The Great Destroyer: Barack Obama's War on the Republic (40 page)

Read The Great Destroyer: Barack Obama's War on the Republic Online

Authors: David Limbaugh

BOOK: The Great Destroyer: Barack Obama's War on the Republic
3.19Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
While China is rapidly enhancing its space capabilities, President Obama has unilaterally dismantled ours. The U.S. shuttle program is finished without a successor in the wings. Experts have noted that China will probably have a fully operational space lab, and possibly a space station in earth’s orbit by 2020—the same year when our International Space Station could be decommissioned, which would leave China with the sole capability of hosting a permanent human presence in space, thus posing a serious threat to America’s national security.
117
ARMING THE WORLD
Even as he disarms America, Obama is accepting or even promoting the spread of military weapons, military-related technology, and nuclear power throughout the world. For example, it’s a little-known fact that the Obama administration is selling huge amounts of weaponry to foreign governments, not all of them reliable U.S. allies. Indeed, the administration is revamping arms export rules to relax oversight of U.S. arms sales. Author Peter Schweizer points to the “stunning statistic” that the Department of Defense last year informed Congress of its plans to sell some $103 billion in weapons to overseas buyers, when the average yearly sales between 1995 and 2005 were $13 billion. Presently, almost half our arm sales are to the volatile Middle East. Schweizer speculates that Obama is increasing arms sales to stimulate the U.S. economy, which he calls “a cynical and dangerous approach to arms sales,” given the increased risk such sales involve.
118
Jeff Abramson, deputy director of the Arms Control Association, calls these sales “an Obama arms bazaar.” The centerpiece of this bazaar shocked many observers: in 2010, the Obama administration struck a mammoth, $60 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. The deal, the single largest arms sale to a foreign nation in our history, would equip the Saudis with a fully modernized and powerful air force.
119
In addition to arming certain foreign countries to the teeth, Obama made it clear he has no objection to Venezuela developing nuclear energy. In October 2010, following dictator Hugo Chavez’s consummation of a deal with Russia to build Venezuela’s first nuclear power plant, Obama said, “Our attitude is that Venezuela has rights to peacefully develop nuclear power.” Even Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was probably surprised that a U.S. president would be so easily persuaded of the benign intent both of Russia’s presence in Venezuela and of the development of nuclear power there; Venezuela, after all, is an oil powerhouse that—like Iran—hardly needs nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Venezuela has also purchased more than $4 billion of weapons from Russia and agreed to allow Russia more access to its oil fields.
Furthermore, the same week Obama selected General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to serve as his top outside economic adviser,
120
GE announced it would sign a joint-venture agreement under which it would share its most advanced airplane electronics with China’s state-owned Aviation Industry Corp. of China. The deal prohibits the use of this technology for military purposes, but as
Investors.com
editorial writers noted, “China’s disrespect for intellectual property rights is legendary,” as is its “ability to hack into and retrieve information from computer systems worldwide.”
121
That same week, Obama announced an agreement with China to increase cooperation on nuclear security. The deal involves the formation of a jointly financed nuclear security center in China, which would provide training to improve security at nuclear facilities and accounting of nuclear materials. It also calls for the sharing of nuclear detection technology, though most of that technology and expertise will be provided by the United States.
122
China was eager to benefit from our technology, but they have shown no interest in sitting down to arms reduction talks, which is unsurprising, since Obama’s enthusiasm for reducing our nuclear arsenal gives them little incentive to bargain. When Defense Secretary Gates invited the Chinese to arms talks in January 2011 while in Beijing, they said they’d consider it. John Tkacik, a China expert and former State Department official, interpreted this response to mean, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” He added, “For the past 20 years, we’ve given the Chinese information briefings and tours of our military facilities without demanding any reciprocity. And, as a result, we haven’t gotten any reciprocity.”
123
“THE MILITARY BALANCE IS UNDOUBTEDLY SHIFTING”
Meanwhile, China is aggressively enhancing its arms capabilities. Its own government reports show that it is continuing with its pattern of double digit defense spending increases, with a jump of 11.2 percent in 2012.
124
It is deploying the Dong Feng 21D, a mobile missile capable of destroying aircraft carriers; has launched its own aircraft carrier; and is flight testing the J-20, a fifth-generation stealth fighter. But the United States, notwithstanding the ongoing War on Terror and its overseas commitments, is drawing down its own capabilities irrespective of any international arms deals, largely due to the Democrats’ spending priorities and their ambivalence toward America’s global military supremacy.
In 2009, America’s air dominance was significantly diminished when it terminated the F-22 Raptor, replacing it with the F-35 Lightning, which is behind in production and riddled with cost overruns. Defense Secretary Gates had capped the U.S. F-22 program at 187 aircraft—instead of the planned 332—on the assumption that China would be slow to deploy advanced fourth-generation fighters and that Russia wouldn’t produce a fifth-generation aircraft until the distant future.
But it’s already clear that the administration miscalculated, to the United States’ detriment. The Chinese Air Force has since purchased from Russia 176 fourth-generation fighters comprising 100 advanced SU-30s and 76 SU-27s. China has now deployed more than 300 other fourth-generation fighters and is helping to finance Russia’s development of the T-50, a fifth-generation fighter, which supposedly incorporates stealth technology.
All this severely undermines Gates’ rationale for prematurely scrapping the Raptor. Obama and the Left’s insistence on reckless defense cuts, instead of tightening our domestic spending belt, is also ominous for the F-35 Lightning, with which the administration is replacing the Raptor. These cuts could reduce the size and scope of the already-strained F-35 program, which would put enormous pressure on the already strained F-22 Raptors’ workload.
125
Contrary to their bitter resistance to the smallest cuts in domestic spending, President Obama and his Democratic colleagues in Congress seem eager to make major defense cuts—in keeping with their view that the key to diplomacy is proving to the rest of the world how peaceful we are. The Budget Control Act of 2011 established the so-called supercom-mittee to find $1.2 trillion in cuts (meaning reductions in spending, not actual cuts) lest an automatic sequester trigger mandatory cuts in domestic and military spending, in equal measure. The Democrats thus forced a deal whereby the defense budget would be reduced dollar for dollar with the domestic budget, though defense only constitutes 20 percent of the budget.
126
It’s not as though we are so far ahead of other powers militarily that we can afford to trim away some perceived surplus. Australian military analysts and Rand Coproration have conducted wargaming to assess the likely outcome of war between the United States and China over the disputed Taiwan Strait. Rand produced an extensive simulation projecting that although the U.S. would enjoy a 6 to 1 kill ratio over Chinese aircraft, we would nevertheless lose the conflict. Even if every U.S. missile destroyed an opponent, enough attackers would survive to destroy our tankers, as well as our command and control and intelligence-gathering aircraft. Andrew Davies, program director for operations and capabilities for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told
Aviation Week
, “The silver-bullet platforms are fantastic … where a small number of them can completely overwhelm a relatively small power.” But against China, a small, high-tech force might not be so formidable, he warns.
127
Of course, our difficulties will mount the more China ramps up and we scale down. “I would say that the military balance is undoubtedly shifting as China’s military expands faster than other regional nations,” says Admiral Robert Willard, chief of U.S. Pacific Command. This is not mere alarmism, but a warning for us to reverse this trend before it reaches a dangerous point. As Max Boot cautions, it’s not that China will attack us tomorrow, but “the risk of conflict goes up when China has less respect for our deterrent capacity. And with the Obama administration and many lawmakers pushing for even steeper defense cuts than those already announced, China’s estimation of our deterrent capacity can only go down.”
128
Likewise, Lieutenant General David Deptula, once the top intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force and also an F-15 pilot, warns that “for the first time, our claim to air supremacy is in jeopardy.” America, he says, is “dangerously ill-prepared to stop the gap-closing efforts of China and Russia.” He estimates that within a decade, Russia and China will have airframes compatible to the F-22. Not only are they catching up to us on that aircraft, the latest production of which we have now cancelled, but the majority of our front line combat aircraft is aging without replacements, he said. Making matters worse, there is “a global revolution to modernize air defense systems,” and Russia and China are building and deploying better surface-to-air missile systems that could eventually overwhelm our fighter aircraft. Deptula cautions, “When taken in total, our potential adversaries can create a nearly impenetrable box that our legacy fighters cannot enter, thus denying us our air supremacy.”
129
This combination of factors along with others, he says, makes Gates’ sanguinity “foolish at best.”
130
During his short time in office, President Obama has shown a disturbing lack of concern for our national security based on his flawed ideology and his much greater interest in advancing his domestic agenda. His misguided priorities and their destructive consequences were starkly revealed in reports that Department of Energy Inspector General Gregory Friedman discovered that the rush to distribute $3.5 billion in stimulus funds to the DOE’s Smart Grid Investment Grant Program (SGIG) may have compromised, rather than enhanced, our national security. “The issues we found were due, in part, to the accelerated planning, development, and deployment approach adopted by the SGIG program,” the IG’s report said. “We also found that the Department was so focused on quickly disbursing Recovery Act funds that it had not ensured personnel received adequate grants management training. Without improvements, there remains a risk that the goals and objectives of the Smart Grid program may not be fully realized.”
131
Indeed, Obama’s reckless approach to national security is strikingly evident in his slashing of our military strength across the board, an unprecedented policy during wartime. As the
Telegraph
‘s James Corum argues, although Obama presents many of these reductions as cost-cutting moves, his real agenda is doubtless to downsize America’s dominant military role in the world.
132
Obama adheres to the leftist worldview that America is often a harmful, bellicose force in the world because of, among other things, its opposition to the “progressive” global agenda. The leftists’ theory, being discredited in real time before our very eyes, is that if the United States disarms, other nations will follow suit.
To the contrary, Obama’s unilateral initiatives have only emboldened our enemies and rivals. Meanwhile, as Islamists ascend to power via the Arab Spring uprisings, his administration panders to the Muslim Brotherhood and even whitewashes their Islamist agenda, again displaying the naive conviction that foreign governments and political parties will act according to our goodwill gestures instead of their own interests. The Brotherhood, for its part, is perfectly open about where its interests lie: in creating a worldwide Islamic caliphate. No U.S. engagement campaigns or outreach efforts will change that. So they’ll continue to pocket Obama’s aid packages and partake in his political training programs, but he should not be surprised when they continue to make good on their vow that “what was acceptable before the revolution is no longer.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE WAR ON GUNS: OPERATION FAST & FURIOUS
Though the Obama administration withdrew its demand to reinstate the ban, it persisted with the 90 percent fable.
2
It also shifted law enforcement resources to border states to combat the supposed gun trafficking problem, “blitzing” Houston and the southern half of Texas in April 2009 with a temporary army of 100 additional inspectors and investigators, with plans to permanently expand those forces later.
3
Further, the administration demonized American gun dealers to the point that the National Rifle Association alerted its members to the scapegoating.
Against that background in the autumn of 2009, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), under the umbrella of the Justice Department, initiated Operation Fast and Furious, a secret gunwalking program whereby ATF agents allowed straw purchasers to buy guns while under surveillance, with the ostensible goal of tracing them into the hands of Mexican cartel leaders and weapons traffickers on the southwestern border and in Mexico. “Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals, this was the plan,” Special Agent John Dodson of the ATF Phoenix field division later explained. “It was so mandated.”
4
The idea, according to findings from a House Oversight Committee report, was “to wait and watch, in the hope that law enforcement could identify other members of a trafficking network and build a large, complex conspiracy case. This shift in strategy was known and authorized at the highest levels of the Justice Department.”
5
The ill-conceived program was a total bust that climaxed in the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry; AK-47s were found at the crime scene that had been knowingly sold under Fast and Furious. An assault on police in Maricopa, Arizona, was also traced to automatic weapons from the operation. Most of the 2,000-plus guns involved in Fast and Furious were lost and, reportedly, hundreds turned up at Mexican crime scenes.
6
Two hundred people were killed or wounded in Mexico with Fast and Furious weapons,
7
and at least eleven violent crimes occurred in the United States involving fifty-seven Fast and Furious weapons.
8
This gruesome outcome was by no means unforeseeable. As Special Agent Larry Alt testified to Congress, “You can’t allow thousands of guns to go south of the border without an expectation that they are going to be recovered eventually in crimes and people are going to die.”
9
After several ATF whistleblowers alerted Congress that Fast and Furious weapons were found at the scene of Agent Terry’s murder, congressional hearings ensued and certain top officials behind the operation were removed from their positions. Despite vehement complaints from Mexico and pressure from Congress, however, the administration didn’t bother to offer any explanation for the operation and stubbornly refused to apologize.
10
Congress turned up the heat, as investigators formally requested that the Obama administration turn over copies of “all records” involving: three specific White House national security officials in connection with the Fast and Furious Operation; other ATF gun cases in Phoenix; and all communications between the White House and the ATF field office in Arizona. While White House staffers had briefed Congress on the operation as early as April 2010, they mentioned nothing about the gunwalking tactics in play. For its part, the administration denied that anyone at the White House knew the operation was allowing gunwalking into Mexico.
11
Casting doubt on the White House’s claim, Bill Newell, the ATF agent in charge of the Phoenix office, told Congress he had discussed the operation with Kevin O’Reilly, the White House National Security director for America.
12
Newell was reportedly in close contact with O’Reilly and was seeking White House assistance to convince the Mexican government to let ATF agents recover U.S. guns across the border.
13
Other White House staff who may have known about the operation include National Security staff members who received information from O’Reilly on Phoenix gun trafficking cases, and Assistant to the President for Homeland Security John Brennan, who led a high-level discussion in Phoenix on gun trafficking in June 2010.
14
“THIS DEATH MIGHT NOT HAVE OCCURRED HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR RECKLESS DECISIONS”
When Congress began investigating Fast and Furious, it quickly realized the Department of Justice would not be cooperative. At a congressional hearing in early May 2011, Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, criticized Attorney General Eric Holder for refusing to answer questions or comply with subpoenas for documents concerning who approved Fast and Furious. “We’re not looking at straw buyers, Mr. Attorney General,” said Issa. “We’re looking at you. We’re looking at you, we’re looking at your key people who knew or should’ve known about this.” Holder indignantly replied, “The notion that somehow or another that this Justice Department is responsible for those deaths, that assertion is offensive.” Issa persisted, “What if it’s accurate, Mr. Attorney General? What am I going to tell Agent Terry’s mother about how he died at the hands of a gun that was videotaped as it was being sold to a straw purchaser fully expecting it to end up in the hands of drug cartels?”
15
A key point of dispute was that Obama and Holder wanted the investigation of Fast and Furious to be conducted internally by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, while congressional investigators, alleging a lack of DOJ cooperation from the outset, wanted a broad outside investigation. As Issa declared,
The Justice Department hasn’t said how and why two rifles purportedly being tracked and monitored by federal law enforcement officials as part of Operation Fast and Furious ended up in the hands of Agent Terry’s killers. It angers me to think that this death might not have occurred had it not been for reckless decisions made by officials at the Department of Justice who authorized and supported an operation that knowingly puts guns in the hands of criminals. For these officials to imagine that this operation would result in anything other than a tragic outcome was naive and negligent.
16
“I HAVE NOT TRIED TO EQUATE THE TWO”
What’s more, in Wide Receiver, the ATF tried to track guns sold to straw purchasers—even fitting some with electronic tracking devices—and when some guns went missing, the operation was quickly shut down. By contrast, there was no attempt at all to track the weapons sold in Fast and Furious, and agents who tried to follow the purchasers were inexplicably ordered to stand down. The operation continued as more and more guns disappeared into Mexico, only ending after Fast and Furious guns were used in the high-profile Terry killing, and reportedly after ATF officials mistakenly believed its weapons were also used in Jared Loughner’s mass shooting in Tucson.
18
Furthermore, while grilling Eric Holder in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator John Cornyn showed that Wide Receiver was coordinated with Mexican authorities, who were deliberately kept in the dark about Fast and Furious. In fact, despite its vast scope, Fast and Furious was kept under such tight wraps that even ATF Attache to Mexico Darren Gil was kept out of the loop; and when Gil discovered the operation and complained that running it without telling Mexican authorities was tantamount to an act of war, he was reportedly pressured to retire. Challenged by Cornyn, Holder himself acknowledged crucial distinctions between Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious, saying, “I have not tried to equate the two.”
19
FAST AND FURIOUS REQUIRED AGENTS TO ABANDON THEIR TRAINING
Forcelli was referring to an order, instituted shortly after Obama was inaugurated, mandating that Phoenix ATF agents monitor, but not stop, gun sales to suspected gun traffickers, breaking with long-established agency practice. Agents told the committee that Phoenix ATF supervisor David Voth “was jovial, if not giddy, but just delighted” when Fast and Furious guns were subsequently recovered at multiple Mexican drug busts. Issa released emails showing that ATF acting director Kenneth Melson arranged to watch live feeds from ATF cameras in the gun stores involved in the operation. Issa’s panel also released documents indicating the operation was well-known and vigorously supported at the highest levels of the ATF.
21
On June 14, 2011, the House Oversight Committee released its shocking findings about Fast and Furious. Here are some highlights:
* “ATF agents are trained to ‘follow the gun’ and interdict weapons whenever possible. Operation Fast and Furious required agents to abandon this training.”
* “Agents knew that given the large numbers of weapons being trafficked to Mexico, tragic results were a near certainty.”
* “Agents [are] expected to interdict weapons, yet were told to stand down and ‘just surveil.’ Agents therefore did not act. They watched straw purchasers buy hundreds of weapons illegally and transfer those weapons to unknown third parties and stash houses.”
* “Operation Fast and Furious contributed to the increasing violence and deaths in Mexico. This result was regarded with giddy optimism by ATF supervisors hoping that guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico would provide the nexus to straw purchasers in Phoenix.”
* “Every time a law enforcement official in Arizona was assaulted or shot by a firearm, ATF agents in Group VII had great anxiety that guns used to perpetrate the crimes may trace back to Operation Fast and Furious.”
* “Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, DOJ continues to deny that Operation Fast and Furious was ill-conceived and had deadly consequences.” (The DOJ later modified this ludicrous and indefensible position.)
22
Even after the panel released its report, astounding revelations about Fast and Furious continued to emerge. During testimony before Issa’s panel on July 4, ATF Acting Director Ken Melson said that the operation included more federal agencies than previously revealed, and that DOJ officials muzzled the ATF as they sought to contain the fallout following Brian Terry’s death.
23
“LITERALLY, MY MOUTH FELL OPEN”
Despite the ghastly toll of the botched operation, the ATF and DOJ steadfastly refused to hold anyone accountable. In fact, in mid-August 2011, the ATF promoted three of its officials intimately involved in Fast and Furious, assigning them to new management positions at ATF headquarters in Washington, D.C. They were William D. Newell and David Voth, both supervisors in the Phoenix office overseeing the operation, and Deputy Director of Operations for the West William G. McMahon.
One ATF deputy assistant director, Steve Martin, stated that McMahon had ignored his urgings in January 2010 to halt Fast and Furious. “I asked Mr. McMahon, I said, ‘what’s your plan?’” Martin reported. “Hearing none, I don’t know if they had one.” Despite his admission that he’d made mistakes in Fast and Furious, McMahon was promoted—ironically—to deputy assistant director of the ATF’s Office of Professional Responsibility and Security Operations—the division that investigates employee misconduct.
24
Newell also admitted to making mistakes in Fast and Furious, though he claimed his agents never allowed guns to “walk.” The denial angered numerous agents who knew better. “Literally, my mouth fell open,” said Agent Larry Alt, who worked under Newell. “I am not being figurative about this. I couldn’t believe it.”
25
As for agent Voth, who supervised the agents working on Fast and Furious, he had dismissed agents’ concerns about the illegal gun purchases and gunwalking, reportedly insisting the bureau was “watching the right people.”
26

Other books

Kentucky Confidential by Paula Graves
All the Sad Young Men by F Scott Fitzgerald
The Ambiguity of Murder by Roderic Jeffries
7 Years Bad Sex by Nicky Wells
House Party by Eric Walters
The Resurrectionist by White, Wrath James
Discipline by Anderson, Marina
Stone Maidens by Lloyd Devereux Richards