Should America span the globe to spread unrest in unpopular regimes, then empower whatever type of government seems to sprout up, afterward? Or should America reserve its power and influence to help establish American Revolution-styled states? In fact, one desperately hopes it is screamingly obvious that if the US helps create any government opposed to our values, that we are helping establish our future enemies.
When the Muslim Spring movement arrived amongst much fanfare, the liberal elites heralded this as Obama's foreign policy coming of age. Muslim Spring is the Barack inspired doctrine offer to aid resisters against Middle East dictators, helping any rebels despite whatever beliefs they espoused. How wise it was, they exclaimed, to direct wars from far-away, to keep American troops out of harm's way, and lead from behind!
Other more realistic analysts declared the notion of tossing aside foreign leaders, some strongly pro-American, a recipe for disaster. (see
Obama Support of "Arab Spring" Clear Marxist Values Leading to Sharia Law Revolution) Further, the idea that America would look the other way while Muslim Shariah Law-directed governments were established across the zone, with US aid, seemed surreal. In short order, the governments of Egypt, Libya, Yemen and now Syria were part of a movement replacing secular tyrannies with what pompous leftists claimed would be an American Revolution type undertaking. Instead, as seen in Egypt, a functional, and US friendly secular tyranny was replaced by a radical Muslim dictatorship imposing Shariah Law, inserted by the Muslim Brotherhood radicals who engineered the coup.
I. Arab Spring Becomes Muslim Brotherhood Nightmare in Egypt
In brief, the problem in Egypt is the problem in the Middle East--Obama decided to back a coup for a group of men who were Muslim radicals and didn't seem to mind, against one of America's most reliable allies--Hosni Mubarick. If this isn't troubling enough, when the Egyptians themselves became alarmed at the new government's draconian powers, America did nothing. Further, when the military finally stepped in and removed Muhammad Morsi, Barack was steamed. Obama acted as if the entire idea behind removing Mubarak--by far the world's wealthiest man at $700 billion, according to Forbes--was to install a Muslim law government.
When Morsi was replaced, Obama acted like a petulant child, ready to ignore the new government and refusing to give his blessing. But what is going on here? Does Barack really replace Middle Eastern strongmen so that religious fanatics can take over and create dozens of Irans across the region? Does Obama not value real democracy over a Shariah pseudo-republic? Is he completely blind to how dangerous a hegemony of Islamic law regimes would be to America's interest? Or, as usual, is he too cool to care?
Something must be done to reestablish the American policy of creating strong allies, and the creation of functional democracies, wherever possible. And the "Obama Doctrine" of backing any random pack of rebels, regardless of their ideology, must be flushed down the toilet where it belongs.
II. Obama's Failed Anti-Freedom Foreign Policy
Obama's entire foreign policy has come apart at the seams. The reason his foreign policy relentlessly fails is it is built on a crust of timidity defended by self-serving platitudes. When Iran protested its rigged election, and asked Obama to intervene, he turned the other cheek. But when Germany and Italy informed Barack they would intervene in Libya, with or without American support, he reluctantly joined. It is simply in Obama's temperament to join someone else's undertaking and take credit for its inception, as he did here.
But how could Obama hope to be respected by foreign leaders who only respect power? Barack has a sanctimonious explanation for every action and inaction. He, therefore, is not regarded as a serious or effective leader or as someone decisive or dangerous. Instead, he's a laughingstock to tough leaders like Russia's Vlad Putin. Barack is a verbose amateur who has no training or instinct for leadership, and it shows.
An Administration spokesman described Obama's style as "Leading from behind," a phrase which resonated with both critics and fans. In Richard Miniter's
Leading from Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him, Barack is portrayed as a hapless, henpecked bozo led by the women who act as diabolical matriarchs. Miniter points out that Barack's mother left him in the fifth grade with her parents so she could travel the world, and never looked back. This apparently left Obama as a lonely, insecure boy who now needs a woman's support and direction for decisions.
Miniter's book portrays Obama as a lonely man who prefers solitude and so seems to makes decisions all by himself, but at the same time is heavily dependent upon the women around him. For example,
Valerie Jarrett has been described as Barack's Rasputin. Michelle Obama also goads Barack into acting and not playing the dilettante. He appears to lack the appetite or spine for the job. Further, Miniter confirmed the Obamas share Jarrett's disdain for America.
Meanwhile, the Middle East is falling apart as a result of Barack's insipid Arab Spring doctrine, as detailed by the
Economist:
ROUGHLY two-and-a-half years after the revolutions in the Arab world, not a single country is yet plainly on course to become a stable, peaceful democracy. The countries that were more hopeful, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen‚ have been struggling. A chaotic experiment with democracy in Egypt, the most populous of them, has landed an elected president behind bars. Syria is awash with the blood of civil war.
III. History of Democracy
Modern democracy is not a continuation of the governments found in ancient Greece and Rome. Instead, after the fall of the ancient classical world, the medieval church began to work through various biblical implications of secular government. The seeds of modern popular democracy were therefore planted by the Reformers, such as John Calvin (1509-1564). These focused upon the individual election of Believers, and the individual relationship each person had with God.
The notion of principled, godly revolt were also sown by the Reformers, such as Theodore Beza's [1519-1605]
De jure magistratuum (On the Rights of Magistrates) 1574 (Concerning the Rights of Rulers Over Their Subjects and the Duty Of Subjects Towards Their Rulers. A brief and clear treatise particularly indispensable to either class in these troubled times.)
Question 1. Must Magistrates Always Be Obeyed As Unconditionally As God?
Inasmuch as only the will of almighty God is the eternal and immutable Rule of all Justice, we declare that it must be unconditionally obeyed. As regards however the obedience due to Princes, they too would doubtless have to be obeyed always and unconditionally if they ruled constantly in accordance with the utterance of God. Since, however, theirs is often the contrary case, such obedience must be made subject to the following condition, namely that they command nothing impious, nothing unjust. Impious or sinful I call those which God forbids in the First Table of His Law, or which forbid those which God there commands. Unjust behests, however, I call those by which the performance of that, which every man in accordance with his calling either public or private is in charity bound to render to his neighbor, is either prevented or forbidden.
The Presbyterian Church was closely tied to Calvin in its inception, and was based upon a structure of
leadership by elders--a semi-democratic model. According to John Witte in
Christianity and Law, these early Reformers used the Decalogue--the Ten Commandments as a model from which to build a set of rights and duties for Believers within the church. This created a covenantal model for rights which later was transitioned from a religious to a secular format. Witte writes,
By the turn of the seventeenth century, Calvinists began to recast these theological doctrines into democratic norms and forms. Protestant doctrines of the person and society were recast into democratic social forms. Since all people stand equal before God, they must stand equal before God's political agents in the state. Since God has vested all persons with natural liberties of life and belief, the state must ensure them of similar civil liberties. Since God has called all persons to be prophets, priests and kings, the state must protect their constitutional freedoms to speak, to preach, and to rule in the community. Since God has created persons as social creatures, the state must promote and protect a plurality of social institutions, particularly the church and family.
Protestant doctrines of sin, in turn, were cast into democratic political forms. The political office must be protected against the sinfulness of the political official. Political power, like ecclesiastical power, must be distributed among self-checking executive, legislative and judicial branches. Officials must be elected to limited terms of office. Laws must be clearly codified, and discretion closely guarded. If officials abuse their office, they must be disobeyed. If they persist in their abuse, they must be removed, even if by regicide. These Protestant teachings were among the driving ideological forces behind the revolts of the French Huguenots, the Dutch Pietists, the Scottish Presbyterians against their monarchical oppressors in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They were critical weapons in the arsenal of the revolutionaries in England and America, and important sources of inspiration and instruction during the great age of democratic construction in later eighteenth and nineteenth century North America and Western Europe.
The
Mayflower Compact set the foundation for New World democracy, as William Bradford was elected and reelected 30 times to lead this small group of earliest colonists. Further, the New World's first representative body was established in the Virginia Burgess in 1619. Viscount James Bryce in
Modern Democracies has this description of how democracy was seeded into America, via the English Puritans and John Locke's teachings:
Among the Puritans who formed the bulk of the parliamentary party in the Civil War, the Independents were the most consistent and most energetic element. In their view all Christians were, as Christians, free and equal, and therefore entitled to a voice in the affairs of a Christian State as well as of a Christian congregation. After the Restoration of 1660 this doctrine fell into the background. But at the end of the period (in 1689) John Locke, the most eminent English thinker of his time, published a treatise on Government, upholding the principles of the Whig party. As that book had its influence then and thereafter on the Whigs, so the seed of the Independents' doctrine, carried across the ocean, fell on congenial ground in the minds of the New England Puritans, and there sprang up, two generations later, in a plentiful harvest.
Conclusion
Barack is handicapped by various problems which block him being an effective leader. First, he has no experience in leadership. Second, he lacks the confidence which a good leader must emote. Third, he does not appear to like America.
These problems will probably never change. But we need to adapt our approach in foreign policy, to always promote real democracy and the education that must proceed it. Further, we must never foment for change in another country if it's likely the outcome will be worse than the status quo. Only if we do these things will America have a better chance of making it through the 21
st century.
