PRESIDENT OBAMA PLEASE PROVIDE GLOBAL LEADERSHIP NOW!
The world we are living in today is beginning to be reminiscent of Europe in 1938 when Nazi Germany was clearly in ascendancy and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier were clearly fantasising the dream of 'peace in our time' which did not match with on-going reality. The same mind set was also replicated in Washington where Republican hawks made it clear to President Franklin Roosevelt that on-going events in Europe had no bearing with the destiny and fortune of the United States and that the United States did not owe the World an obligation to bring its weight to bear on the events unfolding in Europe.
The situation in Syria today is towing the same line with all the world powers committed to an ill-defined campaign to end the reign of terror unleashed globally by ISIS and its Jihadist partners like Al Qaeda, El Shabaab and Boko Haram. The campaign is ill-defined and bound to generate its own problems among the alliance partners or may i say accomplices because the United States the only power strong enough to set parameters and give leadership to the global war on terror is shirking its responsibilities fifteen years after declaring war on global terror and inviting the global community to join in the campaign against organised terror in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorits attack on New York and Washington.
I was not resident in the United States then, but the trauma of the events of that day is still clearly etched in my mind and cannot be erased in a lifetime. The surprising thing however is that fifteen years down the line in the campaign to eliminate global terror, we have an American leadership that is clearly tired and demotivated in providing global leadership in the sustained campaign to eliminate global terror. The offspring of that fading commitment is the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Nature we are told abhors a vacumn and the vacumn created by the premature and hasty withdrawal of American forces from Iraq clearly gave rise to the Islamic State
The Holy Scriptures tells us that whatever is WORTH DOING IS WORTH DOING WELL. President George W Bush may have deposed Sadam Hussein under questionable motives but the fact remained that the pacification of a post Sadam Hussein Iraq was America's responsibility no matter how expensive it may have turned out. I cannot conceive of any battle that you can win by shying away or running from the battlefield. It was American ground forces or what you may call 'boots on the ground' that deposed Sadam Hussein and it will take American ground forces whether we accept it or not to depose the Islamic State.
The emergence of the Islamic State was the bye product of the War in Iraq and ultimately on terror and its defeat in combat is a necessary pre-requisite to the logical conclusion of the war on terror as far as the Middle East is concerned. By 1944, the Second World War had become prohibitively expensive mostly to the UK and to some extent to the United States but both President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not shirk from committing another five billion dollars to the opening of a second front in Europe in the invasion of France on June 6, 1944. By 1944, there were no Republican or Democratic politicians that made any suggestions about the necessity of curbing spending or borrowing to get the war over with. The liberty bonds were joyfully advertised and cheerfully bought throughout the US because folks knew that this war had to be won.
One of the reason the West was resolutely commited to victory in WW2 was because leadership was in place that sold to the people the absolute necessity to defeat the twin evils of Nazism and Fascism.
Without that kind of resolution of spirit i dont see how any form of evil can be defeated on this Earth, The WAR ON TERROR cannot be fought with any less determination than the Second World War was fought if lasting results were to be obtained on the long-run. We have seen from the realm of medical science that a half-hearted treatment of any disease will only strenghten and harden the virus or germs, necessitating the production of even more expensive treatment or vaccines in dealing with a situation that could have been dealt a fatal blow if the necessary commitment was shown in the first inastance.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can see today that the United States was not really safe as long as the Nazis were running riot in Munich, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1936-39 any more than the AVERAGE AMERICAN can think he is immune to events in Paris , Syria, Egypt or the Lake Chad Basin today. The chickens of the late 1930's ultimately came home to roost and the terrorist chickens we see playing havoc today will definitely come home to roost if we choose to bury our heads in the sands and play the Ostritch.
