Many presidents have been remembered in history as promoters of doctrines, defined formulations to project their vision of governance, nationally and internationally. We are now living under the new parameters of the “Obama Doctrine.” President of the United States, Barack Obama, graduate of Harvard Law School, once editor of the Harvard Law Review and occasional Law instructor violated every single lawyerly and law court professional code of conduct, and the fundamental pillars of Rule of Law in his first public articulation of the lens through which he evidently views the world: “I don’t know the facts, but the police acted stupidly.”
This concise sentence of the ideology of arbitrary and dangerously malleable “impressions” and “feelings” over facts, actual investigation and the truth, combined with a corrosive foundational distrust of police as an institution and as individual professionals, presuming guilt until proven innocent, has been applied in full force from President Obama on down through myriad United States Departments of the Obama Administration to Arizona for Arizona’s SB 1070.
Cambridge, Massachusetts was the first city to discover Obama’s penchant for pre-judging police comportment with Obama quickly raising what normally would have been a sooner forgotten the better local kerfuffle to a national issue by publically coming down on one side, solely based on race, because Obama admitted he didn’t “know the facts.” He saw “black” and “white cop,” and jumped all over it by his use of White House bully pulpit – the press conference.
Arizona is the first state to discover the Obama Doctrine as applied to illegal immigration issues:
President Barack Obama: “In Arizona if you don’t have your ID… it’s ‘Adios amigos!”
The Secretary of Homeland Security and former Arizona Governor:
John McCain: “Have you had a chance to review the law?
Janet Napolitano: “I have not reviewed it in detail. I certainly know of it.”
John McCain: So you are not prepared to make a judgment on it.”
Janet Napolitano: “Ahhh … I BELIEVE it’s a bad law …I BELIEVE it mandates and requires…”
United States Attorney General Eric Holder: The nation’s highest law enforcement officer:
Congressman Poe: “Have you read the Arizona law?”
Eric Holder: “Ah … I have not had a chance to … I’ve glanced at it. I have not read it. Um.”
Congressman Poe: “Even though you have not read the law, do you have an opinion whether it’s Constitutional?”
Eric Holder: “Ah …I’ve not really … I’ve not been briefed yet.”
Congressman Poe: “Are you going to read the law?
Eric Holder: “I’m sure I will read the law … in anticipation of that briefing. They will put that in front of me and I will spend a good evening reading that law.”
United States Department of State:
Assistance Secretary of State Michael Posner, formerly of the Open Borders- promoting “Human Rights First” organization apologizes to the Chinese for something they hadn’t even mentioned, the Arizona SB l070: “We brought it up early and often.”
State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley in defense of Posner’s surrender style of negotiating with our enemies: “Have I read the law? No.”
The Obama Doctrine: Facts are to be ignored. Only the political and ideological goals of the Progressive Left Agenda matter. Police are not trusted, because they harbor bigotry.
Is it any surprise that with the willingness of the President on down through his administration to criticize a state law that they “don’t know the facts” about, that agitators feel they have a green light to harass Arizona?
First San Francisco, now Los Angeles Democratic Party politicians have held publically announced they intend harm to the state of Arizona by punishing Arizona economically first with bans on city employee on city business to Arizona and second trying to widen that to the general public to boycott Arizona. Political pressure has been put on sports franchises to boycott, to change venues, to hurt Arizona and Arizona businesses as much as possible through loss of income.
If successful, a boycott will only serve to force Arizona businesses, already squeezed by the economic slide, like restaurants, shops and hotels to lay off more employees, and by the law of unintended consequences, more illegals will be the first out of work, literally forced more by the economic impact of boycotts than SB1070 to move out of state. That’s the short term effect, the long term effect is more insidious and dangerous to the nation’s integrity.
President Barack Obama, by engaging in this rhetoric, while comforting the President of Mexico that he sympathizes with Mexico’s political position over American citizens is engaging in incredibly divisive leadership. Leadership as a quality is neutral; the results depend on where the people are led, set by the character of the leader – led to greater achievement or led down to the pit.
It is worse than ridiculous that Democrat Party city mayors in California, and now in Ohio, are actively promoting economic damage against another state. If not stopped in its tracks, it’s setting the stage for more comprehensive strife and national disunity. At the same time, this has been a more sustained public poisoning of distrust against police. Arizona police and sheriff departments haven’t done anything, yet their thoughts, their motives, their impartiality has all been publically denigrated – judged by a less than impartial pubic and highly partisan jury, guided by the POTUS himself. Every law enforcement officer in the state of Arizona knows he or she is going to be dragged out as Exhibit A if they make one misstep, say one wrong word, one arrest the day SB 1070 goes into effect that will bring down the legal carpetbaggers like a flock of vultures on their heads.
Police departments have for years been running “sensitivity” classes, revamping their hiring, their training, all to address complaints and concerns about how they conduct their public duties. But when was the last time any of those who’ve complained actually praised the concrete improvements? Americans may not see anything special about the typical American policing, so it’s easy to focus constantly on faults, but if they were to compare the average American police officer against his or her Mexican counterpart, they will be surprised. Compare against the average British officer, the average Russian officer, the average Indonesian police, the average Kenyan police … the list goes on and on. American police are head and shoulders above their international counterparts, but when was the last time anyone gave them credit for their high commitment to professionalism?
The President of the United States has a Constitutional duty to “preserve domestic tranquility.”
Obama is not silent on the deterioration of national dignity; he is encouraging agitation between states and mobilizing Federal offices in a joint punitive approach against Arizona and all its legal citizens, a population of all “colors,” languages, cultures and creeds, more diverse in “American Roots” than most other states. His Constitutional duty is to see FIRST to the needs of the lawful citizens, NOT to pander to a foreign government, which holds national interests different than our own. His duty is not to encourage or ignore destructive squabbling between states, but to provide leadership to prevent that or discourage such negative behaviors.
Obama did not come out and rebuke California politicians for their provocative rhetoric and abusive administrative actions; he’s encouraged them by criticizing Arizona – for something that hasn’t even as yet been implemented. He is corrosively continuing his public denigration of our police as an institution to whom the important task of providing local domestic security falls, while stoking agitation that will put the police literally in harm’s way. President Obama’s doctrine should be focusing like a laser beam on doing his constitutionally mandated job to “preserve domestic tranquility” as he fulfills his duty to “provide for the common defense” by credibly securing our national borders.
