At the University of California Irvine’s commencement last Saturday, President Obama took to the teleprompter to announce that climate change deniers are a “fairly serious threat to everybody’s future.” Alas, we are truly screwed as a nation when the president ignores real threats and challenges and instead doubles down on shooting down straw men while focusing on pseudo-science bull manure. But this is nothing new, and he continues this gambit at our peril -- for American blood will be on his hands when, in the words of his friend and spiritual mentor, his chickens come home to roost.

One such chicken is ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.  When he told his American guards upon his release from the Bucca detention center in Iraq in 2009, “I’ll see you guys in New York,” he was making a promise that he had every intention of keeping.  The bad guys have their sites set on us and unlike the President, they actually follow through on their promises.

Sadly, there is one Obama promise that he is actually determined to fulfill: the closing of Gitmo.  In his infinite wisdom, Obama recently released five hardened Taliban terrorist commanders (one of whom “played a key role in al Qaeda’s plans leading up to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks”) in exchange for an accused traitor.  Not only does that make it more likely that Americans will be targeted for kidnapping, but it puts dangerous men back in play in the War on Terror – the war Obama refuses to recognize.  Al-Baghdadi was never thought of as a threat, yet lo and behold, there he is on the battlefield -- stealing victory in a war that brave Americans, losing blood and treasure, had secured until Obama threw it away.

With regard to our most reliable ally in the Mideast region, Israel, the administration has not so subtly threatened a variety of catastrophes, including a third intifada and a strengthened BDS movement, while blaming the Jewish state for the failed peace process with a Palestinian government uninterested in peace.  When Israel issues housing permits, Obama’s minions chastise and punish the alleged obstructionists, but when Palestinian rockets rain down on Israel, the administration is silent. Most recently, it has agreed to recognize and fund the new Palestinian unity government consisting of Hamas terrorists who just kidnapped three teenagers including one American. Quite the foreign policy.

Thanks to Obama, Libya, Syria, and Iraq (and imminently Afghanistan) are flourishing safe havens for al Qaeda and related Islamic terrorist groups (many of whom are now armed with American-supplied weapons), whose dreams of a new caliphate are gradually taking hold and becoming a reality.[i] The U.S. has apparently learned the lessons of Jimmy Carter’s Iranian hostage crisis and Obama’s Benghazi scandal and is now evacuating our embassy in Iraq.  It is unclear whether our personnel are waving white flags as they depart but what is clear is that Iran is expanding its hegemonic influence by sending in troops to fill the vacuum that Obama left behind.  To the victor go the spoils…

Speaking of dreams, in Obama’s alternative universe, “our future rests” on the success of the DREAMers – the young illegal aliens flocking to the country looking for free stuff. One of the problems with not enforcing our immigration laws is that the terrorists (including members of Hezb’llah, which has a very real presence in Latin America) are likely slipping in as well.  As so aptly summarized by Richard Fernandez, “It has somehow become cool to encourage the invasion of America and racist to even consider that might be bad idea [sic].  But through that portal, what might come?  Well, Bienvenido y Allahu Akbar.” 

Under an Obama administration, how many airplane hijackers, Marathon and Times Square bombers, and blind sheiks are now roaming the streets of the U.S. while planning the next attack?  “I’ll see you guys in New York” are words we cannot ignore and yet we have a president about whom Valerie Jarrett explained:

I think frankly we’ve all been through a cold and bitter winter and the bear [that would be Obama, not Putin] has cabin fever…His cabin is a little bit bigger and harder to escape than most….[He has fantasized about being] on a beach somewhere drinking out of a coconut….

Wake up American people!  The Islamists are living in caves and sleeping on desert floors through the dead of winter, fantasizing about the next best way to kill Americans, and Papa Bear needs a beach and a pina colada?  While he golfs, vacations, and parties with the rich and famous, our enemies have become seasoned warriors with weapons, strategies, and plans intended to defeat us.  We are in serious trouble!

In addition to obliterating our reputation as a superpower with the will to face the evildoers, Obama has decimated our military capability bringing us to pre-WWII levels. Eight years of a Commander-in-Chief who has nothing but disdain for our military’s ability to project strength and instill fear across the globe may very well take decades to repair and rebuild.  While the terrorists have endless patience and time, America may not have enough time to prepare and face down future threats that will surely arrive “fast and furious” in coming years.

Perhaps Americans do not prioritize national security due to a naïve and ignorant sense of safety here at home.  9/11 was a brief alarm before Americans hit snooze and returned to their slumber.  Benghazi, the Boston Marathon bombers, and averted threats like the shoe-bomber and Times Square bomber were not enough to wake us up.  I fear a major catastrophe will once again be required before Americans register that what really threads the needle is not the word bomber but the words forbidden from use by the Commander-in-Chief:  Islamist, Islamic Fundamentalism, War on Terror and the like. 

Just ask Syrian and Iraqi citizens, Israelis, and other allies who used to depend on us and yet who have been abandoned by an incompetent and feckless American president.  They understand who the enemy is and the moral commitment and will that will be required to defeat it.  Americans – not so much.  That is, until they too recognize that they have been abandoned and are no longer safe at home or abroad. I repeat, President Obama has abandoned America’s national security.

There is a grave threat in the White House.  If he is not thrown out or otherwise constrained in the near future, national security will inevitably become a top priority for Americans, forced by tragedy, not just to give up “piña coladas and getting caught in the rain,” but to survive a Dark Age into which their president led them.   As Winston Churchill long ago recognized:

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age…Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their Finest Hour.'

It is time for Americans to understand that Obama wishes our Finest Hour to be but a reflection in our rear view mirror and our future to be but a glimmer of what could have been, replaced by a Dark Age of Islamic terrorists run amok and in pursuit of a “golden” age of Shariah.  Now that is a “serious threat to everybody’s future.”