Dear President Obvious, Poor People Are Not 'Our Enemies'

Dear President Obvious, Poor People Are Not 'Our Enemies'
Kevin McCullough
Sunday, January 03, 2010

"The investigation into the Christmas Day incident continues, and we're learning more about the suspect. We know that he traveled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty... It appears that he joined an affiliate of al-Qaeda, and that this group... trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America," Obama said.

President Obama, from his early days on the campaign trail forward, has always been quick to link terrorists (though he will not call them that) with poverty across the globe. The idea is dishonest, misleading, and purposefully misconstrues the point of the issue. It also gives Obama incredible cover, though it insults the very people he made campaign promises to.

In doing so, President Obama makes us weaker, causes us to look in the wrong places, and at the end of the day, this says a great deal about his own commitment to what is required to be his foremost concern: the safety of Americans. It is bad enough that President Obama is blind to the realities of the challenges the terrorists pose to us, but he should be ashamed at his tact in how he attempts to force us to view the world through his sorely out of focus, rose-colored spectacles.

The quote at the top of this column is from President Obama's Saturday weekly radio address to the nation. I'd like to congratulate President Obama for, after nine days, finally admitting that what appeared obvious to every American (with the exception of perhaps his own Homeland Security Secretary) was finally evident to him as well.

America was attacked by Al Qaeda on Christmas Day. We might also add that the only reason it did not take the life of a couple hundred Americans is because the magical undergarments were unable to be ignited.

But what if it had taken place? Would President Obama still have taken nine days to admit to the American people that the attempted attack was an Al Qaeda action? (This was also very reminiscent of his statement on the violence in Iran following their elections when it took him ten days to decide that the people of Iran had the right to be rather put off by a rigged election. He also evidently only came to that conclusion after a beautiful Iranian woman was mowed down by gunfire on international television and the footage aired repeatedly.)

Why can't this president ever seem to grasp the obvious? Except when he finally does?

But the most appalling part of his speech on Saturday was not his eventual embrace of what everyone already knew, but rather his implication that poor people are the real enemies, a habit he has long had in public statements on the issue. Why do liberals insist upon declaring that terrorist enemies are poor? Why do they seem to connect poverty and terrorism (though they never call terrorism by its name?)

I've personally traveled to likely more impoverished nations than our President has. From Eastern Europe, to the African continent, to Latin America, and to Haiti, the poorest nation in our hemisphere and the third poorest on the planet. I've tasted, smelled, rubbed up against, and felt the impoverished experience of our planet. And I have to tell you I don't see it.

I know the theory is that because (in Obama's mind) America is this rich, empirical, occupational power that is the primary reason that the world suffers. In such thinking, those who hold to that imagination believe that the impoverished in remote places on earth develop anger for America because of their personal lack of material goods. Eventually, genius law professors like Obama will argue, that such poverty drives the impoverished to radicalization, and jealous revenge.

The whole theory is hogwash. The vast majority of impoverished people I've met certainly would like greater material ease in life, more regular work, a little bit of help and from time to time, and perhaps a nicety of life. But I've learned another very real truth about the impoverished, from the Sudan to Haiti and beyond, they generally are more thankful for what they DO have than anyone living in America. (Especially Obama's welfare defrauding neighbors living on Chicago's South Side.)

The "poor" in America are still quite wealthy by comparison to what the genuinely poorest of the poor have in this world. They also have the riches of a nation that can and does give them every opportunity to overcome that situation here in their very own country.

By comparison interview any number of orphan children in Sub-Saharan Africa and you will see that when you ask them what they want, they never answer, "the destruction of the United States." In fact far more often than President Obama would ever admit, they HAVE told ME, "to GO to America."

I feel deeply offended that the President uses the poor as political tools and pawns to pass his agenda, then turns around and slanders their character by constantly linking them to the dredge of the world's evil.

It is a well known fact that the terrorists that carried out the 9/11 attacks had the means to go to flight school, speak English, live in America, and even spend money on strippers the night before the attack.

Does Yemen have poor people? Yes? Are they to blame for the flight on NWA 253? No. Not because they are poor anyway.

Someday, even soon, it would be really nice if President Obama just once opened his eyes and saw terrorists for who they are: radical islamic fundamentalists bent on the destruction of the United States.

Is it asking too much to expect that of him, or should I give him another nine days?