The Making of a Paper Tiger ... J. D. Longstreet

The Making of a Paper Tiger
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
********************Obama is about to "transform" America's military -- and by extension -- America, herself, into a "paper tiger."   The definition of a paper tiger is:  "The nature of a person or organization that appears powerful but is actually powerless and ineffectual."  Remember that. You're going to hear it often in the years ahead as our enemies refer to us in public.

Obama's "sequestration" is going to leave America's throat bare to her enemies.  He is cutting our last line of defense, our nuclear arsenal, by roughly one-third,  all to appease the Russians.  (Mr. Putin's Cheshire Cat grin just got even wider!)

THIS is what happens when an amateur goes up against a pro. 

Obama just had his lunch eaten by Putin.

Obama actually appears AFRAID of Putin!
I have noted many times in this column, how the relationship between America and the Russians swings hot and cold on a regular basis.  Ever since we invited them to leave the North American continent, especially the great northwest of what is now the lower forty-eight states of America, there have been periods when Russia appeared to "love" America and periods when Russia appeared to "hate" America. Like a pendulum, these contrived diplomatic seasons of love and hate could -- and can -- be counted upon to swing regularly.

Until Obama.

Obama is Russia's dream for an American leader.  He stumbles all over himself to be first on his knees before whomever the Russian leader is at the time, offering concessions yet uncalled for by the Russians.  How could it get any better than this from the Russian perspective?

Sequestration, which WAS, indeed, Obama's idea (or at least the idea of someone on his staff, which Obama adopted)  is going to absolutely GUT the US military.  Heck, we may find ourselves leasing another country's military to defend America.  During the decline of Rome, even they had to fill their ranks with barbarian soldiers in an attempt to defend Rome.  As America is tracking Rome's decline to a tee, I see no reason why we won't find ourselves considering the same thing  -- and soon.

OK.  So I'm reaching.  But NOT BY MUCH.

Look, when a single successful EMP missile shot  exploding high in the atmosphere over middle America can shut us down and send us -- instantly -- back into the pre-Civil War period, well, I'd say we are already a paper tiger just waiting for someone to rip our flimsy paper mask off.

Great nations don’t quaver when a threat to their security is made -- by anyone.  If they do, believe me, they will not be a great nation for long.  Once that chink in a nation’s armor is made visible, it is the open door through which all that nation’s enemies will seek entry.

America's current leadership is rightly seen by America's enemies as a gift from whichever god they worship.

Here in America, our weak link, our chink in the national armor, is the political left.  Their quavering has caused more deaths of American civilians, and American servicemen, and servicewomen, than any other single cause.

Look. A country cannot hesitate when confronted with danger. It must reply to that threat immediately and with irresistible force. Half-hearted military forays into to the homelands of our enemies only leads to unnecessary American deaths.  The sooner America attacks, with overwhelming force, the sooner the battles, and the war, are over and battle deaths are minimized.
Forget "Nation Building!"  It only sucks our treasury dry, weakens our military by turning soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines into diplomats rather than killers. 

Forget "winning the hearts and minds" of the enemy.  As President Richard Nixon is credited with having said:  "Forget winning their hearts and minds.  Get 'em by the testicles and you can take them anywhere you want."  Crude -- but true!

With America's new Secretary of State, John Kerry, dispatched out into the world with what we are told is essentially a mission to "win hearts and minds" on the orders of his boss, Mr. Obama, we're about to see just how childish a diplomatic plan THAT really is.

This a  particularly dangerous time for America as a result of the depthless naivete of our President.  Obama's lack of sophistication and worldliness is readily apparent on the world stage. The first years of his presidency had much of the world "off kilter" when trying to negotiate with the Obama Administration.  Some of their less than sophisticated diplomats came to believe the Obama people were running a "con" on them. They simply could not grasp that an American leader could be that, well, dumb.  So, they concluded Obama's  apparent lack of knowledge about how the REAL world works was all a ruse by the Obama Administration.  Now, however, they know better and they can -- and will -- use  their understanding of Obama's naivete to their advantage and to the advantage of their governments and their militaries.
 
Only an extremely naive person -- a person afflicted with limited understanding -- would adopt a "Lead from Behind" policy for America.  It has been described as a limp-wristed form of isolationism.  Isolationism for America has been disproved at least since the so-called "Spanish-American War" in 1898.  No nation with a global footprint the size of America's can effectively isolate itself from the myriad of nations sharing this same mud ball speeding around the sun.

The plain truth is that as long as America submits to paternalistic collectivism under a paternalistic ruling elite, our brave new masters will most assuredly continue to have America lurching from a catastrophe to a crisis to some other unstable situation of extreme danger for the country and its citizens.   

This is not the America I knew, neither as a boy, nor as a young man.  The America I knew bowed to no one.  We were a great nation. We were a great people.  We feared no man.  We had confidence in ourselves that we could do anything, go anywhere, and be anything we wanted.  Then the cancer of leftist politics took hold. And like the cancer, that it is, it has eaten away America’s soul and her will to live.  It has robbed us of a future as a great, free, people.  With the heavy introduction of Socialism, Marxism, and Communism into out national legislature, the Congress, in the elections of 2006 and 2008, and the election of a socialist President in 2008, any chance of America's survival as the world's lone superpower vanished.  America will do well simply to survive as a free nation.

Under Obama's leadership, we have changed America from a free democratic representative republic into some sort of American socialist monstrosity.  By gutting our military, we will have completed the creation of the paper tiger facade which will, in the end, hide nothing.

Obama's endeavor to create some sort of Americanized version of European style socialism for America will, in the end, prove as deadly to us as it has to all others foolish enough to try it.   Socialism is no respecter of nations.  It will kill its host every time.

For a brief period we will be able to take some solace in the paper "cut-out" of a tiger employed as out national guardian. Until it is tested.  And it WILL be tested.

Then -- what will we do?

© J. D. Longstreet