OPINION: The American Tsunami; A Fig Leaf President

By Roger Madon

Last week the Japanese people began to experience a one-two punch, an earthquake of incredible magnitude and an epic tsunami, that will bring them to their social, political and economic knees.  At the same time the American people are experiencing a foreign policy calamity that will have a moral and political ruinous effect upon generations to come.

Television, radio  and cable news is filled with calamitous stories concerning the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that  hit Japan last week. The cable news stories have concentrated their lenses on the 3 nuclear power facilities fanning the excitement by predicting that a meltdown is all but inevitable.  All this is occurring while talking heads from MIT and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are trying in vain to calm the waters.  They are wasting their time.

And while Americans are riveted on possible but fairly improbable concentrated radiation drifting over to the West Coast, Col. Muammar Gaddafi is beating the hell out of the rebels that have dared to challenge his authority.  The battle for Libya is into its fourth week and the Gaddafi government, with the help of a reluctant and ambivalent America,  is slowly but relentlessly, with tanks, helicopters and aircraft, each day destroying the momentum of the rebellion. 

President Obama looks to the United Nations and NATO, organizations that forever have shown an unwillingness to engage any government or gang, for that matter, that will require even one soldier, one sailor, a tank, a plane, anything that would allow those who harbor aspirational hopes, who cry for freedom and are willing to die for it, to win. President Obama relied on the corruption of the U.N. and the dithering  of NATO since he knew that these two feckless organizations would never accede to a no fly zone or provide military assistance to the rebels. They did however provide what he believes is the fig leaf to suppress America’s world leadership role, the role he campaigned against.

So finally this American president has accomplished what no American president has ever accomplished before:  The end of American hegemony which shall result as a message to every ruthless dictator on this earth that if you do not hesitate to kill your people in the street you have nothing to fear.  And for those nations and peoples that wish to maintain their freedom, they are on their own.