Home Obama Wants to Defeat America, Not ISIS
Home Obama Wants to Defeat America, Not ISIS

Obama Wants to Defeat America, Not ISIS

Last year at a NATO summit, Obama explicitly disavowed the idea of containing ISIS. "You can't contain an organization that is running roughshod through that much territory, causing that much havoc, displacing that many people, killing that many innocents, enslaving that many women," he said.

Instead he argued, "The goal has to be to dismantle them."

Just before the Paris massacre, Obama shifted back to containment. “From the start, our goal has been first to contain them, and we have contained them,” he said.

Pay no attention to what he said last year. There’s a new message now. Last year Obama was vowing to destroy ISIS. Now he had settled for containing them. And he couldn’t even manage that.

ISIS has expanded into Libya and Yemen. It struck deep into the heart of Europe as one of its refugee suicide bombers appeared to have targeted the President of France and the Foreign Minister of Germany. That’s the opposite of a terrorist organization that had been successfully contained.

Obama has been playing tactical word games over ISIS all along. He would “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS. Or perhaps dismantle the Islamic State. Or maybe just contain it.

Containment is closest to the truth. Obama has no plan for defeating ISIS. Nor is he planning to get one any time soon. There will be talk of multilateral coalitions. Drone strikes will take out key figures. And then when this impressive war theater has died down, ISIS will suddenly pull off another attack.

And everyone will be baffled at how the “defeated” terrorist group is still on the march.

The White House version of reality says that ISIS attacked Paris because it’s losing. Obama also claimed that Putin’s growing strength in Syria is a sign of weakness. Never mind that Putin has all but succeeded in getting countries that were determined to overthrow Assad to agree to let him stay.

Weakness is strength. Strength is weakness.

Obama’s failed wars occupy a space of unreality that most Americans associate with Baghdad Bob bellowing that there are no American soldiers in Iraq. (There are, according to the White House, still no American ground forces in Iraq. Only American forces in firefights on the ground in Iraq.)

There’s nothing new about any of this. Obama doesn’t win wars. He lies about them.

The botched campaign against ISIS is a replay of the disaster in Afghanistan complete with ridiculous rules of engagement, blatant administration lies and no plan for victory. But there can’t be a plan for victory because when Obama gets past the buzzwords, he begins talking about addressing root causes.

And you don’t win wars by addressing root causes. That’s just a euphemism for appeasement.

Addressing root causes means blaming Islamic terrorism on everything from colonialism to global warming. It doesn’t mean defeating it, but finding new ways to blame it on the West.

Obama and his political allies believe that crime can’t be fought with cops and wars can’t be won with soldiers. The only answer lies in addressing the root causes which, after all the prattling about climate change and colonialism, really come down to the Marxist explanation of inequality.

When reporters ask Obama how he plans to win the war, he smirks tiredly at them and launches into another condescending explanation about how the situation is far too complicated for anything as simple as bombs to work. Underneath that explanation is the belief that wars are unwinnable.

Obama knows that Americans won’t accept “war just doesn’t work” as an answer to Islamic terrorism. So he demonstrates to them that wars don’t work by fighting wars that are meant to fail.

In Afghanistan, he bled American soldiers as hard as possible with vicious rules of engagement that favored the Taliban to destroy support for a war that most of the country had formerly backed. By blowing the war, Obama was not only sabotaging the specific implementation of a policy he opposed, but the general idea behind it. His failed wars are meant to teach Americans that war doesn’t work.

The unspoken idea that informs his strategy is that American power is the root cause of the problems in the region. Destroying ISIS would solve nothing. Containing American power is the real answer.

Obama does not have a strategy for defeating ISIS. He has a strategy for defeating America.

Whatever rhetoric he tosses out, his actual strategy is to respond to public pressure by doing the least he can possibly do. He will carry out drone strikes, not because they’re effective, but because they inflict the fewest casualties on the enemy.

He may try to contain the enemy, not because he cares about ISIS, but because he wants to prevent Americans from “overreacting” and demanding harsher measures against the Islamic State. Instead of fighting to win wars, he seeks to deescalate them. If public pressure forces him to go beyond drones, he will authorize the fewest air strikes possible. If he is forced to send in ground troops, he will see to it that they have the least protection and the greatest vulnerability to ISIS attacks.

Just like in Afghanistan.

Obama would like ISIS to go away. Not because they engage in the ethnic cleansing, mass murder and mass rape of non-Muslims, but because they wake the sleeping giant of the United States.

And so his idea of war is fighting an informational conflict against Americans. When Muslim terrorists commit an atrocity so horrifying that public pressure forces him to respond, he lies to Americans. Each time his Baghdad Bob act is shattered by another Islamic terrorist attack, he piles on even more lies.

Any strategy that Obama offers against ISIS will consist of more of the same lies and word games. His apologists will now debate the meaning of “containment” and whether he succeeded in defining it so narrowly on his own terms that he can claim to have accomplished it. But it really doesn’t matter what his meaning of “containment” or “is” is. Failure by any other name smells just as terrible.

Obama responded to ISIS by denying it’s a threat. Once that stopped being a viable strategy, he began to stall for time. And he’s still stalling for time, not to beat ISIS, but to wait until ISIS falls out of the headlines. That has been his approach to all his scandals from ObamaCare to the IRS to the VA.

Lie like crazy and wait for people to forget about it and turn their attention to something else.

This is a containment strategy, but not for ISIS. It’s a containment strategy for America. Obama isn’t trying to bottle up ISIS except as a means of bottling up America. He doesn’t see the Caliph of the Islamic State as the real threat, but the average American who watches the latest beheading on the news and wonders why his government doesn’t do something about it. To the left it isn’t the Caliph of ISIS who starts the wars we ought to worry about, but Joe in Tennessee, Bill in California or Pete in Minnesota.

That is why Obama sounds bored when talking about beating ISIS, but heats up when the conversation turns to fighting Republicans. It’s why Hillary Clinton named Republicans, not ISIS, as her enemy.

The left is not interested in making war on ISIS. It is too busy making war on America.

Comments

  1. The presidential candidates need to read this.

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  2. Anonymous19/11/15

    Before I comment I want to say this:
    Daniel Greenfield - I have been reading your work for years. You are a 'rare' individual because you belong to less than a handful of always 'accurate, spot-on, right-on-the-mark as well as observing everything as 'is' rather than speculate what it may 'is'.
    You have only one agenda: The truth - truth is always what separates you from the many others I read that I can find acceptable to live in reality. You teach! You inform! You tell!
    The most important virtue found in everything I have read in these years that bears your name as the 'writer' is: Truth!
    You need to know that and while I'm sure many others will agree with me - I can't speak for them - only for myself.
    I appreciate your work - I appreciate your diligence - I appreciate that all your work is thoughtful, non-agenda driven - informative and truthful!

    This analysis is also spot-on and right on the mark! Although - one can go back to 2007 when he came of the national scene, ran for the presidency while his book 'Dreams of my father' made headlines while being 'worshipped' as though he was a genius never known to man.
    His lies started back then: He never wrote that book because Bill Ayers did. In that book he vowed: "If the winds should shift against muslims - I will stand with them!" - This is probably the only time he told the truth - because here we are and his actions prove that he did and is going just that.

    To this day - we do not know who this guy is because information about him is hidden and protected by lawyers whom he paid millions to keep anything and everything about his past, background, affiliation and actions hidden from the American citizens.

    While a nugget here and there surfaced, the bulk is still 'off limits' while the msn assisted him. Early on - he was protected from answering any question directed his way or asked to explain - with the 'racist' label, directed at everyone who had the gall to raise their hand.

    We can only evaluate what we hear, see and know since he entered the white house. The conclusion by millions believing he himself is 'muslim' based on his actions is justified. Millions concluded that he is anti-American - that too can be justified based on his deeds. Millions concluded that he is racist - a well earned label by Obama himself. Millions concluded that he dislikes and/or hates our Armed Forces - a valid claim. There are more - too many to list.

    We can also conclude that his planned import of muslims from various middle eastern countries is personal to him - and preferred. He salivates at the thought of the 'many brown faces' outnumbering the American 'white faces'. He is elated to silence many Christian voices because he prefers the call to muslim prayers when he stated during an interview on national TV that 'the call to 'muslim prayers is the most beautiful thing in the world!'

    He also is the agent of globalists and their elites and never had the intention of 'serving the people of the US' nor did he have any intention to honor the Constitution.

    That is why your analysis and post is so accurate. We are in for many deadly surprises either next year but most likely right after he leaves office. It is all timed for something!
    It is ludicrous but telling - that our Armed Forces are sent on a fools errand in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and other places while this president himself is holding the door open for the arriving enemies, the same ones our Armed Forces suppose to fight in the middle east!
    If anyone thinks that makes sense - is delusional!

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  3. silly left...
    Republicans don't want to kill you

    good article

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  4. Anonymous19/11/15

    I have never seen or heard any president speak with such a defeatist and with a overly defensive and haughty attitude as Obama.

    He has given up, and is telling us just to accept defeat, that losing won't hurt so if you do not resist it but just go along with it. ISIS forces are out in the open, easy targets for our hi-tech airstrikes, yet he won't employ them in full measure--And this from a president who on his own executive authority had no problem with ordering airstrikes in Libya, with no concern of collateral damage to civilians.

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  5. D.D.Mao19/11/15

    The entire policy of the Obama administration toward ISIS and the Taliban has been "Lead from Behind." as we are well aware. The preident doesn't want to send ground troops to the Middle East but is quite content to send the Middle East here to America through Syrian immigrants. Assimilation into American society by immigrants has been non existent over the past 4 or 5 decades and believing religious Islamic immigrants are going to assimilate is naïve at best and treacherous at worst. While understood it is more difficult it has been a proven fact that America is better playing away games when it comes to war.


    Thank you Mr. Greenfield for once again describing so eloquently the foreign policy problem before us.

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  6. Another commenter on another site said that, "Obama wants America crucified for the sins of the world, but that's already been done."

    I believe that commenter is correct on both counts.

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  7. I gladly second the praise anonymous 1 heaped upon you for the hard work you do for the cause of retaining values, truth & freedom in the western world.

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  8. Anonymous20/11/15

    Another brilliant analysis of what's living in the White House.

    David, Thailand

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  9. Anonymous20/11/15

    Brillant, as always.

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  10. Redwine20/11/15

    Superb, insightful article,
    Another dimension of Hussein's hatred for America and its citizens is his lawless, open borders "policy" (more of a fiat than a policy) to illegal aliens. He doesn't much care about the Spanish-speakers who cross the border. It's rather the adjunct cause for bringing in millions of Muslims. It would counter what he sees as the "Jewish lobby" or influence and American support for Israel.

    I have an article from May of this year by Daniel Horowitz in Conservative Review that points to "1,628,854 green cards to immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries from 2001-2013" (https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2015/05/1m-immigrants-from-muslim-countries). That's with green cards, and not including those who have infiltrated over the porous borders with the Spanish-speakers.

    I believe that as the petty, vengeful, historically illiterate malignant narcissist that he is, Hussein deeply desires to turn America into a Muslim country.

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  11. Anonymous20/11/15

    The most unfit, un-American president of them all has become tired of pretending to be American. But he has not tired of forcing unconstitutional changes on this country through his infamous "pen and phone."

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  12. Anonymous20/11/15

    To Comment #2 Anonymous above - beautiful post, sir or madam. You and Mr. Greenfield, as are many Americans, in unison in their views, observations and beliefs of the lying (taqiyya) Muslim, Marxist and egregious traitor who inhabits our White House. Along with the complicit media (most of which are influenced by globalist's money and the financial enrichment of the likes of George Soros), and an administration with hand-picked Czars to carry out retaliations against any opposition, it has been clear for quite some time that something is and has been rotten in D.C. for a long, long time. And, I fear, many of our elected officials who have disguised their true beliefs, not as Muslims, necessarily, but as very far left Marxist, Socialist and Communist ideologists. America has been conned big time. Unfortunately, the young are being indoctrinated and the minorities are convinced they are "victims" and those with their hands out for "free stuff" who don't care about being a responsible American, will always vote for a lying democrat. Not that the Republican Establishment is any better - Jeb Bush or Rubio for President?????? NO WAY.

    Resistance is not futile - it wasn't in the past and it will prevail in the future. America IS NOT over.

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  13. Just a common 'tater20/11/15

    You have stated so clearly what we see going on, yet the MSM continues to laud BHO's lack of leadership. Criticism of this dithering leads to accusations of racism. Of course if we criticize Hillary, then we are wife beaters or the equivalent.

    Yet, who is it that is committing ethnic and race based genocides and who mutilates and enslaves women, girls, and boys? The religion that no one dares criticize.

    You stated that BHO has basically tried to ignore ISIS (and similar groups) terrorism and "That has been his approach to all his scandals from ObamaCare to the IRS to the VA." In reality, BHO may be the poster boy and enabler supreme, but this has been going on a long time. NO ONE, not even Eisenhower has stood up to the religion that no one dares criticize, let alone mention, especially in any manner related to the word "terror."

    This penchant of western leadership to kowtow to the middle east oil sheiks was made public when Bush #1 was told by his "allies" that they would not support his removal of a fellow muslim leader, regardless of how vile he was. Hence, stormin' Norman was stopped dead in his tracks and not allowed to clean house in Bagdad.

    While I believe we should support the Hashemite Jordanian leadership, the house of Saud has been just as much a promulgator of militant islam as anyone out there, just using different means. Look at how Bush #2 protected them after 9/11. BHO bowed to and kissed the hand of the King of KSA and has made sure our LEO's do not say terror and Islam in the same sentence, paragraph, or life time.

    Unfortunately, BHO's approach will not work if the same kind of activities that occurred in France happen here. However, unless the voters clean house in each state legislature as well as Congress, nothing will change. Democrats and RINO's are the enablers of the commandless CinC.

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  14. Y. Ben-David21/11/15

    B Hussein really doesn't want to defeat ISIS. It is always important to remember that he promised a "fundamental transformation of America" and that includes its foreign policy. Obama wants to remove 'imperialist, colonialist" Western/American influence from the Middle East. That is why he wanted pro-American Mubarak and Ben Ali out but he wanted the anti-American Iranian Mullah abd Assad regimes preserved.
    He has no real problem with ISIS. I see many "progressive" commentators saying they are not a real threat to the West, or that their existence is merely an "understandable' reaction to years of Western imperialism.
    However, Obama is also a pragmatic politician, unlike Jerermy Corbyn, who thinks like Obama but is a purist who isn't really expecting to win any elections in the UK. Thus, he makes a pretense of fighting ISIS while at the same time ordering 80% of the bombing sorties against them to return without dropping their bombs.
    The ultimate goal of Obama and his followers is to see a cluster of radical, revolutionary states in the Middle East including the Islamic state, Iran and probably Turkey which will then create a juggernaut which will end up sweeping away the remaining foci of Western support including the Gulf States and Egypt. Thus, Obama will be able to point at a newly "purified" Middle East, cleansed of degenerate Western colonialist influence and in which pure Muslim peoples will be newly empowered. This will be a significant advance in Obama's "fundamental transformation of America". Frightening, but very plausible.

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  15. Anonymous21/11/15

    The entire Left wants to defeat America as it is. Once you understand that, you understand everything. The Left wants another America, a balkanized America of tribes, where order can only be maintained by an unaccountable federal government bureaucracy that divides resources as it will, enforces law as it will, determines outcomes as it will, decide what ideas can be heard as it will. The Left wants to be those bureaucrats. Protecting the old America is not on the agenda. The only thing that matters is that we increase the power of the federal government to rule over Americans. If letting more Muslim refugees into the country means more police power, or another tribe with affirmative action, or more welfare, or simply to prove the President can do what the country does not want, it is a very good thing. Defeating the Islamic State does not advance that interest so it is irrelevant.

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  16. Obama and his political allies believe that crime can’t be fought with cops and wars can’t be won with soldiers.

    They believe that crime should be fought with soldiers, and wars can be won with cops.

    -Rurik

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  17. Anonymous21/11/15

    Variations on a classic piece
    (..)The posturing Potus asked his mirror:
    Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
    Who in this land is fairest of all?
    It answered:
    You, my queen, are fair; it is true.
    But Snow-White is a thousand times fairer than you.
    The queen took fright and turned yellow and green with envy.
    "That is white privilege, a microagression" she replied and forbade the snow that tended to deny the settled science of the global warming.
    She added: "And to teach you all a lesson I will turn millions of illegals legal with my black magic". The Mullahs noded in the background

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  18. The left and Obama may be attacking America, but on the way, they are definitely attacking Israel. The obscene efforts of the anthropological society to promote institutional boycotts of Israel cannot be ignored.

    It may not be PC to say it, but the Muslims definitely inhibit criticism through their aggressive physical response. I recall a journalist trying to interview a Muslim after a court case, and having his camera broken, and being physically intimidated by some quite large guys. I suspect it won't happen again. Jews are far too timid and accommodating about anti-Israel bigotry by leftist bullies and cowards. One example - a guy who lived on a main road had an anti-Israel sign that greeted all the car drivers going to work. One day he found that the sign had been destroyed .. he was very apologetic and said he meant no harm.

    I would predict that the head of the Anthropological society and his/her collaborators are gutless cowards and bullies who would not respond well to some intimidation - appropriate for the bigots they are.

    There has to be some sort of penalty for anti-Israel bigotry - and it's not just more talk.

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  19. The left and Obama MAY be against America, but they are DEFINITELY against Israel. The obscenity of the recent Anthropological Society effort to boycott Israel is a prime example.

    We either stand up strongly against these anti-Israel bigots or we don't. One thing to learn from the Muslims is that they don't accept criticism lying down. I recall a journalist having his camera broken and being intimidated by some large Muslims when he attempted to interview someone after a court case.

    We Jews are largely wimps when it comes to defending ourselves and Israel. And while I admire what you write, Sultan Knish, ultimately it's preaching to the converted. In contrast, I recall one example of a guy on a main road who had a large anti-Israel sign greeting all the car drivers. He ignored criticism, until his sign happened to be destroyed one day. At that stage he was very apologetic and said he meant no harm.

    I would predict that the President of the Anthropological society and his/her anti-Israel henchmen are leftist cowards who wouldn't cope well with some minor but real negative consequences to their bigotry ... Naaseh v'nishma.

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  20. The DC Cartel must end. There is no doubt, and never has been in my mind, that Obama is a traitor with no allegiance to America. The Clintons should be in prison for treason, and we should not take in military age refugees from any country where terrorism is a threat. Now, they are all, including the GOP, banding together to discredit Trump when the crooked cartel should be bringing Obama up on treason charges. The DC Cartel must be maintained at any cost. They don't care what the silent majority thinks or believes. That's why they reel with despair over Trump's popularity. It's not so much even Trump because anyone who stood up and told the truth would have become a champion of the people who are never heard because of biased Liberal media. Geraldo turned Republican when he thought his daughter was in danger and touted Trump's plans. Obama should be removed from office before he can finish his term with more damage.

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  21. Obama is a delusional narcissistic sociopath. He only cares about himself. And he sees his legend being established through extremely partisan politics. Domestic only because the public doesn't care about foreign policy. He is the most self-absorbed, mean-spirited, capricious, and insane head of state since Caligula.

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  22. Anonymous22/11/15

    If I could give you a thumbs up anywhere on this one, I would. Home grown terrorists and the Dems aren't speaking of converts to Islam when they say it.

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  23. -- [Y]ou don’t win wars by addressing root causes. --

    Perhaps you do in this case, for the "root cause" of Islamic terrorism is Islam. And it will be so for as long as Islam's most sacred texts exhort Muslims to wield the sword against "the unbeliever."

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  24. Anonymous23/11/15

    Excellent insight, Mr. Greenfield, all the way to the equality premiss that drives so much of leftism. Every voter in America, everyone in the West, need to read and understand this about the man who occupies the Oval Office and the people who put him there.

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  25. Anonymous23/11/15

    GT Kona said "The presidential candidates need to read this."

    A presidential candidate needs to write this.

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  26. Mr. Greenfield, superb analysis. You speak truth.

    May I refer you to the Bible's book of Daniel, chapter 7, verses 19-27.

    One question for you. Would you go so far as to consider Mr. Obama's goal as Islam's conquering the US (and Canada and Great Britain and Europe) rather than simply defeating the US?

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  27. Anonymous23/11/15

    I'm surprised that no one has drawn the obvious corollary to your reasoning: America cannot be defended until the domestic Left is crushed. To me, that's been obvious since April 1975. And I don't mean "crushed" at the polls, but hanged, driven out of every public office and forced into exile abroad. They have been, are and will remain nothing but traitors and parasites, and none of the rest of us will be safe in either or persons or liberties until they are removed permanently from the body politic.

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  28. Anonymous24/11/15

    Obama (or America) lost the Afghanistan war not because the Americans wanted to fight an unwinnable war to placate local opinion, but because America's key ally, Pakistan, on which it was critically dependent and into which it was pouring in billions of dollars and tons of sophisticated weaponry, was fighting against America and with the Taliban, which Pakistan had earlier created, even before the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of gaining strategic depth in Afghanistan, which is one of the key war doctrines of the Pakistani army.

    Even after America's enemy number one, Osama bin Laden was found and assasinated by the marines in a safe house in the Pakistan army cantonment in Abbottabad, neither Obama, nor the Americans have wizened up to the Pakistani game and are being lead up the garden path by the wily Pakistani generals, who are now conning the Americans to help them enter the nuclear club so that they can pass on their Islamic atomic toys to Baghdadi and thus make the evil caliphate in Iraq inviolate.

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous29/11/15

      Pakistan is already a nuclear state.

      Delete
  29. One of the best explanations about Obama that I've EVER read! Thank u for so eloquently speaking out truth!

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  30. Anonymous7/12/15

    Y. Ben-David, Obama's "fundamental transformation of America" sounds like the ultimate SJW entryism. Obama looks at the USA and invests it with meaning and purpose (all of it negative) but he understands it not, cargo cultist that he is. People like him didn't build it; and they don't understand it. With Obama's ego and narcissism there's no need to. Instead he wants to see it remade in his own image. Leftists having been taking over institutions that they did not - could not - build and corrupt them into something with a quite different purpose for ever - from the Boy Scouts, churches and private businesses, to education and journalism, now to the USA itself. His transformed America, is far weaker and poorer with wealth redistribution more like failed African socialist states he'd like it more to resemble. See these well-meaning dupes on the left don't have to hate America like this guy: see, they're being taken for a ride too.

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  31. Anonymous14/12/15

    There is one constant, one thread, a single word tying this administration's thought, word and deed into an understandable philosophical, social, religious, economic, geopolitical actionable plan...Dhimmitude. See, century old efforts of "collectivization" of Western/Eastern countries with Western social/economic/religious systems all having met with failures...How best to "collectivize" Western nations while maintaining "proletariats" subjective while empowering "oligarch's and bourgeoisie" class? With Islam's DHIMMA. This single word encapsulates every hard to explain " radical terrorist" actions! What explains freewheeling admission of some 680,000 Muslim/Islamic natives into American Sanctuary (and depopulated) Cities? And what else explains explosive building of religious places of worship (Mosques) across all America? Lastly, where is all this alarming "flow of funds" originating from, and what is its purpose? Answer: DHIMMA. Statistics from BLS show a quantum shrinkage of America's once proud Middle Class. Associated with this DATA is the increase of Upper Income as well as Lower income Classes (more of the latter, than the former). This is DHIMMA. See, the DHIMMA have to always pledge allegiance to the PASHA and always TITHE to PASHA'S Ruling class (the old "bourgeoisie")! America now is evolving towards the PASHA and DHIMMA Islamic construct of ancient 7th Century Cultures...Obama is speeding this transition with newly minted Climate Change Treaty. Pray. Amen. God Bless America and ALL Americans (sheep being led to slaughter). Read A Bible. Amen.

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