Strategic Leadership: The foreign policy of Barack Obama

Desperate to diminish the President's strong record on foreign policy, conservatives have pathetically attempted to paint President Obama as a weak President who is soft on America's enemies. There is an entertaining but dangerous testosterone contest among the Republican presidential candidates about who would be the first to bomb Iran. In this election year, I think a very important question Americans need to ask themselves is this: Do we want a reckless warrior or an intelligent leader?

After 9/11, we heard a lot of tough talk from Republicans and at the time it worked very well for them but after 10 years of perpetual wars and trillions of dollars spent, many Americans are skeptical about how effective all of that tough talk really was and because of the military successes of President Obama, are beginning to see that there is a more sensible approach to foreign policy.

There are two big reasons I believe Obama is an intelligent leader and his Republican subordinates are reckless: (1) The way he handled the Bin Laden assassination -- a very fragile situation-- and (2) The way that he is dealing with Iran.

Of course, any President would have ordered the death of Bin Laden, which, was the result of several years of intelligence gathering for which no one person can take credit. The question is not whether or not Obama deserves credit for Bin Laden's death, but how would the mission have been carried out differently if someone else was President?

Opportunity Economics and The American Dream Part 1

I recently watched the Republican Debate held in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and I am completely certain that any normal person with an average education would have walked away from this event feeling deeply disturbed and probably offended. The reason I say this is because of the shameless racism demonstrated by the audience and the blatant exploitation of that racism by Newt Gingrich, who defended his statement about ending child labor laws so poor kids in urban areas can "learn what a paycheck is," or something incredibly condescending and racist like that.

This display of ignorance and bigotry from Gingrich stirred up a great level of controversy because of the clear disdain that it expresses towards the poor and more particularly, the African American people who live in our impoverished inner cities --but in South Carolina it received a standing ovation, Yee Hah! Newt Gingrich was exploiting a long held stereotype that black people are a group of people who don't understand what it means to work for a living. What is most disturbing about this stereotype is that it is a widely held view among many conservatives, who believe that black people have been oppressed by liberal policies that keep them dependent on the government and because of the "failed" policies of liberals, are unaware of what it means to work for a living and earn a paycheck.

As someone who grew up in poverty with a single-parent on welfare, I know first hand that this stereotype is not true. It is an irrefutable fact that nobody has a greater initiative to work hard than a person who experiences a life of poverty. Newt Gingrich may think that poor people need him to come teach them about what a paycheck is but that's because Newt Gingrich, along with the rest of his party, is out of touch with reality. As a person who has lived most of his life on the bare essentials of existence I have one objective, to give my children a better life than I had. I, along with the overwhelming majority of poor people who share my objective, understand that in order to achieve this, hard work will be required. That is the sentiment of poor people who are shunned by many of their fellow Americans as lazy; even as they work multiple jobs just to pay their bills and struggle to put food on the table. Republicans keep telling poor people to blame themselves for being poor and not having jobs, as they implement and propose the very policies that send jobs overseas and eliminate opportunities for poor people to get a leg up in society. One thing about poverty is abundantly clear, it is not the result of the lack of work ethic.

The Problem of the Never Ending Campaign Season

Many people in America are frustrated. The reason they are frustrated is because of the inability of the people they elect to accomplish the things they promise. Everyone talks about how we need to make big changes in Washington D.C. but why do these big changes never happen? How come we hear promise after promise, with no results?

It is because of the never ending campaign season.

Long before Obama ever signed a single bill, before he ever even had the opportunity to rest his feet on the desk of the oval office, Republicans had one objective, to make him a one term president. So before he ever had the chance to bring hope and change to Washington D.C., he was faced with a group of corporate welfare cases who wanted to bring nothing more than the hope of his failure and change involving them taking back the executive power they lost -- after they screwed up the country.

The approval rating of congress has dropped from 25% before the 2010 midterm elections, all the way down to 9% -- even communism has a higher approval rating than the US congress. This is because Americans see that instead of focusing on the problems they were elected to solve, politicians have allocated their time and resources towards their objective of obtaining greater political power. The focus of campaigning to take the presidency back from Obama has caused some to put their love of power, before their love of country.

We may not know why Mitch McConnell has a continuous neck that extends all the way up to his mouth and we may not know why there are people who vote against their own interests (Middle Class people who think Donald Trump would make a great President); But one thing we do know is that the reason campaign promises are rarely kept, is because the campaign never ends.