Obama's America 2016 (Non-Fiction)(2012) by Dinesh D'Souza Page B
Authors: Dinesh D'Souza
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War, has been largely jettisoned. The current administration is reducing America’s arsenal to a few hundred missiles and seeks to do away with nuclear weapons entirely. Finally, America has seen its influence diminish in South America, Asia, and especially the Middle East, where anti-American forces are on the rise and America’s allies are increasingly isolated and endangered. Not since Jimmy Carter has America suffered such a stark decline of power and prosperity.
Who is responsible for this? At the center of the debate is one man, Barack Obama. There are those who think that he has nothing to do with any of it; that he inherited all the problems from previous administrations; that he has been gallantly restoring America’s economy and America’s position in the world; that he has faced unfortunate obstacles, mainly in the form of obstinate Republicans, but that success is just ahead; that if we only give him a second term, Obama will vindicate the hope and confidence that were placed in him in 2008. This is the liberal position, which I will show is dangerously delusional, utterly incongruent with the facts, although we still have to explain why intelligent people are so susceptible to such delusions. Then there is the mainstream Republican view, which is that Obama is a typical American liberal, a progressive bungler of the Jimmy Carter type. He wants to restore America’s economy, but he simply adopts one misguided policy after another. He wants to bring down unemployment and gas prices, but doesn’t know how markets work. He wants to repair America’s standing in the world, but his efforts to do so thwart American interests, undermine our allies, and bring our enemies to power.
So the Republicans shake their heads and say: well, he has no experience of working in the private sector, he is unskilled in foreign policy, he just doesn’t understand. We have witnessed four years of right-leaning pundits explaining to Obama that Iran and Syria are not our friends; that slashing our nuclear arsenal is not a way to make America stronger; that if we get rid of nuclear weapons Iran’s mullahs aren’t going to lose interest in acquiring their own bombs; that higher taxes don’t foster economic growth; that if we drill for oil in America we will become less dependent on foreign oil; that debt is reaching a point at which the economy risks ruinous collapse; and so on.
I will show in this book that the mainstream Republican critique of Obama is no less problematic than the liberal hosannas. Obama is not merely the presiding instrument of American decline, he is the architect of American decline. He wants America to be downsized. He wants Americans to consume less, and he would like to see our standard of living decline relative to that of other nations. He seeks a diminished footprint for America in the world. He detests America’s traditional allies, like Britain and Israel, and seeks to weaken them; he is not very worried about radical Muslims acquiring a nuclear bomb or coming to power in countries like Tunisia and Egypt. He is quite willing to saddle future generations of Americans with crippling debt; he has spent trillions of dollars toward this end, and if he had been permitted, he would have spent trillions more. He has shown no inclination, and has no desire, to protect America’s position as number one in the world; he would be content to see America as number 18, or number 67, just another country seated at the great dining table of nations. The strength of my thesis is that it is completely congruent with who Obama is and what he does. We don’t have to assume that he is always getting results opposite to what he intends; we simply have to see that he intends the results he is getting. He emphasized in his inauguration speech his goal of “remaking America”—and he is doing it, recognizing that in order to remake America he must first unmake America. The only question is whether Americans approve of
Who is responsible for this? At the center of the debate is one man, Barack Obama. There are those who think that he has nothing to do with any of it; that he inherited all the problems from previous administrations; that he has been gallantly restoring America’s economy and America’s position in the world; that he has faced unfortunate obstacles, mainly in the form of obstinate Republicans, but that success is just ahead; that if we only give him a second term, Obama will vindicate the hope and confidence that were placed in him in 2008. This is the liberal position, which I will show is dangerously delusional, utterly incongruent with the facts, although we still have to explain why intelligent people are so susceptible to such delusions. Then there is the mainstream Republican view, which is that Obama is a typical American liberal, a progressive bungler of the Jimmy Carter type. He wants to restore America’s economy, but he simply adopts one misguided policy after another. He wants to bring down unemployment and gas prices, but doesn’t know how markets work. He wants to repair America’s standing in the world, but his efforts to do so thwart American interests, undermine our allies, and bring our enemies to power.
So the Republicans shake their heads and say: well, he has no experience of working in the private sector, he is unskilled in foreign policy, he just doesn’t understand. We have witnessed four years of right-leaning pundits explaining to Obama that Iran and Syria are not our friends; that slashing our nuclear arsenal is not a way to make America stronger; that if we get rid of nuclear weapons Iran’s mullahs aren’t going to lose interest in acquiring their own bombs; that higher taxes don’t foster economic growth; that if we drill for oil in America we will become less dependent on foreign oil; that debt is reaching a point at which the economy risks ruinous collapse; and so on.
I will show in this book that the mainstream Republican critique of Obama is no less problematic than the liberal hosannas. Obama is not merely the presiding instrument of American decline, he is the architect of American decline. He wants America to be downsized. He wants Americans to consume less, and he would like to see our standard of living decline relative to that of other nations. He seeks a diminished footprint for America in the world. He detests America’s traditional allies, like Britain and Israel, and seeks to weaken them; he is not very worried about radical Muslims acquiring a nuclear bomb or coming to power in countries like Tunisia and Egypt. He is quite willing to saddle future generations of Americans with crippling debt; he has spent trillions of dollars toward this end, and if he had been permitted, he would have spent trillions more. He has shown no inclination, and has no desire, to protect America’s position as number one in the world; he would be content to see America as number 18, or number 67, just another country seated at the great dining table of nations. The strength of my thesis is that it is completely congruent with who Obama is and what he does. We don’t have to assume that he is always getting results opposite to what he intends; we simply have to see that he intends the results he is getting. He emphasized in his inauguration speech his goal of “remaking America”—and he is doing it, recognizing that in order to remake America he must first unmake America. The only question is whether Americans approve of
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