PrintAugust 23, 2010
The No-Go Mojo Man
A couple of weeks ago, Sarah Palin suggested that President Obama lacked the requisite "cojones" to stand up for border security.
She should have waited.
If she had, she would have seen that President Obama's lack of cojones extends far beyond border security -- it extends to our national security more broadly. President Obama, simply put, has no cojones when it comes to defending and protecting this nation from threats at home and abroad. His leadership style is more waxed chest and eyebrow trim than alpha male; he's our first metrosexual president, an elitist who believes that sweet-talking and willful blindness to the nature of our enemies are a recipe for a success.
Being President of the United States is not an episode of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," where subtle commentary and snarky remarks produce results. It's more like an episode of "Walker, Texas Ranger," where there are good guys and bad guys, and the bad guys need a roundhouse kick to the face. But President Obama is busy watching Bravo.
Nowhere is Obama's lack of metaphoric testosterone clearer than in his tack with the Ground Zero mosque issue. Obama said that the mosque should be built because this is a simple "freedom of religion" issue, which of course is false -- the mosque can be built anywhere, just not on the secular holy site that is Ground Zero. Obama's bizarre argument is equivalent to stating that it would be a "freedom of speech" issue if the KKK wanted to build a grand headquarters on the assassination site of Martin Luther King, Jr. In both cases, the principles of freedom of religion/speech are not risked by utilizing basic common sense.
The real issue here is the one Obama did not address: the responsibility of Islamism for the 9/11 attacks, and the association between the Muslims backing the Ground Zero mosque and Islamist ideology. Obama doesn't believe Islamism is responsible for 9/11; in Dreams From My Father, he instead blames terrorism on economic imbalances (a Marxist and eunuch-ian response to the most devastating attack on American soil in history). And so for him, this is an easy decision -- by simply eliding the larger issue, he can turn this into a case of xenophobia by anti-Ground Zero mosque Americans.
It's not happenstance that Obama's stance on the Ground Zero mosque is the most politically convenient for him; if he acknowledged the nature of our enemies, he'd have to rethink his entire foreign policy framework. He'd have to recognize that precipitous pullouts in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't merely politically problematic, but also highly dangerous; he'd have to admit that the Muslims in the Middle East aren't interested in making peace with the Jews in Israel; he'd have to see that the problem of Islamism isn't merely a class or race problem, but a philosophical problem that crosses all borders. In short, he'd have to wake up to the fact that Islamism is a real threat at home and abroad.
But that wouldn't go along with his blithe -- dare we say feminine? -- attitude toward our enemies, who he believes are tortured souls longing for American apologetics rather than cruel and brutal bastards bent on imposition of Shariah. In fact, Obama does Muslims a disservice by associating the imperialistic Islamism of the Ground Zero mosque -- and yes, it is imperialistic -- with Islam everywhere. There is a reason that Hamas has endorsed the Ground Zero mosque, and there is a reason the founder of the Ground Zero mosque refuses to disown terror against Israelis, and there is a reason he blames America for the attacks on 9/11. It's because he's a representative of an ideology that is political as much as it is religious, an ideology that seeks to overthrow the U.S. government and replace it with a barbaric tyranny. That Islamism should not be protected by the First Amendment in the first place.
Obama, as he has repeatedly informed us, was born and raised at least for part of his life a Muslim. He knows and thinks beautiful the call of the muezzin, he has said. That makes his ignorance of Islamism less pathetic than it is purposeful -- purposeful and cojone-less. As our president, Obama must protect us from totalitarian ideologies. This is by far the most significant responsibility in his job description. He refused that responsibility this week.
We need a leader, not a womyn's studies professor. Strike that -- womyn's studies professors are, by and large, twice as masculine as our current president. I would suggest that President Obama "cowboy up," even though we already know what he thinks of cowboys. Unfortunately, his EZ-Bake Oven, Polly Pocket politics play right into the hands of our enemies.
Carol A. Taber is President of FamilySecurityMatters.org.
