PrintApril 18, 2010
The Obama leadership vacuum
Barack Obama's level of detachment from his duties has come to the point where even his cabinet secretaries quietly are letting it be known that he has defaulted on his leadership responsibilities. Congress was delighted to step into the breach and write health care reform, but when it comes to the executive branch, leadership must come from the top.
The most pressing issue for national security (the President's top responsibility) is Iran's drive to acquire nuclear weapons (and use them to "wipe Israel from the map"), quite possibly triggering Armageddon, as nuclear-armed Israel will not go quietly. Nuclear war in the Middle East would change the course of civilization, something even Israel-haters would find highly disagreeable.
Yet according to the New York Times, the Secretary of Defense
"has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran's steady progress toward nuclear capability, according to government officials familiar with the document."
This is a shocking admission. Yet it is not the only instance of a cabinet secretary stepping into the breach where Obama has left a leadership void.
Investor's Business Daily editorializes:
Something's wrong when a president's lieutenants agitate against his own policies. But Defense Secretary Gates' call for free trade with Colombia arose from a true national security need. So where's the president?Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Latin America and the Caribbean last week, making stops to shore up allies Colombia, Peru and Barbados, on the heels of the signing of the first major U.S. defense pact with Brazil in 30 years.He's doing his job, and not a moment too soon, given the den of dragons the region has become. Colombia's FARC terrorists have now made common cause with Mexico's drug traffickers, whose violence is spilling over the U.S. border.
IBD elaborates on the growing threat in Latin America, including an alliance between Colombia's narco-terrorist FARC movement and the drug mafias that threaten our neighbor Mexico's political stability, and whose violence is spilling across the border affecting Americans' safety.
Yet President Obama is missing in action when it comes to the Colombia free trade pact, a move which will shore up a key democratic ally stanching the flow of leftist narco-violence in our own hemisphere. The reason is not hard to find: Obama is in the pocket of organized labor, which deplores competition.
