats.
220

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